Abdul Azziz Abu Sumayya grew up in Oxford, a small city in England famous for its universities. He took his shahada just after September 11th, not long after leaving school. He had believed in Islam since his school years, but it was only then that he started to practice.
Oxford had a Muslim community, but it was small and quiet. There were a couple of mosques, one known as the Bangladeshi mosque, and the community was mostly cultural. There were no lessons and no support system for a new Muslim. If you had friends, they were your support system. That was it.
Then a brother put an idea to him. Go to Egypt and study Arabic for six months. The brothers would pay for the ticket and sponsor him for the six months. A friend from Oxford was already there and had a room he could share. Abdul Azziz had nothing holding him back. Since becoming Muslim he had been drifting, sitting at home playing PlayStation all day, trying to stay away from the life he had left behind. Six months in Egypt sounded like something worth trying.
He landed in Cairo in 2003, about twenty-one years old. The city hit him at once. It was big, crowded, and cramped, and the traffic was worse than anything he knew. A trip across town could take two or three hours. He went straight to Nasr City, and his biggest shock was the number of foreigners there. On his first day at the masjid he met brothers from London, from America, from all over. They were all there for the same thing, and that was comforting.
He did not study in the big centers. An Algerian brother who had studied in Mauritania gave him private lessons at a discount, because the Algerian's own brother was living in the flat with them. Lessons cost ten or fifteen Egyptian pounds an hour in those days. Abdul Azziz arrived without knowing the Arabic alphabet at all. It took him three months to pronounce a single letter. A classroom did not suit him. He gets distracted easily and likes to understand a thing fully before moving on, so one to one lessons worked better for him.
The flat had a rule. An Arab brother lived with them and paid no rent. In return he helped them with their Arabic and listened to their Quran. In the first year they had two Algerians and a Libyan at different times. Every day they spoke Arabic at home, and every day there was someone to ask.
Within a month of arriving, the sponsorship fell through. The brothers who had promised to support him for six months sent word that they could not. He did not panic. Life was cheap then, and he was living on about a pound a day. That covered his share of the rent, his lessons, and his food. The brothers chipped in together for groceries each week and cooked dinner every day. A plate of chicken fried rice from the Malaysian and Indonesian stalls cost thirty pence.
Then help came from home, without him asking. His mother wrote to say she would send him fifty pounds a month. The mother of a friend who had taken shahada at the same time as him did the same. That was enough.
Six months came and went, and he stayed. Within half a year he knew he would rather live like this. It was not about a perfect country. He is the first to say there is no utopia, and he does not pretend Egypt has no faults. It was simpler than that. On a basic level it was easier to be a Muslim. The country itself was the support system. There was a masjid next to the house. People said salam everywhere. Words like alhamdulillah were part of everyday speech, small reminders built into the language. Back in Oxford he had watched dozens of new Muslims drift away because there was nobody around them. In Cairo he was surrounded by Muslims all day, every day.
Then came the decision that settled it. He wanted to get married. He had enough to marry, pay rent, and eat, but not enough to keep studying full time as well. The choice was to marry and stay, or to keep studying until the money ran out and then go home and marry in England. He chose to marry and stay.
He did not visit England for twelve years. When he finally went back for a month, the place felt strange. He kept wanting to greet people on the bus the way he did in Cairo, and they looked at him oddly. Walking through the airport with his bags, he saw a couple showing affection in public, something he had not seen for twelve years. It hit him harder than he expected.
Work had to come next, because the support from home could not last forever. Teaching became his work, and he still teaches in Cairo today. It slowed his studies down, and he is honest about that, but it also rooted him. The short plan had become a life.
The way he studied changed too. Sitting with Arab and African students, he saw what structured learning looked like: start at the beginning and build step by step, one primer text at a time, instead of jumping from topic to topic the way brothers did back in England. He also learned how high the standard was. In Oxford, a man who had memorized half the Quran was treated as something special. In Cairo, his own son goes to school with thirteen and fourteen year olds who have memorized more than one part of the Quran, and nobody thinks twice about it.
Life in Egypt has not been easy in every way. He says nine out of ten of his problems there have come from everyday disorganization, not from religion. Workmen come to fix a fridge and leave it worse than they found it. Movers break something every time he moves house, and still expect to be paid in full, sometimes more. Nobody offers compensation, and nobody says they do not know how to do the job. He has learned to live with it.
That is his story in short. A six month trip became twenty-one years, a marriage, a family, and a teaching life in Cairo. He tells people who want to follow the same path to start with the right intention, to get their money sorted, to find a teacher who can guide them, and to be patient. Learning is work, and it is slow. But for him, the decision was made in the first six months, and he has never had reason to undo it.