Antonija Petra: finding an answer, and someone to talk to
Antonija Petra Gagulić grew up in Osijek, Croatia, in a Catholic family whose faith was part of everyday life. She remembered a happy childhood. For a time, Mass was held in the family home because there was no church nearby. Alongside that religious upbringing, she developed a habit of asking what she believed and why.
As a teenager, she read about psychology and personal development and explored different spiritual ideas and religions. Belief in a creator remained important to her. When she attended an Arabic course, she discovered that the classes took place in a mosque. She described it as a language course, yet she kept a strong impression of the place and wanted to continue learning Arabic.
Her search became more focused at seventeen. She questioned the relationship between a person and God, the Trinity, and the place of Jesus. In her own account, she explained that Islam’s understanding of one God and of Jesus as a messenger spoke to these questions. Reading and comparison brought a growing conviction, followed by another challenge: how to live with what she had come to believe.
Before the shahada, hearing the call to prayer while visiting her sister in Tuzla strengthened her resolve, she recalled. She continued reading afterward.
She recalled the beginning of 2022 as a period of learning to pray and practising aspects of the faith while finding it difficult to share this change with her family. She wanted to meet someone from her own language and culture who had followed a similar path. Eventually, she met two Croatian men from Osijek who had embraced Islam. She now had people with whom she could discuss her experience.
Visits to the mosque and shared iftar meals followed. According to her autobiography, she declared the shahada in the final third of Ramadan 2022, near the end of secondary school. That step did not remove the difficulties within her family, but it expressed the choice she had reached through her search.
In her later account, she described beginning to live and work independently in 2023. She subsequently moved to Sarajevo. Speaking to Anadolu in 2025, she said that her family had struggled to accept her decision and that she had found a welcoming community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At that stage, she was studying psychology and continuing to learn.
She recalled that independence in autumn 2023 let her pray openly and read a printed Quran, instead of secretly using her phone.
Her story brings an intellectual search together with a need for companionship. Reading helped her understand her choice; meeting people who shared her language and experience helped her feel less alone. Both belong to the account she gave: finding answers to difficult questions, and finding someone willing to listen while she learned to live with them.