Ayana Moon: When Her Language Did Not Yet Hold the Answers
How do you investigate a faith when clear explanations barely exist in your language? What happens when the first image reaching you is framed by war and fear, yet one small question refuses to disappear: why do these people pray every day? [1]
Ayana Jihye Moon traces her curiosity to the age of seven. Islam did not enter her world through a calm introduction. She heard family conversations about 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the religion’s name arrived entangled with terrorism and conflict. But she also learned that Muslims prayed five times a day. That detail opened a different question: why would people repeatedly interrupt their day to pray, and what were they seeking? [1]
Information about Islam in Korean was scarce, and Moon’s English was still weak. She began searching Google with an English dictionary beside her, then moved on to books, lectures and conversations with specialists. [1]
While in middle school, according to material quoted from her book, she found works by a Korean professor who specialised in Islam and the Middle East. She read his books and attended events where he spoke, though she felt too young to join adults in discussion. In high school she finally introduced herself to him. Islam was no longer merely a distant topic in the news; it had become a subject she had studied over years. [1]
Moon said that years of preparation made her decision clearer: she had come to understand the concept of Islam before choosing it. [1]
She declared her faith on 29 April 2012, at the age of sixteen. [2][3][4]
In a 2022 talk, she described learning to fast step by step during her first Ramadan. She said she only discovered the tarawih prayer after moving to Malaysia. Her education therefore did not end with the decision to enter Islam; each new setting opened another part of worship and practice to her. [2]
Social costs followed. Moon said her parents opposed the choice, while friends warned that she was risking a promising future. She also made an important distinction: her friends were worried because they cared about her, and they remained her friends. Later, when she wanted to leave Korea to deepen her studies in a Muslim-majority country, she said her family stopped financial support. She worked in a restaurant, tutored and took other part-time jobs to finance the move to Malaysia. [1][3]
Access remained a practical challenge as well as an intellectual one. In a 2021 webinar, Moon spoke about the difficulty of finding prayer supplies and of locating somewhere to pray while travelling in Korea. In her email interview, she also said that living without financial support later influenced her decision to donate part of the proceeds from her book. [4][1]
Moon wrote that Islam brought her greater peace with herself and that her resolve had settled despite the difficulties she faced. [1]
Her journey shows the value of knowledge available in a seeker’s own language. A dictionary and search results gave her a beginning; books and lectures helped her explore the questions that had followed her since childhood. [1]
Ayana’s starting point was a simple question: why do Muslims pray five times each day? From it she built a long path through a dictionary, books and lectures; after 29 April 2012, that learning continued into the daily details of worship and life. [1][2]
Sources
- Wolipop/Detik email interview, 24 May 2020
- World Muslim Communities Council summary, 28 April 2022
- Republika book-based profile, 12 April 2020
- NU Online report on the 21 November 2021 webinar, published 22 November 2021