VOA - J. TabohJewish-born American Maryam Kabeer Faye's spiritual journey led her to embrace Islam.

Spiritual quest

She left Berkeley after just two years, to begin a spiritual quest to find what she calls her "truth."

"It was not any particular religion that I was seeking or that I knew about," says Kabeer Faye. "I was seeking that liberating truth, wherever the call was coming from."

The call led her to places far beyond America's shores, including Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. It was on a bus trip through an Afghan desert that she first encountered the faith that would come to define her spiritualism.

"The bus went into the middle of the desert and at a certain moment the call to prayer came just lilting through the desert - first time I've ever heard it - and then the bus stopped and all of those colorful people got off the bus," she remembers. "Everyone had their prayer mats and they laid them out in the desert and prayed. [It was the] first time that I saw people praying in that way. And it was so pure and beautiful and truly inviting."

Kabeer Faye had witnessed what all devout, practicing Muslims do five times a day. They set aside other activities, face in the direction of the Muslim holy city of Mecca, and kneel down in worship.

The experience was a call that she eventually answered.

Finding her religion

"Countless, countless moments of awakening led me ultimately to the path of Islam, and within that, to the practice of Sufism, or Tasawuf, which for me is intricately united with Islam," explains Kabeer Faye.