Muslim Nadiyah Shakir found her faith at the age of six. She was ill with rheumatic fever at the time, and drew comfort from the prayers her parents and relatives said on her behalf.

The experience shaped her.

Mrs Shakir received a cultural excellence award from The Muslim Journal last month. She was recognised for the work she put into organising a cultural night when the online newspaper visited Bermuda in September 2013.

Bermudian Tracey Sharrieff was also honoured at the 13th annual A Time to Be Grateful Awards in Kansas City. Judges, congressmen, mayors, imams and celebrities such as Senegalese American singer Akon were among those saluted.

Mrs Shakir joined the list because she was invited to help with a fashion show attached to the awards ceremony, held here nearly four years ago.

The 62-year-old was encouraged to come to a meeting. Once there, the entire responsibility for the cultural night programme was placed in her lap. She asked John Woolridge, music teacher at the Berkeley Institute, to get his students to perform and also the U-fonics, a soul band from the Seventies.

“I like doing things like that so I agreed,” she said. “It’s funny because I’m happy to get on stage and perform, but when it comes to me being honoured personally I get very shy. When The Muslim Journal called me to tell me I would be given an award, my first thought was ‘But why?’

“I felt they had already recognised my efforts by putting it in the newspaper and thanking me publicly at the event in 2013. However, once I got my head around it I said, ‘Wow, that’s a deep blessing’. It was awesome.

“We always hear bad news and sometimes people think people aren’t doing anything positive, so I felt it important that this come to light.”

Mrs Shakir and her siblings were raised as Muslims after her father accepted Islam.

“I grew up in New York so we saw people on the streets with drugs, and people who drank, and prostitutes,” she said. “We saw people get stabbed and all sorts of crazy things, but as Muslims we were removed from a lot of that.

“We had a full life. We had some restrictions, but it wasn’t bad. Coming up, the Muslim community in the US was very tightknit and we had religious classes on Saturdays that taught us about Islam.”

Still, it was not until she fell ill that it all became real to her.

“I was placed in a convalescent home for six months and during that time my parents and relatives would always pray for me,” she said, remembering how the inflammatory disease that attacks the heart, joints, skin and brain affected her.

“My mom would always say, ‘You are going to get better’. And that’s when my faith really grew strong and from then I just stuck with it.”

She learnt to lean on her faith, especially in times such as March 2014 when her 29-year-old daughter, Ruqayyah, died suddenly.

“She used to have seizures,” Mrs Shakir said. “As Muslims we don’t do autopsies after someone has died, but the toxicologist and coroner said they didn’t find anything in her blood so they diagnosed her death as being seizure-related.

“It was a very tough time for our family, but it strengthened our faith because God has shown us so many signs since her passing. Those signs let us know it’s going to be OK.

“We are not superstitious, but we believe God gives us signs. Before my daughter’s funeral we were sitting down as a family talking and we got out a book of photos to show one of my four sons. We flipped to the page and showed him the picture of me and I asked what page is it on and they said ‘Page 29’ — the same age as my daughter when she died. Then we got out the Holy Koran and looked at chapter 29; it talks about trials that come to us in this life.”

Her faith, her husband, Ameer, and their four sons continue to be her source of strength.

Mrs Shakir said: “I still cry for my daughter, but when I cry the first tears are because I miss her. The other tears are because I thank God for his mercy. My daughter wasn’t in prolonged pain when she died and that gives me peace.”