Despite her success as a rapper, Mélanie Georgiades — better known by her stage name Diam’s — felt unfulfilled and deeply troubled about her life.

In search for answers, she’s found new hope and happiness in life after converting to Islam.

“All this stuff, the money, the success, the power did not make me happy,” Georgiades told Arab News while in Makkah for Hajj.

“I was searching for happiness; I was very, very sad, and I was alone. I was wondering why I was on this earth. I knew it was not to be rich or famous, because I had those things, and they did not make me happy. So, I began searching for answers to all my questions.”

At the top of her success as a rapper in 2008, when she won the MTV European Music Award for Best French Artist as well as the NRJ Music Awards for Best Artist, Best Album, and Best Song, Georgiades’ life changed while visiting her friend, Sousou, who was a Muslim.

During that visit, Sousou asked that she be excused for a few minutes to go perform her evening prayers in the other room.

Georgiades felt compelled to join her friend in prayer, imitating her moves and prostrated herself before Allah for the first time in her life.

“When I prayed with her and I prostrated myself, I felt being connected with God,” Georgiades said.

Soon after that, she obtained a copy of the Holy Qur’an and began reading it while on a trip to Mauritius.

“It was a revelation,” she said. “I became intimately convinced that God existed.

The more I was reading, the more convinced I became. Up until then, I believed in one God, but I was Christian in my heart, or rather, did not know exactly what I was, except sad.”

After converting to Islam, she moved to Saudi Arabia along with her husband, a former Franco-Tunisian rapper, Faouzi Tarkhani.

Georgiades and her husband have traveled to Makkah to perform Hajj this year.

“This is going to be my second Hajj, but this time I am coming with a different mindset,” she said.

“Last time I came, I was a new Muslim and did not know the religion very well back then. But because I have now been a Muslim for many years, I have learned many things about Islam and the Sunnah and the Prophet (PBUH) and about the story of this land and of the Haramain. This Hajj will be quite different for me as I realize more now about the significance of the journey’s rituals and steps. It will be an even more spiritual experience than before, Inshallah.”

Hajj Dream

Muslims from around the world pour to Makkah every year to perform Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam.

Hajj consists of several rituals, which are meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.

Every able-bodied adult Muslim who can financially afford the trip must perform Hajj at least once in a lifetime.

Hajj 2019 will commence on Friday, 9th of August 2019 and will continue till Wednesday, 14th of August 2019; in the evening time.