Growing up in the 1970s in Bradford, Zaiba Malik's life was dominated by Islam and the lessons of the Qur'an. But leaving home to go to university exposed her to a secular world and she abandoned the teachings of her father. Then the London bombings happened ...

It's been more than 20 years since I prayed in a mosque. The last time was when, as a reluctant 12-year-old, I was taken by my father to a makeshift prayer hall in Bradford. I wanted to be at home watching Blue Peter, not surrounded by old women who, when they weren't reciting their prayers in Arabic (a language I didn't understand) were chatting away in Urdu (another language I didn't understand). Watching them carry out their ablutions was not a pretty sight, hawking spit and mucus as required by Islamic practice from their mouths and noses before being able to pray. I also remember the ungodly smell: shoes had to be deposited on shelves outside the hall, but still the collective odour of 30 or so pairs of sandals and slippers lingered in the air. I'd heard stories of footwear going missing so, to avoid going home barefoot, I would hide my shoes behind a shelf.

Now aged 35, worrying about my Nike trainers was the last thing on my mind; it was July 8, the day after the London bombings, and I found myself standing with a group of around 30 female worshippers at the East London mosque. I hadn't intended to take part in the Friday prayers - I had come as a journalist to talk to the women about Islam - but when a young girl asked me if I was going to join the kneeled congregation, I immediately replied yes. It was partly out of respect, and partly embarrassment.

My memory of the da'wah, or prayer, was hazy. My slightly unsuitable top kept riding up my back, exposing my flesh every time I bowed to the floor. But recalling the Arabic that my father had taught me came easier than I expected. Suddenly, tears started to roll down my cheeks. I sneaked a glance at the other women. They were all dry-eyed.

At first, I thought it was guilt, remorse at not having stepped inside a mosque for so long. Then I realised - I was crying for my faith. Islam was a way of life for these women and now that way of life was being analysed, debated, criticised and even distorted. From the back of the hall came the sound of childish laughter. Little girls, no more than three or four years old, were entertaining themselves as their mothers prayed. They reminded me of the time I learned about Islam. Then, there were no websites showing suicide bombers and no inflammatory clerics threatened with deportation. Then, there was just my father and his kids sat at the kitchen table reading the Holy Book.

As a child, I was fascinated by my father's copy of the Qur'an. It was a ritual of my father's to gently take it out of its cupboard, unwrap the sling of cream silk used to protect it, and place it on its wooden lectern, the ornate, jet-black Arabic scripture contrasting with the mint green pages. Even before I knew anything about its content, I learned that there were strict rules governing the handling of the Qur'an. You must wash your hands before touching it; you must never place it on the floor; you must never point your feet towards it; you must always cover your hair while reading it.

Contained in its 114 surahs [chapters] were detailed instructions on how Muslims should conduct themselves from birth to death. And so, from the age of about five, most afternoons and weekends for my sister and brother and I were taken up learning the Arabic verse. I had no idea what it meant - Punjabi was the language we spoke at home - but I suppose my father wanted to make sure we knew how to recite the divine revelation in its most pure form, untainted by human translation. Other children had fairy tales read to them; my father told me of the miracles the Prophet Muhammad had performed, such as splitting the moon in two and feeding an entire army of soldiers with just scraps of food.

My father was an engrossing raconteur, and his joy and passion for the Qur'an was infectious. He would frequently tell us of the test that Abraham faced when Allah asked him to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. Because Abraham obeyed, when he brought down the blade on Ishmael, his son was saved, and in his place was a ram. To commemorate this, Muslims hold an annual Feast of Sacrifice - the Eid al-Adha - in which Abraham's obedience is re-enacted with the killing of a ram or goat. On our street, for days before the festival, you would hear bleating coming out of neighbours' back gardens. Then, on the morning of Eid, the bleating would suddenly stop.

But, in addition to the gentle stories, there was also judgment. In common with Christianity, Muslims also believe in the Apocalypse. Once the horn has sounded on the Day of Judgment, I was told, a person's sins will be weighed to determine whether he or she "shall recline on jewelled couches ... with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish", or "dwell amidst scorching winds and seething water; in the shade of pitch black smoke, neither cool nor refreshing". The threat of this cherubic 24-hour surveillance was powerful, and meant that even beyond the gaze of my parents I did my best to be a good Muslim. In the sweltering heat during the month of Ramadan, I never succumbed to the temptation of ice cream.

My father supplemented our Qur'anic education at home with excursions to the pictures. Up until the early 1980s, Bradford had an Asian cinema. At night it played Bollywood films, complete with the obligatory wet saris and suggestive glances, but on Saturday afternoons the projector beamed religious films re-enacting the birth of Islam to a smaller and more restrained audience. Without ever seeing the Prophet Muhammad - portraying him would be a sin - the message was clear that Islam had brought order, justice and peace to an idolatrous and debauched land. I can still remember watching one where a woman who had committed infidelity had ropes tied to her wrists. Attached to those were two lines of men who pulled and pulled until the woman's arms came out of their sockets. If this had been a low-grade horror film with bad special effects, I probably wouldn't have been so frightened; the consequences of going against Allah's will were far more terrifying.

In many ways it was relatively easy for my father to practise Islam in the way he felt right. Most of his friends were Muslim, for whom the local mosque also doubled as a social centre. Most of his co-workers in the textile mills were Muslim, so nobody looked twice when he unfurled his prayer mat among the humming looms.

I, on the other hand, was the only Muslim in my school year, and like most teenagers, what I really wanted was to be the same as everyone else. I found it mortifying to have to wear trousers underneath my regulation skirt, to sit in the library while the pupils sang Onward Christian Soldiers in assembly, to study French while they all studied the Bible in religious education. There were few references to Islam in my life outside the family home, so I found it comforting when I discovered them, even in the most obscure places, such as the use of the word "Bismillah" in Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. I still didn't know what it meant but I recognised it from the Qur'an. And the line in the Jam's Eton Rifles - "Get out your mats and pray to the west".

In time, I started to read the Qur'an in English, and discovered that what was haram (forbidden) and what was halal (permitted) was sometimes crystal clear. No to gambling and committing suicide; yes to a man having more than one wife and divorce. But, as with other religious texts, there were grey areas. My father had a record collection - mostly vinyl LPs of golden oldies from Indian cinema - that would be the envy of any DJ. But though his children used his turntable, when it wasn't blaring out Hindi lyrics, to listen to David Bowie and the Police, in our household music was halal yet dancing was not. In the seven years I was at school I never went to a single school disco. I, too, would sit motionless on the sofa at home and watch the turntable go round and round.

As a child I had used my father, a devout and well-respected man, as my yardstick. Once I left home to go to university, that benchmark was gone. Now I had to use my own judgment. As someone who'd never even spent the night at a friend's house, this was a big step. No wonder my mother cried inconsolably as she dropped me and my luggage off. Contained in my cheap suitcase were my law textbooks, the latest editions on jurisprudence, but no Qur'an. Since adolescence my reading of it had almost stopped and my spare time had been taken up playing netball and performing in amateur dramatics. Over the following months the words of the Holy Book, still resonant when I left home, became muffled.

I know some Muslims say that there is no compromise with Islam but even growing up in Bradford, with a very visible Islamic prescence, strict adherence to the Qur'an was a struggle. Here, on the university campus, it became almost impossible. I had been thrust into secularism, a concept I had little experience of even from my schooldays. We grew up knowing that Jesus and Moses were recognised prophets and that the Bible and Torah were recognised texts, but this was the first real opportunity I had to mix with people of those faiths, and those with no faith. I had little choice - yet again I was the only Muslim on my course.

For me going to university wasn't so much a learning curve as a cliff drop. I came across students who were devout church-goers, who injected drugs, some who were borderline alcoholics, cross-dressers and manic depressives. Some I liked; others I detested. The Qur'an forbids homosexuality but I befriended a gay man. And despite my associations, I still classed myself as a Muslim. I wasn't quite sure what the Qur'an and other Muslims would say about this. Maybe that life on a secular campus had decelerated the flow of Islam in my veins. No wonder I turned off the radio every time I heard REM's Losing My Religion.

But I know that I haven't lost my religion. I may not always display outwardly signs of it by, for example, going to the mosque and fasting but I still have a deep connection with the faith of my parents. Just over three years ago, my father passed away. But after the initial grief, I found some comfort knowing that he had died peacefully, just minutes after saying his early morning prayers. In Islam, when a person dies the soul is said to lie peacefully in the grave if a section from the Qur'an called the Yahsin, known as the Holy Book's throbbing heart, is recited as many times as possible. For 40 days my family read this chapter over and over again. As I muttered the Arabic words, still not really understanding what I was reading, I was grateful that I could do something for my father and grateful that he had taught me the scripture.

He is buried in the Muslim section of the cemetery in Bradford. In contrast to the higgledy-piggledy layout of the nearby Christian graveyard, the tombs of the Muslim dead all point towards Mecca. Flowers, tinsel and flags, incongruously cheerful, relieve the melancholy headstones. My father's is black marble. On it are the words, in Arabic: "In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The first words my father taught me from the Qur'an.