Nine men and women from around Australia give voice to what it's really like to live as a Muslim. Aisha Novakovich, 32, community advocate, law student and mother of two tells of her journey to radicalism and back. Beau Donelly reports.

As a teenager, I had a laminated photo of Osama Bin Laden in my bedroom. A friend once saw the photo and demanded to know why I had it. I told her he was my hero and that I wanted to be one of his wives; that the media was manipulating his image because he was challenging US hegemony.

From the age of 14, I wore the niqab - the full face veil - with gloves. My mother hated it and said I was becoming a fanatic. For me, it became a marker of difference in the face of discrimination. At university I was determined to learn the political systems in the West in order to subvert and challenge them from within. I believed we needed a caliphate. Eventually, I started to flirt with ways I could leave Australia to join the fight against foreign oppressors. Given different circumstances and times, I might have joined a terrorist organisation when I was younger.

1984: As a one-year-old

I have lived in Australia since I was six weeks old. My Yugoslav father was Greek Orthodox. My mother, an Indonesian, is Muslim. As the eldest of four children to migrant parents, I was keenly aware of my family’s constant state of poverty. But when my father died when I was a child, our poverty became desperate and entrenched. My mother was only 27 and she spoke very little English. We lived in Coober Pedy, an isolated mining town in South Australia.

1986: Aisha at age three

As far as Muslim identities went, I had a loose affiliation to Islam and very little contact with the Muslim community. My mother wasn’t a conservative Muslim: she didn’t wear hijab or care if we ate halal food (although she was strict about us not eating pork). But after my father’s death, my uncle influenced her to implement a more “Islamic lifestyle”.

Our names were changed to sound more “Muslim”. I was Nancy one day, Aisha the next. We started going to Sunday school at the local mosque and learned how to pray and read the Koran. I mixed with Muslim kids from different racial and cultural backgrounds who I found different to the kids at my public school. I had always thought of myself as an Aussie girl with Aussie friends at an Aussie school. The world I lived in was very much part of mainstream Australia and that’s where I felt a strong sense of belonging.

I was bitterly disappointed when I was sent to an Islamic high school. The facilities were run down and staff were unprofessional. The kids were unwelcoming, unlike the non-Muslim students I had grown up with. I felt like I’d been catapulted into an environment that stifled creative expression and contained pockets of deep puritanical ideology.

2001: Aisha in a go-kart

I came across some strange ideas. Some kids would talk about the Iraqi Shi'a students as if they carried a contagious virus. I learned that there were better ways of wearing a hijab; a bigger scarf signified greater purity of soul. For a girl, marrying young was desirable and being an obedient wife and mother were markers of nobility. I wondered if my outgoing personality could fit into the idealised version of a docile and demure Muslim woman.

2002: Aisha receiving the inaugural Minister’s Multicultural Ambassadors Youth Award

In university and as a young woman, I became an admirer of the work of ideologues and writers such as Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al-Banna and Abdullah Azzam. I even applauded Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group that Tony Abbott tried to ban for preaching extremist ideology. I became obnoxious in my religious judgement and was openly anti-democratic. I wanted to fight our foreign oppressors. My first husband physically abused me within six months of being married. I was pregnant at the time. The abuse continued for four years. My first marriage wore away my political ideologies. Domestic violence shattered my idealisation of the Muslim family model, where a protective husband with his obedient wife create a safe and loving family home for their children.

2003: After giving birth

My husband eventually divorced me after getting permission from a sheikh to end the marriage on flimsy grounds. During those dark days, I considered leaving Islam. I questioned a religion that seemed to favour men. The arrival of my children was also a reality check. My dreams of going overseas to fight for justice seemed fanciful. The saving grace for me was my support network of family and friends who noticed when my behaviour changed. They loved me unconditionally and challenged me and my beliefs. I also benefited from the mentorship of several community leaders who helped break down the walls of isolation. The final thing that allowed me to rebuild my life was returning to university.

2006: In Canberra, with former PM Bob Hawke

I believe young Muslims in Australia are left uninspired and vulnerable to the prey of ISIS vultures. It is vital that we have frank conversations about why terrorist groups are so alluring. To acknowledge they are seductive is not to admit defeat; it opens up a new space where we can really start to really get it.

Aisha with her new husband, Andre De Barr, after their wedding in 2015.