Despite working odd cash jobs to supplement a meagre pensioner income, my father still found a way to drive me to school. Every morning, he would blast 87.6 FM through the speakers, releasing a sheikh’s voice alongside beautiful recitations of the Qur’an.

I attended a ‘prestigious’ Islamic School in Greenacre. Tall red-and-grey brick buildings, a sprawling green oval, four concrete paved basketball courts, and even a private mosque—all built on a plot of land funded by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The school’s motto was embroidered in gold thread on my dark-green uniform: ‘Knowledge is Light. Work is Worship.’