CAIRO – “It felt like coming home.”

These were the words of Susan Carland, the wife of TV Week Gold Logie winner Waleed Aly, describing her decision to revert to Islam at 19, after debunking her own myths about the faith, The Daily Mail reported on Thursday, June 9.

Susan, who attended the Uniting Church in Sydney as a child before switching to the Baptist Church as a teenager, said her mother originally opposed her decision to convert to Islam.

“Becoming Muslim felt like coming home. It felt like a natural fit for me as a person,” she told The Australian Women’s Weekly.

Carland, a respected sociologist, admitted she originally thought Islam was a ‘barbaric, outdated and sexist religion’.

After detailed research, she realized this was not the case.

The Monash University academic now has two children with Gold Logie-winner Waleed, 37, who describes himself as a ‘moderate Muslim’.

Long years after reverting to Islam, the mother of two said she has been targeted on social media because she wears a hijab and speaks out about the rights of Muslims in Australia.

But she has turned each slander into a positive, by donating $1 to charity for every hateful tweet she receives.

Susan has donated $4,000 since October last year.

She told The Australian Women’s Weekly that people have to be ‘switched on’ about the reality of Islam, rather than sticking to negative stereotypes.

“There’s definitely still the fear and belief among certain people that Muslims are all terrorists and kill people, or if not they are sleeper cells,” Carland said.

Muslims, who have been in Australia for more than 200 years, make up 1.7 percent of its 20-million population.

Islam is the country’s second largest religion after Christianity.