Sex, Please, We’re Muslim….review of the book, Love InshaAllah.
Asalamu alaikum,
A little something today for those who love to read and who aren’t afraid to be brave in their choices… I finally got my hands on a copy of Love, InshaAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Women. I had to read it twice, cover to cover, before I could put into words what I really want to say about this controversial and bold compilation of articles written by American Muslimahs.
Usually I abhor compiled edited works by a various authors, but after having loved “I Speak For Myself: American Women on Being Muslim”, I thought I would give another recently published work a go. And I will never regret doing so. While it kept selling out on Amazon and I couldn’t locate it at any local book sellers, I did finally order it online and predicted that it would be, if nothing else, an entertaining read.
What I did not expect was to be so emotionally drawn in to so many of the sisters’ stories. There is a little something for everyone in this compilation of articles and I found some stories to be heartbreaking, some to be just inspiring in their romanticism. One article, The Birds, the Bees, and My Hole, written by Muslimah comedian, Zahra Noorbakhsh, had me laughing so hard I was crying. No joke. It was well written, descriptive, smartly crass and unabashedly brave. Another article, Punk-Drunk Love, written by Muslimah punk, Tanzila Ahmed, included a paragraph that was so sublimely erotic I really had wished my husband had been home after reading it. Wheeww! Hot stuff!!
Interspersed with stories of profound joy at finding perfect mates, there are also stories included of profound sadness and personal loss; loss of love, loss of family at having made the decision to marry outside of one’s race or culture, loss of sense of self when a relationship ends. What struck me so deeply about these narratives is how willing these sisters were to share their most special, sometimes most tragic, personal experiences and how shockingly similar they are to the journey’s taken by women around the world, regardless of faith.
And that is ultimately why this book is of such importance in today’s Muslim literature landscape… this book truly shows how normal Muslim women are. These sisters run the spectrum from very conservative (one is a regular contributor to a well known pro-salafi publication) to very liberal. Oddly, one of the lesbian contributors could be classified amongst the more conservative of the bunch while many of the straight sisters show themselves to be incredibly liberal. Some sisters write of very traditional marriages, including arranged marriages and semi arranged marriages. One sister is a co-wife, which is stereotypically traditional, though not actually that common. And a number of the married writers found their beloveds through good old fashioned dating. Oh, the shock of it all!
Rarely do I encounter a book that is so inspirational that I have to encourage everyone I know to get ahold of a copy, but this is certainly one of them. One need not be Muslim to enjoy these narratives, nor even a woman. But if you are a Muslim woman encountering this book, I encourage you to set aside your inner haram police, leave Judgement to Allah alone, and to realize that your sisters come in all shapes, sizes, orientations and personalities. Let’s celebrate the diversity of our ummah; Love, InshaAllah certainly does just that!
til next time…
Spring fitness!
This winter I have been taking great joy in the awesome weather we’ve been having in this part of Canada. Lots of above freezing days, short on snow and ice. Wooohooo!! I have been pushing my toddler around our hilly neighbourhood for hours each week as I train to walk my first marathon, in May. The training is awesome. An opportunity to push my body as fast and hard as I can go, up hill and down, while breathing remarkably fresh air and listening to the utter stillness that hits my ‘hood in the early afternoons. It’s so relaxing my son conks right out for his daily nap and I get to pound the pavement. A total win-win situation. I am hoping to get a group of sisters together this spring/summer for regular walks. Sort of like our own Running Room gathering, but of muslimahs who may or may not be training for anything, who may just want to be fit for the sake of Allah.
That’s what I have discovered in the past couple of years; fitness for the sake of Allah. Now, before I reverted I was amazingly fit. I walked extensively and lifted weight. And I really mean a lot of weight. I felt good about myself and I was healthy, body mind and soul. Then for some reason, after I converted, I stopped caring about fitness and I started wearing tents. Now, as the old saying goes, ‘never wear elastic pants’. Well, yeah, good advice. Try shopping at Omar Khayyoum’s place for your daily wear. Now, I know some sisters can wear abayas regularly and never put on a pound, and good for them. Most sisters I know, regardless of wardrobe choices, let the weight creep on after conversion, as if it doesn’t matter anymore. I have heard sisters say that it’s haram to exercise (if you can imagine such silliness!) and I have heard many more say that they feel so good about being Muslim that they don’t need that rush that comes from fitness. Part of me felt that way… Allah and my husband love me just as I am, why bother doing more than a few weekly strolls around the neighbourhood? Who do I need to look good for? Why put out the effort?
Sixty pounds, that’s why. I put on sixty pounds between the time I converted and the time I started getting back into the swing of a fitness routine. If I hadn’t started shedding the weight I probably would have not conceived my son, I was so heavy and out of shape. And feeling very poorly about myself. Especially since I kept needing to buy bigger abayas in which to house myself. Caring for ourselves is part of Allah’s arrangement with us, so to speak. He has blessed us with these amazingly strong, diversely shaped bodies and we owe Him to treat them right. To eat nutritious, whole foods, to keep moving. And while as Muslims we don’t subscribe to the saying ‘exercise is religion’, perhaps we ought to remember that exercise is part of religion. Keeping fit is part of our deen and that is a total blessing from Allah!
So cheers this spring to all the sisters out there who are on the move, indoors and out! Good on y’all, keep the faith alive (‘cause if you are caring for yourself physically, you will be keeping the dawaa alive a lot longer than if you have that heart attack by the time your forty!) If any local sisters are interested in a weekly walking gathering, you know how to get ahold of me!!! Let’s get our Muslim selves out on the streets, moving for the sake of Allah!!
A Time to Remember, A Time to Be Vocal…
Asalamu alaikum,
It has been a while since I have sat down to write, but a few things have been clogging my mind lately and it seems prudent to focus on the topics. First, something that all Muslims should be aware of, is that this march marks the tenth year since the brutal murders of the 14 school girls in Saudi Arabia at the hands of the ‘Virtue’ police, aka religious police, aka Virtue and Vice police, aka mutawwa‘un. I would prefer to refer to call them as they are, ‘Satan’s deviant helpers’. The girls were murdered when a fire broke out in their school and the police forced them back in because they were not all fully covered when they came fleeing from the burning blaze. The incident is well known and was covered extensively in the news media, particularly outside of Saudi, but also within the Kingdom for a few short days before the media was forbidden to discuss it anymore. Sheikh Khaled Abou el Fadl has written about this incident to great length and I won’t even attempt to do justice to in rewording what he has published, but his work can be found online, the main article discussing this incident is, “The Ugly Modern and the Modern Ugly: Reclaiming the Beautiful in Islam.” He also discussed the murders in detail in his book The Great Theft. Please check both out, inshaAllah.
The reason this incident is in my mind, besides the obvious ‘anniversary’, is that nothing has changed since this wake up call. Women are still routinely oppressed and brutalized, not only in Saudi Arabia, but throughout many Muslim majority nations, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and so on. The burning to death of these young girls based on the fact that they didn’t think to whip their niqabs on while trying to save their lives shows us just how far our ummah has sunk in ensuring the basic rights that Allah revealed to His prophet, salalahu aliahi wa salam. We have not simply hit the puck into the crowds, we have defrosted the rink, packed up our gear and walked away. Completely away. As I have noted before, we have incredibly loud voices, this ummah of ours, when it comes to some non Muslim violating our rights or insulting our Prophet, but we are silent, deviantly so, when it comes to criticising the evil acts of some of the most evil people on the planet. Yeah, you read that right. Those religious police in Saudi are evil, they are sick. And it is simply because they are a product of the oppressively misogynist environment in which they were made. And our ummah says nothing. We do nothing.
And beyond this lack of change in the Kingdom and other Muslim majority nations over the past ten years, there is another reason this incident is timely. There is a renewed call, rightly so, to ban Saudi Arabia from participating in this year’s Olympic Games. Now, it is doubtful that this ban will come to fruition, but that is in itself a crime. By allowing this nation to participate in what is an international event that prides itself on inclusiveness, the International Olympic Committee shows just how little equality really means to them. Saudi does not allow females to participate. While this shouldn’t shock any educated, Allah loving person, as we know just what the ‘scholarly’ class in the Kingdom thinks about women, we should be shocked that there is so little outrage from Muslims about this. Why are we not writing the IOC en masse with complaint? Why are we not pressuring Saudi embassies around the world to change their hateful ways? Why are we so quiet and complacent when women are disregarded, or worse? There is precedent. The IOC rightly banned South Africa during the height of the apartheid regime. It can do it again. The treatment of women by the Saudi government, ruling class and ‘scholarly’ classes is nothing better than apartheid.
While I suspect the majority of Muslims around the globe (including average Saudi citizens) care a lot about the girls who were purposely burned to death. And I also suspect they are outraged about the crime of allowing Saudi to participate in the Olympics when those governing classes so clearly abhor half the population. But as usual, as a whole, we are saying little and doing nothing. Where are the candle light vigils around the globe for these murdered school girls? Where are the protests to the IOC about the inclusion of Saudi in the games? There has got to be movement within our ummah to do better to ensure the rights of women, around the globe. We have made great strides here in the west to educate our younger Muslim generation about the harm of many cultural practices, and we have diligently worked to make some mosques and community centers more sister friendly (we have a long, long way to go, but we do have a solid start). It is now time to turn our voices and our words towards a more global concern. Because those who are oppressing and abusing our sisters, are doing so under the banner of Islam. And that, my friends, is the most repugnant crime of all.
Islam versus wahhabism – Fighting the Good Fight
”The beautiful thing about disrupting the grammar of what is deemed authentic Islam…is you are exiled. In exile, I was beholden to no one but God. My mistake all along had been assuming otherwise.” Kameelah Janan Rasheed in ‘I Speak For Myself – American Women on Being Muslim’
I love this quote. In fact, I love this quote so much, if I were less image oriented and more script devoted I would probably have it inked somewhere on my body. Never mind that the author of the quote is an amazing and dedicated sister from south of the border, the words are a rhythmic honesty that reflects the true nature of Islam… submission to God. It is amazing to me how so many Muslims, myself at one time included, stray so far from this basic concept.
The problem is, the ‘authentic Islam’ accepted today by far too many is either a full on wahhabi (often called ‘salafi’) brand of Islam, or some measure of watered down wahhabi thinking made slightly more palatable than the Saudi style for those residing in the west. Thanks to the petro-dollar largesse provided by the guardians of the two holiest cities in Islam, we really do not have to look much further than the continuing onslaught of rigid, unIslamic, propaganda that flows out from Saudi and it’s spiritual cohorts to see why so many Muslims have lost their way. Our ummah is suffering on so many different levels that it would be a very innocent, or very ignorant, Muslim who does not see and acknowledge the heart of this suffering. Every time a person enters the word ‘islam’ into an internet search engine, wahhabi site after wahhabi site infiltrates one’s field of vision. There is no escape. Enter any online Islamic bookstore, or a real live store if you can hunt one down, and you will see more authors and titles from dubious wahhabi publishing companies than you will see works by mainstream, traditional or progressive muslim authors and scholars. We know why this is (see earlier comment on the petro largesse) but how do we begin to combat it?
Sheikh Khaled abou el Fadl, in the conclusion of his amazing work, The Great Theft- Wrestling Islam From the Extremists- proposes that those who are moderate in their approach to Islam, and those non muslims who support us, ought to put our dollars where our mouths are and purchase books and Islamic materials from sources that are wahhabi free. He also encourages us to speak out against this wahhabi threat and to call it what it is. I heed his call to action on a regular basis and hope that my brothers and sisters will also take up verbal ‘arms’ against this most deviant threat to our ummah today.
Sadly, so few muslims are speaking out against this threat; those of us who do, make such little impact. Why? Because boycotting a bookseller that happens to sell wahhabi titles or authors doesn’t really affect the bookseller or persuade them to stop selling these titles because there are so few good Islamic retailers, online or off. Sort of like that ridiculous Danish boycott after the publishing of offensive cartoons. It makes no difference, has no impact. Buying books from actual scholars and moderate authors likewise does little to make a dent into the onslaught of wahhabi extremism.
So if we make little impact with our dollars versus the global impact the Saudi wahhabi regime makes with it’s multi billion dollar impact, what can we do? For one, if we want to cure the spiritual diseases of this ummah we need to speak out, publically, against local masjid boards and imams who promote any wahhabi ‘scholar’ or author. We need to call upon our community leaders to explain themselves if they do support, encourage or utlitize works from any wahhabi source. We must demand better than this disease and we must do it in order to protect ourselves and our children- the very future of Islam- from people who want us to hate and propagate hate. It maybe too late for our generation, bombarded as we are on such a regular basis with the evil machinations of the wahhabi empire, but it is not too late for our children.
If we want our children to develop a loving relationship with Allah, to worship Him and serve His interests in this life, we must make certain that the Islam we are teaching them is actually Islam and not wahhabism. And there is a difference, make absolutely no mistake about it. One deen is in subservience to The Creator, striving to please Him and to understand our mission in this life. The other is a source of hatred, rigidity, and subjugation to the deviated laws of a small group of ignorant and corrupt misogynists. The deen of Islam is inclusive and gentle, the deen of wahhabism is exclusive and cruel.
If we are truly ‘beholden to God’ as sister Kameelah describes, then we will make certain we are bowing to Him, serving Him and loving Him. We must embrace those Muslims who strive on the path of righteousness and avoid those who strive on the wahhabi path of self-righteousness. And we must, absolutely must, start making our community leaders accountable. If we are exiled from our respective communities for demanding more, demanding better, then so be it. With so many blessings from Allah, why should we bow in to the pressure to disobey him by following such a misguided path as wahhabism?
Hypersensitive Parenting
I’ve posted in the past about what I call the ‘bad dawa parenting’ that our community too often commits. You know what I’m talking about… when you are sitting at a doctor’s office or in a restaurant and some little 5 year old stinker named Mohammad is running around kicking people in the knee caps, screaming and hitting his mother, with no consequences for his actions. It always makes me really proud to be Muslim at those moments, knowing that every non Muslim is also looking at me and thinking ‘so is this how they ALL parent?’
So out of a healthy dose of fear of raising my son in this most unIslamic manner, I think I’ve pressured myself into the opposite problem; not letting my son be free to be a child. For instance, we started our mum and tot musikgarten class today. There were about 10 parents and 13 kids aged two and under. My son is almost 18 months and he is full of energy and laughter. The instructor would hand out little instruments and we’d sing songs, dance and play with our kids as part of the larger group. It was an awesome class, full of creativity and happiness and my son was having the time of his life. However, he did not always want to hand in his instrument when we were done with a particular song and made a wee bit of commotion in protest. He was quick to jump up and run around laughing and having fun, which other kids were doing as well, but he was doing the most. Of course, I have become hyper sensitive to the fact that we are minorities and that we need to be on our best behaviour lest I commit the bad dawa parenting, and so kept pulling my son back to me, encouraging him to sit and be quiet (even though no other parent was doing the same for their child).
I just did not want anyone to look at me and think ‘Why don’t those people ever contain their children? Don’t they learn any manners where they come from?’ Because this is precisely what I am thinking when I encounter one of those said menaces at the doctor’s office, or at the mall, while having my toes jumped upon. At the end of the class, the instructor pulled me aside and said that my son should be free to run and play and laugh and shout in joy because that is what the class is about. She said that he should have fun and that I, too, should be having fun, so could I please relax and let him be a kid? Uh, yeah, I can do that… I think.
Have I become the parent that I always insisted I would not be? One of those hard nosed authoritarian types who don’t want their kid to be boisterous and spontaneous and creative and fun because it may offend someone? Yikes! I have very strong ideas about what a parent should be and what a parent should most definitely not be. There must be rules and guidelines and expectations for my child, but he should be free to be who he is and he must be encouraged towards creativity, freedom of expression and towards actually living his childhood fully. I abhor punitive discipline, in part because it does not work and in part because it stifles creative, individualist expression on the part of both parent and child and because it attempts to force respect from the child, even if the parent has done nothing to deserve it. It smacks of the ‘beat you into submission’ authoritarian government style that I believe to be a disease of the ummah, so why would I display that in my own home in order to oppress my child?
But what if what I am doing, with my hypersensitive approach to my son’s behaviour, is oppressive? And surely it is, because I stopped him from expressing himself in an environment where it was not only acceptable to run around and shout with glee, but was actually encouraged as part of the curriculum. All because I fear others looking at me and saying, ‘oh, those baaaaddddd Muslims, they let their kids celebrate childhood.’ I need to recalibrate my approach; when it’s appropriate for him to run around like a wild child, I must encourage this, but when it’s time for him to be quiet (like at the doctor’s office, for an ‘off the cuff’ example…) I need to reign him in and teach him how to be appropriate.
Have I ever mentioned that all mothers are working mothers? Alhamdullilah.
Masalama
t
Thankful to Be Living Life Out Loud
Living life out loud
As if you could want to live it any other way….
Just a few lines to say how blessed I feel to be living in North America.
I love that I can head down to my book seller and buy a copy of just about anything I am interested in reading (or order it via some online retailer) and not worry that whole sections of it will be blacked out by some state sponsored censor.
I love that I can help organize a fundraiser to aid the victims of the East African Famine, and not worry that the government or some state controlling terror group will try to suppress our efforts because, as the terrorist group al shabbab is trying to convince us all, ‘the problem isn’t that bad, it’s just the western media manipulating you all’.
I love that I can walk down the street, proudly pronouncing that I am a Muslim, whilst wearing leggings and a short skirt and showing my stretched ear lobes (and maybe having some ink teasingly sneaking out from under my shirt sleeves…)
I love that I can march in protest of something or someone oppressive and not worry that my government will open fire on me (at least not with anything stronger than tear gas…)
I love that I can get an education for relatively cheap and that I wont be denied because of my gender, socio-economic status, class/caste, religion or skin colour (yeah, I happen to be pastey white, but you know what I mean…)
I love that I can submit to Allah how I want to, because I want to, not because some group of shayateen calling themselves a ministry of the prevention of vice and virtue beat me into submission.
I love that I can walk down the street holding my African husband’s hand and not be arrested for lewdness, or be called names for being married to a black man (and if you think the racism doesn’t happen, you ought to talk to Africans living in the middle east…)
I love that if something terrible happens and I become a victim, of anything, that I can take my case to the authorities and get justice. JUSTICE, folks. Something sorely lacking where most Muslims come from, even though it is a central Islamic theme.
I love that I can express myself in any and every way possible, to live out loud and be the Muslimah that Allah created me to be.
Sit down and think about what you are most grateful for, living here in Canada (or America, for that matter.)
And remember to thank Allah that you live in the west…
How Extremists Saved My Deen… a debt of gratitude.
How Extremists Saved My Deen
I realized this Ramadan that I owe a debt of gratitude that has been five years in the owing, and since Eid just about upon us, I think it’s best to go forth and thank. Now, this may seem like sarcasm, but it is not. I am truly grateful that I spent nearly two years within the local wahabbi community (also called ‘salafis’ because they are under the delusion that they are imitating the early community of Muslims from the time of Muhammad -saw). I am grateful to Allah for putting me through that, and even more grateful that He pulled me out of it, life and mental health in tact.
Many converts and born Muslims spend time going through stages of rigidity and extremism. This is not limited to Islam, of course, ‘born again’ Christians are a clear example of extremism that some Christians feel the need to explore. What I have found with the wahabbi community is that it tends to have a shelf life… not many can stay in that space of anger, hate, intolerance and rigidity for too long, and thankfully most sisters I have known who went through that have successfully come out the other side. Some, sadly, have not. I still run into sisters around town who have been dedicated to that empty way of life for many, many years. Sisters who are educated and should know better, just as I am educated and should have known better. And deep down, even when I was in the thick of it, I did know better. I just didn’t know how to escape.
When a person first begins practicing a religion, any religion, there often comes periods of insecurity and questioning. And too often, out of a fear of stepping over the bounds into ‘wrong’ behaviour, we believe any ultra conservative advice that comes our way; never questioning it and never wondering whose interpretation this is. Of course, for Muslims, this advice comes to us couched in ‘it’s the sunnah’ or ‘its in the Quran’ but that neglects to explain to us the context in which the Quranic verse was revealed or whether the particular sunnah they are quoting is sound, truly sound. And we have to remember the stock in trade of the wahabbis is that they both quote Quran totally out of context and they hadith hurl. Meaning that they pick any verse out the Quran to prove a point, even if the verse has no relation, whatsoever, to the point they are trying to prove, and they just throw out randomly picked hadith out of hadith compilations, in an attempt to control people’s choices and opinions. They take their moral directive from ‘scholars’ in Saudi Arabia and they follow the opinions of western ‘scholars’ who have been funded and educated by Saudi petro-dollars.
I found my time as a wahabbi to be extremely stressful and oppressive. I was constantly told by other wahabbi sisters who to be friends with (or not friends with), what to wear, what to say, how to talk to Allah, what to do and what not to do, right down to the most ridiculous of actions. One sister was so concerned that I stopped plucking my eyebrows, because even if I prayed every prayer, on time, fasted all of Ramadan, gave charity and made Hajj, it would mean nothing if I continued to pluck those Slavic brows… I was hell bound for such aberrant behaviour. Can you imagine such ignorance? Such absolute hatred of Allah? Yeah, well, I was living it 24/7. There is no Mercy or Divine Love in this way of life, and I learned it, time and again. In the end, I became an oppressor too, may Allah forgive me. And may all the sisters whom I oppressed also extend their forgiveness towards me.
But still I am grateful. I am grateful to Allah and to every single sister who oppressed me with her demands. For if I had not gone through this terrible experience, I might never have known the Truth.
What is the Truth, you may ask? Well, I am glad that you have… The Truth is that Allah, in His Infinite Wisdom and Mercy, has not created a deen, a way of life, that is rigid, austere, full of hatred and intolerance, that is oppressive and driven by rules and regulations and little else. But no! Allah in His Infinite Wisdom and Mercy has instead blessed humanity with a deen of love, peace, tolerance, kindness, gentleness, acceptance, inclusiveness, and the ability to be grateful. We can develop an amazing relationship with Allah, both in our submission to Him and in our daily conversations with Him. We know He is Most Merciful so we know that He created humanity with much capability for logic and reasoning. We never have to worry that He is so petty that He will cast a believer who is striving, in any way that they can, into the Hellfire for ridiculous reasons, like eyebrow plucking, or any other of the litany of silliness that extremists throw at us. Allah is above all that junior high school foolery. Allah is not capable of contradiction, so we know that when a ‘sunnah’ contradicts the Quran, that the sunnah is false. Period. This is very liberating. To know that Allah is steadfast and Forgiving, full of Peace, is calming, it is soothing, it is reality.
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Eid Mubarak!
t
The Myth of The ‘Hojabi’; a Ramadan Reminder
Asalamu aliakum and a warm Ramadan Mubarak to all!
I am just writing quickly on a topic that has really hit my heart over the past month, one that has caused me much grief and sadness every time I contemplate it. So I endeavour to broach the subject here, and while I may come across as harsh, even rude, it is simply because I feel that this subject is so serious in our western ummah right now, yet treated very lightly, jokingly even. And, at first you may think it funny, but get the laughter out of your system, the issue is really serious. Forgive me if I offend, but this is really in defence of all the sisters out there who are being viciously maligned by brothers and sisters with barbed tongues…
Really, I must be living under a rock. Until recently I had never encountered the term ‘hojabi’. I was reading a recent publication by a well known UK convert in which two of her characters are ridiculing sisters who wear hijab but do not wear it according to their exacting standards. Never had I heard such a foul and slanderous term used by one sister to describe (disparage) another. I think what shocked me even more than this particular ugliness was the glaring fact that the author (who wears a burka full time and believes this to be part of our deen, for some reason) made no attempt to have either of the characters explain how using such a term is a slander, a ghiba, and thus a very serious crime in Islam.
Two weeks later I read an article in a well known English language Islamic magazine in which the author bandies about the term hojabi to describe a large number of her co-religionists in America. Apparently, every sister who doesn’t go to Omar the tent maker for her day wear is a hojabi. Any sister who dares to show her earrings while wearing a head scarf is a hojabi. Fitted jeans? Yikes! The slurs just pour forth. And Allah forbid, but if a sister wears a head scarf (in any manner) while wearing shorter sleeves or a shorter/fitted skirt… well, she might as well just tattoo a big ole’ ‘H’ on her forehead. ‘H’ for ho, of course.
Seriously, people? Are Muslims so insecure and self loathing these days that we have to resort to calling our supposed sisters in Islam whores if they do not conform to the same standards of dress that we do? ‘Cause that’s what a ‘ho’ is. A hooker. And that is what you are calling believing women who just happen to dress differently than you do. Can you say ‘sick’? ‘twisted’? Yeah, I can also say something else you may have heard of…. ‘hellbound’. Because every brother or sister out there who labels a muslimah with such a vile and slanderous term has two choices… Stop your stinking tongue from saying that degrading stuff and repent to Allah for the misery you have caused or keep on going right to Judgement Day with that. Good luck, if you choose the later. The Prophet Muhammad, salalhu aliahi wa salam, taught us that one who slanders and repents will be amongst the last to enter Jannah on that fateful Day. The one who slanders and doesn’t repent, will be amongst the first to enter the Fire. Your choice, ‘hope you love Allah enough to pick the right one.
So, this Ramadan season, when we are striving, inshaAllah, to do better, to be better, let’s start with our selves. If you really hate yourself so much that you have to call a sister a ‘ho’, perhaps you ought to figure out why you hate yourself that darn much. If I seem harsh, it’s only because I love you. And in particular, I love the sisters whom you revile with your slander. They are the sisters I feel true kinship with; you ladies who use that term to describe a fellow muslimah are the ones the Prophet, salaahu alaihi wa salam, warned the ummah about. You remember, right? When he, salalahu alaihi wa salam, said that the true believer was one that a fellow Muslim felt safe from their tongue. If your sisters can’t be safe from your tongue, how could they possibly trust you with anything else? They can’t. Not until you prove yourselves worthy of that trust. And brothers who use that term to describe a sister? Yikes! Muslimahs everywhere beware! If you know a ‘brother’ like that, run away, don’t walk! Run!!!
So yeah, I realize the term may be funny sounding, a catchy play on words. So laugh if you must. But please be ware of letting that term fly out of your mouth in reference to a sister, or a group of sisters. Or at least make sure you’ve got a lotta good deeds to cover your balance on that final Day… Maybe I am making a big deal out of nothing, but the feminist in me is tired of women being maligned in our community because they are not a cookie cutter of the most extreme and rigid sisters out there. And I know a few women who have been ridiculed for their approach to hijab and they are too sweet and too timid to stand up for themselves. So I am here shouting it from the rooftops that it’s time our community stop this slander. Please. For the sake of Allah, for the love of Him. These women you are maligning are someone’s daughter and quite possibly someone’s mama. How would you like someone to call your daughter or your mother a whore?
Think on that this Ramadan season. May Allah forgive and guide us all. ameeen
masalama,
tanda.
On a Personal Note…
salams,
On a more personal note, following the theme of staying true to one’s self…. there is nothing worse for one’s sense of self than to imitate the expected behaviours, lifestyle and fashions of a community for the sake of trying to fit in. My years after conversion were spent trying to fit in with the broader community and i thought that abandoning my own sense of style, my tastes in literature, movies and music, would help me burrow in to the ummah. I dressed like a modern day arab (i wore abayas), i stopped listening to music, i took out my peircings, i rigidly covered my extensive amount of ink, i only read books on Islam, and when in groups of sisters, i never ever mentioned my previous life. It was exhausting, to say the least. I was not only not being true to myself, i was being a lousy Muslim. I wasnt striving, in the fullest sense, to please Allah, i was striving to please a community.
The saddest part of my ‘lost years’ experience, is that in retrospect, i was so much further from Allah than i had been before i converted. I could never seem to have that inner dialogue, that spiritual connection to Him, no matter what i wore, how much arabic i threw into conversations, how much time i spent with like minded individuals and so on. I was so far from my Rabb and it was a very lonely time. i was not isolated from community, but i was utterly and completely isolated from Allah and from myself. After a while i realized i couldnt continue on in that vein, and i gradually started ‘allowing’ parts of myself to creep back into my daily life. Isnt that a sick thought? That i had to allow me to be me? As though Allah actually wanted me to be someone other than the person He guided to the deen in the first place? As though imitating others could ever please Him, when it was He who molded me, shaped me and guided me to be the person i was, the Muslim i became? Aoothoo billah.
I see other sisters, especially fresh converts, making the same mistakes i made. And the ones who ask my advice, i advise. But the ones who are holier than thou, as i used to be, i let be and never offer an opinion. They would never lower themselves to ask in the first place. They follow the loudest and most rigid opinions in our community, never actually having the guts to ask if these opinions are actually obligations of the deen, or merely obligations of some shaikh or other. I feel sorry for these sisters and i make dua’a that they will be guided back to who they truly are, who Allah made them to be.
and Allah, in His Infinite Wisdom and Mercy, knows best.
peace, y’all….
To Thine Own Self Be True
Asalamu aliakum/peace be upon you,
I was rearranging some old moving boxes that I have in storage the other night and in doing so, stumbled upon a ‘program’ that I kept from 1993 when a university in Ft. Worth, TX, close to where I was living, sponsored a viewing of the AIDS quilts. (please see http://www.aidsquilt.org/ for more info if you don’t have a clue what I am talking about) I don’t know how many years the project had been running at that point (though I seem to recall it starting up some where around 1987 or 1988…) and though it was only a partial section of the quilt on view, there were far too many panels present. It was a very emotional and overwhelming experience, one I pray that I will never forget. As part of the advertising for the showing, a number of magazines and papers had been writing articles about the project and one article I read has stuck with me for nearly two decades. A young woman along with her mother had made a quilt panel for her father who had passed away and she had included his favourite quote, ‘To Thine Own Self Be True’. The daughter explained the struggles her father had gone through to realize who he was and how he needed to live his life and the absolute importance of being true to who he was.
That’s what today’s posting is about, being true to oneself. Specifically I want to discuss the importance of Muslims staying true to who they are, for the sake of Allah. Not to mention, for the sake of their own sanity. I realize that a lot of non Muslims are pressured and cajoled by their faith communities to conform to ideals and norms within their communities, but as usual, I am really not aiming to discuss the problems within Christianity, Judaism and so on. The problems in these communities are obvious, just as within the Muslim community, and peoples from those backgrounds can figure out their own solutions. Muslims, particularly Muslims residing in western nations or non-Muslim majority regions, have a lot of work to do in encouraging and supporting individual believers to follow Islam while remaining steadfast in pursuing their earthly goals, in which ever halal means they feel fit. As I have said before, western born Muslims and Muslims who immigrated as children, too often feel pressure from the community to conform to various cultural, sectarian, tribal and/or political norms.
A Muslim residing in the west can no better practice Saudi style Islam than a Muslim living in Saudi can practice Islam in a way that a Canadian or European could do. And why should we? Allah blessed us with a life in the west in order to live Islam fully, completely and without the cultural baggage that people living in ‘traditional’ Muslim lands couldn’t begin to dream of. We are able to pursue education and career choices, have access to art, literature, music and film that our brethren in oppressed lands don’t even realize exists. We are truly in a different stage of Islam than people who live under cultural burden are at. For centuries Muslims were known, worldwide, for our artistry. We were craftspeople, painters, writers, poets and musicians. We contributed to major intellectual and artistic thought and progress for a millennium and then we fell into our current state where being artistically inclined or working by any means creatively or craftily is looked down upon, ridiculed even. But the golden age of our ummah was clearly tied in to a time when we were thriving creatively, and this is logical. There is no civilization without art and our ummah’s present state is clearly not in the same state of civility as we were a few centuries ago.
Muslims today have a great potential to recapture and advance that past state and the means to do this lie predominantly in western lands at the hands of our artists, our writers, our poets and our musicians. If our ummah can reach out and support, educate and nourish those amongst us who are artistically inclined, our future will be one of strength and positive experiences for Muslims and the non Muslims whom we call neighbours. Our dawaa will be gentle and effective and there will be a certain ripple effect. Our brothers and sisters who are not artistically inclined, but who follow their passions for mathematics, science and athletics will be secure in knowing that within our community space, there is time and place for them to embrace hobbies that may touch hidden artistic capabilities. Their sons and daughters will not worry that they must stay away from the masjid community or be shameful of their faith because it is associated with the intolerant, the rigid and the judgemental. Our ummah re-embracing it’s dynamic and creative past will not tolerate such deviant concepts.
The change must start now. If we see a brother attending Friday prayers with blue hair and 00 gauge ear piercings, instead of shunning him or ridiculing him, we ought to be asking him what creative endeavours he embraces. Is he a writer? A painter? A musician? If so, would he be willing to mentor others in the community, to pass along his knowledge, his skill and his passions? We must find members of our community with these talents who are willing to risk being gossiped about, slandered even, by the rigid and conservative in our midst, and we must encourage them to help teach others. In this way we can begin to break down the barriers that are keeping our ummah artless and stagnant. If we continually push our artists away, we cheapen our community and we further encourage our children to stay away from our mosques and community centers if they have any lifestyle choices that do not fit a particular, often cultural, rigid model. In effect, we are asking them to lie about who they are and about the artistic gifts that Allah blessed them with.
At the end of the day, at the end of our lives, will we be able to say that, for the sake of Allah, we were true to ourselves? This does not mean we must all pick up a sketch pad and some charcoal or that we must dress in an offbeat manner and have pink hair. This means that we must embrace those who are different than us and celebrate their abilities, in the same way that we would like our brothers and sisters in Islam to support our talents and nurture our skills. Only when we can do this, will we be able to say that we are being true to ourselves and consequently, true to the values of kindness, moderation and inclusiveness that our deen promotes. Because at the end of the day, if you can’t look inwards and like who you are and how you are living your life, you haven’t been true to yourself at all.
salams y’all.
