Muslim Woman, Non-Muslim Man

Salaam,

I peak out from my blogging (here) hiatus to comment on the spate of articles that have surfaced at HuffPost Canada, giving Muslim women the permission to marry non-Muslim men. Minority juristic voices as well as a representative from Universalist Muslims, a progressive Muslim organization in Canada, produced articles in the last week encouraging Muslim women who do not have Muslim male suitors to consider dating men "of the Book."

I read this and I wonder what I would have thought about this when I was last single, before I met who is now my husband, this time 5 years ago. Would I be heartened? Would I be frustrated? Would I leave with a lot of questions? Would it have changed anything about how I did things?

Let me take a moment to be quite transparent.

Part of the reason I wrote so little during the last five years was not just about me being a busy resident. A lot of it was that I was actively in a relationship with a secular man, it was different from anything I thought I would experience, and I didn't have a space on this blog to share those experiences. Unfortunately for me, this blog had always been aspirational. It was a great place for me to express all the Muslimah I aspired to be while not dwelling on my shortcomings. I don't think I had more than the normal amount of shortcomings, but this place had fostered for a long time a Muslim community when I didn't have my own. It was a place to lay my thoughts down. It was not a place for me to ponder about the day-to-day realities of a relationship with a secular man.

Yes, he was a secular Muslim man, but that was an accident. I'll explain.

When I matched in Seattle for my residency, I knew I didn't want to spend another several years as I did in Boston. A couple of regrettable relationships later, I didn't want to enter residency in isolation, without working on my future. Marriage and family were the things I always aspired to more than my career, but, as I wrote about at the beginning of my relationship with my now-husband, my want for family felt at odds with my faith.

There was a very real possibility that I could be indefinitely single as an earnest, practicing Muslim sister who only looked for the practicing Muslim men. And in that moment of writing that piece--I decided that if I had to sacrifice part of what made me an earnest, practicing sister in order to marry, as ass-backwards as that sounded...then so be it! I would.

So I cast my net wide, signing up to Muslim dating sites and the standards--Match and OkCupid, and I wanted to see who would bite. Muslim dating sites yielded a man, 16 years my senior, divorced with children, as the only Muslim man in the Puget Sound region interested in me. Match and OkCupid yielded more. I was sure to pepper my profile with hints about my religion and my level of practice. I ended up with two men. One who was also Nigerian who seemed to be more fascination with my existence as an Igbo Muslim than anything else...and my future husband.

Just before Ramadan and after making up super late the part of my fast I missed for menses, I prayed istikhara about these men...and probably also about a classmate I had a crush on. I was surprised when the answer was my husband. I was like, really, God? But he's not practicing. He's very worldly. After bad experiences with religion as a kid, he doesn't think he'll ever be practicing. He's sexually liberal. This is the man I'm supposed to pursue?

And I struggled with it early in our relationship. There were times when I considered jumping ship, counting my losses and getting back on the straight way and finding a good, practicing Muslim man, and not a good secular one.

This only lasted for the first couple of months, but I spent the second year of our relationship doing damage control. He could tell I was distant. But honestly, it wasn't just my trepidation because of religious hangups. I was also a first-year resident and that reality was grueling.

Four and a half years after we began our relationship, we've married, amidst in-law problems, questions of race and other upheavals. And since those early days, I no longer question if it is OK that I am with him.

I don't need him to become more practicing. As long as he stays authentic to his values and continues to respect my clinging to the rites of Islam, then that's all I need. His practice may change over time, and insha'Allah I will support him through it. There is no compulsion in religion and we don't pressure each other from either side.

So when I read all of these articles telling Muslim women that they can marry non-Muslim men, my reaction is lukewarm. I mean, I got over needing to authorities to define what makes me more or less Muslim a long time ago. And besides, I was born of a Muslim woman and Christian man. I remember I had some commenter come and to say my parents' marriage was illegitimate. Rando Muslim man, what purpose does it serve for you? Did you rise in God's esteem by telling a random Muslim sister that her parents' marriage is "illegitimate, astaghfirullah"? What would you have my parents do? Divorce after nearly 35 years of marriage so my mother can find a legitimate spouse, insha'Allah. What is life?

I have long crossed the threshold of feeling the need to get permission for what I do or do not do as a Muslim. This is and has always been between me and God. Is my submission perfect? No, but neither is anybody's. This was my path. Was this the best way? Was this actually what God intended for me? Did I misinterpret the answer to my istikhara and if I had been just a little bit more patient, my actual husband would have come along?

No, my actual husband is here, at my feet, working on a presentation. We have a home and insha'Allah we are building a life. We've done it, it's done, and so God willed it.

And in terms of answers for the single Muslim women who are waiting, as I once did, or searching, as I also once did, for their Muslim mate, I say...I don't have answers. I thought that, whenever I did find love and finally marry, that this would be the thing that defined my faith for the rest of my life. I wasn't wrong about that. But it is less definitive than I imagined. I thought that, from this, I would be able to outline for other women "the way" to do things, but I'm not. My way was highly personal and individual. But, having dated/talked to both Muslim and non-Muslim men, this is what I would say to sisters who may be considering it for the first time:

1) Don't hang around with someone intent on converting you: Nope and nope. I've experienced everything from a Nigerian dude who was intent on trying to sleep with me while saying to my friend, "Ahh, she seems open to Christianity," (and I'm thinking, show me where in the Bible is you trying to sleep with me before marriage OK?) to a pastor friend who was interested in me. In spite of my parents working out, I was generally like, dudes, what are you thinking? My dad is Christian but he's not a pastor and has never tried to convert my mom. My mother tried to convert my dad in the early days and gave up pretty quickly. After having a father who tried to convert me for a while, I decided as a young 20-something, "Nope--only one man in my life is going to try to convert me." Not only is it tiring, but in your spouse, you don't want someone who is not satisfied with you unless you believe and pray as they do, as if your beliefs are less legitimate. That is demoralizing.

2) Find out early where you both stand on sex: I was going to write "where he stands on sex," but it really is a decision for both of you. And when I say sex, I mean everything--sex in premarital relationships vs. waiting until after marriage, and not only that, how you both think of sex. Is sex an act of worship, is sex essential in a relationship, how frequent an essential part of the relationship...? Many "religious" guys of other faiths have a lower threshold for scandal with premarital sex. And, quiet as it's sometimes kept, many Muslims have a lower threshold, too--we're just more tight-lipped about it. If it is important for you, or essential for you, not to have sex prior to marriage, then be upfront about that. Will that weed out a bunch of guys? Yep, because that is no longer a norm for our society. But there are plenty of men who will understand and honor your wishes and be in it with you. ...or, conversely, if you decide, upon thinking about it, that your threshold is lower as well, then think about what that means for your relationship. We are not always the gatekeepers--maybe he's the more conservative one.

3) Talk family planning early and often: If you are planning an interfaith marriage and interfaith family, talk about your kids. Everything is going to be super theoretical until actual little people arrive, but still--talk about how important it is for your kids to follow either faiths. And once the kids arrive, keep talking about it. I am the product of never talking about it, and things got awkward for me as a young adult. Will kids get a taste of both faiths/traditions? Will they be primarily be raised one or the other?

4) Be with someone you can be your authentic self with: I think this was the biggest thing. I had dated Muslim men where I tried to up my practice to a level I was not yet at, because I thought that was what he wanted for me. That was so anxiety-provoking. I was afraid of feeling judged by these men. In my relationship and now in my marriage, I am free to be wherever I am in faith. I had space to figure out my misgivings about my practice. He did not pressure or judge me in one way or the other as I traversed my path.

Mmm...there are probably other things, but these were the big four for me. I think number four was number one for me. Could I have found this in a practicing Muslim man? God knows best. But for where I am right now, authentically--this is where I best am.

Our paths are individual. I pray that we all find the partners best suited for us without sacrificing the essence of our faith. Ameen.

Hater hater hater hater hater

As salaam alaikum,

I started reading The Root (theroot.com) after my previous relationship, and my SO at the time was into all things black. All things pan-African and all things African diaspora. I mean, it's no wonder--we met at a pan-African book club hosted by mutual friends. It only had to be. Except, in spite of being the one who actually has black American ancestry, he was blacker than I was. I didn't read The Root or Grio as my main news sources, after all. And it was always off-putting for me to see only stories about black people--as if only news stories involving black people mattered to black people.

Maybe I really wasn't black enough.

Though it's by far not my only news source, it's one of the more consistent news sites I visit. I get most of the rest of my news from my Facebook newsfeed and the front page of NYT or The Seattle Times in the coffee shops I visit a couple of days a week.

I don't have television.

Anyway, this was a long preface.

One of the stories I love to read in The Root is that of young adults of color excelling in academics or in their early careers. Reading these pieces make me almost certain that I want to home-school my future children, insha'Allah. Seriously, it seems like children who are home-schooled really have their potential unlocked.

Occasionally, there will also be a story about a young person who got accepted to all of the Ivy League schools for college. I'm impressed that this happens more than once, but then again, I never met anyone who applied to all Ivy League schools.

The first two articles of this type that I'd seen in the last two weeks were about first or second generation African students. One was Nigerian American, the other, Somali American. I've come to almost anticipate in the comment section at least someone pointing out that these are African immigrants, and then stating a variation of the following sentiments:

(1) "Slave-descended success does not equal non-slave-descended success." I put this in quotes and I must call it out because this was blurted in a Facebook discussion by one of my acquaintances, who was one of my smart and hardworking classmates in public health school. She said this in response to an article I posted about Nigerians being the most educated immigrants in the country. I think she didn't know that I was, in fact, only half Nigerian and the other half "slave-descended." I asked her which success I benefited from, either or none at all. The more tactful version of this comment is, "I'm proud of this young person, but their circumstances are different, being an African immigrant. They came here as a child, so their formative years were not marred by the effects of American institutionalized racism like their African American counterparts."

Okay.

(2) "If only young black kids/students could stop [fill in the blank of some stereotypical assumption about black students], they could be achieving these things, too."

(3) African first- and second-generation students are taking "the slots" meant for African American students at these schools.

There are probably others I have missed.

I'm used to these things, and, knowing that I probably shouldn't be wasting my time reading comments sections, anyway, I move on. Or so I think.

Then, today, I read an article about an African American student whose family lost everything in Katrina who overcame this loss and went on to get into 8 Ivy League colleges. I looked at her first and last name. She did not seem like a first- or second-generationer. I scrolled down to the comments section, expecting to see someone say, "Now, here is the story I'm looking for. Congratulations to this young woman!"

Instead, I see a comment, full of vitriol, that does not merit paraphrasing and makes little sense. The young woman wanted to study literature and political science. Great. Those are great majors for pre-law, I would think. Instead, this commenter said something about the majors guaranteeing that she would stay in her parents' home until marriage, harkening to a history at HBCUs of women entering college to marry the HBCU men, snarky comment about high echelon blacks, as this person assumes this woman's parents must be, etc.

And the title of this post is my reaction to that comment.

I realized that there is a group of never-satisfied people who will take this story and despair at the fact that the person is African immigrant or immigrant-descended and thus not "real" black. There is someone else who will dismiss and individual as being part of a so-called disconnected black social class, even if they do not have that data.

This is why I loved the "Player Haters Ball" skit of the Chappelle show so much. Hate for no reason. Hate because you're breathing. Hate with no data. Hate because you can.

And this is the semi-benign (because no hate is ever benign) hating-on, as opposed to the always damaging actual hate that I'm speaking to.

I guess those who think of the stories in an only positive light, like myself, are not the ones commenting.

One of black people's favorite words (at least the black people I grew up with) was accolades. Okay. Can we not give accolades where accolades are due? Seriously. Let's stop bickering about how we should celebrate young African first- and second-gens less because their success means less and its supposedly achieved on the backs of African Americans. Because no it doesn't and no it's not. I am Nigerian-American and I am African-American. I live both perspective simultaneously. Ask me anything.

Maybe if we celebrated one another with genuine pride, we could learn from one another and make this place a better place for all of our children, because seriously, right now, this country is pretty shitty for black people. An African surname will not save any of us from a racist too blinded by our hues and browns to see our humanity.

Maybe we wouldn't have turned our back on Martin Luther King and left him vulnerable and left him assassinated.

Maybe we wouldn't have assisted in the killing of brother Malcolm.

And on and on.

So, in summary, I'm tired of the hate. This is ridiculous. Yes, I do want to hear the story of the kid raised by a hard-working single mom, or who grew up below 100% poverty line, or who struggled through the grittiest ghettos or survived the most dilapidated of school districts get accepted into all the Ivy league schools he or she applied to, but more than that, I want to hear about the adults on the other side of their college education finding careers to help make a difference in ways that are meaningful to them in their communities and in society in general. Because that's where it counts.

And if we're stuck back at being less proud of Africans or disdainful of rich blacks, then I have to quote my mother in telling us, "That's why [we] ain't runnin' nothin'."

2014 Retrospective

As salaam alaikum,

As predicted, residency (and life) swallowed me in a way that did not allow me to post (or even write) that often, but that is soon going to be history! I am now a third year resident, and in six months time, I'll be graduating and taking a 3 month break before I start working for real. What I do in those three months are dependent on how much money I save up moonlighting in the next year, but that's another story.

Anyway, for me, the year is hardly over, as my SO is flying down tomorrow to meet my parents, which will get a little notch in my year-in-review, but I figure I may be pretty busy the end of this year so I'd better get in my retrospective now while I'm ahead.

So, this was my 2014, roughly, and maybe not exactly chronologically, but in order of things that stand out to me.

Grandfather: The last time I saw my grandfather fully lucid in this realm was around Christmas of 2013. There was a big ice storm in Flint and surrounding northern communities and it resulted in a prolonged black out. My grandparents were staying at my Uncle Maurice's place because the power was out in their house. My grandfather talked about how much he appreciated what we did for him, an old man, and he started crying. Early this year, he likely had another stroke and went into a fast decline that almost ended in his death in March of this year but ultimately ended in his death early in the morning, July 16, peacefully in his sleep. I love that man with all of my heart and I eagerly but patiently await the day when I hear the rest of his stories in Jannah, iA.

Auntie and Uncle: I met my Nigerian Aunt and Uncle for the first time this year. My uncle, who my father had not seen in over 30 years, and his wife traveled to the United States for the first time and stayed with my family. I cried when I saw the brothers together, reunited. They stayed for four months and I visited with them two weeks out of those four months. I would love to travel with my father to Nigeria one day and visit with the rest of the family. I could say much more about this visit, but that will have to be for another venue.

Sayulita, Nayarit: I still feel like we totally pulled a coup in our residency by taking this trip. For our second-year retreat, instead of the usual long weekend in Leavenworth, we took five days in Mexico with our favorite faculty member in March. It was a coup because those five days did not count towards our paid time off, it was "conference/educational time." So we were paid for five days in which we did maybe 4 hours a day of therapeutic small groups (which were excellent!) and spent the rest of the time as beach bums, wandering around this semi-hidden jewel resort town. I actually got sunburned on this trip. Yes, black people can sunburn. Skin peeled from every exposed surface over the next couple of weeks and I felt like I was molting. So those times I wore sunscreen in the Dominican Republic were not in vain. The 12 of us and our faculty member spent 5 glorious days sharing a house on the hill that overlooked the beach. It was definitely a second bonding point for my classmates and I fell in love with them again.

Jamaica: I had never been to Jamaica, and at first felt conflicting going there to attend a wedding in July, not only of people I had never met before (my SO was best man, and I was his date), but also as the only black person in the party. Yes, I felt conflicted going to a majority black country with a group of white people. This was only the second international trip (Sayulita was the first) that I've made that was not part of a service project. And then to go to a resort where I felt like I may be inherently exploiting the people who work there? It was challenging until I got there and realized that over half of the patrons at this particular resort were black, many of them Jamaican, having conferences or spending a relaxing weekend at the resort. There were also a lot of African Americans there. And I realize that supporting tourism in a country like Jamaica is probably more productive than any of the service projects I carried out in other countries the past, though I still found it polemic. At some point, I finally just let myself relax. I was welcomed by my SO's friend and his wife warmly into their wedding party and was pulled in to do some Serbian dances during the reception (courtesy of the groom's family). Minus the sand flies biting the left side of my body, it was a good time. This is another place I have to go back to. I love going to countries with majority black people!

Stevie Wonder: I attended Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" concert as he toured the country. He actually made a stop in Seattle on December 3. So many performers and performances skip Seattle (like Motown, the Musical), but he came by. I was chief on Family Medicine Service at the time, and though I tried to switch my call days, I ended up on call on the day that our service went from tame to crazy. After that day, we would continue to admit patients and eventually cap out our service. My call days usually saw me staying at least until 8:30pm most days, and this day was no exception...exactly why I wanted to switch my call day so I could make the concert! In the end, I'm glad I didn't switch my call day because Friday (the day I was going to trade out) ended up to be a busier day. The concert started at 8pm, I got out of the hospital at 8:30pm and made it to the concert by 9pm. The people next to me lamented that I had missed "so much," though I got there as he did "Pastime Paradise," and knew that he had much of the album left, though I had missed "Sir Duke." I had heard from my cousins, who went to the concert in Detroit, that it went on for three hours. And Stevie did not disappoint. Our concert went on for four hours, which means I got to jam with Stevie for a full three hours after sliding in an hour late, until midnight! And, after four hours of sleep, I got in to work the next day, saw a full set of patients during my half day in clinic, and realized that age really is just a number. I thought that my days of staying up that late and then being fully functional the next day (without coffee) were behind me. At 29, I surprised myself with the stamina of a 19 year old while working full time. And Stevie, of course, was awesome. He sang each song from the album exactly as it was in the album. And his daughter Aisha Morris was one of his backup singers! And I could go on, but it definitely made my life to see my favorite artist in concert.

Nephew: My best friend from medical school had a baby boy in September, and I got to visit him in November when he was 6 weeks old. I've never witnessed someone I'm that close to have a baby, during those very new periods, someone that I knew before she met her husband when we were both very much single young women. And now seeing her as a mother, watching the transformation she and her husband have made...all I can say is, it's real. It's the only thing that gave my baby fever a pause. Not because of the job they were doing...no, they were doing excellently. It's just that I see that the struggle is real, there is no magical transformation. I was watching them as they were learning and adapting with a newborn. That is how life is, and that is how my life will be when, one day, iA, I have one of my own. Hopefully a girl. I already have some names picked out. Okay, so baby fever was on pause, did not completely go away.

Babies, babies, babies: This was the year of the babies. I think I delivered more than 20 babies this year, most of them being my own patients'. I just delivered one a few days ago, my patient's gorgeous baby girl. I have three more of my own patients due and then my residency adviser cut me off from deliveries. It's just as well. I've more than exceeded the number of continuities I need for graduation. My poor SO is tired of me talking about labor and delivery, and babies. He states that he could probably deliver a baby at this point from my descriptions of it.

Licensed Physician: I took (and passed) Step 3 earlier this year, officially completing USMLE and becoming a licensed physician. Seriously, exam taking in medicine feels like the "Song that Doesn't End." I started medical school and heard about the boards, and then learned about what would be the hardest exam I'd take in my life, disconcertingly named "Step 1." Disconcerting because if there is a step 1, there is probably a step 2, and maybe it goes on. Each year, I learned a little bit more about the exams I was going to be in for. Depending on one's specialty and if they go on to fellowship, there are a whole list of exams besides the USMLE steps that one had to pass to become not only licensed, but also board-certified. As I've chosen family medicine, I have an every-10-year board exam that I will have to pass and certain amount of Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits that I have to keep up with to maintain board certification. The family medicine boards through the ABFM is the last exam I'll take in residency, and the last exam I'll take in life (unless I lose my mind and go for more education or more board certification). But, in February of this year, I took and passed step 3, making me a licensed physician, able to practice independently (thus, moonlighting).

That Full Circle Moment: A couple of weeks ago in clinic, I had one of my first full-circle moments in family medicine. I went into the clinic counseling a pregnant woman on some cramping that she was having. She planned to do her prenatal care elsewhere, so it was going to be a simple visit. As I entered the room and began talking to her, I noticed there were tears in her eyes. She then told me that I was the doctor that told her that her grandfather was dying. Back in my intern year, when I was completing a night float rotation, I led a family meeting at 1am for a family whose beloved grandfather, who I had admitted hours earlier, was passing. It was the defining moment of my residency. I laid myself bare for that family as they looked to me to prognosticate what I couldn't with numbers. People were rolling on the floor, crying. I myself felt completely spent and cried after that interaction. I had never put so much of myself into a patient interaction in residency, and that was a great transition point for me. I actually didn't remember that woman in the sea of family members that were there, but she remembered me. Together, in the exam room, after I reassured her that there was no threat to her pregnancy at present, we remembered her grandfather. I shared with her that my grandfather had also passed that year, so I understood what it felt like to lose someone who had lived a long, complete life but who was still very beloved. We shared that moment and that continuity in a 15 minute visit. And so at the beginning of residency I saw the end of one life I was there at the beginning of another in the same family.

Saturday Thanksgiving: The last three Thanksgivings, I have been working. The first year, I was on the Family Medicine Service and served on a skeleton team that included my seniors and the chief and rounded on all of the patients of the day. My second year, I was on maternal child and covered the team's OB service. This past year, I was again on FMS, this time as chief, and I covered for my interns so they could all have the day off and me and one of the second years covered service for them. My first year, I wanted to prepare a turkey, so I made a full Thanksgiving meal on the day that I had off--Saturday. Since then, I've made Saturday Thanksgiving a small tradition for my residency class. This past year included one of the newest additions to our residency family, one of my co-resident's baby girls.

Death of a Cousin: In January, one of my second cousins lost his life senselessly. He was an anesthesia tec in his hometown in Ohio and he was paged in to work to help with a transplant. His car was in the shop so he couldn't drive there so he walked to catch a bus early in the morning and was robbed and shot dead, in cold blood, his body left in front of the bus stop where it was found shortly thereafter. This Christmas, my cousin, his father, a pastor, is celebrating his life and mourning his only son, the father of his two grandchildren.

A lot more happened this year on the smaller scale that is more tedious to recount. Overall, it was a good year, a year of challenge, growth and transition. And here I find myself.

And here I am.

My Parents' Radical Marriage

Salaam,

On September 15, 1983, surrounded by my maternal grandparents and my Uncle Junior, my parents were married at city hall in Flint. My mother wore a modest, lavender dress, my grandmother's favorite color, and my father wore what I wager was one of the few suits he had at the time. My mother would later tell me that the reason why they married at city hall and that she wore a regular dress was because she knew her father was poor and she did not want to burden him with an expensive wedding, or any wedding at all, apparently.

However, it was also convenient, in the marriage of a Muslim woman to a Christian man, that their ceremony was not at all religious. There was no broom jumping, there was no palm wine. My grandfather did not give his youngest daughter away and my Uncles Donald and Temple were not there to see their youngest brother take a wife. And that's the way my parents wanted it. They often cite my brother's autism for the reason they keep to themselves but I have a feeling they've always been low-key.

And characteristic of the rest of their marriage, my mother's family ignored her requests for little fanfare and threw them a surprise reception after they married. My parents, who sounded very much like hipsters of their time, were gracious and excepted the reception as my father accepted his new family.

My father would travel back to Nigeria the next month and return in April of 1984, just in time to conceive me. He would not travel back to Nigeria in my lifetime.



Pictures from this day are in the front of my favorite photo album in my parents' house. It was my favorite as a child because it was the one where I saw the realization of my birth. It began with pictures of my parents marriage, the reception, my parents in their first apartment and soon transitioned to my mother, several weeks pregnant, her baby shower, and then my newborn pictures. As a child, I loved looking at baby pictures of myself. I was a really cute baby. But I always looked at the album in chronological order, including the three or four pictures in city hall of my parents, exchanging vows, my father accidentally placing the ring on the incorrect finger and my mother laughing, and the kiss with my grandparents clasping their hands and smiling in the background.



Already, their marriage was not typical. It was not in a religious sanctuary, a term my mother would use to describe one of the reasons she and my father chose each other. They didn't need a religious sanctuary to practice their respective faiths, she maintained. She remains un-mosqued as she has been my entire life, praying five times a day alone in the house's prayer room. My father is several years returned to church after never having set foot during all the time I lived at home and through my college years.

It was not surrounded by family and closest friends. It was surrounded by just enough of my mother's family to serve as witnesses--and my Uncle Junior, who, as my senior uncle on my mother's side, has attended nearly every major event in my life, from my birth to my graduation from college.

It was not traditional. My father, who was not raised in Nigerian traditions and couldn't explain them to me if I asked, did not dress in traditional Nigerian clothes on his big day and would not dress that way in the United States for another 30 years. My mother did not wear white. There were no bridesmaids or groomsmen. My mother had no engagement ring when she donned her wedding band. And that was it. Married.

But it was also radical. The Muslim daughter of Muslim parents married a Christian man, with the open approval of her parents, though she never asked for it. A Christian man who grew up sitting at his father's feet during sermons married a Muslim woman in spite of all of the things he believed about the Muslims of the north that were responsible for killing his people before the war. He also didn't seek the approval of his family.

When my mother tells it, she never balked at what my grandparents would think of her marrying a Christian man. She did not ask their permission to travel to Nigeria to visit my father in 1981. She told them, then she went. A woman previously sheltered by the strictest parents I've ever heard of in the name of the Nation of Islam traveled outside of the country for the first time to Nigeria, by herself. She has never asked them what they thought of the whole thing and it hasn't mattered.

My father doesn't tell stories about these things, but I imagine he didn't ask or tell very much. Not only did my mother not meet his family when she traveled to Nigeria (tell me more about that month long trip, Ma), but his family just found out that she is Muslim...two years ago? Over the phone? This tells me that my father did not consult his elder brothers, as my grandparents on that side had already passed.

That the children of two families who were essentially religious entities in their community could pull of an accepted interfaith marriage was pretty remarkable. That neither of these adults were hindered by what their family thought was fantastic. Their marriage exemplifies everything a love marriage can be for a Muslim woman, for an immigrant man.

And unlike various in each set of their co-religionists, they do not wonder if their marriage is valid. And they do not doubt that it is recognized by God.



Besides this very radical aspect of my parents' marriage, the interfaith without asking permission part, it is also otherwise unconventional. It was my mother who proposed to my father. And I believe it went a little something like this:

"Hey! Why don't we get married?"

And three years later, after spending most of that time with the Atlantic between them, they did just that. Prior to their marriage, their courtship face-to-face was 10 months total - 9 months in the United States, 1 month in Nigeria. They succeeded in having the longest long distance courtship I've personally known of.

They were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend they hadn't talked to in years. My mother was instantly taken at how my father was so friendly and outgoing that he talked to the DJ at the party as if he'd known him for years, yet he just met him. I don't know what my father was thinking, but I know that he's always adored my mother, and probably felt some semblance of that then.

They were set up but they had met before. My mother was a secretary at University of Michigan, Flint in the offices of Afro-American and Chicano Studies, where my father's cousin, head of the department, worked. My father would visit his cousin and bow his head toward my mother as he entered the office.

And somehow, this was totally unrelated to them being set up.

I don't know if my father dated previously, but I assume he did. I know my mother did. Her first foray into dating non-black men was another Nigerian who happened to be Chinua Achebe's cousin. The date ended, and Mr. Achebe seemed enthusiastic but I guess that was the last date.

(And to think, I may have been an Achebe...more than happy to be who I am!)

And of course, as goes without saying, their union was intercultural.


 
For all the ways my parents' marriage was radical, unconventional, special, it was also largely ordinary. It's an ordinary story of two people who loved each other and decided to spend the rest of their lives together. It's all about love, as Maurice White sings.

"Bound to fall in love one day. Surely, and you need it!"

They liked each other, then they loved each other, they married, they formed a family.

I don't know what it was about my dad, but he saw my mother transform from being a professional-minded woman who never aspired to have children to a mother who adored and nurtured us without interruption from the days we were born while still developing professionally. And I don't know what it is about my mother, but she anchored my father to a land in which he never intended to stay.

And the rest is history.

Nigerian Parent Invencible

Salaam,

Today, I was reading the wikipedia entry for Chiwetel Ejiofor (an actor I've admired since Dirty Pretty Things) and read about the tragic death of his father in a car accident in Nigeria, while he survived, and my heart sank.

It was the same way I was saddened to hear about a Nigerian woman, single mother in Michigan who was hit by a car as she crossed the street on her way to work and was killed.

If I ever have puff puff again, I'll probably cry over it as I remember how my mother, father and brother ate puff puff prepared by her at the last Nigerian wedding they attended.

I realize I'm really shaken by these deaths more than baseline because they bring my father's mortality into focus. My father is such a strong personality and a strong force in my life, I cannot imagine him suddenly and violently leaving, as in the likes of a car accident. In fact, God forbid! I pray when I do lose my father, it's not in such a way.

You cannot prepare for life and you can't for death but I'm just coming to terms with my grandparents dying. Sometimes I call my parents to make sure they're okay. I'm not ready for them to leave, but who ever is?

I've known a lot of Nigerians in my life...my father, aunties and uncles in that way that unrelated adults are aunties and uncles, and I see them as invincible, illogically so. I don't know if it's the inherent faith and God-fearing nature of so many of them, their ubiquity in my life for so long with little tragedy. It seems like they'd be here forever until they age and move on of natural causes.

There's something so alive, so vital about my father's presence in my life. Something about him that made me more apt to assume he was perfect for so long, even when I knew he was wrong. He's so steadfast in his faith and in his work as I suppose are many a first generation immigrant, like the auntie who made puff puff at the wedding, as I imagine Ejiofor's father may have been, a physician killed as he drove from a wedding in Nigeria.

And my heart sinks because they're not invincible, and I've always known it, but he feels so alive to me even when he's no where near me because of that presence his persona creates, and I'm not ready for it to be violently stripped from this realm. Not yet.



My father has commuted every day, one hour to work and one hour home, since the day after I was born, for 29 years now. I pray for his safe journey to work and safe return home, every day, for the rest of his life.

Illegitimate Daughter

As salaam alaikum,

If any of you couldn't tell, I got some daddy issues with Islam.

Some major daddy issues.

When I came into practice in late 2003 after growing up in an interfaith household, I searched for a way to bring meaning and sense to my world, a world that, in my teenage mind, tended a little too much towards chaos. Without having ever read the entire Qur'an myself or having gotten any religious instruction outside of what my mother taught me, I didn't understand how a just and merciful god could allow such suffering in the world.

Of course, being a teenager and just journeying into the world of abstract thought, I had no idea that this was a major philosophical question that has puzzled people for eons before my time, the answer of which has led many before me on several paths between devotion and atheism.

Of course, my life was good. I was an upper middle class kid from a semi-rural small town who had nearly everything she wanted. It wasn't just given to me, mind you...I afforded college because of merit scholarships, not Daddy's money. And of course, the grace of God, which I was spiritual enough to recognize at the time, but I wanted more. I was plagued by my own emotions, my own angst. If I was suffering so much from things just in my head, I could only imagine what it must be like for people with real suffering...women and girls subject to rape and sexual assault on regular bases, people starving, people without homes. It just caused me to delve deeper into a downward spiral of despair. If God didn't help these people who obviously needed it more than me, why would he ever help me who had the "fake" problem of depression?

So, as I entered college, I searched for more solid standing within Islam, to provide me with a much needed foundation for my spirituality, and to provide me with comfortable answers to my questions about the nature of God. Submission to God was the answer for me, and that would solve the problem of my depression and anxiety.

I was so not expecting to come into an Islam, practiced by Muslims I've encountered here in the United States, that would not always be that comfortable place to seek refuge, to submit to God, to rest my weary spirit from the unforgivable secular world.

I wasn't expecting to find out I was, in fact, an illegitimate daughter of Islam.



Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I had remained in a state of innocence. I wish Islam had remained for me as simple and organic as my mother taught it. As I delved into Islam in college, I came upon a version of Islam that was at times hostile, inflexible and merciless. It felt very much unlike the way I was raised to believe in God, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful of my Yusus Ali translation of the Qur'an that my mother used to read to us when we were little.

It wasn't the first sticking point, but the most painful sticking point was the fact that my parents' marriage, under most interpretations of Islamic law, is invalid, because my father is not Muslim.

So I am illegitimate.

I mean, for a while, it didn't really matter, because people would see me at MSA meetings and think I was a non-Muslim interloper anyway, because I was black. Never mind that the first major populations of Muslims in this country were black. Never mind that the first president of the MSA at my college years ago was a black woman. How strange to enter a context in your own country where you are made to feel foreign when, as a Muslimah, especially a searching, striving Muslimah, I should have been made to feel welcome.

I'm always an outsider because my name and ethnicity make me a mystery. I always have to explain how I was raised Muslim.

So it hurts to be considered otherwise illegitimate by my coreligionists.

I struggled to find a way in a faith, as I understood it, that would require me to deny my father, or deny his culture, in a certain sense, if the culture considered itself diametrically opposed to Islam. Maybe it was the fact that I was exposed to Muslims on my mother's side that were not so rigid that I did not go down that road that many of those that come into the religion later in life do.

Maybe it was the fact that it was partially the values that my father raised me with that brought me to Islam. So how could I rebuke the man who was responsible for bringing me into the world and partially responsible for my Islam? It made no sense...

I could easily give up on a religion that always considered my parents' union, the union responsible for my life, illegitimate. I was always a bastard, anyway, so why even bother? Why even bother, if God never blessed my parents' union? Why even bother, if I'm completely dispensable in a community of believers, believers, the best of communities of people in this earth, because my ethnicity isn't usual, because my name isn't right? Believers will continue to strive in the way of Allah (swt) and insha'Allah find their reward with Him in paradise without missing the little misfit that either sat, tugging at her sleeves without hijab in the center of the room or sat, tugging at her sleeves with hijab at the corner of the room, spoken to by only a couple of sisters that took pity on her isolation.

I've given up on a few things over time, but alhamdulillah it never leaves me with nothing. When I let go of everything, I'm left with the simple, organic Islam my mother taught me, and Islam that would make sense for an illegitimate daughter like me to practice...illegitimate in the sense that I'm living here in a non-Muslim country, as an ultimate minority, irremediably and unabashedly American, beautifully black and proud, unlikely to fit in a country perceived to be more halal for me because of all the things that I am, unlikely to fit into Random Muslim Community USA because all of the things that I am...

My mother became expert at practicing Islam in almost complete isolation. And while I will not stay so isolated, this is the Islam for me, free of some of the toxic impurities that we have somehow absorbed over time and taken as dogma.


So yes, I grew up in Islam without a Muslim father, without a "father." But I think my fellow Muslims make huge mistakes in this life when they ignore people like me who are several ways "illegitimate." I think if we do this, we're missing the point, we're missing the purpose of life, we're missing out on blessings and we're missing out on forgiveness.

Colonial Injury

As salaam alaikum,

I've been going through quite the spiritual journey, such that the words above, my standard greeting for every entry, don't mean the same to me anymore. They don't mean the same to me anymore because of one question and one thing I learned from reading Muhammad by Martin Lings. The question is, how much of our vocabulary and, indeed, our very existence as Muslims has to be in Arabic? And the thing I learned from reading Muhammad by Martin Lings is that as salaamu alaikum is in the second person plural form, even when greeting one person, because it also includes one's two guardian angels.

And that point is a good illustration of where I am in my spiritual journey right now, in my regard for my religion. I've got a love-hate dichotomy I'm working through. Yes, hate. It's a strong word that I seldom use, but when people or parties try to or succeed in bringing impurities into my religion or otherwise attempt to disrupt my faith, yes, that is a thing of hate. Not for the people themselves, but for these impurities that, try as you may, you cannot wash off. Like the sensation of blood on Lady Macbeth's hands.

Yes.

There are so many things I can talk about relating to my spiritual journey, but I've been doing a lot of reading, of scholars and historians, on everything from Qur'an hermeneutics and exegesis to the origins of "shar'ia" as it is popularly known. I just started that book, actually. But it's apparent, over time and in growing in my faith, that by being in possession of what we know as the final revelation in book form that we have, yes, insha'Allah carefully preserved over time, we also assume that the spirit of our religion has been preserved over time, and it has not been. It cannot be, implicit in our nature as human beings. So all we can do is do the best we can to preserve it's spirit and understand God's intention for us more than 1400 years later, which is harder than preserving text and recitation fidelity.

And I may talk about different elements of my journey later.

What I mainly want to talk about is something apparent to me after watching Fela! last Wednesday. First of all, I still want to delve into his life. I only knew him peripherally from my father having his music on audio cassettes that he brought with him from Nigeria...that, and of his gyrating women on stage. There's so much more I want to learn. But it was interesting how he spoke of his grandfather, and his European hymns and how he hated that his grandfather kept him from learning about the traditional Yoruba religions, which resonated more with him.

That made me think of two things. Fela's grandfather was like my Nigerian grandfather, head of his church in Nigeria. My father grew up at his feet every Sunday, learned the Anglican hymns "in the tummy," as he always says, and still has a preference for that style of church music over the "hollering" African American style my mother grew up with as a Southern Baptist. It made me realize how much my father was not a revolutionary in Nigeria post Biafran War (and even then, he was "rescued" from combat) and how he may represent that colonialist spirit that Fela saw in his grandfather...and how much that contrasted with my mother, at the very same time, young black Mos in the Nation of Islam, doing drills, wearing her Nation hijab and uniform to school every day and believing, perhaps more than any of her other siblings, in the word of the Messenger, that there was no "spook god" and "no pie in the sky when you die." Believing in the black man and militantly so. They were so different, and had they met not at the time they did, as they were both relatively distant from organized religion, though my father moving farther away and my mother moving back to it...I wouldn't be here. Subhan'Allah! Heh.

The other thing it made me think of is...how important it is for us to have our own religions, and how much injury was done in the spread of the Abrahamic faiths in the course of conquering and colonization that those of us who unapologetically reject colonialist attitudes may never overcome.

One of the bigger criticisms of the Nation of Islam is that they rejected one "white man's religion" for another. So more contemporarily, Europeans enslaved us and "stripped us of our language and our culture," took away our original religions, condemned them as heathens, and replaced them with Christianity instead, further adding insult to injury by using the Bible to justify our enslavement and to encourage our obedience while being so subjugated. But, what of the Arabs, who were Muslim, and their brutal enslavement of Africans, their conquering of Africans, their spreading of Islam over our original religions? So, why take on that religion over Christianity as if it's any better?

My answer to that question is...the Nation of Islam was a movement out of nowhere, so I don't know! Who was "Master" Fard Muhammad, anyway? Where did he come from, and where did he go? These are all good questions! I wouldn't bring this fact up to my grandfather at his age, because it would resonate with him, but as most of my family who is still Muslim has been Muslim longer than we were in the Nation, our reasons for being Muslim now have a lot to do with other things than avoiding the religion of conquerors and colonizers. And our reasons for being are probably all individual, unique.

Then, I think about other of my friends' attitudes towards the Abrahamic faiths. They view them as "imported religions." African solutions for African problems, they say, and part of the root of the problem is akin to the ubiquitous white Jesus...that Africans benefit more from a religion with their own face. The imported religions are not indigenous and are just part of the problem of Africans looking outside for the answers to their needs.

And I hear them, and I hear this argument. But I thought to myself...I thought, am I possessing a colonial attitude by choosing a religion that does not have an African face? Am I colonialist, buying into cultural imperialism by my acceptance of Islam?

Nope.

That was an easy answer.

It's all rooted in my beliefs. I believe that every community, every every community, got prophets. Everyone did. They weren't just in the middle east, though the texts and traditions of the Abrahamic faiths focus on that region. And it wasn't only those of the middle east that accepted their prophets (and many of them didn't, as the books tell). But we don't have record of who else did, and who those people were and where they lived. I don't at all believe in the superiority of any ethnic or language group, even of my own beloved people, West Africans and Diasporans. In accepting Islam, I did not accept it because of it's "Arab face." I accepted it because it answered questions that no other religion I'd encountered answered for me. The religion (not those who practice it), stressed the importance of multiculturalism, that we were made different peoples (and different genders) so that we may learn to know one another. So that we can learn from each other. Islam was not meant to be a religion to replace people's cultures but to enhance the good of them and to mute what was not good for our spiritual journey through this life.

When I came into Islam, it did not have an Arab face. Despite the fact that I prayed in Arabic, I didn't really think of Arabs as Muslims until high school. All the Muslims I knew until then were all black Americans, so the religion had an African American face for me until really college, when I really started getting to know non-black Muslims. Islam was removing my shoes in my Grandparents house, greeting them with as salaam alaikum in an unabashed American accent, tying my scarf behind my head with my neck and chin exposed in my aunt's Islamic school down the street while one of the boys in the school led salat. Islam was my mother praying deliberately in English and reading to us select stories in the Qur'an in English and teaching us who God was, what it meant for Him to "beget not, nor is He begotten," and the subtle beauties of creation.

The Islam I grew up with had an African American face, and when I learned of the last sermon of the Prophet (saw) and ayah 49:13, it had a multicultural face. We're all related, I used to say in late high school and college. I knew we humans functioned far from the ideal...but I didn't realize how far from the ideal we actually functioned. I started learning in college, and I continue learning...

So, for me, spiritually, I've never needed a religion with an African face. But just because I don't doesn't mean I decry the want and maybe need of those who do. And as much as I believe in my religion, I know we all find our own path to God, or searching for some type of divine if not God, or denying all divine and contenting ourselves with the material. I don't think it's our place as humans to deny that right of anyone, as long as their practices don't harm you in any way, though we may otherwise offend each other. And honestly, I have not studied the history of Islam in the Continent to understand how it was spread, so I can't really speak to that.

All I can say that...conquering and colonization caused injury to the people involved that is not easily healed. As Muslims, we believed that no prophets came after Muhammad (saw). So what right do non-prophets, that is, those who do not get revelation directly from God, have to spread their faith as superior to anyone practicing any other religion? What right do they have to come into your home and call you heathens? I personally believe in one God that created us all, and though we may approach Him in different ways, that does not make our God distinct from one another. We just understand Him and approach Him in different ways. I do not believe in spreading religion by force. But does that mean I relinquish my religion because it was spread by force? No. Nor do I think Christians who hold fast to their faiths should relinquish it because it was spread by force and used to subjugate their enslaved ancestors. Nor do I assume that all Christians see the white Jesus, or value Christianity because of any aspects of a European face.

A lot of ugly has been committed in the name of religion. Ugly and evil. In the name of Christianity and Islam, I know. Conquering a people and forcing them to stop practicing their religions and giving them a sense of inferiority in their culture and what is native to them is un-Islamic, even if one's religion is essentially un-Islamic. Even among the converted, that does them no good. Even among the converted in the United States that are told that aspects of their culture and very beings is haram, they go through a process of Arabicizing, if I may make up a word, rejecting their friends and family in search of an essential Islamic culture which does not exist. Stripping one of their language and culture in favor of...no substitute is very injurious and counterproductive to their reception of the message.

And I'm not making this point to facilitate conversion. I'm just saying...I understand my friends who seek a religion with an African face. Muslims may balk at this because it reminds them of the many nations who rejected their prophets in the name of their ancestors...or, the story of Abraham himself, seeking God in objects and recognizing that, in their transient natures, they could not be his Almighty. In destroying his father's idols...and so much of African religions have to do with exactly those things as Muslims that we try to avoid...polytheism and following the way of ancestors.

These Muslims don't realize that most of them are following the way of their ancestors, and not all their ancestors have done in the name of Islam has anything to do with Islam, and some of it is actually harmful...

You know.

But I think an essential part of knowing who you are is knowing where you come from. And it doesn't mean, as a African Diasporan, that I have to know what "tribes" the people on my mother's side came from, as I know I'm Igbo on my father's side. I know more generations back on my mother's side than my father's side, actually, ironically. I'm saying this because essential in even understanding Islam is understanding the context, pre-Islamic Arabia. And I think that the essential colonial injury that makes accepting of the Abrahamic faiths from being easily palatable to many of us is the way it was presented, spread, forced in many ways without validating the strengths of the cultures that it entered.

I didn't suffer this injury, this stripping of a sense of self. A sense of self was injected into me by my formerly black nationalist family and by having a Nigerian father from a young age. So I looked for a religion with a multicultural face, and I found an Islam that is not widely practiced. And I hold fast to that. For those whose sense of self was stripped or whose culture was devalued...the quest continues for a religion with their face.

And no one's sense of faith should be threatened by the spiritual quests of another.

[uncensored]: Interfaith Marriage on a String

As salaam alaikum,

(X-Posted)

“All is change with time / the future none can see / the road you leave behind / ahead lies mystery!” – Stevie Wonder, “All in Love is Fair.”

My mother told me the other day, “You know, I think your brother’s autism saved our marriage.”
Being single in a time of intense want—for a fulfilling relationship, my own marriage, my own family—has made me hyperaware of other people’s marriages. Over the years, I’ve noticed that many marriages, at one point or another, hang by a string. Sometimes the couple recognizes this fragility and this motivates them to make it work. Sometimes couples don’t even know that they’re there, and it comes and goes without their knowing.

I feel like my parents are there right now.

My mother is Muslim, my father is Christian. They met as part of a blind date, became friends who discovered they loved each other. My father’s visa expiration and a youth service obligation led him back to Nigeria, leaving my mother in the United States to pine over him and wait with bated breath for his letters for the next three years. And they married upon his return to the United States. They were Muslim, several years converted from the Nation of Islam, and Christian, the son of Nigeria’s head of the Faith Tabernacle Church, but love conquered all and brought them together.

My mother later told me that their shared values and their conviction against the need to attend a “religious sanctuary” were some of the key practical elements that made the interfaith aspect of their marriage work early on. This was less romantic to me, but it seemed to work out.

Growing up, my parents never argued, at least not to our hearing. My mother sometimes lamented not going out as much as they used to, and my father sometimes complained when his food wasn’t ready when he came home from a long day of work, but that was it. My mother prayed and read her Qur’an daily and my father watched his favorite televangelist, and everything was fine.

They maintained this balance in our home until the summer in 2005. I was 20 when I came home from college and decided, in the worst of ways, to tell my father that I was Muslim. I told him, between tears and snot, that “I will never be Christian.”

And things were never the same in my parents’ house.

During the worst of times, when I was home for New Years’ that same year, my father blamed my mother for my brother’s autism. “If the family had been united in faith and prayer, he could have been healed.” It was surreal to watch my mother run up to their room, weeping. My father seemed unrepentant.  He returned to his office in the basement without a word to me. My parents never argued like this. My father had never said such mean things. I had never seen my mother cry. What was happening?

What did I do?

I initiated the stringing of my parents’ relationship. My being Muslim is unacceptable to my father. He’s embarrassed by it. When he goes to church these days and they ask where his family is, he gives an elaborate excuse and tells them that I am Christian when they ask.

I’m sorry he feels that way. I find God best in Islam. This is how he allowed my mother to raise me. This was the way my extended family practiced. I wish my father would accept me.

He loves and accepts my mother. He reflects with sadness that there were some churches he couldn’t attend because some would not consider him Christian because he had a Muslim wife. And I told him that there are Muslims who would most certainly question my mother’s Islam in the same way. But my father loves my mother, and my mother loves my father, and they are dedicated to each other and to their family, both my brother and me.

He loves me, but he does not love my Islam.

My father was so upset to tell his elder brother, my uncle in Nigeria, that I was “leaning toward Islam.” He told him two weeks ago. He can’t bring himself to ever call me Muslim.

“This is huge!” my father told me. “You don’t understand…Nigeria is a big country but mine is a small community. What would people think? They would think this isn’t me. They would think that this can’t have come from the son raised by his father, the son who sat at his feet for every sermon.  After the way that I was raised…”

It’s also that I’m Muslim, as were the people who killed my people just prior to the civil war in my country.  My father doesn’t understand how I can be Muslim when “The Igbo and the Hausa do not see eye to eye.”

I try to fix it sometimes. Maybe I shouldn’t be so loud about being Muslim. I told my father, “I’m sorry. If I had known it was such a big deal…”

“It’s not a big deal.”

But Daddy, it is a big deal. All you described to me are big deal things….

It’s my fault. Sometimes I feel like my brother really is the unifying factor. My parents may argue sometimes, but if my brother misses his medication and has a seizure, my parents will run to the scene, catch him as he falls and pray over him for the duration of his tonic-clonic convulsions and post-ictal state as he struggles through slurred speech to tell them that he’s okay.

My Islam reminds them of their difference, the very real theological difference between Jesus as personal savior and Prophet Jesus, between God in three persons and God, the one, the only.

“You know, I think your brother’s autism saved our marriage.” my mother told me last week. She then explained that the social isolation from the Nigerian network in our state probably kept her from having uncomfortable run-ins with Christians who would disapprove of her Islam. It probably saved her from arguments with them that may have jeopardized her relationship with Daddy. But she can’t know that…

…and I actually don’t believe that to be true. Their love has always been more than shared aversion of religious sanctuaries held together by my brother’s autism and epilepsy. They are each other’s best friend. They don’t pray the same but they do pray together. They have similar dreams and goals for their children and they love us more than they are able to express. They came together in strength following a diagnosis that was all the more devastating in the 1980s when professionals knew so much less about autism. They’ve stayed together in a marriage unmarred by infidelity and separations, physical or emotional violence or any real discord. They did it! They are achieving interfaith marriage!

It wasn’t just autism. I realize my mother just said that because their marriage is hanging by a string right now, and they don’t know it. It’ll pass. I don’t know how or when, but inshAllah it will. Both love and are dedicated to this family too much, to my brother too much. Maybe one day inshAllah I’ll get married and leave my father’s figurative house and my father won’t feel so responsible for my being Muslim anymore. He can concentrate on loving his Muslim wife instead of trying to convert his Muslim daughter.

Marriage is hard, and interfaith marriage is just one type of hard that a couple can face, that I may face one day, whoever my husband may be. There is no one way to do things, so there is no how-to. This is just one way. It may hurt to tell it sometimes, but this is actually a story of success. Success…on a string.

In Wait for Mr. Right

As salaam alaikum,

After the thing with Y didn't work out (long story...long, happily hilarious story, haha!) I suddenly felt free! It was inexplicable. Instead of my usual moping after the end of a relationship (or not-relationship, as this case was) and believing that "no man likes me," I went to sleep, had a crazy dream where I felt freer than I ever have (but, for the sake of self-censorship, haha, will not reveal), and woke up and had an awesome day.

There was something liberating about not waiting around any more for this man to decide if he wanted to be with me or not, or get things started. There was something liberating about trying to make him fit in my man paradigm just because he was the one who liked me. Especially after I made the declaration "No more Nigerians!" (not that I'm excluding my motherland brothers entirely...but the record, brothers and sisters, has not been good), I felt especially free!

I realized that feeling lonely is one thing, but feeling like only one type of man or one group of men will likely end up marrying you is another feeling of desolation all together. Don't get me wrong, I love my heritage! I just don't think that ending up with a Nigerian man (and if Allah (swt) wills it, who am I to dispute it!) is necessarily the best fit with all that I am. I am Nigerian, but my tradition in Islam is more that of African Americans and not Nigerian Muslims, for example. I'm most Nigerian in my body type (apparently) and my food palate, but the second pais do meu coração is Brazil! I keep imagining instances in my life in which I could just pick up and live there, maybe in Salvador, for years. I clearly know more Brazilian music than Nigerian music. I don't speak Igbo...I speak Spanish and Portuguese. If I had to choose a hemisphere longitudinally, I would stay on this one. The family I grew up with is here, Latin America is here.

As I say in "The Hybrid Dance," I am more than an Igbo who is not Christian, more than an African American Muslim. I am a Muslimah, first and foremost, independent of my culture and ethnicity. I am Igbo Nigerian American, black American and a lot in between. I was born a daughter, a granddaughter a cousin and a niece, and I became a sister along the way to a very special young man who I tease but who has all of my heart. I am also a sambista, a noveleira, a future family physician and public health practitioner. I am a creative writer, a música popular brasileira singer! I am a nerd! I am a hispanohablante and a lusoparlante. I am a soul sister, loving me my soul music throughout the years.

And all of these things I am and all of these things that I have done, I've done by the grace of God without a partner in life, sometimes in wait for him and sometimes not. But I've become this full person not to thereafter mute parts of myself to fit with a man who likes parts of me and doesn't care about the rest. That is not why Allah (swt) gave me this time on earth to develop my interests, my career, my tastes. That is not why God has me waiting now, in wait of my Mr. Right. For me to act like I didn't have this time to become everything I dreamed and never dreamed of becoming just to throw it away for a man who is not it!

No! If that were the case, I could have met said man a long time ago, and maybe I wouldn't have been some of the things that I am. And that would have been okay, but that's not the reality.

No. I may be in wait for Mr. Right, but it isn't a twiddling-my-thumbs kind of wait. It's a Center of Awesomeness kind of wait. It's a me doing my own thing, taking care of my physical and emotional health and my hair health type of wait. It's me loving and living with those in my life type of wait. It's a me continuing to develop type of wait. Because, insha'Allah, I'm graduating from medical school this May with my MD and MPH, and I'm going to begin the transformative process of residency, iA. There is so much more that I'm going to be, iA, if he continues to bless me with the full life I've already had.

And Allah (swt) will provide for me a worthy partner, as I will be a worthy partner for him. Insha'Allah.

I know I'd be more content with myself, in and of myself, if I didn't have this strong need to share myself with others. I think the reason I've always wanted a partner is that I've wanted someone constant, who as long as he lives and as long as we are together, is going to be in my life. And even in times of absence, I'll know he'll be back. He'll be that person that I can share all of my life with, who doesn't move on with his life like friends will, who isn't my parents. I love the times I am alone, just me, writing or chilling or listening to music, but even with music in the background, it's quiet.

My friends know from the way I blab, I love to share my life. And I get lonely when there's no one to share my life with. But lonelier is the feeling that who you may be accepting into your life as a partner may not share. May not let you live in his blue.

É, você que é feito de azul, me deixa morar nesse azul...

I'm in wait for that man made of blue...or yellow, or magenta, or cerulean...or cinammon, or milk chocolate, or cream...of gold, whatever color he may be. I'm in wait for someone who lets me live all up in it, as I'll let him in my burnt orange!

God Laughing

As salaam alaikum,

Yesterday was a very good day. I was sitting in the emergency room, seeing patients, loving my life. It could have been because I only had two patients during my entire shift due to some of the complexities of the way flow goes and the way that I pick up patients. But I feel somewhat more comfortable in the space now, comfortable enough to know that I'll miss the ED, I'll miss the residents. I have a med student crush on two of them, one because he's like the best resident ever, the other one because he's really cute and is a good resident.

The latter is married, haha, so it's like, admiration from a far. They're med student crushes, anyway...not I-want-to-get-with-you crushes.

Then, during the night, I had a sudden feeling of doom. I suddenly had the impulse to look at pictures of death. I watched, again, the last moments of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, the tape feed that survived, before the shuttle broke up upon reentry into the atmosphere. Then I looked up a picture of Otis Redding's body that was pulled from the lake after his plane crashed...

I saw a dead body once. There was blood everywhere because his head was crushed in a motorcycle accident. Dead on the scene. Somehow, I got through an entire third year of medical school without watching a patient die. Some of my patients have died, but after I met them, so it's like they might as well still be living. Some of my relatives have died...

I suddenly started to remember the type of Muslimah I wanted to be...one who would be prepared for both life and death if it were to happen tomorrow. I wanted to feel as if I was doing everything right and as if I were good with God so that if I were to die the next day, I'd feel more secure about my going to Heaven.

I had a series of strange dreams last night. I think they all tied together. They were family related. I had a dream my cousin's daughter was on my computer and I kept her from it. I also had a dream that I got a free upgrade to Windows 7 and had some bugs to work out. I had a dream about family, and that we were somehow related to Levar Burton's wife, and Levar had converted to Islam, I guess, because his wife wore jilbab and niqab, even. I forgot how we were related to them. They had a light skinned son that she carried around. She was very stylish under her jilbab and very stylish with it. I helped her retie it upon leaving, and I wanted to tell her that I liked her jilbab, but for some reason, I didn't want my father to hear.

I woke up from the dream near the end, where I was playing a recording that I guess I had made with my webcam. I thought it was of me singing, "So High," by John Legend. And it started out like that, but then it became this 80s power ballad that I was singing at an impressively high register (which is unlike me, because I have a bit of a deep voice and I'm an alto by nature). I started singing along with it, but when I saw that my voice wasn't going to be able to do it today, I started it again so I could hear what I did. I looked at myself in the video. I was wearing an orange shirt, pacing up and down in my parent's house when I was singing it.

Then, my brother came in, and I told him to stop and listen to my singing, and watch me. He did his characteristic, "Whaaaattt?" but I started playing it for him anyway. I'm starting not to be able to reproduce the song, but the last lyrics were, "If I can't make it through the day, I'll make love through the night." Something like that.

And then my mind was like, "What kind of song is this?" And then I woke up.

But I woke up smiling...that was such a pretty song.

I woke up after feeling that little bit of impending doom feeling to a day where I'm once again, loving my life. I look around, I have everything I want and need, alhamdulillah. Something's going to change.

I just talked to a friend of mine who recently got married. I had a dream about her...she was telling someone that she prayed through Jesus (as) and she asked the man how he prayed, and he said through Jesus (as) as well. She is Christian, but she always refers to what God will do, not what Jesus will do, so it was a strange dream.

Anyway, she was saying that there is an incredible feeling of companionship that comes from being married than there was before she and her husband were married. I laughed and told her that this was the same thing that Imani said. She told me, "Yes, and you'll feel the same way with your husband."

I then snorted, "Yeah, in 10 years or whatever."

She chuckled, "You know, God is probably laughing at you." I didn't quite hear, so I asked her to repeat. "God is laughing at you, just waiting for you to see what He has in store."

This friend of mine...she is a riot! God laughing at me because I don't know what great thing I have in store?

...but I kind of took that to heart. Not the God laughing part, but that, if I only knew what was in store for me, I would be overjoyed, I would be even happier than I am now. If only I knew that what I will have will be better than I knew could exist.

I pray.

Because I prayed in my dream, too. I remember how she said she prayed for a God-fearing man, and two days later, she met who would be her husband. So, in spite of myself, in the dream, I prayed the same, with the same expectation. I prayed for in my dream what I have not been able to pray for in real life because in a sense I've given up, I've prayed for this for years, like, since I was a kid, and I guess it hasn't been time yet.

But waking up from that dream is one of those times in life that I feel like I'm in a state of grace...

This Non-Muslim Business

As salaam alaikum,

Back when I first started going out with B, I wrote a journal entry called The First Conundrum in which I outlined my problem - for our first date, B had invited me to go to the First Annual Nigerian Conference at Harvard for the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's independence. I liked him and I wanted to go, but on the same day, there was a conference being held at the Boston ISBCC by the founder of the Ta'leef Collective, a project which I am very much a fan of that really creates a forum for reverts and, as I call them, Muslims at the fringes to have dialogue, to learn about Islam, to return to the masjid in a way they wouldn't have before.

It was a one-day intensive for young Muslim students and professionals. It would have been perfect for me...but instead, I went out on a date.

So I liked this guy, I was Nigerian, it would be a great event, but I also was interested in what dude had to say, and he would only be in Boston for a limited time. In a sense, I was making a decision between my Nigerian identity and my Muslim identity.

I decided that I didn't do a whole lot with my Nigerian identity, so I chose that over the ISBCC event. Of course, it was also a decision to try dating, so I went there.

And thus began something that will impact the decisions I will make for the rest of my life. I began dating a non-Muslim, an issue that I had turned over in my mind but something that I assumed would never happen.

And now another non-Muslim, a Christian, is interested in me, and at the cusp of something else happening, I'm just going to have to take a time out.

For one thing, the way that B and I broke up had unnecessary drama cultivated by him, but besides that...he broke up with me because he needed space, and he didn't want me to wait for him. He'll need to be with himself for a long time. The thing is...the point that we got into our relationship, even with the unnecessary elements of our breakup, I still cared for him, and I still do. I want to check in on him, touch base with him periodically, all of these things.

Just talking to this guy I'm currently talking to, and he's a nice guy, I realize that I can't be doing that if I'm ever in a relationship with someone else. Like, that's a big no-no, still talking to your ex. I mean, it's all inevitable. If I don't end up with B I'm going to end up with someone else, so eventually our friendship/contact/whatever is going on right now would have to end. I just worry about him and want to check in on him and make sure he's okay and not continuing to go at life alone.

It's especially after a conversation I had with this other guy, and he was talking about what he felt constituted cheating...

The other big issue with this other guy is that he's not Muslim, and he'll have not Muslim expectations for a relationship that I did not fulfill with B...okay, let's be frank. He'll want to have sex. I did not have sex with B (haha, I feel like Bill Clinton right now), but let's say that before him, I had never kissed a man, and that's no longer true. I don't have to do that with anyone else, I realize. I don't regret the intimacy I had with him, and at the same time I do not regret that we did not have sex, by my demand.

I realize that if I cross that line, a lot that makes up my morals, my values, who I consider myself to be will dissipate. A lot of people remark at how different I am from most women they know (non-Muslims), and I think a lot of it has to do with my integrity in that regard. Not my virginity--I never liked that construct. But, the standards I live by, and how I struggle to uphold them...it's not the standards themselves that make me, it's the struggle that has shaped me.

But non-Muslim men have this expectation of sex in relationships that is real, and I understand now why so many Muslims see dating as synonymous with sex in this country because, oh Muslimahs, if you survey your non-Muslim friends, that's usually the case. My roommates of old and new, most of my friends...it's all true. They all assume that sex is part of a relationship...

So I don't think I can relate to non-Muslims anymore. I think the reason that B didn't pressure me to much is because he's a softy. Other men will not be as patient or understanding.

The issue is, it will take a very specific type of man to make a match for me. Even if I were to assume the manners and the dress of a hijabi again next month, I'm not the Muslimah that most Muslim men would expect out of a woman who wears the scarf. I once tried to fit into what I thought was the mainstream American Muslim world in college, and I didn't. I failed miserably.

I don't want to fit in, at the end of the day. I've never fit in really anywhere, and I love who I am. I just wish I had a way to go about finding a life partner without having to compromise my values any more than I already have, but for me, that seems a little bit impossible.

I don't know. Pray for me, as always.

I Cannot be a Muslim and Not Think

As salaam alaikum,

So, I don't think I really talked about this at all, but as you know, the followers of the ministry Family Radio were expecting to experience "rapture" this weekend--and it didn't happen. The head of Family Radio, Harold Camping, told a San Francisco newspaper that he was "flabbergasted." In the meantime, hundreds of his followers prepared to ascend to Heaven, selling their worldly belongings, including their homes, removing their children from school, spending their life's savings on billboards and subway posters warning non-believers of Judgment Day--May 21, 2011.

By May 22, 2011, no one was raptured. Some Family Radio congregants say that it's a test from God, and that the world will still end on October 21 this year. Others are very disillusioned because they didn't have a schema for this not being real. My mother listens to "Coast to Coast" radio that broadcasts from LA, and I heard this heartbreaking story about a young man who had been Atheist and started reading the Bible, converted to Christianity and later became a follower of Harold Camping. On the show, he was perfect in his loyalty to Camping and believed in his prophecy without question.

When the host asked this young man what he would do if he weren't raptured the next day, the man said he had no answer, because it didn't fit with his beliefs.

It was heartbreaking only as a believer in God to see someone actively seeking God and yet still falling astray, bound to be disillusioned.

I didn't joke about Judgment Day just because I don't think Judgment Day, death or either side of the Afterlife is anything to joke about. I could be joking about Judgment Day, choke on a pretzel, then die and then it's my Judgment Day...

...okay, so I don't joke about it, but a little bit of sarcasm and dark humor may manifest itself.

But in all seriousness, the last day for any of us can come really at any time. I'm aware of this every day. I sit in a house (I'm at my parents house right now) that uses gas for heating and cooking. There could be a sudden gas leak and I could explode as I'm writing this, along with all of my family's earthly possessions, and that could be it. Of course, I pray not! I pray for God to deliver me through each day and if I ever forget to pray, Allah (swt) has a plan greater than my own and He has preserved me, alhamdulillah!

So May 21 could have been my last day, so I didn't joke about it. Especially if...if we humans were to know God's plan and know the time and the hour as this Family Radio dude claimed to, even if we had time to prepare, how many of us would be ready?

I used to, even more than I do now, live every day of my life like it were my last. I strived toward Allah (swt) and His straight path so hard, with all of my might, with as much speed and haste as I could just so I could be ready, because I felt so far from ready. Every day, I wasn't good enough. Every day, I lamented not memorizing more suwar in the Qur'an, not speaking Arabic, not doing more supraregulatory prayers, not praying more in jamaah...

But I was doing it all alone, so it didn't work. And now I'm here, as I am now, not quite like I was before I became a practicing Muslimah, but not like I was at the height of my fervor.

And thinking back to those times when I strived toward Allah (swt) like every day was my last and as if, if I decelerated, I would surely go to Hell...I see how the followers of Harold Camping could believe as much as they did in the May 21 Judgment Day, and I really feel for their disillusion.

I'm not saying that I was wrong in trying to live my life the way that I did. No. It was a very pure time in my life, and I was probably better for it. I just think that--a lot of us (human beings) want so hard to find the straight way, to find the truth of things, and we can put our faith in a lot of places, some misguided, some prudent, some wise, and we can just run and run toward that place and lose foresight and peripheral vision and end up in a place we don't want to be, that is actually not helping us serve or approach God the way we envisioned, and then we end up lost in disillusion for a while.

Who knows what's going on with the young man who used to be Atheist who is now disillusioned because he was not raptured?


My mother stopped listening to one stream of her radio show because an Atheist had gotten on and was talking about his book about why people believe in everything from ghosts to God. She doesn't listen to anything that goes counter to her faith in God and Islam. And I just thought about it, and to some people, I'm as crazy as the Family Radio followers, the Heaven's Gate congregants, the people who preach on the streets. To them, I'm a fool to follow a text that is more than 1400 years old, to follow a god that I can't see, when really life is a cosmic accident. Life is a bitch and then you die, and I call myself an educated person, in medical school, going to be someone's doctor, and I believe in ancient, Middle Eastern fairy tales, fables and legends.

Or, as my mother has summed up the sentiment, this life is an accident, "and by the way, you came from a monkey."

I love a lot from the Qur'an. A lot of what I love from the Qur'an I learned from my mother, who has read the Qur'an (albeit in English) more times than anyone I know. When I was a kid, she used to be able to quote suwar for each situation, and she used to read things to my brother and I. My brother still remembers the song she made up for disbelievers--singing and dancing in a conga line, singing, "Ain't no fire," or rather, "Ain't no fi-YAH!" Man, that stuck in my head so much that to this day, I was just at a party with friends and we formed a spontaneous conga line and my heart stopped a little, because I likened dancing in a conga line to being a disbeliever.

Anyway, as an adolescent and adult, one of the suwar my mother reminded me of was one about Satan. After Satan was cast down by Allah (swt) and He gave Satan a respite, Satan, upset, resolved the following:

"He said: 'Because thou hast thrown me out of the way, lo! I will lie in wait for them on thy stright way: Then I will assault them from before them and behind them, from their right and their left: Nor wilt though find, in most of them, gratitude (for they mercies)." (7:16-17).
Satan comes from all directions. I think I've cited this before, but I like it a lot. Some of us err on the sides of extremes. Those of us who believe in God sometimes err on the side of religious conservatism in an effort to make sure that we are doing the right thing, pleasing to God, whatever constructs our theologies outline. Others of us err on the side of religious liberalism or atheism, rejecting what seems rigorous, nonsensical or unjust, believing deep down that life has to be about more than ritual and banking on a merciful God or cosmic grace.

I believe both approaches approach belief and God in too simplistic a manner and we miss out on meaningful nuance and, more importantly, place ourselves in a precarious position with regards to Satan. He's there on the left, and he's there on the right. The sins of a fundamentalist are no better or worse than the sins of a non-believer. One who kills someone in the name of God is no better than the gangster who kills someone in the name of all mighty dollar.

The middle path is not easy, because I don't believe there to be a single middle path, just the same as I don't believe there to be a singular right way to approach God. Of course, I wouldn't be Muslim if I didn't believe that Islam were the right way, but I argue that I wouldn't be a good Muslim if I didn't recognize that not all of those who call themselves Muslims are actually following Islam, the form above human interpretation, as it is intended to be followed, and there are some non-Muslims who are closer to Islam than some of them will ever know.

Why wouldn't I be a good Muslim if I didn't know this to be true? Because then I wouldn't be thinking, and in this life, we are told by God, there are messages for people who think. I can't be a Muslim and not think.


I cannot be a Muslim and not think. This phrase goes so far. Throughout the Qur'an, God talks about messages for those who think. And beyond the specific examples given in the Qur'an, life deals us so many messages such that if we just thought, we'd arrive at the answer.

I cannot be a Muslim in the United States and not think. I have to be on my toes, sorting out the halal and haram and improvising in a society where even native Muslims seem immigrant and Islam is alien. I have to think and challenge for myself the challenge to my faith that I encounter almost on a daily basis, from people throwing ahadith in my face to atheists smearing my religion to Muslim being made synonymous with terrorist in the media. If I did not think, surely I would have been led away from Islam to the vapid nature of the secular masses.

I cannot be a Muslim woman and not think. Women are subjugated in my society and women are subjugated in some Muslim societies. On either extreme encouraged to be skin tight, all bearing ornaments and or we're covered and hidden as if our existence is shameful. Neither extreme is right, and Satan is before and behind us. I have to think hard about what I wear every single day, and what it means in my society, as a Muslim woman, as God's creation: am I respecting myself, am I honoring the woman that God made me? Or am I answering to men, mankind, other women included, and what they expect of me? If I didn't think, I would surely dress differently depending on who was around me, every day.

I cannot be an black Muslim and not think. I read the last sermon of the Prophet (saw), I read those suwar of the Qur'an that talk about how we were made different people so we could learn from each other, and that is why I came into Islam. I was a child, but this was a sign for me because I thought, and I though, wow, a religion that speaks to troubles of our times, even though these things were spoken so long ago, it resonates now. Language of black and white, like now. This was a message for us, in the United States with our racial fixation. This is a religion that transcends race. And if I didn't think when I was a child, and if I didn't think now, I would have abandoned Islam long ago because of the way that some Muslims practice it, or rather the way that they exclude based on race and ethnicity, the way that they discriminate based on race and ethnicity, because I would be discouraged that this beautiful religion that my mother raised me in didn't really exist.

But I think, therefore I am. Muslim. I cannot be an Igbo Nigerian Muslim and not think because if I did not think, I would convert to Christianity because my people are Christians and the Muslims of the north had once been our enemy. I cannot be a Muslim scientist and not think because no one teaches science in the name of God, so there are a lot of truths and theories that I reconcile with my faith whenever I face them. I cannot be a Muslim physician and not think or else I would not be humbled by my practice and I'd fall into a fatal god complex that would do neither me or my patients any good.

I cannot be a Muslim and not think, or else I would start disbelieving a little bit every day until there was nothing left.

Islam is being demonized, and though it's painful to see non-Muslims and Muslims alike crapping on my faith, it is only meant to fortify us. For those of us who think, who reason and this is how we arrived at Islam as our way of life, the naysaying voices and forces that come from all directions, bombard us every day are small challenges that get us to the other side of the day with our faith strengthened for the next blow, and the next, until insha'Allah we'll approach God with a faith so strong that when the distraction of this world is removed, we'll be closer to Him than we imagined we could attain!

No, I don't know the day or the hour, and any of ours could be at any time. But though we should defend Islam and believers, in this spiritually turbulent time that we're living, instead of predicting the end of times because things seem so bad and because Islam is demonized or anything, let's focus on how we respond to blows to faith. Maybe that blow knocks us back on a more moderate path, back onto the straight way...maybe that blow knocks us back to the ground, humility. Maybe that blow knocks us away from Satan. Maybe they're not blows but little pinches, reminders, so we can answer with our heads high not with pride, but in reverence of the Creator...
This is our time, no less meaningful because we may not be at the end of times. Challenges abound, but if our way is true, facing these challenges to our faith is purposeful, meant to make us stronger.

So I don't disagree with the Family Radio followers who think their faith is being tested by God. You're probably right, dudes. Search long and deep, and maybe you'll find the answer, and live every day approaching God, seeking refuge in his grace and mercy like it's the last instead of banking on knowing the day.


I pray that God leads me the straight way, and that I do not misrepresent my faith. After all, I cannot be a Muslim and not pray, either.