Salaam,
My cousins family buried him last week. He was my second cousin and leaves behind a wife and two small children. I think my cousin, his father, said it best on his Facebook today when he posted, "I asked God why and He said, because I am God!!!"
It reminded me, of course, of Qur'an, 2:30, when God introduced the concept of human beings to the angels:
2:30 (Asad) AND LO! Thy Sustainer said unto the angels: "Behold, I am about to establish upon earth one who shall inherit it." They said: "Wilt Thou place on it such as will spread corruption
thereon and shed blood -whereas it is we who extol Thy limitless glory,
and praise Thee, and hallow Thy name?" [God] answered: "Verily, I know
that which you do not know."
Those were the words of a father, a man of God, struggling to understand why his son was taken away from him, from his mother, from his wife and his children. Those were words of a father, a man of God, who has dedicated his life to preaching a congregation in the way of God and is facing perhaps the hardest thing he ever will in his life.
He is a father who had prominence in his community to call for action and justice sooner than the families of other such slain black men were ever able to and still, the case is wide open. We still don't know.
And yet, so many other black men were killed similarly, senselessly, that week, last year, whatever. I don't know the stats, but there are many, and most of them (like all crimes, regardless of race) were intraracial crimes.
So-called "black-on-black" violence. So-called because most white people are killed by other white people, yet we don't call that white-on-white.
I get tired of the lame-o analyses, "I don't see black people marching when a black person kills another black person." Whoever says that doesn't know any black people and doesn't care to know anything about black people. We are deeply saddened, outraged and crying out for justice each time one of our own is killed. Will we be perhaps louder when there is a case like Trayvon Martin that harkens back to uglier times in the history of our nation? Yes, but that doesn't mean we are silent when our people are killing our own.
And calling these black people who have been killed "my people" and "my own" resonates with me even more now. This was my cousin who was killed. Months before, another one of my cousins killed someone. The cycle of violence, unfortunately, is full circle in my family.
In the wake of MLK's birthday and my realization about how little about the man I know, my realization that school's now been out for me for over a year and half now and anything new I learn I'm really going to have to teach myself, in the wake of my counseling patients who have lost their loved ones in similar, violent ways, I've arrived at a new state of being.
Sometimes, too many times and in too many ways, being black in this country is tragic. My cousin's case is a prime example. He was a man far removed from the streets, well-grounded in his faith, an honest man who worked for a living and lived to serve God. But he was robbed and killed in a neighborhood where he was the more likely target because he was black, by other black people who recognize that our lives are more dispensable in the public eye. Killed over a few bills and the chance to run free to rob another day. Tragic. He married his wife and was a present and loving father and now his children will grow up like so many black children in this country, without a father. Tragic.
So my new state of being? I recognize that being black in this country is often tragic and I want to do my part to help people grieve through those tragedies and to prevent those tragedies, if I can. No one else can do this but us. And when I say us, I mean my family, I mean black people. This is my purpose. This is why I'm still here. And I will work until the day I'm gone from this world at it.
Because the tragedy is greater and more far reaching than innocent lives (and not-so innocent lives) lost to crime. It's greater rates of prematurity, it's our children falling behind in school, it's the poverty of our schools, it's the achievement gap, it's the failings of affirmative action, it's lower university enrollment, it's failure to graduate, it's vacuums in mentorship. It's the prison-industrial complex, it's the war on drugs, it's red-lining and its legacy, it's post-racial assumptions. It's poverty. It's illness, it's greater mortality rates. It's poorer health for black women, our mothers, and it's the multifactorial loss of black men, our fathers.
As a black female physician who plans to do my own part to eat away at the social determinants of health, I plan to do my part, insha'Allah. Because if others are going to disregard human life, then I should be one to revere it.
Why would God place humans on earth, knowing our tendency for killing and corruption? Why are we here? No one has the answer. We are left to the mercy of the All Knowing, and we accept that mercy or we deny it.
I don't know why we're here, but I know it's not just for us to inflict pain on each other. With the potential for great evil there is an even greater potential for great good, and I pray to be one of those vehicles for good.
Showing posts with label Qur'an. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Qur'an. Show all posts
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Want
As salaam alaikum,
I once wanted something for myself, but then I'm pretty sure I gave up because I was convinced that it does not exist. I still believe that it does not exist. Or do I?
I don't think I believe that it doesn't exist anymore. It's just that, after wanting it so much, convincing myself that it was perfect for me...I realized that I didn't want it once I convinced myself that it didn't exist.
And now it exists again, and I don't want it.
This wouldn't be a problem if I hardly knew who I was anymore. And it's not residency specifically that has depersonalized me. It's the ebb and flow of life and making decisions before I have the time to ruminate over my thoughts in a thousand words in a word document, or in a blog entry. I've moved faster than the estimation of myself.
I've even started questioning if I want to be a wife and a mother. I have to remind myself at intervals, of course I do. Do I? Yes. I manage women labor, put their babies on their chest, constantly imagining what I would prefer when I'm delivering, how I hope I am able to handle labor, imagining my husband at my side. Of course I want that...
...or do I?
Life for a while was a constant quest of me searching how to be. How to be optimally, to earn the most love from Allah (swt). And in the course of mindfulness, I learned to be enough, enough right now, enough for myself, to be myself. But in the background, there's the historic me who thought that there was no such thing as being oneself. To be oneself was to be satisfied with the innate mediocrity that we are instead of striving to be better. To never be satisfied with oneself was to be striving. To struggle daily because marriage was not in site was a worthy struggle, because I was struggling in the way of God and what He wanted for me in such a relationship and not settling for less. Prayers were much more cathartic that way.
There was baseline worthiness that I thought would be accomplished by being a baseline Muslimah...five pillars, the minimum, modesty at the minimum. And I never got there...never all at once. And I didn't feel worthy unless I got there.
And probably I was still single because God knew it would be best for me to get there instead of looking for spiritual and religious guidance too much in a man, a future husband. He wanted me to rely on myself, I told myself. I prayed for the best husband I could have on this earth, and it's taking so long because that's what I prayed for, I told myself. Meanwhile, each prayer became like a plead and my pain and depression etched battle scars into my being, that which I thought was worthy, worthy and the struggle for God.
This is the way we are all supposed to live, ultimately, I told myself, if we only knew. Life is struggle enough, but if we're putting it in the right place...I may not understand it now, but it'll only reap rewards for me. This is why God constantly reminds us that the next life is better than this...
...and so I lived a life not so much for the next life but for the next moment and the next stage of being.
I wanted very many things, actually. A certain type of being, a certain type of husband so I could raise a certain type of children, all that would fit into what I already had going for my career. I imagined a being where I was more fit than I am, thinner than I am, hair healthier than it is, clothing my own brand of modesty and elegance as it's not. I hoped to redefine myself into this woman upon entering residency, and instead, I remained as I've always been. Jeans and a blouse, sometimes dry and matted puff on my head.
I acquired a man who loves me, and I him, who will not be that certain type of husband. Nor do I want to be.
I wanted very many things for myself that I convinced myself at one time did not exist and now that I'm over them and I see that they do exist, I no longer want them.
I still want to live God-conscious, but I'm finding a more organic way to do that than molding myself into what I should be to be enough, when we are always enough. God did not create mediocrity. My paradigm is partly the pleasure of God but it's also the understanding of a life that is supposed to bring us the most benefit and equilibrium.
...or is it that I still don't want it?
I once wanted something for myself, but then I'm pretty sure I gave up because I was convinced that it does not exist. I still believe that it does not exist. Or do I?
I don't think I believe that it doesn't exist anymore. It's just that, after wanting it so much, convincing myself that it was perfect for me...I realized that I didn't want it once I convinced myself that it didn't exist.
And now it exists again, and I don't want it.
This wouldn't be a problem if I hardly knew who I was anymore. And it's not residency specifically that has depersonalized me. It's the ebb and flow of life and making decisions before I have the time to ruminate over my thoughts in a thousand words in a word document, or in a blog entry. I've moved faster than the estimation of myself.
I've even started questioning if I want to be a wife and a mother. I have to remind myself at intervals, of course I do. Do I? Yes. I manage women labor, put their babies on their chest, constantly imagining what I would prefer when I'm delivering, how I hope I am able to handle labor, imagining my husband at my side. Of course I want that...
...or do I?
Life for a while was a constant quest of me searching how to be. How to be optimally, to earn the most love from Allah (swt). And in the course of mindfulness, I learned to be enough, enough right now, enough for myself, to be myself. But in the background, there's the historic me who thought that there was no such thing as being oneself. To be oneself was to be satisfied with the innate mediocrity that we are instead of striving to be better. To never be satisfied with oneself was to be striving. To struggle daily because marriage was not in site was a worthy struggle, because I was struggling in the way of God and what He wanted for me in such a relationship and not settling for less. Prayers were much more cathartic that way.
There was baseline worthiness that I thought would be accomplished by being a baseline Muslimah...five pillars, the minimum, modesty at the minimum. And I never got there...never all at once. And I didn't feel worthy unless I got there.
And probably I was still single because God knew it would be best for me to get there instead of looking for spiritual and religious guidance too much in a man, a future husband. He wanted me to rely on myself, I told myself. I prayed for the best husband I could have on this earth, and it's taking so long because that's what I prayed for, I told myself. Meanwhile, each prayer became like a plead and my pain and depression etched battle scars into my being, that which I thought was worthy, worthy and the struggle for God.
This is the way we are all supposed to live, ultimately, I told myself, if we only knew. Life is struggle enough, but if we're putting it in the right place...I may not understand it now, but it'll only reap rewards for me. This is why God constantly reminds us that the next life is better than this...
...and so I lived a life not so much for the next life but for the next moment and the next stage of being.
I wanted very many things, actually. A certain type of being, a certain type of husband so I could raise a certain type of children, all that would fit into what I already had going for my career. I imagined a being where I was more fit than I am, thinner than I am, hair healthier than it is, clothing my own brand of modesty and elegance as it's not. I hoped to redefine myself into this woman upon entering residency, and instead, I remained as I've always been. Jeans and a blouse, sometimes dry and matted puff on my head.
I acquired a man who loves me, and I him, who will not be that certain type of husband. Nor do I want to be.
I wanted very many things for myself that I convinced myself at one time did not exist and now that I'm over them and I see that they do exist, I no longer want them.
I still want to live God-conscious, but I'm finding a more organic way to do that than molding myself into what I should be to be enough, when we are always enough. God did not create mediocrity. My paradigm is partly the pleasure of God but it's also the understanding of a life that is supposed to bring us the most benefit and equilibrium.
...or is it that I still don't want it?
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Happy Father's Day to my non-Muslim Father
As salaam alaikum,
First, a shout-out to one of the editors of Love, InshAllah, Ayesha, and the ladies of the anthology (and their fathers) as mentioned in this HuffPost piece, "Father's Day: A Love Letter to Muslim Fathers." This is a lovely piece about real Muslim fathers, real Muslim men who are loving, compassionate and accommodating of their daughter's loves and aspirations. And though I love my Christian father like none other and could not love him any more, reading the piece made me feel the continued void of Muslim men, real Muslim men, in my life.
My grandfather was the primary Muslim man in my life, and even then, his practice has always been very private. The only other practicing Muslim man in my family growing up was one of my uncles, my mother's youngest brother. But growing up, when I visited my family in Flint, the Muslim men I saw praying were the men at the Islamic Center and the local masjid were all unrelated black men in the community. But I was mostly exposed to practicing Muslim women...my grandmother, one of my aunts in particular, and my mother. These were the people I witnessed pray the most, read the Qur'an the most, reflect on their spirituality the most...
I was, however, exposed to the praying, beliefs and devotion of a Christian man. No, my father did not attend church, which is considered by most Christians to be integral to one's faith. But as a child, I watched him read his Bible, his King James, Jesus (as) text in red Bible, I watched with him sometimes his favorite televangelist, Reverend Price (Evidence! Evidence!), I listened to his Mormon Tabernacle Choir some Sundays, I prayed with him as he led prayers over our food and before journeys. My father is, in fact, the most practicing religious man that I know.
And yet, I aspired to marry a Muslim man, without too many examples of Muslim men in my life. I do, however, have an example of a good man in my life, and that is my father. A man who loves God, who is humble, sometimes to the point of being self-deprecating, one who is striving actively in the way of God as he believes to be fit, who provides for his family, who loves us all dearly, who is dedicated to his responsibilities as husband and father, who is a diligent and tireless worker, who is fiercely intelligent to the point where I'm convinced he's a genius (and I'm not just saying that because I'm his daughter), who is patient, who is gentle, who loves and respects my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as his own blood...
And so many other attributes. I never demonized my father for being Christian, though I am often frustrated by his seeming intolerance of my being Muslim sometimes. As a matter of fact, as a gift to him on father's day, I'm listening to several of the sermons from his church, as he always wants me to do, so we can discuss it if he wants. I couldn't help but open my Islamicity Qur'an search to find those parallel ayat in the Qur'an that speaks to essential theological differences that scream out to me as I listen to his pastor. I can't fault him. This is the man who taught me to blow my nose in a very specific way...closing one nostril and then blowing out one, then repeating on the opposite side. Because he blows his nose that way and he was convinced that was the most efficient and effective way to do it.
Of course he's going to try to expose me to his way of believing and approaching God, because he is my father.
I do sometimes, often times, wish I had more good Muslim men in my life, including a Muslim husband. But, no contest, I'd rather have my father in my life, exactly as he is, and as he's always been.
I love you, Daddy. Happy Father's Day.
First, a shout-out to one of the editors of Love, InshAllah, Ayesha, and the ladies of the anthology (and their fathers) as mentioned in this HuffPost piece, "Father's Day: A Love Letter to Muslim Fathers." This is a lovely piece about real Muslim fathers, real Muslim men who are loving, compassionate and accommodating of their daughter's loves and aspirations. And though I love my Christian father like none other and could not love him any more, reading the piece made me feel the continued void of Muslim men, real Muslim men, in my life.
My grandfather was the primary Muslim man in my life, and even then, his practice has always been very private. The only other practicing Muslim man in my family growing up was one of my uncles, my mother's youngest brother. But growing up, when I visited my family in Flint, the Muslim men I saw praying were the men at the Islamic Center and the local masjid were all unrelated black men in the community. But I was mostly exposed to practicing Muslim women...my grandmother, one of my aunts in particular, and my mother. These were the people I witnessed pray the most, read the Qur'an the most, reflect on their spirituality the most...
I was, however, exposed to the praying, beliefs and devotion of a Christian man. No, my father did not attend church, which is considered by most Christians to be integral to one's faith. But as a child, I watched him read his Bible, his King James, Jesus (as) text in red Bible, I watched with him sometimes his favorite televangelist, Reverend Price (Evidence! Evidence!), I listened to his Mormon Tabernacle Choir some Sundays, I prayed with him as he led prayers over our food and before journeys. My father is, in fact, the most practicing religious man that I know.
And yet, I aspired to marry a Muslim man, without too many examples of Muslim men in my life. I do, however, have an example of a good man in my life, and that is my father. A man who loves God, who is humble, sometimes to the point of being self-deprecating, one who is striving actively in the way of God as he believes to be fit, who provides for his family, who loves us all dearly, who is dedicated to his responsibilities as husband and father, who is a diligent and tireless worker, who is fiercely intelligent to the point where I'm convinced he's a genius (and I'm not just saying that because I'm his daughter), who is patient, who is gentle, who loves and respects my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as his own blood...
And so many other attributes. I never demonized my father for being Christian, though I am often frustrated by his seeming intolerance of my being Muslim sometimes. As a matter of fact, as a gift to him on father's day, I'm listening to several of the sermons from his church, as he always wants me to do, so we can discuss it if he wants. I couldn't help but open my Islamicity Qur'an search to find those parallel ayat in the Qur'an that speaks to essential theological differences that scream out to me as I listen to his pastor. I can't fault him. This is the man who taught me to blow my nose in a very specific way...closing one nostril and then blowing out one, then repeating on the opposite side. Because he blows his nose that way and he was convinced that was the most efficient and effective way to do it.
Of course he's going to try to expose me to his way of believing and approaching God, because he is my father.
I do sometimes, often times, wish I had more good Muslim men in my life, including a Muslim husband. But, no contest, I'd rather have my father in my life, exactly as he is, and as he's always been.
I love you, Daddy. Happy Father's Day.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Extinction
As salaam alaikum,
Interestingly, someone arrived at my site by searching to see if Esperanza Spalding is Muslim. Probably got to the site because I frequently post about my musical spirit sister and I'm Muslim. Whoever it was probably heard the lyrics to "Vague Suspicions," and thought, a person who writes lyrics like this, so sympathetic to Muslims, recognizing that Christians and Muslims in fact do worship the same God must be Muslim.
Not necessarily, hehe, but nice thought.
I feel like every few years, there's some celebrity that we get excited about being Muslim. Like we're seeking validation. I'm not mad at that, but I'm much happier to hear the sympathy in her lyrics for civilian victims of this Orwellian war (as well as sympathy for the young men and women from our country that have their blood senselessly on their hands), to hear her belief and struggle-with-belief in God so poetically expressed in song. She is so right on with that song.
I'll post the lyrics at the end of this entry, because people don't seem to be understanding what she's saying on any of the lyrics sites I visited, haha.
But I also had Esperanza's arrangement of "Endagered Species" in my mind on Sunday morning when I woke up and felt like I'm slowly going extinct.
I was alarmed when Islamicity calculated 'Isha' for midnight and fajr for a little after 2am here in Seattle, knowing that the days are just going to get longer for a while. I started going to mosque sites in the Seattle area to confirm an alternate prayer time calculation that I saw that is more reasonable ('isha' a bit after 11, fajr around 3am). I didn't just want to go with one because it suited me better, so I had to make sure it was something the mosques in the area were following.
As I investigated the prayer time calculations (they seem to go with ISNA), I explored some of the mosque websites. I checked out one site's "women's activities," and it talked about the various halaqas. Besides the introductory halaqas for new Muslimahs or Muslimahs hoping to review the basics, the only other one is in Arabic. They were to address the woman "molding" herself into "the ideal Muslimah."
That, and the fact that the page had not been updated since 2005, got me discouraged.
For some time, I've not been interested in other people's opinions of what an ideal Muslimah is and how I should be her. I tried that. The good Muslims of my community still did not have space for me. It was disappointing. And an ideal Muslimah is not ideal if she exists in isolation.
What sense does it make for anyone, man or woman, to exist in isolation? It doesn't
I was tired of, "Well, maybe if I just do this, if I just do that...then I'll fit." Where was I?
Where am I?
I've been back for a while, rebuilding my identity, stumbling my way through Erikson's Identity vs. Role Confusion and am now fully to Intimacy vs. Isolation.
Intimacy vs. Isolation.
Intimacy. No one loves me for my Islam. Men are either interested in me in spite of the Islam or in ignorance of the Islam. Yes, even Muslim men, on both counts. In spite of me not being Muslim enough, in spite of me being Muslim, whichever your pleasure. And if my submission to God is the biggest part of me, don't I deserve to be with someone who loves that about me? Not I like it, but...I don't understand it, it bothers me, it's insufficient, it could be better for my tastes, I could do without it.
Isolation. It's easiest for me to be Muslim in isolation. Meaning, it's easiest for me to submit to the will of God if I do so alone. The world outside is so toxic, toxic on both sides, the Muslim and the non. It's clearly the work of the devil that our communities are so rent asunder that someone like me struggles to find a place for herself. That so many of us are slipping in and out of obscurity just to keep our heads above water, just to hold onto the faith, the way of being that injects our lives with beauty, hope and God's grace.
It's a shame.
At the same time, I feel like I'm slowly going extinct. I feel like I'm slipping into irrelevance in this world, that I don't make sense, never have, and will continue to do so, because of the way I live and the way that I choose to submit to God.
Have faith, stay strong, pray, they all say. The earliest believers went through trials that you cannot imagine. I know. The Qur'an tells us that we'd best believe that those before us suffered trials and pleaded with God, wondering when He would come through (2:214). And for the believer, there is many a lonely road, but also life abundant (4:100). Alhamdulillah, I have abundant life, even as I trek my lonely road.
So this must be a trial for me. This must be a trial for me but I can't help but think that I'm going extinct. That my existence in this life is as a shadow, that I'm a shell. I'm someone whose purpose is for others, for others, for others, and rarely for me.
That what I've allocated for myself is just a stipend to keep me alive and healthy to continue to serve others.
And don't get me wrong, I live to serve others. I believe that's a big part of all of our purposes of life...to seek out ways to help our fellow human beings through this life. Allahu a'lam. But for a change, I want something for myself. I want companionship. I want a partner who loves me for my Islam. That's the only thing that I want that is mine. Service and self-service all in one. And while I recognize that my desire to have children isn't entirely alturistic, motherhood would be another realm in which I'm giving of myself, of myself, of myself, and little for myself.
I want a man who loves God and, by extension, loves my Islam, for myself.
Because if I don't get it, I'll go extinct. I'll live life going through the motions, a living shell that works for others and that stipend that just sustains her, day after day, month after month...
In the name of God, I'm going extinct.
Vague Suspicions - Esperanza Spalding
On the neon news, they won't be talking about his life
That was still unfolding when he had to fly
Toward, toward God
May this war end, insha'Allah, he knelt to pray
When a dusty troop misjudged and blew him away
Strangers, same God
They are faceless numbers in the headlines we all read
Drone strike leaves thirteen civilians dead
Hold that thought
My God!
Maybe your heart is seized with passing pitty for the dead
And vague suspicions creep into your head
Am I part of one?
And what is God for?
Next, on channel four, celebrity gossip
Interestingly, someone arrived at my site by searching to see if Esperanza Spalding is Muslim. Probably got to the site because I frequently post about my musical spirit sister and I'm Muslim. Whoever it was probably heard the lyrics to "Vague Suspicions," and thought, a person who writes lyrics like this, so sympathetic to Muslims, recognizing that Christians and Muslims in fact do worship the same God must be Muslim.
Not necessarily, hehe, but nice thought.
I feel like every few years, there's some celebrity that we get excited about being Muslim. Like we're seeking validation. I'm not mad at that, but I'm much happier to hear the sympathy in her lyrics for civilian victims of this Orwellian war (as well as sympathy for the young men and women from our country that have their blood senselessly on their hands), to hear her belief and struggle-with-belief in God so poetically expressed in song. She is so right on with that song.
I'll post the lyrics at the end of this entry, because people don't seem to be understanding what she's saying on any of the lyrics sites I visited, haha.
But I also had Esperanza's arrangement of "Endagered Species" in my mind on Sunday morning when I woke up and felt like I'm slowly going extinct.
I was alarmed when Islamicity calculated 'Isha' for midnight and fajr for a little after 2am here in Seattle, knowing that the days are just going to get longer for a while. I started going to mosque sites in the Seattle area to confirm an alternate prayer time calculation that I saw that is more reasonable ('isha' a bit after 11, fajr around 3am). I didn't just want to go with one because it suited me better, so I had to make sure it was something the mosques in the area were following.
As I investigated the prayer time calculations (they seem to go with ISNA), I explored some of the mosque websites. I checked out one site's "women's activities," and it talked about the various halaqas. Besides the introductory halaqas for new Muslimahs or Muslimahs hoping to review the basics, the only other one is in Arabic. They were to address the woman "molding" herself into "the ideal Muslimah."
That, and the fact that the page had not been updated since 2005, got me discouraged.
For some time, I've not been interested in other people's opinions of what an ideal Muslimah is and how I should be her. I tried that. The good Muslims of my community still did not have space for me. It was disappointing. And an ideal Muslimah is not ideal if she exists in isolation.
What sense does it make for anyone, man or woman, to exist in isolation? It doesn't
I was tired of, "Well, maybe if I just do this, if I just do that...then I'll fit." Where was I?
Where am I?
I've been back for a while, rebuilding my identity, stumbling my way through Erikson's Identity vs. Role Confusion and am now fully to Intimacy vs. Isolation.
Intimacy vs. Isolation.
Intimacy. No one loves me for my Islam. Men are either interested in me in spite of the Islam or in ignorance of the Islam. Yes, even Muslim men, on both counts. In spite of me not being Muslim enough, in spite of me being Muslim, whichever your pleasure. And if my submission to God is the biggest part of me, don't I deserve to be with someone who loves that about me? Not I like it, but...I don't understand it, it bothers me, it's insufficient, it could be better for my tastes, I could do without it.
Isolation. It's easiest for me to be Muslim in isolation. Meaning, it's easiest for me to submit to the will of God if I do so alone. The world outside is so toxic, toxic on both sides, the Muslim and the non. It's clearly the work of the devil that our communities are so rent asunder that someone like me struggles to find a place for herself. That so many of us are slipping in and out of obscurity just to keep our heads above water, just to hold onto the faith, the way of being that injects our lives with beauty, hope and God's grace.
It's a shame.
At the same time, I feel like I'm slowly going extinct. I feel like I'm slipping into irrelevance in this world, that I don't make sense, never have, and will continue to do so, because of the way I live and the way that I choose to submit to God.
Have faith, stay strong, pray, they all say. The earliest believers went through trials that you cannot imagine. I know. The Qur'an tells us that we'd best believe that those before us suffered trials and pleaded with God, wondering when He would come through (2:214). And for the believer, there is many a lonely road, but also life abundant (4:100). Alhamdulillah, I have abundant life, even as I trek my lonely road.
So this must be a trial for me. This must be a trial for me but I can't help but think that I'm going extinct. That my existence in this life is as a shadow, that I'm a shell. I'm someone whose purpose is for others, for others, for others, and rarely for me.
That what I've allocated for myself is just a stipend to keep me alive and healthy to continue to serve others.
And don't get me wrong, I live to serve others. I believe that's a big part of all of our purposes of life...to seek out ways to help our fellow human beings through this life. Allahu a'lam. But for a change, I want something for myself. I want companionship. I want a partner who loves me for my Islam. That's the only thing that I want that is mine. Service and self-service all in one. And while I recognize that my desire to have children isn't entirely alturistic, motherhood would be another realm in which I'm giving of myself, of myself, of myself, and little for myself.
I want a man who loves God and, by extension, loves my Islam, for myself.
Because if I don't get it, I'll go extinct. I'll live life going through the motions, a living shell that works for others and that stipend that just sustains her, day after day, month after month...
In the name of God, I'm going extinct.
Vague Suspicions - Esperanza Spalding
On the neon news, they won't be talking about his life
That was still unfolding when he had to fly
Toward, toward God
May this war end, insha'Allah, he knelt to pray
When a dusty troop misjudged and blew him away
Strangers, same God
They are faceless numbers in the headlines we all read
Drone strike leaves thirteen civilians dead
Hold that thought
My God!
Maybe your heart is seized with passing pitty for the dead
And vague suspicions creep into your head
Am I part of one?
And what is God for?
Next, on channel four, celebrity gossip
Friday, May 18, 2012
Strength in Weakness, Faith and Critique
As salaam alaikum,
At the "Expressions of Islam in Contemporary African American Communities" conference (yes, I was conferencing it up before I left Boston!), we touched upon so many topics. Feminism in Islam was not excluded, nor were issues of race for non-black converts to Islam, the so-called immigrant vs. indigenous dichotomy, cultural imperialism, Muslim chaplaincy and the future of Muslim leadership...it was awesome.
One thing we talked about after Mustafa Davis screened his film was the Ta'leef Collective, and how an organization that was established to support converts came to be made up of a vast majority of what I call "Muslims on the fringe" who come to weekly sessions to find open places to discuss their place in Islam.
In discussing the film and discussing Ta'leef, we discussed the inflexibility of many of our communities and probably many of our world views to accept weakness in Islam.
What do I mean by that? I was raised differently, but in college I came up in Islam believing that any emotion that was not happiness, any of the DSM-IV diagnosable psychiatric disorders were actually diseases of the heart. Diseases of the Heart. I read that collection before medical school, earnestly seeking a firm backbone for my spiritual support of my mental health, believing that this was the way. Depression, I believed, was at its root ingratitude. Ingratitude or otherwise some sign of low iman. There is much to be done. There are special duas, fasting, charity...there is so much to be done.
For less pathological emotions, like loneliness, as discussed in the conference, many Muslims are afraid to pronounce. Some of us feel afraid to admit in our communities that our faith isn't satisfying all of the time. I can say personally that I was afraid to express any discontent with Islam before my father, lest he uses that crack in my faith to try to squeeze Christianity in.
And I also know that I've felt that any loneliness I feel is my own fault, because the religion is perfect. My loneliness in undergrad in the face of a very ethnically divided MSA was my fault for not "putting myself out there" to meet with other sisters, because everyone was busy and everyone was a student and I couldn't expect anyone to just embrace me. And so on...
Okay, well, maybe it's not all our faults, the feelings that we feel. Maybe not every negative or disordered emotion we feel is reflective of weak faith. Maybe it's okay to admit, I feel lonely in Islam so much.
Because I do. I feel lonely more often than I feel any benefit of brother or sisterhood. But God told us in the Qur'an that for the believer, we are bound to encounter lonely roads, as well as life abundant, so I keep on trucking, but that does not take away the fact that being Muslim can be a very lonely, isolating experience.
And this conference gave me permission to express this, and be loud about it!
With Mustafa Davis and with contributions of a great audience, we discussed how it's actually empowering to allow people to talk about their loneliness and their discontent with the religion. So often, for whatever reason, people don't feel like their allowed to express such sentiments. Like we're somehow afraid that admitting such things will send us down a spiral of religion rejection.
Or we're afraid of others questioning our faith.
While, quiet as it's kept, we all struggle. I don't think any of us have found that perfect faith sweet spot. I guess that's just one of the things like evil and the otherwise haram that people are afraid to noise about. But when it's for the purpose of helping a fellow human being, or self-discovery, or strengthening (yes!) one's faith, then...I don't see what the problem is.
I felt stronger in my faith when I felt free to admit the down times. Thereafter, I was more free to reflect and discover that Islam, in its perfect form is never at fault because that Islam has never existed on the face of this earth. It did in spirit during revelation, but as all the reforms the Qur'an called for were not fully implemented by the end of revelation, even then did Islam in its perfect form not exist on this earth. We've had generations do the best they can, and generations do less than the best that they can, and that conglomeration of ancestral tradition (yes) and consensus interpretations of the text is the Islam we have now, as imperfect as its human vectors.
The loneliness I feel is in part due to relative dysfunction that results from people attempting to but not achieving the practice of a perfect faith. It is not unique to Muslims and can be found among other groups of people approximating the form of the perfect faith that cannot exist in our realm. That itself makes me feel a whole lot less alone, and expands my community of believers in one way of many ways that has helped to expand my world.
And I am unapologetic.
There is strength in admitting weakness, laying it out bare. I'm not reveling in it, flaunting it as one would do, say, ignorance. I'm not laying it out there for judgment or begging for it to be fixed. It's admitting to ourselves that in our striving for that perfect faith all of us know we can't attain, we're not only going to be imperfect sometimes, but we're going to make mistakes, have setbacks, lose spirit, lose faith, miss prayers, pray on empty, commit haram, repent and fall into sin again...and we don't have to be lonely or noise too much about it to know that we're not the only ones, and we're not bad people for doing so. We are humans, God is Merciful beyond any mercy we can imagine on earth, more merciful than any jurist, no matter how versed, can be, more merciful than any fiqh said jurist can decree for order on this earth, His order is infinitely more just, and...
Realizing that even at our worst, we are realizing our creation, realizing the purpose that God put us here for (yes), being exactly as He created us, as the angels questioned God why He'd put us on earth, with our tendency to rape, pillage and spread corruption in the world whereas the angels are perfect in exhaulting God. Like Adam, we are cast down, but His guidance never eludes us. The Prophet (saw) told us to try to be as perfect as we could while recognizing that religion is very, very easy.
Very, very easy?
There's strength in admitting weakness. If something of Islam is too hard, if something of religion doesn't satisfy, then there's another way to approach it, there's another way for it to be done. Just as we don't thrash our children with the thought that it will make their studies any easier, we should not thrash ourselves into making religion easier. It won't in either case. We may get better, but not without a healthy dose of fear and the need for negative reinforcers to keep us on our way, and that was not God's intent for us on this earth.
And that is not the path to God.
There is strength in admitting weakness, in being mindful of it, in recognizing that it's a natural part of our existence as God created us. Acknowledging it is submitting to God in a way. Submitting that He is Greater. Submitting that we need help.
As soon as I admitted I was lonely, people in the conference came up to me and provided me with contacts to the Muslim community in Seattle. I met a Muslim/Unitarian Universalist chaplain who offered to be my mentor. I prayed beside an older woman who practices much like I do, giving me a vision into what my future could be as a practicing Muslimah, and I was encouraged.
This ended up more flow-of-consciousness than I initially had hoped. Oh well. I was inspired after watching an episode of Colbert Report in which he, once again, criticized the Catholic Church while being what some would consider a devout Catholic himself. I thought about where he must be in his faith, teaching Sunday school and meanwhile creating parody that criticizes policies and sometimes the very structure of the Church. I wondered how he could exist so comfortably and fluidly in a state of such critique of his own religion...
And then I realized, oh snap, I think I'm there!
At the "Expressions of Islam in Contemporary African American Communities" conference (yes, I was conferencing it up before I left Boston!), we touched upon so many topics. Feminism in Islam was not excluded, nor were issues of race for non-black converts to Islam, the so-called immigrant vs. indigenous dichotomy, cultural imperialism, Muslim chaplaincy and the future of Muslim leadership...it was awesome.
One thing we talked about after Mustafa Davis screened his film was the Ta'leef Collective, and how an organization that was established to support converts came to be made up of a vast majority of what I call "Muslims on the fringe" who come to weekly sessions to find open places to discuss their place in Islam.
In discussing the film and discussing Ta'leef, we discussed the inflexibility of many of our communities and probably many of our world views to accept weakness in Islam.
What do I mean by that? I was raised differently, but in college I came up in Islam believing that any emotion that was not happiness, any of the DSM-IV diagnosable psychiatric disorders were actually diseases of the heart. Diseases of the Heart. I read that collection before medical school, earnestly seeking a firm backbone for my spiritual support of my mental health, believing that this was the way. Depression, I believed, was at its root ingratitude. Ingratitude or otherwise some sign of low iman. There is much to be done. There are special duas, fasting, charity...there is so much to be done.
For less pathological emotions, like loneliness, as discussed in the conference, many Muslims are afraid to pronounce. Some of us feel afraid to admit in our communities that our faith isn't satisfying all of the time. I can say personally that I was afraid to express any discontent with Islam before my father, lest he uses that crack in my faith to try to squeeze Christianity in.
And I also know that I've felt that any loneliness I feel is my own fault, because the religion is perfect. My loneliness in undergrad in the face of a very ethnically divided MSA was my fault for not "putting myself out there" to meet with other sisters, because everyone was busy and everyone was a student and I couldn't expect anyone to just embrace me. And so on...
Okay, well, maybe it's not all our faults, the feelings that we feel. Maybe not every negative or disordered emotion we feel is reflective of weak faith. Maybe it's okay to admit, I feel lonely in Islam so much.
Because I do. I feel lonely more often than I feel any benefit of brother or sisterhood. But God told us in the Qur'an that for the believer, we are bound to encounter lonely roads, as well as life abundant, so I keep on trucking, but that does not take away the fact that being Muslim can be a very lonely, isolating experience.
And this conference gave me permission to express this, and be loud about it!
With Mustafa Davis and with contributions of a great audience, we discussed how it's actually empowering to allow people to talk about their loneliness and their discontent with the religion. So often, for whatever reason, people don't feel like their allowed to express such sentiments. Like we're somehow afraid that admitting such things will send us down a spiral of religion rejection.
Or we're afraid of others questioning our faith.
While, quiet as it's kept, we all struggle. I don't think any of us have found that perfect faith sweet spot. I guess that's just one of the things like evil and the otherwise haram that people are afraid to noise about. But when it's for the purpose of helping a fellow human being, or self-discovery, or strengthening (yes!) one's faith, then...I don't see what the problem is.
I felt stronger in my faith when I felt free to admit the down times. Thereafter, I was more free to reflect and discover that Islam, in its perfect form is never at fault because that Islam has never existed on the face of this earth. It did in spirit during revelation, but as all the reforms the Qur'an called for were not fully implemented by the end of revelation, even then did Islam in its perfect form not exist on this earth. We've had generations do the best they can, and generations do less than the best that they can, and that conglomeration of ancestral tradition (yes) and consensus interpretations of the text is the Islam we have now, as imperfect as its human vectors.
The loneliness I feel is in part due to relative dysfunction that results from people attempting to but not achieving the practice of a perfect faith. It is not unique to Muslims and can be found among other groups of people approximating the form of the perfect faith that cannot exist in our realm. That itself makes me feel a whole lot less alone, and expands my community of believers in one way of many ways that has helped to expand my world.
And I am unapologetic.
There is strength in admitting weakness, laying it out bare. I'm not reveling in it, flaunting it as one would do, say, ignorance. I'm not laying it out there for judgment or begging for it to be fixed. It's admitting to ourselves that in our striving for that perfect faith all of us know we can't attain, we're not only going to be imperfect sometimes, but we're going to make mistakes, have setbacks, lose spirit, lose faith, miss prayers, pray on empty, commit haram, repent and fall into sin again...and we don't have to be lonely or noise too much about it to know that we're not the only ones, and we're not bad people for doing so. We are humans, God is Merciful beyond any mercy we can imagine on earth, more merciful than any jurist, no matter how versed, can be, more merciful than any fiqh said jurist can decree for order on this earth, His order is infinitely more just, and...
Realizing that even at our worst, we are realizing our creation, realizing the purpose that God put us here for (yes), being exactly as He created us, as the angels questioned God why He'd put us on earth, with our tendency to rape, pillage and spread corruption in the world whereas the angels are perfect in exhaulting God. Like Adam, we are cast down, but His guidance never eludes us. The Prophet (saw) told us to try to be as perfect as we could while recognizing that religion is very, very easy.
Very, very easy?
There's strength in admitting weakness. If something of Islam is too hard, if something of religion doesn't satisfy, then there's another way to approach it, there's another way for it to be done. Just as we don't thrash our children with the thought that it will make their studies any easier, we should not thrash ourselves into making religion easier. It won't in either case. We may get better, but not without a healthy dose of fear and the need for negative reinforcers to keep us on our way, and that was not God's intent for us on this earth.
And that is not the path to God.
There is strength in admitting weakness, in being mindful of it, in recognizing that it's a natural part of our existence as God created us. Acknowledging it is submitting to God in a way. Submitting that He is Greater. Submitting that we need help.
As soon as I admitted I was lonely, people in the conference came up to me and provided me with contacts to the Muslim community in Seattle. I met a Muslim/Unitarian Universalist chaplain who offered to be my mentor. I prayed beside an older woman who practices much like I do, giving me a vision into what my future could be as a practicing Muslimah, and I was encouraged.
This ended up more flow-of-consciousness than I initially had hoped. Oh well. I was inspired after watching an episode of Colbert Report in which he, once again, criticized the Catholic Church while being what some would consider a devout Catholic himself. I thought about where he must be in his faith, teaching Sunday school and meanwhile creating parody that criticizes policies and sometimes the very structure of the Church. I wondered how he could exist so comfortably and fluidly in a state of such critique of his own religion...
And then I realized, oh snap, I think I'm there!
Monday, April 30, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Of Slavery and Polygamy
As salaam alaikum,
"And if you have reason to fear that you might not act equitably towards orphans, then marry from among [other] women such as are lawful to you--[even] two, or three, or four: but if you have reason to fear that you might not be able to treat them with equal fairness, then [only] one--or [from among] those women who you rightfully possess. This will make it more likely that you will not deviate from the right course." (4:3)
"And if any of those whom you rightfully possess desire [to obtain] a deed of freedom, write it out for them if you are aware of any good in them: and give them [their share] of the wealth of God which He has given you. And do not, in order to gain some of the fleeting pleasures of this worly life, coerce your [slave] maidens into whoredom if they happen to be desirous of marriage; and if anyone should coerce them, then, verily, after they have been compelled [to submit in their helplessness], God will be much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace!" (part of 24:33)
I just finished reading Qur'an and Woman (finally) by Dr. Aminah Wadud, after years of avoiding anything written by her, convinced by the mainstream that she was a woman overstepping her bounds. I started reading it, and it was very empirical and understandable, and I wondered what all the fuss was about in what was a pivotal book...then, I got to the ending, when she began making her conclusions. And though I agreed with her in spirit, I really had hoped for some of the same empiricism through the text that had led her arguments earlier in the book. One particularly powerful argument in which I wish there was more textual proof for was her argument about polygamy...and, similarly, slavery.
This paragraph caught my eye:
Quoted within is a references from Nazirah Zein ed-Din and Shaykh Al-Ghalynini as quoted by Nazirah Zeid-ed Din, "Removing the Veil and Veiling." For more extensive citations, please see Dr. Wadud's book...
Why did this catch my eye? The calling of polygamy a reprehensible tradition and Dr. Wadud's assertion that it is one such tradition, like slavery, that was not abolished in the Qur'an but, as she later concludes, was meant to be eventually completely abolished. Dr. Wadud concludes that, given the spirit of the Qur'an, we as believers should understand that these are the so-called "reprehensible traditions" that eventually should have been abolished completely.
Quoted above are two suwar from the Qur'an that speak most directly to the two issues mentioned (Muhammad Asad's translation)...polygamy and slavery. Surveying the text (briefly, and through translations), I recognize that I don't see anything calling for the abolition of slavery or the end of polygamy completely. And as Dr. Wadud notes, not all of the reform enjoined upon us by revelation (or thereafter implied) took place before the final revelation. It would take centuries after revelation for slavery to be abolished in the Muslim world, and a few more centuries for the global community to completely abolish and criminalize slavery (and don't think for a second that there still aren't millions of slaves, and some of them are in this hemisphere, this continent, this country).
Dr. Wadud poses an interesting question. As you can see in the suwar above, polygamy is modified, with the limitation of four wives so long as you can be equitable to all of them. Slaves are allowed emancipation...if you judge them fit. But slavery is more or less universally seen as a reprehensible act that should have been done away with...now, centuries later. What of polygamy? Dr. Wadud and many other Muslims regard polygamy to be as archaic and irrelevant to their lives as slavery. But many others do not.
I'm part of this facebook group of black Muslim women, primarily from Southern Atlantic states. Very interesting articles come up, and not that I'm doing an ethnography on these women or anything, but their reactions to some of the issues are very different from my own. For example, there was an article I didn't read about a woman feeling trapped and cheated on in a polygamous relationship. One of the women in the group responded by stating that she really seeks refuge with God and tries to understand these parts of Islam that are hard for her to understand, such as the allowance of polygamy.
A lot of women in this group believe that, as part of Islam, it is a man's (or even their own husband's) right at any time to seek another wife. I...don't. I believe, as I have read and have been taught, that polygamy is discouraged precisely because most men do not have the material or emotional means to care for more than one wife...and personally, I think some men are just greedy. Now, granted a man has the material, emotional and spiritual needs to have more than one wife, and his wife and potential wife and everyone involved are game, then God is Judge. Despite my feeling that polygamy is for the most part unnecessary today (with the high propensity to be dysfunctional), I am actually neutral towards polygamous marriages. Yes, actually. It works well for some couples, and who am I to say anything against them?
I'm very marriage-equitable, though, the topic of another entry...
But anyway...why are there still echoings about polygamy being okay, about it being a husband's "right," while there are no echoings about taking slaves? Like polygamy, slavery is against the law in this country. More than polygamy, slavery is decried and outlawed by the international community. And while I guess some "traditional jurists" called for the reopening of slavery (God!), most all of us agree that slavery is un-Islamic...but somehow, polygamy didn't quite get there. Even though it is modified in the Qur'an as slavery is, with no explicit end called for.
So what can we conclude from that? Dr. Wadud concludes that polygamy, like slavery, is not for our time, was an artifact of 7th century Arabia that had to be gradually modified in order to make the Qur'an more palatable for that community. Based on her proofs, though, I could not really come to that conclusion. And it's not just because I'm neutral to polygamous relationships as I mentioned above...although admittedly, that is part of my bias. But we really do not have proofs besides our interpretation of the spirit of Islam. She argues that Islam calls for so much restraint and modesty from men, that it seems incongruous that polygamy would be a practice that would be continued to be practiced. She uses the same argument to argue against the notion that men would receive a number of partners in Jannah.
She also argues that if such a rigorous level of modesty is expected/demanded and, for the most part, upheld women in our communities, why are standards for men so lax?
And I mean...I think my overall feeling at the end of reading the book is that it's one of those things that the text cannot tell you, even with a rigorous exegesis as she demonstrated. I agree with a lot of her points, all the same, but I realize that there are questions that just reading the Qur'an, even if I had more authority, cannot answer. I believe that yes, slavery should have been eventually completely abolished, and reinstatement of slavery is in no way Islamic. But can we and should we put polygamy in the same place?
...let me clarify. I do not want to be in a polygamous marriage. Haha, this is not something I want for myself, but I'm not sure if polygamy and slavery can be considered similar reprehensible traditions that are completely un-Islamic.
Or is it, as Dr. Wadud asserts, that "God's permissibility only showed man's cruel heart, his inability to submit to truth and justice, and his immoral character, acquired from the worst pre-Islamic customs... Had it not been for the viciousness in his mind, his misguided soul and his cruel heart, God would not have granted him then such allowances that He disliked and which were meant to vanish with time."
Or, were allowances made because men can never practice self-restraint as much as females, and therefore still need to know they have the option to have more than one wife? Just like the emancipation of slaves was conditional on their character, because there are still people who deserve to be enslaved?
"And if you have reason to fear that you might not act equitably towards orphans, then marry from among [other] women such as are lawful to you--[even] two, or three, or four: but if you have reason to fear that you might not be able to treat them with equal fairness, then [only] one--or [from among] those women who you rightfully possess. This will make it more likely that you will not deviate from the right course." (4:3)
"And if any of those whom you rightfully possess desire [to obtain] a deed of freedom, write it out for them if you are aware of any good in them: and give them [their share] of the wealth of God which He has given you. And do not, in order to gain some of the fleeting pleasures of this worly life, coerce your [slave] maidens into whoredom if they happen to be desirous of marriage; and if anyone should coerce them, then, verily, after they have been compelled [to submit in their helplessness], God will be much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace!" (part of 24:33)
I just finished reading Qur'an and Woman (finally) by Dr. Aminah Wadud, after years of avoiding anything written by her, convinced by the mainstream that she was a woman overstepping her bounds. I started reading it, and it was very empirical and understandable, and I wondered what all the fuss was about in what was a pivotal book...then, I got to the ending, when she began making her conclusions. And though I agreed with her in spirit, I really had hoped for some of the same empiricism through the text that had led her arguments earlier in the book. One particularly powerful argument in which I wish there was more textual proof for was her argument about polygamy...and, similarly, slavery.
This paragraph caught my eye:
Although in some instances the Qur'an proposed immediate abolition of certain ill practices, most of the time it advocated gradual reform. Few reforms were completely implemented before the final revelation. 'If all these customs had been entirely abolished by God, several problems would have ensued; not many of His commandments would have been obeyed.' However, the means for completing others were provided for by the flexibility and the intent of the text itself. 'It was considered wise...not to totally abolish some of the reprehensible traditions such as polygamy [or slavery], as there were so many difficulties involved.' - Wadud, Chapter 4, Qur'an and Woman
Quoted within is a references from Nazirah Zein ed-Din and Shaykh Al-Ghalynini as quoted by Nazirah Zeid-ed Din, "Removing the Veil and Veiling." For more extensive citations, please see Dr. Wadud's book...
Why did this catch my eye? The calling of polygamy a reprehensible tradition and Dr. Wadud's assertion that it is one such tradition, like slavery, that was not abolished in the Qur'an but, as she later concludes, was meant to be eventually completely abolished. Dr. Wadud concludes that, given the spirit of the Qur'an, we as believers should understand that these are the so-called "reprehensible traditions" that eventually should have been abolished completely.
Quoted above are two suwar from the Qur'an that speak most directly to the two issues mentioned (Muhammad Asad's translation)...polygamy and slavery. Surveying the text (briefly, and through translations), I recognize that I don't see anything calling for the abolition of slavery or the end of polygamy completely. And as Dr. Wadud notes, not all of the reform enjoined upon us by revelation (or thereafter implied) took place before the final revelation. It would take centuries after revelation for slavery to be abolished in the Muslim world, and a few more centuries for the global community to completely abolish and criminalize slavery (and don't think for a second that there still aren't millions of slaves, and some of them are in this hemisphere, this continent, this country).
Dr. Wadud poses an interesting question. As you can see in the suwar above, polygamy is modified, with the limitation of four wives so long as you can be equitable to all of them. Slaves are allowed emancipation...if you judge them fit. But slavery is more or less universally seen as a reprehensible act that should have been done away with...now, centuries later. What of polygamy? Dr. Wadud and many other Muslims regard polygamy to be as archaic and irrelevant to their lives as slavery. But many others do not.
I'm part of this facebook group of black Muslim women, primarily from Southern Atlantic states. Very interesting articles come up, and not that I'm doing an ethnography on these women or anything, but their reactions to some of the issues are very different from my own. For example, there was an article I didn't read about a woman feeling trapped and cheated on in a polygamous relationship. One of the women in the group responded by stating that she really seeks refuge with God and tries to understand these parts of Islam that are hard for her to understand, such as the allowance of polygamy.
A lot of women in this group believe that, as part of Islam, it is a man's (or even their own husband's) right at any time to seek another wife. I...don't. I believe, as I have read and have been taught, that polygamy is discouraged precisely because most men do not have the material or emotional means to care for more than one wife...and personally, I think some men are just greedy. Now, granted a man has the material, emotional and spiritual needs to have more than one wife, and his wife and potential wife and everyone involved are game, then God is Judge. Despite my feeling that polygamy is for the most part unnecessary today (with the high propensity to be dysfunctional), I am actually neutral towards polygamous marriages. Yes, actually. It works well for some couples, and who am I to say anything against them?
I'm very marriage-equitable, though, the topic of another entry...
But anyway...why are there still echoings about polygamy being okay, about it being a husband's "right," while there are no echoings about taking slaves? Like polygamy, slavery is against the law in this country. More than polygamy, slavery is decried and outlawed by the international community. And while I guess some "traditional jurists" called for the reopening of slavery (God!), most all of us agree that slavery is un-Islamic...but somehow, polygamy didn't quite get there. Even though it is modified in the Qur'an as slavery is, with no explicit end called for.
So what can we conclude from that? Dr. Wadud concludes that polygamy, like slavery, is not for our time, was an artifact of 7th century Arabia that had to be gradually modified in order to make the Qur'an more palatable for that community. Based on her proofs, though, I could not really come to that conclusion. And it's not just because I'm neutral to polygamous relationships as I mentioned above...although admittedly, that is part of my bias. But we really do not have proofs besides our interpretation of the spirit of Islam. She argues that Islam calls for so much restraint and modesty from men, that it seems incongruous that polygamy would be a practice that would be continued to be practiced. She uses the same argument to argue against the notion that men would receive a number of partners in Jannah.
She also argues that if such a rigorous level of modesty is expected/demanded and, for the most part, upheld women in our communities, why are standards for men so lax?
And I mean...I think my overall feeling at the end of reading the book is that it's one of those things that the text cannot tell you, even with a rigorous exegesis as she demonstrated. I agree with a lot of her points, all the same, but I realize that there are questions that just reading the Qur'an, even if I had more authority, cannot answer. I believe that yes, slavery should have been eventually completely abolished, and reinstatement of slavery is in no way Islamic. But can we and should we put polygamy in the same place?
...let me clarify. I do not want to be in a polygamous marriage. Haha, this is not something I want for myself, but I'm not sure if polygamy and slavery can be considered similar reprehensible traditions that are completely un-Islamic.
Or is it, as Dr. Wadud asserts, that "God's permissibility only showed man's cruel heart, his inability to submit to truth and justice, and his immoral character, acquired from the worst pre-Islamic customs... Had it not been for the viciousness in his mind, his misguided soul and his cruel heart, God would not have granted him then such allowances that He disliked and which were meant to vanish with time."
Or, were allowances made because men can never practice self-restraint as much as females, and therefore still need to know they have the option to have more than one wife? Just like the emancipation of slaves was conditional on their character, because there are still people who deserve to be enslaved?
Friday, April 27, 2012
[uncensored]: Ode to the Brothers
As salaam alaikum,
Allah (swt) has truly blessed me with a phenomenal farewell to Boston. I've made family and lifelong friends here, I've made connections here that I'll insha'Allah take with me for the rest of my professional life. This last month has been deliciously long, filled with conferences on Islam, concerts and plays (oh my!). I've had get togethers with friends that I won't see in a while, got to watch the Boston Marathon for the first time (first year, I was a nerd and stayed in class...all other years, I was unable to due to boards studying, rotations or public health school...so this was exciting). I've embarked on a weight loss journey that has me more fit and healthy than I think I've ever been, and I'm making connections for my move to Seattle. In all, alhamdulillah, it's been a great thing!
There are so many other things I want to blog about...the Expressions of Islam in Contemporary African American Communities conference, Esperanza Spalding's lovely concert at the Orpheum Theatre, seeing Fela! (finally) at Cutler Theatre after missing the show on Broadway a little over a year ago...
I'll talk about one thing, rather...one song. "Black Gold." This is my ode to the brothers...maybe moreso the brother brothers, if you know what I mean, but maybe it applies to more.
I was randomly searching for Esperanza Spalding songs to listen to on youtube when I came across a newly uploaded song from her then, yet unreleased album, Radio Music Society. The song was entitled "Black Gold." I'll put the video below:
As I watched the scene unfold with the two young black boys and their doting, attentive father, I started crying. No joke, I really did. It's such a beautiful video because I realize that it's an image that I rarely see...a black father with his sons.
There was another similar commercial that I think may have been a commercial for fabric softener, toilet tissue, something...showing a black father embracing his son after he came out of the tub.
And the message of this song is truly important. I hate youtube comments, because it's troll city, but some of those folks watching the video...truly don't get it. Probably the same folks that didn't even wonder why the only black kid in class, from the time they were in elementary school, was always getting disciplinary action...name on the board, standing on the wall at recess, put out of the class, detention, expulsion.
They figure that it's just that blacks need to get over being victims. Slavery was a long time ago and should not be blamed for our drug and violence problems, and that 1 in 4 of the black male population ends up in prison at some point in their lives is their own fault.
The problem is that slavery was not over in 1865 for everyone as the Emancipation Proclamation did not mean everything to slave owners at the time, Reconstruction never happened, blacks were never transitioned into free living, and racism remained institutionalized for some time. Oh yeah, and sharecropping? Not that far from slavery.
Slavery may be "far" away, but Jim Crow was not as far away and Redlining happened really recently. Redlining was particularly genius, and if it wasn't thought up by some evil mastermind, I'm sure they would want to assume credit. It's part of the reason that the average wealth (not income, but assets, including home equity) for white Americans is around $12,000 and that for black Americans is, like, $45. I can't remember the exact figure, but yes. Redlining, of all of the institutionalized racist practices of yore, I think has the most impact on us still, because of the impact on our wealth, the property values of the places where we now historically live, the quality of our school systems and the safety of our neighborhoods. And racism is now.
I may be leftist, but I do not remove personal responsibility from the equation. Just to let you know, though, the bootstrap theory is bullshit for the many who were systematically denied the bootstraps to pull up on...
But anyway...I digress...
This is an ode to the brothers. I also thought about this after listening to an Amir Sulaiman poem telling the young men, "We love you." How often do we say that to young black boys and to our young men? Not, "I love you, but you are..." but just an, "I love you?"
So, in her concert, Esperanza talked about how, as a young black girl (mixed girl) in Portland, OR, beautiful young college students used to come to her classroom and tell her how she'd grow to be a strong, black woman. And she appreciated this, but always wondered why there wasn't something for the boys...
And by the boys, she meant the black boys. I like how she didn't feel the need to clarify. Because while females need to be empowered, and black females especially need to be empowered...so do black men.
I mean, 1 in 4 spend time in prison. Do we turn our backs, or do we recognize our boys need help?
I love you.
There, I don't say this often, not even to my parents, so...yes, I do. I love you all. I love you as the other half of God's creation, sons of Adam, who the angels bow before, knower of the names of all things.
Satan scorns us in envy and keeps trying to keep us down, down from the state God promised us we'd return.
I love you like the boys I grew up with, from Daryll, my first grade crush whose shoulder I slept on alternately all the way to Greenfield Village on the bus one field trip, to Earnest, the class clown who I laughed with, but only on the inside.
I love you for the potential I've seen in all of the men that I've loved, because a little bit of it is there in all of you.
I love you so much, yeah, I am hard on men sometimes. I'm hard on you all of the time. I know it's because you are the focus of my quest for partnership, but I also know it because...I know how great you can be, if you just faced your fears and tried to be. If you had the role models to show you how to be. If someone would stop taking the tools from your hands and allow you to be. If you just try to be.
You don't know how beautiful you are. From a shy smile when you think no one's looking to the lines, angles and contours of your frame when you lean over, attentively, and the furrow of your brow. You don't know how much more beautiful you would be if you employed your tenor, baritone or bass to speak truth, wisdom, or even the naivete of a student enthralled in learning, trying to know...a student of anything, of philosophy, of medicine, of parenting, of husbanding, of the deen, of loving, of law.
I love you for what you are. I love you for all you can be. I don't know what I can do to change your situation, to ease your ills, as a woman that a male role model, father figure, coach, whatever, couldn't do better. But I guess my love and support is what I can give.
You are appreciated, and this is my ode to you.
Because being a man in this society does not afford the same privilege across racial boundaries, the cursed social construct that race is. Race was a very emasculating force for black men in this country, historically and not too long ago. The last black man lynched may have been officially recorded as 1981, but they continued to be beaten with excessive brutality, dragged behind moving trucks, and shot while unarmed. And even when the violence isn't as overt, a lot of the violence was internalized. Whatever all did a number on the black family unit...I don't know, I feel like I can't even begin to put it all together. It's doctoral thesis worthy.
So yes, we need to empower the boys. We need to especially focus on the boys. No matter the ethnicity of my husband, in this country, my boys will be black boys. I want to make sure that they come into a great support network that includes me and their father to prepare them for what all is raw out there for them as they become men. And I want the same for the little boys they grew up with, and the ones that came before them, and the ones that are already men and have space to change.
And yeah, that's all.
I love Esperanza's male-affirming songs. This is another one I really like:
Allah (swt) has truly blessed me with a phenomenal farewell to Boston. I've made family and lifelong friends here, I've made connections here that I'll insha'Allah take with me for the rest of my professional life. This last month has been deliciously long, filled with conferences on Islam, concerts and plays (oh my!). I've had get togethers with friends that I won't see in a while, got to watch the Boston Marathon for the first time (first year, I was a nerd and stayed in class...all other years, I was unable to due to boards studying, rotations or public health school...so this was exciting). I've embarked on a weight loss journey that has me more fit and healthy than I think I've ever been, and I'm making connections for my move to Seattle. In all, alhamdulillah, it's been a great thing!
There are so many other things I want to blog about...the Expressions of Islam in Contemporary African American Communities conference, Esperanza Spalding's lovely concert at the Orpheum Theatre, seeing Fela! (finally) at Cutler Theatre after missing the show on Broadway a little over a year ago...
I'll talk about one thing, rather...one song. "Black Gold." This is my ode to the brothers...maybe moreso the brother brothers, if you know what I mean, but maybe it applies to more.
I was randomly searching for Esperanza Spalding songs to listen to on youtube when I came across a newly uploaded song from her then, yet unreleased album, Radio Music Society. The song was entitled "Black Gold." I'll put the video below:
As I watched the scene unfold with the two young black boys and their doting, attentive father, I started crying. No joke, I really did. It's such a beautiful video because I realize that it's an image that I rarely see...a black father with his sons.
There was another similar commercial that I think may have been a commercial for fabric softener, toilet tissue, something...showing a black father embracing his son after he came out of the tub.
And the message of this song is truly important. I hate youtube comments, because it's troll city, but some of those folks watching the video...truly don't get it. Probably the same folks that didn't even wonder why the only black kid in class, from the time they were in elementary school, was always getting disciplinary action...name on the board, standing on the wall at recess, put out of the class, detention, expulsion.
They figure that it's just that blacks need to get over being victims. Slavery was a long time ago and should not be blamed for our drug and violence problems, and that 1 in 4 of the black male population ends up in prison at some point in their lives is their own fault.
The problem is that slavery was not over in 1865 for everyone as the Emancipation Proclamation did not mean everything to slave owners at the time, Reconstruction never happened, blacks were never transitioned into free living, and racism remained institutionalized for some time. Oh yeah, and sharecropping? Not that far from slavery.
Slavery may be "far" away, but Jim Crow was not as far away and Redlining happened really recently. Redlining was particularly genius, and if it wasn't thought up by some evil mastermind, I'm sure they would want to assume credit. It's part of the reason that the average wealth (not income, but assets, including home equity) for white Americans is around $12,000 and that for black Americans is, like, $45. I can't remember the exact figure, but yes. Redlining, of all of the institutionalized racist practices of yore, I think has the most impact on us still, because of the impact on our wealth, the property values of the places where we now historically live, the quality of our school systems and the safety of our neighborhoods. And racism is now.
I may be leftist, but I do not remove personal responsibility from the equation. Just to let you know, though, the bootstrap theory is bullshit for the many who were systematically denied the bootstraps to pull up on...
But anyway...I digress...
This is an ode to the brothers. I also thought about this after listening to an Amir Sulaiman poem telling the young men, "We love you." How often do we say that to young black boys and to our young men? Not, "I love you, but you are..." but just an, "I love you?"
So, in her concert, Esperanza talked about how, as a young black girl (mixed girl) in Portland, OR, beautiful young college students used to come to her classroom and tell her how she'd grow to be a strong, black woman. And she appreciated this, but always wondered why there wasn't something for the boys...
And by the boys, she meant the black boys. I like how she didn't feel the need to clarify. Because while females need to be empowered, and black females especially need to be empowered...so do black men.
I mean, 1 in 4 spend time in prison. Do we turn our backs, or do we recognize our boys need help?
I love you.
There, I don't say this often, not even to my parents, so...yes, I do. I love you all. I love you as the other half of God's creation, sons of Adam, who the angels bow before, knower of the names of all things.
Satan scorns us in envy and keeps trying to keep us down, down from the state God promised us we'd return.
I love you like the boys I grew up with, from Daryll, my first grade crush whose shoulder I slept on alternately all the way to Greenfield Village on the bus one field trip, to Earnest, the class clown who I laughed with, but only on the inside.
I love you for the potential I've seen in all of the men that I've loved, because a little bit of it is there in all of you.
I love you so much, yeah, I am hard on men sometimes. I'm hard on you all of the time. I know it's because you are the focus of my quest for partnership, but I also know it because...I know how great you can be, if you just faced your fears and tried to be. If you had the role models to show you how to be. If someone would stop taking the tools from your hands and allow you to be. If you just try to be.
You don't know how beautiful you are. From a shy smile when you think no one's looking to the lines, angles and contours of your frame when you lean over, attentively, and the furrow of your brow. You don't know how much more beautiful you would be if you employed your tenor, baritone or bass to speak truth, wisdom, or even the naivete of a student enthralled in learning, trying to know...a student of anything, of philosophy, of medicine, of parenting, of husbanding, of the deen, of loving, of law.
I love you for what you are. I love you for all you can be. I don't know what I can do to change your situation, to ease your ills, as a woman that a male role model, father figure, coach, whatever, couldn't do better. But I guess my love and support is what I can give.
You are appreciated, and this is my ode to you.
Because being a man in this society does not afford the same privilege across racial boundaries, the cursed social construct that race is. Race was a very emasculating force for black men in this country, historically and not too long ago. The last black man lynched may have been officially recorded as 1981, but they continued to be beaten with excessive brutality, dragged behind moving trucks, and shot while unarmed. And even when the violence isn't as overt, a lot of the violence was internalized. Whatever all did a number on the black family unit...I don't know, I feel like I can't even begin to put it all together. It's doctoral thesis worthy.
So yes, we need to empower the boys. We need to especially focus on the boys. No matter the ethnicity of my husband, in this country, my boys will be black boys. I want to make sure that they come into a great support network that includes me and their father to prepare them for what all is raw out there for them as they become men. And I want the same for the little boys they grew up with, and the ones that came before them, and the ones that are already men and have space to change.
And yeah, that's all.
I love Esperanza's male-affirming songs. This is another one I really like:
Thursday, April 5, 2012
What is Man, If Woman
As salaam alaikum,
After attending the conference this weekend and as I continue my spiritual quest to be enough for God myself and evade traditional loneliness, I've started to contemplate gender roles. I think of all of the ways and in all the contexts I believe we very much should have gender roles, and all of the unfortunate ways that reasonable gender roles have been tainted by misogyny.
And it's a lot to think about.
But I thought about women who feel the need to be spiritual leaders, imamas. I thought about how much people decry this and opine that these women are transgressing bounds, if we use Muslim vocabulary. And I think about how I held this to be self-evident, though now I see the very real spaces in society where Muslim women leading at least other Muslim women in prayer is something very essential.
But the case of the imama left alone, what of other problems in the world of gender relations in Islam. The oft nebulous female prayer space in masajid across the country and worldwide. The relegation to the female to her own home to pray, the silencing of females because our voices are apparently awrah, the partitioning of females away from males in worship with physical barriers makes me wonder...is a husband ever able to say salat with his wife without him just wanting to do her at all times?
But on a grander scale, what is this all about? I understand the pull and the anxiety, the feeling of intense necessity to uphold certain mores in the name of Islam, in the name of near perfect submission to our Creator. But I wonder what would happen if you would separate the parts of these attitudes and convictions that result from fear of women, contempt for women, or maybe just plain misunderstanding of women, and what the whole thing would look like. Would there be partitions? Would there be closet-sized musalla for the sisters, would we be so encouraged to just stay home?
And why is there so much interest in what we shouldn't do, shouldn't say, shouldn't be. So much interest in the position of our bodies in prayer, the space where we say prayer, the volume of our voice in daily speak?
One of the women in the conference stated that the reason she felt so many religious women in academia were feminist was because there's such a contrast between the lecture hall, where they sit side by side with men, often Muslim men, who are colleagues and sometimes lecture them to the mosque, where they sit behind curtains, ask questions by writing them on pieces of paper and passing it to the brothers, and are not allowed to give khutbahs. And they look into gender relations in Islam and wonder if this is the way it's supposed to be.
And I wonder if it's the way things are supposed to be.
Why do we have these email chain letters floating around telling sisters to remember that they are not men, they are women, though not at all defining these roles as if it is self-evident. Should I not wear pants? Or should I not be a physician? Even though female physicians are needed to preserve the modesty and ensure the comfort of those female patients, Muslim women included, who require or prefer a female practioner.
So if seeking a profession such as medicine isn't inherently manly, and being desirous of being a wife and a mother is certainly not manly...what is left in this description of "women trying to be like men."
I guess the masjid is the last bastion for so many men of that man's world of yore. And for some of them, Islam is a place where patriarchy is supported by Qur'an and Sunnah. It must be affirming to them to have their roles clearly spelled out like that, and give them something to aspire to.
But is that so threatened by a woman trying to be an imama, let alone the presence of women in the masjid?
It begs the question, what is man, if woman also is?
And this has been a question I've had bubbling up inside of me that goes beyond the context of women in Islam. I'm talking about women in society in general. What is man if woman is also a professional? We are physicians, lawyers and businesswoman. Even in professions that had been traditionally a boys-only club, women are making their way in. For example, my friend who is 5'2" is getting ready to be an orthopedic surgery resident, a field once reserved for ex-jock-like tall and brawny men. Women outnumber men in universities and we tie them in such professional schools as medical schools. While some of my male classmates can definitely slave at work all day and have a doting wife to come home to, half of us are women and have no doting wife to come home to.
What is man if woman is also a leader or ruler of countries? Of queens and presidents and prime ministers, women have been assuming the ranks for some time. While we have not yet had a female president in the US and will not have one in the upcoming election, we've flirted with the idea. We certainly do have female governors, justices and congresswomen. There's no objective measure of who's prowess is greater as a leader. And, once again, as more females than males enter universities increasingly in the United States, one has to wonder at what point the power will shift and more females assume leadership roles not only in government, but in organizations and companies as well.
What is man if woman is a breadwinner in her household? It can certainly happen nowadays that the woman makes more and is in a better position to support the family than her husband.
What is man if woman is independent? We have to wait longer for marriage these days, and often we've traveled the world, lived on our own, supported ourselves with our own income or at the very least been used to living with ourselves only before marriage comes into play. Sharing that with someone else may take some getting used to.
What is man if woman is assertive, opinionated, boisterous, stubborn, determined, hardworking, intelligent, educated, accomplished, ambitious, untiring, strong?
Man is a man. Man should be a man, regardless.
I'm not saying it's all men but I do know some men who are carried away by their insecurities about women doing these things that are supposed to be just for men, I guess, with no textual evidence in our scriptures of this being true. With fewer secular notions as to why this should be true. A woman doing things that once only men did, a woman being any or all of those things I stated above should not be intimidating to the famed "real man."
Man is a man regardless of whether women are professionals, leaders and rules, breadwinners, independent, assertive, opinionated or any of those other things. Just because we women can be all of these things and bear and birth children doesn't render men...sperm donors.
Man, I may be down on you, really and sometimes unnecessarily hard on you, disappointed and dismissive, but I do it out of love. That's right, I love you, and I know you can do so much better. I know, because I have men in my life who have done so much better. I hope and pray every night for the man who will be the head of my household, who will share with me the responsibilities of family life, who will lead me in prayer and pray together with me, that we may help guide each other in spirituality. I pray for a man who I can look up to, someone I feel like I want to be, as I hope I inspire admiration of me in him. And so many other things that I know can exist in a man, in very many men...if they just let it.
If they just let it be. If they just let silly little things be, like circumscribed gender roles that limit the beauty that God enjoins us to find in each other.
So what is man, if woman is the bearer, birther and nurturer of future generations? All of this in addition to being able to assume a full complement of roles outside of the home?
Man is still, insha'Allah, the head of my household, my partner for life, my support, my inspiration, my love, my home...as well as he is his own, independent being, just like me. Just as we were always meant to be.
God created us both. The being of one of us does not negate the being of the other. We were created male and female so that we could learn from each other (49:13).
So let's learn to know one another.
After attending the conference this weekend and as I continue my spiritual quest to be enough for God myself and evade traditional loneliness, I've started to contemplate gender roles. I think of all of the ways and in all the contexts I believe we very much should have gender roles, and all of the unfortunate ways that reasonable gender roles have been tainted by misogyny.
And it's a lot to think about.
But I thought about women who feel the need to be spiritual leaders, imamas. I thought about how much people decry this and opine that these women are transgressing bounds, if we use Muslim vocabulary. And I think about how I held this to be self-evident, though now I see the very real spaces in society where Muslim women leading at least other Muslim women in prayer is something very essential.
But the case of the imama left alone, what of other problems in the world of gender relations in Islam. The oft nebulous female prayer space in masajid across the country and worldwide. The relegation to the female to her own home to pray, the silencing of females because our voices are apparently awrah, the partitioning of females away from males in worship with physical barriers makes me wonder...is a husband ever able to say salat with his wife without him just wanting to do her at all times?
But on a grander scale, what is this all about? I understand the pull and the anxiety, the feeling of intense necessity to uphold certain mores in the name of Islam, in the name of near perfect submission to our Creator. But I wonder what would happen if you would separate the parts of these attitudes and convictions that result from fear of women, contempt for women, or maybe just plain misunderstanding of women, and what the whole thing would look like. Would there be partitions? Would there be closet-sized musalla for the sisters, would we be so encouraged to just stay home?
And why is there so much interest in what we shouldn't do, shouldn't say, shouldn't be. So much interest in the position of our bodies in prayer, the space where we say prayer, the volume of our voice in daily speak?
One of the women in the conference stated that the reason she felt so many religious women in academia were feminist was because there's such a contrast between the lecture hall, where they sit side by side with men, often Muslim men, who are colleagues and sometimes lecture them to the mosque, where they sit behind curtains, ask questions by writing them on pieces of paper and passing it to the brothers, and are not allowed to give khutbahs. And they look into gender relations in Islam and wonder if this is the way it's supposed to be.
And I wonder if it's the way things are supposed to be.
Why do we have these email chain letters floating around telling sisters to remember that they are not men, they are women, though not at all defining these roles as if it is self-evident. Should I not wear pants? Or should I not be a physician? Even though female physicians are needed to preserve the modesty and ensure the comfort of those female patients, Muslim women included, who require or prefer a female practioner.
So if seeking a profession such as medicine isn't inherently manly, and being desirous of being a wife and a mother is certainly not manly...what is left in this description of "women trying to be like men."
I guess the masjid is the last bastion for so many men of that man's world of yore. And for some of them, Islam is a place where patriarchy is supported by Qur'an and Sunnah. It must be affirming to them to have their roles clearly spelled out like that, and give them something to aspire to.
But is that so threatened by a woman trying to be an imama, let alone the presence of women in the masjid?
It begs the question, what is man, if woman also is?
And this has been a question I've had bubbling up inside of me that goes beyond the context of women in Islam. I'm talking about women in society in general. What is man if woman is also a professional? We are physicians, lawyers and businesswoman. Even in professions that had been traditionally a boys-only club, women are making their way in. For example, my friend who is 5'2" is getting ready to be an orthopedic surgery resident, a field once reserved for ex-jock-like tall and brawny men. Women outnumber men in universities and we tie them in such professional schools as medical schools. While some of my male classmates can definitely slave at work all day and have a doting wife to come home to, half of us are women and have no doting wife to come home to.
What is man if woman is also a leader or ruler of countries? Of queens and presidents and prime ministers, women have been assuming the ranks for some time. While we have not yet had a female president in the US and will not have one in the upcoming election, we've flirted with the idea. We certainly do have female governors, justices and congresswomen. There's no objective measure of who's prowess is greater as a leader. And, once again, as more females than males enter universities increasingly in the United States, one has to wonder at what point the power will shift and more females assume leadership roles not only in government, but in organizations and companies as well.
What is man if woman is a breadwinner in her household? It can certainly happen nowadays that the woman makes more and is in a better position to support the family than her husband.
What is man if woman is independent? We have to wait longer for marriage these days, and often we've traveled the world, lived on our own, supported ourselves with our own income or at the very least been used to living with ourselves only before marriage comes into play. Sharing that with someone else may take some getting used to.
What is man if woman is assertive, opinionated, boisterous, stubborn, determined, hardworking, intelligent, educated, accomplished, ambitious, untiring, strong?
Man is a man. Man should be a man, regardless.
I'm not saying it's all men but I do know some men who are carried away by their insecurities about women doing these things that are supposed to be just for men, I guess, with no textual evidence in our scriptures of this being true. With fewer secular notions as to why this should be true. A woman doing things that once only men did, a woman being any or all of those things I stated above should not be intimidating to the famed "real man."
Man is a man regardless of whether women are professionals, leaders and rules, breadwinners, independent, assertive, opinionated or any of those other things. Just because we women can be all of these things and bear and birth children doesn't render men...sperm donors.
Man, I may be down on you, really and sometimes unnecessarily hard on you, disappointed and dismissive, but I do it out of love. That's right, I love you, and I know you can do so much better. I know, because I have men in my life who have done so much better. I hope and pray every night for the man who will be the head of my household, who will share with me the responsibilities of family life, who will lead me in prayer and pray together with me, that we may help guide each other in spirituality. I pray for a man who I can look up to, someone I feel like I want to be, as I hope I inspire admiration of me in him. And so many other things that I know can exist in a man, in very many men...if they just let it.
If they just let it be. If they just let silly little things be, like circumscribed gender roles that limit the beauty that God enjoins us to find in each other.
So what is man, if woman is the bearer, birther and nurturer of future generations? All of this in addition to being able to assume a full complement of roles outside of the home?
Man is still, insha'Allah, the head of my household, my partner for life, my support, my inspiration, my love, my home...as well as he is his own, independent being, just like me. Just as we were always meant to be.
God created us both. The being of one of us does not negate the being of the other. We were created male and female so that we could learn from each other (49:13).
So let's learn to know one another.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority Conference
As salaam alaikum,
This weekend, I attended this conference. What can I say, except...wow! What an awesome conference! It definitely helped exercise the humanities side of my brain that I haven't used in a while (except, to blog, heh), but it brought up key issues about what it means to be a woman in Islam domestically and internationally and some of the things that are holding us back. I would probably write more about it if I hadn't reflected extensively with two of my friends the day of the conference, but suffice it to say, I really enjoyed it.
Plus, I got to meet one of the contributors to the anthology. We totally missed our photo opportunity because I had to run out of the conference for a previous engagement...
But this was the third sign I got this week that my next spiritual endeavor will be exploring my role as a woman in Islam. The first sign was the finale of Big Love, which pertained to Barb's quest throughout the season (if not also the season before) to be a priesthood holder. The second sign was one of my best friends asking me if I ever considered becoming an imama, and how loaded of a question that was for me that brought questions into my own mind about Muslim woman leadership and my...being too intimidated to talk to most imams about anything...
And then this conference brought it all together for me.
And I'm not talking...I want to go out, attain some scholarship and become an imama right now. No. Alhamdulillah, I accept that medicine is my field and a worthy career and I'm sticking to it. I'm just talking about ways in which I think, consciously and subconsciously, my own religious pursuits were curtailed because I learned that there are certain things that women aren't required to do...in the sense that we are "spared." Oh, well, you don't have to go to Jummah like men do, and it's a mercy for you. This article in Altmuslimah on Islam and menstruation also gave me pause, and the fact that some men consider our spirituality inferior because we have to break salat and fasting for something that enables us to, oh, I don't know, carry children, the most important part of carrying on the human race as God intends?
Because really, when I'm menstruating during the year, what comes of that week? We're given little guidance about what we can do to not wreck our spiritual continuity during time of menses. I guess it's up to us to come up with that on our own, but I feel like on this and many other issues, we Muslim women are left to fend for ourselves in ways that seem incongruous to the amount of guidance other aspects of our daily lives is afforded in practice.
One woman in the audience talked about making Hajj and being in a women's tent where they were left alone to perform prayers. As you know, according to one's madhab, some women opine that a woman should not lead a congregational prayer, even of other women. So eventually, the most learned woman among them took over the leading of prayer. However, she had several rules for herself...that her voice should not be raised beyond a certain decibel because of her consideration of the female's voice as awrah, thus making it impractical for her to lead prayers because no one could hear her. Another woman was a hafiza and did not want to lead prayer because she believed she could not recite the Qur'an out loud as a woman. I guess they eventually figured something out...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
That story was heartbreaking. Here are women on Hajj who could not accomplish something as simple as salat because we have been so limited in our practice...we are to avert our eyes, not raise our voices, be unassuming and sit behind curtains in the masjid so men cannot see us...or better yet, stay in our homes! What do we do when we are alone?
When I learned that there were women of some madhab who don't subscribe to women praying together, I was heartbroken. Really? So I can be in a house of sisters and we all pray separately. What happened to the blessings of praying in jama'ah? Is that, too, only for men?
Yes, I remember hearing this, when I was coming into Islam and I was sweating about the fact that I hadn't attended Jummah since I was 11 years old, and I didn't know how to go about it...what it entailed, proper Jummah etiquette, etc. I looked it up on the internet to learn before I went to the first campus Jummah to find an article that said that Jummah was only obligatory for men and optional for a woman. They believed this to be so to not be a burden on women who had children at home to tend to. It went as far as saying that a woman perhaps attained greater blessing if she stayed home.
And me, confused, but too embarrassed or intimidated to ask anyone, gave in, and the time for Jummah came and went and I didn't go to campus Jummah.
And in my learning about Islam, which was very much online much of the time because I am not a convert and I was embarrassed to ask the very basic things that I felt like I should know...I read a lot of things like this that yes, curtailed my practice. Though me not making Jummah these days is more about my not being able to leave my hospital or rotation to get to a place...what if I were a practicing male Muslim student? I would have felt a greater obligation to talk to my course directors to make allowances for my religious beliefs, right? And this would probably make me more comfortable about piecing out at opportune times to pray in the hospital's chapel...
In the end, I'm not really blaming my own deficiencies in practice on the complex (and corrupt) gender politics of Muslims. More, I'm recognizing how they influenced me and I will shape my future practice being mindful of the fact that this particular gender politic is not absolute and not necessarily condoned by Allah (swt).
The conference was excellent. It began with the story of Khawla bint Tha'labah, her questioning of the Prophet (saw) and what that should mean we as Muslims should do in the face of contemporary problems in our society. The first panel was on Qur'an hermeneutics, a word that I have never used and will never use again, probably. Panelists spoke about ayah 4:34, what it means to be a Muslim feminist, if that is the correct term to use at all, and of feminist interpretations of the Qur'an, leading me to have to read Dr. Amina Wudud's book, Qur'an and Woman. My favorite paper in the panel was by Dr. Aysha Hidayatullah and her piece "Women's Experience as a Source of Scriptural Authority." There, she set up an argument that we as Muslim women, and indeed, we as Muslims period, are well within our right to question, discuss and challenge interpretations of the Qur'an because the Qur'an, though our ultimate textual authority, is not to be equated with the Word of God inasmuch as we recognize that the Qur'an is, in fact, limited as we humans are limited. It's limited by the language and is also limited by the time and context in which it was revealed, whereas the Word of God is Greater and is beyond all of the wisdom in the Qur'an. A powerful concept, but a difficult one to swallow and one I would most certainly not offer in mixed Muslim company, haha!
Next was an excellent keynote address by Dr. Amina Wudud. Just a word here...I haven't yet read any of Dr. Wudud's work because, coming into Islam, I immediately understood her to be controversial and one overstepping the bounds. Why was she pushing so hard to be an imama? I believed that God laid out the gender roles clear in Qur'an and Sunnah, and if we follow these sources so closely in determining how we pray, why should we then disregard them when it comes to female's role. I just understood that my role as a Muslimah was not to be one of leadership in the Muslim community, and that Dr. Wudud was creating fitna at the very least.
Having now lived as a practicing Muslimah for almost 9 years and feeling my practice curtailed by other things I'm supposed to do or not do, supposedly in the name of God...I have been questioning things as late. This is, after all, the religion of those who think...
The next panel was on Prayer and Authority. This panel may have been the most relevant to me. Dr. Aisha Geissinger discussed the history of texts about how woman should pray, something that I've always wondered about. I've seen so many different sources discuss how women's salat is different than men, and in relearning salat from the way my mother did it, I learned to keep my fingers closer together and bear my body closer to the ground than my mother did, because I thought this is what women were supposed to do. Dr. Geissinger discussed this, the separation of men and women in prayer spaces over time since the time of the Prophet (saw) to the periods after, and traced the gradual increased separation of the sexes more. At the end, she offered that she was a historian and not a theologian to be able to speak about "what was right," but just hearing this history makes me wonder if these were not differences that weren't just arbitrarily chosen over time in an act of relegating the female body...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
Chaplain Bilal Ansari's work for helping to enable worship for practicing Muslim female inmates really brought out why the prevailing Muslim gender politic is is impractical, if not dysfunctional.
On a side note...arrrrgghh! I know Muslim men shouldn't wear gold, but can you wear silver instead? I feel like it's wrong for brothers to not wear some sort of wedding band...anyway, hehe, digression...
The next panel...yeah...the next panel was the Pious Movements Panel, which was a very interesting look into Muslim female leadership into various religious movements overseas. The last panel was on Sufi women and leadership. Both panels brought up the interesting question of whether these women, in denying at all being feminist organizations, had a sort of agency and what this agency took the shape of. One of the presenters, Dr. Joseph Hill, posited that the women, in assuming what could be construed as "traditional," deferent roles in the community and their own homes (ex. woman as homemaker) were actually, covertly, expressing their agency...as if they were pretending to go along with the gender-role program while, within these confines, being somewhat revolutionary.
The whole while, I was thinking about a story idea that's been brewing for a while whose working title is "Black Widow," which will likely morph into something else. It's precisely about a woman who assumes a very deferent role in her marriage but in fact each of her actions, decisions and attitudes toward her husband are coolly calculated...or, at least the way her daughter sees it. ...anyway...digression again. This is why it's hard for me to read books. I get my own ideas and then I want to run off and write...
And those two panels concluded an excellent conference!
I'm still processing what all of this meant for me and will mean for me. It will probably be a topic in this blog for days to come. Stay tuned!
This weekend, I attended this conference. What can I say, except...wow! What an awesome conference! It definitely helped exercise the humanities side of my brain that I haven't used in a while (except, to blog, heh), but it brought up key issues about what it means to be a woman in Islam domestically and internationally and some of the things that are holding us back. I would probably write more about it if I hadn't reflected extensively with two of my friends the day of the conference, but suffice it to say, I really enjoyed it.
Plus, I got to meet one of the contributors to the anthology. We totally missed our photo opportunity because I had to run out of the conference for a previous engagement...
But this was the third sign I got this week that my next spiritual endeavor will be exploring my role as a woman in Islam. The first sign was the finale of Big Love, which pertained to Barb's quest throughout the season (if not also the season before) to be a priesthood holder. The second sign was one of my best friends asking me if I ever considered becoming an imama, and how loaded of a question that was for me that brought questions into my own mind about Muslim woman leadership and my...being too intimidated to talk to most imams about anything...
And then this conference brought it all together for me.
And I'm not talking...I want to go out, attain some scholarship and become an imama right now. No. Alhamdulillah, I accept that medicine is my field and a worthy career and I'm sticking to it. I'm just talking about ways in which I think, consciously and subconsciously, my own religious pursuits were curtailed because I learned that there are certain things that women aren't required to do...in the sense that we are "spared." Oh, well, you don't have to go to Jummah like men do, and it's a mercy for you. This article in Altmuslimah on Islam and menstruation also gave me pause, and the fact that some men consider our spirituality inferior because we have to break salat and fasting for something that enables us to, oh, I don't know, carry children, the most important part of carrying on the human race as God intends?
Because really, when I'm menstruating during the year, what comes of that week? We're given little guidance about what we can do to not wreck our spiritual continuity during time of menses. I guess it's up to us to come up with that on our own, but I feel like on this and many other issues, we Muslim women are left to fend for ourselves in ways that seem incongruous to the amount of guidance other aspects of our daily lives is afforded in practice.
One woman in the audience talked about making Hajj and being in a women's tent where they were left alone to perform prayers. As you know, according to one's madhab, some women opine that a woman should not lead a congregational prayer, even of other women. So eventually, the most learned woman among them took over the leading of prayer. However, she had several rules for herself...that her voice should not be raised beyond a certain decibel because of her consideration of the female's voice as awrah, thus making it impractical for her to lead prayers because no one could hear her. Another woman was a hafiza and did not want to lead prayer because she believed she could not recite the Qur'an out loud as a woman. I guess they eventually figured something out...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
That story was heartbreaking. Here are women on Hajj who could not accomplish something as simple as salat because we have been so limited in our practice...we are to avert our eyes, not raise our voices, be unassuming and sit behind curtains in the masjid so men cannot see us...or better yet, stay in our homes! What do we do when we are alone?
When I learned that there were women of some madhab who don't subscribe to women praying together, I was heartbroken. Really? So I can be in a house of sisters and we all pray separately. What happened to the blessings of praying in jama'ah? Is that, too, only for men?
Yes, I remember hearing this, when I was coming into Islam and I was sweating about the fact that I hadn't attended Jummah since I was 11 years old, and I didn't know how to go about it...what it entailed, proper Jummah etiquette, etc. I looked it up on the internet to learn before I went to the first campus Jummah to find an article that said that Jummah was only obligatory for men and optional for a woman. They believed this to be so to not be a burden on women who had children at home to tend to. It went as far as saying that a woman perhaps attained greater blessing if she stayed home.
And me, confused, but too embarrassed or intimidated to ask anyone, gave in, and the time for Jummah came and went and I didn't go to campus Jummah.
And in my learning about Islam, which was very much online much of the time because I am not a convert and I was embarrassed to ask the very basic things that I felt like I should know...I read a lot of things like this that yes, curtailed my practice. Though me not making Jummah these days is more about my not being able to leave my hospital or rotation to get to a place...what if I were a practicing male Muslim student? I would have felt a greater obligation to talk to my course directors to make allowances for my religious beliefs, right? And this would probably make me more comfortable about piecing out at opportune times to pray in the hospital's chapel...
In the end, I'm not really blaming my own deficiencies in practice on the complex (and corrupt) gender politics of Muslims. More, I'm recognizing how they influenced me and I will shape my future practice being mindful of the fact that this particular gender politic is not absolute and not necessarily condoned by Allah (swt).
The conference was excellent. It began with the story of Khawla bint Tha'labah, her questioning of the Prophet (saw) and what that should mean we as Muslims should do in the face of contemporary problems in our society. The first panel was on Qur'an hermeneutics, a word that I have never used and will never use again, probably. Panelists spoke about ayah 4:34, what it means to be a Muslim feminist, if that is the correct term to use at all, and of feminist interpretations of the Qur'an, leading me to have to read Dr. Amina Wudud's book, Qur'an and Woman. My favorite paper in the panel was by Dr. Aysha Hidayatullah and her piece "Women's Experience as a Source of Scriptural Authority." There, she set up an argument that we as Muslim women, and indeed, we as Muslims period, are well within our right to question, discuss and challenge interpretations of the Qur'an because the Qur'an, though our ultimate textual authority, is not to be equated with the Word of God inasmuch as we recognize that the Qur'an is, in fact, limited as we humans are limited. It's limited by the language and is also limited by the time and context in which it was revealed, whereas the Word of God is Greater and is beyond all of the wisdom in the Qur'an. A powerful concept, but a difficult one to swallow and one I would most certainly not offer in mixed Muslim company, haha!
Next was an excellent keynote address by Dr. Amina Wudud. Just a word here...I haven't yet read any of Dr. Wudud's work because, coming into Islam, I immediately understood her to be controversial and one overstepping the bounds. Why was she pushing so hard to be an imama? I believed that God laid out the gender roles clear in Qur'an and Sunnah, and if we follow these sources so closely in determining how we pray, why should we then disregard them when it comes to female's role. I just understood that my role as a Muslimah was not to be one of leadership in the Muslim community, and that Dr. Wudud was creating fitna at the very least.
Having now lived as a practicing Muslimah for almost 9 years and feeling my practice curtailed by other things I'm supposed to do or not do, supposedly in the name of God...I have been questioning things as late. This is, after all, the religion of those who think...
The next panel was on Prayer and Authority. This panel may have been the most relevant to me. Dr. Aisha Geissinger discussed the history of texts about how woman should pray, something that I've always wondered about. I've seen so many different sources discuss how women's salat is different than men, and in relearning salat from the way my mother did it, I learned to keep my fingers closer together and bear my body closer to the ground than my mother did, because I thought this is what women were supposed to do. Dr. Geissinger discussed this, the separation of men and women in prayer spaces over time since the time of the Prophet (saw) to the periods after, and traced the gradual increased separation of the sexes more. At the end, she offered that she was a historian and not a theologian to be able to speak about "what was right," but just hearing this history makes me wonder if these were not differences that weren't just arbitrarily chosen over time in an act of relegating the female body...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
Chaplain Bilal Ansari's work for helping to enable worship for practicing Muslim female inmates really brought out why the prevailing Muslim gender politic is is impractical, if not dysfunctional.
On a side note...arrrrgghh! I know Muslim men shouldn't wear gold, but can you wear silver instead? I feel like it's wrong for brothers to not wear some sort of wedding band...anyway, hehe, digression...
The next panel...yeah...the next panel was the Pious Movements Panel, which was a very interesting look into Muslim female leadership into various religious movements overseas. The last panel was on Sufi women and leadership. Both panels brought up the interesting question of whether these women, in denying at all being feminist organizations, had a sort of agency and what this agency took the shape of. One of the presenters, Dr. Joseph Hill, posited that the women, in assuming what could be construed as "traditional," deferent roles in the community and their own homes (ex. woman as homemaker) were actually, covertly, expressing their agency...as if they were pretending to go along with the gender-role program while, within these confines, being somewhat revolutionary.
The whole while, I was thinking about a story idea that's been brewing for a while whose working title is "Black Widow," which will likely morph into something else. It's precisely about a woman who assumes a very deferent role in her marriage but in fact each of her actions, decisions and attitudes toward her husband are coolly calculated...or, at least the way her daughter sees it. ...anyway...digression again. This is why it's hard for me to read books. I get my own ideas and then I want to run off and write...
And those two panels concluded an excellent conference!
I'm still processing what all of this meant for me and will mean for me. It will probably be a topic in this blog for days to come. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
[uncensored]: Breaking the Fourth Wall
As salaam alaikum,
So, I started up this blog, and it's predecessor, (the xanga version), with the intention of living Islam in every aspect of my life, including my blog. If I intend to submit my entire self to God, I figured, and if I wanted to be able to do nearly everything in my life in the name of God, then what I blog about should be no exception. I wanted a place where I was comfortable reviewing what I was learning as a Muslimah (the original, xanga version) and just reflecting on my life through my Muslim lens (this blog).
Sometimes, I have these entries called [uncensored]. I never really explained them, but I will now. I usually label entries as [uncensored] when I feel it's important to express myself in a raw way without employing my usual purity, my Muslimah censor. That includes using curse words on occasion if my spirit so moves me. That includes talking about things I wouldn't usually talk about, or revealing details about my life that I usual don't. I hadn't done one in a while because I didn't feel so inclined. I was happy about life and possibilities seemed to abound.
How fickle that feeling is.
So, in this entry, I need to vent. I'm breaking the fourth wall. What does this mean? You can wikipedia it, but I learned about it in the context of television shows. Will Smith on Fresh Prince broke the fourth wall a few times, notably when the actress for Aunt Vivian changed or when baby Nicky grew up form an infant to a preschool age child in one season. Perhaps one of the most famous instances in television history of breaking the fourth wall (and also in the literal sense) was when Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad danced off the set of The Cosby Show on the last episode, revealing to the television audience for the first time what the set looked like.
I still get emotional when I see that! That show brought so many happy memories for me, though surprisingly, has little (consciously) to do with me wanting to practice obstetrics.
So that's breaking the fourth wall. So now I'm going to break the fourth wall, if just for one entry. Because there are just some things that happen in my life as a Muslimah that I either censor or omit, and I just have to be real for a little bit.
Before I decided to become a better Muslim, I was known as the sweetheart. The good girl, don't ever change type of deal. I still am, I guess, but it's brought me mostly pain and isolation.
Being a good Muslimah in the way I see most fit has brought me mostly pain and isolation. I pray to God for solace, and maybe it is that I'm getting it, and things would have been much worse if not.
Maybe.
Like my story in the anthology, most of the time, I feel like I'm an unfortunate, hybrid bird doing his mating dance alone in a field, and any mates that would have otherwise been interested are passing me by. The one thing I struggle with in my faith is believing, and actually believing, that someone, one day, will love me for who I am, for all of who I am. I struggle believing that. I so struggle believing that. I always have.
I have faith in God when it comes to my career, residency, all of these things. I have faith in God when it comes to the future of my family, my parents and my brother. My faith is weak when it comes to my future, wanting to have a family of my own, my own children. And it causes me a lot of despair, because I know how much I want it and I feel like God may not want it for me, and I don't understand why, but I feel trapped. I feel like I'm trapped in a world where I may really want something and God, in His infinite wisdom, doesn't want it, and I'll not know why until I return to him.
And it's so painful, and I'm so lonely.
I've hoped and prayed for so many things. I've hoped and prayed for my husband to fall out of the sky. I've searched for my husband in some of the men I've known. I've been rejected in a way that was really painful for me. I've been passed over. I've been ignored. All the while I've been lonely, hoping for the companion that I could share my Islam with, hoping for a companion that I could share my life with.
And I guess I'm only 27. This is a wait that really has no bounds. This is a wait that has no limit. And that's maddening to me. Absolutely maddening. It's one of those things I wonder why and I despair because the only answer I have is that God "knows what [I] know not."
I have to repeat to myself, over and over, "Consider the bright morning hours, and the night as it grows still and dark. Thy Sustainer has not foresaken thee, nor does he scorn thee. For, indeed, the life to comee will be better for thee than this earlier part [of thy life]! And, indeed, in time will thy Susatainer grant thee [what thy heart desires], and thou shalt bee well-pleased." (93:1-5)
The truth is, I'm despairing because I finally just cut B out of my life. I just had an elaborate dream about all of the possible women his new girlfriend could be. The reality is, I was talking to a Muslim man, Y, who I thought was interested in getting to know me for possible marriage. He called me last night, and I didn't pick up, because he informed me that he's talking to another woman and his ex is back and wants to learn about Islam. I talked to his ex about Islam. What else is there for us to say to each other?
The truth is, I struggle in a world where Muslim men will perhaps disapprove of me for the way that I practice, the way I comfortably do not don the hijab and would not do so for a future husband, the way that I do not really believe in the obligatory-recommended-discouraged-forbidden scheme of things when it comes to my religion and depend on saying salat "because I want to because God knows what's best for me." I struggle in a world where my pool is small. I struggle in a world where I am open to non-Muslim men, but where they are basically looking for free sex and are disappointed when they find they won't find it in me.
There's no place that I can look to find a future husband. I'm afraid that no one will accept me as I am. I am a 27-year-old Muslimah. I've never had sex but, God have mercy, I have known some intimacy with men. I was in a short relationship with a non-Muslim man who randomly was no longer attracted to me, and I suffered from that rejection. My Islam is simple and organic, more spirituality than law. I don't like living strictly by dos and don'ts and I live in a way that makes sense for my well-being, with the spiritual wisdom of revelation. I have no doubt that people who don't call themselves Muslim who believe in God and are good people and do good deeds overall will have a place with my Sustainer in the Hereafter along with me, insha'Allah, so that one says it's obligatory for me to do X, Y and Z as a Muslimah doesn't make sense to me if I know believers of other faiths who do not do this will also have their place with my Sustainer. It is obligatory, or what? It is a sin if I don't do it? Obligatory or hellfire? Is it that they don't know better, but I do? It could be. But the God I grew up with, the God that my mother taught me about...isn't like that.
Allahu a'alam.
We all try to do our best, anyway. I've tried to do my best as I've come into Islam and formed my own opinions of things. I've tried to do my best to understand why God wants me to be single right now and why I stumbled in a past relationship instead of finding a man who fit in my life. I don't understand. I struggle to understand. I struggle.
It was something I needed to live, that relationship. Something I needed to get out of my system. I had a pent up notion of sexuality and a pent up sexuality that I thought I needed to validate that I needed to get out of my system before I could begin healthy abstinence, meaningful abstinence and a healthy relationship with someone else.
I know that.
I wondered why, when I looked at him, I had this feeling, "You're going to end up with him." I was surprised, because he wasn't my type, and distressed, because I didn't get a sense of timeline. I just knew we were going to be in a relationship, but I didn't know how long it would last. I just heard it like a voice, like I've heard other things that will perhaps materialize, surprisingly, in my life. You're going to end up with him, the voice said, and I recorded it in my old journal back in April 2010, and I tried to ignore it, deny it.
And there it was. It happened. Now what?
So I'm breaking the fourth wall. I struggle with my beliefs. I'm an invisible Muslimah because I don't wear the scarf and there's not a lot of other ways that you could recognize that I'm Muslim, besides the times I may disappear for salat, but I usually pray when no one is around. Besides the content of my character and the goodness of my heart, masha'Allah. Besides my sense of justice and charity. But you can't see those things on the outside. So maybe I'm still invisible.
I struggle with trying to find what I feel is the purest sense of my religion and the purest way for me to live in this society. I believe in ways people will disagree with because of my trepidation with the law. I struggle to believe that God wants for me what I want, even though it's half of my religion, simply because it's not come yet and I have no signs of it. And I've touched men before.
This is me, breaking my fourth wall. This is me, no longer just reflecting on the more halal parts of my life. This is me being rough around the edges as I always was, and always will be. This is me taking a break to be human.
This is me imploring God for guidance, as always, and hoping that, every day a little bit, and cumulatively to the end of my life, that He is pleased with me.
This is me.
So, I started up this blog, and it's predecessor, (the xanga version), with the intention of living Islam in every aspect of my life, including my blog. If I intend to submit my entire self to God, I figured, and if I wanted to be able to do nearly everything in my life in the name of God, then what I blog about should be no exception. I wanted a place where I was comfortable reviewing what I was learning as a Muslimah (the original, xanga version) and just reflecting on my life through my Muslim lens (this blog).
Sometimes, I have these entries called [uncensored]. I never really explained them, but I will now. I usually label entries as [uncensored] when I feel it's important to express myself in a raw way without employing my usual purity, my Muslimah censor. That includes using curse words on occasion if my spirit so moves me. That includes talking about things I wouldn't usually talk about, or revealing details about my life that I usual don't. I hadn't done one in a while because I didn't feel so inclined. I was happy about life and possibilities seemed to abound.
How fickle that feeling is.
So, in this entry, I need to vent. I'm breaking the fourth wall. What does this mean? You can wikipedia it, but I learned about it in the context of television shows. Will Smith on Fresh Prince broke the fourth wall a few times, notably when the actress for Aunt Vivian changed or when baby Nicky grew up form an infant to a preschool age child in one season. Perhaps one of the most famous instances in television history of breaking the fourth wall (and also in the literal sense) was when Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad danced off the set of The Cosby Show on the last episode, revealing to the television audience for the first time what the set looked like.
I still get emotional when I see that! That show brought so many happy memories for me, though surprisingly, has little (consciously) to do with me wanting to practice obstetrics.
So that's breaking the fourth wall. So now I'm going to break the fourth wall, if just for one entry. Because there are just some things that happen in my life as a Muslimah that I either censor or omit, and I just have to be real for a little bit.
Before I decided to become a better Muslim, I was known as the sweetheart. The good girl, don't ever change type of deal. I still am, I guess, but it's brought me mostly pain and isolation.
Being a good Muslimah in the way I see most fit has brought me mostly pain and isolation. I pray to God for solace, and maybe it is that I'm getting it, and things would have been much worse if not.
Maybe.
Like my story in the anthology, most of the time, I feel like I'm an unfortunate, hybrid bird doing his mating dance alone in a field, and any mates that would have otherwise been interested are passing me by. The one thing I struggle with in my faith is believing, and actually believing, that someone, one day, will love me for who I am, for all of who I am. I struggle believing that. I so struggle believing that. I always have.
I have faith in God when it comes to my career, residency, all of these things. I have faith in God when it comes to the future of my family, my parents and my brother. My faith is weak when it comes to my future, wanting to have a family of my own, my own children. And it causes me a lot of despair, because I know how much I want it and I feel like God may not want it for me, and I don't understand why, but I feel trapped. I feel like I'm trapped in a world where I may really want something and God, in His infinite wisdom, doesn't want it, and I'll not know why until I return to him.
And it's so painful, and I'm so lonely.
I've hoped and prayed for so many things. I've hoped and prayed for my husband to fall out of the sky. I've searched for my husband in some of the men I've known. I've been rejected in a way that was really painful for me. I've been passed over. I've been ignored. All the while I've been lonely, hoping for the companion that I could share my Islam with, hoping for a companion that I could share my life with.
And I guess I'm only 27. This is a wait that really has no bounds. This is a wait that has no limit. And that's maddening to me. Absolutely maddening. It's one of those things I wonder why and I despair because the only answer I have is that God "knows what [I] know not."
I have to repeat to myself, over and over, "Consider the bright morning hours, and the night as it grows still and dark. Thy Sustainer has not foresaken thee, nor does he scorn thee. For, indeed, the life to comee will be better for thee than this earlier part [of thy life]! And, indeed, in time will thy Susatainer grant thee [what thy heart desires], and thou shalt bee well-pleased." (93:1-5)
The truth is, I'm despairing because I finally just cut B out of my life. I just had an elaborate dream about all of the possible women his new girlfriend could be. The reality is, I was talking to a Muslim man, Y, who I thought was interested in getting to know me for possible marriage. He called me last night, and I didn't pick up, because he informed me that he's talking to another woman and his ex is back and wants to learn about Islam. I talked to his ex about Islam. What else is there for us to say to each other?
The truth is, I struggle in a world where Muslim men will perhaps disapprove of me for the way that I practice, the way I comfortably do not don the hijab and would not do so for a future husband, the way that I do not really believe in the obligatory-recommended-discouraged-forbidden scheme of things when it comes to my religion and depend on saying salat "because I want to because God knows what's best for me." I struggle in a world where my pool is small. I struggle in a world where I am open to non-Muslim men, but where they are basically looking for free sex and are disappointed when they find they won't find it in me.
There's no place that I can look to find a future husband. I'm afraid that no one will accept me as I am. I am a 27-year-old Muslimah. I've never had sex but, God have mercy, I have known some intimacy with men. I was in a short relationship with a non-Muslim man who randomly was no longer attracted to me, and I suffered from that rejection. My Islam is simple and organic, more spirituality than law. I don't like living strictly by dos and don'ts and I live in a way that makes sense for my well-being, with the spiritual wisdom of revelation. I have no doubt that people who don't call themselves Muslim who believe in God and are good people and do good deeds overall will have a place with my Sustainer in the Hereafter along with me, insha'Allah, so that one says it's obligatory for me to do X, Y and Z as a Muslimah doesn't make sense to me if I know believers of other faiths who do not do this will also have their place with my Sustainer. It is obligatory, or what? It is a sin if I don't do it? Obligatory or hellfire? Is it that they don't know better, but I do? It could be. But the God I grew up with, the God that my mother taught me about...isn't like that.
Allahu a'alam.
We all try to do our best, anyway. I've tried to do my best as I've come into Islam and formed my own opinions of things. I've tried to do my best to understand why God wants me to be single right now and why I stumbled in a past relationship instead of finding a man who fit in my life. I don't understand. I struggle to understand. I struggle.
It was something I needed to live, that relationship. Something I needed to get out of my system. I had a pent up notion of sexuality and a pent up sexuality that I thought I needed to validate that I needed to get out of my system before I could begin healthy abstinence, meaningful abstinence and a healthy relationship with someone else.
I know that.
I wondered why, when I looked at him, I had this feeling, "You're going to end up with him." I was surprised, because he wasn't my type, and distressed, because I didn't get a sense of timeline. I just knew we were going to be in a relationship, but I didn't know how long it would last. I just heard it like a voice, like I've heard other things that will perhaps materialize, surprisingly, in my life. You're going to end up with him, the voice said, and I recorded it in my old journal back in April 2010, and I tried to ignore it, deny it.
And there it was. It happened. Now what?
So I'm breaking the fourth wall. I struggle with my beliefs. I'm an invisible Muslimah because I don't wear the scarf and there's not a lot of other ways that you could recognize that I'm Muslim, besides the times I may disappear for salat, but I usually pray when no one is around. Besides the content of my character and the goodness of my heart, masha'Allah. Besides my sense of justice and charity. But you can't see those things on the outside. So maybe I'm still invisible.
I struggle with trying to find what I feel is the purest sense of my religion and the purest way for me to live in this society. I believe in ways people will disagree with because of my trepidation with the law. I struggle to believe that God wants for me what I want, even though it's half of my religion, simply because it's not come yet and I have no signs of it. And I've touched men before.
This is me, breaking my fourth wall. This is me, no longer just reflecting on the more halal parts of my life. This is me being rough around the edges as I always was, and always will be. This is me taking a break to be human.
This is me imploring God for guidance, as always, and hoping that, every day a little bit, and cumulatively to the end of my life, that He is pleased with me.
This is me.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Vivinha da Silva!
As salaam alaikum,
I went to bed last night, smiling, knowing that I was Vivinha da Silva and loving it!
What does that mean? It's this expression that I've started hearing on my novela that I liken to the use of "McGee" in Engilsh, although we wouldn't say something like, I'm Alive McGee.
I've called myself and others things like Sleeps McGee before when they oversleep...or, I've nicknamed our elusive residential mouse Mousy McGee (along with Mickey and Squeakers).
But I love that expression! I'm going to start using it...
Because that's how I felt last night, Vivinha da Silva and in love with life!
I have to realize something, lest I fret. Just like my love with any temporal thing or any person's worldly existence, it's not going to be perfect. Things and people let me down, make me sad, make loving them very difficult. But just as I don't despair when being in love hurts sometimes or loving someone is difficult, nor should I worry so much when I'm in love with life so much it hurts, or when loving my life is difficult.
This one sister in a facebook sisters forum I belong to said that she believes the cure for depression is love. I took that to heart. And I thought about it. The only time I have not had the occasional bouts of depression was when I was living love.
I've always been a sensitive person (though Marvin Gaye would argue that we're all sensitive people...with so much to give...sorry, couldn't resist it).\
But that mess is true!
My biggest worry in life, more than experiencing or dying in a fire, is not living love in all aspects of my life. Alhamdulillah, I'm able to live love in my family life, in my schooling and insha'Allah I'll be able to do so in my career. I pray to be able to live love in my marriage and the raising of my children. But those are the great unknowns that I worry will never happen.
But instead, let me thrive on my love for this life, this wonderful life that was a gift from God that even so pales in comparison to what is to come. Let me thrive, above all else, in my love for God, the only love that is reciprocated to perfection.
I learned the word reciprocity from Lauryn Hill when I was in middle school, by the way. I've never forgotten that.
My life in music, indeed!
Yes, sometimes life will upset me. Sometimes I'll be insecure. Sometimes it will be a challenge, a challenge I'd rather not go through. But I shouldn't give up on it.
I should live love like I live the love for my father, who I've had a slightly tenuous relationship with since I told him I was Muslim almost 7 years ago. We have some bad times, but that doesn't make me want to abandon my father. I take those times in stride, feeling the pain of my father's unwarranted disappointment as the occasional love pang.
I love my family like crazy, even though so many have done incredibly disappointing things, even though loving some of them is made difficult by their personality or their life choices. I love them through worrying about them, for their lives, without missing a beat. There is never a point when I wanted to disown any of them.
And when I love a man, I love like there is no other. I'm afraid to pronounce it because it's so strong, and I've toned it down for my own sake, but the happiest time in my life were the moments of sheer joy that I lived while being in love, even with the feeling of precariousness and uncertainty. It's the only time hope has felt so good, and aspirations soared so high, and life seemed so magic. And I just acknowledged the fact that I want this and that I'm justified in wanting this with the man I am to marry.
I don't desire to relinquish these bonds, even the while loving them is difficult. So I should not fret when life is painful, when I'm insecure, when I'm uncertain about the future, because the fact of the matter is that life is here to stay for a while, insha'Allah, and when it's no longer for me, something greater is there. So I should not fear, nor should I grieve.
We feel so far from God in this existence, but He's given us a guide through Qur'an and Sunnah to achieve the full extent of our blessings while here, while we're joining together in the mutual teachings of truth. That's what makes this life so hard, because we feel so far...
I didn't crumble when I believed my grandmother was dying, nor do I crumble as she succumbs to dementia. I don't crumble when my father and I have a difficult relationship, or when family is in a bad way, or when school gets hard. No. So why do I crumble when life gets hard?
Because somehow, I believed that being in love with life or loving life was somehow different than any other worldly loves. Was I committing shirk? That type of love should be reserved only for God. No, my love of life should be no different. There are good days and there are better days, in reality, no real bad days, because I always have numerous, uncountable blessings. God is to merciful to allow worst case scenario, ever.
So yes, I'm Vivinha da Silva, so alive right now, so loving it, and sometimes, that means I will cry and have my heart wrenched but I should bear that crooked smile, the one that MTQ once described that women have on their face when they are looking at pictures of those they love...
His words were so beautiful for a 20-year-old man. I loved that about him, and so many other things.
The pain of life is just part of my loving it as much as I do. My despair is an artifact of me loving so much. I was so afraid to say what has always been true...I love so much and sometimes I feel harder than those around me. I revel in it, I really do. It's like an ill-trained superpower that I've had to learn how to direct properly for maximum impact...
Maximum extent of my blessings, maximize my relationship with God while on this earth...
Maximum love. I'm ready to continue living it!
I went to bed last night, smiling, knowing that I was Vivinha da Silva and loving it!
What does that mean? It's this expression that I've started hearing on my novela that I liken to the use of "McGee" in Engilsh, although we wouldn't say something like, I'm Alive McGee.
I've called myself and others things like Sleeps McGee before when they oversleep...or, I've nicknamed our elusive residential mouse Mousy McGee (along with Mickey and Squeakers).
But I love that expression! I'm going to start using it...
Because that's how I felt last night, Vivinha da Silva and in love with life!
I have to realize something, lest I fret. Just like my love with any temporal thing or any person's worldly existence, it's not going to be perfect. Things and people let me down, make me sad, make loving them very difficult. But just as I don't despair when being in love hurts sometimes or loving someone is difficult, nor should I worry so much when I'm in love with life so much it hurts, or when loving my life is difficult.
This one sister in a facebook sisters forum I belong to said that she believes the cure for depression is love. I took that to heart. And I thought about it. The only time I have not had the occasional bouts of depression was when I was living love.
I've always been a sensitive person (though Marvin Gaye would argue that we're all sensitive people...with so much to give...sorry, couldn't resist it).\
But that mess is true!
My biggest worry in life, more than experiencing or dying in a fire, is not living love in all aspects of my life. Alhamdulillah, I'm able to live love in my family life, in my schooling and insha'Allah I'll be able to do so in my career. I pray to be able to live love in my marriage and the raising of my children. But those are the great unknowns that I worry will never happen.
But instead, let me thrive on my love for this life, this wonderful life that was a gift from God that even so pales in comparison to what is to come. Let me thrive, above all else, in my love for God, the only love that is reciprocated to perfection.
I learned the word reciprocity from Lauryn Hill when I was in middle school, by the way. I've never forgotten that.
My life in music, indeed!
Yes, sometimes life will upset me. Sometimes I'll be insecure. Sometimes it will be a challenge, a challenge I'd rather not go through. But I shouldn't give up on it.
I should live love like I live the love for my father, who I've had a slightly tenuous relationship with since I told him I was Muslim almost 7 years ago. We have some bad times, but that doesn't make me want to abandon my father. I take those times in stride, feeling the pain of my father's unwarranted disappointment as the occasional love pang.
I love my family like crazy, even though so many have done incredibly disappointing things, even though loving some of them is made difficult by their personality or their life choices. I love them through worrying about them, for their lives, without missing a beat. There is never a point when I wanted to disown any of them.
And when I love a man, I love like there is no other. I'm afraid to pronounce it because it's so strong, and I've toned it down for my own sake, but the happiest time in my life were the moments of sheer joy that I lived while being in love, even with the feeling of precariousness and uncertainty. It's the only time hope has felt so good, and aspirations soared so high, and life seemed so magic. And I just acknowledged the fact that I want this and that I'm justified in wanting this with the man I am to marry.
I don't desire to relinquish these bonds, even the while loving them is difficult. So I should not fret when life is painful, when I'm insecure, when I'm uncertain about the future, because the fact of the matter is that life is here to stay for a while, insha'Allah, and when it's no longer for me, something greater is there. So I should not fear, nor should I grieve.
We feel so far from God in this existence, but He's given us a guide through Qur'an and Sunnah to achieve the full extent of our blessings while here, while we're joining together in the mutual teachings of truth. That's what makes this life so hard, because we feel so far...
I didn't crumble when I believed my grandmother was dying, nor do I crumble as she succumbs to dementia. I don't crumble when my father and I have a difficult relationship, or when family is in a bad way, or when school gets hard. No. So why do I crumble when life gets hard?
Because somehow, I believed that being in love with life or loving life was somehow different than any other worldly loves. Was I committing shirk? That type of love should be reserved only for God. No, my love of life should be no different. There are good days and there are better days, in reality, no real bad days, because I always have numerous, uncountable blessings. God is to merciful to allow worst case scenario, ever.
So yes, I'm Vivinha da Silva, so alive right now, so loving it, and sometimes, that means I will cry and have my heart wrenched but I should bear that crooked smile, the one that MTQ once described that women have on their face when they are looking at pictures of those they love...
His words were so beautiful for a 20-year-old man. I loved that about him, and so many other things.
The pain of life is just part of my loving it as much as I do. My despair is an artifact of me loving so much. I was so afraid to say what has always been true...I love so much and sometimes I feel harder than those around me. I revel in it, I really do. It's like an ill-trained superpower that I've had to learn how to direct properly for maximum impact...
Maximum extent of my blessings, maximize my relationship with God while on this earth...
Maximum love. I'm ready to continue living it!
Friday, January 20, 2012
Have a Talk With God
As salaam alaikum,
(6:48) "And We send [Our] message-bearers only as heralds of glad tidings and as warners: hence, all who believe and live righteously -no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve" (emphasis added)
I am also called to mind this song by Stevie Wonder, haha, my favorite musician ever:
Masha'Allah and Alhamdulillah!
There are worldly solutions to many of the problems we face in our daily lives. You can mediate, you can think in terms of statistics, like, really, what is the chance that this plane I'm in that's suffering this terrible turbulence over this mountain range is going to crash? This flight has never suffered a crash, people fly every day and most days there's no plane crash...it's said that the most dangerous parts of the flight are the takeoff and landing, and we're in neither, and how many crashes take place mid-flight, anyway?
Or, one could place their trust in God, in whose dominion there is no error, there is no weakness as therre is in our ability to meditate on the positive or be consoled by the statistics of life.
This is one example of an anxiety that we face, but not all of us. I was informed by a friend that she never thought of the precariousness of flight, or the wonder of a plane to propel itself into the atmosphere and remain adrift in the air, just because she "always" assumes that everything will work out. She found my anxieties unhealthy, and maybe it is. I wouldn't call it a disorder, though, because it's never paralyzed me in my daily life or kept me from aspiring and achieving my dreams.
But it just takes me to a different level of God consciousness.
I never assume things will work out. I know, alhamdulillah, that everything will work out, insha'Allah, the way it should. I just also know that the intermediate outcomes may not be to my liking, because as He tells us, "it may well be that you hate a thing the while it is good for you, and it may well be that you love a thing the while it is bad for you: and God knows, whereas you do not know" (2:216).
And while I knew, insha'Allah, that everything would work out, the God knows and you don't part was what caused me anxiety, and basically caused me to revert to doubt, anxiety...
That plane could crash, I may not be the great physician I aspire to be, I may never get married, and if I do, I may be infertile...and though I may hate these outcomes, God knows what I do not.
Alhamdulillah, I am no longer burdened by these thoughts and insha'Allah, this respite from these anxieties should continue. And it's not because I'm meditating or thinking of statistics, nor is it really because I'm thinking of what God in general wants for us, and why what He should want for me is the marriage and family I desire, at least...
Because the truth always remains, God knows what we do not, including the future, including His intent for us in this existence and the grander intent He may have for us as our eternal selves in the Hereafter. I will not know, and that is part of the beauty of the human experience. I will struggle in pain but I will also be pleasantly surprised, and the reward is with Him in the end, greater than any reward in this life and greater than the balance of the cumulative pain felt in this world.
It helped me some to meditate in this way: to recognize that sometimes I will feel pain, that sometimes I will be anxious or lonely, or sometimes a remembrance will bring me sadness, but this is okay. I have the tendency to get anxious when I'm sad and it ends with me downward spiraling into a self-pity fest, or, to be less hard on myself, desperation. I tend to be haunted by the thought that maybe I'm not strong enough, that I was made weak, and that this is manifested in my occasional depression. It helped me a few months back to meditate on the fact that this is how I feel now, and that it's permissible, if not justified, that I feel the way that I do.
But that didn't help always, and I found myself in a desperation at one point that I had little patience for and no longer wanted to be in.
This meditation did not work because God was absent in my considerations, and my methods were therefore weak.
So instead, I will "meditate" in prayer.
I began feeling anxious upon talking to a friend of mine who is also applying in family medicine. She's planning to go to a program in Chicago that sounds like an excellent program. I began to doubt my decision to not apply to any Chicago programs, began second-guessing my first choice program in favor of another that would be closer to her, began wondering if there were similarly other jewels of residency programs that would have been in places that would be better fits for me than my top choices, and I began wondering how I would ever make this choice.
And then, that ayah above (which comes up multiple times in the Qur'an) came into my mind, and I smiled, smacked myself on the forehead and said, "Duh!" I'll pray on it, I decided, like everything else. Why hadn't that occurred to me?
Well, let me be real on two fronts. One, of course praying about these things occurs to me, but I think often I pray on a macro level and do not recognize the opportunity to seek guidance (because that's really what prayer comes down to in this context) on a micro level. Like, here is an individual doubt that could possibly breed anxiety. If I let that anxiety blow up on a big scale, I'll find myself doubting my training, my community, my career. It's not about that. Alhamdulillah, I'll become an excellent family physician whichever program I match in out of my top three. The question is, which one should I go in order to realize the full extent of my blessings...
And that is why I have payed istikhara and have faith that I will be heard, as I always have been, masha'Allah.
And my life is as it should be, masha'Allah.
On the second front...I know this new security comes in part due to the fact that I am now talking to an interesting, admirable and intelligent brother in Islam. And while I let anxiety and insecurity overtake me shortly after hearing the news of this interested Muslim from a non-Muslim friend of mine, I calmed when I talked to him a few days back and got to hear his voice and know how easy it was to talk to him...for two hours.
It's easy to have this security in my faith now and trust in Allah (swt) once I see the possible synthesis of a prayer I've had over the years fall into place...or at the very least, understand some of the reasons why it could be a while in the making (or at the very least be inspired to another strong story idea)...but what if this were to go away? Will I be strong enough to talk with the conviction that I do now about the ease with which I can make decisions by simply having a talk with God, asking for guidance, praying salatul istikhara?
Insha'Allah. In the meantime, instead of letting these doubts degenerate into anxiety, I will also take this issue to prayer...as I did my burgeoning relationship with B, that I nearly through a tantrum about in the course of letting him go, but that I should have realized was the answer to the softest of my prayers while with him.
The answers are all with God. If I believe, and do righteous deeds, and strive as I am striving and aspire to strive...there's nothing I should be afraid of, and I will not grieve.
And I didn't need to have Stevie on repeat to tell me that. None of us do.
(2:62) "VERILY, those who have attained to faith [in this divine writ], as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians -all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds-shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve" (emphasis added).
(6:48) "And We send [Our] message-bearers only as heralds of glad tidings and as warners: hence, all who believe and live righteously -no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve" (emphasis added)
I am also called to mind this song by Stevie Wonder, haha, my favorite musician ever:
Masha'Allah and Alhamdulillah!
There are worldly solutions to many of the problems we face in our daily lives. You can mediate, you can think in terms of statistics, like, really, what is the chance that this plane I'm in that's suffering this terrible turbulence over this mountain range is going to crash? This flight has never suffered a crash, people fly every day and most days there's no plane crash...it's said that the most dangerous parts of the flight are the takeoff and landing, and we're in neither, and how many crashes take place mid-flight, anyway?
Or, one could place their trust in God, in whose dominion there is no error, there is no weakness as therre is in our ability to meditate on the positive or be consoled by the statistics of life.
This is one example of an anxiety that we face, but not all of us. I was informed by a friend that she never thought of the precariousness of flight, or the wonder of a plane to propel itself into the atmosphere and remain adrift in the air, just because she "always" assumes that everything will work out. She found my anxieties unhealthy, and maybe it is. I wouldn't call it a disorder, though, because it's never paralyzed me in my daily life or kept me from aspiring and achieving my dreams.
But it just takes me to a different level of God consciousness.
I never assume things will work out. I know, alhamdulillah, that everything will work out, insha'Allah, the way it should. I just also know that the intermediate outcomes may not be to my liking, because as He tells us, "it may well be that you hate a thing the while it is good for you, and it may well be that you love a thing the while it is bad for you: and God knows, whereas you do not know" (2:216).
And while I knew, insha'Allah, that everything would work out, the God knows and you don't part was what caused me anxiety, and basically caused me to revert to doubt, anxiety...
That plane could crash, I may not be the great physician I aspire to be, I may never get married, and if I do, I may be infertile...and though I may hate these outcomes, God knows what I do not.
Alhamdulillah, I am no longer burdened by these thoughts and insha'Allah, this respite from these anxieties should continue. And it's not because I'm meditating or thinking of statistics, nor is it really because I'm thinking of what God in general wants for us, and why what He should want for me is the marriage and family I desire, at least...
Because the truth always remains, God knows what we do not, including the future, including His intent for us in this existence and the grander intent He may have for us as our eternal selves in the Hereafter. I will not know, and that is part of the beauty of the human experience. I will struggle in pain but I will also be pleasantly surprised, and the reward is with Him in the end, greater than any reward in this life and greater than the balance of the cumulative pain felt in this world.
It helped me some to meditate in this way: to recognize that sometimes I will feel pain, that sometimes I will be anxious or lonely, or sometimes a remembrance will bring me sadness, but this is okay. I have the tendency to get anxious when I'm sad and it ends with me downward spiraling into a self-pity fest, or, to be less hard on myself, desperation. I tend to be haunted by the thought that maybe I'm not strong enough, that I was made weak, and that this is manifested in my occasional depression. It helped me a few months back to meditate on the fact that this is how I feel now, and that it's permissible, if not justified, that I feel the way that I do.
But that didn't help always, and I found myself in a desperation at one point that I had little patience for and no longer wanted to be in.
This meditation did not work because God was absent in my considerations, and my methods were therefore weak.
So instead, I will "meditate" in prayer.
I began feeling anxious upon talking to a friend of mine who is also applying in family medicine. She's planning to go to a program in Chicago that sounds like an excellent program. I began to doubt my decision to not apply to any Chicago programs, began second-guessing my first choice program in favor of another that would be closer to her, began wondering if there were similarly other jewels of residency programs that would have been in places that would be better fits for me than my top choices, and I began wondering how I would ever make this choice.
And then, that ayah above (which comes up multiple times in the Qur'an) came into my mind, and I smiled, smacked myself on the forehead and said, "Duh!" I'll pray on it, I decided, like everything else. Why hadn't that occurred to me?
Well, let me be real on two fronts. One, of course praying about these things occurs to me, but I think often I pray on a macro level and do not recognize the opportunity to seek guidance (because that's really what prayer comes down to in this context) on a micro level. Like, here is an individual doubt that could possibly breed anxiety. If I let that anxiety blow up on a big scale, I'll find myself doubting my training, my community, my career. It's not about that. Alhamdulillah, I'll become an excellent family physician whichever program I match in out of my top three. The question is, which one should I go in order to realize the full extent of my blessings...
And that is why I have payed istikhara and have faith that I will be heard, as I always have been, masha'Allah.
And my life is as it should be, masha'Allah.
On the second front...I know this new security comes in part due to the fact that I am now talking to an interesting, admirable and intelligent brother in Islam. And while I let anxiety and insecurity overtake me shortly after hearing the news of this interested Muslim from a non-Muslim friend of mine, I calmed when I talked to him a few days back and got to hear his voice and know how easy it was to talk to him...for two hours.
It's easy to have this security in my faith now and trust in Allah (swt) once I see the possible synthesis of a prayer I've had over the years fall into place...or at the very least, understand some of the reasons why it could be a while in the making (or at the very least be inspired to another strong story idea)...but what if this were to go away? Will I be strong enough to talk with the conviction that I do now about the ease with which I can make decisions by simply having a talk with God, asking for guidance, praying salatul istikhara?
Insha'Allah. In the meantime, instead of letting these doubts degenerate into anxiety, I will also take this issue to prayer...as I did my burgeoning relationship with B, that I nearly through a tantrum about in the course of letting him go, but that I should have realized was the answer to the softest of my prayers while with him.
The answers are all with God. If I believe, and do righteous deeds, and strive as I am striving and aspire to strive...there's nothing I should be afraid of, and I will not grieve.
And I didn't need to have Stevie on repeat to tell me that. None of us do.
(2:62) "VERILY, those who have attained to faith [in this divine writ], as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians -all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds-shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve" (emphasis added).
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