Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Damascus
Friday, July 13, 2012
Saint Cloud, and me
Living in Saint Cloud has been one of the biggest learning
experiences of my life on so many levels, but one of the funniest things I have
learned here is that my mere existence has the power of offending people; that
me being in a room can be politically incorrect and that people have some
pretty interesting misconceptions about me. And, despite the fact that I
sometimes enjoy the absurdity of the misconceptions and the look of offence on
middle aged women when I buy milk at wall mart, I think some clarification is necessary…
at least for anyone who will read this. So I have listed here the top five
misconceptions that have been voiced to me (mind you there may be some that I
am unaware of) with some clarifications:
So in no particular order:
1.
Why do I want to kill
everyone, especially people who leave Islam?
The reason I know about this one is that a
girl came up to me during Islamic awareness week and started asking me this
again and again never giving me an
actual chance to answer her… But if she had here is what I would have said:
first of all rest assured I do not want to kill anyone. Killing is just as much
a crime in Islam as it is in any major religion, and although I have fantasized
about doing some violence to my English teacher who assigned a twenty page
research paper, I would never act on those inclinations. Furthermore this
concept that Islam orders the death of reverts is only held by those ignorant
of the religion; actually during the time of
Prophet Muhammad there are three documented incidents of people leaving
Islam, two of which (Hisham and Ayash ) turned back to the polytheism (worship
of many gods represented by statues) practiced by the people of Quraysh. At the
time no decision or sanction was taken against them. Later on Ayyash came back
to Islam and revelation subsequently was revealed in order to ease his exceedingly
harsh vision of himself: “Say: O those who have transgressed against themselves!
Do not despair of God’s mercy: for God forgives all sins; for He is the
All-Forgiving, the Most Merciful”39:53 upon hearing these verses, Hisham also
came back to Islam. The third example is of one who did not return: Ubaydallah
ibn Jahish, who had gone to Abyssinia with the first group of emigrants and who
then converted to Christianity. Neither the prophet from Mecca nor any of the Muslims
who lived in Abyssinia took any measure against him: he remained a Christian
until he died without ever being harassed or ill-treated.
So I am sorry to disappoint you but I am a Muslim
and an Arab, who really does want world peace.
2. Why don’t you believe in Jesus?
My friend who works at Burger King
was the first person to tell me a story about someone saying something on those
terms, and then I started getting bombarded with pamphlets on the topic. In fact one of the six pillars of belief in Islam
requires that I do believe in him, and in the virgin Mary (who has an entire
chapter ’surah19’ named after her in the Quran), the story of the virgin birth
of Jesus is related as such in the Quran :
{“Relate in the book [the story of]
Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place of the East. She placed a
screen [to screen her self] from them: then we sent her Our Angel, and he
appeared to her as a man in all respects. She said; ‘I seek refuge from you in
the shelter of the most gracious, if you fear him.’ He said: ‘I am only a
messenger from your Lord [to announce] to you a gift of a pure son.’ She said: ‘how
shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and that I am not
unchaste?’ He said so [it will be]; your Lord says: that is easy for me and [we
wish] to appoint him as a sign to men and a mercy from us; it is a matter
decreed.”}
The main difference is that Muslims
do not attribute divinity to him, rather regard him to be a greatly revered
prophet- as the core belief of Islam is that God is One, neither begot nor
begotten.
3.
So was it your dad or your husband that made
you wear a scarf?
This has to be one of the most annoying
misconceptions for me. I am a strong
feminist and the fact that everyone thinks that my actions are because of some
“man” always gets to me. People like this are usually very surprised when they
meet my dad in his jeans jacket and clean shaven face or my husband with his
hair in a pony tail. Let me make this
very clear; the way I dress is my choice, and my prerogative. The fact that it
is beyond your capacity to accept that someone would choose this type of dress
is irrelevant. This ‘misconception’ goes
beyond my choice of clothes as an outspoken atheist in my university during a debate
on something or other pointed at me and said : “You make your women sit separately
and don’t let them sit with you.” that got my blood boiling, and I promptly stood
up walked to a different seat between two boys who I actually did know and said
“No one MAKES me sit any where” what he thought was someone “making” me sit
somewhere was just me sitting with a group of my friends who happen to be
female. But I kind of think this proves this white middle aged man was the kind
of man he was accusing Muslim men of being: chauvinistic… sigh
And since we are on the topic of
clothes; no I am not bald nor do I sleep in my scarf.
Maybe these questions sound silly
to you, but I have been asked them many times. My mom once (just for kicks)
maintained a straight face and said I not only sleep in my scarf I also shower
in it LOL you should have seen the look of horror on the women’s face.
Regardless the answer to both questions is no. I am not bald, and no, I do not
sleep (or shower) in my scarf. Actually I don’t wear it at home at all, and at
my wedding I had my hair done all pretty just like any other run of the mill
girl; difference is I probably am not going to show you the pictures (if you’re
a boy).
4.
Wow that’s a really great
painting/photo/film you made, you’re not like other Muslim women, are you?
GAH…the best part about this
question/statement is the person saying it ALWAYS does so with a big smile on
his face and a presumption that he is flattering me, when in fact he is simply
proving his own limited mind set and ignorance.
Listen just because fox news and the likes of
it shows you a bunch of sad oppressed Muslim women does not mean that the other
over almost one billion Muslim women are actually like that. Please just except
that I am the rule and they are the exception; not the other way around. Don’t
believe me? Go live in a predominately Muslim country for a year (Malaysia for
example-check link below) and interact with the normal population. Now I am not
denying the existence of oppressed Muslim women, but there are also (sadly)
oppressed Christian women and oppressed atheist women and and and…. It is a sad state of affairs but it is the
truth. It frustrates me that every
single art piece I make is considered to
be a political statement. Sometimes I really wish people would stop totalizing
me and look at my work as they would anyone else’s.
5.
You worship Allah and I
worship God/you asking Muhammad to give you a blessing
Here is an interesting tidbit of
information: there are many Christians in the Arab world and when they speak of
God they also say Allah, because for the BILLIONTH time Allah is God in Arabic.
Christians in Syria also say things like: insh-allah which means God willing,
so really this discussion is getting tedious. Also Muslims do not not not not
not worship Muhammad; he is considered a prophet; we do not pray to him; we
pray to God - full stop. End of story
Well that’s it for now.. Please
follow these links. Thanks for bearing
with me to the end, and sorry if I sounded like I was ranting…I kind of was..
Meet an extremely talented Malaysian
girl http://youtu.be/AGllgO_mBoE
Spend a few minutes looking at
this, change ur perspective http://badassmuslimahs.tumblr.com/
Monday, July 9, 2012
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