Heather's Thoughts

Me, Niqabi

2011-02-01T00:58:00.000-05:00

Written Tues., January 11, 2010

Justin brought up yesterday that I'd been nearly full-time niqaabi (wearing a face veil) for a while now - increasingly frequently since late September, I suppose - and asked how it was going for me. I was surprised to realize how often I wear it now. I'm returning to a mental place where I don't usually notice, or pay attention to, the looks and stares. Well, except for one instance last month where I stared down a ten year old boy in Wal-Mart who, in a display of poor manners, insisted on following me around and staring rather aggessively, even after I greeted him AND despite the presence of both his parents, who acted as if I wasn't there at all! I think I ended up scaring him, but sometimes enough is enough. It's kind of funny in retrospect.

In fact, today I ran into a classmate uptown whom I'd only met last week, and not only was I in niqab (which she's seen) but I also had the eyeveil down over my face because of the snow (keeps snow from smudging my glasses, though I can see out fine, though an observer can't see my eyes; it's like wearing sunglasses). She not only recognized me, but struck up a nice conversation right there on the sidewalk, and ended up promising to have me over for dinner.

Once again, I suggest that niqab is not a barrier to communication unless either party makes it one. In other words, I guess that the niqab is going well - and I'm finally adapting to being in a 'safe' environment, where I don't get the aggressive responses I dealt with in Indy.

"The World" vs. Religion

2009-11-03T15:23:00.005-05:00

Eboo Patel, a Muslim author and scholar, wrote the preface to a book I picked up at the Governor's Conference on Service and Volunteerism last week, "Hearing the Call Across Traditions: Readings on Faith and Service." He begins by talking about how the Prophet Muhammad would make an annual retreat to a cave on Mount Hira to pray and contemplate. In the Muslim tradition, Muhammad was chosen to be the prophet to his people because (as Patel echoes) he regularly removed himself from the world in order to focus on worship. Patel continues,

"That felt difficult for me. Ever since I can remember, I have wanted nothing more than to know and love the world... To travel, to taste, to experiment, to see, to serve. And while I felt a longing for God throughout my adolescence, if connecting to the Divine meant removing myself from real life, I wasn't quite ready to make that commitment. I chose the world."

Nevertheless, he wasn't quite satisfied, and he eventually returned to a deeper study of Islam. There he found something that is obvious but completely overlooked by most: after his first encounter with the angel Gabriel and the revelation that the angel brought, Muhammad never returned to the cave in the mountain.

"Once he was touched by the Heavens of Faith, Muhammad lived the rest of his years in the Harlem of Life. He married and had children. He preached and counseled... He loved the world, and he lived his life in it, and he did it on the command of God. In fact, in the Holy Qur'an, God makes it clear that this was His intention for all human beings... One of our primary duties is to manifest His mercy here."

Not to chase after experiences of the Divine presence. Not even to worship God (though here I suspect Patel may disagree with my interpretation).

Again: Muhammad never returned to the mountain.

He lived. He engaged with the world, with life, with others.

Separating oneself from "the world" in order to be "more religious" is not only unnecessary, to do so is to forget what faith and religion are supposed to be about. What is important: Living one's life fully and enthusiastically. Involving oneself in the lives of other people. Serving other people. Loving other people.

This has been said by many, in many places, but I wrote it here because of how the passage affected me. And because it connects with my last post, on truth and Truth. While I still long to sense the presence of God, I no longer encounter the Divine in the same way that I used to. I have, in a sense, left that mountain years ago, and I ought to stop trying to climb it again.

Rather, I should take the prophet's example: live, and live, and help others, and live.

Truth - and Reality

2009-10-27T12:48:00.004-04:00

In the last day or so, two encounters made me pause and consider what I think of as my reality, the one I live in day to day.

Yesterday morning as I was going in to the office, a woman approached me asking about the food pantry that's recently been opened in our same building. I wasn't sure how to find it, so I accompanied her and we eventually found the right place to go and got her signed in. She was very worried that she'd arrive too late to get any food, as it's open only certain days until the food is all distributed; she had no food in her house, nothing, "not even a stick of candy." From her tone, expression and body language, I don't think she was exaggerating. In any case, the urgency and depth of her need was written on her whole person. While we were talking and looking for the correct entrance, I asked her where she'd walked there from, and she told me she'd walked from a certain street, which I know is about a mile away, and asked if the food pantry also gave out bus passes or if our legal clinic had any, so she wouldn't have to walk the mile back with the bags. They didn't, and we don't, so I gave her the $2 bus fare myself.

What else is there to do? - the universe put her directly in my path (or me in her path) and what is nothing to me made a significant difference to her, even just the very small act of helping her find the correct entrance so she could pick up a couple of bags of food. She wasn't angling for pity, or 'playing up' her situation, she was just telling me as it was. And that's what affected me so much.

I might not be enjoying the poverty-level-income aspect of my current situation, but my reality is that I am still in a position to help others whose situations are both truly ugly and not necessarily by their own choosing. And that the Universe expects me to remember that and act on it, that it is indeed foundational for being a decent human being.

The second encounter was quite brief. I was listening to two of my co-workers talking about church, and their faith, and one asked the other about how she came to be a Christian. It wasn't a dramatic Conversion Story, it was more about curiosity and inquiry and personal study. And then she said that the more she read about Christianity, the more truth (Truth) she found in it.

I left the room at that point to think about that statement.

In what book, or religion, or set of beliefs/concepts do *I* find 'more and more Truth?' IS there anything that fits that description?

I can list many places I do not find it. And I find pieces of Truth all over the place (or rather, what might be Truth: how can I tell except to ask my self whether I can deeply and honestly accept the offered concept, or not, and even then it's still subjective truth, not transcendent Truth). But I do not find that as I read the Qur'an nor the books of Muslim jurists and theologians that I find 'more and more Truth' there as my friend has with her Scripture.

Sometimes - but not often, and not for a while - I feel what I interpret as the presence of God in prayer or supplication. But I'm no closer to finding Truth - or really, all that much in the way of subjective truth - than I was at the beginning of my spiritual journeying. I 'knew' more when I started out than I do now, and I've been steadily losing what sense of certainty I had, for a couple of years. (It may be that Islam was an attempt at a spiritual stopgap, a way to try to recover what I'd already lost. I'll have to think about that.)

So, other than a heretic from two religions now, what does that make me?

Staying

2009-08-12T22:25:00.003-04:00

Too much happening since I last posted...

I'm staying in Indy. I still miss southeastern Ohio. Sometimes I just miss Ohio. But this is where I need to be, and what I need to do. This is what I am being asked to do. So, I stay; and as soon as I assented to that decision, things began to fall into place, and I understood that this next year will be good, not only 'good for me' like a vegetable you don't like but GOOD.

Other things are changing, too... I'm in transition once again, unmoored, but unafraid, because I know the path is charted, and even if I don't know where I'm heading the one who loosed me from the slip does. Navigation isn't my part of my duties.

Rather, it's like the first boat trip Amelia and I took in Indonesia, from the main island port to Balobaloang, twelve hours by sailboat, setting off just after sunset. The crew navigated by the stars; we lay on the deck and wondered at the multitude of them and at how the Bugis crew could so easily find their way through the endless sea, until we fell asleep. And the next morning woke to the see the suggestion of land, still several hours away, but there.

Yeah Zen!

2009-07-12T15:35:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I discovered that the Zen Center is Five. Blocks. From. Where. I. Work. Walking distance. I've driven down that road multiple times and never ever noticed the house with the discreet 'Indianapolis Zen Center' sign. Apparently it's time.

When I walked into the Dharma Room for the class, the first thing I noticed was that there wasn't a Buddha on the altar. It was Avalokitesvara, aka Kwan Yin. Avalokitesvara isn't a 'deity' in the usual sense - Zen Buddhism doesn't work that way - rather, he/she symbolizes compassion for all life. So the statue on the altar isn't holy, the altar isn't holy, and worship isn't part of it. It's a symbol to remind the practitioner.

Oh, and the particular school of Zen that this center is part of is the Kwan Um School, a Korean lineage - so I didn't get it at first. Kwan Um: a Korean name for Kwan Yin. The school emphasizes...wait for it... the path of compassion. I feel like I've been smacked repeatedly with a really big Dharma Stick. (In nonBuddhistspeak, God had to make my clue signs REALLY BIG before I noticed.) I happen to have a certain affinity for the Compassionate aspect of the divine; in Islam, these are the central 'names' (aspects) of God, repeated frequently in the formal prayer (Al-Rahman, Al-Rahmim). There's also many, many hadith (and Qur'an passages) that emphasize God's mercy and compassion over strict justice.

This tradition also is practice-based rather than text-based, so it's all about the meditation, about training the mind. Perfect.

An Anthology of Recent Thoughts on Creativity, My Future, and All That

2009-07-10T17:19:00.008-04:00

(Anthology sounds better than Random Collection, don't you think?)

~ To begin with - I want to tell stories. I don't know if I want to tell *my* stories or someone else's stories, but that's what I want to do. Not that I know what I mean by that; stories can be told in nonfiction as well as in fiction (and I am awful with dialogue), or in script format, or in media that is not print. Like, oh, audio. But I know that it definitely all comes back around to stories, in the end - all of it: Life, the Universe, and Everything. Except for the parts that are actually explained by the answer 42. And maybe even those.

~ Christopher Moore's "Fool," though not as funny as "You Suck" or the first three-quarters of "Lamb," would make an interesting screenplay. I could see it as I read, from the very first chapter. Not that I was looking for something to adapt. Nor do I think I could possibly get the rights to do anything with a screenplay adaptation for it. But - there it was. And is. In my head. Bugging me. And tempting me to insert random anachronistic pseudo-British curses into inappropriate places in daily conversation. Dog snogging. (See?)

~ However...I really enjoy the academia environment - for instance, being able to quote postmodern media theorists and not have people look at me as if I'd suddenly started spouting aphorisms in Old Welsh - and I would like to get a Ph.D. But this languages thing, this may not be for me. Which really limits the Ph.D. programs I could a) get admitted to, and b) actually finish. OK, I'm resigned to wrestling with Modern Standard Arabic at least for now, and think I could probably pull off a decent proficiency in French relatively easily, but...German? No, don't think so. And ALL the programs I've looked into, whether Media Studies or Religious Studies or Middle Eastern Studies (such creative nomenclature) require one to acquire near-fluency in Arabic, plus intermediate level French and German (the languages other than English that most research documents will be in), and some programs even 'suggest' adding an additional relevant language, like, say, Farsi (aka what they speak in Iran). Oh, no, really, I don't think so.

~ Besides, if I got a Ph.D., in anything at all, I'd become even more of the Resident Islam Expert Who Knoweth All There Is About Yonder Muslims and Must Therefore Be Asked All Sorts of Dumb Questions About How to Solve the Palestine Thing and Why Muslims Dress Funny. The title of Expert conferred by a Ph.D. just might not be quite my cup of tea, especially in the direction, and at the rate of speed thereto, I'm going with the Islam-thing.

~ Which means I have NO IDEA what I'm Supposed To Be Doing With My Life. (Do any of us, really?) Though having a plan would be, well, somewhat useful.

~ Which brings me back to storytelling - and what the dickens do stories have to do with a Ph.D. anyway? (That's not a rhetorical question, by the way.)

~ Oh, and the best compliment I've received in a very long time: a friend who's known me quite a while told me he's glad that I'm finally (again)giving expression to the liberal-creative-hippie genes I inherited from my parents. Yep, so am I; I feel more 'myself' than I have in quite some time.

~ And to throw a bit of randomness in: I miss fireflies. No, really, I do. When I was in Ohio last, at a friend's house one evening, there were lightning bugs just everywhere. I know they exist here, but I've not actually SEEN any in a very long time. That was lovely. Stars, too; too much light pollution - and just darn pollution - in this city to see very many of these. But at the IMA gardens last week, while I was sitting reading, I had a mayfly (or something resembling one) land on my hand and sit there for about five minutes, doing mayfly-things like wiping its face and twitching its wings and, well, pooping (eh, I have cats, I've stepped in worse). Watching it was...humbling.

Kinetic Wind Sculptures

2009-07-01T14:09:00.003-04:00

There's a famous artist's work (or derivatives thereof) currently being exhibited throughout the city; I've seen two of these sculptures so far, both at Monument Circle. One of them, a pair of circles that move slowly and independently of each other, I could use as a meditation foci, it's so enthralling.

The exhibit information...

One Beautiful Evening... A Story

2009-06-25T22:20:00.012-04:00

Originally posted June 2009, removed, reposted here.

------------------------------------

There was a devout nun in the fifteenth century who decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and she belonged to an order that wore bags over their heads. And the mother superior told the nun that if she walked through the countryside with a bag on her head, she would scare people. But the nun insisted, so the mother superior allowed to her to walk around and around the cloister, every day for three years until she covered the equivalent distance to the Holy City. At the end of her journey the nun was so exhausted that she collapsed. (Laurie Anderson, from "On the Way to Jerusalem", The Ugly One With the Jewels

One beautiful evening in the garden on Eden
A snake came walking in the twilight
He was leaning on his ivory cane
And he said, let me tell you a little secret about life
There's a certain sharpness to a knife, or a diamond
Come here, Watch it glitter...

Oh beauty in all its' forms
Funny how hatred can also be a beautiful thing
When it's as sharp as a knife
As hard as a diamond
Perfect.
(Laurie Anderson, heavily excerpted from "One Beautiful Evening," Life on a String

Come with me, I'll tell you a story.

This story is about a nun, who, unlike the one I spoke of above, wore the bag that was the mark of her religious order not only into the countryside, but also into the town. She was, as one might expect, hated and feared by the townspeople for her oddness. One day, after the nun had been wandering about the town for many months, one of the bolder townspeople, sick unto death of seeing the nun and her bag, vigorously backed his oxcart into the nun's only wagon while in the bazaar parking area. Unfortunately, there were no witnesses that cared to claim they'd seen anything at all.

After this, the nun got the point. She took off her bag and went back to her mother superior, but the other nuns would not let her back in to the monastery because she had broken one of the cardinal rules of her order by taking off the bag.

So she decided to return to the town, not because she wanted to, but because there wasn't much else around, if one wanted to eat regularly. She covered her baldness with a small triangle of cloth, locally called a 'bandana', so the townspeople wouldn't stare as much, until her hair grew back in. The last time I talked to her, she had decided to take a break from being a nun. In fact, she was taking a break from all of her regular devotions for a while, though she still regularly argued with God about all the mother superiors and their bags.

Did you enjoy my story? I hope so. I was hoping not to sadden you yet again, my dear readers, but I thought you might like to hear this particular story.

Because history has stories that we half remembered, and most of them never even get written down. And so when they say things like “We’re gonna do this by the book”, you have to ask “What book?”, because it would make a big difference if it was Dostoyevsky or just, you know, Ivanhoe. (Laurie Anderson, from "Same Time Tomorrow," The Ugly One With The Jewels

Something to think on

2009-06-02T17:50:00.001-04:00

"When we think we have the truth, we have abandoned the mystery of God."

Orthodox Paradox - Noah Feldman

2009-06-01T12:59:00.003-04:00

This article by Noah Feldman, an Orthodox Jew who argues for a more inclusive view within his tradition, and who incidentally married a non-Jewish woman (to the great horror of the entire Orthodox community), discusses the tensions between trying to follow his faith tradition and being a thinking, rational, compassionate human being. I rather identify with what he has to say, including the reaction of his Orthodox community to his non-traditional opinions; it reminds me of my own complaints in an earlier post here on trying to be a traditional modern Muslimah. Not that I'm equating this small endeavor with the work of this well-published scholar...

...just read the article, already.

Indiana farmers markets to accept food stamps

2009-05-29T15:42:00.003-04:00

It's about time. I knew I liked this (Republican) governor, but he was starting to really disappoint me. This makes up for it.

A bill signed into law this month opens the way for farmers markets to accept EBT food stamps (the debit-card system that replaced the paper stamps some years ago). Twenty EBT machines are supposed to be in place by the end of the year; realistically, there will probably not be significant implementation until next farmers-market season. So while I won't benefit personally, this is a great step in exactly the right direction.

Athens' farmers market has had an EBT food-stamp card swipe machine (insert technical name here) for a year or so. It's quite simple: there's one card swipe machine thing at a central kiosk, and you enter the amount of benefits you want to redeem, as if you were making a regular food purchase anywhere, and in exchange you get a handful of $1 tokens you can use to pay for your purchases. Nearly all the vendors (that is, of those who offer products you can use food stamps to buy) do accept the tokens, which they later redeem for their cash. I hope that the system that Indiana sets up will be as easy to use, and as successful. And that more states catch on.

A Black White Girl

2009-04-26T13:29:00.007-04:00

As I've mentioned before in this blog, most people, in public, have been indifferent about me and my appearance. But a significant number have no shame to express exactly how much they dislike me because of how I dress; it's frequently communicated through disgusted (and worse) looks but as the weather warms, people seem to be more and more vocal about what they think. These people - and I'm now encountering at least one of them nearly every time I go out shopping, regardless of what part of town I'm in - do not even offer me the courtesy of making their comments to my face, so that I can properly answer them. Rather they talk in my presence as if I am not there, like you'd do about an animal or an object, or perhaps an infant. And yes, they do know I can hear and understand them; I have never been mistaken for foreign, and when I have addressed them no one has ever been surprised that I speak English, and without an accent. No, they just don't give a crap - and probably WANT me to hear them so that I know exactly how hated I am. When I became fed up with pretending "that didn't just happen," I started addressing them. Nothing is useful; I've tried a friendly hello-how-are-you, I've tried politely pointing out that I can indeed hear them, and I've tried more direct approaches (last night I called a particularly insulting woman a bigot, and no, I'm not proud of it) and the only response is that they either insult me further or laugh in my face, literally. What kind of people are these? What kind of place fails to instill even the most basic of human courtesies in its native sons and daughters, especially a place that so prides itself on its deeply Christian heritage and identity?

When I first moved here I tried to ignore rude people, tried to handle the situation as if it were high school (they're just ignorant, they're just insecure) but it's gotten worse than that by far. People are less rude now, and far more cruel. It's not ignorance, it's simple, potent hatred. I don't know what's changed, whether it has to do with spring somehow, or if I've misjudged the negative impact of some item in international news. Maybe they're taking their Obama-hatred out on me.

A Black friend who lives in Southeastern Ohio - also not the most welcoming place for anyone not-white - tells me that what I've been experiencing sounds a lot like the racism she has to deal with: that I now know a little about what the American Black experience is like.

In response I'm becoming a person I don't want to be. She advised me to make du'a (pray) for those people who are hateful, but if I ask for anything other than a cosmic two-by-four for them (and I don't mean enlightenment) my prayer is insincere. I'm suspicious of people; if this number of people that I randomly pass actually express their hatred towards me, how many others are thinking the same thing. I'm beginning to hate the people here and not only the place.

I'm going to have to do something, though, for my own sanity. Two evenings in a row this week I've come home crying and furious (punch-holes-in-walls angry) because of the people I encountered. Last night I actually wanted to get into a physical fight with that woman whom I called a bigot - I who have never been in a fight in my life. If I don't find a better way to manage, I'm going to hurt someone, probably myself. And if I capitulate and take off my identifying clothes and hijab for a conformist persona, then in my psyche they've won: I will not only resent everyone around me even more, I will also enter more deeply into depression because all of that anger I'm feeling will turn inward, adding to my feelings of failure and weakness.

And, honestly, I was just starting to think that Indianapolis wasn't all that bad after all, that there was a possibility that I could carve out a tolerable niche for myself here.

Perhaps I could, but only if I stopped dressing like a Muslim.

Ancient Egyptian Monotheism (If All Peoples Received a Prophet, What Happened to Egypt?)

2009-04-20T13:26:00.002-04:00

I’m reading a book I picked up at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the fall, in connection with an exhibition of Egyptian artifacts. This exhibit was generally interesting, but there was one element that really struck me, which neither the docent nor anyone else from the museum could illuminate: among the royal artifacts there were items found buried with Akhenaten, the ‘heretic pharaoh.’ Among these were shabtis and other items with traditional symbolic significance (which I do not unfortunately remember exactly). These items were part of the traditional system of Egyptian worship which Akhenaten largely rejected in favor of worship of the One God, represented as the sun disc Aten. But why were these items included in his grave goods? Did Akhenaten allow them to be prepared for his tomb, or were they a last-minute addition by someone close to him who never fully accepted his ideas?

Akhenaten is a fascinating person, and the degree to which he was actually a monotheist (and not a pantheist) is debatable, though many see him as a precursor to monotheism, or suggest he was strongly influenced by the religion of the Hebrews during their time in Egypt. But this book suggests that a type of monotheism existed in Egypt long before Akhenaten championed the concept of one God. (The book, originally published in 1899, is “Egyptian Religion: Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life,” by E.A. Wallis Budge. Budge was a respected Egyptologist at the British Museum for many years; I would trust, then, that this book is well-researched and accurate, for the late 1800s at least.)

The author begins the book by stating that, long before the polytheistic system we are familiar with developed, Egyptians believed in a single God, “self-existent, immortal, invisible, eternal, omniscient, almighty…the maker of the heavens, earth, and underworld; the creator of the sky and sea, men and women, animals and birds…and the incorporeal beings who were the messengers that fulfilled his wish and word” (p. 1). This idea of the High Creator God is found, he says, in the literature of every period of Egyptian history, including during the height of the polytheistic priesthood system. He identifies this Deity by the name or attribution ntr (which he Anglicizes to Neter for ease of pronunciation, though the vowels are actually unknown). While there is no agreement on the exact meaning of this word, he does point to the ancient Coptic Nuti, which likewise referred to the One God and is translated as ‘God’ or ‘Lord’. (Coptic grew out of the same root language as Egyptian and other Middle Eastern languages and dialects; the author calls ancient Coptic an Egyptian dialect.)

Tracing the development of Egyptian religion (as limited as our knowledge of early beliefs and practices is), the author then links ntr (as the One God) with the named god Ra, and describes the deities that developed within the Egyptian religious system – the neteru, translatable as ‘gods’ – as “only forms, manifestations, and phases” of the One God, Ra (p. 17).

The relationship between Ra and the other gods he describes is very much like the Hindu system: One Self-Existent Creator God (Brahma) whose attributes and activities are gradually accreted into the form of what seem to be separate gods, but which are actually emanations of, and one with, the One God. To outside observers and to lay worshipers, particularly as this system developed a formal priesthood and temple culture, these named attributes of God lost their symbolic nature and became understood as a pantheon of separate beings, although the core idea of Oneness is still present, known to those who deeply study the religion.

The idea that Egypt, long before the religion we all (think we) know, was primarily monotheistic, albeit with folk practices that tended toward recognition of lesser city or household gods, overturns the Western tendency to think of ‘primitive’ peoples as being solely, and simplistically, polytheistic, and ‘advanced, civilized’ peoples as having adopted the morally-superior idea of monotheism.

Of course I have no idea how true these hypotheses are, but I’m intrigued to think that perhaps Egypt did receive prophets early in history, and that the idea of monotheism and the Unity of God that these prophets brought was not wholly lost after all.

Out of unhappiness, Light

2009-04-16T17:39:00.010-04:00

Those of you in/from/familiar with Athens, Ohio are also familiar in some way with the persons and work of Art and Peggy Gish, Christian peace activists who yearly spend time in Iraq (Peggy) and Palestine (Art) with the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

After I moved to Indiana, I began reading Art's books; I'd had an older title of his, "Beyond the Rat Race," for a couple of years, but it was never the right time to read it. I finally did. It was like a little (nonviolent) revolution within my soul. It spoke to questions I was asking, about the direction of my life and of modern American life in general, and about what really brings happiness.

Most recently, I picked up a copy of "At-Tuwani Journal," a follow-up to "Hebron Journal," from Art himself at the Farmer's Market last time I was in Athens. This book is about his experiences living in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani, south of Hebron, as a Christian Peacemaker Team member. While it does go into much detail about the sufferings of these Palestinians under the Israeli Occupation, Art also discusses his own internal struggles to love the Israeli settlers and the military, and to face his own fears in response to the leading of God in what are often dangerous situations.

Though his Christian faith is primary, Art embraces the Jewish and Muslim faiths as well; we are all three spiritually children of Abraham, and we worship the very same God, despite our doctrinal differences. While this is a difficult or impossible concept for many practicing Jews, Christians and Muslims to truly accept, I've come to a very similar understanding of the interconnectedness of our faiths. Indeed, one of the truths that drew me strongly into Islam is that God sent a prophet to every - EVERY - people on Earth, not only to the Jews, and not only the prophets whose identity we know from scriptures. The outward forms of the Message differed, but the Message itself - basically. the Oneness of God, and God's Mercy and Love toward humanity - were affirmed by every prophet. As Muslims, one of the primary tenets of faith is that we acknowledge and believe in all the prophets that preceded Muhammad (peace), and in the unity of their Message, though it seems to me that there is little practical application of this truth.

I know that this unitarian view of religion is uncommon for modern Muslims to have, and I know that I'm putting myself out on a limb, socially speaking, by saying so. But no, I don't believe that one must be a Muslim to gain access to Heaven; my understanding of God is much broader than that. I'm not saying "anything goes." Each person is responsible for the question of faith in their own hearts, and is responsible to follow obediently and wholeheartedly that which God calls them to. Sincerity and openness to God are key. As is actually LIVING what one is called to.

I've also recognized that I am, mostly, a pacifist. Long before I was Muslim, the words of the Dalai Lama about nonviolence and peace opened a door in my heart to another way of living. What I have learned during my time in Indiana, from Art Gish's words as well as the words of many others, has escorted me through that door. I say that I am 'mostly' a pacifist, though, because I'm not honestly sure how I would choose to respond in a situation that immediately threatened my life or the life of someone nearby; perhaps violent response is so ingrained in me by my culture that I don't have another answer at this point. And don't ask me about World War 2 - I believe that a pro-active response from the nations of the world would have stopped the evil that was to come, and would have headed off war, but as this pro-active stance was largely absent from the progression of events that led up to war, I do not know what else could have been done. However, this is an exceptional case in the history of human warfare and violence, and does not contradict my conviction that war brings far more suffering than any good it does.

This time in Indiana - with all of its difficulty and depression and isolation - has been superb for my inward personal development. I'm still not happy about it all, but I recognize that God did have, and does have, a purpose for me being here. My experiences here have not been by chance, nor is it coincidental that I am working for a Christian organization.

To bring this post full circle, what I have been learning from God through Art's unique experiences and struggles is not only how close we all are spiritually. His obedience to the leadings of God, his stubbornness to actively stand up for what is right and just in the face of a powerful oppressor (and to try to love the oppressors at the same time), and his commitment to active interfaith dialogue (as opposed to the flat, nonproductive type of 'interfaith dialogue' that we so often see) - all of these examples of lived, engaged Christianity are teaching me to be a better Muslim. I am also seeing that authentic Islam can likewise be active, loving, courageous, nonviolent, welcoming, even ecumenical, without losing that which makes Islam distinct. Engaging with those of different faiths can make me more wholly Muslim, not weaker in my faith, even though that engagement requires me to do the difficult work of loving, of accepting, and of enlarging my understanding of God.

no longer a free country

2009-04-03T22:30:00.011-04:00

I thought I grew up in a nation that valued personal freedom, the right to choose for oneself, the right to one's own religious expression, the right to be YOURSELF. I thought these rights were protected by that document Americans claim to hold in highest respect, The Constitution, named as if there is no other - as if no other document could ever reach the high standards ours does.

I was misled.

Perhaps we should change our Constitution to more accurately reflect the values we actually hold close: conformity, Christianity (preferably born-again), and self-righteousness as individuals and as our national identity.

For everyone in this city who has the nerve to greet me on the street, or smile in my direction, there's five who glare, scowl, look at me as if I'm a piece of shit on their shoe, mock me with jeers of "bin laden" or "suicide bomber", and tell their curious children that I'm some kind of monster.

I've had dreams lately where I've thrown off my hijab in disgust at one thing or another. This is why.

This treatment is also why the Muslim women here who wear hijab aren't often seen in public, and why the handful who wear niqab just don't leave their homes. I'm clearly stupid to be so stubborn. It gets me nothing but hatred piled on my head.

It would be so easy to change the way I dress, to better fit in, to draw less bile toward myself.

Yet I remain stubborn, because if I give in then I lose the bit of self respect I have left. That fragment is all I have to hold on to.

I would think this was a form of hatred confined to certain isolated and bigoted places, except that the same message, that 'you're not one of us and never will be,' is repeating itself across the entire country. Recent examples: proposed (though thankfully not passed into law) bills in two states banning all forms of headcovering on drivers license photos, ESPECIALLY hijab; this was taken quite seriously but was recognized as probably unconstitutional. The reports of banks, or bank employees, that require women to remove their hijab, conduct their banking in a 'separate-but-equal' back room out of sight of all other customers, or leave; there's been some backpedaling from a few of these banks when confronted, but much of that has sounded rather grudging. And, there's the public reaction to these events and others like it, which seems overwhelmingly to say that civil rights protections shouldn't apply to people who dress like (their idea of) terrorists, because the banks are right, we ragheads are indeed a threat. Particularly the women, since we're the visible ones. And this isn't really against the Constitution because we are all being treated the same: we Muslims must all conform, convert, or leave the country. (See? Fair and equal treatment.)

And I'll be glad to oblige them, at least the local bigots: I'll be relieved to finally leave this place in a few months, and stop being such a threat to their uniformity. Ohio bigots will seem charming in comparison.

Let Your Computer Pray Fajr For You!

2009-03-28T15:54:00.002-04:00

This was featured on the NPR show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" (my second favorite, after "A Prairie Home Companion").

There's a new online service that prays for you, currently only in English but they are working on other languages (presumably including Arabic). The site, still new, caters to Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims in particular. For Muslims, you can subscribe to have the Fajr (pre-dawn) prayer prayed electronically on your behalf. (Please point your speakers toward Mecca to make sure God hears you.)

Now if they'd just begin to offer all five prayers, in Arabic, with your choice of suras. Of course, first they have to figure out that in any salat you need to recite a a sura in ADDITION to the Fatiha and that you need to do this more than ONCE per prayer!

And then you'd need the Shi'a package as well, with the Shi'a adhan and an option to have five times for prayer or combine them and only do three sessions (hey, maybe that would be cheaper...)

If you belonged to certain schools of Buddhism - I know, for example, that the Tibetan Buddhists do this - then having someone else 'automatically' send up prayers on your behalf would be valid (ie, the electronic version of the prayer flags and prayer wheels, which send prayers constantly out on the air). But there's no Buddhist option on the site, oh the irony.

Please share my amusement: www.informationageprayer.com

Carbon Offsets for Fun and Profit

2009-03-10T10:54:00.009-04:00

This article from the latest Stanford Social Innovation Review talks about whether the growing practice (and industry) of individuals buying carbon offsets, to offset their flights or their SUV or whatever they feel guilty for, is actually benefiting the environment. There's a danger that those who purchase offsets to offset their feelings of guilt about their carbon footprint may then feel justified by producing even more carbon emissions. Want an SUV but don't want the carbon guilt? Just spend $100 or so on offsets, and drive, drive, drive! If it were a wholly-conscious decision process, yeah, it would be hypocrisy. But most people don't think about it in such blatant terms.

What truly surprised me, though, was not this rebound behavior, but the fact that some carbon-offset resellers are for-profit companies. This shouldn't surprise me, but I assumed that of course an activity that is ostensibly for the sole purpose of environmental protection would have nonprofit status. On the other hand, after a quick look at the North American resellers, some of the for-profit providers funnel a higher percentage of offset-purchases into projects than some of the non-profits.

The website Carbon Catalog reviews carbon-offset resellers, reviews the projects that these offsets are funding for efficacy and sustainability, and allows you to search for offset resellers in your country. Resellers from around the world are included. If you're interested in pricing or purchasing carbon offsets for a particular trip/activity/event, or just to try to balance your personal carbon footprint, this is an excellent resource and place to start. You can search by providers and by projects (wind, solar, biomass, efficiency, forestation, etc). Do you want to plant trees in Israel (if so, choose Go Neutral) or would you rather support your favorite organic dairy producer's solar energy (Stonyfield Farm Solar Array)? For a more mainstream approach, the well-advertised (for-profit) TerraPass, based in San Francisco, offers one of the less expensive offset options at about $13 per ton, and invests heavily in methane from biomass and industrial methane.

While this site doesn't have as much information on the cost efficiency or sustainability of these projects as I'd like to see, it's at least a good beginning toward making informed choices about what carbon offset programs are better choices, in environmental terms, than others, and helps you see what your Bali-vacation-guilt-dollars actually supports.

Defended...on the bus?!

2009-03-10T10:28:00.004-04:00

For the official record, I still don't much care for the city. But having discovered the local-and-organic food scene here, it's become a less unhappy situation. And, if my Indy Turkish Muslim friends are reading, you know it's not you : )

Anyway, I thought I should offer a touch of balance to my bleak assessment of the city and how it is treating me. To be fair.

A few weeks ago, I was riding the bus toward downtown making my way (eventually) home for the evening; it was about 5:30pm so the bus was completely full. One guy seated at the front of the bus on the 'sideways' seats, a couple of rows in front of me, was generally and loudly talking trash. When he caught sight of me, I could just see his eyes light up in recognition of the perfect target. And predictably, he began by rhetorically asking me if I'm from Iraq and continuing with comments involving suicide bombers and the like. There's no dialoguing with someone who wants only to spew ignorance and hate, so I just glared at the back of the seat in front of me, alert to the (small) possibility that he or someone else - as pretty much the entire bus was now staring at me - might choose to take things beyond talk.

This lasted a minute or less. A woman sitting near him, who looked like she could, well, break him in half, and wouldn't really mind doing so if this continued, told him to SHUT. UP.

And he did. Completely.

Why I Don't Like Indianapolis, Part 1

2009-01-12T13:45:00.003-05:00

... part one of what may be many, if I decide to actually vent my frustrations with this place.

My roommate recently subscribed to the newspaper, the IndyStar, Indiana's largest paper. I noticed this morning that there is a Bible verse on the masthead. Oh, yes, there is. Mentions "the Lord" and everything. This was a touch shocking, but I thought, all right, I already knew I'm in The Midwest, where Everyone Is Christian and Shouldn't You Be Too.

Then, as I was searching for a story on another topic, I came across a story from last week from the local CBS affiliate: "Daily Prayer Doesn't Make Cut for Star". The newspaper decided to drop the daily prayer from its pages, which has turned out to be an unpopular move. One local pastor interviewed for the story said,

"If five percent of the population is Atheist and non-believers, God bless them. But then, when you add all those people who pray, regardless of who they call God, the representative culture is something 90-95 percent of people who believe in prayer. So not only do I question this at a spiritual level, I question if this is a good business decision for the Star."

Um, do Indy's Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, pagans, and everyone else who "pray, regardless of who they call God" actually miss the daily prayer in their newspaper? I don't have an objective answer, since no one who isn't Christian was interviewed for the story.

What truly bothers me about the story, though, is that 93 comments have been left on the online forum about this article. About 80 of these comments were strongly against removing the daily prayer from the paper. About five comments were completely off topic. Leaving perhaps seven or eight comments supportive of or neutral about removing it, most of which were written by one person who responded to the vitriolic comments written about her evilness.

Where am I, again? It sometimes seems like a bad dream I can't wake from.

Being In Indiana

2009-01-12T13:25:00.006-05:00

I've not posted in months because I was planning for moving, moving, and getting acclimated to Indianapolis. For the record, I don't like it. I don't like it, a lot. More than I can say. Which is why I haven't written: it would primarily be a list of unhappinesses and complaints, and, while I still have all my complaints intact, I've adapted enough to begin to work around them.

My most frequent comment to myself these days is the advice, "Oh, just get over yourself." This is a fantastically adaptive phrase that applies to complaints about local driving habits, bus schedules, roommate friction, neighbors with loud stereos, my personal appearance, homesickness ... I could continue but you get the idea. The phrase doesn't make me actually feel better about the situation but it does help me retain the broader context around my suffering. Or rather, what I perceive as my suffering, since I don't mean to sound like a self-important git whose life is all kinds of awful.

No, it's just all kinds of not-fulfilling-my-wishes and being generally not what I'd hoped for. But such is life sometimes.

Though I am getting a bit tired of being not only stared at, but occasionally LAUGHED at in public, because of my hijab. I have never been openly laughed at before, by adults (drunk undergraduates don't count). No wonder I never see other muhajabat in public; they've learned that it's best to just stay home, or travel in groups. And no wonder so many Muslim women here who do work outside the home, don't wear hijab. People aren't hostile, they're just...demeaning. Like being an uncool kid in high school again. And my response is much the same: withdraw, wait it out, and when that fails, try to pretend I'm not actually here. Which isn't so difficult, since those who aren't staring at me are often trying to pretend there isn't a real, live Muslim in front of them. No, really, I've watched it happen.

Yeah, I do need to get over myself. And out of Indiana.

Meep the Mighty Stalker meets Amma the Unconscious

2008-05-29T13:46:00.007-04:00

~

The kittens are about 7 months old now : )

Trying to be a traditional modern Muslimah

2008-04-02T16:22:00.005-04:00

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I've been studying Islamic law, mostly from the Shafi'i point of view, for six or seven months now. Pretty much just the basics - ritual purity and prayer, paying zakat, lawful and unlawful food, and the guidelines of interacting with the opposite gender. It's mostly interesting, often frustrating, and occasionally downright maddening, particularly when it comes to certain issues relating to women.

The shariah law (and the Qur'an and traditions it's based on) was established a long time ago, in a culture in which it was assumed that women would live with their families until they married, then if they were divorced or widowed they would return to their families or live with extended family or grown children. (Not that women could not work outside the home, or own a business, but rather those activities would normally take place within the larger culture in which people just didn't live by themselves, they lived with their families, whether blood related, adoptive, or by marriage.) That's a nice idea, and sometimes I wish we'd return to a closer approximation of that close family-based society. But that situation, the environment in which the shariah law was developed, does not correspond with "Western" culture at all, and this causes problems for women trying to live with respect for traditional law within these postmodern cultures. Some succeed by cloistering themselves in communities of like-minded Muslims, marrying relatively early and staying at home as housewives and mothers. Good for them, but that pattern does not work for all of us, especially, ESPECIALLY for converts with no Muslim family, who want to complete their education before marrying and who may even (gasp!) pursue a career as well as be a wife and mother.

So what's the problem? For one thing, shariah law doesn't know what to do with a woman independent of husband or family, who has to work to take care of herself. Traditional law requires her to obtain permission from her closest male relative or husband to travel without him outside her town. Even then, it doesn't allow for her to travel very far outside her city, or to be away from her home without a close male relative (father or brother, or son if she has a child old enough to fill this role) for more than 3 nights. Some traditional viewpoints don't allow a woman to travel outside of her city without a male guardian at all, but I consider that position to be truly too extreme to be enforceable, or reasonable, in any but the most traditional Islamic cultures in which women are still under the constant guardianship of a father or husband.

Without this male guardian, the only place the woman trying to observe the tenets of Islamic law could travel to for an extended stay would be the home of her close relatives. (But only if they don't do forbidden things in their home like drink alcohol or watch R-rated movies!) For those of us in graduate school, that means no out-of-state conferences if they're longer than the time permissible, no vacations with girlfriends, and absolutely no overseas travel.

And how does one even begin to apply shariah law to the woman who goes off to college by herself and lives with non-Muslim roommates? Or who has no family in her town and lives alone, working full time? If the law assumes she will live with family or be married, most women in Western cultures fall outside the scope of the law. Like me. Sometimes I get the impression, studying traditional jurisprudence, that until I'm safely married to a conservative Muslim man, everything I do, from school to work to every moment of my travel, is all haraam. This isn't the case, of course; Islam was not meant to be impossible, and it was not revealed in order to force all of us into a very narrow cultural mold. Shariah law, though based upon holy texts, is itself man-made (in the literal sense! by males), which Muslims seem to forget more and more the farther they get in time from the scholars who actively and rigorously debated the principles of the law so many centuries ago.

This is only one example of why the scholars of Islam, the trained and qualified teachers and jurists, need to enter into new discussions of how to apply the principles embodied by shariah law, in ways that respect the values enshrined in the law and in the texts it is inspired by, while accepting that most of us now live in cultures very different from the ones that shariah law was developed within. Let me make this point very clear: I am not, am not, am not advocating a wholesale rejection of tradition and traditional law. When one does that, the substance that the law points to is also lost forever. There is value in the thoughts and rulings of the ancient scholars, they are to be respected as our forebears in a long lineage of Muslim scholarship, not dismissed as irrelevant old men.

While I fear the excesses and loss of depth - of meaning - that other religions that have "reformed" and "modernized" have experienced in exchange for bringing their religion into conformity with contemporary culture, I fear as much the effects of fossilization upon a Muslim community trying to live within contemporary culture. The modernizers are already at work within Islam, encouraging us to discard everything except a fragile shell of the religion by telling us that the "heart" of the faith, usually called "compassion" or "love" or something else that sounds important, is the only thing that actually matters. These rituals we traditionalists cling to are all for show, all basically empty, and we are now "mature" enough to let go of them. We don't need to dress modestly, because modesty is really only "in the heart." We don't need to perform the daily ritual prayer, because prayer is an inner conversation with God and has nothing to do with ritual or outward expression. We don't need to fast, because we are now intellegent enough to understand the benefits of self discipline and we all know about the awful plight of the poor through the likes of those charity infomercials featuring starving African children. Islam, like some forms of "modern" Judaism and Christianity, is thus reduced to some pithy homilies and a lot of talk about philosophy, but minimal practice of putting into action the values we say we live by.

I would rather conform to old-school rules about when and where I can travel, about whether or not I may shake hands with a non-Muslim man, about what my proper role as a woman is, than to lose the meaning and the depth - that precious, undescribable sense of value and fulfillment - that the shariah as a body of law points to. As one of my teachers says, physical actions have spiritual effects, and it may be that a practice that one sees as irrelevant to modern life may actually have a profound impact upon one's spiritual life, over time.

This is the careful, knife's-edge balance that any scholar attempting successful religious reform has to attain. Most fall off in one direction or the other, to the side of non-negotiable tradition or the side of hollow assimilation. It is our responsibility to keep the shariah a living body of knowledge; not being a qualified scholar (and not likely to ever attain that level) I cannot do the work of reform myself. What I can do is to embrace the shariah, to learn it, to try to live it, and to then challenge my teachers and other scholars to understand the law in new ways, through my own experiences of living it.

If you, my unknown audience, find that you agree with anything I've said, then I challenge you to try it. If you don't have a qualified teacher nearby - a teacher from a strong lineage of other teachers - you can learn online. SunniPath, http://www.sunnipath.com/, has an excellent online academy with discounted tuition for full-time students, and the possibility of financial aid if you can't afford it otherwise. SunniPath even has a YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/SunniPathAcademy, where you can check out some of their material. I highly recommend Shaykh Hamza Karamali - he opened my eyes to the value of sacred knowledge, and is a good teacher and is very approachable. I've also heard excellent things about other teachers and other sites, so if SunniPath doesn't appeal to you then ask around, inshallah God will lead you to the teacher that is best for you.

Long awaited kitten pictures!

2008-02-12T17:17:00.002-05:00

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Since I've had one of my cats since October, I suppose it's time I included them here!

Meep (shown here at about 5 weeks old) is an utterly sweet fluffy black kitten with accents of silver, and the most adorable tufts of fur on his ears I've ever seen. He was rescued from under a porch, at perhaps 2 weeks of age, the only survivor of a litter that had the misfortune of being born right before an early cold snap. We're not sure how he survived the night before he was found, warmed and fed. He was not quite weaned when he came into my care, so he and I struggled together to get him drinking from a dish, then slurping soft food, then (finally) eating dry food. His face is a bit flattish, which seems to have made the process more difficult than it usually is - he'd try to put his mouth in the dish, but his nose would end up submerged too - so he ended up trying to drown rather than drinking, poor thing. It was a bit like taking care of an infant for the first few weeks. Since he's been in human company from such an early age, mostly mine, he's closely bonded to me; even though he adores Amma (whom I got to keep him company when I'm out) he's like a puppy when I get home, and one of his favorite activities is napping in my lap. How can I not find him utterly sweet?

Amma, shown here at about four months of age (a little over a month ago), you know a little about from my post in December when she joined the household. She was wary for a while, but is starting to really warm to me and can be just as affectionate (and as much a lap hog) as Meep, but on her own terms. She'll often sit on a cushion across from me and stare intently at me with wide open eyes but no expression. Sometimes I wonder if she's trying to put me under hypnosis... must-give-Amma-lots-of-yogurt-and-fish-must...
The final picture shows the both of them playing, about a month ago. Meep looks more like a cat and less like an alien now, no?

What an overhead abaya looks like

2008-02-12T12:52:00.001-05:00

This is an open overhead abaya, much like the one that journalist Danielle Crittenden wore (see the Abaya Monologues series of posts).

The photo on the left is from Al Hediya's website, www.alhediya.com.

The overhead abaya on the right is shown worn with a niqab, and is from Desert Boutique, www.thedesertboutique.com.

Both sites are retailers based in Kuwait. It's possible Crittenden ordered from one of these shops - she described receiving a rather unusual-looking package from Kuwait - though I know for certain she did not order from the online retailer she named as her source - Al Hannah - because Al Hannah is not based in Kuwait but in the U.S., and ships from Connecticut, as is clearly explained on Al Hannah's website. Sloppy, sloppy journalism.

The Abaya Monologues, conclusion

2008-02-12T12:44:00.001-05:00

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A North American “healthy lifestyle” and fundamentalist Islam do not go together very well, at least if you’re a woman. Or maybe its followers do not believe any North American lifestyle can be described as healthy. Either way, I was darned if I was going to miss my workout.

Now I am becoming exasperated with her assumptions. This anti-American attitude that she assumes conservative Muslim women have is incorrect and arrogant on her part. Aside from that, many covering women go to the gym, have exercise regimens, and pay close attention to their health and the health of their families. They just don’t usually exercise in mixed company. Crittenden is quite correct to point out that full abaya and niqab is not conducive to a proper workout. That’s why women don’t usually exercise in their full overgarments. There are many options for covered women – especially in the greater Washington D.C. area, where she lives - including women-only gyms, women’s nights at regular gyms, routines one can do at home, brisk walking (which can be done in overgarments), and even private women-only classes offered by community organizations. Crittenden’s decision to work out in her full overgarments would be considered a little silly, even eccentric, among many Muslim women.

She ends her article with a series of experiments testing the limits of tolerance in her city. She carries a black backpack and acts suspiciously on the train, she buys a one-way refundable ticket at the airport while acting nervous, she observes the reactions of Washingtonians around her as she goes about her day. She is astonished at the general lack of reaction she receives from those around her, and questions if perhaps tolerance has gone too far. Not only is it not particularly helpful to actual Muslims that she spent a week trying to get people to react to her with antagonism, she seems to believe that people SHOULD react with fear or hostility to a covered Muslim woman because it’s possible she’s a terrorist and ought to be treated like one.

In the end, her conclusions that Muslim women in conservative garments are submissively oppressed by the patriarchal order, and that their garments effect the erasure of their individualism and identity, is based solely on Crittenden’s own expectations. She began with the question, What is daily life like for an Islamist woman? However, she did not even begin to answer this question. None of her experiences in abaya and niqab are at all relevant to the question; it is impossible to draw generalizations from such subjective and uninformed experiences. The only way she could have drawn anything useful from this week-long experiment would have been if she’d spent time talking to women who do wear conservative garments about their experiences, thoughts, and motivations. If she had, she might have actually learned something.

The Abaya Monologues, part 2

2008-02-12T12:38:00.001-05:00

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As she begins her first day in her new clothes, she complains that her peripheral vision is impaired and that her niqab keeps slipping up her face into her eyes as she moves. Only if you wear the niqab incorrectly – that is, with no idea of how is supposed to fit – do you end up with impaired vision and an uncomfortable, slipping niqab.

I’d finally mastered how to pin my face-mask and cloak to each other so they wouldn’t slip all over the place.

This is what I mean by wearing it incorrectly: you don’t pin them together like this. There’s a good reason for that - it doesn’t work. And from her description of how the niqab slips into her eyes as she moves her head, it clearly isn’t working for her either. Anyone who does wear niqab could show her in minutes how to wear it so that it wouldn’t slip. If you’re going to pin them together, you need an underscarf to anchor everything, which she has apparently decided to omit. The argument that the niqab cuts off vision is commonly raised in support of banning the niqab, for public safety. However, most niqabs do NOT interfere with peripheral vision, nor do they usually slip up into one’s eyes. They are designed not to. Even women who cover their eyes with one of the niqab’s layers don’t have their vision seriously impaired; it’s like wearing a dark pair of sunglasses. (Of course, it’s possible to wear these items in a way that would cut off peripheral vision or block your sight – such as wearing too many layers over the eyes or covering the eyes at night - but that’s not inherent to the niqab nor is this how women usually wear them.)

Crittenden tries to wear the abaya and niqab while eating breakfast in her kitchen because, as she acknowledges, if she were Muslim she wouldn’t have to wear the overgarments at home, except that her house is being renovated so there are unrelated men coming and going without warning. Fair enough, but in my experience most women who observe this level of covering would either close the kitchen door to the rest of the house and warn the foreman that workers must knock before entering the kitchen (giving a woman enough time to pull her abaya or headscarf over her face), or would simply take her coffee and cereal to another, private room of the house. A good excuse to take breakfast in bed, indeed. Instead, Crittenden tries to follow the strict letter of the law without applying her common sense to the matter.

But then, as I poured a bowl of cereal, I reached for that first delicious sip of milky coffee and … there was this huge black napkin in the way of my mouth! So I lifted up the bottom of the napkin and guess what? I could no longer see my coffee cup. How on earth do Islamist women eat and drink? I assume by fumbling blindly, which is what I did. I slowly manouevered the cup toward the mask’s concealed mouth hole and felt for its rim with my lips. Ah, the warm sensation … seeping into the fabric over my chin.

It is difficult to learn to eat and drink while wearing niqab, but many women successfully do. It’s a skill that takes practice to develop. However, since when do you need to see your coffee cup in order to get it to your mouth accurately? I’m also confused about her reference to the niqab’s “concealed mouth hole.” A niqab is essentially a flap of fabric covering the lower face, it does not have a ‘mouth hole’ in any sense.

The Abaya Monologues, part 1

2008-02-12T12:18:00.001-05:00

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No, I didn’t come up with that title – it’s the title of an article by Washington journalist Danielle Crittenden, who decided to wear a conservative-style abaya (overgarment) and niqab (face veil) during a week of her everyday life. She wanted to know what life is like for those “Islamist women” who wear these “oppressive” garments. (I’ll quote from parts of the longer article, which can be read as published by Canada’s National Post in December 2007, here.)

From the point of view of a Muslim woman who daily wears a moderate version of this “Islamic” attire (which I suspect she’d still consider oppressive!), and who has on occasion willingly worn something similar to the abaya/niqab combination Crittenden selected, this article has a number of inaccuracies and pitfalls that I cannot refrain from addressing.

The first problem I noticed with this article, the problem which forms the foundation for her experience in abaya/niqab and informs her commentary on it, is that Crittenden, like many journalists (and academics), does not bother to actually ask Muslim women about what it is like to wear these overgarments in their everyday life. She consults no one, and she does not offer any alternative points of view, she simply takes her own bias (that the garments are inherently and necessarily oppressive) and sets about to prove herself correct while veiling her obvious bias in the language of journalism.

Any new type of garment will require time and practice before one can move comfortably in it. If you have grown up wearing pants and then begin to wear skirts, there will be a learning curve over which you get used to the way the new garment moves and learn how to move in it and with it. The same idea holds true for a Muslim woman who adopts a headscarf, an abaya, a niqab, or even a long, loose skirt after being used to wearing shorter, fitted skirts. Crittenden does not take this required learning curve into account in her own experiment with Islamic overgarments, and the lack colors her experience.

Because Crittenden does not bother to consult anyone who actually wears these garments she does not know what she is buying nor how realistic these garments are for the average conservative (or, to use her language, “Islamist”) woman. Even in Saudi Arabia, stereotyped as a place where women wear only one kind of clothing in public, there is a staggering variety of styles and fabrics worn. Some of these are more practical or more popular than others. Crittenden, assuming she already knew what these women wear, chose one of the most conservative, least practical garments, an overhead abaya (called so because it falls from the top of the head to cover the entire body). This particular garment is not required of Saudi women, and only the most conservative or most traditional wear them regularly.

I had opted (blithely, in retrospect) for the most conservative, Saudi-style of abaya (i.e. velcro not included). So I improvise: I pull the top part over my head, as if I’m about to run out in the rain, and then tuck in another piece under my left shoulder so the front stays closed, sort-of.

The style she selected is not even sewn closed or fastened in the front, requiring the wearer to hold or pin it closed; most North American women who wear an overhead abaya opt for the kind that’s closed in the front, as it’s much more practical. In fact, most online retailers who sell these to the North American market warn shoppers that this is a somewhat difficult style to wear and that women new to the garment are advised to buy a closed style instead of the open. Crittenden also complains that there are no “Ikea-like diagrams with cheerful balloon people, suitable for all languages” to demonstrate how to wear the abaya enclosed with her order. This is hardly necessary since anyone buying an overhead abaya, which is not a ‘starter’ overgarment, really ought to already know what it is they are buying; additionally, photographs of the item on the websites Crittenden perused before making her purchase show clearly how the garment is supposed to be worn. It’s quite straightforward – you put the middle of the fabric at the face opening on the top of your head and put your hands through the openings on either side. That’s it.

She continues to baffle me by describing the clothes she’s chosen to wear beneath her abaya.

I’ve worn a black longsleeve t-shirt, yoga pants, and boots beneath the abaya (the closest thing I have in my wardrobe to colorless Arabic undergarments).

Just where did she get this idea? Sure, one should wear long pants/skirt under the abaya, as the abaya fabric will move around with you (especially the overhead style) and may reveal glimpses of your pants as you move (and better to reveal glimpses of your pants than of your bare legs!). But what are “colorless Arabic undergarments”? There’s no such concept. Women wear whatever they like under their abayas, whether they are Saudi or Arab or from wherever. Jeans are popular all over the world. Colorful clothing is extremely common, even expected. Muslim women who observe more conservative and dark-colored coverings in public do not forswear bright, even attractive clothing altogether, they simply cover it when in public. The idea that women are supposed to wear only black comes from her own imagination, not from fact. Even in Saudi Arabia, black overgarments are a matter of a hegemenous cultural tradition rather than law.

My unexpected Eid/Christmas/Birthday/Insert-Holiday-Here Present

2007-12-29T17:16:00.001-05:00

~
As my friend Barbara who is responsible for this new addition to my life has already described events better than I could, as I wasn't there, I'm going to quote from her narrative and my reply from her blog, Tigers and Strawberries. Besides, I should be working on my Sunnipath homework and I'm stalling so I ought be brief!

I'll get pictures soon, inshallah - or I'll try to if they sit still long enough : )

-------------------------------

... Saturday morning, we went out to eat at another restaurant–Jana’s–and had a great breakfast. We came out, and Zak and I got Kat strapped in her carseat, we jumped in our seats, and Zak turned on the engine. Right then, the sound of a great, piteous mewling filled our ears, and we were sure that a cat had gotten trapped in our engine.

He turned off the car, I jumped out of my seat, and out from under the car next to us–which was still unoccupied–popped a little tortoiseshell kitten head. She bounded out, and put her paw immediately on my knee, and mewed and purred. She was skinny, and had fleas, and ear mites, and was much younger than the two kittens from the night before–but she was adorable and friendly.

Well, so I thought. As I walked back across the street to Jana’s to ask if they knew if she belonged to someone, we passed two fishermen, whom the kitten tried to run from, and two old ladies coming out of the restaurant who scared her, too. Jana said she thought it had been dropped off–it seems to happen often out where the restaurant is–so I told Zak to call our vet who often fosters cats and finds them homes. The office was closed. Then, we drove the mile to another local vet office where we have had good dealings–but they were closed, too.

By now, the kitten was curled in my arms, purring mightily, and Zak and I had resigned ourselves to at least taking her in our home until we could find her another set of parents. She was charming, gorgeous and sweet.

And then it dawned on me. Heather wanted a friend for her first kitten.

So, we called her.

And we dropped by.

And the kitten has a new Mommy.

-------------------------------
To which I replied...

I am the recipient of the tortoise - she is indeed sweet and affectionate, and is getting along like gangbusters with my first kitten, Meep - also rescued, but not by Barbara. They’re very close to the same age and zoom around like crazed furballs, chasing each other, wresting and biting - the kinds of kitten play Meep desperately wanted from me that my tender human skin can’t handle!

The new kitten is named Amma, which I took primarily from the Arabic for mother - umm - a word closely related to ‘community’ (ummah) and ‘beloved’ (amat). And of course this basic word/sound is found in many other languages with similar maternal meanings, even in languages not closely related linguistically, which I think is pretty cool.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Barbara isn’t grooming me to be the next cat-lady-in-training, once she gets her official Weird Cat Lady union card I’m gonna need a bigger house.

------------------

I think I've got plenty of cats now. No, really, I'm done. I can stop whenever I want. Really.

Supplement to Eating Halal

2007-12-21T21:37:00.001-05:00

~
If you're in the U.S. and interested in finding pasture-raised, grass fed beef, lamb and goat, or eggs and dairy products from such cows and chickens, or even deer and game, check out Eat Wild, a site that has a directory of farms that meet their high standards for animal welfare, listed by state. Some of these farms even ship. You can also find restaurants that use products from these farms, and learn more about why pasturing is better for animals and for people.

Thanks to my dear friend Barbara Fisher of Tigers and Strawberries for bringing this site to my attention.

Is Halal Meat Halal? (or, Why Should I Care About a Cow?)

2007-09-11T22:30:00.001-04:00

~
(Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim, in the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful ~)

Those of you who have the questionable honor of knowing me in person know that I tend to be pretty outspoken (for a Muslim, anyway) about organic and locally raised meats. I believe that halal - religiously, ritually acceptable - meat means far more than whether the animal had the name of God recited while it was slaughtered. How the animal lived is far more important to me than how it died.

Now, this is a fairly unusual, even radical, statement for a Muslim. According to all the traditional scholars, and nearly all modern scholars are in agreement, halal meat = correctly slaughtered. That's it - only the slaughter process counts. There is more to it than just reciting the name of God: there's a long list of requirements surrounding the slaughter process, most of them with the goal of minimizing the animal's suffering (must use a very sharp knife, may not kill one animal in the sight of another, and so on).

Within the traditions of Islam there is expressed an unceasing concern for animal welfare. This goes so far as to assert, in one authenticated hadith, that an otherwise 'good' person who willfully neglects an animal in their care risks hellfire, and in another hadith, that an otherwise 'sinful' person who shows compassion to a suffering animal can find admission to heaven because of that one act. Taken together, along with rules around the care of livestock and slaughter, this suggests the heavy responsibility humans have toward animals - each of us as individuals, not only those who work with animals for a living.

As an average person living in an urban environment, I don't have much direct contact with or influence on animals other than my pet cat. But this doesn't excuse me from my responsibility, because I eat meat. I don't kill the animals I eat, I don't raise them, I have nothing to do with the process except for the end - but that part, what I buy, I DO have control over. And this is where my responsibility is. It is my responsibility to not only make sure (as I am able to) that the animals I eat for food lived and died with minimal suffering, but also to encourage farmers to treat their livestock well by "voting with my dollars" for those companies and farms that do, and not purchasing from industrial farms/corporations that abuse their livestock in order to make more profit from their lives and deaths.

On a more 'practical' level, as far as 'halal-ness', it is also well known that corporate farms feed their animals parts of other animals (and not the nice bits either - think blood, used litter and bits left over from 'processing'). I mentioned earlier that most predators are categorically not halal; feeding otherwise-halal species animal-based material as if they were predators calls their halal-ness into serious question.

The Fiqh Council of North America, a group of Muslim scholars who are well respected and qualified to issue fiqh rulings issued this preliminary ruling in 2001 declaring non-vegetarian-fed meat to be highly "doubtful" (a legal category that is just below "forbidden") and recommending that Muslims restrict their meat intake until this question can be further examined. (The issue has not been updated since, unfortunately.) This decision is significant because the FCNA is one of the only bodies of scholars in North America qualified to make authoritative religious rulings; most who answer Q&A about religious issues are not qualified to issue anything other than their educated opinion. Their decision can be found here.

This article, which is referenced in the FCNA decision but with a broken link, is also from 2001. Because of this, some of the precise details about feed regulations are not perfectly accurate, but the article as a whole is not only accurate but frightening. It also points out that a kosher certification does not guarantee a vegetarian diet.

Many Muslims think that a "halal" certification includes these factors such as the animal's diet. However, to achieve a halal certification a company needs only feed the livestock it slaughters a vegetarian diet for a short time before slaughter, and the halal certification process does not even consider the conditions an animal was raised in. Thus, it's legal for a "halal" company to purchase animals from a regular industrial farm, feed them grain for a few weeks, slaughter them and call them "halal". I'm not accusing any company or producer of this; we don't know what the actual practices are, and with the widespread ignorance about commercial meat production in this country, it's certainly possible that halal meat is not quite so halal. To my knowledge, no halal meat producer in the U.S. has thoroughly addressed the question, and I've never heard of organic halal meat being offered anywhere. I hope that I someday do.

In the meantime, I'll continue to eat organic or local/regional meat from trusted sources and reduce my consumption of non-organic/trusted meat (including Hebrew National hot dogs, sadly!). There's far more to the issue: I haven't touched on dairy production and I've said almost nothing about the actual conditions in which most food animals, dairy cows and laying chickens are kept for their entire lives. Nor have I discussed the routine use of antibiotics and hormones on food animals, or the "meat processing" process itself. If you want to read more than you ever wanted to know about U.S. commercial (and organic) meat, egg and dairy production, try "The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter" or check out my friend's blog, Tigers and Strawberries. In addition to food production editorial, she has a wealth of recipes, cooking lessons, and adorable cat and Kat (baby) pictures.

Displacement

2007-09-06T23:43:00.003-04:00

~
I said goodbye to another family whom I am close to tonight. They leave Sunday, insha Allah, but I will be returning from a conference in St. Louis (Global Fusion)and won't be able to see them off at the airport. They're driving to Dulles anyway, to avoid the baggage hassles of switching planes. I am very saddened because I cannot accompany them to the airport, as I did that for Anwar and for Fattmah, and Amel (and her daughter) mean just as much to me, and have had as significant an impact on my faith and religion, as the others did.

Visiting with Amel and her daughter Fatima always makes me more conscious of the division of the spheres of my life. My life as a Muslim is in many facets distinct from my life in academia, and the two only seem to be increasing in distance. I found myself wondering earlier today, as I contemplated what to pack for the conference (complicated by the fact that what I wear on the plane tomorrow is what I will be presenting my paper in, no opportunity to go to my hotel to freshen up) - I wondered how my experiments with niqab will affect my potential future career in academia. I don't have any role models in this, certainly not in the West. Any university I would apply to would consider niqab a barrier to communication (a la Jack Straw), and if it is perceived that way, of course that is what it becomes.

Then I started wondering if I can even be a mujalbaba (one who wears jilbab/overgarments) in academia. Even hijab is a potential barrier, especially if the market is competitive. I have to be just *that* much better than anyone else would have to be, just to compete equally with my peers.

How do I own, and justify, two very different wardrobes, one for university and one for the rest of my life? I can be accepted if I'm modestly dressed, but not if I'm TOO modestly dressed. This seems ridiculous. This is supposed to be the most forward-thinking of American institutions, but even they have their limits.

My Azhan clock is Shafi'i!!

2007-08-31T14:20:00.000-04:00

I gleefully bought an azhan clock (a clock that is programmed to sound the call to prayer at each of the prayer times) this week. I can't really afford it, but I can return some of the household stuff I've recently bought for my apartment that isn't necessary - it IS necessary that I find a way to make the prayers on time regularly, and I think this will help. I can't use it until I move but I tested it out yesterday and I'm thrilled. Mostly.

First, I don't understand how, with the advances in audio chip technology (we put them in DISPOSABLE GREETING CARDS, for goodness sake!) we cannot seem to make an azhan clock with good quality sound. These items are not exactly cheap anyway; the investment in a high quality sound chip would not make much of a price difference, I think. But this clock has five different recordings of the azhan, so there are 2 that I can deal with without cringing every time it goes off. So, it's OK, and a significant improvement over older models.

I am quite excited that the clock is programmed for prayer times for over 1000 cities across the world. This means that the nearest large city to me, Columbus, is included. The last clock I tried was older and had only a couple hundred cities, and believe me, New York prayer times do NOT coincide at all with Ohio prayer times!!! (Some new clocks still have only a few hundred cities - how useless unless you happen to live in a major city!) The Columbus times are within a couple of minutes of the times published for Athens. That's well within acceptable ranges, and I can further customize by shifting the time the azhan sounds by up to 30 minutes in either direction, if I want even more precision.

HOWEVER, the Asr (midafternoon) prayer time is set according to the Shafi'i (and perhaps Hanbali and Maliki?) ruling, which puts it about an hour earlier than the Hanafi ruling...and guess what, I've decided to follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence (I'll explain more about that at another post). It's (the clock is) not changeable. And that's a bit odd considering that the Hanafi school is the largest one, and there are so many features on this clock already that it would have been a simple matter to add a "Hanafi Asr time" setting to the clock. From what I've seen, there aren't any U.S.-available clocks that offer this. Why is this?? So I'll be praying Asr according to the Shafi'i ruling, which does not affect the validity of my prayers but does annoy me. Which, for those of my friends who have heard my diatribes about the particulars of the Shafi'i school for the last couple of years, should be quite amusing.

ALSO, the clock has a nifty "qibla finder" icon - that is, you place the clock so that the face is facing north, and you have a handy little graphic that points out which way you should face in prayer. The clock doesn't have a compass built in, it has the correct direction for prayer for each city programmed in with an arrow to show you the way. One problem with this handy feature. The majority-opinion for the direction of prayer in most of North America is NE, as the shortest distance between here and Mecca, taking into consideration the curvature of the earth. Simply put, Mecca is, on a flat map, very east and somewhat south of Ohio, but on a globe, the "fastest" route (as a plane would fly) is NORTH east, following the curve of the earth around. There is a minority opinion that has the proper prayer direction for North America as southeast, using the flat-map model (it's not like my prayer has to "arrive" in Mecca as quickly as possible, it's not an airplane and in fact doesn't "go" to Mecca anyway since God doesn't "live" there, so there's some logic to this position). It does not in the end matter which direction you choose as long as it's what you believe to be the "best" way to face Mecca, which is all that is required. But most still pray to the NE and many will argue for the correctness of that direction.

So, oddly, the qibla finder on my clock follows the MINORITY opinion on proper direction, which is even odder than not having a Hanafi-Asr option.

Does that make my clock Hanbali?

Manners...more important than your mother thought

2007-08-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

Oh...
This relates quite well to the last post, Revert vs. Convert. I found it on a blog I very much enjoy, www.sisteraishah.com. Honestly, I would have thought the manners/spirituality relationship was the other way around (referring to the second hadith).

It was recorded by Abu Dawud with a Sahih chain that the Prophet sallallâhu `alayhi wa sallam said:

"There is nothing heavier on the Scale than good manners."

It was recorded by Abu Dawud and Al-Hakim with a Sahih chain that the Prophet sallallâhu `alayhi wa sallam said:

"Indeed, through good manners does a person reach the levels of the one who stands at night (to pray) and the one who fasts during the day."

Revert vs. Convert

2007-08-27T21:31:00.002-04:00

"To grow in compassion, there must be suffering and the choice to ignore. And so it is with all of the virtues: love, charity, justice, forgiveness, and the others. To grow in each of them, we must have the alternative to do otherwise and the possibility for the existence of hate, indifference, greed, vengeance, and, obviously, suffering. Of course, we must have at least an inclination towards goodness from the start, at least the seed of virtue and piety when we come into this world. This is precisely how Muslim exegetes understood the statement of the Qur'an that God 'breathed into him (man) something of His spirit' (15:29) and the saying of Muhammad that every human is born with an inclination (fitrah) towards self-surrender to God." (Jeffrey Lang, "Struggling to Surrender," emphasis mine)

This inclination towards surrender to God - literally, towards islam with a little i - is why Muslims generally prefer to call converts "reverts," because one who comes into Islam is returning to their original nature, to that seed of virtue and the innate desire to nurture that seed in accordance with and obedience to God. Of course, whether and to what degree a revert to islam (Islam) continues on that path toward surrender to God is entirely personal.

I never liked to call myself a revert to Islam because I never understood the term; I knew the definition, but did not grasp the difference between the "convert" who changes their religion and the "revert" who returns to the divinely-commanded path. "Revert" sounded too religious, too pious, too self-righteous to me. And, looking back, I can see that I was correct to call myself a convert: I had changed my religion, and with that came many changes in behavior and belief, but I had not yet engaged with the path of surrender to God. I did not submit (islam) and I did not have the inner peace that comes with that surrender (salam). Rather, I fought with everything asked of me that was not easy or desirable, or at least interesting. I fasted with great reluctance and suffering, I avoided the dawn prayer, I made excuses for not completing all the (few, really) requirements that the ritual part of the of religion requires.

All right, admittedly I'm being a bit hard on myself here. I don't honestly think I've been a complete hypocrite as a Muslim, but, at the same time - Ya Rabb, what kind of Muslim is this?

And neither am I saying that I'm suddenly all better, I'm a model worshipper and wholly surrendered to my God. No, I'm still awaiting Ramadan with reluctance and not getting up for the dawn prayer. But I am getting awfully tired of making excuses. And I am changing: in my worldview, in the way I think about islam and Islam, and in the thoughts I have about the person I want to be. I'm finally beginning, just beginning, to understand why a convert is a revert, why that is a significant (actually, fundamental) distinction, and how that applies to me. I'm beginning to accept the name and idea of being a revert to islam/Islam and I certainly don't find that the term conveys self-righteousness. Rather, it's humbling in its childlike connotations and challenges me to actually BE one-who-submits ("muslim"), rather than just one who talks about submitting.

Oh, this is shaping up to be an interesting Ramadan. And it doesn't begin for another two weeks.

I'm going to get off my aurah (if you don't know, don't ask me, try Wikipedia : ) and go pray before I get tired and put it off, now that I've put my own feet to the fire, and publicly at that.

After a time of being away...

2007-08-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

For those of my friends who have not utterly given up checking for updates on my long inactive blog - I will begin posting regularly soon, inshallah. I plan to write more about my thoughts and experiences (and live up to the blog's name!), especially as I transition into the next phase of my life, and as I seek to become more spiritually (re)focused. I would say something more at the present moment, but I'm currently visiting at a friend's house and shan't be rude.

What I will say is... my friends gave me a lovely shershaf (sheetlike prayer garment) and I'm looking forward to figuring out how to use it during Ramadan this year. I've also ordered an overhead abaya and custom sized niqab, and when those arrive I expect I'll have a lot to say about that experience.

But for now, goodnight and maa salama.

Baalbeck, Bacchus temple graffiti

2005-07-24T17:13:00.000-04:00

Baalbeck, Bacchus temple graffiti
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

These names, if you can't read them, are dated in the late 1800s, during a period of European archaeology and just plain looting. Funny that what was originally an act of defacement is now considered a historical artifact.

Baalbeck, Bacchus temple looking out

2005-07-24T17:11:00.000-04:00

Baalbeck, Bacchus temple looking out
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

Like at all the other major historical sites, there's a concert series held at Baalbeck every summer. The stage is set up in front of the Bacchus temple, next to the Jupiter temple, and the artists play with the ruins as their backdrop. Must be impressive!

Baalbeck, detail

2005-07-24T17:10:00.000-04:00

Baalbeck, detail
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

There's a ton (literally) of very nice carving fragments lying about all over the temple area. Some retain amazing detail.

Baalbeck, great courtyard from top of higher altar

2005-07-24T17:09:00.000-04:00

Baalbeck, great courtyard from top of higher altar
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

This is a view of the Great Courtyard from the elevated altar platform. The courtyard, in front of the holy sanctuary dedicated to Jupiter, is where the common people worshipped and made offerings.

Baalbeck, Bacchus temple, me in colonnade

2005-07-24T17:08:00.000-04:00

Baalbeck, Bacchus temple, me in colonnade
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

While this pic is utterly useless if you actually want to see ME, it does help demonstrate that the stones and pillars in this temple complex are some of the largest in the world. The Jupiter Temple and the adjoining Bacchus Temple are Roman structures, built on an earlier worship site.

Byblos, residential passageway

2005-07-24T17:04:00.000-04:00

Byblos, residential passageway
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

Byblos is my favorite town so far. Its mixture of ancient history and modern, everyday life makes it a living anachronism.

Beiteddine, me with mosaic

2005-07-12T12:48:00.000-04:00

Beiteddine, me with mosaic
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

Beiteddine Palace has more than thirty Byzantine mosaics that were rescued from a ruined church in Lebanon. This one - since it is out in the garden - is most likely a reproduction.

Beiteddine, Michelle and Nadine

2005-07-12T12:46:00.000-04:00

Beiteddine, Michelle and Nadine
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

A classmate and a teacher enjoying the interior courtyard.

Beiteddine Palace is an Ottoman palace in the mountains near Beirut. It has been restored somewhat (not always skillfully, alas) and part of it is still a summer residence for Lebanon's president (who was not actually in residence when we visited).

Deir al-Qamar, reception area royal apts

2005-07-12T12:43:00.000-04:00

Deir al-Qamar, reception area royal apts
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

Deir al-Qamar is an old town whose buildings, such as a 14th-century mosque and the municipal complex this room is part of, are still in use. This room was part of the royal apartments used when Deir al-Qamar had the honor of hosting the ruler or his envoy. This room has apparently not been restored, so the original wood ceiling and window screens (and stonework) is intact. I have many other pictures detailing the intricately engraved and painted ceiling.

Muslims at Harissa, #2

2005-07-05T07:38:00.000-04:00

Muslims at Harissa, #2
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

There were as many Muslims visiting the sanctuary at Harissa as Christians. This (admittedly indistinct) picture sums it up for me: a group of fully veiled women from the Gulf, with their husbands, enjoying the main courtyard of the sanctuary. We were surprised to see conservative Muslims at a Christian holy place, so one of my classmates asked one of the Saudis about it. He replied that as Harissa is a holy place to Christians, it is likewise a holy place to them.

Our Lady of Lebanon

2005-07-05T07:36:00.000-04:00

Our Lady of Lebanon
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

This is the statue of Notre Dame du Liban that is the focal point of Harissa. She is herself quite large, and stands on an equally tall pedestal. She used to face the interior of the country, as the country's patron, but during Lebanon's civil war, she literally turned her back on the war, turning to face the sea instead.

Maronite church, outside

2005-07-05T07:33:00.000-04:00

Marionite church, outside
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

This is the best view I could get of the main church at Harissa; the building is very large. The shape of it echoes the hull of the Phonecian ships that landed on the shore that Harissa overlooks.

Teleferique, #1

2005-07-05T07:32:00.000-04:00

Teleferique, #1
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

You can drive up to Harissa, but this is how we went - by cable car. We are in transit here, almost halfway up, having passed over part of the city. We're going to the TOP of this mountain; the second half of the trip is really steep, earning it the nickname "Terrorferiqe". It does live up to it.

Harissa seen from Jounieh

2005-07-05T07:30:00.000-04:00

Harissa seen from Jounieh
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

This pic is a bit too small to actually see Harissa, but it's perched at the very top of this 'hill'. Harissa is a small town that is home to a Maronite Christian holy site and several churches of different denominations.

Me at Jaita Grotto

2005-07-05T07:29:00.000-04:00

Me at Jaita Grotto
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

Jaita Grotto is a cave system that rivals the most fantastic caves in America. It was spectacular, but since photos are strictly prohibited inside the caverns (to preserve the delicate formations) I'll have to bring postcards back in order to give you a glimpse inside.

At Mounir

2005-06-25T18:59:00.000-04:00

At Mounir
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

Me with some of my classmates at a wonderful restaurant, Mounir, in the hills above Beirut.

Hariri memorial

2005-06-25T18:55:00.000-04:00

Hariri grave
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

There is a large memorial to assassinated former prime minister and businessman Rafiq Hariri downtown. It is open around the clock and is visited continuously. Lebanon was hit hard by his death; the assassination was the touchstone for the massive demonstrations that led to Syria's withdrawal earlier this year. The Lebanese are deeply patriotic about their country and have a great amount of pride in Lebanon, and mourn Hariri as a symbol of national identity and unity.

Roman baths detail

2005-06-25T18:51:00.000-04:00

Roman baths detail
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

This is part of the Roman baths excavated in downtown Beirut. It's one of the archaeological sites uncovered during the clean-up following the civil war. Notice the pattern in the stone above the columns - I didn't see this before. The pic is fuzzy because it's nighttime and my camera is not so good at night.

View from balcony

2005-06-25T18:47:00.000-04:00

View from balcony
Originally uploaded by thesoundgirl.

This is part of the view from my balcony in Ashrafiyeh, Beirut. It's looking south, roughly, over the city. Beirut is extensive, but somehow it's rather quick to get around for its size.

Comments on my blog - Administrative note

2005-03-10T17:59:00.000-05:00

I've changed the Comments settings, so now anyone can comment on posts. (Sorry, Tomcat! I thought I'd done this earlier.)

How I Became an American Muslim

2005-03-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

This is a rather simplified version of how I became a Muslim. As with all stories of significant events in one's life, the full, unedited version would be pages long and possibly quite boring to read.

This particular version was published in my MSA's monthly newsletter last October. The Ohio University Muslim Student Association's website is http://cscwww.cats.ohiou.edu/~muslimst/. Copies of the newsletter are posted here.

(One day I may figure out how to make links in my blog... Wouldn't you like that?)

-----------

How I Became an American Muslim

I am an American convert to Islam, one of thousands each year. I probably do not fit anyone’s stereotypes of who a convert to Islam should be: None of my family are Muslim nor are any of them from the Middle East. I am a white female, a college student, a Muslim who believes strongly in the rights and equality of women.
In a little over a month, I will mark the first anniversary of my conversion to Islam. This seems a good time to reflect on the journey that led me to this faith.
About three years ago, I gradually left Christianity because of theological differences, which had become more pronounced over time. I had abandoned the Church, but still kept my faith in God. During this transitional time, I studied different religions – Buddhism and Hinduism most deeply – but did not find any that fit with my few existing beliefs and that I could rationally accept.
Around the time that the United States attacked Iraq, I realized that I knew very little about Islam. It was only natural that I would add Islam to the religions I had been reading about. I realized that the way Islam was being portrayed in the media was probably not wholly accurate, so I read Islamic websites and sought out an opportunity to visit the Islamic Center on campus in an attempt to balance my understanding. I attended an Open House at the Islamic Center, spoke with some of the women there, and left more intrigued by this faith than before.
But then I became caught up in the demands of school and life, and put Islam out of my mind for a while. Even so, my spiritual restlessness continued to grow. Just before the month of Ramadan began last year, I decided to visit the Islamic Center again. (The month of Ramadan is a time when Muslims fast from dawn to sunset to commemorate the giving of the Qu’ran. Fasting during Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of the Islamic faith.) Ramadan is the most social time of year for Muslim families, since many Muslims come together at their mosques or Islamic Centers to break their fast and pray together each evening.
Ramadan in Athens is no different. I enjoyed the evening meals at the Islamic Center, which was crowded every evening I was able to attend. I even attempted fasting for a week or so, but found it too difficult to sustain without previous practice with this level of fasting and without the proper religious reason to support my weak willpower. The time I did fast was rewarding, though; I gained deeper insight into what it might be like to be a Muslim and I learned more about the observance of Ramadan than I think I could have from a book or website.
What I most enjoyed about Ramadan was the camaraderie. There were Muslims there from all over the world, representing diverse cultures and having differing interpretations of Islam, covering the spectrum from very conservative to progressive and everything in between, yet they did not allow their doctrinal differences to come between them. Each considered the others to be her sisters and brothers in Islam, regardless of practical differences. I had read that Islam is a religion with room for wide differences of interpretation, that accepts differences of belief within the boundaries of belief in one God and in the final prophet Mohammed. During Ramadan, I saw that diversity in action.
Toward the end of Ramadan, I began seriously considering Islam as possibly being the faith I had been searching for. I was drawn to Islam because of its strict monotheism, its view of other monotheistic religions, and the warm fellowship among its community of believers. Islam recognizes the Jewish prophets as messengers from God in the same prophetic lineage as the last prophet, Mohammed. Islam also recognizes Jesus as a prophet in this line, a very special prophet who will return to usher in the end of time, although he is not the son of God nor God Himself. The Qu’ran teaches that prophets were sent to each group or community of people so that all would know the fundamental message that there is only one God, although that message was often misunderstood or forgotten in the course of time. This teaching was one that I had been looking for in particular – the idea that God had not chosen one group of people and left the others to figure things out for themselves, but rather, that God had spoken to all peoples because all are equally worthy of His attention and equally responsible to believe in and worship Him.
(I use the masculine pronoun to refer to God as a linguistic convention, because of the limitations of English. In Arabic, the noun “Allah” – which simply means “God” – does not have a specific gender attached to it. God, or Allah, is neither male nor female, but is far greater than these human classifications.)
When I realized that I was thinking seriously about converting, I wrestled with my feelings toward Islam. One part of me very much wanted to commit to Islam, another part worried that I hadn’t found ‘the truth’ yet, another part was afraid of how my family and my husband might react, and another part was overwhelmed by how much I would have to learn to be a good Muslim. But I knew that I wouldn’t be happy if I walked away from Islam. My husband, and most of my family, had always been supportive of me and I had no reason to doubt that would change with my change of faith. And learning about one’s faith, whatever it is, is a gradual process – the Muslim community would be there to help me learn, without pressure to learn everything all at once. My desire to become a Muslim overrode my objections, and I made my profession of faith at Eid, the holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan.
In the year since my conversion, I’ve learned more about my faith than I would have thought I could. I’ve found that the rituals of ablution and prayer are simple to perform but deep with meaning and spiritual value. Sometimes the requirements of my faith are challenging – for instance, it can be difficult on a busy day to pray when I should – but when I put forth the effort to fulfill those responsibilities, I find the effort rewarding. My husband has noticed that I am happier and more content since I accepted Islam. I am glad to be a Muslim, and will enjoy celebrating my first ‘conversion anniversary’ at Eid this year.

Women's rights, Islam, and Asra Nomani

2005-02-15T14:39:00.000-05:00

Feminist author, journalist, and American Muslim Asra Nomani has just released a new book, "Standing Alone in Mecca, An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam." You can preview the book at http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060571446&tc=bd.

Nomani is on the forefront of women's rights issues in American Islam. Her personal struggle with the entrenched Muslim patriarchy began a couple of years ago; she had left Islam, the faith of her birth, when she was a young woman. After the birth of her son (whom she openly refers to as being born out of wedlock, a major social problem for most Muslims as well as clear evidence of a major sin), she decided to return to Islam so that her son would be raised in the faith.

She was living in her hometown, Morgantown, West Virginia, and attending the mosque there that her father had been instrumental in establishing years before. At first, she prayed upstairs in the 'women's section', but quickly became aware of the unjustness of segregating women to a separate room with unequal facilities and no way to communicate with the men, downstairs in the main prayer hall.

With the support of her father, she made the courageous step of attending prayer in the main hall one day. The men were scandalized, and threatened to throw her out of the mosque altogether, despite her father's respected position in the leadership of the mosque. Eventually, the men who opposed her came to grudgingly accept her presence in the main hall, along with four other brave women who joined Nomani's protest.

You can read her description of events on her website, www.asranomani.com/site, under the Writing section.

Her new book is an introspective look at her recent hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. She was determined to take her son, despite his fatherlessness and the potential danger to her that represented from Saudi ultra-conservatives, who still support stoning those who commit adultery. (While these ultra-conservatives are a minority even in Saudi Arabia, their activities are often tolerated by law enforcement.)

The book opens with a chapter describing her encounter with the Dalai Lama in India, during a major Hindu festival. The first part of this chapter is excerpted on the publisher's website, the first site referenced above.

I'll add more about the book later.

Remembering Indonesia

2005-01-07T23:09:00.000-05:00

This was written for a school assignment. Aside from a liberty or two with insignificant details, it’s accurate to how I remember the evening.

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I’m finally here.

We left at dark, just after the sunset call to prayer. The call – broadcast in Arabic although the people speak Indonesian – rang over the city like a poem as we arrived at the dock. The dozens of mosques in the city keep their own clocks; the call to prayer begins at one mosque, then another begins its sacred counterpoint, then another. For five minutes, the city is overlaid with the cacophony, overburdened loudspeakers crackling like popcorn.

We boarded the small cargo boat a few minutes after the last mosque’s call, lagging behind the others by a minute or two, faded into the evening sky, replaced by the sounds of waves lapping against the boats and the shouts of crew members loading their cargoes of rice, eggs, sarongs, plastic chairs in shocking shades of pink and orange, and other household goods they would take back to the families on their respective islands.

Our boat, the Alam Shukur, would arrive at one of these islands around noon the next day. The island is one of hundreds that cluster in the sea that fills the space between the several major, large islands that make up Indonesia. Our island, Balobaloang, had the good fortune of being part of an archipelago of several similar islands, most of which were inhabitable, so although Balobaloang is a fifteen-hour journey by boat from the nearest city, at least it is not completely alone out in the empty sea.

These were some of the thoughts that offered me comfort as we got underway. I had never been this far from home before – literally half the world away – and my excitement at the journey was dampened by homesickness and a dull foreboding that simmered in the pit of my stomach like the pot of fish stew we’d eaten earlier that day. I did not speak Indonesian well at all, and now we were going to live for a month or more among people who primarily spoke a regional language, with only a little of the national language mixed in. At least my traveling companion, an Indonesian by birth who had been studying in the United States, spoke excellent English and some of the regional Bugis language, and could fill in the gaps when my language skills failed. Or so I told myself, to hold at arms’ length my anxiety about traveling into a place so foreign to me.

Once we entered the open ocean, my fear began to recede. We sat on the small deck with the six-man crew – as large a crew as could comfortably fit on a boat this small – under the clear evening sky. With no light pollution from the mainland to spoil the view, the stars overhead were thick and luminous, more stars than I had ever seen before. The ocean was relatively calm; the waves rocked the Alam Shakur as we made our way, but not enough to disturb our normally land-bound sense of balance. The gentle rocking relaxed me, like the motion of the rocking chair in which my mother would soothe me when, as a little girl, I would suffer nightmares and a fear of the dark.

I slept that night on the deck, under the stars and the sails, wrapped head to toe in a blanket against the wind and the light mist of spray stirred by our travel. My last thoughts before sleep were of my parents, whom I’d lost fifteen years ago. I pictured them as they were in their wedding album, young and filled with the exuberance of a life just beginning. They had loved boats and the romantic ideal of ocean travel by vessels such as the one that carried me, but they had never had the opportunity to take such a trip as the one I was on. I imagined them looking down on me from among the stars, two of the numberless points of light turning slowly above me. I saw them smiling at me, glad that I could experience what they never had. And I imagined that, through my eyes, through the part of them that I carry in me, my parents finally were able to realize their long-delayed wish.

So much food...

2004-12-29T00:29:00.000-05:00

Reading the past few days’ entries, I realize I’ve talked nonstop about what we’ve eaten and where. I’m not that much of a food connoisseur, but being a Muslim has made me more aware of what I eat and what my options are where we choose to take meals. I have to think about the subject more consciously, so I suppose it’s natural that I’d reflect that in my descriptions.

Besides, I hope that perhaps other Muslims planning a trip to the places I’ve been may stumble upon this blog and find something helpful in it for planning their own trip. Just a glimmer of light on that shot-in-the-dark effort known as Muslim Dining in Unfamiliar Places.

I am getting pickier, though, about what I eat, in terms of taste and texture. For that I blame Barbara, who spoils my palate every time she cooks for us. It’s a delightful problem to have.

Finally sun!

2004-12-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

We leave for Ohio tomorrow morning. It’s mostly been cool (or downright cold) and often rainy during our trip. We had one nice day after we arrived (when we visited Epcot), then yesterday (still cool) and today (which hopefully will break 70 degrees). The rest of the week is supposed to warm up further and be Lovely.

Sigh.

Sometimes life ain’t fair.

But then, this is what I remember Florida being like. My family lived for a year or so in Florida when I was little. I think we were in St. Petersburg and Sarasota – the same side of the state as we’re on now, though further south than Crystal River (where we’re staying). Despite the stereotype of the pleasant ‘Florida lifestyle’, I remember that year in Florida as being rather cold and rainy. I don’t remember playing on the beach in the sun, but I do remember sitting in the car looking over the beach toward the ocean, eating lunch and listening to the heavy rain. I also remember whining about that rain, because I wanted to get out and play in the sand! Some things just don’t change; here I am, some 23 years later, complaining that I can’t go play on the beach because of the weather.

I also remember the Montessori school I attended. I don’t think I learned much, but I had the most fun in school there that I’d ever had, and perhaps more than I have ever had in school.

During that time, we were staying in the house of the recording artist that my father was supposed to be working for. But the artist’s manager went back on his promise (or outright cheated him, I’m not sure) and didn’t pay him, despite having hired him and moving him (and later the rest of us) from Nashville to Florida. So we had no money, no place to live, no immediate means of support. The artist’s family was living elsewhere (perhaps out of the country) for an extended time, so out of sympathy we were invited to stay in their house for a while. We stayed several months – I think six months or so? – during this exceedingly stressful time for us. I even remember celebrating Christmas there. We had a tree, but it wasn’t our tree, so it (like most of the house) was both familiar and personal but still alien. I don’t remember much about that Christmas, other than the tree, but I doubt it was a happy holiday.

The great tragedy

2004-12-28T01:22:00.000-05:00

News of a large earthquake in the ocean off the coast of Sumatra two days ago, causing a vast series of tsunamis that struck Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and even as far as Somalia, three thousand miles away.

I keep wondering about the people on Balobaloang. The island is protected from the force of the earthquake and tsunamis by Sumatra, Java and other land masses, but I wonder about how the sudden displacement of Sumatra affected the oceans on the other side of Indonesia. Surely they experienced very high tides; I hope none of the boats or, God forbid, houses were damaged. I am afraid for them, but have no way to find out, the island is so remote.

I keep feeling there’s something I should do. But there’s really nothing at all, only pray and grieve, and perhaps donate a few dollars – such a small amount in the face of such an immense tragedy.

But why have aid agencies or governments not set up tsunami warning buoys, as Japan and the West US coast have? Does the rest of the world bear partial responsibility for this loss of life, because we could have set up warning systems and did not?

Yummy halal Indian food in Orlando

2004-12-26T22:17:00.000-05:00

We decided to venture into Orlando and find some good food this evening, on the way back to Crystal River. With the guidance of a couple of those coupon books you find at rest stops and tourist draws, we located an Indian restaurant – Punjab - that advertised itself as halal, on International Drive with a ton of other restaurants. It wasn’t far off the main highway, but the traffic was tight and it took a while to drive far enough down the road to find the restaurant. (Next time, take Interstate 4 to Sand Lake Road, then turn left onto International Drive. ‘Punjab’ on the right. This route saves much time and frustration over exiting on International Drive directly from 528.)

The menu said “halal meat available” so I took that to mean I had to ask for it. The food was rather good (but a bit expensive). Dan’s mild chicken curry was, indeed, mild and a bit creamy. My lamb saag (cooked with spinach) was medium spicy, and yummy but not as yummy as my Star of India lamb pathak in Athens. Dinner for two was about $45. I recommend it to anyone staying in or passing through Orlando.

On the way out, we passed two other Indian restaurants which both advertised halal meat. Both looked promising; they’re a little farther north on International than Punjab is. One was on the left (going north), the other I don’t remember clearly, but was located near the others.

To get back on the highway, take Sand Lake Road to Interstate 4 East (toward Orlando). You can pick up the main Florida toll road from there. Or go west on 4 to get on 528 (the Bee Line Expressway).

Kennedy Space Center, day 2 (all about food)

2004-12-26T20:15:00.000-05:00

We had lunch at Mila’s restaurant, inside the visitor’s center complex. I had chicken pot pie in puff pastry, which was quite good, and Dan had chicken parmesan, which was not as good. Drinks in the entire park are way expensive ($2.60 regardless of where you buy them) but the food was reasonable. Lunch for two, no dessert, was about $25. I’d suggest this restaurant, over the grill that is your other choice.

Food for the zabiha-only is limited in the park. You are limited in the food you bring in (and no coolers are permitted) so you might want to bring a selection of snack type foods, which should pass the security checkpoint without complaint. Otherwise, you’re limited to salads and a cheese calzone like sandwich. Or you could go to the restaurant (Mila’s) and request things like chicken parmesan without the chicken, resulting in pasta with tomato sauce. You can exit and re-enter, but the nearest outside restaurant is at least 20 minutes away, if I recall correctly.

A word of warning to niqabis: for reasons of environmental preservation, the park does not use or offer drinking straws anywhere in their food service facilities. So bring your own, if you use them.

Kennedy Space Center, day 1

2004-12-24T19:14:00.000-05:00

This park has a lot to see. It’s been majorly refurbished within the past few years; Dan had been here when he was young, and he would frequently comment on things that had been added since his visit. The “Maximum Access” ticket is actually a two-day ticket (days must be consecutive). If you have any interest at all in space exploration, you really should get the “Maximum Access” ticket and plan to spend both days there, unless you decide to wear yourself out trying to do it all in one 11-hour day (from park open at 9 am to close at 8 pm). The “Maximum Access” two-day ticket with one additional special thing (lunch with an astronaut, extended tour of the grounds, or another event) is about the same price as a one-day adult pass to a Disney park – about $55 – making it, in my opinion, the best attraction value to be found in Florida.

We purchased tickets for the “Lunch with an Astronaut” experience. It was cool, but there’s a lot of people there. We each got an autographed photo of the astronaut (today, it was John McBride) and had our pictures taken with him. He was genuine and friendly, despite the number of people he talks to during a day working at the park.

Lunch was buffet style: roasted chicken, seasoned rice, salad, steamed vegetables, mac & cheese, teeny corn dogs, and assorted desserts. Enough selection for any kind of diet to get enough to eat. The food was rather good, though my white-meat chicken was a bit dry. The corn dogs ended up on my plate, since I wasn’t initially sure what they were, but I made Dan open one to check : ) He got mine.

Epcot

2004-12-22T22:11:00.000-05:00

My parents in law gave us tickets to Epcot for Christmas. Dan and I had flown in just the previous afternoon and we were quite exhausted, but we chose to go today because the weather was predicted to turn rainy and cold by the next morning. All four of us wandered around together much of the day.

I took a nap inside the Mexico exhibit – it’s dim and cool there, though not quiet. I was curled up on a bench; Dan said people kept coming up to me and staring, confused, as if I were a statue. An odd reaction, considering that there are people napping everywhere through the park. I didn’t notice until an oblivious kid tromped on my feet (tucked under the edge of the bench). You’d think it would occur to him that he’d stepped on me. He must have thought that I was a statue, too.

Anyway, after my abrupt awakening, our group split up. My in-laws were too tired to keep up with us longer, despite the rest. They wandered off to find lunch and we headed to the Moroccan exhibit for our own meal. We ate at Café Marrakesh there. It was OK, but the portions were small and only moderately tasty, and it was overpriced, even for park food. Don’t bother, unless you want ambience; then go for dinner, when musicians are there.

Later we had fish and chips from the UK section, from a counter-service (not sit-down) restaurant that does only fish and chips. It was very freshly made and GOOD! The fish is not beer battered, and nothing else is cooked there, so I think even strict halal-observers would find no conflicts eating here. It’s reasonably priced and we recommend it highly.

Arabic and Bridges TV

2004-12-06T16:38:00.000-05:00

I’m well into winter break and getting rather bored. Not that there’s nothing to do, but I’m annoyingly unmotivated to do them. Time is running out, slowly but certainly each day, until I no longer have time to complete my postponed sewing projects or finishing the major housecleaning put off from all of Fall quarter. This frustration, though, should be the first step toward motivation, if my regular pattern holds.

I’ve been working on learning Arabic for the past few weeks. I’m still on the alphabet – not studying regularly due to this slothfulness that’s taken me over – and hope to get on to simple words by January, God willing. We’ll see. Last night I was playing with my laptop settings, figuring out how to write bilingually on the system. It turns out that Microsoft Office for OS X does not support Arabic. There’s no special download, it just doesn’t work. But Text Edit, Apple’s built in basic word processor, has support for Arabic script. I mucked around with that a while, but got absolutely confused by the layout; there’s a keyboard layout view, but I don’t know the alphabet well enough to decipher much of it, since the layout includes different forms of some letters and also emphasis markers. Eeek.

A couple of weeks ago a new satellite channel launched, the first American channel for a Muslim audience. I’ve not seen any of it yet – we have limited broadband access – but it sounds like it should be interesting. It’s certainly an ambitious project, which launched with 50,000 subscribers. What excites me the most about it is that their programming will come primarily from outside sources, including independent producers. This sounds like a good possible outlet for, for instance, the upcoming documentary in Morocco, as well as any number of ideas I have floating around. I’ll have to look into that possibility. In the meantime, you can check out the channel (and view it if you have broadband) at www.bridgestv.com.

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(from “NEW NETWORK HOPES TO BRIDGE CULTURE GAPS,” Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune, 11/30/04)
But this is not the American Al Jazeera. Instead, call it Lifetime for Muslims, with a dash of CNN

The lineup includes an Emeril-like chef who can whip up Indonesian, Middle Eastern or South Asian fare; a soap opera about an Egyptian father dealing with his daughter's interfaith marriage; and a comedy show featuring shtick between a rabbi and a Palestinian-American.

"It is this kind of bridge-building situation that Bridges TV is all about," said Mo Hassan, founder and CEO of Bridges TV, which is based in Buffalo. "Foreign-language channels appeal primarily to the immigrant parent, not to their U.S.-born children. The programming of those channels is all about life back home. What Bridges TV is doing is programming...focused on life here in North America…"