muslim roundup

It’s a short and (mostly) visual roundup today.

Sometimes there are just no (written) words when (moving) pictures can say it all.

Enjoy Muslims just being real!

1) Maryam Ismail has an interesting take on a recent panel discussion held during the opening of Sadaf Sayed’s iCover exhibition at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization.

Responding with “the modern Muslim woman is who she chooses to be” Ismail asks:

Where did this image of the oppressed Muslim woman come from and when will this battle against it stop? … Today, it seems there is the idea that under one’s hijab lies some mystical inner working, one that needs to be covered up by another layer of normality…

Why should it be a special event if a woman who wears a hijab decides to be a fencer or a ballerina? Is it out of the realm of faith? Some may not think so and others may not care. Then, there may be another premise: that wearing the hijab will show the world that Muslim women have arrived. However, I think that if this is the case, they may end up being the oldest debutantes at the ball.

Match point.

I have to say that I LOVE seeing awesome, strong Muslimahs rocking out in their hijab. But do I love them because they mirror what I do on a Friday night, or because they apparently SMASH current stereotypes of the submissive veiled (groan) woman?

Muslimah’s shouldn’t need a surfboard or a boxing glove to augment their hijab just to be considered normal. Discuss.

2) What is this? –>>

I think it’s a lovely, albeit unfortunate piece of Islamic Calligraphy.

What do YOU think it is?

Find out how community members’ dirty minds won the right to deface their mosque, and read more hilarious awkwardness at Wajahat Ali and Aman Ali’s new project: Hair in New Places.

(seriously… WHAT were they THINKING?!)

3) Wondering what REAL Muslims looks like. Without the pressures of hijabs, beards, surfboards or boxing gloves?

Interested in seeing just plain, normal, fantastic, boring, amazing, neighbourly humans who happen to be Muslim?

Well now you can with Todd Drake’s “Muslim Self Portraits” project profiling (haha) Muslims in North Carolina and Manama, Bahrain “to create self-portraits that share real, rather than seeming, reflections of self to a wider audience.”

4) And unless you’ve taken a self-imposed holiday from any form of social or digital media, you just might have heard about the Sh*it People Say meme that’s sweeping teh internetz.

Naturally, Muslims had to get on board.

I give you:

• Stuff Muslim Women Say
• St*ff Hijabi Girls say (by a really cute boy in hijab!!)
• Stuff People Say to Hijabis
• Sh*it Muslims Say

And my personal favourite, Stuff Hijabis Say:

 

You can’t argue with “is my hair showing?” “what is up with the drama in the MSA?” gritting your teeth through auntie interrogation and getting your dance on to Nari Narien!

 

monday moments

For it being incredibly freezing, we actually ended up doing quite a lot of fun stuff this weekend. Threats of the white-stuff gave us visions of tobogganing — but unfortunately, Toronto was hit with just a dusting of snow. So we improvised.

I played super-Mom with a burst of energy so strong, I thought I was nesting. While the Hubby slept through his horrid head cold, I cleaned the house, did laundry, made pancakes and then baked cupcakes with Eryn — all before lunch. We celebrated my homemaking skills with a trip to the movies and some take-out. Who has time to cook dinner when there’s cupcakes to be had? CUPCAKES!

Here’s Eryn practicing her new photography skills. Everything is an appropriate subject:

"Cheese baby!" (can you tell I'm sucking it in? No really, it's quite the flattering angle. She's the ideal photographer.)

There was also “Cheese Monkey” and “Cheese num-nyah!” but I am not showing you a picture of just my chest. Why Eryn thinks my breasts are their own entity is beyond me.

 

does Islam need muslim feminists? Part III

this. This. THIS. THIS!

Mona Eltahawy says in five minutes what I can barely get at in two posts.

 

God, I LOVE this woman.

 

does Islam need muslim feminists? Part II

I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been said.

I believe completely that the last 1,400 years of scholarship has been dominated by men. It’s indisputable. And while it may sound like some seedy “conspiracy theory,” there is also ample evidence illustrating that pro-female interpretations and male interpretations favouring prophetic and Qur’anic expectations of equity are largely drowned out.

Misogynist interpretations came to the fore not necessarily because they were the most correct, the closest to how Islam was practiced by the Prophet, or what God really wanted to say – but are most likely the result of whoever had the strongest army. There were hundreds of legal schools within the first few centuries of Islam. Hundreds. All died out through lack of popularity or persecution by the Caliph of the day who was usually more concerned with his political aspirations than religious goals.

Finding a variety of scholarly opinions and debates on women and women’s roles in Islam is nothing new. This is why Muslim feminists are needed today to call people out on their misogyny and for believers in “Islamic feminism” to do more than just acknowledge that things have vastly changed from what God and the Prophet intended.

 

does Islam need muslim feminists? Part I

Common topics discussed in the Islamosphere tend to appear and reappear cyclically. It’s like a wave that spreads through the many talented voices dedicated to grappling with the more “uncomfortable” discourses in our nuanced communities – where suddenly, Muslim bloggers are all talking about the same thing at the same time: the “beating verse,” hijab, gender segregation at mosques, hijab, women’s rights and roles, hijab, polygamy, hijab, menstruation, hijab, domestic violence, hijab, and on it goes.

This month the topic of choice is Islamic and Muslim Feminism – discussed here, here, here, here and here by people more brilliant than I.

This post was supposed to allow me to daydream myself into a faerie-tale discussion of the “perfect” mosque – but a reader sent an e-mail requesting my thoughts on the recent Goatmilk debate: Islam is incompatible with Feminism, and I decided to throw my two cents in.

Two respectable minds entered the debate – only one emerged victorious … though, the jury is still out, and will probably be out for a very long time on this very complex subject.

Debater Mohamad Tabbaa favoured the motion, and argued that Islam and Feminism are two different and irreconcilable ideologies:

Muslim feminists must now make the choice between the Islamic paradigm, which is centred around God, or the secularised modern theology, which is based almost exclusively around (white) men.

In his rebuttal, Tabbaa nuanced his arguments further with the idea that merging Islam into Feminism colonises “Muslim spaces and voices” and that, “Islam already has within its paradigm the language and tools with which to deal with women’s issues.”

Arguing against the motion, Katrina Daly Thompson took the position that there are some Muslims who simply don’t understand Feminism (just as there are Feminists who don’t understand Islam is open to interpretation) – and that Islam and Feminism are fundamentally linked:

Feminism and Islam both need Muslim feminists—Muslim men and women who believe in the full humanity of women—to fight against gender discrimination within Muslim cultures and spaces.

Guess which one I sided with.

 

creating sleep associations with humanoid blobs

Breakfast with an alien.

I’ve been invaded.

Ever since Christmas Eve, an alien has latched onto my daughter — and now it’s latching on to me.

It’s ensnared the entire family with its black beady eyes, cute smiling grin and innocent white marshmallow-fluff-like shape.

Eryn can’t go anywhere or do anything without it. This new family addition has become her best friend and she shares simply everything with it. Everything.

Including me.

 

muslim roundup

Happy weekend everyone — here’s a new roundup for your reading pleasure.

This week we’ve got a mix of serious and whimsical pieces — from honour killings and HIV in the Muslim community to awkward parental sex talks and female whirling dervishes.

Enjoy!

1) Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi, co-editors of the upcoming anthology Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, are just splashing all over the place with a little tongue-in-cheek and some wink-wink-nudge-nudge — if you know what I mean. In a fun piece on the HuffPo, these brilliant ladies expose the fact that due to his swarthy good looks and heroic treatment of Muslims in the Media, Muslim females everywhere are spending their nights with John Stewart from the Daily Show.

But can Muslim women really love Jon Stewart, who is — gasp! — Jewish? Honestly, that makes it even better. The Daily Show‘s Senior Muslim Correspondent Aasif Mandvi may be a suitable boy to bring home to our parents, but the element of forbidden fruit makes Jon all the sexier. (And, we suspect our moms might have a thing for Jon too.)

You damn well better believe it.

The HuffPo also published an exert from the above mentioned Love, InshAllah. Deliciously titled “The Birds, the Bees, and My Hole,” Zahra Noorbakhsh expresses how her mother’s straight-forward-but-not-so-helpful sex talk changed the way she related to her jeans and her male friends.

It’s a fantastically bitter-sweet story. Girl finishes high school and celebrates with a group of friends by going to the movies. One of those friends is a boy! Uh-oh! Watch the drama unfold when Mama finds out:

“Zahra, you have a hole. And for the rest of your life, men will want to put their penis in your hole. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, who is your ‘friend.’ Even at the movies, maman jaan, wherever—it does not change. Ri-anne seems like a very nice man, but he is a man. And all he wants is your hole. So, I will pick you up here at five o’clock. Have fun, maman jaan,” she said.

*shudder* I hated the sex talk I had with my dad. I think I blocked 98% of it out while he awkwardly talked about me not “giving IT away.” Ugh.

2) The Muslim community in Eastern Ontario has been shaken by the Shafia family murder case — where a husband, his second wife and son have been charged with the first degree murder of their three daughters and the husband’s first wife. When the trial first started there were plenty of mud-slinging debates if honour killings are actually a part or not a part of Islam.

It’s a horrific story and an enraging topic, so I’m glad to see people are making an effort to address violence in our community. Writing for the Gazette, Kingston Imam Sikander Hashmi unequivocally states that murder is off-limits in Islam:

For starters, murder is totally off-limits in Islam. Having an affair, a relationship or a boyfriend, not wearing the hijab, and so on – as dishonourable as these may be considered – are not cause for murder. Murder is prohibited to the severest degree and cannot be justified in any way, especially for girls who are under the care of their parents.

3) Joe Bradford, imam of the Islamic Center of North East Florida, blogged about an important consideration for many converts to Islam: changing your name to a more “Muslim” sounding name.

For many, “Muslim sounding” just means Arabizing your current name, or choosing a name based on an Islamic concept, Prophet, or Muslim historical figure. So Joseph becomes Yusuf. Katie becomes Khadija. I suppose you could use an English, French, German, <insert language choice here> translated name — but I’ve never met a Catherine who wanted to be called Faith. She usually chooses Iman.

In his post, Joe relates his struggles to adopt a “Muslim” name and then reclaim his parental-given name — and includes a couple of sweet anecdotes from his teachers along the way:

I appreciate that you have preserved your culture, your dress, your name; it is completely contradictory that we say Islam is a universal religion, and then tell people to choose Arabic names, eat Arabic food, and dress like Arabs. Sure we have regulations for dress, but that the how to wear, not the what to wear. Be you, that is the best example you can be; you’ll do more for Islam that way. Both Muslims and other faiths should know that we can have a person of knowledge named Joe; that is the universal nature of Islam.

Awwww! Love.

4) The HIV magazine Positively Aware has a brilliant article on a Chicago workshop which addressed “The Homophobia and Stigma Endured with being Gay, Muslim, and Living with HIV.” Three speakers relate their personal accounts and discuss the lack of HIV support in Muslim communities, experiencing Islamophobia or racism from non-Muslim service providers, and the need to  bring these stories to light.

It’s an uphill battle against an entrenched attitude that makes open discussion about homosexuality taboo among most Muslims. In fact, almost the same words of condemnation that appear in the Bible also appear in the Quran. Boyd acknowledges that the judgment and rejection can be “really psychologically damaging.” Just having someone with whom to talk about it openly is a great relief.

Read it. It’s important. Nobody in the community should have to hide.

5) And finally, what do you get when you put a 13th century Muslim mystic together with a bunch of contemporary women? A whirling colourful display of awesome dervishes!

 

not my mosque

There is a mosque on a popular downtown street corner. A nondescript red brick building with blueish trim on the windows. Upon closer inspection, you might see Islamic calligraphy in the form of “Allah,” “Bismillah,” or the mosque’s name etched into glass frosting — giving just a hint that this former bank property is now a place of worship for Muslims.

I am not a part of this community — in more ways than one.

I have never attended a Jummah, a lecture or an event here. I’ve never been to their fundraisers, BBQs, bake sales or open houses. I’ve never been to their sessions for converts, Arabic lessons, or Qur’anic recitation 101 for women. I don’t even know if they hold these types of events or services. I cannot, with any certainty, speak to the experience of women who see this mosque as central to their community and faith.

Yet I pray here all the time.

In convert years, I am older than this mosque — but we grew up together. For 10 years this mosque has been a resource for Muslims in the downtown core, travelers, and people like myself who just need a place to pray.

Whether because it’s conveniently located to my place of work, or because it’s right next to the Toronto bus terminal — I’m here with surprising frequency.

But I could never make it my home.

 

muslim roundup

Happy Friday everyone! It’s the last roundup of the year and while I though the Muslim news would be a little slow, we’ve got plenty of snark, *head desk*, bad hijab, and great hijab stories.

I’m looking forward to news items in 2012 which may include such gems as: “World doesn’t end in 2012. Muslims still think it’s 1433!” and “Muslim Women Call For More Female Imams Within Their Communities“

Enjoy and Happy New Year!

Like ZOMG guys! Hijab makes so much more sense now!

1) Why does the Media insist on creating illustrations desperately trying to simplify and explain the innumerable diverse religious and personal expressions four types of Muslim “head gear”?

This illustration appeared on an article in the National Post, reporting on the political reaction to the Quebec government’s decision to allow female prison guards to wear hijab. Because you know, the hijab (as “championed by the Muslim Brotherhood”) is just Step One in the slow Islamification of our correctional system. Before you know it, the traffic cop ticketing your car will be in burqa!

At least this is better than the BBC’s illustration — which shows women becoming significantly more pissed off and darker in skin colour, as more cloth hides their faces.

2) Awww, the Media isn’t all THAT bad — not when you have Mark Steel, a man with possibly the best natural superhero name, taking on false media reports about Muslims.

In an op-ed for the Independent, Mark Steel dishes out a whole lotta snark in response to The Sun’s admittance that some of their reporting on Muslims is… “distorted.” Noting that some stories are in fact complete fabrications, Mark Steel suggests:

But if reporters are allowed to make up what they like, [they] should be disciplined for displaying a shocking lack of imagination… there was a story about “Muslim thugs” in Windsor who attacked a house used by soldiers, except it was another invention. But with this tale the reporter still claims it’s true, despite a complete absence of evidence, because, “The police are too politically correct to admit it.”

This must be the solution to all unsolved crimes. With Jack the Ripper it’s obvious – he was facing the East End of London, his victims were infidels and he’d have access to a burqua which would give him vital camouflage in the smog. But do the pro-Muslim police even bother to investigate? Of course not, because it’s just “Allah Allah Allah” down at the stations these days.

3) Have you seen the reports on Victoria Jackson’s anti-Islam diatribe on her web-show “Politichicks?” Like, have you actually sat down to watch just how much the former SNL actress is full of horrific, ridiculous, ignorant cow-pies? After a 6 hour briefing on Islam and how the Muslim Brotherhood has “infiltrated the highest positions in government,” she had this to share with the world:

Islam is our enemy. Islam is not a religion of Peace. That’s a lie. It’s called taqiyya — and you’re allowed to lie for Allah.

And if you can actually get through the 11 minutes of putrid hate you might even learn that we also practice “Civilization Jihad” — where we creep into society and turn Americans against each other. Or that 1/7th of our zakat “goes to jihad… you know, murder.” She even “proves” that the “one white, right-wing, Christian extremist” has a Muslim connection. So natch, Timothy Mcveigh was a Muslim Terrorist.

You know, I just don’t have much to say about this. Islamophobia will never get better or go away. It’s just going to get worse.

By the by, 100% of my zakat goes toward women’s shelters. So STFU Vicky.

4) YAY! I get to start the New Year with a new favourite catch phrase: “vaginal vigilantism!”

Nushin Arbabzadah asks the most fundamental question of our time: Why the hell do male imams get to decide how women are supposed to feel? In a piece called, Why are imams telling us about nail polish?

…I saw a bearded imam on the stage preaching through the microphone to the female congregation. He was telling the hundred or so female believers what it meant to be a Muslim woman, as if the women themselves were clueless about this particular matter.

Judging by the women’s almost palpable concentration, they were deeply engrossed in the question, which was fair enough. But why listen to a man who, by virtue of his biological, social and cultural programming, was unable to know what it felt like to be a woman, let alone a Muslim woman – the innocent victims par excellence of this century’s relentless clash of civilisations. The irony of the situation was missed by both the female congregation and, naturally, the imam himself. The bearded man finished the sermon with the words: “And that’s what being a Muslim woman feels like.”

As a good friend recently said to me about imams talking about menstruation, “There are plenty of female scholars. Don’t worry guys. We got this.”

5) Finally, and as I have said time and time again, the Australians have got it going ON!

World News Australia has a cute little piece on Aussies sharing “Islamic fashion” online.

I want to shop at the Hijab House in a mall and be a hijabista too!

 

what a year

Since I have to do some vacation coverage at work and want to catch up on True Blood, I’m taking a little break from the blog over the holidays. Which simply means I may or may not post the weekly roundup, and I may or may not post pictures, but most certainly means I unfortunately will not be posting any seriously fun posts (like my thoughts on women led-prayer, gaining heaven through motherhood or hijab as a heterosexist construct) until 2012.

Which apparently is right around the corner *gasp!* I guess you won’t have to wait too long.

This year I spoke a lot about hijab. Hijab as privilege. Hijab on children. Sexy hijab. Camel-hump hijab. Halloween hijab and TV hijab. I even interviewed a seriously awesome hijabi boxer, ranted about niqab, made fun of hijab and took my hijab to the beach.

But you know, being a muslimah isn’t all about the hijab — I also mused about Muslims traveling through space and time. Ranted about prayer in public schools. Made the decision to nurse my toddler. And got my hijab in a bunch over misogynist parables, creeping shari’a, not-so-halal halal meat, gender segregation, misogynist readings of hadith, traditions keeping women from reciting the Qur’an, hearing hate from the pulpit, power and accommodation at the mosque, reclaiming Friday prayers and male scholars telling women how best to relate to their menstrual periods.

And still had enough time to make decadent Oreo-stuffed, chocolate chip cookies and read a book.

So with good thoughts, prayers and warm feelings for the year ahead — here’s to more great discussions with all of you insha’Allah. See you in 2012!