Swinging Door

"When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door and we are purely independent of and at the same time dependent upon everything."

My mother has always told me I say too much, by which she means she would appreciate if more of what is in my head stayed inside my head. I have only followed her advice when I have done or seen things which have been outlined to require grave consequences if revealed, and in regard to those instances, I feel like I oppressed my soul for having taken part in something that must be hidden. Listen, I know that I wouldn't feel that way if those things hadn't been outlined as such, but they were and I do. So here's everything else.

If you don't do drugs, you will learn other ways to step back and look at your own life. You realize that's what you wanted in the first place, when you still had control. You will remember you always knew how to tear yourself away, if necessary, to open your laden arms and stop time to take stock-- what exactly are you carrying? Do you need all that? The questions have changed, and I'm getting better at making the assessment, but this act remains essential to maintaining sanity. It does matter what you step back into, too.

I need a close look, so I'm up late tonight. It's only 1:22AM in California. Still late for me these days, but I don't have to work tomorrow or the next day, I'm not tired because I didn't work yesterday or the day before. I don't have to worry about falling asleep late and missing the dawn prayer because I'm on my period, so excused this week. I'm not studying for a certification exam and I'm not in school or recovering from being in school. I haven't been in love in about 18 months. And my life has taken shape recently (read: I got my shit together) in a way that I had once imagined over twelve years ago and then completely forgotten about. Oh, and the world seems to be going to shit and I have never felt more calm about it. In other words, the universe has aligned and conditions for reflection are perfect. And I'm going to do that publicly because, don't you want to know how I did it all?

Awh, internal laudatory chorus. Stawpppp. It wasn't narcissism. I swear.

We've come a long way since the two whitest kids at my school asked me if I was related to Osama Bin Laden and if I believed in god, respectively. The other day, the whitest person at work asked me what the Muslim community thinks about ______. Chicken? Printer cartridges? Toilet Paper? I'm not actually sure. I faded out for a second and for that paranoid second, I wondered if he was asking me for A Reason and reassured myself-- this is not something I need to hide. Whatever he asked, I recovered in time to read him the first sentence of this paragraph, minus the bit about white kids. I think he got my point because he went on to express a bunch of sympathy for the disenfranchised (while maintaining a fiscal conservative stance). At least the one time that a non-Muslim POC bullied me, he had the awareness, in 2002, as a pre-teen, to put a towel on his head and imitate a muezzin. If I hadn't been terrified, I might have been impressed.

I've lost track of details. Are things worse now than they were fourteen years ago? I think so. But I can't say I've been trying to keep track of everything. It takes a considerable amount of work to go from literary studies (academic analysis of written cultural artifacts) to maintaining and building data systems. (That's a horrible description of it. My profession is not good at descriptions of our work. I apologize. I work on distributed databases. Sometimes I say, hey, it's still a matter of understanding the organization of information. Or, like, you know, the basic human experience of understanding.) First, I had to change from being a person who engages through only observation, however creatively or intelligently I did so, to a person who takes initiative and moves both ideas and resources. I also needed both an art degree and a science degree. I also fell in love and broke my heart a bunch of times. I swallowed my pride. I treated depression with unsanctioned drugs. I moved halfway across the country, and then entirely across the country. I pursued esoteric religion.

So I can't fully tell you how I ended up back on the path I meant to take when I was fifteen, the person I wanted to be before I realized how complicated global politics was going to make my life. You can't contain my whole life. You don't need to. No one can. But there are some parts that are critical for us to share.

I do still occasionally catch the news. Sometimes it can't be helped. I don't exactly avoid it, but I also don't feel constantly threatened. I do care. I pray for the dead. I pray for the living. I give what I can to people who have lost their homes, their families, their livelihood. I hope to do more of that. I work because I can and it's okay that some people can't do as much.

But I don't have all the defensive arguments down. I refuse to. I understand why they're important to some people. But I need more than that, deeper and wider. Yet, I already have everything I need.

I'm not who I'm not. I'm not even who I am. Identity, or what I project, where I feel I belong or who I show alliance with or however you want to define it, is only a small part of the self. I think most people only use a small part of the self. And when you have very little, you are likely to hold what you have very tightly. And probably spend all your money on it. But that's not the point of self. The point is to let it go.



the quote at the beginning is from a zen member of my family

Apologetics in Religious Dialogue and Development

This post is a follow-up to my previous post, Dreaming of Potato Chips During Ramadan. A reader pointed out that my explanation of what Ramadan means to me was somewhat of an exercise in apologetics.  First of all, I am thankful to have this pointed out because I have never examined or really acknowledged that it's something I do. Next, we were agreed on our primary motivations behind religious action, that being "the admission that you do it primarily because you were required to, and you submit to that requirement." However, I do think there is a place for apologetics in religious dialogue.

Looking back, I grew up in a culture of Islamic apologetics. I was okay with that when I was a teenager. Back then, I did need to rationalize/defend my religion. This was for two reasons, both of which go back to my immigrant experience. First, I was constantly surrounded by people who thought I was a complete weirdo with my brown skin and head scarf and the second is, because people thought my way of life was weird, I was all too aware that mine was not the only way of life and that the religion I practiced was not something I had chosen but, like my skin color, something I had inherited. I was taught, via the American dream, that being American means you are not tied to the inheritance you receive from you parents. In fact, even if that inheritance is great, you are expected to make your own name. So, to convince the people around me (and myself, because it's hard to live in America and never find yourself believing in the American dream) that I hadn't just inherited my religion, I took up an apologetic stance .

I admire my reader's irritation with having to defend a religious choice. However, I am still defensive. Yes, 9/11 and the Arab Spring have happened but the vast majority of people I interact with on a daily basis know very little about being a Muslim and/or a minority. In my post, I acknowledge that I am trying to address both Muslims and non-Muslims and I think the second group still brings out my self-justification. I am also trying to address Muslims who are, like me, defensive. I think that religious rationalization has a place in society and in the religious development of a person. After all, in the Quran God provides rationale, too, and also urges people to seek knowledge. Not everyone can easily concede to doing something simply because they are told to, perhaps especially not anyone raised in America on a steady diet of questioning authority. For many people, rationalization serves the purpose of relating the lives they live with the abstract idea of God and pulls them toward faith.

For the record, I got sick of apologetics pretty early on in college. A lot of the time, an argument is only as good as its argumentation. Anyway, I have always been Muslim by default, which I tried not to take for granted, but I needed to experience unconditional love before feeling like I chose Islam. Having experienced it, I bear witness that it's not easy to find. Other people probably have other things that pull them toward God and/or religion. I don't think that's wrong. I think there is also a guiding sense besides whatever brings you to religion. Those times when you just know something is the good thing to do in a situation and submit to it without thought or hesitation. Just like there's nothing wrong with starting with a rational, social, political, etc reason to act on a religious command and working your way up to this guiding sense with practice, there's nothing wrong having this guiding sense already and then gaining knowledge about how/why God's creation works the way it does.

Beauty is a Well-Organized Mind

Brown lady at the counter: you are so pretty! you look like a picture.
White lady nearby: you are. I'm thinking national geographic. 
Brown lady: no, I mean by any standard.

THANK YOU.

I have a vendetta against the idea of"national geographic" aka "exotic" prettiness. Well meaning people, don't make me make you feel awkward by attempting to compliment me with this idea. That the mere paradigm shift of finding beauty in someone without apparently nordic ancestry can be considered worldly, adventurous, cool, rebellious taste makes the rest of white people seem unfairly stuffy. Not to mention that I resent my image being used as a marker of taste, cool or otherwise. That my image can only be beautiful in a way that serves the viewer either objectifies me or suggests a wishful master-slave mindset, which can be synonymous. And since I am neither an object nor a slave probably means the viewer resents me for being who I am where I am. In other words, people who think I'm exotic think I don't belong.

Unless they think that the state of not being in one's native place, being unusually juxtaposed with one's background, is beautiful. In which case, I'm still offended because a brown person among white people is out of place but a white person among brown people is usually construed as worldly, adventurous, cool, rebellious and all you've done is ghettoize me.

I don't really agree with the brown lady's beauty standards either but at least her compliment was really a compliment and not backhanded white supremacy. She proved that by following her compliment up with defending me.

So, what beauty standards do I endorse? That would be inner beauty. What's inner beauty? I'm gonna go with my mom and with Dumbledore and say that inner beauty, which I'm going to say is also eternal beauty, is a well-organized mind. Given my tendency to talk about religion, anti-rationalism, and social justice, maybe you expected this to be focused on the heart. Anyone who gets a Dumbledore citation, though, might guess that your heart should help you organize your mind. I think my heart is where my inner child lives and though I will never shut her out, she is reactionary, fickle and all ego and as an adult, it would be blind or lazy of me to not have learned better about some things.

As I tried to say from the beginning, though I'm not sure I said it the same way, this blog has been mostly about figuring out my organizing principles. I think I like this way of saying it better.

"The Essential Rumi, borrowed from the library"

Before I read the mystic's words,
the flowers of your perfume,
curled between pages you held long and close,
dreamed our release into a tangled garden
of cornflowers, violet and green.

And we, red and gold, hair loosened by poetry,
flew wings of kept birds out of the house
into the glory of that conjured place,
praying for tree houses and swings
with no words, just whooping, sublime and serene.

Meditation on Sharhnush Parsipur's Touba

Today, I have been mentally disconnected from the world around me, wandering in the book, Touba and the Meaning of Night. I finished it last night and I need to move on because I have plenty of reading I plan on getting done in the next few weeks. But in my usual approach to finishing a really good book, I want to dwell on it. I can't read anything else while I'm at work so here I am. To do this constructively, and because the themes of this book a very relevant to this blog, here's a quick analysis.
The book is pretty out there. Employing what critics are calling magical realism,which I love, the book is a blend Islamic mysticism and a critique of history and gender politics. At times I felt that the author was heavy handed by offering definitions yet her definitions were so good, I can't say I minded. I felt like I was being told a story by an elder, wisdom emanating from the actions of every character.

Alert: spoilers ahead. If you dare, keep reading.

Let's start with the Islamic mysticism. The main first ambition expressed by Touba, the main character, is her desire to find god and bear a messiah. She is inspired after her father teaches her the Quran, who is inspired to do so when the thought that the earth is round makes him realize that women are capable of thinking. Throughout the novel, when there is a change in the path of Touba's life, she recalls this ambition and wonders how her marriages, her children, her society, her property prevent her from following it. In the end, however, it is Layla, the embodiment of femininity, who enlightens Touba and unites her with the Touba Tree, the Sufi symbol for spiritual perfection, unity with God, and death.

The society that had successfully prevented her was itself in political and cultural upheaval. The political upheaval, despite Touba's marriage into the Qajar dynasty, always seemed distant in the book. The absence of politically people involved are not felt except in the case of Mr. Khiabani and Ismael, Touba's and her daughter Moone's prime male interests. These interests, through no fault of their own, turn Touba and her daughter towards mysticism. Nonetheless, the book begins with a story of a European man whipping Touba's father in the face for wandering, deep in mystic thought, into the path of his horse. The idea of historical progress, which is implemented by those in power, at first embarrass Touba, but in due course become irrelevant after she also questions, admires, and rejects them on the basis of disconnected principles. Touba's greatest difficulty is in dealing with modernization and, for which she consults her spiritual leader, fluctuating social norms.

On Touba's first visit to her spiritual leader, he sends her home because her mind is preoccupied with those she must care for: her family, including four young children and a mentally disturbed aunt. Her family soon doubles after they get home and Touba is asked to take in refugees from Azerbaijan and only to be broken when her husband takes a second wife. Two false images of gender equality are presented: the sexual agency of the court women, allowed them due to wealth and power, and the financial agency of Touba's daughter, afforded her through modernization. Both are false in giving neither woman what she wants, though the second, unlike the first, is less harmful in its falsehood. But what Touba wants most is to be united with God and each duty in her life seems to be an obstacle. After yet another generation of adopted family finally finds their own direction in life, Touba finals turns within herself and asks herself why she has never achieved her only goal.

That's as far as I can spoil it for you. Now I'll give you my conclusion: This is a work of dharmic feminism, a journey in search of the divine feminine. I don't know Farsi, but in Bengali, the word for religion doesn't translate to "faith." This is something I first glimpsed in a lecture by Ingrid Matteson, a professor on the Spirituality of Muslim Women at Hartford Seminary. I just put two and two together. The word for religion, dharmo, is very close the Hindu concept of "duty." Sufism is, in fact, highly influenced by the dharmic religions. Because Touba's end goal is to raise herself to union with God, and because her duties include contending with the social and political forces around her, she expresses embedded feminism.

I heavily related to this book because, even in different social and political environments, this is the Islam I grew up with. Persian culture is appreciated by many Bengalis, as is Buddhist and Hindu culture.. Though my family is Sunni and Iran is largely Shi'a, there are also members of my family who are Sufis, like Touba. My maternal grandfather, despite his Arabian influenced Islam, read palms, which I can't see jibing with Wahabism. My parents, in deference to my grandfather's dated reference, seek Arabian influence and these days that results in pretty straight-laced views. How has Wahabism developed over the span of my grandfathers' lives, my mother's life, my life? Could it have been less influential when my grandfather developed his religious views?  These are relevant questions I wouldn't have thought to ask without having read this book.**

Of course, in America, Islam is something still different. Sufism is/should be different. I am an immigrant but I doubt I will instill in my children half the dharmic values I have and I don't have that many compared to my parents (though there are some I want to cultivate). At times, in America, you need something else. Are there Puritan, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish values that can be expressed in Islam? Considering the common root of the religions, that answer should be easy! But has it emerged? Eboo Patel says there is a cornerstone in the value of service and I agree. Mohja Kahf points out American Islam's roots in slavery and the Civil Rights movement and the American value of egalitarian love and that has to be a part of it, too. Also, it has to seriously engage in feminism. What else? I think there's more. I believe this is my generation's duty.

Now, time to get my laundry and clean my room.



**I have vague answers because I know a rough religio-political history of Islam,  via Reza Aslan's No God But God and G. Willow Wilson's Butterfly Mosque.

Against Eltahawy's Criticism of Religious Sublimation

This video can use some more circulation in the Muslim feminist blogosphere.

My favorite part of this video is towards the end, when Leila Ahmed criticizes Mona Eltahawy's interpretation of Alifa Rifaat's story, "Distant View of a Minaret." There are several reasons its my favorite part. First, it got me to read the story for myself, which wasn't hard because it is also linked in the Foreign Policy article, for myself. Second, in my first post about this article, my strongest criticism of it was Eltahawy's criticism of religious sublimation, which is what is happening in her reading of the story, by "claiming to have God firmly on their side."

Before I tell you my final reason for liking Ahmed's criticism, I have to tell you me second favorite part of this video. My second part of this video is how much respect these two women have for each other and that the Melissa Harris-Perry show did nothing to play that down. This makes me feel like I don't have to worry about Eltahawy burning bridges for those who want to follow in her footsteps. I loved that both she and Ahmed met and talked to Alifa Rifaat. I love this network of Muslim feminist thinkers and the exchange of feminist thought. Beautifully done. And I love that Mona made a splash and brought these pieces together for anyone who is willing to see beyond the Islamophobic and anti-Islamophobia static.

Now, my final reason for liking Ahmed's criticism, brought on by Eltahawy's bringing this issue to the forefront, is that this is the part of the discussion I want to take part in.

Reminiscent of Marxist, "opium of the masses" idea, that religion allows us an escapist option in the face of oppression or that it can be turned to instead of reform is a common criticism of religion itself, not society, which the umbrella under which gender criticism usually falls. I don't like Eltahawy's blurring of the line between religion and society but the truth is, Islam has been used to justify and normalize misogyny. Yet, for the women who marry the men under oppressive regimes and are, in turn, oppressed themselves, is religious sublimation so bad? It saves a woman from a life of finding meaning only through her duty to her uncaring husband. Isn't that feminism? Alternatives, which should be available, include divorce, marrying out of the culture or not marrying, all of which value the self over the society and can both free a woman of the pitfalls of misogyny and introduce a whole set of new problems (that will likely include a foreign version of misogyny) or not marrying men

And then there's the idea that God is a patriarchal man. I don't believe that to be true. But there are probably many religious women that do believe that and by believing that there's a good model for a patriarchal man, continue to believe in patriarchy. While feminists tear down patriarchy for its flaw, these women seem to believe in a higher standard for it. What's wrong with that? Where that higher standard (which should be considered a moderate from of feminism) is left unexpressed is where my only criticism of what Eltahawy blankets over can be found. If that seems un-feminist of me, I think you need to expand your definition of the term.

One day, I'm going to be a famous poet

In my last post, I said I applaud Mona Eltahawy for gaining the readership she's gained. Not only that, as explained by Altmuslimah, she got a discussion going. Not only THAT, but I hope she's paving the way for Muslim, feminist journalists and writers on the world stage. That part is only a hope so far because to do so, she can't sacrifice her identity for success. That said, she doesn't need to represent every Muslim feminist out there but selling herself out will likely only cause a barrier for anyone wanting to follow in her footsteps.

I've been thinking recently about gaining a wider readership. And by thinking, I mean thinking of trying to get to that point myself. I don't intend to go via news or publishing corporations. That's not the only way to mass communication. At least, if those corps don't come to own the entire internet, it's not. And I'd like to come at it from a community organizer's point of view, where successful mass communication isn't muddled with the attitude of "trying to make a splash" like it has been for Mona Eltahawy.

In the meantime, I don't want to get lost in Muslim feminism. There's more to me than that. I've had the fortune of growing up in country where ideas flow freely and I can't forget that side of myself. I want to be a part of that free flow of ideas and there's more to my ideas, more to ME than my Muslim and feminist ideas. I want to be a poet so I can take those pieces apart and sew them back together into my favorite outfit. And when I figure out how to be a poet, I want to know how to get people to listen. The people who need it, at least. Who wants to sit around at home in her favorite outfit?

These are big dreams considering my current readership (I appreciate each of you deeply) but I've always been a big dreamer.

To touch base with another side of myself, (but mostly to direct you to something wonderful) I recently watched the premiere episode of HBO's Girls. I had to see what all the hubbub in the female and feminist blogosphere was about. Unfortunately, I was pretty upset about it. I don't even want to talk about it. I'm not watching any more of it if I can help it. I'd rather re-watch ABG.

Yale's "Call the NYPD" Protest and the role of the MSA in the American University

I haven't posted in a very long time! I've been pretty busy corralling application forms and figuring out the next step for myself. Which is close to being figured out, by the way. I'll explain some more in my next post because, in the interest of aforementioned corralling and figuring, this post will have to be a short one.

Side note: That title sounds like a paper title. Maybe I do miss being in school.

So, getting to the meat of today's topic. Recently, my sister's college MSO hosted a lecture by Ingrid Mattson, former president of ICNA. After a girl, claiming she was a photography student, asked to take a picture of my father, my sister brought up the recently publicized NYPD investigation of Muslim college student organization that, shockingly, pervaded the east coast much further than NYPD jurisdiction does.

While I am disappointed, and slightly confused since Bloomburg openly supported the Park51 Mosque, I would prefer to call attention to Yale's response because the way we respond to what gets thrown at us is what defines us and the way Yale students have responded is highly respectable.

To protest racial profiling, Yale students are posting pictures captions "Call the NYPD" of people on campus holding signs declaring "I'm a Muslim," "I'm a feminist," "I'm just trying to help," "We used to be Muslim," or simply, "I'm against racial profiling." The wide range of photos posted and wildly varying signs proclaiming personal identity effectively condones racial profiling.

Further, I believe that this act reflects the desire in the American Muslim community to be addressed as an individual. Though Muslim culture is generally collective, American Muslims have a tendency to either flout or walk the line between individualism and collectivism. I first noticed this after reading a ton of Sherman Alexie last summer, particularly his novel Reservation Blues, because I believe it's an experience shared by most minorities strongly associated with enduring stereotypes.

I was never an MSA member myself, though my school's chapter was the largest organization on campus. Most members were fairly conservative Muslims. There weren't any non-Muslims as far as I remember and being a female, semi-practicing Muslim who was grew up pretty American, I didn't feel like I fit in. I don't think the MSA was intentionally exclusive but I think the Yale protest certainly hints at a need for more diverse involvement within similar organizations across America.

Afterall, the MSA is not the campus mosque/masjid. Though it can certainly function as that as well, in the end, it is a campus organization and has to address the needs of the campus as well the Muslim community at the school. It has the opportunity to serve as a platform of discussion between Muslims and non-Muslims an intermediary is sorely needed there. Though mosques can do this as well, as a campus organization rather than a house of worship, this is a responsibility of the campus MSA.

Finally, I don't think the response from the Yale community at large can be dissociated from the character of the Yale MSA. The Yale MSA has a reputation for what some would call "liberalism." But this is a place where Americans Muslims walk a similar line as that between individualism and collectivism and should not be mistaken, though it often is, as counter to good religious practice. Islam, like other religions, historically adopted the culture of the land and mixed religious expression with cultural expression. I don't think that men and women praying side by side on a college campus, though it contradicts Islamic orthodoxy, can so easily be condemned as the religiously conservative are wont to do.

All in all, in my book: Yale 1, NYPD 0.

Is the Occupy movement over yet?

I am an extreme opponent of "Occupy Wall Street," and the "movements" it has "inspired." As demonstrated by the number of quotation marks in that last sentence. The opinions expressed in this post are meant to be inflammatory.  So, here are some reasons I think OWS would be better off dead:

1. Occupy Wall Street was, itself, a complete failure. Protesting "corporate greed," the greed that gobbled up tuition money and gave students nothing in return, so vaguely produces no results. It put the ball in the capitalist court, because blaming is the same as appointing responsibility. Occupy Wall Street's protesters took no responsibility. What if they instead protested the Higher Education Bubble, which was a far more immediate cause of their problems? Or the marketing/advertising industry? Trade and finance overall is not problematic, as OWS's founding Adbusters claims. General unrest is nothing new and nothing to protest.

2. Occupy Wall Street was inspired by the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring did it better than it's American copycat movement. Of course, they had more obviously corrupt leaders to overthrow while even most college educated Americans, after years under a subversively repressive government (felt only by people the government declared war upon such as Muslims, American and otherwise, via the War on Terror), had only vague feelings of injustice. The Arab inspiration behind Occupy Wall Street is widely recognized but rarely does OWS seek advice from the movement that inspired it. Why not?

3. Occupy Wall Street highlights the lack of employment opportunities for the college educated, who refuse to stoop to the level of working at Wal-mart. My dad, who worked as a "sales representative" at a Sony outlet store even after completing two master's degrees and nearly a PhD, sympathizes with this aspect of the movement. However, rather than protesting the degradation of having to work under your qualification, have any of the occupiers thought to protest the degrading nature of working class work? Have they ever thought that their adversity to joining the working class is devoid of endowing any dignity to the working class?

4. Occupy Wall Street is a manifestation of the fear of losing a middle class standard of living, more than anything. Or a fear of never gaining it. It's a fear of being ashamed that you can't afford to do what your friends are doing. It's a fear of going back home after college and being the least successful of your friends. Or even of having to go back home after college. It's a fear of no longer being able to imitate the bourgeoisie with middle class earnings. 

5. Occupy Wall Street propagates the facade of American democracy and opportunity. The world sees America as an emblem of democracy and opportunity. In this arena, America is more or less a "has been." We stopped being so as soon as we began to force that image upon other countries. That's when we became imperialist. America is also internally imperialist. Any sense of us being otherwise is a sense of entitlement. This is evidenced by the fact that everyone else is now doing what we claim to do better than we are*. Their protests are more successful. Their music and art is revolutionary. They wear their hearts on their sleeves and we can only manage to be sarcastic. We need to look to other countries for inspiration now. The movement's illusory nature is also evidenced by the fact that the media has largely been its proponent. I might've put some faith in this movement had it been named the American Spring (some have suggested calling it American Autumn but it didn't stick).

6. Occupy Wall Street sold souvenirs to participants and had visitors. Do I need to explain this one? 

I am critical of this movement largely because I care deeply about protest and reform. However, the culture of the people participating in the largest protest movements in America acts as a blinder to their success. People who got good grades in school and completed college degrees, the people of the movement, are generally too institutionalized to understand what it means to protest and reform. I think there's a good reason behind "anti-intellectualism" in America. Know that in occupying in order to put your degree to work means you are using something designed against your best interests to pursue your interests.


*Does this also mean that countries emulating what they think of as being "American freedom" are going to have some issues to face, too? Yes.

My New Year's Resolutions

I don't normally make New Year's Resolutions because they are such flimsy creatures. However, this is a pivotal stage of my life and I don't see how using the turning of the calender as another excuse to think through my decisions could hurt. I know you're thinking I've already wasted a whole day of this year or that I'm lazy, and though  you'd be right on both accounts, you should also know I'm leaning on some old revisionist tendencies of mine today so bear with me.

To improve the custom of New Year's resolution making, I propose that after the first day of the New Year has passed and you've had time to rethink your resolutions, there should be a tradition to be honest with yourself about your ambitions. Why are you trying to lose ten pounds? Do you really need to reconnect with you flaky friends? Why should stop cracking your knuckles? If you don't have a good answer today, that resolution isn't gonna stick.

I work with wonderful people at the library. I like almost all of my co-workers who I've gotten to know, which is generally how it goes with me and people. However, I have a lot of trouble conveying that I like them solely due to the fact that I am a pretty awkward conversationalist these days. I'm okay with small talk but after the acceptable number of exchanges, people tend to think you're talking to them about the weather because you're just making conversation to be polite and don't really like them all that much or even find their existence interesting. But I love talking about the weather! What other people say about the weather tells me a million things about them! And I love learning things about people!**

Naturally, I would like to resolve to become witty and eloquent. I've been so before. But I think I have now achieved the social awkwardness I worked tirelessly to avoid since like, second grade. It takes a lot of effort to be socially competent and I am really lazy and have found better things to invest my energy in.

Ah, but there's another twist! One of the things, if not The Thing that I've chosen to invest my energy in is the building of good communities. Co-workers, ideally, form a community around their shared workplace and common work experiences. When they don't, they create an uncomfortable environment for everyone involved. This is the reason that there are so many pop-management books.

So, how do you create community even though you are socially awkward because when you said you didn't have cable, your co-worker thought TV was against your religion and not because you don't have that kinda cash? Well, for now I figure if I stick around long enough, they'll eventually get it. Keep your enemies close and you'll probably stop calling them enemies. Except, of course, in jest.

So, my revised resolution is to refuse to allow my awkwardness to dissuade me from communicating with my co-workers. Or people in general. Because sometimes the awkwardness is their fault and there's no reason I should have to do the work of smoothing things over. I don't have to make them feel okay about their preconceived notions of Muslim Americans or Muslim American women. But it wouldn't be fair of me to not provide them with opportunities to learn/do better. And to be fair, I also resolve to be more sensitive to realizing when the awkwardness is actually my fault and then, and ONLY then, breaking out some wit and/or eloquence.



**Disclaimer: I really don't like gossip, though. I don't stop people from telling me gossip but I will try my best not to repeat it and usually resent the gossiper for now creating the possibility of the awkward situation in which I have to make my knowledge of their gossip known. I should try to use gossip I hear for good from now on. Is that another resolution? Let's save that one for another time.

The Miseducation of Me

Yesterday, I started working as a clerk at the public library. In a library, organization is very important. Things are classified a certain way and need to be kept accordingly so they can easily be located when needed. When something slips through the cracks of the obsessive structure of order, due to human error or subterfuge, it is tracked down and the situation is cleanly rectified.

Having studied post-colonial and vernacular English Literature, Gender Studies, and Philosophy in college, I am not trained to put things in a preordained order. I'm trained to question order. I'm trained to analyze, deconstruct, and reassess as exhaustively as possible and I am trained to defend as innovative a reassessment as I possibly can.

I wasn't really made for that sort of training. I'm a South Asian immigrant, I am a Muslim, I am a woman, and I am poor. College was a training that mostly sees the world for its disorder and dissonance. Despite the questioning of order, believe it or not, it is hard to avoid Western, patriarchal*, elitist values, since they are the values that get an American college its credibility. I at least attended a Catholic University that wore its Christian values on its sleeve and did not worship secularism.

While college helped me see my place in society, which I had previously felt I was lacking and that I needed to work hard and be creative to earn, it is a place in society where I increasingly feel like I am trespassing, a place I cannot earn no matter how hard I work. But it's a place that is rightfully mine. My college degree mostly made me painfully aware of the possibility that I struggle in futility. This is not something I am willing to easily accept.

Questioning order is infinitely constructive for the privileged, for people that order benefits. But of course they are the least likely to do so. That leaves it for those who order has forsaken. But after a certain point, for those that order has forsaken and has left to question it, all order becomes an enemy, life becomes meaningless and their questions become a threat to no one but themselves. This becomes a sort of order itself, created and supported by human error and subterfuge. It is unsettling to realize that you are not of the former group, though you've been a confident, straight "A" student your whole life, when you are in the middle of college.

I have to believe that order can be good. I have to see it. When a library patron is scanning a shelf that I ensured was organized, when someone comes in for something and I know exactly where it is, when I can learn from my mistakes rather than feel like everything I do is a mistake, it helps me feel that I can earn my place as a positive aspect of a constructive order.

Obviously, I don't think the objective way that libraries are ordered is a way that people can be ordered because people are not objects and what is just for objects is not just for subjects. Order should contain justice because a belief in order requires a belief in justice. This belief in justice is apparent in religion, and so religion has been called "The opium of the masses," and "slave mentality," Marx and Nietzsche respectively, for it's support of unjust order through a belief in cosmic justice. But that's what's called "blaming the victim," in my book, and it's ridiculous to blame disenfranchised people who can empower themselves by believing in any greater order.

So as it turns out, not all minimum wage jobs are soul-crushing.



*You can be a patriarchal feminist. You probably are one if you think matriarchal societies and lesbians are all feminists. Chew on that now.

What does it mean to be a Muslim feminist?

In a previous post, I referenced a "theory" that the perceived Islamic patriarchy as it stands today was largely a relic of colonialism. The Emel Magazine article's author goes on to say that whether or not this is true, simple finger-pointing to the West does not absolve the fact of what is, which, specific to this article, is the denunciation of early Islamic female scholarship. The post-colonial theory is used to explain why few, including Islamic scholars, are aware of the female scholarship revivified in Dr. Akram Nadwi's canon.

In Islam, and particularly in certain schools of thought, the examples of people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, living around the time of the Prophet(SAW) strongly influence religious interpretation and practice.  So, though the Quran directly invokes that all believers-- men, women, children and everyone in between, are both literate, requiring that they can read and understand the Quran, and seek knowledge in the wider world, if there is no prevalent example of this among the early believers, it is believed by many to be a lesser aspect of Islamic practice. If there are only examples among the men and not among everyone else, it is believed to be an aspect of practice prescribed primarily, if not exclusively, to men.

Before Islam, the women of the Arabian peninsula could be treated as like chattel as were livestock. Not all women were treated this way-- as can be understood from the example of the prophet's first wife, Khadija, who was a successful and respected businesswoman, but there was nothing that prevented it. Islamic jurisprudence, called Sharia, drastically changed this, primarily by giving women the right to literacy, divorce and the inheritance of property. This was more than one thousand years before western countries began to conceptualize rights equivalent to those Islam brought to women. However, the post-colonialist theory is that, even before this, Western domination of Islamic countries brought with it the domination of Muslim women by Muslim men.

I am extremely interested in how this happened. Social change, especially that which entitles previously disempowered groups, is usually adopted gradually and embraced far after enacted legal reform. But how can such a long held reform been so pervasively swept away? Though the author of "The Lost Female Scholars of Islam" discourages finger-pointing for the sake of moving beyond such, I believe the fact that enough female scholarship to fill 40 volumes can have been lost under imperialism and colonialism demonstrates not only the sheer extent of cultural domination that happened but also a certain readiness to return to old habits.

As a teenager, I came across feminist discourse on the internet. This was before the prevalence of radical feminism and what I encountered, specifically the fact that the ERA is yet to be enacted, is what has been classified as first wave feminism. I was shocked by it and immediately identified myself as a feminist. Next, I found second wave feminism and the discussion of gender in college classrooms. What interested me the most about second wave feminism was the call to female scholarship for the purpose of social change. Knowledge, before then, had been so gendered for me that I usually assumed that most things I read were written by men and, in fact, didn't think anything of it. My encounter with second wave feminism changed that. Finally, I came upon belle hooks and the idea that American feminism is about white, middle class women.

This was the most difficult feminism for me to understand, and is probably so for most people who are socialized with the dominant white, middle class American culture. When American feminists rose up against the oppression of women in Islam, I felt distanced from both feminism and the treatment of women in Islam. I tried to read works by Islamic feminists. They usually called for feminist interpretations of the Quran. However, the imposition of American feminism (western, white, middle class feminism) upon the Quran did not feel right to me. It wasn't something I could bring home to my mom, who is both very religious and believes in women's rights. However, there are Islamic feminists, who by the American definition are third wave or multicultural feminists, and the tradition of female scholarship in Islam and its contribution to Islamic thought provides a framework from which Islamic feminism can be understood as an inherent part of Islam and more widely accepted by Muslims.Though second wavers may not necessarily concede to Islamic feminism, it's not really any of their business to do so.

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman

Reading belle hooks is as good for my soul as reading Walt Whitman has ever been. I have been slowly working my way through Teaching Critical Thinking, savoring the fleeting chapters of "practical wisdom." In a chapter on how helpful stories are for the learning process, she shares one of her favorite stories. It goes like this:

"A student seeking to understand better the process of self-actualization goes to the teacher and says, 'I often suffer from a split mind, a lack of congruence between what I think, say, and do. How can I end this suffering?' The teacher tells the student that the potential for this split is happening inside everyone. For inside all of us there is a 'sick self and a self struggling to be well and they are in conflict.' When the student asks the teacher which self is winning the conflict, the teacher replies, 'whichever self you feed.'"

Philosophical, empowering, 100% belle hooks.

As I may have mentioned, I am terrible at taking advice. You cannot simply tell me what to do and expect I'll do it, even if I asked you for advice. I need to see the reason behind your advice and I need to see the values behind your reasoning, and I need you to acknowledge that I've thought about this so much already that it's a ridiculously complex issue that you may not fully understand unless you're in the mood for a very, very long story. At it's best, advice only helps to clarify my own reasoning and the values behind them. However, because we may disagree or, even more likely, I may feel that your advice doesn't take the culmination of my experience into consideration, I am still left with little confidence on my issue.

On the other hand, the best stories of wisdom rarely tell you directly what to do but help you think through your own complexities and, at the same time, are empowering. Even stories that don't resemble zen koan, just good, nuanced stories that aren't your own and help you get out of your own head and your own frame of mind help you figure out your own experience in a delicate comparison/contrast.

People are complicated, life is complicated, and that's why we need stories to help us learn.

Curation and Cultivation

Since finishing college, maybe even since I began living away from my family, I have begun to realize that the way most people define themselves is in relation to a given set of rules. Some people follow rules provided to them and identify themselves as followers of those rules. Some people defy rules that are provided to them and consider themselves to be rebels, often also identifying themselves with the reasons that they need not follow those rules. A lot of times, people hop between different sets of rules, looking for a set they like. Even more often, people take their given set of rules and modify them to suite their lifestyle.

However, because people use rules as a basis for their identities, they tend to take it personally when others defy, reject, modify, or even follow the same rules as they do. To take a lesson from Huck Finn, rules also have an intimate relationship with morality and justice. On top of which righteousness often involves choosing between following rules that can mean saving yourself and sacrificing others or saving others and sacrificing yourself where "self" is interchangeable with rules and identity and mired in the realm of choice.

Even the way we learn and know can be boiled down to understanding, accepting, and following rules.

Since I was a kid, I have always had a problem with rules. They are what I consider to be a narrow minded way of being. As a daughter of immigrant parents, it often seemed to me that neither my school nor my parents, the two institutions under which I had to operate quite knew what rules really made sense to enforce upon me. My mother thought this was because my grandfather had spoiled me as a child and lead me to believe I was too good for rules, which is probably partially true.

From a young age, I have been choosing when I wanted to follow whatever rules suited my interests. I kept my enemy close when it came to school, by getting such spectacular grades that the teachers just assumed I was a stickler for the rules and neglected to enforce them for me, eventually deeming me an exception-- which I was. Unfortunately, my mother saw me for what I was and defying her over-protective rules required covert operations.

For me, defying rules has never been action based in carelessness or recklessness. In a true mastery of defiance, getting caught should be an act of defiance itself. Or is it an act of identity, identifying the perpetrator simply as a rebel? But I am not happy with being someone who is just "against" some other thing. I crave to learn, not destroy.  

As someone who has never followed rules indiscriminately, I struggled in college-- navigating disciplines and bureaucracies. And even more so, I struggled with the freedom to choose and make my own life, freedom I have only gained from leaving my parents' home and from finishing school with zero job prospects. However, I refused to follow any beaten trail guaranteeing success.

Obviously, I have no choice but to make my own rules-- rules I will myself to follow in a lifelong test of my own capacity for learning, adapting, and perhaps teaching others to do the same. I seek not only to know but understand knowing and to pass on that understanding and pass on my refusal to tailor myself to any principles but my own. This is what I do best. Having nothing else to base my principles on, I will have to base them on the curation and cultivation of my interests. Having no platform for the performance of my self-discipline, I begin this blog as a promise to myself and will continue it until my private performance is either satisfactory or preferred.