Meeting Khadra

I’m working my way through Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. It’s the first assigned book for a book club I helped start. I obligated myself and a number of other Muslim women to read it, and the obligation is what got me through the first, less interesting parts of the book. I’m glad it did. As I delved deeper into the book, I encountered the story of a woman very similar to myself. Raised by a devout Muslim community that stressed the ritual aspects of Islam and defined morality on the basis of one’s adherence to particular rules, the character has to experience the other end of the community’s judgmentalism – when it shunned her in light of her choice to abort her first child and divorce her husband – before she realizes the black-and-white morality for what it is: simplistic, arrogant, and at times even immoral.

Reeling from rejection, she finds herself in Syria, her parents’ homeland. Part of finding herself is her finding out the secrets of her mother’s past, which isn’t so hard considering the total nonchalance with which Khadra’s aunts spill some rather large beans. Like how Khadra’s mother wasn’t always so ritualistically religious and that the turning point in her life was her having been raped by an alluring instructor during a study abroad in France. The rape part of the story seemed to come out of nowhere, a bit too dramatic and out of place in a story of humdrum realities.

Similarly, upon the main character, Khadra’s, return to the U.S., this time to Philadelphia where she attends photography school, her character description involves some major, seemingly unexplained leaps. For example, she finds herself in a relationship that, despite her refusal to label it as such, is clearly of the boyfriend-girlfriend type. She is enamored with a boy who is openly anti-Islam and even finds herself struggling to define “chastity” when faced by his physical advances.

Having identified with the character in essence, I am confused by these leaps. I too went through my “fundi” phase, the traditionalist stage, the activist stage, the disillusioned stage, and finally ended up at the open-minded stage. But my open-mindedness is colored and shaped by my past; understanding the core truth of my past experiences, I am unable to sever myself from that core. The lack of severance is what keeps me from ignoring my parents’ concerned phone calls (Khadra manages to avoid picking up the phone every time her parents call). Before my marriage, my past also kept me from crossing certain lines made strictly taboo, like relationships with boys that creep into the “boyfriend” realm, especially the type that begin to focus on the physical. When asked by her friend if she disapproves of pre-marital relationships, Khadra finds herself mumbling her way through political correctness.

Granted, Khadra’s struggles may be Kahf’s way of representing the confusion inherent in blurring moral lines. I can, in theory, understand that a black-and-white upbringing can lead one to crave ambiguities, but I find it hard to swallow that moral lines can become that blurred.

These differences aside, I connected with the powerful spiritual point that in order to genuinely empathize with others and gain cognizance of the world’s complexities, one must undergo hardships of their own. As long as we live in a comfortable, idyllic world where everything “bad” and tragic happens to other people, we will likely stick to the book-based view of reality. Reality means people, things, nature, God.

Take it from someone who attended Deen Intensives on a regular basis, only to later learn that such experiences were near useless without a real-life counterpart. Zaytuna organizes these events at a campsite and brings together a devoted group of learners to study the Islamic sciences and immerse themselves in an intensive spiritual experience. Attending these programs, and following them up with deep analysis of books titled along the lines of Purification of the Soul, I used to think that I knew everything I needed to know about spirituality. Reading the books and listening to the lectures made me feel warm, fuzzy, and spiritually strong, though I wasn’t really sure what it meant to be spiritually strong.

At one of these week-long camps, I shared a cabin with a girl who would later become a dear friend of mine. Let’s call her S. S had lost her brother a few months prior to a car accident. One late night in our cold cabin, the girls snuggled close together as she reminisced about her beloved brother. One woman in our group who knew S’s family well told us how S’s family had dealt with the news; how they had been shocked and saddened, but had ultimately proven themselves profound believers. Instead of lashing out to God angrily for what He had done, they prayed to Him and thanked Him for giving them their son/brother for the 20-something years that he had lived. I think I speak for every other girl in that group when I say I felt stunned by the spiritual fullness of S’s family.

I remember going to bed that night thinking to myself, "God I want you to test me the same way so that I may prove my faith to you and become stronger in my belief." It was an unexpected, almost involuntary prayer, but it burned fiercely in my heart. And soon thereafter God did test me.

Though you, the reader, are not privy to the details of that tribulation, suffice it to say that it was enormous. In the midst of it, memories of that not-so-distant night in the cold Deen Intensive cabin came upon me. I realized, “So this is spirituality. This is how I learn. This is the fire I have to go through.” The picture perfect life of an upper middle class girl who excelled academically and at whatever else she put her mind to – this life had temporarily been torn asunder.

From that chaos arose a more real me. I was able to live in the real world, no longer unable to survive outside my childhood idealizations. Up until I read Kahf’s book, I wondered if my story was relatable, more the norm rather than a freak accident. And then I met Khadra.

Imagining Possibilities

I'm in the plane heading back from a week at my mom's home in Miami. Nestled into my seat, the economy class size of it just right for my petite build, with plenty of white noise and a reading light casting a soft glow on my laptop, I feel cozy.

I spent the first hour of the flight analyzing the emotions that had welled up inside of me when I was getting ready to head to the airport this morning. I can spend hours buried in this analysis. Thinking deeply is a hobby of mine; this blog is a means of sharing some of those musings, which are oftentimes knotty and winding but nevertheless worthy of being shared.

Many of my most anguished musings involve problem-solving – not puzzles merely of the mind but emotional and moral struggles. Often, the center of the dilemma is how to best make myself of use to others; how do I use my "self" for all of its intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual worth, to serve the needs of others. I am sure that the world's philanthropists and charity workers face similar struggles, but the battle I speak of is the type involving day-to-day things, like being there for your friends and family when they need you.

The starting point of this musing is the cruel fact of life that you can't always have all of your beloveds in one place.

The untimely nature of my father's death has left my mom reeling, wanting to change time, history, the facts of life. She approaches the complexity of her situation with simple answers – and naturally so. She needs her kids and grandkids and family of all sorts to surround her with happiness, a forum to vent her frustrations, to share the simple pleasures of life, to fill her inner emptiness and the hollow halls of her stately Miami home with laughter, cheer, and presence. Knowing that my husband, daughter, and I are panaceas for her sadness, I am placed in a dilemma. The distance between she and us cannot easily be shortened. We have practical constraints holding us down in our respective geographical locations. Still, she implores strongly and frequently for us to move closer, to somehow change what cannot – at the time – be changed.

Most people would accept their inability to change what cannot be changed. I accept it, but I battle it. This is not the first time I have spent hours contemplating ways to get around that which practicality dictates. I like to use my creativity to finds loopholes in the ways things are, always thinking that life is as you make it to be; as the saying goes, if there's a will, there's a way.

This musing is not about the various possibilities I am imagining. It is about the fact that I am imagining possibilities.

Restlessness with the status quo forms the core of my personality. I am the Peanut Gallery because I have certain entrenched notions of "right" and "wrong" through which I view and comment upon the rest of the world. The commentary is harshest when it comes to myself. It involves delineating that which is "right." The next step is figuring out the role I can play in actualizing that "right." The final steps involve going to the ends of my logical, creative capacities to figure out a way of putting myself in a position where I can play that role.

From a moral perspective, it seems to me the only natural way to be. It's kind of like "have your cake and eat it too" but in a very self-sacrificial, emotionally painful sort of way. Where there are competing concerns, I want to somehow find conciliation, a way of serving polar opposites without becoming inherently contradictory. The result: life ends up feeling like a never-ending Twister game, where I am stretched and folded into pretzels, always feeling that my feet are slipping, seeking desperately to find stability and not crush everyone around me.

But is life really supposed to be this difficult? How does one negotiate between (1) the practical implications of wanting to do "right" and (2) what I feel is intrinsic morality, built in by God and encouraged by scriptural and social admonitions to promote good and forbid evil? Is there space in any of this for self-satisfaction, or is the quest to always work harder, seek to be better, and try to find solutions where there appear to be none?

The Tradition of Giving

It is Eid-ul-Adha today, and it seems appropriate to make today’s posting The Tradition of Giving. The postings on the Traditions of Work and Faith mentioned a number of my father’s charitable acts. After all, giving to those less fortunate than himself was the most important part of his life’s work and it was rooted in his abiding faith. It was his way of putting his faith into action, as my father was all about actualizations rather than mere theorizing.

When I think of his charity, what immediately comes to mind are the countless fundraising dinners for mosques, Islamic schools, and various organizations like CAIR. My father gave at all of these events and some of that giving was publicly announced. For some reason, what sticks out from all of these memories is not just the complete ease with which my father parted with large sums of his money, but also my perceived awkwardness at the public nature of it all. At the time, it seemed strange that my father should choose to do it this way, though in retrospect I realize that it was a product of deep passion for the charitable project at hand. He wanted to reflect that passion in a way that fired up others too.

That the public, or publicized, giving was an anomaly has come into greater focus after his passing, when I uncovered a number of charitable causes he contributed to but which he never disclosed. Orphans in Africa, single moms, struggling fathers, disaster victims across the globe, and Islamic projects in locales unknown to me – all were beneficiaries of his hidden, humble generosity.

The variability reveals the essence of my father’s charity. For him, “giving” included charity and sacrifice in all of their possible forms, from the simple to the extraordinary. When my father gave, he gave at all levels. He gave both publicly and privately, trying to both encourage others to be similarly generous while also – to use a common Islamic metaphor -- trying to hide from his right hand what his left hand gave. And giving in the form of things, whether money or what money can buy, was never enough. He gave of his time, effort, intelligence, and with particularly trying matters, of his patience and mental energy, too.

In many ways, then, this Tradition reflects the message of the entire Traditions series. These postings are not merely about remembering a good man; nor are they purporting to tell a story about something that was, that possibly can be, but for the average man is not likely to be. These are real life examples about real life achievements; about the doings of an ordinary man who was made great by his deeds.

The crux of that message is that the traditions my father embodied were not relegated to certain spheres and not others. In my own quest for success, I’ve at times become fixated on becoming an over-achiever. My fixation has at times made me forget that true goodness is rooted in the essence of the doer rather than in the magnificence of the end product. To make an impact and serve my ultimate purpose, I don’t have to single-handedly build an entire mosque or discover a cure or invent some life-altering technology. In following my father’s example, I don’t even have to do as much as he did.

The aim instead is to return to my core, and like my father, be a good person rather than merely perform the role of one. It is part and parcel of the Peanut Gallery's quest to extract the real from the fake and to uncover performance that masquerades as something of greater authenticity.

The Tradition of Faith

There had always been signs that my father’s faith was extraordinary. When I was younger, I internalized this fact through smaller, pettier things. For instance, if we were out of the house when prayer time came upon us, it didn’t matter if we were shopping or in Disney World, my dad would find a spot to fall to his knees and prostrate in prayer. The Muslim prayer involves both spiritual and physical elements, and the movements, especially the sajdah, can seem strange to the foreign observer. My father appeared not only oblivious to his seeming strangeness, but also proud of his religious obligations. For him, his actions were dawaah in and of themselves. He was indifferent to judgment other than that of God’s.

As I grew older, I began to notice his greater spiritual feats. It was customary for community members to come seeking help from him, most of the time financial. One such time, a group of men came lamenting the impending bankruptcy of their business. I wasn’t privy to their meeting, but I remember seeing them sitting in the den on many a night. Often, they looked distraught, imploring my father to help them. My father, unable to turn away those truly in need, succumbed to their pleas and ultimately ended up investing – and losing – half a million dollars in the venture.

I remember the night he learned for certain just how much he had lost. The news was frightening for me, because as a young Muslim just coming to learn the more complicated dimensions of her faith, I was worried about the ramifications of such a huge financial loss. My fears had me agitated, the uneasiness keeping me up that night. I remember giving up on trying to sleep and going to check on my dad to see how he was doing; I expected to find him similarly restless. But when I peeked through the bedroom door, I found him sleeping soundly.

To say the least, the sight of him sleeping peacefully was surprising, if not shocking. My father embraced his role as provider in a strong, confident manner, and so I thought such a loss for a man who worked hard for his money would have some sort of tangible, physical effect. Of course, there were probably frustrations lurking beneath his steady snore, and at some point after learning of his loss, he had probably felt a bit disheartened. He was, after all, human, with human hopes and expectations. But what I came to learn from that incident was that even half a million dollars in losses wasn’t enough to faze his belief that if he did what pleased God, God would reward him three-fold. As the Qur’an intimates, giving in the way of God is the best investment one can make. For those who haven’t unlocked the secrets of the Unseen, losses are seen as losses; for those who have interacted more deeply with God, “loss” and “gain” are defined in more other-worldly terms.

It was this same mental framework that guided my father in all levels of interaction. Despite his selflessness, he sometimes found himself in situations where his trust had been betrayed or his integrity questioned. I was occasionally witness to these occurrences and I asked my dad why he even bothered helping people who just turned on him later. Why didn’t he just lash back at them, give them a piece of his mind? I was only in grade school when I posed this question to him, and he replied simply, “Because if you’re good to them, it’ll help them realize one day that what they did is wrong.” His purpose in life, it seemed, was to sacrifice his own pride in order to help people better their own selves.

It is believed by Muslims and perhaps by most if not all religions that individuals of the strongest faith are tested more frequently and more severely by God. The most pious people in the past, most notably the prophets, went through endless tribulations. Their struggles refined and strengthened their faith. In the calculus of faith, God tries those whom He loves, helping them along the way to their ultimate reward in the Hereafter. If the purpose of life is to submit to God, then anything that helps us accomplish that purpose is an aid rather than an obstacle. Perhaps for those who sail through this life, their tribulations await them in the next world.

For the atheist, this may seem like a counterintuitive, illogical, and perhaps even a bit demented outlook on life. After all, for those who conceive of life as relevant in and of itself, rather than as a stepping stone to something greater, a life of hardships is unnecessarily troublesome, except perhaps for the purpose of character development. But when faced with a tribulation that essentially signals the end of one’s life, an atheist surely finds nothing worthy in it, since there is nothing redeeming about something that ends one’s only state of existence.

In contrast, for a spiritual man tested time and again throughout his life, it seems almost natural that the greatest obstacle would await him at the end of his life. At the threshold between the worldly state of existence and the final return to God, God’s servant embraces the moment for its spiritual capital. Indeed, my father’s most heroic spiritual feat occurred in those four months between his diagnosis and death. As the physical pain became increasingly excruciating, he could no longer deny that he would soon leave his family, friends, community, charities, and the endless list of things that he still had to contribute to the world. Faced with the end, my father did not despair. He didn’t become visibly depressed, and he rarely even cried. In fact, his only instances of crying coincided with his seeing my younger brother, who had turned 17 the same day my father had been diagnosed. The sight of my brother would often remind my father about his unfulfilled duties, about the years he had so wanted to experience so that he could see his youngest child, and his only son, to independence. Tears and sentimentality are part of faith, proof that my father knew the essential relevance of what was about to happen. It was those tears, as symbols of my father’s understanding, which made his stoicism the rest of the time even more impressive. He was sad for us, sad that he wouldn’t be there much longer to help, guide, and protect us. But in turning to God, welcoming his meeting with Him, and in accepting His will, my father knew – in that way of certainty, or yaqin, that only people of faith know how to know -- that God would take care of us.

The Tradition of Work

In the few weeks before my father was diagnosed with advanced-stage primary live cancer, I remember my first realization that something was wrong. The nature of primary liver cancer is that it progresses silently with little or no symptoms for years. The liver is tucked away deep inside one's body, enveloped by several layers that serve as buffers between the tumor's signs and any physical realization that something very deadly is going on. As such, his disease came as a total shock to everyone who had ever known him – a man who had never suffered even a minor illness, now faced with a life-threatening situation.

It was precisely his seemingly superb health that made otherwise simple matters alarming. During a weekday in March, on a day I had come home early from work, I went to pray in our prayer room, or musalla. Our prayer room served as a guest room as well and there is, accordingly, a bed in there. I noticed my father sleeping there that afternoon and was a bit puzzled, though distracted by my prayer obligation. As I finished praying, though, I remember turning around and looking at my father's sleeping body and feeling profoundly disturbed, a feeling of dread beginning to gnaw inside. I quieted my fears, though, telling myself that perhaps he was just getting older and needed to rest. But my rationalization wasn't very convincing, as the one thing I and everyone who had ever lived with my father knew was that he was a man of superhuman endurance. He barely slept at night, much less in the daytime. This was no simple case of a 55-year-old man coming home to take a nap. It was, in fact, a reflection of total exhaustion overcoming a million running thoughts and an endless list of "to-dos", including places to go, people to talk to, projects to run, and charities to support. Every day of his life was equivalent to almost a week's worth of an average person's life, so a few hours sleeping in the day for him meant a loss of a good 24-hours-of-an-average-man's work. Perhaps you may think that this is a colored memory, a hyperbole that helps me venerate him. But you think that only because you never met him.

A hafiz since his early teens, my father rose every day at fajr to pray the dawn prayer and spend an hour reciting the Qur'an. He liked to sit outside by the pool and watch the sun rise as he greeted it with his recitation. It was the only time during the day when he was doing just one thing at a time, rather than numerous intersecting tasks. Soon after he completed his recitation, he took a moment for breakfast and then went about organizing the kitchen, taking care of any cleaning he hadn't completed the night before. Then he would shower, get ready for work, and before heading to his office he would go out of his way to take my brother to school. During the ride he would have my brother, just as he had done with each of us when he took us to school, recite the chapters of the Qur'an my father had helped him memorize. After the recitation, my father would introduce new verses, and each day's ride to school helped build upon the prior day's knowledge.

Only after my brother had been dropped off did the real work of the day begin. Aside from running two engineering firms, one of which dealt with multi-million dollar design projects throughout South Florida, my father also designed several mosques, financed a number of prominent Islamic projects, and helped a large but unknown number of families with their financial woes. His assistance ranged from interest-free loans to land trust agreements, the intention always being to help people get on their feet, own homes, and live full lives. Because he went out of his way in offering a helping hand and never turning away anyone who came seeking help, he was inevitably respected as a man of tremendous generosity and wisdom. Indeed, he didn't just provide financial help but also offered his advice and assistance, whether it be helping people complete immigration or other legal forms or helping individuals set up and prosper in their own businesses. Somehow, his energy and time were forever expandable, and his patience resilient.

And after 8-10 hours working on all of these projects on any given day, he would come home and help clean the house, often doing his own laundry, helping clean up after dinner, and then spending the later hours of the evening either discussing household matters with my mom or making some calls and preparing documents for the various charitable projects on his plate.

Some might call my father a workaholic. That is certainly the accepted social term for someone who enjoys being productive and prefers it over relaxing and doing "nothing." Indeed, he enjoyed his work and spent most of his life working. However, the variability of his work, ranging from professional engineering matters to faith-based initiatives to pure social networking, community service, and interpersonal counseling, gave his work so much meaning and personality that anyone can understand why he loved his work so much.

There were of course times when my family and I missed him, wishing he were less busy and more able and willing to participate in pure silliness. We were a world-traveling family, visiting a new country every summer. Our hallway wall is a testament to these travels, featuring pictures from the Taj Mahal, the Alhambra, the Tower of Pisa, and many other important landmarks. And of course, living the tradition that my father embodied, we all were involved in a multitude of our own activities, always thinking and doing and achieving. Still, in those times and in the time since his passing, I think we all wished there had been more carefree bantering, the type that transpired at the dinner table during many evenings. Maybe it would have been better if he was more interested in watching TV or going to the movies with us. In contemplating on his tradition of work – both the tremendous achievements and the gaps in between – I can see clearly how best to apply his example without forgetting the potential pitfalls.

Traditions: A Series

I am 27 and my childhood is not very distant. Still, the contours of my life have changed so dramatically in the past decade that it sometimes feel as if more time has passed; both the tragic and the ecstatic elements have imbued my life with so much depth that in thickness, though not in length, my life has been full.

I don’t like speaking of all such tragedies, or even all of the determinative ecstatic elements of my life. The morsels of true happiness are worth protecting, especially from the evil eye. As for the tragedies, some are uncomfortable to conjure up, and they exist only as unmentionables. Things that are but never were; things that once were but no longer are. Somewhere between now and then they have gotten lost in the folds of time and memory, intentionally so, since they signal discomfort, negativity, and perhaps even failure.

But the tragedies that I do think and speak of are no less difficult; they are just more relatable, “normal,” and perhaps reflect my personal strength in a way I feel comfortable celebrating. I think we all filter our memories in ways that help manufacture a personality and a reputation that we’re comfortable seeing and being seen as.

Of the tragedies that I can speak of, like that of my father’s seemingly sudden death from liver cancer, I can speak of only some parts and not others. From the perspective of an external observer, I can speak of his struggle and personal resilience. I can talk about the story of the man he once was, the man he continues to be through his inspiring example. I can even speak about, perhaps even obsess about, the madness that ensued soon after he passed away – the practical realities of having the breadwinner, the stalwart guide, the symbol of piety and calmness disappear into the total chaos engendered by his absence.

But it’s a bit more difficult to articulate the thoughts that run between this warm fuzziness. There are endless crevices in this landscape of memories and mourning. From the crevices ooze regret, fear, confusion, disbelief, and a number of other states of being with which I’ve become acquainted only through my dreams. In my dreams, I see him in a moment when we were equipped with knowledge of what was and what was about to happen. It was an omniscience possible only in dreams; an omniscient supernaturalism that allowed me to know but not despair. In that absence of despair, I am able to concoct new possibilities, new clinical interventions, mixed with that greater likelihood of momentous victory that, too, is often only possible in dreams. In my dreams, he survives. And I stand in the sidelines, observant, amazed, yet aware even in my dream what it feels like to live the reality outside of that dream.

Similarly, my waking reality is influenced by my dream existence. The tragedy and the suffering aren’t just unanalyzed emotions, clichés taught by society and absorbed complacently by me and my very human experience. Dreams make the grief palpable, infuse it with meaning, and sculpt it into something that elevates me as a human being.

I often mine my dream experiences, desperately in search for not just semi-real glimpses of my father, but also for the essence of his example. It reminds me of when I stood outside his hospital room moments after he had passed away. In stepping away from his deathbed and out into the brightly lit hallway, bustling with mourners pouring in and down the hall, I had felt a separation. My brother was weeping silently, calmly, and he said quite resolutely, “Abu, I won’t ever forget you.” He repeated the statement several times, murmuring to himself, trying to both make sense of and push away the grief that was suffocating him. He was right. The greatest peril of my father’s passing is the possibility of our forgetting him. My father’s 25-hour days and superhuman faith, his mannerisms, appearance, actions, words, and weaknesses – the traditions that he represented and for which we, too, stand. In stepping out into that hallway mere moments after his passing, I was already scrambling to revive him – not remember him, in the way memories distort – but to conceptualize him as he had been when he had existed in the here and now, as if he still existed in that realm.

In recounting the traditions he lived by and, through his example, taught us, I am reminded of a recent book I read by Ralph Nader: The Seventeen Traditions. “From listening to learning, from patriotism to argument, from work to simple enjoyment, Nader revisits seventeen key traditions he absorbed from his parents, his siblings, and the people in his community, and draws from them inspiring lessons for today's society.” He calls these principles “traditions”, as they were meant to be passed on through the generations and to inform and shape his and his siblings lives intrinsically and meaningfully. I’m not sure that I am interested in recounting the traditions for the sake of social reform, as I am no Nader-like activist. But I am a thinker and self-reformer, someone who appreciates critical thinking for the purpose of self-enlightenment. In revisiting the traditions that informed my childhood, I am analyzing the inward, wanting to hold onto the traditions at a young age when I feel like parental traditions should still be in the making, rather than merely a matter of reminiscence.

I want to resurrect my father’s teachings and reinterpret them as time goes on, sort of but not really like the way Muslims and other religious folk approach their sacred texts. He was not infallible, but there’s something deeply true about what he taught us. In subsequent blog posts, I want to begin the search for that truth.

Facebook Commentary - Part 1

A recent article titled "Campus Exposure" in the NY Times Magazine discussed the appearance of student-produced porn magazines on several college campuses throughout the country. The writer of the article at one point noted:

"Vandenberg described a social landscape changed irrevocably by the rise of networking Web sites. After meeting someone, it's now de rigueur to check out his or her profile — a collage of pictures (often risqué) and preferences — on MySpace or Facebook.com. "I have a BlackBerry — so immediately," Vandenberg said. "You might run into someone at a party, and then you Facebook them: what are their interests? Are they crazy-religious, is their favorite quote from the Bible? Everyone takes great pains over presenting themselves. It's like an embodiment of your personality."

The writer's mention of Facebook got me thinking. I've always found the modern networking site a bit troubling. Although created presumably to serve as a connector between people of similar interests, these sites often become very popular, very fast – and I'd venture to guess the reason for that is their secondary use as a place to socialize, show-off, and create a picture of oneself that may not be anywhere near the truth.

The link between Facebook and the rise of porn magazines on university campuses is a troubling one, at the very least. At first, the relation between the two may seem tenuous, but upon further thought, it seems a little inevitable. Many times, I've been shocked to flip through profiles of people I thought I knew, only to find that all this time they've lived a second life. Pictures of themselves and their comrades, often depicting acts better left undisclosed, are plastered all over their Facebook profile.

The presentation of these pictures seems almost proud. It is the pride that makes me wonder if the person I knew prior to venturing upon his/her profile is the real person, and the Facebook version merely his/her performance. Likely, they've taken great pains to manufacture an online persona that is cool, hip, popular…and, well, manufactured.

The conformity is apparent not just in the pictures, but in the language as well. About 90% of the Muslim youth whose photo commentary I've read use the word "hot" about 90% of the time. Pictures of people who have painstakingly selected for posting the most flattering ones of themselves, along with more natural pictures, are uniformly described as "hot." After a while, the overuse of the word becomes almost comical…

…and a bit troublesome, not just from the perspective of linguistic conformity, but from the perspective of what this all means in reference to Muslim youth. Commanded by our faith to be modest, what does it mean to use terminology that, in its very nature, is immodest? What does it mean to present ourselves on this public forum in a physically appealing, and often seductive, way?

And penetrating even deeper, I wonder how the publicity of our conversations on Facebook "walls" fits with these themes of Islam, modesty, performance, and conformity. Why do people choose to advertise their conversations, especially those of a clearly private type, on their wall? The voyeurism inherent in the pictures and the words has a frightening aspect to it, threatening to obliterate – or substantially lessen – the sacredness of our private realms. All is available for viewing, and perhaps the manufacturing of the personalities is a way of laying it all out without having to expose any of our vulnerability. We can now socialize using a "self" that may not actually exist, but that we've created for this very purpose. In the limited arena of the Facebook World, we can be who we always wanted to be.

PEANUT GALLERY: Introduction

My husband, well before we were married and during that period when he presumably should've been trying to court me, once called me the "peanut gallery." I didn't know what that meant but decided it couldn't be very nice and remember feeling a little offended. But now that I know what it means, I guess my husband knew me well then, and knows me even better today, when he not only still thinks I am the peanut gallery, but also thinks that I can't take nearly half as much as I dish out. (By the way, "peanut gallery," according to Wikipedia, means "an audience which heckles the performer.")

So I guess I have a propensity toward commentary. It's not a mean or mocking commentary, but a sort of reality-check type of thing, where I see people living life as if it's a grand performance and, in response, I feel the need to articulate – even if for no one but myself – the silliness of the performance.

I'm not sure how I became this way….this way of limited patience for frivolity and a knack for seeing the unreal. I remember telling a friend of mine back in high school that, as much as he'd like to think he was a rebel, his drinking, smoking, and other antics were conforming almost perfectly to society's image of the rebellious, indifferent teenager. Society tells you what you have to do to be a rebel, and then you conform to its image of rebellion. What a farce.

Performance breeds mediocrity. There's nothing unique or extraordinary about conforming to a script, whether it be in values or actions. The question isn't about predestination, since no one knows for what he or she is predestined and can therefore not conform to it. Nor is this a question about learning our morality from religious texts or even community social codes. It's about recognizing that we may in many ways be products of our environment, but that it is up to us to determine which elements of that environment will ultimately impact us and shape our character.

It's about knowing and unknowing social conformity. We all fall into it to some degree, even I who mocks it so unforgivingly. But some do so more than others, to a point where it's hard to tell where, in the grand performance, lies the individual. Or if there even is an individual. Can people ever define themselves if they never know that "self" can be defined outside of social conformity?

Before I sink into total abstraction, I'll offer an example: teenyboppers (defined by Wikipedia as "a teenager, especially a girl in her early teens, who follows teenage fashions in music, clothes, etc."). I've come to use this term to denote a broader concept: girls and boys (including men and women perpetually frozen in adolescence) who think and act as told to by peers and media. It's the phenomenon of "teenybopperism" that I feel explains infantile, conformist, performance behavior.

(Ok, so maybe my commentary is a little ruthless…)

I feel exasperated by teens who fall into the same predictable behavioral patterns. They all spend more than half their time, and sometimes all of their time, in total frivolity, dragging their feet when faced with endeavors of greater, deeper meaning. Some risk their health, breach their own sense of morality, and even play with their life, and not for any noble reason either.

Maybe there's a shared human tendency that leads to many of us making the same mistakes. Or maybe when we're told time and again that this is how society expects us to behave, coupled with peer pressure to fit the mold in order to feel accepted, we feel we have no choice. Maybe our sense of criticism and uniqueness is blunted by overwhelming social coercion.

Still, I feel exasperated – especially so when the teenybopperism seems to seep into so many people's adult years. Society, with its emphasis on preserving youthfulness, having fun, and shunning commitment and responsibility, fosters persistent, prolonged adolescence. That, at the core, is what I'm railing against. Not so much teenybopperism in our teeny years, but a teenybopperism that is so pervasive that it colors our goals for and perspectives on life. We're stuck in it, we'll live in it, we can't escape it.

Maybe this is what is meant by the hadith which admonishes us to wake up before we die. Maybe we need to prioritize our life and stop wasting it. Extract ourselves from the performance and create an un-manufactured "self".

And it occurs to me that performance is not just about frivolity, but also about feigned ambition; ambition driven by the need for external approval, prestige, status. Philanthropy, academic achievements, humanitarian work—even these can force us to perform when motivated by superficiality.

As I've gone through various tragedies in my own life, with my own expectations of life and "how it's supposed to be" destroyed time and time again, I've learned the futility of performance. Suffering penetrates through the superficiality and forces us to search for purpose and meaning outside physical limits. Encouraged to think in theoretical and possibly spiritual terms, we cease, at least temporarily, to be performers.

Growing up, though, has also made me wonder about the inherent merits of my commentary – my intolerance with the performance. Am I like this because I feel left out? Is this a reflection of my resentment? Am I becoming cynical just for the sake of being cynical? Perhaps my heckling at the performer is a form of defensiveness, a cover-up for insecurities?

Suspended between possible cynicism and a more generous, heartfelt desire for truth and sincerity, I feel agitated. My commentary is a means of coping with the agitation. I see people living life as if it's a grand performance and, in response, I feel the need to articulate – even if for no one but myself – the silliness of the performance. Perhaps by articulating it, I am trying to ensure that I don't fall into it myself. Or perhaps the articulation makes the apparently fake seem real; perhaps it's another attempt to find what lies at the core.