Peanut Gallery

Facebook Commentary - a response

2008-11-16T18:14:00.002-05:00

The following excerpt from a NYTimes article responds in part to my Facebook Commentary; thought I'd share:

It would be hard to overestimate how much communication and an informal tone means to this generation. They have poured out their foibles and triumphs on blogs, MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Older Americans see this as dangerous exhibitionism, but young adults believe the conversation leads to open-mindedness and consensus.

“This generation has been knocked for putting all of their personal stuff on full display,” said Mik Moore, 34, a founder of the Great Schlep, which used a Sarah Silverman online video to help young Jews win their grandparents’ support for Senator Obama. “But there is an upside, too, which is a willingness to communicate with large numbers of people in your network about what’s important to you.”

Women's Access to Mosque: Subverting Dialogue

2008-05-17T16:52:00.003-04:00

On my last evening in Norway, I attended a reception at the DCM's residence. Most of the people we had met throughout the Norway tour were present at this official reception, the purpose of which was to network and solidify connections. I was surprised to be approached by some of the Pakistani law students I had met at the Pakistani mosque.

During the mosque visit, I had asked what the status of women's access to mosques was in Norway. I recounted the story of the woman-led prayer in the U.S. some years back, stating that it had been motivated by a deep frustration with Muslim women's physical and social space in the mosque. When I posed the question to the Norwegian group, the imam of the mosque was quick to step in and answer my question, assuring me that Muslim women in Norway are happy with their degree of access. When the imam was further prodded about whether women were given a seat on the mosque board, he said that women had their own organizations which they formed and led. In other words, no, they don't have a seat on the board.

The question had actually come to me when I had first stepped inside the Norwegian mosque and saw that the second floor gallery had a glass railing and there was a woman sitting behind the railing reading the Qur'an. I was pleased that the women's section was integrated into the larger mosque setting and that they weren't forced to sit in a separate room or behind a concrete or frosted glass railing that blocked their view of the imam on the lower level. What I didn't notice, but my colleagues did, is that the moment we stepped in, the imam signaled impatiently to the woman to leave the room. As the imam later confirmed, women were generally not permitted to use the upstairs balcony and had instead been allotted a separate room at the back of the mosque.

When I asked my question about women's space, the only response I received other than the imam's - which I now realized was intended to set the tone of the discussion - was from a woman who had recently moved to Norway from Denmark, and who said that she preferred to pray in the separate room as it gave her privacy. For classes, however, she preferred that she be given space in the main room. She went on to cite the structure of classes at programs held by the Zaytuna Institute in the U.S., which she had attended. She failed to note whether she was given equal space in classes held by the Norwegian mosque.

Several days later, at the DCM's reception, I was approached by some of the Muslim law students who had been present during this awkward discussion of women's space. They informed me that what had been discussed was not true - that women were rarely given permission to enter the mosque and use its main space. In a society where immigrant Muslim women don't know the Norwegian language and are generally excluded from most activities outside the home, the mosque is one of the few spaces they can go to for social interaction. And according to these students, even that space has been denied to these immigrant women, such that when the rare occasion arises where the mosque doors are open to them, these women flock to the mosque in almost a state of desperation.

What I took from this revelation by the Muslim law students was not only that women are going through perhaps a more difficult struggle than American Muslim women are vis-a-vis mosque access, but that the purpose of the Citizen's Dialogue Tour was in some instances being subverted. Instead of an open discussion of different or similar problems in Norway and the U.S., when it came to controversial topics, a front was being put up. The discussion on integration and secular extremism was open and meaningful, but discourse of women's issues was kept under wraps.

Muslims and Minorities in Norway

2008-05-14T16:02:00.007-04:00

Tonight's my last night in Norway. As I pause to reflect on the past 4 days and the many conversations I have had with activists, politicians, religious leaders, journalists, and students, I am amazed by how much I have learned. Common themes include integration, secular extremism, social welfare, racism, employment discrimination, and the vast proportion of Muslim immigrants who are uneducated and/or of refugee status. Despite instances of blatant racism, Norwegians recoil at the very word "racism" for "to be Norwegian is to be good". In many if not most ways, Norwegians are very good. I have received nothing but kindness and hospitality while here. And the Norwegian government uses its oil wealth to take care of each and every one of its citizens, guaranteeing each an upper middle class lifestyle. The 121 homeless people in all of Oslo are homeless because they refuse to take help from the system; the moment they accept conformity (i.e. fill out the necessary aid forms), they will be living comfortably - without ever having to work.

And yet, these same luxuries are what hinder progress in certain areas. For instance, new immigrants who can stay at home and receive money from the government instead of having to work for it have little or no incentive to do so. In refusing to work, they are also refusing to learn the language and customs and interact with native Norwegians on a daily basis. Integration as a whole is therefore severely hampered.

Similarly, when the Muslim community is handed money from the government, the community has little or no need to work together to fundraise. Each mosque with its ethnically-segregated congregation can take government money and continue to isolate itself from the rest of the Norwegian Muslim community. In contrast, in the US, the plethora of fundraising dinners and other fundraising initiatives force the community to work together, looking past their ethnic differences in their quest toward a common goal.

Aside from these counterintuitive downfalls of a seemingly fabulous social welfare system, while in Norway, I came to a better understanding of Europe's secular culture. This secular culture is exemplified in Norway's secular extremism, where the very discussion of religion or anything religious causes great discomfort. This is true despite the fact that the Norwegian constitution requires that the head of government and almost half of its Parliament members belong to the Lutheran sect of Protestant Christianity.

In the case of immigrants, especially those from Muslim countries, this requirement to keep their religious identity out of the public sphere and to air their grievances - if they must - in non-religious terms comes as a great affront to their sense of self. It's hard to discuss the issues when they are intrinsically linked to religion, and religion is a taboo subject for public discourse.

On the flip side, when it comes to battling serious human rights violations among the Muslim community - whether it be honor killings, FGM, or forced marriages -- instances of such violations among Muslims are generalized as representative of Muslims/Islam generally. So the selective discussion of religion, where it is used to conflate the actions of specific individuals with the actions of an entire community, but where religion is generally not an acceptable topic of discussion, leads to gross media distortions and huge gaps in public knowledge of Islam.

Globalized Muslims

2008-04-28T13:47:00.003-04:00

Currently gearing up for the Citizens Dialogue Tour to Norway, Ireland, and Belgium. I'll be leaving May 10 and will return May 24, full of observations and conversations worth sharing. In the meanwhile, my preparation has included reading some articles on Islam in Europe and in those countries specifically, and I am shocked by not just the vast differences in the Muslim experience over there, but also by my ignorance of it up till now. How did I before assume that all Muslims in all Western countries lived the life of mutual respect and dignity that I as a Muslim American live here, among my fellow Americans? European Muslims, though more politically involved than American Muslims, are subject to discriminatory actions on the part of their governments and some fellow citizens too. European Muslims are also less educated and less prosperous than their American brethren, and are composed primarily of immigrants rather than the indigenous Caucasion and Black Muslim contingency in America that constitutes 35% of the American Muslim population. And, perhaps linked to that is the fact that European Muslims are more likely to hold extremist views than the vastly moderate Muslim population of America.

On that note, I have to mention an interesting article I read by Olivier Roy about how globalization is in fact the root cause of Muslim extremism. He points out that it is a mistake to assume that extremism is something that Muslim immigrants bring from their homeland to their new European/Western homes. The displacement of Muslims from Muslim countries where Islamic rituals and way of life are supported and fortified by cultural practices to their new Western context forces Muslims to make the culture v. religion distinction. In separating those two concepts, Muslims often decide to let go of the cultural elements and practice only the religious ones, which in turns focuses them on rules and rituals. Rules and rituals make you measure your religiosity in terms of the degree to which you abide by them.

Which reminds me of an interesting, but sort of unrelated, point made by Hijabman at yesterday's bookclub meeting for Blue-Eyed Devil: He noted that extremists, both present and those who have left that ideology but still haven't found a stable middle ground, tend to be inherently contradictory. One second they will be lambasting women who don't cover completely, and the other second they will be ogling women. Strict ritualists who realize that it is impossible to abide perfectly by the rules, all the time, all the way, become disillusioned and sway to the opposite end of the spectrum.

In Roy's terms, where does that leave globalized, displaced Muslims? At the opposite end of strict ritualists? And what is that exactly?

Infidel: It's Finally Over

2008-03-23T01:07:00.002-04:00

I finally finished the book a few days ago. Throughout my reading, I periodically abandoned the book but whenever I finally made it back, I found it hard to put down. The drama, deceit, and sensationalism kept me hooked, I guess. These 80 pages to the end of the book, however, were quite painful, and mostly I plugged through it because I just wanted to be done with it.

First, the parts of her story that I can understand: I can understand her frustration with lack of cultural integration. The Dutch government, in wanting to give immigrants their space, decided against forced assimilation. Hirsi Ali is right in demanding that the government not use its anti-integration policy as a way of turning a blind eye to existing human rights violations.

A bit trickier: I also understand her insistence on pointing to the religious bases of some of these human rights violations. But, I think this approach is about cultural sensitivity rather than about attacking religion. When it comes to religiously-motivated crimes, it is not enough to blame culture alone, when such demarcation between culture and religion fails to get to the crux of the matter as the perpetrators themselves understand it. That is, if a father feels it is his religious duty to kill his daughter for her illicit love affair, then in counteracting that problem, the government must deal with the role of religion in that man's worldview. Again, dealing with religion is about understanding it enough to come up with a solution more attuned to the problem. In the case of religion, it may be about counteracting a particular interpretation with another one. In no case is it about attacking all forms of the religion itself.

Now, the parts I don't understand and which, essentially, belie understanding: I don't understand how someone purportedly tied to the values of liberalism, such as respecting diversity, can continue to attack a major world religion in the crudest of ways, and then wonder why the reaction is so virulent. Of course, actions such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh are not justifiable, but to describe the incident as "I don't understand how someone can be so angry at a mere film" (as Hirsi Ali states in her book) is ridiculously blind to the fact that Submission was not a mere film. It was a film that insulted its Muslim viewers in the deepest core of their being. At the end of her book, she notes that some people have told her that her criticisms of Islam are too aggressive, but she goes on to say that the pain oppressed women suffer is far worse. But do all Muslims have to be constantly insulted in order for women oppressed in the name of Islam to find relief? According to her atheist dogmatism, religion is the bane of all existence. And so despite billions of people's intimate, meaningful connections to their faith tradition, it is perfectly okay to insult them.

Though her atheism makes it legitimate, in her eyes, for her to insult religion and religious folk, she does take some pains throughout the book to distinguish Islam from Judaism and Christianity. She notes, for example, that "unlike" Judaism and Christianity, Islam requires that its followers' relationship with God be entirely about submission. I am not sure where and when she educated herself about Judaism and Christianity, but she seems to have completely overlooked each of these religion's fundamentalist strains.

For Hirsi Ali, "submission" requires blind following, with no space for questioning or interpretation. In fact, earlier on in the book, when her father tells her about his relatively modern views of Islam, she blows him off by stating that his views are mere interpretations and that real Islam is about literal interpretation. She echoes this thought toward the end of her book when she claims that Saudi Arabia practices the "purest" form of Islam.

In all of this talk of purity and what Islam really is, it never occurs to her that she has basically internalized a particular rhetoric about "pureness" and the essential superiority of literal readings of Scripture. She decides somewhere along the line that this particular rhetoric is the truest expression of Islam. Unlike millions of Muslims who undergo spiritual evolution in the course of their lives as they attempt to better understand their religion, Hirsi Ali somehow knows, for certain, what Islam is. She never doubts it or checks it against the practice and belief of the full diversity of Muslims across the world. Again, I find her naïveté unsettling – and her rise to a position of political prominence even more disturbing.

Infidel - Revisited

2008-03-14T13:33:00.004-04:00

So now I'm on page 270 of Infidel. You may be wondering why I don't just finish the book and write some sort of composite review, but I find some value in recording my impressions when they are fresh...like an evolving relationship with a supposedly evolving character.

As I near the end of the book, I am seeing more and more of what I had picked up on earlier in the book - that many, if not all, of her conclusions about Islam are simplistic and logically fallible. She states her conclusions point-blank, and doesn't even acknowledge the existence or possibility of counterarguments. I'm at the point in the book right after she learned of the 9/11 attacks and is reevaluating her views on Islam. Her colleague states that this attack is due more to socioeconomic, political and cultural matters than it is to religious belief. She denies his position vehemently, using as proof that because, for example, the hijackers weren't Palestinian, there is no way this can be related to the Palestine-Israel conflict. Or that because they themselves are not poor and oppressed, it has nothing to do with social and political oppression. For someone who fancies herself deeply connected to rationalism and Western Enlightenment, she doesn't exhibit much in the way of either logical consistency or sociological sensitivity. Just because the hijackers claim to be committing crimes in order to attain religious reward doesn't preclude the fact that (1) the hijackers' version of religion is taught and encouraged by social circumstances and that this version may be entirely distinct and even antithetical to the religion itself; and (2) that the hijackers don't have to be poor, or Palestinian for that matter, to feel tied enough to those causes that they feel the need to act for them.

Although the attacks cannot be justified, some holistic explanation is in order, something that pinpoints a problem that needs to be intelligently addressed. Racist, simplistic conclusions that are not related to the core issue are not going to help. That the Dutch commentators point to Islam's history of peace and intellectual fervor doesn't make them somehow out of touch with reality, as Hirsi Ali states. Instead, these commentators are looking for reasons why a culture that bred tolerance and rationalism can suddenly be used to justify totally barbaric acts against humanity. Particular religious interpretations feeding off of peripheral issues are the problem, not the core itself - otherwise the entire history of Islam would be about violence and hatred.

To the extent that she uses her own experiences of poverty and oppression as a way of reaching conclusions about Islam, she seems oblivious to other causes of socioeconomic depravity. She also doesn't realize that the Islamic Empire itself was vastly more wealthy and sophisticated than the Western world. By viewing all of Islam through the lens of the current global situation and, even more narrowly, her particular experience of Islam is to discount a million factors and influences, ranging from the political to the social and to the psychological results of such influences.

From the moment she steps into Europe, she remains completely enamored. She acknowledges in passing that Holland does have some problems, but overall, it seems to her that the Dutch are living an almost idyllic life. It's unfortunate that in all of Holland she didn't find a compassionate, rational Muslim to connect with (or at least she conveniently excludes such characters from her book) but that such Muslims exist is, I'm sure, something she learned of from her colleagues or readings. But she ignores the possibility of such a thing - a modernized, intellectually-aware Muslim, and chooses instead to conflate all things bad and poor with Islam and Muslims, as if one cannot be extricated from the other. That her initial childish impressions of Europe and modernization were not at some point tempered by intellectual subtlety is not merely unfortunate, but evidence of a conscious disregard for anything that would shake her predetermined notions of Islam and Muslims.

Feeling Biological

2008-03-05T18:39:00.002-05:00

I feel so biological. I have a dull headache, a runny nose, and a congested nasal cavity. My body, too, is tired, since I decided to surprise it today with the rigors of a 30 minute run that it hasn't experienced for a year now.

You might think I am not feeling well. But really, I am feeling pretty good about not feeling well, and so overall, I am feeling well. Instead of the metaphysical and intellectual hiding our physical experiences, in sickness, we feel totally biological. There's something sort of...fun...about laying in bed all day, reading a book, eating chicken soup, and moaning about feeling ill while our family members serve our needs.

The joy of sickness lies in its temporary-ness, and so obviously terminal illnesses do not carry the same entertainment value. With minor illnesses, we know that this is a mere stopping ground before we head back to our busy lives, our list of to-do items, appointments, expectations and performances. A fever or flu, or even a bad cold, gives us a moment of respite.

And with that respite comes the feeling of being biological. Biological in a vulnerable way, so that it's the help people give us when we're sick that makes us feel good about being sick. Biological in a healthy way, knowing that our body is gradually rehabilitating itself. Biological in a celebratory way, enjoying the little pleasures of life, hidden in the most unexpected of places.

Presently Photographing The Past

2008-03-04T21:58:00.006-05:00

The rise of Facebook, My Space, and other networking sites that incorporate and almost necessitate frequent phototaking, has helped us all become unusually tied to photographs. By making photos more important, Facebook has encouraged some of us to become better photographers. I'm convinced that more SLRs have been sold to laymen because of Facebook than because of any other factor.

Facebook has certainly convinced me that photography is important, and beautiful photography is all the better. And so I have bought myself an expensive camera and learned to find unique angles that capture the essence of my subject. Of course, the fact that I have a baby now gives me a totally legitimate reason to want to capture moments and essences - it has also fortified my fascination with photography.

Here's the downside though: I noticed during my trip this past summer to Egypt that as I clicked away, I was preoccupied with what that picture would look like - in the instant when I took it, and in that moment after the trip when I would look to it for beauty, composition, and memories -- and less concerned with the subject of the picture. My present experience became significantly wrapped up in the future, and I was already somehow living in the past.

A moment from 10 years ago comes to mind. I was vacationing in India and was on a road trip to Agra from New Delhi. As I viewed rural India through the square window of our van, I felt the constant urge to take pictures, to somehow capture every second. It occurred to me after the fact that the urge arose from my notions of perfect photography. What I saw through my window, framed by that window, reminded me of the photos on the Discovery Channel and in National Geographic. The "picture" was perfect. It was exotic, fresh, real.

Taking pictures was partly about mimicking, then - it was about living the moment in the way I was taught to live it. I focused in on some aspects, perhaps to the exclusion of other aspects. Either way, though, I was still living in the moment, finding different ways to view and relish it. My photography was about connecting with the elements of the present.

In contrast, there is something very unreal - perhaps artificial - about photography as I conceive of it now. Photography is more about the picture than of the event, thing, or even the person. It's about capturing something for later, and sometimes that stunts the present experience so that you're forced to rely on a photograph to remember what that something ever was.

Why her?

2008-03-04T15:41:00.002-05:00

Currently on page 134 of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 350 page autobiography Infidel. The book is not just about her past, but about how her past apparently justifies her personal and global judgments on religion and Islam specifically. Aside from the female genital circumcision part of her story, which was strangely brief, her story isn't terribly different from what even most American Muslim women can speak to. That is, most of us who have grappled meaningfully with our faith have dealt with the fundo phase, where black-and-white Islam seems to be both a comfort and an assault on our notions of self-dignity and worth. We all struggle to define gender equality within a framework that doesn't seem to really allow it.

But somehow, some or, I hope, most of us, don't end up where she did - frustrated with Islam, unable to reconcile it with her deep seated notions of equality, sexuality, and individuality. That raises a question, though: why her? Why not us? What was different?

I think a part of it may be that she didn't have the sort of mentors and companions, vicarious or real, who helped her with her spiritual negotiation. Her father was often missing, and her mother was staunchly anti-discussion and free thought. She was bent on having her daughters conform to her version of Islam and culture and to essentially live out what she had been forced to endure. Ayaan's siblings were not too helpful either, each living their own paths, her sister fiercely defiant and her brother finding his own winding way to authority, control, and honor. Her friends and acquaintances, teachers like Sister Aziza, and even those who attended the evening debates on Islam-related matters - none of them seemed to align with her. Her deepest love, Abshir, was perhaps the closest she got to finding a spiritual soulmate, but his parallel confusion made him obviously hypocritical. She spurned him because he created divisions where she sought unity.

Maybe there's a character still waiting in the curtains, somewhere in the latter half of her book, who brought meaning to her religious quest. But I doubt it. If she ended up where she did, then her religious experiences were on a constant downward spiral, not leading her somewhere that made sense. Her past wasn't making her present and future anymore whole. Being lost rather than grounded in time and life's progression, in the ways I suggest in Spirals, seemed to be the cause of her religous infidelity.

But again - why? Why didn't she find a mentor? Why does God give some of us that companion, and some of us not, even if the lack of such guidance can lead to our losing faith?

Recap, and Looking Forward

2008-02-27T22:34:00.003-05:00

So I finally feel like a big-firm associate. I don't think I experienced it even when, earlier on in my career, I was being yelled at regularly by a stressed partner angry at the world and viewing me as his personal scapegoat. But these past two weeks, when I have camped out in conference war rooms late nights, weekends, early mornings, and everything in between, I feel I have been baptized. Initiated. Entered into associateship. And for all the fatigue, overall I feel pretty good.

Though, as all big-firm associates living the stereotype of associateship, I have not had the luxury to blog for a while. Much has happened this past month, much of it strangely and surprisingly revolving around a bookclub I helped start. I had a lot of aspirations for the bookclub, though I don't think I ever expressed them - to others, or to myself. Somehow, the bookclub has become what I have always wanted. It has become a collaborative exploration of critical gender matters in Islam. And it happened so effortlessly.

The Living Islam Out Loud meeting, where we had the pleasure of having the author/editor of the book, Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, join us for the meeting, definitely created momentum and potential. The guest appearance attracted a larger group and brought in women who have struggled, negotiated, contemplated, and learned to articulate that struggle and negotiation. The experience was almost out-of-body when I heard women in that room describe battles that were hauntingly similar to my own. As if that battle had just metamorphosed and gained meaning. As my Spirals entry suggests, our present somehow makes the past make so much more sense. Events seem to fall into place, weave into each other, and things previously perplexing become eerily, but fantastically, coherent.

And now, I find myself a critical part of a vibrant group of kick-ass women (to take the phrase from Saleemah). It's so refreshing. An intimate group traveling the path together. And, hopefully, a source of comfort for when, and if, I stop enjoying my time in the conference room, feeling and being an associate.

Metaphor

2008-02-08T13:44:00.000-05:00

A note from last year, when Zaynab was kicking about happily inside of me...

God works in mysterious ways. He takes a life and gives another, sometimes in the place of the former.

Or so they say.

Five months ago, soon after my father passed away from cancer, I learned that I was expecting. The initial reactions of my family were…bittersweet. How wonderful that there will soon be a new life; how tragic that this new child will never, in this world, know or be known by his or her maternal grandfather. As they struggled to make sense of their emotional chaos, their thoughts fell into a predictable spiritual pattern: God takes, and He gives. Life and death are in His power. Never despair, for He, in His infinite generosity, will take care of you.

But I'm not one for spiritual clichés. God's profundity spans well beyond such neat little sound bytes, and I'm not sure it even makes rational sense to think that lives are somehow swapped for one another. It seems to me that a truer generosity would supplement, rather than supplant, family members. Maybe it was better to taste the bittersweetness and not try to sugar coat it.

The deeper lessons of life are those that evolve over time, requiring insight, foresight, patience. Their deepness comes from their ability to penetrate beyond all of our psychological barriers. As the time gap between now and my father's passing became wider, a numbness settled in to me. Formerly enthralled by life and the intricate workings of divine interaction, I was now filled with total blankness. It was not a lack of faith, but instead was faith stripped of its drama. It may have been a higher stage in spiritual evolution, but at the time, it was just a place, a plateau, where I had come to rest … and to mourn.

Morning sickness jolted me out of my quietude. In my heaving body and abdominal pain, I seemed to awake. I didn't think of God. I didn't think of my yet-to-be-born child. I just thought about my pain. I felt it and lived it, and in my pain, I found myself connected to my father in a way I had never before been.

In theological discourse, the spiritual and physical realms are often made to seem contradictory. But our bodies are matters of tremendous spiritual reflection, and sometimes we need awareness of that physicality to help us understand greater truths.

In the four months between my dad's diagnosis and his eventual death from primary liver cancer, he had suffered from frequent bouts of vomiting. As the tumor grew larger and pushed down on his portal vein, his abdominal area swelled with fluid. Every time the weight of the water became unbearable, he had to have his water tapped. But even as the tapping drained fluid from around his abdominal area, it brought little relief to his swelled legs and feet, which became increasingly tight with excess water.

I remember taking him to the hospital to have his water tapped. After the procedure, he would slowly change back into his clothes. I remember his skeletal back; I remember the sagging skin and the protruding bones.

It's one thing to see someone else suffer and an entirely other one to live his or her pain. I can't say I have ever suffered his pain, but what little pain I have suffered in the past few months as my belly has grown larger, my legs and feet have swelled with fluid, and the nausea has come and gone, has helped me draw closer to my father and the most tragic experience of his life. In my heaving body and abdominal pain, I remembered him and cried.

How strange that in the greatest miracle of life—the very creation of another human being—we can find the sweetest joys and the most heart rendering sadness. For all my future child has and will give me, she has begun by awaking me to my father's pain. God works in mysterious ways.

Training Ground

2008-01-28T21:23:00.000-05:00

I am reading Living Islam Out Loud, edited by Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur and composed of real life stories by Muslim American women. Asra Nomani starts her piece by describing her childhood conception of “leadership” as something outside herself, possible by others, meant for others, never to be embodied and embraced by herself. Something about that description made me put the book down and think, “hmm.” And from “hmm” came the urge to muse a little bit, for a little while, in the ways of the Peanut Gallery. So here I am.

Nomani’s struggle to embody leadership hits home…and hard. A couple months ago, I began to figure out that I have an internal roadblock, a voice telling me incessantly I can’t achieve my out-of-the-box dreams because I don’t know enough, I’m not good enough, I don’t know the right people or the right steps and everything takes too long and is too complicated. Being married to an entrepreneur who is constantly cooking up something fresh, I am often inspired. But unlike the calm practicality with which he takes steps to convert his epiphanies into cool inventions (he calls it “execution”), I tend to get perplexed and give up on my ideas almost as soon as I begin to conceptualize the steps it’ll take to bring them to life. Something about the reality part of creativity throws me for a loop.

Nomani states, “[l]eadership often emerges at times of crisis when we are faced with critical and fateful choices.” For her, that moment came when she was treated as second-class at her local mosque and realized that most Muslim women were treated similarly at mosques across the nation. Her leadership emerged in response to that crisis. What is my crisis? What will jolt me out of my inability to believe myself capable of applying my intellect and determination to the creation of cool new books and businesses and other crazy, beautiful stuff?

In some ways, I have already been jolted. Shocked, shaken, thrown into the middle of leadership. Not in the form of literary projects I envision – not yet, anyway. So far it has manifested in the form of taking control of my mother’s financial future and resolving a number of pending business and investment matters in the wake of my father’s death. Yes, it’s been a year and a half since he passed away. A year and a half since I’ve been doled these responsibilities. A year and a half that I have felt overwhelmed. But I have been imbued with a new sense of leadership, fostered by the urgency of crisis.

If I can make it through that mess, with money and real estate and insurance companies and all that boring-but-scary practical stuff, then maybe it won’t seem so foreboding when I apply it to my dreams. I shall consider it lessons learned in execution.

Spirals

2008-01-28T13:19:00.001-05:00

Here's something I jotted down a year and a half ago, when I was sitting in my father's bedroom during his final days. As he slept, I sat deluged in the glow of the computer screen.

I can't figure out Time. As a concept of limitedness, it has always inspired my activism, but as a marker of our mortality, it takes on an entirely different hue. Even activism doesn't seem like enough. My dad is very sick and Time seems to be both standing still and moving much too quickly. I am suspended somewhere between this stillness and this panic, and am trying to glean God's lesson in it without letting fear overcome the desire to learn and to appreciate the complexity of it all.

******

In Einstein's Dreams, a book about Einstein's theories of Time and its relation to beauty, ambition, love, dreams, and realizations, Time is described as linear, circular, moving backward, forward, stuck in the past, the future, and, for the lucky few, in the present. I have spent much of my life in many of these various modes and think, perhaps, that the present is beckoning me to yet another concept of Time.

******

When you live your life in constant interaction with God's Signs, nothing is trivial and everything is beautiful. It makes an imperfect present a perfect stepping stone to a greater future. Time, for me, has thus always been both the tunnel and the light at the end. I have experienced life, and have lived to experience it.

******

Time is both the circle and the line. I work on my present, knowing it'll one day be my past, and I have learned that our past always somehow interferes with our future. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do with Time what you would want Time to do with you. When I think about my present as if it were also my past and my future, I know better what to do.

******

If Time is moving backward, forward, in circles and lines, in squares, triangles, spirals--if it is telescopic and scattered--then perhaps the best way for me to deal with Time now is to put aside my ideas of past and future and somehow let myself be caught in Time's motion and shape. In spirals there are recurrent beginnings and ends, and I think that I can find comfort in that…at least for now.

Killing Time

2008-01-10T16:04:00.001-05:00

I haven't written for about a week now, and contrary to what I had told myself about posting structured blog entries only, I have succumbed to the pressures of work, fatigue, and lack of time and am writing free-style now.

So I'll take a moment to contemplate fun. I think my previous entries may have painted me, as the Peanut Gallery, as a most un-fun entity. I rail against frivolity, mindlessness, conformity, news as entertainment, and even poor Khadra's moral confusion. But I am not against fun, and these days, having fun is the main thing on my mind.

I think my preoccupation with fun has to do with this frustration that my husband and I always work so hard at our careers and lives, amass wealth and success, but when we finally try to apply some of that wealth to having some fun, our plans are often foiled. Either because we're too tired, or some weird happening of nature screws up our day, we end up attending lavish dinners and grand stage productions but, in the end, just feel like going home, pulling on our PJs, and eating pizza in front of the tube. The more we plan "fun", the more it ends up being totally not so.

And, of course, in the ways of the Peanut Gallery, I can't help but generalize this foiled fun to some larger concept. Like the purpose of life. Since my father's passing, I have been faced - and sometimes accosted - with the question of mortality and I've often answered it with total complacency. We work, eat, sleep, spend time with the family, attempt to grow spiritually, and then we die. 'Tis life in all its glory. Sure, there's beauty and intrinsic worth in the family and spirituality part of it, and maybe even in the education and career part of it. But ultimately, it seems like we all follow a formula, or struggle to find a pattern in our lives. Unless we can transcend that struggle long enough to glimpse what lies beyond, it seems like life, and all that we do, can end up being a constant attempt at killing time. We work to kill time. We play to kill time. We just kill time .. until time is up.

Ok, I think I've managed to ruin the fun again.

The Age of the Internet

2008-01-02T13:58:00.000-05:00

The Peanut Gallery is part and parcel of the larger trend of culture watchers, those who analyze trends in society and comment upon their long term effects. One such culture watcher is Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. In Amusing Ourselves, published in 1985, Postman argues that while other countries may need to heed the warnings of Orwell’s 1984, in America we should be more afraid of Aldous Huxley’s prediction in A Brave New World that society will become controllable by essentially becoming frivolized. (Note: Just to be clear, neither Postman nor I are against entertainment. Postman is saying that TV is best when it's pure fun; only when TV purports to relay serious messages as entertainment does it become problematic.)

Postman’s thesis is premised on the rise of the television and the effects that such mode of communication has on how we, as a society, think, interact, conceptualize. That is, if the primary mode of communication is one that is focused on quick sound bytes, imagery, and simplified messages, then society itself will learn to think in this manner and tune out information that is more thoughtful – information that, ultimately, is not entertainment.

To give you a clearer picture of what Postman is talking about, consider the following excerpts. The first one describes the way news is delivered through the television medium:

“‘Now…this’ is commonly used on radio and television newscasts to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see. The phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and not to be taken seriously.” (99)

Not only does the “now…this” format separate different news stories so that they fail to form one unified message, but they trivialize our perception of public information more generally:

“I do not mean that the trivialization of public information is all accomplished on television. I mean that television is the paradigm for our conception of public information. As the printing press did in an earlier time, television has achieved the power to define the form in which news must come, and it has also defined how we shall respond to it. In presenting news to us packaged as vaudeville, television induces other media to do the same, so that the total information environment begins to mirror television.” (111)

If news stories, delivered through the televised medium, can become entertainment, so can topics of more transcendent value, like religion. More than public discourse is at risk; the very nature of our introspection is compromised. No longer are we encouraged to contemplate abstractions; the focus instead is on TV personalities:

“Both the history and the ever-present possibilities of the television screen work against the idea that introspection or spiritual transcendence is desirable in its presence. The television screen wants you to remember that its imagery is always available for your amusement and pleasure.” (120)

Postman’s work is a couple decades old and almost entirely focused on the television; his book thus seems a bit outdated given that much of modern-day discourse occurs through or in connection with the internet. The internet, with news sites, online magazines, and a plethora of blogs, many of which offer meaningful discussion on matters of public concern, is the direct opposite of the TV. That is, the internet seems to encourage reading and people can stay informed about world events with a frequency and depth that before wasn’t as easily possible. The focus seems to be back on words, and not just images. Unlike TV, the internet appears to encourage readers to not only connect the dots but also read beyond a single news story to get a fuller picture and a variety of viewpoints on any given issue or event. Democracy itself is furthered and encapsulated by the internet, which fosters not only access to information but also allows readers to participate in debates. Readers from across the world can debates news and social commentary.

Although the internet appears to ameliorate concerns that American society will turn away from public discourse in favor of pure entertainment, it seems to me that the answer can’t be that simple. The TV continues to play a major role in American society – so how does the news-as-entertainment aspect of TV and the serious, democratic discourse of the internet work together? Is the internet stopping or even slowing down the TV-induced frivolization of public discourse? How does the rise of YouTube and other forms of TV-on-the-Internet affect this relationship and the seriousness of public discourse more generally?

The right answer may (or may not) be that TV has been replaced as the primary means by which people receive information and is merely an accessory to the internet, where people get their real news and engage in real discourse. Maybe the TV points people to the issues they should read about and research on the internet. Or maybe TV does more than that, initially shaping the debate which ultimately gets played out online.

Meeting Khadra

2007-12-30T19:34:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-20T00:45:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-16T22:05:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-14T14:24:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-12T21:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-12T21:05:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-12T20:56:00.000-05:00

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.