Muhammad Abduh And The Extent Of His Face

by HijabMan :: posted 2 July 09

A few years back I found a complete English translation of “Muhammad ‘Abduh” by Osman Amin originally published by Da’ir al-Ma’arif al-Islamiya, Cairo, 1944. This translation was published by the American Council of Learned Societies, as a part of their Near Eastern Translation Program, Washington, DC 1953. Amazing what you find in the Islam section of used bookstores for $4.00. Unfortunately, I’ve lost it since then— and all the other copies I see for sale are around $50 bucks.

I’ve always been interested in the story of Muhammad Abduh, especially during/after a class with a wonderful professor by the name of Dr. Walid Kazziha. If you attend the American University in Cairo, you must take a class with Dr. Kazziha. If not for his knowledge, for his wit.

“The reigning spirit in al-Azhar was one of pious adherence to the past, traditionalism triumphant over reason, and rejection of all that was new. The fanatacism of the champions of the past reached such a pitch that they would accuse all who dared oppose them of error and deviation from the faith.” (Page 11)

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Reading about how Abduh overcame slander, exile, and in general, the struggles of life… is a source of inspiration to me. Many of the anecdotes remind me of present day happenings. How often is it that imams and religious leaders and even regular old MSA kids make religion just a tad bit more difficult and exlusivist, rather than using the reason that God gave them? Take for example this anecdote, that had me laughing so hard it threw me into a fit of coughing:

“When the Sheikh returned from his trip to the Sudan in 1905, he stopped at Minia, and judges from both the Native and Religious courts, and prominent people of the town came to greet him. When they had all gathered, one of the judges from the Religious Court said to him, ‘A great many Christians are adopting Islam and are making our task more difficult.”
The Sheikh asked, ‘What task is that, Sheikh?”’
He answered, ‘Our teaching them the fundamentals of our religion.’
The Sheikh said, ‘It is enough to say: Pray, fast, give alms, and go on pilgrimage.’
The Judge added, ‘But we must instruct them in the ritual ablutions.’
The Sheikh replied, ‘Tell Him: Wash your face, and your arms up to
the elbow, wet your head and wash your feet.’
The man insisted, ‘That will not be enough: we shall have to teach them the boundaries of the face, from where it begins to where it ends.’

The Sheikh exclaimed with some hint of irritation, ‘Glory be to God! My good Sheikh! Tell him to wash his face! Every man knows the extent of his own face without resorting to a surveyor!!’

ISNA in Washington, DC

by HijabMan :: posted 1 July 09

Look For The Balloon-Hatted Man In The Bazaar. That’s me. Come meet me. You can also meet Shaykh YerBooty! Buy A Shirt.

To The Man Who Is Smelling

by HijabMan :: posted 1 July 09

A few weeks ago I was listening to EBC Radio, 1060 AM out of New Jersey. It’s a South Asian station, playing a range of old hindi classics, and some newer things, like Rabbi Shergil. They also have call-in shows, from reading horoscopes to real estate. The particular program I listened to was targeted towards South Asians in the area who wished to sell their homes. Half way through the program, a young man called in and gave some wonderful (and funny advice). Note: All of this should be read with a South Asian accent

“Hello, Hello, you’ve reached EBC Radio, what is your question?”

“Actu-ali, I’m having comment… vhen you are showing the house, our community, we should not be cooking before, these outsiders are not used to the smell of cooking and things, and it is smelling.”

insert DJ laughter “You are making the good point,” more laughter “This is right, try not to cook before you show your house, especially these things like curry, as this smell might turn away the people.”
Click

Then came another caller, wishing to comment on the previous comment…

“Hello, next caller, you are on the air!”

“Hello, I am vanting to comment to the man who is smelling?”

“This topic is closed sir, no, no, you can call back after the show…”

The DJ tried to cut him off, but to no avail:

“Okay, but vhat im really vanting to say it is…. BUY SOME CANDLE!”

CLICK

Guest Post: Muslim Career Women (And Their Husbands)

by HijabMan :: posted 23 June 09

HijabMan’s Note: This is a guest post by Fathima. Reprinted with permission.

Fathima’s Note: Upon re-reading, I realise that this article has flattened out the complex experiences of mothers who work at home. In a more careful analysis, there’d have been discussions of how female household labour is configured within the economy. As well, I should have been more careful about my presentation of immigrant housewives — by no means are they all passive, or quiet. Nor are all their children invested in traditional gender roles.
I also want to note that my parents did not do everything on their own. Though their choices continue to be thought of as slightly bizarre by most people, they did have support, most notably from their relatives, most of whom were dirtpoor and live in villages in Sri Lanka. I make this explicit because I don’t want to hear that I or my parents are espousing some kind of “Western” feminism that is alien to rural/traditional/South Asian Islam. Additionally, I want to recognise that they could not have gone as far as they did without that familial support. Families who don’t have access to those kinds of networks are necessarily shunted into more constrictive formations.

—

“If a woman has a child [and] she abandons that responsibility in pursuit of an empty career or the idea of making her mark on the world, she has completely misunderstood the great importance and the great responsibility that she has been given by God, in that the fruit of her womb is before her.” “So if a woman brings children into this world and then dumps them in a daycare centre … and if she thinks somehow she is doing something more important by going out and working, I think there’s something very seriously wrong with her maternal instincts. Because abandonment in the animal kingdom, abandonment is alien to animals.” “I am amazed that there’s children out there that are really struggling to find a purpose to their life in a world that is telling them constantly, including their parents by abandoning them, that that they are worthless.” “If you don’t listen to your soul, you’ll end up on antidepressants.”

- Interview with Hamza Yusuf, undated.

My father is a very forceful man and he looks it. In high school, my male friends tended to melt away from around me whenever my father appeared. He’s also, in many ways, very conservative: he wears a thobe on a regular basis; is an ardent supporter of the Tabligh Jamaat, which he credits with restoring his faith when he was young; and has often talked favorably about the niqab. He is a strong believer in following the sunnah, though I sometimes think that in emulating the prophet, he’s got him confused with god.

My mother was one of — if not the — first Muslim women in Gampola to become a doctor, this despite the rampant sexism and racism of the time. She excelled in her studies and later in her work, even when dealing with the rampant sexism and racism of Saudi Arabia, where she spent a decade as an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. When she married my father she didn’t wear a hijab. It was after she’d become a mother of two and moved to study in England for a while on her own that she decided to adopt it, because she felt that it helped her keep the faith in what was then not the multicultural UK we know now. When we migrated to Canada nine years ago, because she was an International Medical Graduate, my mother had to do a series of requalifying exams. My parents made the joint decision then that it would be her — and not my father’s — income that would sustain our household. To that end, while she spent most of the day studying in university carrels, and later being a medical student, my father put aside his own career ambitions in engineering so that he could stay at home more often. He took on jobs with flexible hours; invariably these were jobs that paid little: tutoring or low-level engineering positions, the kinds that are physically taxing for old men and disheartening for someone who was capable of much more.

You need to imagine my father: he’s so dark-skinned that he’s been mistaken by Somalians for Somali; he has a beard, once black, now streaked white and grey; he is big and has a big voice. Once on a drive back to Toronto from Kitchener, he took me to a bridge he was helping construct. It was near a thoroughfare. He pointed out the specific things he did, standing in the concrete in his spotless white thobe. A woman drove by in a car, and then she circled back and she stopped on the other side of the road and proceeded to watched us. My father, explaining the function of various pieces of machinery to me, didn’t see her, but I did. And I knew why she stopped and why she was watching us. It was because my father fits the image of terrorist fundamentalist abusive Moslem to a T. Though perhaps his beard could have stood to gain a few dozen inches, there was no way he wasn’t there on that bridge because he wasn’t planning to bomb it.

No one who has ever met my father would dare question his masculinity. No one would question his sense of conviction, his force of character, and his sheer obstinance. If you know me, with my temper and stubbornness, then imagine my father in my image, except this time with more feeling and a different accent. “I could argue with god,” said a friend once, “and change his mind, but not your dad.”

Not once has my father ever regretted marrying a woman who has been, since the day he met her, committed to an “empty career.” Not once has he questioned my mother’s maternal instincts. Nor has he ever claimed to feel like less of man, even when my mother’s income was barely enough to get the family through the month and he was earning still less than that. When I got my law school acceptance letter a few months ago, my father got teary with relief and happiness for me, though it meant I was leaving for a city a 5-hour flight away. This is no mean feat for a man whose over-protectionism is the stuff of legend. With that letter, I began my slow ascent out of a long depression. “You look happy for the first time,” he said, and he kissed me. “You’ll do big things. I can see it.”

In my first year as an undergrad, I had a poem published in a student feminist literary magazine. One day, the male segment of the Muslim Students’ Association’s executive body that year — in effect, the entire MSA exec except me — cornered my father when he came to the musallah to pray Asr. They showed him the poem and demanded that he do something about my unMuslim ways. “Your daughter is creating fitna.” According to them, it did not befit a practising Muslim woman to write about marijuana in a publication that celebrated queerness. My father responded that they had no business telling him what I could and could not write. It wasn’t until many months later that my father told me about the encounter. That conversation quickly degenerated into a heated argument, both of us enraged, he at me for having been put into a position where he had to respond to accusations of fitna in his family — and nothing makes my father more anxious than the F word; and I at him for his not having so thoroughly routed them that they wouldn’t have continued, as they did for the rest of that academic year, to make me hate being Muslim at Queen’s.

“But it was a good poem,” he said, at the end. It actually wasn’t. It was just the kind of overwrought writing you’d expect from a desperately homesick 18-year-old. And he still has the copy the MSA boys thrust on him that afternoon. It’s stored in a briefcase in the bowels of his closet, along with my elementary school report cards and a dozen photocopies of my health card.

He recently told a Muslim friend of his about my getting into the University of British Columbia. The man, responded, appalled, “You’re letting her go?” My father turns 61 this October, but when he recounted that story to me that night, the baffled hurt on his face made him look 10. I was angry on my father’s behalf, that this man had the gall to question both my father’s observation of Islam and his parenting of me. And I was angry at my father for not having known better than to expect exactly that kind of a response from a man whose wife ended her university degree in her second year, when she married him. “What did you think he was going to do?” I demanded. “Congratulate you?”

My father is staunchly Muslim. His three sons are hafizes of the Quran, and his youngest daughter is on her way to becoming one, too. I am his first child. When he talks about my political engagement, he talks to me about doing good for and within the Muslim community. When he talks about my writing, he talks to me about writing for truth and for justice. He talks to me about wars that aren’t, technically, “Muslim wars,” in that Muslims do not constitute the greatest casualties. These are not wars, then, included in the litanies that end Friday sermons and Ramadan taraweeh. “But how,” he demands, when he talks about the thousands of Tamil civilians slaughtered in the space of days in Sri Lanka this May and about passive Muslim complicity in the Sri Lankan government’s violence, “can we as Muslims accept this?” He gesticulated widely with his hands. “How?”

So when my father talks to me about my purpose, as his daughter, in life, it is a staunchly Muslim vision: to fix the world. That we disagree, and sometimes deeply, about what needs fixing does not detract from the conviction I learned from him that public activism is part and parcel of Muslim practice. When my father says he sees me doing big things, I know he means the same things I do: the little, heartbreaking things, the tiny activisms that go unremarked in mainstream media.

What I also learned from my father was that the fact my mother worked hard — harder than men and women half her age — and came home exhausted in the evenings after leaving early in the mornings was part of her mothering of us. This was her love for us. It was not that she had a job in spite of loving us; it was that she worked because she loved us. Her career was not an indication of weak faith, but the measure of its strength. He taught this to me and I learned it as truth, unassailable fact. And it was true, unassailable: my mother has done more for this family, has sacrificed more of her heart and her life, than I can ever hope to. As I grow older and I begin to think about what kind of a family I might want to raise in the future, it is to her example that I turn for a practice of love that I can only hope to emulate. It is not easy being a “career woman” and a new immigrant, raising five children in a Toronto ghetto.

But I also know this: my mother is not a woman who could be a housewife. It would drive her, like it would me, to depression. Depression does not make for good parenting. For both her sake and mine, I would have our family past be no other way than with her working and away from home for long hours. When my parents decided that our first priority would be ensuring that my mother could be a doctor in Canada as she had been elsewhere, they didn’t do this only because it was an investment in our financial future, but because practising medicine is important to my mother. It’s a goal she’s worked towards her entire life and to take that away from her, even though she was now in her late 40s and would have to start all over in this new country, would have been cruel of us. It would have been selfish of us.

I’m not going to romanticise away the difficulties that ensued as a result of that decision. For many years, home was a claustrophobic apartment in a priority neighbourhood in Toronto. Whatever furniture we hadn’t brought with us from Jeddah we bought from Value Village. The only things the flat had in abundance were people and books. Life would have been different if my parents had accepted the supposedly natural order of things, and my father, against the dictates of his own common sense, had decided to be the primary breadwinner, and my mother, against the pull of her desires, had agreed to be a quiet immigrant housewife. They could have been like all the other aunties and uncles we knew. Then we might not have been as poor, or as strange. Life would have been different, yes. But I know, as my parents knew a decade ago, that it wouldn’t have been better.

Really, what would have happened if my mother had been at home 24/7, there to cook for us when we came from school and/or work; there to wake us up in the mornings so that we weren’t late for our appointments with the external world; there to make sure the clothes we’d bought from Zellers were clean enough to pass public muster? I’m not sure. What did happen was that we learned to cook for ourselves, we set our own alarm clocks, and we did our own laundry. Maybe if she hadn’t had a career, I would have gotten 90s in high school, instead of 80s, and I would have had better(-behaved) friends. Would having had her at home have averted all the drama that my siblings and I went through at school? I doubt it. For one thing, I was a teenager adamant in the pursuit of drama. For another, her presence could have guaranteed nothing. After all, I know so many stay-at-home mothers who stayed at home and still had difficulties with their children. So many women set aside their careers and/or their hopes for a career, because they’ve been told that their children would drop out of school, have babies in grade eight, and do drugs if they “abandoned” them. Yet many of those women who didn’t work, even if they wanted to, did after all end up having children who dropped out of school, had unprotected sex when they were teenagers, and became hooked on narcotics before they’d turned 18. And I’m talking about Muslim kids here, kids I know. But mothers stick it out, thinking this is a sacrifice that they must make, because it is their duty and their lot as women.

There is no utopia that is constructed overnight in household spaces when women stay indoors. I wonder how many of those dysfunctional household would have had an easier time of it if their mothers had been allowed, guilt-free, to pursue careers of their own choice. Perhaps that would have eased some measure of repressed angst in those mothers who did want to work. Perhaps they would have been happier, and better able to deal with the anxieties their children brought home. Maybe then I’d know fewer men who believe that domesticity is hardwired into female DNA and I’d know fewer women who, despite being terrified of turning into their mothers, succumbed to those same stories because of opposition to alternative futures.

I’m not saying that the model of parenting that my parents practiced works for everyone; certainly it doesn’t appear to work for most men I know. I’m not saying that working mothers necessarily raise well-adjusted children; certainly I know families in which that wasn’t the case. I’m not even saying that every woman does or should want what my mother wanted for herself. Yet as a community, we insist, time and again, that working mothers are failing mothers. I hear, from the same people who laud my mother for being a woman in a difficult profession and who laud her for providing medical services to women who are uncomfortable visiting male practitioners, that my mother abandoned me. The same imams who bemoan “their women” — their wives and their daughters and their sisters, literal and metaphoric — having to see male OBs, warn against the dangers of “empty careers.” The hypocrisy is galling; the lack of logic confounding. This is one part of the struggle that my mother encounters as a working Muslim mother. This, not merely the physical toll it takes on her, is what I hark to when I think of how furious my love for her is.

The binary we’ve constructed between good non-working mothers and failed working ones is not only false, it’s eating away at our homes and communities. Depression, among Muslim youth and among Muslim women, is rampant, but no one talks about it in any real way, because that would require admitting to disappointments and resentments that we’ve locked away and admit to no one, least of all to imams and self-appointed community leaders. It makes us sound selfish when we say: but this is what I, Muslim and female, want to do with my life. Men are not called on to defend their career goals to the extent that women are. Whereas for men, a career is seen as being essential to manhood, for women it’s trivial and even misguided, because it detracts attention away from their wombs. Yet the opportunity to operate in the public arena in self-determined ways is integral to anyone’s happiness, male or female. However, it is primarily women who are called on to be self-sacrificing of their hopes and aspirations, lest they be called selfish.

And the last, the very last word, I would ever use to describe my mother is “selfish.” I do not think I could ever write anything long enough that would entail my using that word to describe my mother’s decision to work, made before she had children, and sustained after she had them.

What will be said in response to this I already know. People will congratulate me on my parents, only so they can be dismissed as outliers, endearing but untenable examples. I will be told, as I often am, that my mother and my family are exceptions and that the world like doesn’t work like my household. But should I ever have my own family, this is an exception I intend to replicate. It’s a world I know to be true, and will make true. It’s the kind of family my brothers know, the kind of masculinity they’ve learned. It’s the love they know, and that I hope they will pass onto their sons, as my father did to them.

So Hamza Yusuf can keep for himself his chauvinist binaries, his world wherein the problem with daycares is not that the women who work there are underpaid, but that they exist at all. He can have all the sensationalised tabloids he wants and read up as much as he cares to about pathologies whose symptoms include dumping babies in trashcans and jogging in the streets. I know a different reality, and I pity him that his world-vision is so self-absorbed and all-consuming that he has never and perhaps never will encounter anything like mine. That does not, however, let him off the hook for foreclosing that opportunity for everyone else.

And no one, however much he may call himself a representative of an Islamic community, however many followers he may have, will ever be able to convince me that I should be “ashamed” of my father’s decision to support my mother, or that there is something “wrong” with her because she left an indelible mark on the world.

Others have written elsewhere about fatherhood in Islam. Though this article by Tariq Ramadan doesn’t strike me as particularly groundbreaking, that might be because I’ve never had reason to be invested in Yusuf’s beliefs on Muslim parenting:

Muslims naturally feel inclined to place the mother at the centre of the process of raising children, unwittingly ignoring the father’s role. Islamic tradition does stress the role of the mother. For example, when asked who a Muslim should love most, the Prophet Muhammad said, “Your mother, your mother, your mother and then your father.” It is also said that paradise lies at the feet of the mother. As a result, we tend to focus on the father as an individual, not as someone who should and can play a central role within his family.

When we assess issues from an Islamic perspective, we categorise everything according to “rights” and “duties”. We speak of the rights of the man, the rights of the woman, the duties of the man, the duties of the woman. This mentality is dangerous. It reduces issues to black and white, right and wrong absolutes. This approach is more prevalent than we realise. We must take from all the human sciences that can deal with family problems.

“Another problem in our approach is the idealism. We speak about an idealised past and idealised families which have nothing to do with reality, whether it be now or the history of our ancestors. Muslims must realise we may be Muslims but we live in Western societies and therefore, face the same problems as other families.”
– Muslim Fatherhood workshop – Fathers Direct National Conference, 5 April 2005.

*Fathima runs LikeTheWind Designs. She’s lived in Toronto for nearly a decade but is still of no use to tourists, who she wishes would know better than to ask her impossible questions like, “Where is the nearest subway station.”

A Critique Of Barack Obama's Speech In Cairo, Egypt

by HijabMan :: posted 4 June 09

“Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” -President Barack Obama quoting the Qur’an

Today, I sat with my family and watched Obama’s speech (full text) in Cairo. While the significance of a U.S. President humanizing Muslims and Islam by quoting Qur’anic verses and illustrating our contributions to Civilization is not lost on us (this was unimaginable just a couple years ago!), we did find a few things to critique. With that, I’ll hand over the laptop to my brother-in-law, Angrez.

1. To define the suffering of Palestinians in terms of dislocation and humiliation is an unfortunate and shocking understatement. Palestinians were expelled from their land in a manner that can only be described as ethnic cleansing. Consider, for example, the rules allowing any Jew to settle there while Palestinians continue to be barred from their ancestral homes. Consider also the number of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli forces during conflicts and battles. The disproportionate use of force by the Israeli forces is well-noted by human rights groups and the UN. The United States has always turned a blind eye to these excesses, and it is this that has characterised the “unbreakable” bond of which Obama spoke. The simple truth is that the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (and barring the return of refugees) is illegal under international law, and I have yet to hear an American President admit this.

2. It is true that Muslim countries can do much better in terms of tolerance towards religious minorities. Contrary to Obama’s view however, examples of such tolerance are not only found in the depths of our past in Muslim Spain. In Pakistan, for example, the founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah was adamant about the protection of minorities from the very beginning. While Pakistan still has much to do in the context of protecting minorities, let us not forget the number of churches and Christian schools that are found throughout the nation, the appearance of Christian religious leaders on television at Christmas time and the reserved seats for minorities in parliament. Pakistanis welcome Sikhs who come on pilgrimage every year to the Punjab. The expression of faith by minorities is found throughout the most populous Muslim countries, including Indonesia, which Obama mentioned. The complete suppression of other religions by countries such as Saudi Arabia, with its relatively tiny population of 8 to 10 million people, should not be perceived as the norm. Let us not forget that the majority of Muslims live east of Karachi, and let us not forget that Israel, with which the US shares an “unbreakable” bond, would treat Palestinians fairly if they were Jewish.

3. Sunni-Shia hatred has a long and lamentable history but as a European, I am all too aware of our historical Catholic-Protestant conflicts. These resulted in wars in the past and suffering in Northern Ireland. Such conflict, while appalling, is human and not exclusive to Muslims. The war between the Sunni Saddam Hussein and his Shia opponents was egged on by the West.

I am by and large glad that Obama is trying to engage the Muslim world and is at least trying to reign in some Israeli excesses, e.g. settlements. I fully support his opposition to extremists and appreciated his admission of American mistakes in Iran and Iraq. He is a compelling orator and I cannot help feeling that he is more sincere than many other politicians. Perhaps because of this I am sometimes disappointed that he does not seem to go all the way when addressing problems such as the Israeli occupation. One has to recognise the constraints upon him I suppose, e.g. the need for the support of the pro-Israeli lobby.

With such constraints in mind, I believe he offers the best chance for an improvement in ties with the rest of the world, compared to the other Presidential candidates that were before us.

Update: For some more commentary and more of a comprehensive critique, see Ali Abunimah’s commentary over at the Guardian.

Beautiful Things. Fish Spa And Wonderful Hosts!

by HijabMan :: posted 1 June 09

The last month has been full of beautiful things. So much so that I was rendered a bit speechless. All I’ve wanted to do since coming back from Malaysia is sit in my apartment (Read: Cave) and let everything sink in.

Now I’m ready to share. This will probably last a few posts.

1. Hosts. MacVaysia, Azlin, BinGregory, Farah & Jeremy, Ayu’s Family, Aida. Years ago, when I first started blogging from the confines of my house in suburban Pennsylvania, I searched all over the internet for blogs in Muslim countries. There was always a plethora of blogs of people in Malaysia. I kept in touch from time to time, and because of that and some good luck, I never had to stay in a hotel while in Malaysia or Singapore. I stayed with and was treated to some lovely meals with friends new and old. Thank you for opening your homes to me, feeding me, sharing the company and warmth of your families, and showing me around. From climbing the walls of Pudu Prison and bathing in rivers, to walking quietly into the most serene of Palm plantations and exploring the tea fields of the Cameron Highlands… Let’s just say it was most definitely a fulfilling trip. But like I said to BinGregory, the adventures are great and all, but my favorite thing about the trip was meeting and just hanging out with families. Just regular-old family time. Because regular-old family time is not so-regular, and not-so-old.

2. Faces. Do I need an explanation? At the top, a worker on a Tea Plantation takes a break. Above, a woman working at a vegetable stand in the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. Below, an icecream peddler on Petaling Street smiles as people pass by in Kuala Lumpur.

3. Getting the dead skin eaten off of my feet by fish @ a fish spa. It tickled. A lot.

"We Slept With Our Photographer On Our Wedding Night"

by HijabMan :: posted 1 June 09

“If you saw our photographer, you would do the same!”

“Do you want a photographer that will get really up close and personal?”

Straight out of my last clients’ mouths. Yes, I slept in the same room with the couple on their wedding night. No, it wasn’t what you think it was. And no, I won’t be making it a habit. Hahaha.

Before you think I’m insane, let me explain. I was supposed to sleep in the family room of the bride’s mother’s house, but it was occupied until late at night. At the end of the day, we all hung out in the couple’s room because it had A/C (this was in Malaysia). I ended up falling asleep on the floor, and at around 11 pm, woke up and crashed on the couch outside.

The couple didn’t mind at all, and in fact found in it many opportunities for laughs.

“If anything, we were worried about his back sleeping on that hard floor!”

They continued to ad-lib some silly advertising campaigns for me, seen above, on our trip to the Cameron Highlands a couple days later. They are way too cool. It is wild to think that I met them right before their wedding, and now I consider them among my best friends. In fact, I feel that way about all of the couples I’ve photographed. There is something about journeying with people, whether physically or emotionally that brings you close to them. I am blessed to have been able to make such connections.

Today is the first day of June and the last day I will be 26 years of age. I’m sitting in A La Mode Cafe in Lombard, Illinois and sipping on a cafe Mocha, hoping that the girl behind the counter can reset the wireless internet. If not, I may offer my services as an unemployed Tech Support Guy (TSG).

(Update: I offered my services. They Worked! Wee!)

I’ve been silent on this blog for about of month, which is what I expected a three week trip to Malaysia would do to me. It was one of those epic adventures where you need to absorb, reflect, and be grateful for the ability to jump on a plane, make close, familial friendships with all sorts of people (see title of post), and experience the company and surroundings of thousands of others.

Since I’ve been back, word of my photography has spread, and I have had the privilege of photographing both the Council For The Advancement of Muslim Professionals Leadership Summit and a fascinating one-day Muslim Charities Accreditation Program (MCAP) seminar put on by Muslim Advocates here in Chicago.

Next up, I have a wedding in Indianapolis, ISNA in Washington, DC, and then back to Singapore and Malaysia for another month. At which point, I’ll do my best to hunker down and start nursing school.

Clutches Camera

I’d like to thank the ~~academy~~ economy for laying me off. You have allowed me to continue on my journey to discover what I love.

In the meantime, you can expect more posts.

And hey, if you need a photographer who you need to feel comfortable with— someone who just ‘fits in’ and is easy to work with, contact me. You won’t be disappointed.

Lots of love and respect,
HijabMan

A HijabMan Sandwich In LRT Putra Or How To Survive A Train Ride in Kuala Lumpur At Rush Hour

by HijabMan :: posted 20 April 09

It was 7:30 AM, on Monday when I met Uncle Bob, as little Faaris called him. Uncle Bob is the taxi ( teksi! ) driver that gets my friend A.‘s’s family to wherever they need to go.

In this case, Uncle Bob dropped me off at a train station so I could take the LRT Putra back into downtown Kuala Lumpur.

If you’ve never been on a train in KL during rush hour, and want an authentic work-day experience, go for it. Five trains passed me by until I was able to squeeze myself onto one with my large backpack. New York Subways have nothing on KL, no joke.

The first few stops were a bit torturous, but nothing out of the ordinary, as I was stuck in the middle somewhere squeezed between about three different men. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I moved as close to the door as I could.

The sweetest spot on one of these trains is against the door. Facing the door is best, so you don’t have someone sandwiching you in an uncomfortable position.

Specifically, you should stand near the side of the door that corresponds with the train’s direction. This way, you have your own personal fan. The cracks between the door and the wall of the train are not air-tight, so a nice breeze keeps you cool while everyone else sweats it out.

I tried to maintain that position for as long as I could, stepping off to let people out, but always coming back to the spot right up next to the door.

Unfortunately, I lost the spot as a large number of folks squeezed on at KLCC. So many that I ended up in the worst position— the nook near to the door, facing outward. Needless to say, someone was pressed up against the front side of my body for the remainder of the trip- along with the hundreds of extra pounds of force that were sandwiched up against her.

To reiterate, the safest place on the packed LRT of Kuala Lumpur during rush hour is against the side of the door that corresponds with the direction of your travel.

This has been a public service announcement from a sweaty, stinky, and happy HijabMan.

Now, off to Cameron Highlands to dance in the tea plantations and pretend I am Aamir Khan

Did I just write that out loud?

My Kids Will Be Born Abroad.

by HijabMan :: posted 17 April 09

“If you speak three languages, what is it called?”
“Trilingual.”
“If you speak two languages, what is it called?”
“Bilingual.”
“If you speak one language, what is it called?”
“Mon…”
“You must be an American.” – BinGregory

We both laughed because we know it is true. And sad.

It is Saturday morning at BinGregory’s house in Kuching, all six of his kids are playing a computer game on-line that enables you to chat with the others playing the game.

“I can ask you in Malay. Or in Arabic,” one of them tells the other.

Their father was telling me yesterday that their primary school curriculum consists of learning a few different languages. Malay, Mandarin, Arabic, and English. Sometimes they speak in all different languages in the same breath… a rojak, or “mix.”

Every place that I’ve traveled outside the U.S., I meet kids and adults alike that speak 3-4 different languages each.

Can you say jealous ? In Mandarin? Hahaha. The funny thing is that these folks sometimes don’t appreciate what they’ve got because it is so normal for them.

Oops, gotta go, his eldest is explaining to me the difference between roti canoi and thosai (or dosa, for you South Asian folks). I love learning the Malay words for South Asian foods!

Newark, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and now for some rest in Penang.

by HijabMan :: posted 10 April 09

Newark – Tokyo – Singapore – Kuala Lumpur and now I’m on a bus to Penang. It is 2:35 AM. If it feels like I’ve been in transit for 3 days it is because I have been. Penang will be the first place I spend more than a day in— and I am totally looking forward to sleeping for 8 straight hours when I get there. I thought I was spontaneous and flew by the seat of my pants until I met this couple, A. and K. who thought up this plan of ours. Which is more of really a rough plan. Up until about 4 hours ago, we hadn’t decided how we were actually getting to Penang. First, it was a relative’s car. That didn’t work out too well, as the car broke down today. Another idea was flying. Which would’ve been kind of nice, though the bus isn’t too bad either. After about 45 minutes of sleep, I was roused from my nap at 11:15 PM. Our bus was leaving KL at midnight. Arriving in Penang at 5 AM.

When they woke me up, I was feeling nauseous, and a bit cranky. But then I thought about what I did have control over, and took care of that. So i drank about four glasses of water, to keep hydrated. I’ve learned over the years that something as simple as drinking water can keep you happy, healthy, and feeling less fatigued. Within 5 minutes, I was good as new.

So, how did I get here? The bride has followed my blog since her undergraduate days in college. She messaged me out of no where 3 weeks ago, and hired me to photograph a ceremony in the states. A couple days later, she suggested that I photograph a ceremony in Malaysia too. Did I mention that neither of them had met me? Hahaha

“So when K. suggested that you come to Malaysia as well, something inside my head clicked because I imagined your trip to Malaysia as being something that could bring a LOT of good all around. And I felt like it was providing for a good that nobody knows yet how it could be good. For K., he sees you as the link to both weddings— someone coming in from the outside, who loves God as much as we do.

Speechless. How do you respond to that? Praise God. Could I even imagine of saying no?

They are so laid back and comfortable— like me, that we seem to make pretty good travel buddies. And while this constant planes, trains, and automobiles has got my head spinning. It is nothing that some dried and spiced mandarin peel wouldn’t cure. Perfect to settle some queasiness. Or is that just a placebo effect, Norzu? ;)

When I finished this post, it was 5 AM, and the first thing we did when we got to Penang was eat some nasi kandar

“Finger Lickin’ Good” – A.

I’d have to agree. Eating a bunch of meat and rice at 5 AM by the side of the road has to be one of my favorite feelings in the world. Yum!

Welcome! This site serves two main purposes: to entertain and educate the Believing and curious community, and to generate a bit of cash—God willing. But there’s a lot more about HijabMan.

Regular Guests

Photographs

Latest Comments

clare (ISNA in Washington, DC)

I wish I were going, especially since I live …
fathima (Guest Post: Muslim Career Women (And Their Husbands))

in fact, i found Hamza Yusuf’s interview more – …
fathima (To The Man Who Is Smelling)

i laughed until it hurt.

Muhammad Abduh And The Extent Of His Face

ISNA in Washington, DC

To The Man Who Is Smelling

Guest Post: Muslim Career Women (And Their Husbands)

A Critique Of Barack Obama's Speech In Cairo, Egypt

Beautiful Things. Fish Spa And Wonderful Hosts!

"We Slept With Our Photographer On Our Wedding Night"

A HijabMan Sandwich In LRT Putra Or How To Survive A Train Ride in Kuala Lumpur At Rush Hour

My Kids Will Be Born Abroad.

Newark, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and now for some rest in Penang.

Recent Articles

Featured Articles

Regular Guests

Photographs

Latest Comments

HijabMan Shop

Archive By Tag

Favorite Links

Worthy Matter

Tumblr Widget