For Meredith. Wherever The Heck You Are.

by HijabMan :: posted 28 April 08

During the periodic cleanings of my apartment, I’ll inevitably come across notes, cards, and photos from old friends. Today, during my spring-cleaning blitz, I found a CD case.

“Wait a second, wait a second! Let me get this straight, you and mom actually played music and stored things on… disks? HAHAHAHAHAHA!” – my future children

Out of sheer curiosity, I stuck my hand in the back pocket of the case and came out with an envelope with a card in it. It was written by a particularly mysterious friend of mine while we were studing in Cairo. In the era of Facebook, Gmail, and the all-together mind blowing human connections I’ve found myself having lately, I’m not exactly sure how she disappeared herself. I know she was interested in a job with intelligence, either FBI or CIA, but that is all speculation, though I must admit, it adds some exciting drama to this otherwise run-of-the mill blog post, and it makes me want to type things like

plot thickens. or dun dun DUN!

So, I fished out the card. She wanted to share with me a journal entry of hers, dated 7-20-2001. I hope she doesn’t mind that I am sharing it with you. It is a lovely thought:

“Be strong everyday. Try to stop and think at all the difficult points/steps because they all matter, even the small ones. And if you can remember to be strong, compassionate, and do the right thing— remembering what is truly important— then hopefully it will come naturally when the big stuff hits. Try to remind yourself daily that you are never alone, that God is watching & that is not a scary thing, it is a blessing and we are all going to be okay. Great things, great love is waiting in God’s plan for the future… and there is great joy/happiness buried somewhere every day if you keep your eyes open and your heart/mind clear of distractions. Don’t stop giving because returns don’t matter. To give is never fruitless, just try to start giving without ever expecting a return (I must do this in front of my children so it comes naturally to them). Try to recognize when selfishness is clouding your vision, and push it away so you can admit your mistakes and learn from them.” – Tovah

The great part about this is not just this journal entry, but her thoughts afterwards. She reiterated that this was a moment of spiritual clarity, something that she’d probably forget. Because that is what human beings do. Forget.

Thanks for the note, Meredith.

I Have A Belly, And I Will Take The Steep Path To Get Rid Of It!

by HijabMan :: posted 23 March 08

“...my body is borrowed
yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom
and some maggots…” – Ani Difranco, My I.Q.

I have a belly. Not a small firm one, not a ridiculously large one. It’s just a medium sized belly. I come from a pool of genes that allocates all fat to my belly. Everything else? Skinny.

Skinny arms. Check.
Skinny legs. Check.

My belly appeared when I returned from a four month stay in Syria and found a full-time job. The combination of a full-time job, a car, and laziness is deadly. I stopped riding my bike, and I stopped eating as healthy as I should.

Sometimes I ate just because a sundae looked tasty, other times I ate because I felt like I needed to finish what I started. Often, when I felt hungry, I also replaced the uncomfortable feeling of hunger [was it really hunger?] with an equal discomfort, that of eating too much! It really is quite stupid when you think about it.

Many things slip passed us when we forget that the life of this world is illusory. When we, with full bellies, nice cars, and four-dollar-lattes forget that we are among the top 4.62% richest people in the world! Yes, my income puts me in the top 5% of the world.

I often question myself about how I can use the status I have been given (by God) to make my life and the lives of others better. Sure, I can throw some money here, throw some money there, and think, “Okay, I did my part.” But I think of that as the easy way out. And the easy way is never the right way, as I learned in the Quranic Chapter, Al-Balad:

Nay! I call to witness this land – this land in which you are free to dwell – and [I call to witness] parent and offspring: Verily, We have created man into [a life of] pain, toil, and trial. Does he, then, think that no one has power over him? He boasts, “I have spent wealth abundant!” Does he, then, think that no one sees him? Have We not given him two eyes, and a tongue, and a pair of lips, and *shown him the two highways [of good and evil]? But he would not try to ascend the steep uphill road… And what could make you conceive what it is, that steep uphill road?* [It is] the freeing of one’s neck [from the burden of sin], or the feeding, upon a day of [one’s own] hunger, of an orphan near of kin, or of a needy [stranger] lying in the dust – and being, with that, of those who have attained to faith, and who enjoin upon one another patience in adversity, and enjoin upon one another compassion. Such are they that have attained to righteousness; whereas those who are bent on denying the truth of Our messages – they are such as have lost themselves in evil, [with] fire closing in upon them. – Chapter 90, Muhammad Asad’s Translation with some editing by myself to make it more modern

We’ve been given two highways. One is easy. There are no bumps, it has recently been paved, and you’ve set cruise control at 70. Smooooooth sailing. There is no need to think and no need to act. The other is a steep uphill road. It has bumps, turns, and forks. Sometimes you feel like you will fall off the edge. To be on that path you have to be proactive. You have to be aware both of yourself and the true reality of this world. Being on that path is knowing that the material things we surround ourselves with are nothing but a dream.

For me, the best way to change the situation of the world is to transform myself. The basis of changing myself comes first from being grateful, to give thanks. Because the simple awareness that all of this came from God, motivates me to take care of everything I have, including my body. A gift that I’ve been loaned for the time in between my mother’s womb and some maggots, as Ani Difranco makes clearer than I could.

During Ramadan, the month in which Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, we get a taste of what hunger actually feels like. I need to re-learn that.

On the uphill road to physical fitness, I need to listen to my body. I will eat when I’m hungry. Eating slowly enough so that I can stop when I feel full. Many Americans including myself have forgotten what it feels like to feel hungry, because we eat more than we need, and we eat while doing something else, whether it be driving or sitting in front of a screen. The second part of the uphill battle against my belly is staying physically active. Despite fearing the act of walking in and working out next to strangers, I’ve joined the YMCA for the first time in 15 years. I stopped putting it off, and have been getting more comfortable with each visit. My initial goal is to go to the gym once a day. At the moment of this writing, I’ve been maintaining three visits per week staying an average of an hour for every visit.

What uphill battles are you facing? How do you motivate yourself? Share.
————

Just FYI, I’ve started a tumble log, where you can see pictures/links/videos of things I come across throughout my day. I’ll keep a log of my workout routines/food consumption there as well, since I can post from on the road. Check it out, add it to your RSS readers, and feel free to comment there as well! There may be a big announcement there soon, as well, so you might want to keep an eye out!

p.s. that photo is of the yummy red pepper, green pepper, and onions in my chicken jalfrezi.

CAIR Philadelphia's 2nd Annual Banquet: April 12th

by HijabMan :: posted 20 March 08

If any of you are in the Philadelphia area, I strongly encourage you to register for CAIR-PA Philadelphia Chapter’s Banquet on April 12 @ 5:30 PM in Hilton Philadelphia’s Grand ballroom located at 4200 City Avenue.

For more information on the banquet, including speaker bios, click here

Why Support CAIR Pennsylvania?

- CAIR PA serves American-Muslim community needs at the local level — a resource to Islamic and interfaith centers – CAIR PA presents an American-Muslim voice to media, policy makers, and civic groups – CAIR PA defends against negative images, stereotypes and bigotry – CAIR PA builds bridges with civil rights organizations, and ethnic-based communities on the common goal of promoting justice and mutual understanding

I’m personally looking forward to hearing Michael Hamilton Morgan speak. Bio: “Award-winning former diplomat Michael Hamilton Morgan is the author of the new book Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists. Morgan is also founder and President of New Foundations for Peace, a nonprofit created to teach leadership skills to young people worldwide.

While some in the media and American politics are exploiting fear-based depictions of Muslim culture, Michael Hamilton Morgan’s Lost History shows how much of modern science-based, humanitarian and tolerant society comes from Muslim sources. Rather than a clash of civilizations, Morgan finds a single global digital civilization, with many of its roots in historic Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba and other places.”

Oh, and Azhar Usman, will provide the entertainment!

Register Now or if you cannot attend, go ahead and donate a few bucks to help build another local Muslim Institution. even if it is just $5.00 here and there.

Do Muslims Never Get to Have an Idea of Their Own? Reinterpretating Islam In Turkey

by KufiGirl :: posted 2 March 08

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by KufiGirl

The case of Turkey’s Department of Religious Affairs “reinterpreting” the hadith to make Islam more palatable to modern sensibilities has been the big story in Islamic circles this week. It was reported in the British press and received with fanfare across the blogosphere. I admit I am perplexed.

With the huge, blinding, blinking-lights-in-neon caveat that I Am Not An Islamic Scholar, and that I welcome comments from those who are, I need to rant about this because the whole idea of “reinterpreting” the hadith from a modern standpoint just doesn’t make a lot of sense if you know how the hadith works. This is NOT because everything in Islam is set in stone and there can be only one interpretation and Muslims are conservative fanatics who believe a seventh-century code is the only proper guide to life in the modern era and therefore cannot bear the idea of new readings on old problems — it’s because the hadith is already considered potentially unstable. But there is an established way of dealing with this. All Muslims know that, hence the collective “huh?” at this becoming such a big story in the West over the last few days.

To make the first of what I’m sure will be a series of scandalous simplifications, a hadith can be compared to an ancient game of telephone. Unlike the Qur’an, which was considered divine and memorized word-for-word, hadiths were stories told about (not by) Muhammad and were intended to complement (not replace) the Qur’an. Some of these were told by multiple people, though wording and details vary from person to person. Taken collectively, the hadith describes the traditions and sayings of Muhammad (the sunnah), which is the second-highest source of fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, after the Qur’an.

Of course, like any game of telephone, there is danger in a story becoming corrupted as it goes through a chain of narrators. Allowing for this, each hadith is verified individually according to several factors, such as the character of the original narrator and the reliability of his or her memory, whether or not the chain of narration is unbroken, the number of narrators telling the same story, and so on. What you get, in the end, is a collection of thousands of hadiths with varying degrees of reliability. It is perfectly possible to have a hadith told by one unstable guy whom no one liked who had an ulterior motive and no one to back up his story, a story which doesn’t even make sense anyway because no one believes Muhammad would really have done that thing this guy claims he did. Right? So that hadith would still be part of the conversation around Islamic law, but it would be classified as a fabrication or otherwise unsupportable by a variety of methods used to validate individual hadiths. In casual conversation these are usually referred to as “weak” hadiths (although the word for weak, da’if, has a specific meaning in this context).

By the same token, you can have a very “strong” hadith, let’s say one told by twenty different companions of the prophet who were all noble servants of God and had no motive to lie, telling a story that seems consistent with the Qur’an, followed up by an unbroken chain of narration — and still argue about the applicability of that hadith to modern circumstances. For cases like this there are a number of “lower” sources of Islamic interpretation,* such as reasoning by analogy, decision by consensus, and, at the lowest level, the acceptance of default cultural practice when it does not conflict with any of the above.

This process happens all the time. It is an assumed part of ‘official’ Islamic jurisprudence, as well as a common conversation that goes on informally among Muslims on a dead regular basis. This is a good example, or this debate about the hijab, or this post regarding Islam’s association with misogyny.

So when the BBC article says that the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs claims “that a significant number of the [hadiths] were never uttered by Muhammad”, that’s a serious case of non-news. Yet the tone of the article, and the tone of discussion around it, implies that this is a shocking new development in Islam, one that only a secular state like Turkey would have the courage to initiate and the kind of thing we could only see in our present world climate, now that Islam has been called on the carpet and ordered to modernize.

Okay, you say, so acknowledging the (sometimes) problematic sourcing of (some) hadiths is old hat, but what about the “strong” hadiths perceived to be incompatible with modernity? Isn’t Turkey so very brazen and forward-thinking to go there, too? From the article:

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example.

“There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband’s permission and they are genuine.

“But this isn’t a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet’s time it simply wasn’t safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons.”

The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content of the Hadith by rigorous academic research.

Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said “he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone”.

So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet’s goal was.

Fine… but still not new. Feminists in Tunisia, for example, successfully achieved a ban on polygamy by arguing that it was permissible in the seventh century as a means of protection for widows and orphans during wartime, but that monogamy was clearly the Qur’anic ideal. This law, passed several decades ago, would have been even more controversial than what Turkey is doing now because these women were arguing about the Qur’an, not the hadith, and the Qur’an is considered the literal word of God.

Likewise, we hear of women trained in this “new” thinking going to rural parts of Turkey to explain that honor killings are not Islamic:

One of the women, Hulya Koc, looked out over a sea of headscarves at a town meeting in central Turkey and told the women of the equality, justice and human rights guaranteed by an accurate interpretation of the Koran – one guided and confirmed by the revised Hadith.

She says that, at the moment, Islam is being widely used to justify the violent suppression of women.

“There are honour killings,” she explains.

“We hear that some women are being killed when they marry the wrong person or run away with someone they love.

“There’s also violence against women within families, including sexual harassment by uncles and others. This does not exist in Islam… we have to explain that to them.”

Yet another noble effort. Yet again, nothing new. There are so many examples of this I’m not going to list them here; suffice it to say that sending educated women into rural provinces to explain “true” Islam to illiterate peasant women is a well-established tradition in the Middle East and Central Asia, one that goes back at least 100 years, to the beginning of the feminist movement, and arguably much longer if we widen the discussion to include the historic role of Islamic schools in the teaching of literacy. My daughter’s great-aunt, for example, born in 1920, got her first job as a teacher driving throughout Saudi Arabia, teaching girls in village schools. This was during a time of great upheaval, when the role of educating women was hotly contested. When this right was defended it was done so via the argument that women should learn “proper Islam” in place of “ignorant cultural practices.” As evidenced by the Turkish case, elements of that debate continue today, on remarkably similar terms. Whether or not you find that position sufficiently radical to result in real change for women, at least situate it historically and acknowledge that this is not an example of bold new thinking.

Okay, you say, so it’s not “new.” Whatever. It’s still good, right? This idea that Islam is subject to interpretation? Isn’t it exciting to see people take up a project like this, in the face of certain fossilized versions of religion?

My problem here is that the perception of “newness” IS the story. It conforms to the view that Muslims occupy an earlier point on the progress timeline, and must be ripped, by force if necessary, into the modern era. (The Guardian article on this subject is called “Turkey strives for 21st century form of Islam” — in case we forgot that most OTHER Muslims are of the Dark Ages variety.) Sure, we may hate military intervention, but how else to foster change in a region where (we erroneously believe) people are still adhering to a form of religion unchanged and unquestioned for 1,400 years? That Muslims might — finally! for once! — be taking on this task through their own initiative is exciting only in the sense that we privately congratulate ourselves for having pushed them into it. When they stand up, we’ll stand down. And so on.

The Guardian article makes this connection explicit:

The exercise in reforming Islamic jurisprudence, sponsored by the modernising and mildly Islamic government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is being seen as an iconoclastic campaign to establish a 21st century form of Islam, fusing Muslim beliefs and tradition with European and western philosophical methods and principles.

The result, say experts following the ambitious experiment, could be to diminish Muslim discrimination against women, banish some of the brutal penalties associated with Islamic law, such as stoning and amputation, and redefine Islam as a modern, dynamic force in the large country that pivots between east and west, leaning into the Middle East while aspiring to join the European Union.

“Muslim beliefs and tradition” are balanced against “European and western philosophical methods and principles.” They get to claim “stoning and amputation”; we get to claim “modern” and “dynamic.” To drive this point even further into the ground, both articles rely on the tired trope of this leading to the possibility of “an Islamic reformation”: an ahistorical idea rooted in the notion that Islam has remained stagnant.

In a related vein, the excitement here betrays a belief that extreme forms of Islamic conservatism begin with overly literal readings of Islamic texts. I’ve found this belief to be very popular with people who know a lot about, and are disgusted by, Christian fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism, they extrapolate, must be similar, only like using the Muslim Bible or whatever instead. I bet they hate science and abortion, too! In addition to ignoring some major theological reasons for this analogy not holding up, it’s a framework that ignores the role of political circumstances, particularly colonialism, in shaping Islam-as-political-project. That’s a separate and much longer discussion, but I’m noting it because I think, despite the fact that the word “terrorism” is never used, the read-between-the-lines hope being expressed here is that if Muslims only KNEW they had good, solid Islamic alternatives to Waging War On The Infidels, they would pack up and go home.

This is part of why the word “revised” is so problematic in this context. Read this sentence again:

One of the women, Hulya Koc, looked out over a sea of headscarves at a town meeting in central Turkey and told the women of the equality, justice and human rights guaranteed by an accurate interpretation of the Koran – one guided and confirmed by the revised Hadith.

There is no need to develop “revised Hadith” to make this point, since honor killings have never been an accepted part of Islamic practice. To note this is not to criticize the Turkish project itself, but to critique, again, its portrayal as daring innovation, because if anything such a portrayal lends credibility to the idea that actually honor killings ARE part of “real,” “authentic” Islam. Not only is this false, but it is exactly the opposite of the project’s intent. The implication is that, until last Tuesday, Muslims spent over a thousand years laboring under a medieval religious tradition; the only question now is whether or not they will accept “revisions” undertaken by a secular country like Turkey.

Which is an interesting subject itself. Had it not been for this rush of Western interest, I’d be optimistic. Turkey is secular, but its recent election was won by a (slightly) more conservative pro-Islamic party, and whatever the country’s modern politics, it still retains an association with the Ottoman Empire, which would have been the proper site for a major Islamic project such as this one. More problematic is that it is being undertaken by a government agency, and government-sponsored mouthpieces of religion (an unfamiliar concept in the U.S., but popular abroad, not only in Muslim countries) are prone to issuing verdicts that are inevitably taken with a grain of salt. Still, the aim of this project sounds like something akin to Google — not the creation of new content, but the organization of old. Although this is being described as an attempt to overwrite all previous forms of Islam, I think, among Muslims, it would have been taken for what it was: an unusually ambitious but ultimately common and therefore familiar attempt to apply Islamic jurisprudence to modern circumstances. I have no particular problem with that, so long as it is understood to be part of a much larger discourse (and not, say, a state-sanctioned Wahhabist-style attempt to render all other readings moot).

Now, however, Turkey has been put on the defensive. This week, Mehmet Görmez, the director of the project, issued a statement decrying the BBC article, saying the Directorate of Religious Affairs is going so far as “to take the appropriate legal measures for redress” because the project was so inaccurately portrayed:

“Our project is not aimed at effecting a radical renewal of the religion, as is claimed by the BBC. Our objective is to help our citizens attain a better understanding of the hadith. Though I underlined several times during our interview with a BBC reporter that our project cannot be considered a reformation of Islam, he distorted the facts, saying Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam — and a controversial and radical modernization of the religion.” ...

A fresh look at the hadith collections — the gathering of which began some 200 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed — and how they are utilized and interpreted within the framework of Islamic jurisprudence, while sure to generate a degree of criticism and controversy, is a far cry from attempting to change, in effect, some of Islam’s most important historical records…

“I had an interview with BBC reporter Robert Pigott around two months ago about the project. I underscored during our interview that it cannot be termed a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam. But, his article read ‘the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.’ This does not reflect the truth.”

If this denunciation speaks louder than the original misreporting, the project may still find an audience. If not, I’m guessing it’ll be tossed in the pot along with other ideas assumed to be Western-tainted pseudo-Islam, inciting not “revolution” or “reformation,” but reactionary backlash and a further retreat into religious conservatism.

* This process is Sunni — Shi’a practices vary.

Chit Chat Chaat & Chai With Hijabman

by HijabMan :: posted 22 February 08

Due to popular demand, Yasminay of SweepTheSunshine demonstrates the gravity defying head-wrap she wears…

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.

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Latest Comments

adnan. (For Meredith. Wherever The Heck You Are.)

“Don’t stop giving because returns don’t matter. To give …
Anjum (I Have A Belly, And I Will Take The Steep Path To Get Rid Of It!)

actually i’m going through a similar change as you …
Vanessa Fatima (I Have A Belly, And I Will Take The Steep Path To Get Rid Of It!)

This post was so well written! I like how …