I miss women. "Help peel the potatoes" neighbor downstairs women, unapologetic artist women, book club women, coffeeshop women, women with children conveniently close in age to mine, women with whom I have nothing in common but with whom I get along fabulously anyway, talking 'bout the deep and the shallow equally women, activist women, going shopping women, Friday night women, Tuesday afternoon women, bad joke women, and familiar women at large.

Children are a blessing but also a binding. Moving to a new town with such young children to demand my time has definitely scaled down my access to planting the seeds of a whole new social circle. You know you just need to get out more when the thought crosses your mind to hit up matrimonial sites for the purposes of tracking down local friends. (I'm not even really sure how that conversation would go. Me: "Hey sister, I know you're busy looking for the love of your life and all, but if I might interrupt for a second to ask if you'd be interested in a girl's night out?" She: *frantically clicking the delete/block/ignore buttons to get rid of the creepy woman who may or may not be hitting on her*)

Yeah. Definitely need a Plan B.

I'm sorry to have reverted to running such a dead blog; some personal matters have been keeping me from giving a lot of time to anything that requires silly little things like actual thought. I know my whole three readers are heartbroken. ;-)

At any rate ... I just watched The Mosque in Morgantown. And I didn't hate it. Perhaps I didn't hate it because I so anticipated hating it. I think for internal viewing, for viewing by the American Muslim community, the film actually did a fairly good job of illustrating and clarifying what the situation was, in practice, in intentions, and in the mind of Ms. Nomani herself. Internally it did not very well portray her as a martyr for her cause or even as being correct in her approach, but it also did not attempt to simply wash away the fact of the discomfort and disputes that do arise in mosque memberships. Not so much propaganda and not so much proselytizing, or at least not of the believable kind. As films go I can respect that. Though I do question here, now, years afterwards, nationally debuting a film that in effect continues the attempt to make a national spectacle of one community.

Externally ... I well understand that it is likely to read differently. But to be blunt I'm finding it hard to care. To put it in some context: I have recently engaged in a discussion about Asra Nomani with a Christian woman who read an article by her or heard an interview with her or something along those lines. What the conversation has caused, for me, is a renewed realization of the difficulty that exists in discussing Islamic matters, particularly sensitive matters, in their own context with people who exist outside of that context. An American Christian feminist can not realistically help but to view a woman holding a protest in front of a mosque, a single mother who feels disrespected, through anything but the lenses of American protest movements, Christian texts and their related disputes, the Christian American political scene and it's own cliches, and 20th century sexual politics -- through every lens but those of Muslims, Muslim feminists, or Islamic texts, ethics, or methods. (That the filmmaker herself does so well underlines the point.) That such a viewer will view things in a manner that doesn't necessarily apply is more a given than it is gamble. But to the extent that such a viewer is not in a position to attempt to force changes in line with their own perceptions (say, for example, in the case of using the plights of many Afghan women in the litany of excuses for leveling those same women's communities) their opinions are only as relevant as we care to make them. And, frankly, I doubt very many people sitting down to watch a little PBS on a Monday night are in just such a position.

(As an aside, I thought the AltMuslimah article on and the Muslimah Media Watch review of the film were both fair in their criticism.)

Though I may not have hated it, I still have higher hopes for New Muslim Cool next week. I'm missing films about Muslims that kind of fill the reality space that exists between dawah documentaries and things like The Yacoubian Building or Confessions of a Gambler. Piety with reality but not centered so heavily on divisive controversy or only personal failings ... is that really so much to ask from just a movie?

Labels: c'est ne pas une tag

Since I'm already getting remiss in actually reading/listening to something daily, gratuitous pictures of my kids instead:

Can asceticism at times itself be hedonistic?

Learn Qur'an first. Learn it well. Learn its language. If Arabic is your tongue, still learn its language. Memorize from it -- juz 'amma, at least. Surat al-Kahf. Ayat al-Kursi. Amanar-rasul. More if you can -- Ya Seen, al-Mulk, ar-Rahman. Chapters and verses about which the particular blessings were recorded by the companions and our scholars, radhi allahu anhum. Get ambitious -- take on al-Baqarah. Take what you like. Start from the beginning. Work backwards. Choose randomly. Just learn Qur'an first.

Read tafsir. Ask questions regarding that which you do not know, do not understand, and regarding that with which you do not agree. Read Ibn Kathir -- we've all seen it online. Read it. Read the Maariful Quran -- download the PDFs if the price is high. Google the Tafhim al-Quran, Tafsir al-Jalalayn, and read, all free.

Perfect your prayers, insha'allah. Forget that you've known how to pray for almost as long as you've known how to walk and to speak; read a guidebook, or three. Remind yourself. Pray behind an imam when you are able. Learn supplications, and to evoke them from the heart.

Learn the seerah. Learn love for the prophet, salallahu alayhi wa salam. Learn a love that is not lipservice.

Then comes the works of legalists and philosophers.

Then comes the back and forth between al-Ghazali and ibn Rushd, if you please, or back copies of al-Manar and video clips of the Doha debates, if you prefer. Increasingly obscure translations or totally contemporary transcripts.

Then comes navigating the merits and pitfalls of all the possible -isms.

Then comes disagreements regarding the translation of this word or that -- discussions of roots, contexts, classical versus modern meanings, constrictions, restrictions, abrogation, and the full scope of metaphor.

Then comes the politics, reformations, applications, allegiances, arguments, dueling rulings, picking the locks on ijtihad, dawah, outreach, identity politics, criticisms, community actions, activisms, rebuttals, refusals and refuseniks, and all the boycotts, blog warriors, masjid malcontents, all around spiritual masochism you can handle.

But however tempting those things may be ...

Learn. Qur'an. First.

Or you'll be talking out your ear.

(A kind reminder to myself as much as anyone.)

He said, 'He says she shall be a cow not broken, not subdued for labour, that is, to plough the earth, churning its soil for sowing (tuthir al-ard: the clause describes the word dhalul, and constitutes part of the negation); or to water the tillage, that is, the land prepared for sowing; one safe, from faults and the effects of toil; with no blemish, of a colour other than her own, on her'. They said, 'Now you have brought the truth', that is, [now] you have explained it clearly; they thus sought it out and found it with a boy very dutiful towards his mother, and they eventually purchased it for the equivalent of its weight in gold; and so they sacrificed her, even though they very nearly did not, on account of its excessive cost. In a hadith [it is stated that], 'Had they sacrificed any cow, it would have sufficed them, but they made it difficult for themselves and so God made it difficult for them'.

- Tafsir al-Jalalayn on al-Baqarah 71.

I have a house. The neighbors southward are bedouins -- the uncinematic kind, the unromantic kind. The women do not peer out from beneath headdresses dripping spangles or through burnished, bird-like masks like elders of Oman; the children do not appear with photo-ready aged and wistful eyes. They are our landlords, of sorts. They sold the land, years ago, are selling it still, profiting prettily from the urban congestion spreading out from Alexandria like progress, to some, or disease, to others ... but still they consider it theirs. Land lords. Were Zeus to sell Olympus for a pocketful of coins would he too have ceded his throne upon it?

The neighbors northward are moderns. I know not what else to call them. Or maybe throwbacks, Egyptians circa 70s, Egyptians who got on nicely before something from the Iranian Revolution took to the air and spread, too, like the city. Before young women traveled together in flocks, costumed tip to toe as tropical birds. Before "insha'allah" popularly dotted sentences like as though it was its own grammatical advancement: a punctuation of piety. Insha'allah.

I have a house which evenly splits the distance between highway and sea, set back within the twisting logic of unpaved packed sand roads. Vacant vacation houses, urban ex-pats, forcibly settled nomads, elders who couldn't afford better from before the land values rose, and small-time dreamers slowly aging out of "young" together fill the landscape of sand, courtyards, and concrete. We're an odd lot. Cars of French import fame part seas of children herding goats in the streets. Satellite dishes overlook orange trees and trash heaps.

The house itself is two floors stacked upon a foundation meant to support as many as eight: a decision resulting from the dreams of a matriarch, her visions of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren coming together in one vertical unit having manifested itself in a foundation costing more than the neighboring houses combined. Two floors marked by jutting balconies and arched windows, interlocking clay tile crescents lining sloping roofs, stucco and bricks, wrought iron geometry. Here I dreamed of gardens, once. Grapevines over the side patio, nevermind the bother of dropping fruits fermenting under foot. Low lavender hedges lining walkways and lending order to a mix of tomatoes and tomatillos, espalier citrus, basils and beanpoles. Obligatory but still beautiful bougainvillea spilling out over the entrance gate. I drew plant maps on paper, traced outlines in the sand with sticks: raised beds here, walking paths there. The matriarch dreamed bigger; I was still young for that.

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Remember how when he was in the wife's -- in the house of Umm Salamah, radhi allahu anha, and he said, "what do you have for us today?" And she said, "Only vinegar." And he said, "The best nutrition is vinegar." And she brought him some broken bread, and he had it with the vinegar. And when he, salallahu alayhi wa salam, said, "the best nutrition is vinegar" ... you know that's not tech- ... well, we can't say that it's not correct. So we can't even say that sentence. But it's, as commentary, our masters, radhi allah anhum, said, "it is understood" -- see how they're eloquent, radhi allahu anhum -- they say, "it is understood that vinegar is not the best of nutrition." See? They didn't say it, even though that's not true, because that's not good adab with the messenger, salallahu alayhi wa salam. But they said, "Though it is known that vinegar is not the best nutrition, out of kindness and mercy he, salallahu alayhi wa salam, said, in other words, whatever it is that you have will be wonderful. It is the best nutrition -- whatever it is in your house, it is the best nutrition for us."

- Shaykh Abdullah Adhami, in his lecture on love for the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa salam.

Labels: daily reads

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms --
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain,
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.
When they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children's dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn't care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America.
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
     Time? -- The old ones prayed for the young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.

- Different Ways to Pray, by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Labels: daily reads

"His family life seems to have been happy, based on sincerity, respect, and love. Farid al-Din al-Attar relates that his children, asked how they knew if he were angry, replied that he used to treat them, on such occasions, with an affection which was even stronger than usual, but at the same time refrained from food and drink."

- From Dr. Muhammad Ibraheem Al-Geyoushi's "Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi: His Works and Thoughts," read in a post at Akram's Razor.


"Anger is like a ball of fire, but if you swallow it it's sweeter than honey."

- Sayyiduna 'Ali, radhi allahu anhu, clipped from a post by Salikah.


In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.

- "February 2, 1968," a poem by Wendell Berry.

Labels: daily reads