A year ago—in late 2014, my Jewish friend Lenny called me. “Sabeeha, it’s in the news. The mosque in Long Island has elected a woman to be the president of the mosque. I thought of you.”
In August 2015, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), one of the largest Muslim organizations in the US, launched a campaign for the inclusive, women-friendly masjid (mosque), stating “we call upon all masjids to ensure that … women actively participate in the decision-making process of the masjid, best realized by having women on the governing bodies of masjids.”
21.
My Brand of Islam
1987
We never went back to being the same. The controversy over women’s roles had forced the hands of the conservatives and split the community, and the issue was no longer that of women but rather: what brand of Islam does the mosque represent? I worried.
What form of Islam will be taught to our children? Will boys and girls be segregated in the classrooms? Will they be told that music is forbidden? What will they be taught about how Muslims relate to non-Muslims? Is tolerance being preached or are they encouraging a stick-to-your-own-kind-and-you-will-remain-pure mentality? What will be the role of women? Will they be relegated to meal planning or be allowed to teach? Teach preschool girls only or older boys as well?
Until recently, I had been grateful that we had a mosque and someone was teaching my children. The election and women’s issue elevated our level of awareness about the content of what was being taught. I started paying close attention. So did the other parents.
“Do you know what the teacher told the children in class today?” one of my friends called and asked me. “He said, ‘You should not waste your time listening to Noor Jehan’s songs.’” Noor Jehan was a very popular Pakistani singer.
It has started. My children are being told that music is forbidden. What next? How do we stop this?
Another friend called. “Guess what happened in class today. The children were segregated. Boys on the left, girls on the right.”
Now I have no problem with self-segregation. We ladies did it all the time at parties. Our children do it with school, boys clustering with boys, girls with girls. As long as that is by choice, fine. But I had a problem with imposed segregation, particularly among grade-school children.
What next?
Nail polish. Yes, nail polish. A woman pointed to my nails, said you cannot perform ablution if you have nail polish. Why not? Because the water has to touch the nails, and nail polish is a barrier. Let me see if I get this straight: I cannot have a conversation with God because I have nail polish on my nails?
Khalid started speaking up. Each time we ran against what we felt was contrary to what we wanted our children to learn, Khalid would speak up. On the advice of my friends, I became silent. I was told that if I spoke up, the conversation would deflect from the “what” to the “whom.” “Keep a low profile,” I was urged. What they were really saying was: you have made enough trouble, now lay off until the dust settles. The dust never settled. Khalid was given a gag order: he was not an authority on religion and therefore should back off from making pronouncements. Khalid pushed back. Lines were drawn and the community split into two factions: the ultraconservatives and the progressives.
That label—ultraconservative—was my bias. I should have said, “their-way-of-thinking-ers” and “our-way-of-thinking-ers.” We agreed on nothing. It was like gridlock in Congress. Eventually, both camps parted ways. It was a sad outcome. Muslims, who should stay united, had broken up so early in the stages of community building. The “Us” was much smaller in number, had no teachers and no space, but we had our spiritual leader and we had our ideology. Now it was up to us to give our children the brand of Islam that we wanted—one that preached tolerance and inclusivity and was unencumbered by cultural baggage from the old country. We were taking charge.
I said that we had no teachers. We sat around the table, seven of us, and looked at one another. There was only one answer.
Us.
We had to become teachers.
“I’ll take the preschoolers,” I raised my hand and said. The beginning class was all I was equipped for. “I will teach them the Arabic alphabet and basic Islamic studies.”
“I will teach Islamic history,” said Khalid. Another easy one. “I want children to be proud of their history.”
The others, well versed in Islam, took the classes in Islamic studies, and Imam took the adult classes. We had a faculty of seven.
An interior decorator once told me that it is a decorator’s nirvana to start with an empty space rather than work with existing furniture. An architect once told me, “Give me new construction, and I will hand it to you in six months. Ask me to renovate, and it will take a year and cost you more.” Sitting around that table, that is how we all felt. We were starting with an empty school and furnishing it with the curriculum of our choice, one that focused on the spirit and values of Islam: God consciousness, spirituality, tolerance, inclusiveness, dignity, compassion, equality, and social justice. Whereas I knew little about Islamic theology, I knew what kind of Muslims I wanted my children to be, and I was going to build this Sunday school to make my kind of Muslims out of them. So help me Allah.
Allah did help us. According to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, God says to us, “Take one step toward Me, and I will take ten steps toward you.” The first step was space. Khalid spoke to the CEO of Bayley Seton Hospital, and he handed us a cottage on hospital grounds—rent-free. Furniture? St. Vincent’s Hospital decided to replace its classroom chairs and donated the used chairs to us. Saqib rounded up his friends, and in a friend’s station wagon, we drove to Pergament, carted the blackboards, made donor stops at friends, and picked up rugs, folding tables, chairs, and sofas; by Saturday evening, the school was set up. Sunday morning, our faculty welcomed the students. We were ready.
Will we even have a congregation? Will we even have students, other than our own children? Will we have to rebuild a community as well?
Remember Field of Dreams? “If you build it, they will come.” I will amend that to say—not so modestly, “If you build it right (for them), they will come.” One of the faculty members stressed from the beginning, “We have to establish a first-rate school. If we have a solid school with a well-defined curriculum, people will come, and we will have a community for our children.” She was right.
The day school opened, classes were full. But what proved her right was what happened the following year. On the first day of school, as I pulled up into the parking lot, I was besieged by families lined up outside the door—Pakistani, Indian, African, Egyptian, African American … so many children. Sitting at the registration desk, I looked up at one of the mothers and said, “We don’t have teachers for so many children.”
“I will teach,” she said. And the lovely Mona, an Egyptian American, outlined her credentials and joined the faculty. Two of the Egyptian fathers, standing by, offered to teach. On the first day of school, our faculty doubled, and we had more students than we had dreamed off. Allah had taken many steps toward us.
An unintended consequence of the furor over the women’s issue was that it galvanized the moderates. Families who had been on the periphery in terms of their level of participation in the mosque became active. So incensed were they by what they saw happening, and what they saw coming, that they felt they owed it to get involved to turn the tide.
Yet another unplanned consequence: Khalid and I had to educate ourselves—Islamically, that is. We mail-ordered books from Kazi Publication and got down to teacher-training ourselves.
And yet another consequence: we became custodians of the Sunday school. Every Sunday morning, we would get to the school an hour before opening, carrying our vacuum cleaner, and clean up the classrooms and bathrooms. I want Saqib and Asim to see what it takes. At the stroke of the hour, classes would start, and Khalid, the other teachers, and I would ferry out to the classrooms. Imam held adult classes in the livi
ng room, and everyone gathered around him on the rug. In the afternoon, young adults would join his class. During break, the ladies would set up refreshments in the living room, and the school would come alive with chatter and laughter. At the end of the school day, we would clean up again and lock up. We came to school charged with anticipation, going over checklists, and drove back with an “Aaah!”
In time we would go on to establish a summer camp for children—all the fun stuff and all in a Muslim setting. We did field trips; made museum visits; held picnics; had parent-teacher conferences; organized a library with books indexed by the Boy Scouts of America as Saqib’s Eagle project; hosted Taraweeh prayers in Ramadan; and went all out on Eid festivities.
Saqib was fifteen, Asim twelve. These were their formative years in Islamic education, and they got the best of what was available. They also got the best of both worlds—the Pakistani values of hospitality, respect for elders, respect for authority, family values, politeness, modesty, and restraint; and the American values of discipline, punctuality, patience (waiting in line), tolerance, pluralism, embracing diversity, diligence, civic mindedness, and the work ethic. Our brand of Islam was taking shape, and I was threading my prayer rug in red, white, and blue, blending in harmony with the green.
22.
Abraham’s Sacrifice
We even Americanized the festival of Eid-ul-Adha.
Summer of 1988
“Where are the poor?”
It was the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha, and we had a challenge. How do we distribute meat to the poor?
“I just send the money to Pakistan and ask my parents to sacrifice the lamb for us. It is so easy to distribute meat over there,” one of my friends said. “There is so much poverty in Pakistan. Some eat meat only once a year, on Eid.”
“It is time we start thinking local,” Khalid said to me. “There is a halal meat butcher on Staten Island. Perhaps the butcher can help us distribute the meat to the poor.”
I could feel the gears in his head turning.
“How?” I asked. “How do we find ‘the poor’?”
“I will figure something out.”
I am sure you will.
So Khalid started his research. Mind you, this was 1988—there was no Google. He had to let his fingers do the walking. Sure enough, one day Khalid came home and said, “It’s all worked out. Families will place their lamb orders with Bahri Halal Meat and pick up their two-thirds portion. Project Hospitality, which runs a soup kitchen for the homeless, will pick up the one-third portion for the poor. And I have called the press. They will be there when the meat is picked up.”
“You called the press!”
“Most people believe that Muslims are a bunch of terrorists. I want people to see that Muslims are giving to the community.”
I love him.
The day after Eid, Reverend Terry Troia, director of Project Hospitality, drove up to Bahri Halal meat and lugged six hundred pounds of lamb meat to her soup kitchen. Her parting comment was: for once, the homeless will be served meat. The next day there was a spread in the Staten Island Advance, the local newspaper, with a photo of the doctor, the butcher, and the soup kitchen gal. And thus began a partnership between Project Hospitality and the Muslim community of Staten Island. As the Muslim community grew, Project Hospitality was the institution that enabled us to practice one of the core pillars of our faith—charitable giving. Terry came year after year, carrying sheep loads of meat—a hands-on servant of God. And as the lines at the soup kitchen grew longer, no one was turned away.
So what about the one-third portion of the meat that has to be distributed to family and friends? Some families preferred to donate that portion to the poor as well, partly for charitable purposes, and partly because it made practical sense. I decided to go by the book. Picture this: Khalid brings two-thirds of the lamb meat into our kitchen. I freeze our one-third portion. The children and I take the remaining one-third, pack it into a dozen freezer bags, and load it in our car. Saqib, who has his driver’s license by now, drives Asim and me to our Muslim friends’ houses. Asim rings the doorbell. An auntie answers.
“Eid Mubarak,” we all chime. “Here is some meat for you,” and we hand her the pouch. Her husband and children have gathered behind her in the hallway.
“Oh, thank you. Won’t you come in?”
“No, thanks. We have meat to deliver. Another time,” and we drive off to our next stop. It takes all evening to make the meat drops. I choose not to include my dear neighbors. It would have been too shocking for them. Wouldn’t you be shocked if your neighbor’s son rang your doorbell, and instead of saying, “Trick or treat,” handed you a pouch of raw meat?
Later that evening, our doorbell rang.
“Eid Mubarak. Here is some meat for you.”
By nighttime, my freezer had filled up with a two-thirds equivalent.
Was this the intent of the family portion?
For the next two months, guess what my answer was each time my children asked, “Mummy, what’s for dinner?”
I was back to examining the pattern in my prayer rug. What if I gave away all the meat in charity? What if we didn’t do the sacrificial lamb at all, and just gave money in charity?
23.
Grounded in Roots
Now that I had made the distinction between culture and religion, focusing on rebranding religion, I shifted gears back to culture.
New York. 1980s
OK, so I have the religion track pretty much under control for my children. But what about Pakistani culture—their heritage, traditions, language, music, and history—the nonreligious stuff that makes life so colorful? Their cultural clock is ticking. They are Americans, no matter what. But if we don’t make a deliberate, strategic effort, they will never know what they missed and will be a reminder to me of everything Khalid and I have failed to pass down to them. Religion is on auto-Islam; let’s get the cultural track going. Like with everything else, let’s start with stories.
Mummy and Daddy were visiting us.
“Tell them about my birth, what my childhood was like,” I asked Mummy.
Saqib and Asim sat around on the rug, legs crossed, their chins resting in their palms. I have heard Mummy tell this story so many times. Now I tell this story to my granddaughter.
Once Upon a Time, I Was a Little Girl
… growing up in a far-off land, in a newborn nation that had just been christened Pakistan. Mummy’s name was Farrukh, and Daddy’s was Kazim. Mummy was expecting me when Daddy, a lieutenant in the army, got transferred to England for a five-year course. She stayed back with my grandparents, which was the custom—ladies came home to their mother for their delivery. Daadee Amma joined them to await the big day. I was born in the comfort of their home, delivered by Daadee Amma. This was in the middle ages of the twentieth century, and babies were born at home in Pakistan.
Mummy tells me that I was the most beautiful newborn. Perfect skin, no blemishes, gorgeous baby-pink coloring, and a well-defined nose, a hallmark of beauty. My grandmothers proceeded to spoil me, and Mummy got all the pampering that a just-delivered mom receives in Pakistan. By the time I was eight months old, and ready to fly out to England, I was thoroughly spoiled. And although Mummy never admitted it, so was she. She had been so pampered that she never got around to mothering. Think about it! An untrained mom and a spoiled baby get onto a seaplane making multiple overnight refueling stops until they finally get to England three days later. Till she passed away in 2014, Mummy would tell the story of that unforgettable journey—and the torture I put her through. My husband, my children, my grandchildren, they all have heard it. My favorite anecdote of that journey is when she ran out of clean diapers on the plane and an older woman took charge, washing them and hanging them to dry along the perimeter of the cabin, despite my embarrassed mother’s protests. “Baby in plane,” the woman said authoritatively when passengers dared to make a wry face about the wet diapers fluttering in their faces.
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p; Soon after we landed in England, our British landlady took charge of unspoiling me. An older woman, she told Mummy to just “be quiet and listen to me.”
Daddy tells me that on Sundays they would send me to church with the neighborhood girls. Now remember, this was a Muslim family living in England. One would think that they would be worried about their daughter’s religious identity. But as Daddy explained to me when I became a mother, they wanted to instill in me respect of a place of worship. It was in church that I learned to sit quietly, bow my head, and behave myself. How about that!
I am told that I was the darling of the neighborhood families and the Pakistani-army clan—more so, I believe, because I was the firstborn in that batch of families, and because I was just so well-behaved. Mummy would doll me up in oh-so-stylish home-sewn dresses, curl my tresses into ringlets, and see to it that I had impeccable manners. At four, I was a perfect lady, and the aunties and uncles adored me.
When I returned to Pakistan at age five, I spoke only English. Hearing Urdu being spoken all around me sent me into shock, and I went mute. I was fascinated by flies and would chase them around the house, upset when the servants swatted them. Lizards on the walls were a joy to behold. Goats and donkeys on the streets! Life was one huge zoo! Somewhere along the line I lost my British accent, and any memory of my time in England was now the preserve of family albums and stories my parents told.
Pakistan was emerging from the bonds of colonialism and having its own identity crisis. It was a nation founded on the platform of “a homeland for the Muslims of British India.” Religion had a prominent place in people’s lives, yet the middle and upper classes also held on to the legacy of the British, taking pride in being Anglicized. The military, in particular, maintained British traditions, and our lifestyle reflected that—discipline, punctuality, order, and respect for authority. English was the official language, and the ability to converse fluently in English was the norm. My parents tried to find the right balance in integrating Muslim values into a British lifestyle. I believe they did that well. Daddy was always dressed in a blazer and necktie when not in uniform. Mummy was exquisite in her attire, and they were very proper in their etiquette—formal, very British.
Threading My Prayer Rug Page 19