Threading My Prayer Rug

by Sabeeha Rehman

  On Saturday, December 24, 1988, the Staten Island Advance ran a story, “Muslims Also Celebrate Christmas.” It was Christmas Eve, and Staten Islanders were reading, “According to Dr. Khalid Rehman … Prophet Isa (Jesus) is one of the most revered prophets for Muslims.” Khalid had quoted the nineteenth chapter of the Holy Qur’an, titled Mariam, detailing the miraculous birth of Jesus.

  Monday morning, hospital staff was commenting, “We had no idea that the Qur’an mentions the birth of Jesus.”

  “You see”—I looked over the dining table at Saqib and Asim— “knowing is understanding; understanding is unifying. It’s up to us to raise awareness. Actually, I take that back. It is our responsibility to raise awareness. How else will anyone know? We can’t blame people for misunderstanding us if we don’t take the initiative to educate. See what a difference just an article has made!”

  They saw. They saw that it took effort, but they also saw a lot more, as their father plugged away, and the conservative community of Staten Island kept opening its doors.

  Another bold idea.

  “I am going to ask the Staten Island Advance if I can start writing a regular column on Islam. I have made an appointment with their religion editor.”

  Just like that.

  Khalid proposed; the Advance agreed. On Saturday, May 11, 1991, the first in a monthly series of “Islam” was launched. Over the next seven years, Khalid wrote on prayer, moon sighting, women and equality, sects, adoption, abortion, interest on loans, family relationships, birth, death, commonalities with other faiths—but my favorite is the piece he wrote when we sent Asim off to college.

  A Muslim Father Offers Some Advice to His Child

  Going to College Can Be a Test of One’s Faith

  By Dr. Khalid L. Rehman

  Advance Correspondent

  Staten Island Advance. Saturday, September 2, 1995

  My dear child! I know that you have grown, become a young adult and are leaving home to live by yourself at college but please allow me to refer to you as my child.

  When you were younger, I and your mother worked very hard to give you the best education, moral values and spiritual guidance.

  Whereas all that knowledge is surely tucked away in the memory cells, I feel the need to remind you of the do’s and don’ts expected of a young adult Muslim.

  New college life will bring independence, freedom and new challenges. The parental pressure and scrutiny will be replaced with peer pressure….

  The human being is a social animal and needs friends and company. When you are with others, remember to treat them with dignity and respect. You don’t have to be a stiff, but your manners, conduct and language have to be becoming to a Muslim, someone who knows that God is always there and that we as humans are His viceroys and hence have to be dignified and pious.

  I have always reminded you to be gentle and soft-spoken and avoid cursing, foul language and angry outbursts.

  Do remember that your faith, Islam, prohibits sex outside of marriage. Don’t be alone with a member of the opposite sex in a social environment. This may lead to intimacy and a conduct, which is not permitted for unmarried people. You may go to the movies and concerts together, but always in a group, as you have done in the past.

  Your teachers deserve the same level of respect that your parents do, if not more. Every adult who is your senior in age commands respect, and the younger ones, your love and affection.

  All human beings are equal and a creation of the same God. Remember the last sermon of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), in which he said that Arabs and non-Arabs, black and white, rich and poor are all equal, and only those who are pious and God-conscious are superior in the eyes of God.

  Be good to your neighbor and continue to give to charity.

  Keep up your five daily prayers. These take only a few minutes, but provide an opportunity to wash up, set aside the worldly things for the few minutes, and commune with your creator.

  Take the time to thank Him for all the blessings, ask forgiveness for transgressions you may have committed and pray for success in this world and in the world hereafter. Do remember us, your family and friends, in your prayers.

  The month of Ramadan, which is the month of fasting, will soon be here. Remember your obligations to fast from sunrise to sunset every day, and be generous and charitable.

  Alcohol and other similar intoxicants are prohibited. The argument that one or two drinks do not make you drunk is a fallacy. Your ability to distinguish between the permissible and the forbidden is chipped away with each drink. One may end up socially disgraced and harmful to the others. Say, “No, thank you” as you always have.

  If Halal meat is available, it would be preferred. Otherwise, you may partake of the Jewish kosher meat. Pork and pork products are forbidden.

  To uphold the values of your family and the dictates of your faith may appear to be difficult, but then as a young Muslim student, you must set an example and be a role model.

  You may be surprised to know how many of your friends, Muslim or non-Muslim, also subscribe to the same ethical and moral values. Stay within the group whose members reinforce each other’s strong moral character.

  You are a grown-up person now and, although not answerable to me, you surely have to settle the score with your Creator, as we all have to do for our individual conduct. Your mother joins me in praying for your good health, happiness and prosperity.

  Beautiful, isn’t it!

  And why should television be left behind? Island in the Sun was a local program broadcast by the local TV station. Someone spoke to someone, and the moderator of the program, Joe Madory, called Khalid. He wanted to hold a panel on Muslims on Staten Island and asked if we could recommend panelists. Khalid contacted the chaplain of the correctional facility and a scholar of Egyptian descent. As we went live, sitting around the table with Joe were two Pakistani Americans, an African American, and an Egyptian American, three men and a woman. That’s the face of Islam. Viewers called in. Most questions were directed at me. I guess the callers wanted to know if I was for real, or did I sound oppressed. Not fair, but I couldn’t help sticking that in. One of the questions asked still bothers me: do you believe that now that the bogeyman of Russia is gone that the next big conflict America will face will be with the Muslims?

  The light of the answering machine was blinking away when we came home. Message 1: “You did great.” Message 2: “You were wonderful.” Message 3: … Why did he ask that question? Muslims, the next bogeyman! Muslim women are being raped in Bosnia, thousands massacred in Srebrenica, millions of Palestinians displaced. But I suppose that is irrelevant. Does he speak for himself, or is this a widely held perception? Can a splintered, fractious, multinational people of faith, divided along national and sectarian lines, be a threat to the United States? Of course not, but then why this perceived threat? You know what! Khalid and I cannot control what Muslims do around the world, but at least here at home, in America, thanks to a liberal media and freedom of speech, we have the opportunity to persuade the average American on Main Street, USA, that we are regular people, like them. Like Joe the bus driver, Jack the cashier, or Janice the hairdresser. We share the same dreams: a house with a backyard; the same aspirations: my son, the doctor; the same fears: I hope it is not cancer; the same yearnings: I wish Mom were here.

  The Bogeyman Strikes

  And then it happened. The towers fell and the world was never the same again. The horror, the loss, the grief, and the pain consumed us. The Bogeyman had struck and taken us all down with him. Islamophobia reared its ugly head, and Muslims found themselves encircled by lions. They ran for cover: women uncovered their hair, men shaved their beards, children refused to go to school, the ten-year-old Osama became Sam, Mohammad became Mo, and Salman became Sal. An eerie silence stunned the Muslim community. And then America opened its heart: priests, ministers, and rabbis started calling the imams: “Come talk to us…. Come pray with us…. Break bread with us.” T
hus began the transition of the Muslim community in the USA from being inward-focused to reaching out. Reaching out, beyond the comfort zones of their tight communities, extending invitations, exposing themselves, and making friends. It took a tragedy of humongous proportion to come out from behind the veil. And they knew that their work had only just begun.

  27.

  Flashpoints

  Ask any Muslim in America, “What was the turning point in your life?” and they will say: 9/11. True. But flashpoints occurred even before the century turned, and these were major turning points in my quest for religious understanding and the redefining of my identity as an American Muslim.

  Rushdie Affair. February 1989

  Muslims lost the battle, but they won the war.

  They wanted the book banned, and they lost on that one. It was a battle they could not have won. They should have known that. This is America—the land of free speech. Did they really think they could get Viking Press to take the book off the shelves! But, and here is the “but”: it got something going. They got organized. Oh sure, Muslim organizations existed long before Imam Khomeini put a price on Rushdie’s head, but they were doing their own thing. There was little integration. The Rushdie affair pulled them together, and the image of Muslims praying in the streets of New York, taking a break from the street protest, got many a spine tingling. How many of us who saw that image felt a surge of gratitude? Only in America; only in America can one pray freely on the streets of New York—not just pray but have the police protect you while you pray! In this land, we have a voice. If we don’t like what we read, we can speak up. We can give the faith a face, and we can raise a banner and be seen across the screens from sea to shining sea.

  I was among those who believed that the book should be banned. Don’t panic. My children made me change my mind. Exhale. At first, I was outraged: he wrote what?! How dare anyone say something so disrespectful about the Prophet and his wives! That’s terrible! At weekend parties, the voice was unanimous—the book should be banned. But at work, in the cafeteria over lunch, Reverend Nelson peered at me over his round spectacles, pursed his lips, and said, “You want a book banned just because you don’t like what it says?”

  “Yes,” I said, my pitch rising, “because if you allow such books to be published, people will say anything they want to about the Prophet.”

  “So? It’s freedom of speech.”

  “Well, freedom of speech should have its limits. You don’t abuse your rights and insult others.”

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  “People will believe it.”

  “So exercise your right and speak up. Tell the world it’s not true. Tell them why.”

  “Oh! So now I am supposed to write a book that no one will publish.” I could feel my argument weakening. “How would you feel if someone said something like that about Jesus Christ?”

  He tapped my hand with his finger and in a serene voice said, “I’d say, ‘What’s your problem?’”

  Stumped.

  Now why can’t I be that way? Calm. Indifferent. Is it insecurity?

  By that time, others had joined us at the table and no one was taking my side. I kept arguing because I didn’t want to lose the argument, and the harder I pushed, the weaker I felt. I argued in absentia driving all the way home. I should have said … And if they said … I would say…. They just don’t understand. How can they? It’s a matter of faith, of reverence.

  I was still fighting my confusion when I got home.

  We discussed this over dinner. I don’t recall the exact conversation, but I do remember asking my children what they thought about the whole controversy and listening to them in awe.

  “It’s offensive, but it’s freedom of speech,” my sixteen-year-old said without batting an eye. He didn’t even pause. Asim, my fourteen-year-old, nodded. I listened to them voice their take on it, and I must have stopped eating. I must have looked at them with the eyes of a child. My babies were now teaching Mommy, and Mommy was listening. In those moments, I felt my confusion unravel.

  Time to retire. Hand religion over to your children. They are ready.

  “I have an idea.” I looked across the table at Saqib. “I want you to organize a youth panel discussion on this issue. We will hold it in the mosque. You children select the participants, the format, the content, the publicity, and Khalid, you get the approval.”

  Parents need to hear what their children are thinking, and like me, learn from them.

  Then came Khomeini’s fatwa, and Khalid got a call from the press, the Staten Island Advance. They wanted a statement. It was printed the next day: he found the passages in the book to be offensive and disrespectful toward the Prophet and his wife but opposed Imam Khomeini’s fatwa that Rushdie be put to death. That evening, after dinner, our phone started ringing. “Well said,” said one. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” said another.

  On March 12, 1989, five high school students, two girls and three boys, faced the congregation in the mosque. Every inch was taken, men and boys sitting on the wall-to-wall prayer rug in the front rows, women and girls at the back. I know! Saqib took his position at the lectern, the tapestry of the Kaaba adorning the wall behind, and introduced the panelists. I held my breath. I had taken a risk and wasn’t sure how this would roll out—a charged issue had split the community, and what had I done? Handed the mic to a bunch of teenagers. I listened as each of them analyzed a particular aspect of the controversy and then took questions from the audience. I watched our children speak dispassionately, with compassion, keeping emotions at bay, with chip-less and baggage-free shoulders. The audience, split bitterly over the banning, exercised restraint and acted like adults—benevolent adults. Someone asked the question: do you agree with Khomeini’s fatwa? The children’s response: for every allegation, there is due process. Evidence has to be introduced—in this case the evidence is the book—expert testimony is required, the law has to be examined and upheld…. The congregation took it all in.

  Do they see what I see? Our children are reshaping Islam in an American context. These are the Muslims of tomorrow. Get to know them.

  That was the moment when I saw the emergence of an American Muslim identity. I saw our children reshaping Islam in an American setting, one that was Islamic in its values and American in its ethos.

  Gulf War. August 1990

  “The problem is with your creed.”

  Reverend Nelson looked down at me, towering over my desk.

  “No, it isn’t!” I fought back with hollow words, my face feeling hot.

  He was referring to jihad, now a bad word, synonymous with holy war and violence.

  “Jihad means to struggle, the inner struggle against oneself, a spiritual striving. It’s the politicians and media who have labeled it as holy war.”

  “Muslims waging violence are calling it jihad. They are quoting the Qur’an.”

  “Well, they are wrong.”

  “Are they?”

  Stumped and speechless, with nothing more than blind faith and utterly lacking in knowledge, all I could say was, “It isn’t true.” He stood looking at me, silent, waiting for me to come up with something more than “It isn’t true.”

  “Islam was spread by the sword,” Dr. Goldstein, a doctor who must be fifteen years my senior and a dear colleague, remarked over lunch.

  “No, it wasn’t!” I almost shouted.

  “She is so naïve.” He shook his head, as the others around the table gave me a sympathetic look.

  You know what my problem is? I am ignorant. Totally, hopelessly ignorant. I cannot come up with a single quotation from the Qur’an to refute his argument. It isn’t enough to believe and have the faith. It was enough in Pakistan, where no one challenged the faith. Here one has to be equipped with knowledge. How else are we going to stand up to the onslaught, set the record straight, or educate?

  The drive home was a one-woman planning session. By the time I pulled into the garage, I had it mapped
out.

  “Khalid, I am going to get myself an education,” I said to him as I walked up the steps, through the kitchen, into the bedroom. He followed me.

  “Law school?” he teased.

  “Islamic school. I have a plan. I am going to home-school myself. I start tonight.”

  “You can teach me as you go along.” Khalid smiled. “What brought this about?”

  After dinner, I settled in the den in my gray corduroy armchair by the fireplace, surrounded by family photos on the burlap walls in dusty rose, and started my study of the Qur’an. The Qur’an was revealed in Arabic and has been translated into hundreds of languages, by hundreds of translators. I could read Arabic but could not understand it. Go figure. I studied the translation in English, then in Urdu, then in English again. I studied the translation of Abd’Allah Yusuf Ali, Maulani Maudoodi, Pickthall … every translation on my bookshelf. I went through the catalogue of Kazi Publications and ordered the Hadith, sayings and deeds of the Prophet, books on jihad, Islam, and democracy, the Prophet’s biography, and women in Islam, and I read them all. I searched for answers in the sacred text. Much of what I read, I forgot. Some of it I retained. In Pakistan, we used to—people still do—recite the Qur’an in Arabic and walk away feeling good and understanding nothing. And now, here I was, with copies lying around on the coffee table, neon-orange Post-it notes sticking out, highlighting over the text, and handwritten notes in margins. A visitor remarked, “You are writing on the Qur’an!” implying that I had desecrated the holy text. I don’t think God will be offended if I highlight his text. At least I am getting something out of it. Isn’t that the whole idea? I was on a treasure hunt, scratching, digging, uncovering, and finding jewels. “Look what I found!” I would call out to Khalid sitting upstairs at his computer, “It says right here in the Qur’an about jihad:

  Permission [to fight] is given to those against whom war is being wrongfully waged—and, verily, God has indeed the power to succor them: those who have been driven out from their homelands against all right for no other reason than their saying, “Our Sustainer is God!” For, if God had not enabled people to defend themselves against one another, [all] monasteries and churches and synagogues and mosques—in [all of] which God’s name is abundantly extolled—would surely have been destroyed [ere now]. And God will most certainly succor him who succors His cause: for, verily, God is most powerful, almighty.4