Love, InshAllah

by Nura Maznavi

  I had not told Ammu about my marriage to Mika’il. I wanted to tell her that I had found this amazing Muslim man who reminded me of Abbu, the man whom she had fallen in love with, but I was too scared. She would never accept an African American man as my husband, Muslim or not. I don’t know if her views stemmed from the negative portrayal of black people in America, or if it was just plain old desi racism. I needed time to make dua to Allah to soften her heart.

  A year after graduating from Berkeley, I brought Mika’il to L.A. to meet Ammu. By then, we’d been married secretly for two years. We pulled up to my childhood driveway, right next to where Abbu’s old gray pickup truck was still parked. I could see a small pearl of sweat on Mika’il’s forehead. He was nervous. I told him to wait in the car until after I had spoken to Ammu.

  Ammu was in her usual place, rocking back and forth in her blue recliner and staring at the TV. The scent from the kitchen revealed my favorite meal: beef cabbage and hot basmati rice. Ammu got up and started moving toward the kitchen.

  “Ammu, wait. I want to talk to you before I eat. Mone ache that Muslim I told you about a few months ago? Ore nam hoche Mika’il Ali, remember?”

  “Na!” Ammu looked through me, as if she had no idea what I was talking about, and continued to make me a plate of food.

  “Okay, Ammu. Well, Mika’il is here. And I would really like for you to meet him so you can tell me if he’s the right man for me to marry. I feel like he is, but I want your opinion and approval.”

  She looked annoyed. “Che kala?”

  “Yes, he’s black.”

  “Shaytaner bacha! Thu ammar bashai akta kala ke nea ashce? Kok-hona, never! Akta kala Muslim hothe pare na!”

  “Ammu, what do you mean, ‘a kala can’t be Muslim’? He is Muslim, and he’s a good, practicing Muslim. Ammu, he’s just like Abbu. Please, just meet him.”

  I was crying by now. She ignored my tears and kept screaming. In her mind, Mika’il was a dumb, dangerous, pants-sagging gang-banger like the ones she saw on TV. She wouldn’t listen when I told her that he was in law school, had grown up in a military family, and had found Islam on his own.

  She stood there, her small fingers pointing at me, right in front of a framed copy of the Prophet Muhammad’s last sermon hanging on our wall, in which he said, “White has no superiority over black, nor does a black have any superiority over white; except by piety and good action.”

  “Suzanne, if you go marry this kala, I will never speak to you again. Allah will punish you. You will never be anything. You will never be a doctor; you will be cleaning people’s floors like a dirty slave.”

  Tears blurred my vision, and my mouth was numb. “I’m going to leave now, Ammu.”

  “Ja! Shaytan!” she shouted after me.

  So began my life at twenty-three as an orphan in Portland, Oregon, while Mika’il attended law school. The homeless teenagers, the white faces, and the constant rain were all new to me. But over time, I got used to my new home. After having been long distance the whole time we had been secretly married, we felt like this was our first year of truly being husband and wife. I made eggs and porotas in the morning before Mika’il left for law school, went grocery shopping in the middle of the afternoon, and fucked at night. Yes, fucked. He is my husband, and in the eyes of Allah it is not only halal, but a blessing, for me to fuck him. And I enjoyed fucking him. “Lovemaking” freaks me out, so we did lovefucking instead.

  I’m twenty-five now, and my Portland house smells of cardamom and chai. My home doesn’t have four walls, like a box, but rather has the two muscular arms of my husband, ready to pick me up when I’m too scared to move. My husband, who, every time he lovefucks me, prays extra namaj to thank Allah for our union. I thought I left home for Mika’il. But every time I smell his face, I know he is my home.

  Mika’il still looks at me and asks, “Where did you come from, tiny little thing? Woman who is my life, who runs my life? Where did you come from?”

  I pout. “What do you mean?”

  “Since you called me that morning, crying, I knew. I told myself that I was going to take care of you for the rest of my life.”

  Marriage is hard, and it’s harder when you don’t have a mother showing you how much turmeric to add to the dal or what to do if your husband is angry. Allah took my mother, my role model, the strongest and craziest woman I’ve ever met. Allah also took Abbu, my best friend, my backbone. Sometimes, lying in the dark, I fear that He will take Mika’il.

  I don’t know if this is my last love or just the beginning, but I do know that Allah is everlasting. In spite of all the hardships in my life, my dua gives me sustenance.

  Brain Meets Heart

  Aida Rahim

  I was born in the United States but grew up in Malaysia, where Islam was part of the official curriculum in school. Malaysia is where I learned all the “Islamic rules”—specifically, those related to dressing properly and talking correctly, money and music, and gender interactions, including dating and marriage. But growing up, I cared about Islam solely for the purpose of passing exams and getting good grades.

  After high school, I moved to England to continue my studies. Suddenly faced with the prospect of being a minority, both racially and religiously, I wanted an identity that I could hold on to and call my own. I decided that I would Be Muslim, instead of being Muslim merely by chance of birth. I would do this by following, to the letter, all the rules that I had learned in school in Malaysia. I thought that the more closely I adhered to those rules, the stronger my faith would be.

  This was my religious conviction at twenty-four, when I met my first husband. By this time, I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and enrolled in a PhD program. I had never been on a date before, and no boy or man had ever shown any interest in me. Perhaps I was too serious and conservative—I wore hijab, dressed in long, flowy clothes, and avoided unnecessary conversation with men. Perhaps I was too independent—I had lived on my own for the past ten years and had never needed to ask permission of anyone to do anything. Perhaps my standards were too high—I wanted a fellow rule-follower and someone physically and mentally smarter and stronger than I. Or perhaps the right man just had not come my way.

  So when I met a man who, after knowing me for just a couple of weeks, decided that he wanted to marry me, it was exactly as I had pictured how Muslim marriages should come about. His parents introduced us, all conversations were carried out chastely under their watchful gaze, we kept our eyes lowered modestly whenever we met, and we had absolutely no physical contact until we married.

  Two years and one baby later, he left.

  I had been so determined to get married that I had ignored all my doubts about my now ex-husband. I thought his religious conservatism and his zeal about following all the Islamic rules were what I needed to help strengthen my own faith. I was never really attracted to him as a person. I was attracted to his kind and sweet parents; I was attracted to the sense of duty and respect he showed them; I was attracted to his potential for professional success; I was attracted to his intention to move to Malaysia with me after my graduation. However, I never found communicating with him to be very enjoyable. Conversation was always stilted, as we did not have much in common.

  But I was independent and stubborn—once I wanted something, I went all out to get it. I wanted to be married, so I got married.

  Even though I did not acknowledge it at the time, even my body tried to warn me that all was not right. During the courtship, I could not sleep, would suddenly start crying, and was often stressed to the point that my menstrual cycle was disrupted. But, being a logical, emotionally disconnected person, I managed to rationalize these bad omens away.

  My marriage was supposed to be the capstone of my spirituality. The divorce forced me to question the unflexible, rule-based person I had become.

  Two years later, I was truly enjoying life as a single mother raising a rambunctious toddler. I had a postdoctoral research position in a lab in Singap
ore, doing tissue engineering. I had thought a great deal about myself and the way I had been practicing Islam. I realized that it was impossible to follow all the rules absolutely, and that there were multiple rules for any given situation anyway. By now, I usually did whatever was most convenient for me, even though I still had doubts about my choices and was often hard on myself for not following the strictest interpretation of any given rule. Still in my mind was the notion that morality was tied very strongly with following the right rules—you were a highly moral person if you chose to follow the most difficult rule.

  One thing I did know was that I was definitely not looking to get married again. And then I met Javed.

  We were e-introduced by a mutual friend, who had hired him to photograph her wedding in Malaysia. Javed was flying from the United States and needed a place to stay in Singapore while in transit. I was going to be away at a conference, so I offered him my house.

  We met in person in Malaysia, the day before the wedding, and went to a group dinner that night with the bride and groom.

  Over dinner we discussed Islamic marriage courses, which are compulsory in Malaysia for Muslim couples. Our friends had just gone to theirs and learned about their respective marital duties, family planning and birth control, and family law in Malaysia’s shariah courts. Javed and I both agreed that such a course was unnecessary, but then he said that if it was imposed by government, supposedly for society’s overall good, it should be free. I did not agree with that, though I held my tongue at dinner.

  I knew that Javed didn’t see things as I did, because our mutual friend told me about his Hijabman blog, and I had taken a quick look before dinner. His open and engaging personality came across online and during dinner, as did his very liberal and unconventional religious views. He was not at all impressed with rules-based Islam, finding instead that the life principles of doing good and being just rose from the pages of the Qur’an.

  Since I was unsettled in my own religious convictions, I was curious to see if Javed was a person whose religious outlook and thought process I could learn from. I emailed him to explain my disagreement over the point made at dinner. It was a minor point of contention, but I was just using it as an excuse to open up a channel of communication.

  I received a reply from him almost immediately.

  Even though he was traveling around Malaysia by then, he took the time to think through and craft a thoughtful, lengthy response. And as we started to correspond, it was clear that not only was he interested in airing his opinions, he was also interested in me. He asked me questions about myself and my life in a way that put me at ease. We emailed almost every day, covering topics ranging from religious ideas to personality traits to future goals and dreams. Even when we vehemently disagreed with each other—the clash of my rules-based Islam with his, which challenged the status quo—he laid out his thoughts in the most respectful of ways.

  And he always signed his emails, “Much love and respect, Javed.” His use of the word “love” was neither offensive nor intrusive when balanced with “respect.” It made me feel as though his interest was genuine—not necessarily for romantic purposes, but in me as a human being who had her own experiences and thoughts. It motivated me to be as honest as possible in our exchanges.

  It had been just two weeks since our first meeting over dinner, but I was interested—interested in Javed’s mind and the way he articulated his thoughts clearly, with an almost scientific process: a starting point; a fleshing-out, in which he considered, rejected, or accepted various parameters or inputs; and a conclusion. It was like reading multiple well-thought-out journal articles.

  Before he returned to the United States, Javed came back to Singapore and stayed with my two-year-old daughter and me for three days. He immediately immersed himself in our lives: We went grocery shopping together, and he taught me how to select healthier food products by reading labels and picking the ones with the fewest ingredients. I was touched by his willingness to go grocery shopping with us in the first place, and by his concern for our health. We went to the playground, where he roughhoused with my daughter. It made me happy to see her laughing madly as he tossed her into the air. I also showed him around the city: We visited the marina and splashed at the water fountain, we went to the turtle farm, and we strolled around the Chinese gardens.

  Overall, I was struck by the ease of our interactions. Javed was relaxed, so I relaxed, too. I never felt as if there was a stranger in our midst whom I had to cater to. My daughter’s comfort with Javed indicated that, had she been old enough to express her thoughts, she would have agreed with me. My attraction to him was growing, but I had no idea whether the feeling was mutual.

  During my daughter’s naptime and way past her bedtime, we would sit face-to-face on the couch and pick up where our email conversations had left off. We exchanged travel stories and childhood experiences, and our email exchanges about our personality traits, including our weaknesses, expanded to include considerations about what kind of partner would best complement us.

  On the second day of Javed’s stay, our conversation veered toward past relationships. He told me that he had many female acquaintances: “Often, I quickly get put into the friend category. Even if I’m interested in pursuing more than just friendship, I’m stuck in the friend box.”

  “Well,” I replied, “I think that if you start feeling interest beyond friendship, you should just bring it up. You can talk about it, and if it goes nowhere, then that’s okay,” I advised.

  He paused.

  I got up to get a glass of water for each of us.

  When I sat back down, he said, “So, Aida . . . would you consider someone like me for marriage?”

  I looked straight at him and said, “Someone like you . . . or you?”

  There was another pause. He looked slightly embarrassed but replied, “Okay, me.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  When my rational side thought about how we were expressing an interest in pursuing a relationship the day before Javed’s return to the United States, it seemed a little insane. What were we committing to, after only a few weeks of emails and two days of in-person conversation? I didn’t know his family, and he didn’t know mine. He was going to start nursing school in the fall, while I had a child to care for and a full-time, consuming job. How were we going to build a relationship living on two different continents, separated by twelve time zones?

  These challenges might have seemed insurmountable to some, but not to me. I knew then that Javed could be my partner for life, and a father to my daughter. He was too precious to let go. The worst that could happen would be that things did not work out between us. But not to try at all would have been an injustice to us both.

  When the cab came at 4:00 AM on Javed’s last day to take him to the airport, we parted with a long hug. It was the first time I had hugged an unrelated male. Until that moment, I had truly believed that intergender physical contact was not allowed in Islam. But when Javed hugged me, I hugged him back impulsively, surprised by how nonsexual and nonthreatening it felt.

  But afterward, I was not comfortable with my decision.

  When we discussed it later over email, Javed wrote: “The Qur’an says that we should ‘not approach zina,’ or illicit sexual intercourse. That is pretty open for interpretation. I know that fornication is wrong. Everything else is open to your own gut feeling (in my humble opinion). I didn’t feel an ounce of regret giving you the hug and expressing my care for you through touch. Because for me that wasn’t approaching illicit sex. In fact, it was not sexual at all. It was warm. It was a mutually understood expression of . . . good vibes, for lack of a better description. And yes, everyone’s boundaries are different. That is why communication is so important. Different people have different boundaries, emotions, preferences, approaches, etc. To be self-aware is a hard, steep path.”

  His words made sense and put me at ease.

  So began our long-distance relationship. We would instant me
ssage during my workday and video chat in the evening. I particularly relished our exchanges on the point of religion, triggered by Javed’s favorite general question: What is your approach to religion? I felt that this was a great platform upon which to start fleshing out some of the thoughts I had been wrestling with since my divorce, my slow move away from rules-based Islam.

  Javed’s approach to the faith contrasted dramatically with my own. He had read a translation of the Qur’an when he was fourteen, and nothing about it even remotely resembled the Islam he was learning in Sunday school, which focused so much energy and attention on the minute details of moon-sighting and the one-eyed Dajjal. After he read the Qur’an on his own, he decided that his life would be predicated on its core messages: Believe in God; work for good; know that deeds will be ultimately judged.

  Up until this point, when something deemed “Islamic” had not sat well with me, I had blamed my weak heart, believing my faith was simply not strong enough to accept the truth. But at some point during our discussions, something clicked inside me, and I realized that there was nothing wrong with exercising my own judgment about how to lead my life. It was such a relief to finally give myself permission to think within my religious space. I decided to stop believing in ultimate morality, a morality that was tied to specific religious rules. I decided that the only ultimate truth was that God is just and merciful, and that within that framework, there was no harm in exploring other viewpoints.

  Sometimes I think of myself as a robot: I am methodical and logical to a fault. Javed’s way of communicating, speaking straight from his heart, was helping me to open up and be more adventurous with my emotions. I felt my relationship with God transcend the objective rules and flood into the emotional space.