The Mother of Mohammed

by Sally Neighbour

  ‘The transformation was profound. It was so drastic. One day I was somebody and the next day I was somebody else. The way I dressed, the way I spoke, the way I looked.’ And unlike her childhood epiphany under the stained glass of the Catholic church in Mudgee, this time there was not a shadow of doubt. ‘The person I was when I was Robyn wasn’t real. I never felt comfortable and I always felt like I was looking for something, not something I’d lost but something I wanted to see and experience. When I found Islam it was so clear that that’s what I had been lacking all my life.’

  Praying beside her was one of her new Muslim friends, an American convert named Rahmah McCormack, who was a member of the cohort formed around Silma and Siddiq Buckley. Rahmah’s journey had much in common with Rabiah’s own. She was born Suzanne into a Catholic family in New Jersey, but abandoned the church at the age of thirteen; much like Rabiah, she found there were too many esoteric mysteries that made no sense. ‘It was not intellectually satisfying for me. I was asked to accept a lot in faith without any intellectual backup and it was very frustrating’, she explained later. She studied education at university, obtained a masters degree in teaching, married an atheist, bought a home and explored eastern religions. ‘I had everything I was supposed to want. But I was still very confused. People of my mother’s generation had stability, but in my generation we were left on our own to decide. We really did not know what to do. I began to reject my lifestyle. My marriage was falling apart.’

  It was then she met Robert McCormack, an Australian travelling in the United States who had become a Muslim and taken the name Abdul Wasi. She converted, changed her name to Rahmah, and they married and moved to Australia in 1979. They settled in Sydney’s Lakemba—whose large Lebanese Muslim population had earned it the nickname ‘Lebkemba’—where the shops stocked halal food and there was a huge mosque, built in the mid 1970s with a gift of $300 000 from the King of Saudi Arabia, supplemented by donations from Libya, Kuwait and other benefactors. Lakemba was the natural home for an ever-widening circle of about 200 Australian Muslim converts.

  It was by this same community that Rabiah was embraced when she arrived at Lakemba a year after Rahmah, with five-year-old Devi and Mohammed, now aged three. The McCormacks invited Rabiah and the children into their home, a tidy brick house in nearby Dulwich Hill. The children slept in bunk beds while the adults slept on mattresses on the floor, as the Prophet Mohammed had done, and instead of chairs in the lounge room there were velvet cushions and mats draped in Indian prints.

  With all the mettle of her namesake, Rabiah now set about mastering Islam. She was determined to really become Rabiah, not just go by the name. ‘I call this my sponge stage. When I moved here I kept my promise to Allah to try to the best of my ability to learn this deen of Islam. And it was the most incredible time for me. For the next six months I hardly slept. It was six months of striving to understand Islam. All I did was clean, cook, look after my kids and read. I just read anything and everything I could get my hands on.’

  Having overcome her childhood dyslexia to become a voracious reader, she now consumed every Islamic text she could find in English. In the space of a few days, she read a four-volume compilation of the hadith, the collected sayings and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed, which make up the body of knowledge known as the Sunnah, the customary ways of the Prophet, used by Muslims as a guide to how they should live. With her near-photographic memory, she says: ‘I remembered every word I read. If there was something I didn’t understand or it didn’t make sense, I would go back to the original text. I’m a very thorough person, I keep going till I get the correct interpretation.’ Her fixation with finding the ‘correct’ interpretation was reminiscent of the obsession with realism evident in her childhood games, playing horses with her schoolmates in Mudgee or playing nuns with Laurette to convert their hapless visiting auntie to Catholicism. ‘That’s always been part of who I am and what I am, that if I do something I want to do it right. I mean I made those kids eat grass, and that poor deranged auntie was kneeling at the foot of that bed for hours.’

  The year 1980 was an exhilarating time to be a Muslim. The Iranian revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini had recently toppled the corrupt American-backed Shah of Iran and established an Islamic state which Muslims the world over were inspired to emulate. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, prompting the nation’s mullahs to declare a jihad (holy war) against the infidel aggressors. Muslims around the globe were rallying to support the mujahidin (holy warriors) in their fight against the Russians, enthusiastically backed and bankrolled by the United States and its allies.

  On Tuesday nights, Rabiah and her new friends would congregate at Silma and Siddiq’s bookshop, which also served as a drop-in centre and welfare office where English-speaking Muslims gathered to discuss and seek guidance on the tenets of their faith. The converts were a bunch of enthusiastic idealists who were captivated by Islam’s strong sense of community, egalitarianism and social justice. They attended lectures on Islam at the universities and Sunday talks in the Domain by celebrated converts such as the firebrand former Communist trade union leader Mohammed John Webster.

  Rabiah was drawn to Jemaah Tabligh, a missionary sect established in India in the early 1900s to promote the spiritual revival of Islam through strict observance of the Sunnah (customs) of the Prophet. Jemaah Tabligh’s Lakemba chapter was the most organised and active Muslim group in Australia at the time, and its adherents the most conspicuously devout. The men wore long Arab-style robes, with their pants above their ankles and their beards the length of a man’s fist, in the style of the Prophet. They took their sleeping bags to Friday jummah (communal prayers) so they could spend the entire weekend at the mosque. Their movement eschewed politics and the use of violence, believing that Muslims could only wage jihad once they had perfected their practice of Islam. Their stark literalism and blatant religiosity appealed to Rabiah. ‘It was something I admired because of their outward display of Islam. It’s a strong statement: “I am a Muslim”. I saw them as the epitome of good Muslims.’

  For Rabiah, a potent part of the allure of Islam was that nothing was left to chance; every aspect of a Muslim’s life was prescribed in the Quran and Sunnah. ‘Once you become a Muslim, everything—from how long your fingernails are to how you go to the toilet; how you live your life twenty-four hours a day to how you rule a country—is governed by Islam.’ After a life marked by domestic tumult, it spoke powerfully to her longing for discipline, order and clarity.

  ‘She was very motivated to have a clear grasp of Islam’, Siddiq Buckley recalls. ‘Her attitude seemed to be: “OK, I can hang onto this—it’s very clear, it’s transparent, I can have no doubts about this”. She wanted everything to be clear. I think she was always looking—even in those days—for the “right” kind of Islam.’

  Having found her own salvation, Rabiah was eager to spread the word. In November 1980, she and Rahmah McCormack were interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, for a story about Muslim converts in Australia. (The Herald sent its ‘ethnic affairs reporter’, reflecting the prevailing view that a story about Muslims constituted ‘ethnic affairs’, even though the article was about mostly Australian-born devotees.) The story appeared under the headline ‘Two women converts explain Islam’s “simplistic” appeal’.

  ‘The two women are young and attractive’, the reporter wrote. ‘Between them, they have tried the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and Presbyterian faiths and now, they say, they are committed Moslems [sic] … They are no longer confused, aimless or unhappy. The Koran tells them what to do and they do it, happily, in the knowledge of Islam.’

  ‘I was looking for the truth. I found the truth through Islam’, Rabiah told the newspaper. ‘Moslems [sic] say there is a way to live your life and make it easier to live with one another, and this is the way’, her friend Rahmah explained. ‘It is a simplistic direction. You are not confused, you are directed.’

  Rabiah was pictured wearin
g a yellow Indian-style kaftan with a flowing headscarf held in place by a black band around her hair, ‘like a Muslim hippy’, she later observed. She wore her trademark grin as she and Rahmah were photographed strolling along a street in Dulwich Hill. ‘I looked like a stupid Cheshire cat and she looked like the Virgin Mary.’

  The two neophytes were eager to emphasise that Islam was not a culture but a faith, that they were Australian and Muslim. They insisted that contrary to popular perception Islam was not oppressive, and the primitive customs followed in some Muslim countries were a reflection of their cultures, not of the true Islamic faith. As Rabiah explained it: ‘Islam is not a mantle of another culture. As converts we do not have cultural ties. People look at the culture of Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran and blame Islam. (But) we look to pure Islam. Practices in Arab countries such as female circumcision or wearing veils are local practices done in ignorance of Islam.’

  Rabiah’s own experience as a Muslim and her study of the scripture had transformed her previously low opinion of Islam’s treatment of women. Like many female Muslims, she embraced those parts of the Quran and Sunnah that extol the dignity, honour and rights of women. The hadith record the Prophet Mohammed telling his followers: ‘You will be held to account for how you treated the women’. When asked by one man, ‘To whom do I owe my loyalty?’ the Prophet replied ‘your mother’. ‘And then?’ the man asked him. ‘Your mother’, the Prophet replied again. ‘And then?’ ‘Your mother.’

  Rabiah’s role models were the iconic heroines of Islamic lore such as Mohammed’s first wife, Khadija, a respected businesswoman fifteen years his senior, who remained his sole partner until she died; and his third wife, Aisha, who accompanied Muslim forces into battle after the Prophet’s death. It was Aisha who inspired Mohammed to enjoin his followers: ‘Take half of your religion from this woman’, an order that is widely read as acknowledging women’s equality in religious matters. This equality is alluded to in the Quran, which addresses itself to both ‘men who believe and women who believe, men who obey and women who obey’.

  For the women of seventh-century Arabia, the revelations set down in the Quran were an enormous step forward. Previously, women had had the status of mere chattels who could be taken as war booty, and newborn girls were often left to perish in the desert. Wives were routinely beaten and there was no limit on how many spouses a man could take. The Quran ordered an end to female infanticide and established that a man could take a maximum of four wives, but only if he treated them equally, stressing: ‘If you shall not be able to deal justly, (take) just one’. The Prophet discouraged domestic violence, chastising his followers: ‘Some of your wives came to me complaining that their husbands have been beating them. I swear by Allah those are not the best among you.’ The Quran instructed that a disobedient woman should first be admonished, then banished from her husband’s bed; if she continued to disobey him she could be beaten as a last resort, but never on the face. When a follower asked him what kind of beating was allowed, the Prophet replied that he could hit his wife only with a sewak, or tooth stick. This was a twig cut from a desert Arak tree, which was soaked in water and chewed until the fibres separated, creating a natural toothbrush that was (and still is) widely used by Muslims. While to a modern reader this may seem brutal, in the context of its time the Quran was a force for women’s liberation rather than oppression; indeed in some respects it afforded them rights that were well ahead of those enjoyed by European women at the time. It was this that Rabiah and her fellow converts grasped.

  ‘I had been reading a lot of hadith and my reaction was— look at all these rights that Islam has given women’, says Rabiah. ‘Don’t forget I had just been through Germaine Greer and the “burn your bra” period. A lot of things that women were fighting for, Muslim women had had for 1400 years: the fact that a Muslim woman doesn’t become “Mrs” anything; you are not the property of your husband; your husband has no right to your money; a man doesn’t have the right to beat his wife black and blue; he is responsible for her upkeep.’ She had read in the hadith that a man was supposed to provide his wife with a slave if he could afford one, that women were not obliged to do menial chores, and that the Prophet used to sew his own clothing. ‘I thought all these things were wonderful’, she says.

  The fact that the Quran allotted women half the inheritance rights of men (again, a progressive step in seventh-century Arabia) and gave their legal testimony only half the value of that of men could be simply explained, according to Rabiah. Men were obligated to financially support their wives and sisters, so they needed a greater share of wealth. And women were known to be more emotional than men, hence their testimony was deemed less reliable. The same explanation applied to the divorce rules, which allow a man to end his marriage by simply saying ‘I divorce thee’ three times, whereas a women must go to a judge to seek a formal annulment.

  Herself hot-tempered and impulsive by nature, Rabiah felt this made perfect sense. ‘I’m not going to be apologetic about it—Islam teaches us that women are more emotional than men. The reason it (the power in divorce) is given to men is because of the nature of the female. When she gets very upset she gets more emotional, and is likely to say “Well, divorce me then!” It’s a safety net against emotional decisions.’

  For all her rebelliousness in childhood and her teens, Rabiah remained an old-fashioned girl at heart. She held motherhood and family life as her most cherished values and had no time at all for political correctness. Despite her flirtation with the ‘burn your bra’ movement, to Rabiah the ‘equality of the sexes’ was nothing more than a slogan. ‘Men and women aren’t “equal”. It’s like saying a cup of coffee and a cup of tea are “equal”— yes they’re both hot, they’re both in a cup. But the mere term “equal” connotates “the same”. Men and women are so different, in the shape of their body and the functions of their brain. Is one better than the other? No. Which one is more capable? It depends what you’re talking about. Which one is kinder? A woman. Which one is stronger? Usually a man.’

  To her it was self-evident that their distinctive qualities should be recognised in separate roles. As she saw it, Islam offered a different kind of ‘liberation’. ‘It’s liberating in that it allows you to be a woman and it liberates you from unreal expectations and untrue stereotyping. It liberates you from the wrong concepts about being a woman. And Islam liberates women and men from the servitude of any human being.’

  When Rabiah’s old buddies on the surf scene saw her spouting her views in the Sydney Morning Herald, they were gobsmacked. The day she had packed up and moved to Lakemba, she had left without saying goodbye, severing all contact with previously close friends, some of whom had been oblivious of her conversion.

  ‘I picked up the newspaper one day and there’s Robyn in her Muslim regalia as “the spokesperson for the Muslim community”’, remembers Deborah Jensen, her old schoolmate from Manly Girls High. ‘Two weeks prior she’d been working as a barmaid at the Steyne Hotel in Manly. She had an argument with a customer and he threw a beer in her face so she quit her job and went back to being a Muslim again.’

  Deborah was furious and rang the journalist at the Herald to pour scorn on the story. Next she rang her former friend to let her have it. ‘I was angry with her because she was being a hypocrite. I spoke to her on the phone afterwards, and I said, “Robyn, you know me very well and you know I don’t like hypocrites. Robyn, you’re a hypocrite”.’ It was the last time they ever spoke. Twenty-eight years later, Deborah, who volunteers that she has little time for organised religion, remains cynical about her friend’s metamorphosis. ‘I didn’t see it as a betrayal, I just saw it as bullshit. There wasn’t a religious bone in her body. She just went on a mission. That’s Robyn. Being a Muslim—I think it drew attention to her, it made her feel valued, important. It was an unusual thing for an Australian woman to be a Muslim, and she liked that. It made her feel more important and better about herself. Robyn had a hard life. She wanted to be noti
ced—Robyn wanted to be noticed.’

  Normally thick-skinned, Rabiah was mortified at her friend’s reaction. ‘I was really embarrassed. It made me sound like I was on some sort of scam, pretending to be something I wasn’t. According to Deborah and the people who’d known me in Manly, I was an Aussie chick who did everything everyone else did, and now I was pretending to be a Muslim. In fact it was the other way around. I was a Muslim and I was pretending to be that Aussie chick—not pretending, but I’d slipped back into that way of life.’

  Determined to reinvent herself, Robyn had left the ‘Aussie chick’ behind, once and for all—discarded like a cicada shell— along with her old friends. ‘I never “wiped” them. It was just that they stayed with Robyn—my friends stayed with Robyn. It wasn’t that I didn’t need them any more, like I discarded them because they weren’t useful. It was more a case of—I’m going somewhere and I can’t take you with me. And in any case, they wouldn’t recognise me any more. They didn’t know Rabiah, they didn’t know Rabiah existed. And they have no idea Robyn doesn’t exist any more. And you could not be Robyn and Rabiah at the same time.’

  This belief in the all-consuming nature of her conversion was underscored, a few months after her move to Lakemba, when her sister Susan got married in a service at the Uniting Church in Dee Why followed by a reception at the Diggers Club. Rabiah baulked at attending the church service but went along to the reception, albeit reluctantly, having been told that devout Muslims regard music as haram, or forbidden. She bought herself a new outfit and draped her headscarf to look like an exotic fashion rather than religious attire. ‘From the minute I got there I wanted it to be over. I went out of duty, love and respect for my sister, but it was terrible. I felt like the biggest hypocrite. It was like knocking on a door and someone answers it and they think you’re someone else, and because they insist you’re that person you try to accommodate them. Everyone else thought it was Robyn. But it wasn’t Robyn who went to that wedding, it was Rabiah. I just didn’t belong.’