Sage advice

The more concerned members of my family, who would like to see me happy and settled, and have a less intimate knowledge of the Moslems, occasionally pipe up to give me some love advice. This being:

Dear Liz,

If you want to marry a pious Muslim, stop yapping about your male childhood friends hugging you on your blog. Also, never ever ever mention that you have “a past.” Also never talk about your screw-ups. The pious Muslim men won’t have it and will think you’re some sort of libertine. And maybe you are. Regardless, bottle it up and shut up about it. The Christians accept you for who you are, because, you know, we’re very reasonable people, but you know how small-minded Muslims are. So please do yourself a favor, and become someone you’re not. Or at least pretend to be someone else. Until after the wedding. Then, good luck living up to the lie! Protestantism is always here for you, should you ever tire of the charade.

Love always,

your loving family

Needless to say, I haven’t taken their advice. Why? Well, I’ve tried. Boy did I try. I tried to be what I imagined everyone would want, and I tried to ignore the pieces of me that you might not expect. I tried to ignore the fact that I’m a convert, and American, and that the culture I grew up with is very different from the subculture in which I now find myself. I tried. And it kind of backfired.

We all have our struggles, and I’m not saying that this (i.e. Islam) is supposed to be a piece of cake. It’s not. Talk to any convert. Forget that, actually – talk to anyone. What you’ll hear from almost everyone, in one way or another, is this: I wouldn’t have it any other way. But sometimes it’s so difficult I fear I’m about to bust something.

We’re all Muslim because we choose to be. Lord knows that the easier and infinitely more convenient thing to do in this society is give it up – give up the prayer, fasting, your beard, covering your hair, no gambling, no drinking, no dating, no sex. We don’t do those things because it’s fun. We do them because we’re committed to something greater than ourselves, because we want to travel towards and not away from God throughout the course of our lives, because we believe that within struggle lies growth. Like, you can’t become patient if you get everything you want the second that you want it. You’ve gotta wait sometimes. Like that.

Thing is, I do all that stuff (minus growing a beard, of course). By most people’s standards, I’m considered very conservative – even by my own family (see very disconcerting advice above). But my family, and occasionally the Muslims around me, keep warning me (between telling me that I’m CRAZY conservative like those loony fundos) that I’m too liberal. Too liberal for the hardcore fundos out there – and we all know that that’s precisely what all of the practicing Muslims are – but not what you might call a “progressive” Muslim.

Which leaves me……where?

Eeny meeny miney, community?

The bizarre thing (I find) is that some converts are able to cast off their “past lives” with total disregard. It’s like the first twenty/thirty/forty/whatever years of their lives disappear into the ether and they’re the first ones to forget about it. And I’m sitting there….wondering how. It’s not that I’m stuck in my past – it’s not that I romanticize it (Ah, the days I used to do haram things! If only I could go back!). It’s that I want to be able to admit that it’s there, and develop naturally, and without cultural amnesia. Is that so much to ask?

Sometimes I’m asking this of the community, and sometimes I’m asking it of individuals. I was at the local mosque last night, and there was a scene that recalled my early days in Islam all too well:

There was a girl laying on the floor waiting for prayer. Two women sat on either side of her. She was bright-eyed and asking a lot of questions: What do I say after the adhan? What do I do when _____ happens?

An Egyptian woman was answering her inquiries. Every sentence she spoke to this newbie began with one of two words: do or say. And I’m listening to her and thinking: You’re teaching this girl like you have a Ph.D. in prayer and you’re mispronouncing your “tha”. It’s atheem, not azeem.

Now there’s nothing wrong with this unloading of advice per se. It’s all kindly meant, and most converts (myself included) do arrive at the mosque with roughly a billion questions every other day. But still. Don’t cram it down her throat like that. Write it down. One thing at a time. Leave her wanting more, not feeling dizzy with information she can’t hope to remember – and doesn’t understand.

Here’s what I want: I want someone to say to her: Hi, salaam alaykum, welcome to the community.

How are you?

Anything I can help you out with?

How are things going for you? How is your faith? How is your family? How are your friends?

Can I grab you some tea?

So here’s what I did: I introduced myself. I said welcome into the fold, gave her my number, took hers, prayed maghrib next to her, and told her that I had to leave to give a friend a ride, but that she should never hesitate to call me at three in the morning. I told her that I’ve been Muslim for two and a half years. And sometimes it’s rough. And I get it.

The trouble is that with all of our fussing over the newbies learning all the “right” things (most of which, mind you, are not required by the religion), we teach them a thousand things a minute, tell them what to do and what not to do, and then wonder why they get overwhelmed, or why they haven’t been to the mosque in a while. There’s no real effort to get to know them. It’s not like, hey let’s go grab coffee and chat cuz we’re sisters now, it’s like, perfect yourself perfect yourself perfect yourself. Yesterday! There is no subtlety in dealing with the converts. NONE.

Maybe the right answer lies somewhere in between my way of dealing with this girl and the other woman’s. I’m not sure, honestly – I’m figuring this out as I go. But what I want is to not be imposed upon by another culture. I want to be Muslim, but not Egyptian. Or Pakistani. Or Turkish. Because I’m none of those things. I want to be Muslim and white, and for that to be my  identity. I’m Irish and Polish. I’ll be teaching my kids to pray and making them golumpkis for dinner, thankyouverymuch. I’ll teach them thikr, hopefully pronounced correctly (God willing), and read Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson with them – and Al-Ghazali. Because they will own all those things, and they should be able to. They should be proud of that. Not all of the ideas, art, and culture borne out of the Anglo-Saxons is bad. It is not all to be rejected. It is to be refined.

To be honest, I stayed away from Islam for a long time because I thought: square peg, round hole. Because I was a dancer, and a singer, and a theater chick – where was I going to put all that stuff? Three years later, I’m discovering that I can put them in a blog, in speaking, in poetry readings. But it took that long. And you know what? I hate to say it. It’s the community’s fault. We’re all so obsessed with the deen beauty contest that we forget that people grow, and it takes time to come into your own, and that’s okay.

So that’s why I put it here, I guess. It’s half declaration of identity-independence, and half prayer. I want to be able to say: I have a story, and not have everyone balk at it. Because you know what? If you can’t handle someone with a story, then you can’t handle converts. The fact that people come into this religion is purely the mercy of God – because the Muslims certainly don’t make it very easy for them. The Muslims make it so hard to be Muslim that converts’ family members tell them to hush up. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as extreme?

And maybe they’re right. Maybe I am making it harder for myself. Maybe some really great, really conservative guy who would otherwise be interested in me is reading this and thinking: never mind. You know what? So be it. Even if I didn’t have a blog, this is still who I am. And it’s not going to go away, no matter how much I don’t talk about it. And when I do find the guy for me, God willing, I want him to accept me for who I am – past, flaws, virtues, talents, quirks, all of it. What’s the point, otherwise? If you have to become someone else to be loved, then you’re not really being loved – someone else, some other identity that you’ve put on, like an outfit – that’s what is being loved. And nobody wants that, including me. I want to be loved, or bust. No masks, no pretending. And I’ll wait as long as it takes.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I’m finding people who love me just as I am, and still help me to be better – but don’t try to make me into someone else entirely. And it’s more cheering than I can possibly say. We buoy each other up, we laugh together, we protect each other, we encourage each other – but never absolutely, never with an iron fist. And isn’t that the way of our beloved Prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him? Who was gentler? Who loved people more? Who accepted people more? Did he (pbbuh) teach the Muslims their religion in one day? Did he (pbbuh) ask Umar ibn al-Khattab (may God be pleased with him) to become a different man, once he came to Islam? No. The Prophet (pbbuh) asked Umar to use his talents and his personality in the service of the religion. And that was all. If that was all we were asked by the community – love what you love, be who you are, and when you can, do those things in the service of your Lord and this community – my goodness, what a relief that would be.

What my family asserts, or sees, about the community, isn’t wrong. They see us all “starched up into seeming piety” (Mansfield Park, I can’t help myself) and wonder how authentic it is, and see – quite rightly – that there’s no room for WASPs/WASMs (read: White Anglo-Saxon Muslims). My family doesn’t want to deal with all of the cultural/social/emotional confusion and pain my brother and I went through – and who can blame them? Are we really all that welcoming, if we ask everyone to be instantly different from the moment they convert? Where is our patience with people? Where is our love for each other?

What I’m hoping is that we’re moving towards a happier balance. I think we are. My brother changed his name when he came to Islam, but by the time I followed seven years later, he advised me not to (resulting in something I like to call “Lizzy pride.” I love that someone with my name introduces herself in hijab. I have such a WASP name, and I’m so Muslim. Surprise!). The struggles of the converts in the 70s, 80s, and 90s were much greater than ours. So there’s hope, I think – for the girl in the mosque yesterday, and for me. There’s hope that I can admit that I struggle, and I can sound off on my insights into the community that are inevitably through the lens of my past (both Muslim and before), and that yes, when I see the guys I’ve known since third grade and love like brothers (and who know me better than some of my family) hug me, I don’t shove them off rudely, screaming, For shame! I don’t touch boys anymore. It’s called chastity, you lecher. And that despite all that, I have friends – and hopefully, God willing, I’ll have a best-friend-roommate-husband who will love me because/despite it all.

And then I will say: I told you so. Until then, here’s my line:

It’ll all turn out all right in the end.

How will it, you say?

I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

Pet self

Lemme tell you something about white people:

We have more spiritual impediments than everybody except politicians.

Now before I insult some really nice, pure-hearted white person, let me explain myself.

We’re not raised right. This is my thesis. We’re not raised right in this country (perhaps I should expand beyond the whites here; still, if Islam has taught me anything about culture, it’s that we white people have more of a cultural identity than I had previously thought, in my whitewashed existence. And God knows best).

We’re raised – and by we, I mean, of course, I – to believe primarily in the self. To begin with, we’re raised in small families. Mine is fairly giant by today’s standards, with a whopping six members in our nuclear unit alone! But even so, I grew up not sharing a bedroom, or a plate, or a doll, or much of anything besides the dog. And to think, I criticized only children for being naturally selfish. God forgive me. If only they could see me now, with more pet peeves than Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets.

The four kids in my family had wide-ranging interests that sent my mother into a carpooling frenzy for an untold number of her middle years. God bless her. My two older siblings went to boarding school while my brother and I (who are much closer in age) were still quite young. But we two kept our parents busy shuttling us from soccer to hockey to piano to ballet to gymnastics, and then, as a result, to the orthopedic surgeon for a number of dislocated years. And by we, I mean, of course, I.

In school, I was naturally competitive, and was further encouraged in the trait by my teachers. I spoke out in class, a surprisingly dedicated and feisty feminist of twelve. I aced math and science exams, and excelled in just about anything I could get my hands on, except – you guessed it – team sports. Dance was my thing. Very individual. Also very cooperative. It has that tasty balance of trust and love for your fellow dancers, and beauty-body-talent-skill-flexibility-grace feuding every night of the week. Delicious.

My parents, in loving support, told me, You can be anything. Anything, indeed? Yes, darling, anything. The world is your oyster.

Ah. There’s the rub.

See, I’m a girl, and a member of one of the first generations raised in the aftermath of the feminist movement – equality is a female president, and women eating the corporate food chain like chocolate, baby! - so it’s understandable, it’s expected, and it was very kindly meant by everyone who said it, hinted at it, or spoonfed it to us in one way or another.

With such assurances, high school trained up my arrogance and selfishness very well, and I planned on going on to college and, after a brilliant thesis, changing the world. But it wasn’t all bad. My adolescent self was a tad self-serving, but not evil. I had a good heart in there somewhere, however fatally arrogant and self-centered I was. I cared about people, participated in causes, protested Bush’s first ascent to Washington like a good little liberal, and cooperated with my fellow theater enthusiasts in putting on shows.

But it was still my oyster, and I didn’t like sharing. I didn’t deal with disappointment well, and to a certain degree I still don’t. Under a kindly facade, I liked things just so. I might not say so, really – I was brought up too well for that – but I resented every imagined and real affront and nursed it in my heart like a baby seal or something. I’ve spent my twenties trying to train this out of myself, in fits of grumbling, self-censured bitterness.

The problem with ‘the world is your oyster,’ besides becoming a serious spiritual handicap after too many years, is roommates. Wait no, let’s revise that – any relationship at all. Teacher-student, friendship, sibling, cousins, uncles, you name it. According to the doctrine of ‘the world is your oyster,’ all these people are, in peeved moments, are obstacles lying in the way of us having everything the way we like it, the way we left it, or how it ought to be. And then we have to bite our tongues – perhaps, in the process, building mountains of barely-concealed ill will in our psyches, or risk seriously offending people we actually care about very much, under our festering resentment.

The problem with crowning individualism is that the people who live out solitary lives are actually devastatingly lonely. Sex in the City is painful to watch even if it doesn’t make your moral hairs stand on end. Because the oppressive, fashionably-clad loneliness is stifling. And it’s real. Those characters are fictional, but there are a lot of people close to forty, and forty, and beyond, out there who are still single – and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the reasons is that we just can’t live together gracefully. We’ve got too many doggone ways.

Tricky. Very tricky.

I had a revelation the other day. It’s very obvious, and very sad that it took me this long to see it exactly in this way. (Someone like my lovely sister-in-law, God bless her, who was raised around numerous family members she was taught to serve selflessly out of love, no questions asked, would, I imagine, smack me playfully for my shameful white stupidity.) So here it is: all those people that bug me, in their very tiny and harmless ways – it’s not them that is bothering me. They’re not the problem, and whatever it is that they’re doing that is like nails on a chalkboard is not the problem either. My feelings of having been slighted, my taking it personally, and my annoyance – those are the problems. If someone else leaves a mess, say, I can clean it up – either doing it because it’s the nice thing to do, and I should place myself at the service of others whenever I can, because therein lies the spiritual path, or with a black and angry heart that only gets blacker and angrier with every wiped up crumb.

Now I’m wondering why I’ve consigned myself to such torture. For Pete’s sake, woman, clean up the freaking mess and be done with it!

…I just want to submit, briefly, that I’m not maligning the idea of equality between the sexes. I do think that the Western version of the idea is, frankly, bizarre – please see Martha Stewart and Britney Spears for further reference – but I’m not suggesting that men are better than women. What I mean to hint at here is that in the fifties, maybe American men were a little selfish and a little hard on their wives – prompting many “mysterious” depressions and The Feminine Mystique, among others. But the “feminist” solution was not to tell the men to be less selfish – it was to tell the women to be equally as selfish as the men. So instead of fighting over equal rights to education, we find ourselves bickering over whose night it is to cook or whose turn it is to take out the trash – and God forbid that either party would lovingly budge and actually try to do extra. Which leaves us in our current quandary of either being resentfully yet lovingly attached, or serenely yet lonesomely single. No dice, if you’re asking this white girl.