Salam Karen!
May this find you well: ) I was happy to read your last post, particularly about the mutually nurturing/nourishing things you and Chris did over the Labor Day weekend.
I have had some time now to gain some distance from my time in Atlanta, and am settling into the post of the "pre-" and "post" of it. I think I mentioned that it was a transformative experience for many of us, most of us actually. I marvel at how it happened in such a short space of time. I am fascinated with the idea that our whole lives can change in an instant, because change usually does happen in a moment, just like that, and suddenly you are on the other side a turning point...I think part of what made it such a profound experience was that it was really the first time that I felt I could be all of myself. It's like a prism; mostly the light reflects back one side but sometimes it will hit evenly all sides and the rainbow will come through. As a Muslim woman going into mostly Muslim spaces, it isn't necessarily safe to talk about being queer or about some more radical notions like men and women praying side by side and women leading prayers. They aren't trying to hear about feminism and such. In queer spaces people don't relate to being Muslim, or to being of a different culture per se. It was amazing to be everything and to be with people who could be everything, some for the first time. We talked about our relationship to Islam. It was interesting to hear people say that being gay had made them better Muslims. I should mention that the women were in our own space, the men in theirs and then trans folks in theirs briefly. For some, their relationship with Islam was tenuous, for some entirely cultural, for others entirely spiritual. I was a little sad to hear people who felt their faith was weak. I always think that the things that cause suffering in Islam are due to decisions that have been made by men across the years. That is not Islam. I've never had trouble distinguishing that from what I feel to be true Islam. I was so happy to hear such progressive thinking, even going so far as to create a new school of Islamic thought, maddhab, not based on some man's personality and thinking, but on a philosophy of tawheed (the oneness of God), which is one of the central tenets of Islam. At one point, on the final night, there was a moment when it felt like we were one, living and breathing in unison. It was amazing. That is Islam. The Progressive movement in Islam is very much predicated on actually realizing equal treatment for women in how people practice Islam, and in Islamic countries. It is also all about justice and cultivating the importance of justice as part of being Muslim. At that same banquet, a few minutes before this moment of unity, a woman, a hotel employee, Muslim, walked into the hall and said "If you're gay and Muslim, you will be fuel for the hellfire..." and a small group of people escorted her out. We were reminded of what we must fight against. We had been insulated from that world for the weekend. Could we carry all that we had created back into the wider world? I definitely think I have. I feel ready to work in a way I've been skirting around for the last few months. My goal of working with kids in west africa, being a bridge between the arts and conflict prevention, requires a great deal of leadership. I know I have it in me, but at some point you have to start actually carrying the mantle. I read a great essay by a wonderful Muslim woman named Asra Nomani, who challenged the anti-woman attitude of her masjid (mosque) in Virginia. She is actually a well-know journalist but really came into international spotlight for asserting women's Islamic rights in her mosque. It was quite a struggle. She even received a death threat or two or more, but she did it. She was at the conference as an ally and it was such a good experience to hear from her and to see her humility and her desire to connect, to link up with another aspect of oneness. Anyways in this essay in a book called "Living Out Loud: American Muslim women's voices" or something like that, she writes about how in all her years as a journalist, interviewing people from all walks of life internationally, she never felt like a leader. It wasn't until she demanded her own rights in the mosque, not intending to do anything more than that, and everything else followed, that she realized she had to become a leader in her own life. Others were looking to hear as a leader and she was surprised. She has a little boy, and recognized that she has to be a leader for him to grow into a Muslim, man.
The idea of becoming a leader in one's own life really resonates with me. Actually some of the women from the retreat and I are starting up our own group called The First Look Project, based on disrupting the hadith that while modesty is everything and you shouldn't look at people for their physical beauty or lack thereof, the first look is halal, meaning it's permitted, so you can stare all you want to as long as it is the first look. It's pretty funny to think of that: )
It's a huge project it really will, already has, changed all of our lives. We envision big things and really building a real community of it. In fact, it started because we want to build a real community where we can see, touch and talk to one another. I was Philly this weekend visiting with my girl Khalida, whose idea starting an organization was. Before I came down to New York on Thursday my girl Sabeena came down from your old stomping groungs, NoHo, to visit me for a couple of days in Boston. I don't want to know people on the internet, who are on the fringes of your real life. I want to know people who can count on me and who I can count on for the big and the small, the highs, the middles, the plateaus, the lows. All of it. One of the women had the retreat had recently been outed to her family. She's from a country where they do do honour killings, and her family really did consider that. So when she really needed to figure out safe places to be where they couldn't find her and all that, she felt she didn't have a community she could turn to and rely on. That really resonated with me. Mercifully, the family is now over the honour killing idea, but those memories don't dissipate.
That was, in a nutshell, my weekend.
I'm in New York now. I start my training on Thursday afternoon. We went in to do all the paper work yesterday. Upon listening to some of the things we'll be doing during training I was reminded that real challenge lies ahead. I think I am more mentally prepared for it now than I was last week, which is good. I'm still a bit anxious to find out what "special ed" will mean for me--kids with physical disabilities or behavioral issues--? We'll find out soon! I was relieved to pass my certification exams without which I wouldn't have been able to continue with training.
I'm staying with my friend Alex for the moment, and desperate to be in a place of my own. I want to unpack my bags and dive unabashedly into library book hoarding and indulge my curiosity and my energy to do a lot. I'm up for it.
What do you think about what's happening in New Orleans? I mean you wrote about it tearing the country in two. What two do you see? I continue to be deeply disturbed by the stories I'm hearing coming out from people in New Orleans and people now in Houston. I'd have liked to think better of the humanity of this government, though I guess we all know better, but I'm glad to think of the humanity of people all over this country, in whatever guise it manifests. What Barbara Bush said was appalling. She should be so deeply ashamed of herself, her lack of humanity, her lack of compassion and empathy; she probably isn't as she sits in her air-conditioning with people to wait on her hand and foot. Her wealth is not the problem. Her lack of vision is, and yet she echoes the sentiments of many, only she was unchecked enough to say it. Were people left because they were black or because they were poor? Probably both, more poor than black methinks. This country is actually one of the hardest in the world from which to escape poverty.
How is your back doing?
How are you?
Share share share!
Hugs to you, and to Chris.
Always love,
Terna
ps. the title is a quote from my mom when I told her that my friend who was recently in a psychiatric hospital still sounds very tired
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