I barely have had enough time to even write this, but I did want to make it official: it is time to bring this blog to a close.
Reasons: The connection between faith and books no longer burns in me the way it used to. Some of it relates to why I left Altmuslimah: many people are saying many things, and I’m becoming certain that my voice does not need to be in the mix any longer. I am more than happy to retreat to the world of books, family, and (hopefully) more physical and spiritual activity.
This is what looks like a book that took commendable effort.
By someone with good intentions.
But it is not the Quran.
I long for the Quran the way a hopeless drunkard longs for a saintlike jewel of a being.
The way Devdas longed for Paro.
I long for the Quran while knowing
That I am not worthy of it.
That I am polluted with worldliness, selfishness, gluttony.
To read The American Quran is not to read the real Quran.
For is it not supremely better
To have just the Quran?
To have its verses echo inside me as I walk?
To have them run repeatedly in my mind,
Without knowing that is what I am doing?
The munafiq I am, I am disgusted.
That they dare attach their own images, their own projections
To the dark, glorious tresses of its calligraphy.
That contain universes in its every vowel.
Fathah, dammah, kasra, the smallest marks ever so beautiful.
Maybe if people like me didn’t shroud themselves with the dunya
Its glory would shine brilliantly
And no one would dare project images—
(Oh I laugh as I write this)
—In “juxtaposition” to what it is saying…
“What it is saying?”
It has come to this.
It is one thing to be given a translation that collects dust on a bookshelf
It is another to own this “collector’s item”
To shuffle a few pages while having your wine.
And think you have some idea of what it really says.
You can dress up this text in whichever way you like
For it to be palatable to you.
But there are still a few who know
What it feels like when it brushes your soul.
And the rest falls away.
FYI: I didn’t make this post “outsider friendly.” I am assuming the reader has a basic understanding of female menstruation and prayer in the Islamic tradition.
I used to be the kind of Muslim who didn’t care much for rules. Matters such as how you fold your arms when you pray seemed to be a way to divide and police people. Isn’t it the spirituality, the intention, that matters?
I have learned, however, that fiqh—the part of Islamic faith that has to do with legal rulings—IS a way of enacting spirituality. Rules are like rituals. They make the processes and methodology absolute so that one cannot be distracted, uneasy, or meek in their workship.
It was due to this newfound respect and adab for fiqh that I attended a workshop on the Fiqh of Taharah (Purity) at a mosque in Markham. It was specific to the subject of menstruation and was for females only.
What I grew up knowing about menstrual purity was based on what my mother told me and some scattered readings of religious texts. It had been over a decade since I received any formal instruction on the subject, and it turned out that there was much I hadn’t been aware of.
Image credit: Stròlic Furlàn, flickr
Overall, I learned that Islamic legal rulings give a holistic, universal treatment of female bleeding that can be applicable to all women. For example, in the Hanafi school of thought, a period is only considered a true menstrual period if it is at least three days, and if the time that has passed since the last period is at least fifteen days. There is a specific way a woman is supposed to monitor the start and end of her period—for example, her period doesn’t start from the time she starts the bleeding, but the time she sees the blood. It may seem like common sense, but to know that this was the conclusion that legal experts sanctioned provides a strange kind of comfort and ease.
It was a revelation to me and many others that it is almost essential, religiously speaking, for women to track their periods and to know their normal cycle. The instructor (who happened to be a male using the audio system form a different room) emphasized that many of the Islamic legal implications on menstruation had to do with the women knowing her “habit,” or the usual course her cycle takes. Having this information is key for some of the conundrums that may come up when her bleeding is irregular, for she could be confused as to whether she should pray. We went on break not long after that point was made by the instructor, and I saw the room come alive with women discussing the lessons and sharing their experiences with one another. As part of this, we started talking about if/how we tracked our periods, and my sister leaned in and ended up showing me which she considers “the best app” for period tracking.
That was when everything would change.
I started using Clue right after that and have been consistent with it since. Clue has allowed me the uphold the injunction to know one’s cycle from both a fiqh and reproductive health perspective. The initiative was founded by a successful award-winning social entrepreneur who sees infinite possibilities in marrying data analytics and reproductive health.
The user experience is seamless and the app itself is a mini encyclopedia of facts related to things like menstruation, birth control and PMS. Without exaggeration, it has allowed me to get in touch with my body by observing and getting to know it.
I am one of the more fortunate women to have learned about reproductive health and menstruation in my biology and health classes. Even so, I was not given the tools to apply the facts to how my body worked. Clue, for me, serves as that missing tool. It encourages me to pay closer attention to myself. And, best of all, it gives me the means to uphold and apply the “fiqh of Taharah” by completing its most fundamental requirement—knowing my cyle. Thanks to its graphical representations, I know at a glance the length of my “tuhr,” or time between my periods.
Should my body behave differently, I will have my reference points for knowing my habit, knowing what is natural for me, because my body is not a machine.
Rituals and rules give us certainty and knowledge gives us power. Thanks to these beautifully simultaneous occurrences: attending the course and beginning to use Clue, I now have a growing understanding of my body I didn’t have before, both in the worldly and in the spiritual realms.
I knew the beliefs as to why I had to wear the hijab were limiting.
There was not anything wrong in my wearing the hijab, in itself. I wouldn’t take back a second I spent wearing it.
But why I believed I wore the hijab…that had been getting murkier and murkier. I had these moments before and I braved through them. I triumphantly continued to compare my hijab to a marriage, a marriage that just grew stronger with each phase of self-doubt.
It was worth the fight, it was worth hanging on for as long as I did, it was worth taking seriously. But the time came to change. It is almost as if the events of the past few months–only one of which was getting married–somehow shook my brain and set it down so it completely reassembled itself and started to operate differently.
Image credit: RPatts
I feel relieved now, not because the hijab itself was a burden. It is because it no longer made sense to me to be a sort of paradox, to go to a yoga retreat or dance class while being a hijabi. Five years ago, I thought there was nothing more splendid than a hijabi girl who plays the saxophone. After trying to live that ideal, I now understand, fundamentally, that that it is not for me. It is not only the issue of explaining the paradox to others: it was having to live it, to reconcile things that (I feel) can never be reconciled, given my understanding and experience of religion.
There are things I still love about the hijab: being recognized, exchanging salaams, embodying and always depicting the importance of prayers, of fasting, of dhikr, even when I wasn’t doing those things. I loved being asked about Islam. I loved that I always depicted the things I always thought about, that I wore on my sleeve my specific interpretation of that fact that the world is truly only transitory.
A part of me will never really know if I did the right thing. But on that first day I stepped out without it I remember thinking that this is fate, and this was always meant to be, and the time had come to let it be.
If I were to be an official-ish, published writer, I would be a nonfiction writer. I would hope to be the kind of writer who writes a book like this. Zakaria’s book illustrates a private, painful family story in parallel to the story of Pakistan as experienced by the swollen, violent, disturbed, distorted city that is Karachi.
Nothing is perfect—in true journalistic fashion, things are simply conveyed as they are, yet artfully so. Islamization campaigns in Pakistan are shown as no worse than the corruption and hypocrisy of secular leadership. (One exception: I couldn’t help but feel that there was a bit of sympathy on her part towards the Muhajjir Qaumi Movement—MQM, but that could be just me.)
This is also the story of how Zakaria’s paternal aunt’s husband ended up taking a second wife. This is not an Orientalist horrifying tale of how Islam allows polygamy and how it is terrible. It is an examination of the social realities of arranged marriages, women’s roles in society, love, and the tightrope a middle-class Pakistani family must walk to maintain its respectability. It is also the story of human nature, how easy it is to hate for the sake of hating, and how the most negative sentiments can become lifelong companions. It is the story of how vulnerable a woman is when her sole role is to serve her husband, when her life is built around him. This is not just Aunt Amina’s story: it is the story of millions of women, married and unmarried, whose worth is measured by their marital status, whether they are mothers, whether they work or are taught to have aspirations of their own. Aunt Amina is the chronically bereaved family member you will desperately want to avoid, to avoid all that negative energy, while fully understanding that she is the way she is because that is all she knows, and that is her reality.
On a different note: I kept wondering, as I read the book, what or who emboldened Zakaria to write so many details about her aunt’s life. No one would want their life put on display this way. In the Western context of publishing and the accountability of telling stories, “consent” wouldn’t come close to describing the kind of license the subject of a story would have to provide. Nothing is more powerful than a private, true story, but shouldering the responsibility of sharing this kind of a narrative has both serious legal and (I feel) spiritual implications.
Allah knows the author’s intentions best, and is the judge in all matters.
This book seems awfully scattered at times and I am sure it could have done its job in two-thirds the number of pages it takes up. I didn’t read all of it. But I did come across a review of it and wanted to share a key point:
Guard your mind. Yes, it’s cool to live in the dazzling array of electronics, but while it’s convenient that you can instantly find out how much the Empire State Building weighs that doesn’t mean you always should.
What could be more purely Islamic than the notion of guarding your mind?
A Muslimah Writes 