Western “Reverts” and Love of “Exotica”

I recently came across a discussion by an American muslimah living in the US lamenting her “homesickness” for an Arab country she visited. Another Muslimah from that country questioned whether “homesickness” was the correct word/concept. This is just one particular thread but I have read many similar ones over the last year that express similar ideas. Many times Western Muslims glamorize the Arab world as a place where “real” Islam is practiced and often confuse Arab culture with Islamic mandates. I’ve written about this before with regard to converts taking Arab names, wearing Arab clothes and eating only Arab foods. I thought it might be interesting to share my perspective on the issue of Arabophilia.

I have lived in Qatar for 9 years now. I loved it when I first came here — actually LIVING and WORKING here, rather than traveling, visiting or sightseeing. When I went home after 10 months here I did find myself anxious to return here but can’t really say I was “homesick”. Sure I was fascinated with “the other” and found a fair degree of “exoticism” in living and traveling in the Middle East but in time I did actually find myself more and more at home here. Now, I can say I truly get “homesick” if I am away for a while but that is because I actually maintain my home here and do not maintain a home in any other country.

Most of the women I notice succumbing to the Romantic notion of “the Other” are young women who have converted and married Arabs, subsequently suffering rejection from their families. Sometimes the family doesn’t adapt well to the outward changes in their daughter (e.g., perhaps she has started covering her hair or face); they may feel estranged with the new son-in-law’s culture or they may be puzzled and hurt by their daughter’s rejection of the religious values they raised her with. It can even be as simple as non-religious parents not understanding how they now cannot have a glass of wine at Thanksgiving in the presence of their daughter. Regardless of the triggers, a parent whose child makes this major life altering decision is definitely going to need time to adjust to the changes. When the daughter is young (teens or twenties) it’s only natural that the parent might assume that rebellion is the driving force behind these changes.

But sisters, just give it some time and be patient. Let them see you are the same daughter they have loved and raised. Make sure they know that as a Muslim you will still be devoted to them as your parents. And for God’s sake, don’t make them associate your becoming a Muslim with a rejection of everything they value and hold dear. Or at least, don’t rub it in their faces! LOL!

The United States will always be my home, even if I never return to live there. There are many things I don’t like (maybe even hate) about the US but wisdom and maturity has taught me that you can’t run away from home and really negate who you are. At most you will be an ex-pat in Arabia like me, comfortable and happy. But like me you will never be an Arab, so the sooner you get comfortable with WHO you are the more you will feel connected to WHERE you are.

Let Me Tell You About My Little Sisters And Brothers

When I first came to Qatar in 1999 I met a young student (Fatma) who was to be my student the following year. Fatma is Palestinian and she soon took me home to meet her entire family. This consists of her father (who soon became my “Baba”), her mother Monira; two brothers (Abdullah and Ahmed); and 5 sisters (From oldest to youngest: Hend, Noura, Sara, Mona, and Maha). Mind you this was 9 years ago, so I have watched this beautiful family grow and blossom — while I was nurtured as one of them.

Both Baba and Monira are from Gaza, and if I told you the story of all that has happened to them growing up in the wake of the establishment of Israel it would break your heart. But this is not a sad story, because Baba and Monira are testaments to the resilient human spirit and all the best qualities of humanity. They both got their university education — Baba in Alexandria and Monira her at Qatar University while she was juggling caring for her young children. Baba and Monira then began their careers teaching here in Doha and passed their love and respect for education to their children.

Hind led the way in being the first to attend the first university here in Qatar Foundation’s Education City. She graduated with a BFA in Fashion Design and after working as a Designer on several important projects and an international Design firm, she was accepted into a Master’s Program in the UK. She received her Master’s about a year ago and immediately began working on her PhD (also in the UK). She has returned to my uni (her alma mater) this summer — now as FACULTY — and will be teaching her first class! I met Hend when she was a sophomore in uni and now she is my colleague! Maash’Allah!

Fatma also graduated from my uni with a BFA in Motion Graphic Design. She studied animation in London for one semester and returned to Doha to work as a Designer for the 2006 Doha Asian Games. Since then she has been been employed by the Design firm that is a subsidiary at the university. Their biggest project is handling the enormous task of redesigning all the Qatar military, security and police uniforms and insignia. She has been accepted into graduate school in London where she will be pursuing a Masters degree in film making. Fatoom is like a younger version of myself and it drives me crazy sometimes but I love that girl! She’s smart and stubborn and wise beyond her years. Maash’Allah!

Noura has just graduated with Honors from Carnegie-Mellon University in Education City with a BSc in Computer Science. Tonight she is heading to Pittsburgh where she will represent her graduating class at commencement. Noura’s job prospects are excellent and she hopes to get some work experience under her belt before she applies to graduate schools. When I talk with Noura I feel like such a dummy. Tonight she was telling me about a paper she’s submitting to a conference in Cyprus! Maash’Allah!

Sara has just finished her junior year at my university where she is double majoring in Fashion Design and Graphic Design. Sara is a thinker. Sara communicates through design but is often shy about expressing herself verbally. Recently we have had the chance to grow closer as she faced some adversity and I am seeing her get more comfortable with expressing herself verbally. Sara was born premature and was a teeny-tiny baby (only about 2 pounds). She had an incredible strength and will to survive and I see that in her determination now. Sara is like the tiny mouse that roars — Maash’Allah!

Tomorrow afternoon, Mona will be interviewing at Northwestern University’s new branch campus here at Education City. Mona is the “Great Communicator”! She has a smile that could provide the energy for all of Qatar and is interested in a career in journalism or broadcasting. I can really see her in broadcasting — but I’ll let her decide! Mona studied English for one year in the UK after high school and is one of those people who can really help to bridge the culture gap between East and West.  I think Northwestern would be lucky to have her. Maash’Allah!

Little Maha was just a very young girl when I met her. She has infinite patience as you can imagine how often everyone in the family asks her to get things or do things for them. I was the youngest in my family, too, so I remember how it was to be the one everyone called for to do chores and errands. The difference is that I did it grudgingly, but Maha always does it graciously. Here was this quiet young girl running to bring me anything I might want and all the while she was growing up and becoming smarter and smarter! Maha entered a high school that focuses on the sciences — in English — when she spoke very little English (except “Hi, how are you?”). Where did the time go? I don’t know, but Maha is finishing high school and hopes to study medicine at Cornell here at Education City. Finally, a DOCTOR in the family, insha’Allah! Maash’Allah!

Abdullah was a young man when I met him. He was working in a family business which seemed natural upon his graduation from high school here. When he graduated the only university was Qatar University and he didn’t really have a specific career interest. A few years ago he surprised me when he told me he was applying to the Aeronautical University here and wanted to become a pilot! Sure enough, he overcame all the hurdles — English and returning to school after a long gap as an adult — to become the top student in his class. In another 2 years I expect to board a plane with Abdullah in the cockpit! Maash’Allah!

Now Ahmed is my youngest brother. When Ahmed was little he made me laugh SOOOO much! He can do impersonations of everyone — and my own is so embarassing but on the money! Ahmed has a great love of horses and is magical with them but we knew his chances of becoming a world class jockey were limited when this little boy grew up to be about 6′5″ and 275 pounds!!! He is quite the handsome young man; my granddaughter Olivia loves to sit on his shoulders! Ahmed will finish high school this year, insha’Allah, and is looking into aviation for a career as well. I worry that he will be so handsome in a pilot’s uniform we will have to fight the girls off with a baseball bat! Ahmed can still make me laugh like no one else and for all his manliness he is still my sweet little brother. Maash’Allah!

Can you imagine how rich my life became when I met this family and they opened their home and hearts to me? Truly, God has blessed me by bringing this family into my life. I love them more than I can ever express.

 

 

Marooned In Iraq: The Simplest of Pleasures

From the opening sound of fighter jets streaking past the mountain tops in Kurdistan, you know that Marooned in Iraqby Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi is going to explore the way people acclimate to life filled with endless war, conflicts and displacement. Having seen Ghobadi’s A Time For Drunken Horses (a heartbreaking story of Kurdish children who survive by leading illegal caravans between Iran and Iraq as black market smugglers) and Turtles Can Fly(which depicts a village full of orphaned Kurdish children on the Iraq-Turkey border perched on the verge of hope right before the American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent fall of Saddam), this was my third film by the director who I consider one of the leading young filmmakers in World Cinema. His films are exquisitely crafted, with breathtaking visuals and powerful performances (often by non-professionals) who Ghobadi nurtures to bring reality to life in his films. Marooned in Iraq is no different.

The film depicts the story of two brothers (Barat and Audeh) whose father (Mirza) hears that the wife (Hanareh) who deserted him many years before, running off with his best friend, has now been stranded in Iraq. The family is one of musicians and thus, the film — and their journey — is one filled with music, and surprisingly laughter. In fact, Hanareh was also a successful singer and had fled Iran after the Revolution when authorities banned women singing in public. Early on we learn that the father never really divorced her twenty-three years earlier, as he tells his son he made up that story to preserve the family honor! One can’t help but feel the wry irony at the revelation.

The father and sons set off on the motorcycle and side-car that belongs to Barat and head for Iraq — which in this case means that Audeh has to leave his 7 wives and 11 daughters! He soon decides this will be the perfect occasion to pick up another wife on his trip (to bear him the son he is missing) so tells one of his wives to ready the “wedding room”. And the journey begins. The three men don’t actually know it but they will each find something that will change their lives in ways they could not have predicted.

Gobhadi’s films always show the struggles of everyday life in this world. In this case that means back-breaking labor making sun-dried mud bricks in the same manner originated by the ancient Sumerians and turning old metal shipping containers into habitats. But the life is also full of music and dance — even children help to mix the mud for the bricks by essentially dancing barefoot in it up to their calfs. This is contrasted with an overcrowded refugee camp encircled with razor wire, where multiple generations will survive the cold, harsh winter in tents but also enjoy the spontaneous and unexpected concert put on by Audeh and Barat. Once again, the introduction of something as simple as music brings a sparkle to the eyes of young children. These marked contrasts in Marooned In Iraq are thought provoking and keep the film flowing between the broad range of human emotions.

Marooned In Iraqis one of those films that takes people in the most pitiful circumstances and shows you there is always someone worse off, highlighting the human survival instinct. These men who themselves lead a somewhat hard-scrabble life are confronted with the even greater hardships on their journey. After all, isn’t it human instinct to remind yourself to be thankful when you see the pain and suffering of others? This is one of the things Ghobadi does best.

Women’s Prison: An Analogy In Film Of Post-Revolutiony Iran

We often hear how Islam came to “liberate” us and guarantee our rights. Surely there is a case to be made for this if we are to break down the Quran and Sunnah. However, it is just as easy to make a case against this by the selective choice and interpretation of specific ayat and ahadith. That is not what I want to get into in this post, but rather would like to cast a light on how so-called Muslim societies continue to sink near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to women’s human rights. If I had a riyal for every time I have heard or read Muslims talking about how bad Western society is for women and how wonderful or so-called Islamic societies are — well, I could be purchasing a penthouse on the Pearl.

 Women’s Prison, the first feature film directed by Manijeh Hekmat (2002), presents the incarceration of women from all walks of life in post-Revolutionary Iran as a microcosm of the larger society. The film centers around the changing relationship between the dour, pious warden and a prisoner whose crime was killing an abusive stepfather. The film spans close to twenty years and is divided into three acts: the first is set around 1984, four years after the Revolution and during the Iran/Iraq war; the second act is set in 1992 when the country is slipping into severe poverty coupled with a psycho-social malaise that is raising questions about “Islamic reforms”; and the final act, set in 2001, after Khatami’s attempt to soften the repressive regime.

As the film opens, the new warden (Tahareh) arrives right after a riot over the horrendous conditions in the prison. She promises improvement but it becomes clear immediately that improvement will not come until she “breaks” the spirits of the women she sees as the ringleaders of the prison’s problems. This brings her into immediate conflict with Mitra — awaiting a murder trial that never comes due to the backlog in the court system.  Other characters – including three different ones (played by the director’s own daughter) appearing in each of the three acts of the film — enrich the plot by allowing us to see the complex relationships that develop in the prison and the increasing effects of the failure of the Revolution.

Women’s Prison functions on many symbolic levels. The setting — the prison itself — is transformed throughout the film and in some ways is barely recognizable in the final act as the chaotic prison overturned by rioting in the opening act.  In 1984 the prison is dirty and infested with lice, with broken plumbing, no heat, little food that is not spoiled and virtually no comforts. By 1991 we see the prison facility has improved but it is now overcrowded and experiencing fights, drug abuse, same-sex rape and suicide. And in the final act, the film is so overcrowded with women incarcerated for seemingly any offense and legal system that can no longer keep up with the numbers of women being moved through it. The stasis of the courts becomes a metaphor for the implosion of Iranian society that seems inevitable.

The characters add another symbolic dimension to the film. Taherah is strong but colorless in the opening act, contrasted with the defiant and passionate Mitra. Over time, Mitra is “tamed” and Taherah is beaten down by the problems created by the stagnant governmental bureaucracy. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is when Taherah picks up a red lipstick that has been confiscated in a shakedown and applies it in front of a mirror, touching her face and seemingly not recognizing her embellished appearance.

Babies are born. Older children are sent to orphanages as they grow up. As time marches on — in their lives and in the film’s three acts – so do blindfolded women go to their deaths as they are taken from the prison to the gallows. Their crimes are not clear and yet it doesn’t seem to matter. What we do see is that the executions don’t seem to be having the desired effect — which is seemingly in part to reduce crime in the society, because the prison just keeps getting more crowded, its social problems multiplying ten-fold.

Women’s Prison isn’t a happy film — in fact, it was banned by the Iranian government upon its release — but it is a thought provoking film. It is an Iranian view of the declining situation in the so-called Islamic Republic that begs to question if you can imprison a whole society and still be considered a revolutionary success.

 

What Is The Status Of Women In The “Kingdom”?

Yeah, I know. You’ll get lots of differing responses to this, just as you do when you ask Muslim women how they feel about wearing a headscarf. But I submit the following based on actual research by Hatoon Al-Fassi on women in Arabia during the pre-Islamic times (by Andrew Hammond for Reuters:

RIYADH (Reuters) - When clerics, ministers and businessmen gathered at a forum in Riyadh last month to discuss women in the workplace, there were no women in sight. Typically for Saudi Arabia, the women who took part were seated in a separate room so the men could only hear them. Such oddities are part and parcel of the complex system of social control maintained by clerics of Saudi Arabia’s austere version of Sunni Islamic law, often termed Wahhabism. It’s a system called into question by scholar Hatoon al-Fassi.

In her study, “Women In Pre-Islamic Arabia”, the outspoken rights advocate argues women in the pre-Islamic period enjoyed considerable rights in the Nabataean state, an urban Arabian kingdom centered in modern Jordan, south Syria and northwest Saudi Arabia during the Roman empire. Most controversially, Fassi says women in Nabataea — whose capital was the famous rose-red city of Petra in south Jordan and which was at its height during the lifetime of Jesus Christ — enjoyed more freedom than in Saudi Arabia today because clerics have misunderstood the origins of Islamic law. She also suggests some Saudi restrictions on women may have their origins in Greco-Roman traditions.

“One of the objectives of this book is to question the assumption of subordination of women in pre-Islamic Arabia,” Fassi writes. “Most of the practices related to women’s status are based on some local traditional practices that are not necessarily Islamic. Nor are they essentially Arabian.”

She argues women in Nabataea were free to conduct legal contracts in their own name with no male guardian, unlike in Greek and Roman law, and in Saudi Arabia where the guardian is central to the clerics’ idea of a moral public sphere. The Wahhabi interpretation of sharia requires a “muhrim” — father, husband, brother or son — to accompany women in public, allow them to travel and attest their legal contracts. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch attacked that system in a report in April as treating women as effectively legal minors.

At last month’s televised “National Dialogue”, clerics insisted women could work only in segregated female-only workspaces. Their opponents in government say these rules have kept unemployment among women at around 26 percent.

“I found that with Nabataean women the legal status and self representation was stronger and more evident than with Greek women who needed always a ‘tutor’, or representative, in order to conclude any contract,” Fassi said in an interview.

“An adaptation of Greek and Roman laws was inserted in Islamic law,” she said, referring to guardianship. “I would insist that it’s an ancient adaptation, that (Muslim) scholars are not aware of, and they would really be shocked.”

ORIGINS OF SHARIA

The main schools of sharia were codified in the 9th century AD in territories where a ruling Arab elite mixed with non-Arab and non-Muslim populations in the aftermath of the Arab conquests and the rise of Islam in the 7th century AD. The main body of the law is derived mainly from oral traditions attributed to the Prophet Mohammad, and viewed by Islamic scholars as divine in origin. Scholars in the West have seen, in effect, a mix of Arabian, Jewish and Roman origins.

“The argument about Greco-Roman law having influenced the sharia rules about women could have some basis if one thinks in terms of Middle Eastern adaptations — ‘provincial versions’ — of Greco-Roman law,” said Gerald Hawting, a historian of early Islam at the School of Oriental & African Studies in London.

Fassi, he said, “is not likely to win many friends among the traditional ulama (scholars) by arguing that important elements of the sharia originate from human history and not from God”.

Fassi’s ideas reflect views often expressed by Arab liberals — that restrictive traditions in the empires conquered by the Arabs found their way into Islam. Egyptian feminist Nawal al-Saadawi, for one, has often been attacked for saying as much.

“The deterioration in women’s status is clear. We now live the worst status imaginable as women,” said Fawziya al-Oyouni, a women’s rights activist who lobbies for women’s right to drive. “There is no religious text that stipulates ‘guardianship’.”

MORE LIBERAL TIMES

Signs are around 2,000 years ago things were not so strict. Using coins and inscriptions on Nabataean tombs and monuments in Greek and Semitic languages, Fassi surmises that women’s independent status was linked to a rise in trade and political exchanges in the ancient world at the time.

“There was a certain economic change in that period that allowed women to become stronger or more visible,” she said. “I believe it was because of the economic absence of men … At the end of the first century BC the caravan trade became intensive, twice a year rather than once in the previous millennium.”

The last of the Middle East states to fall to direct Roman rule in 106 AD, the Nabataean confederation’s power was based on desert trade routes from Yemen to Greece and Rome. Nabataean queens had coins struck in their name and showing their face, with light hair-covering veils. Today, Saudi clerics expound at length on television and in other forums on the complex rules over when women can and cannot reveal their faces.

An urbanized Bedouin state, Nabataea has received relatively little attention from scholars, some of whom question whether it was authentically Arab. Petra was even forgotten to history until “discovered” in 1812 by Swiss explorer Johann Burckhardt. Fassi, banned from teaching at King Saud University since 2001, suggested one reason for the neglect was that Nabataea defies stereotypes about Arabs.

“(Nabataea) has weakened the idea that Arabians were merely or essentially nomads, by having an Arabian urbanized state,” she says in her book, published by British Archaeological Reports.

This woman is probably considered very dangerous by TPTB , but she doesn’t look like such a threat, does she?

Oh, this really gives me so many interesting things to explore!

How Can We Have Peace In The Middle East When We Can’t Even Debate With Civility And Reason?

I had to admit, though, that I laughed myself silly watching this clip from Al-Jazeera:

from peacefulmuslimah.wor posted with vodpod

Thank God we have the Doha Debates sponsored by the Qatar Foundation and BBC to show these lunatics how it should be done.

In This Life: In This World

Many of us think of life as a journey. But what if you never reached home on that journey? What if you didn’t really have a home and the journey was taking you to a place you didn’t know if you would even be welcomed to?

That is the story of Michael Winterbottom’s In This World, a film about two Afghani refugees who undertake the daunting journey to what is supposed to be a better life in London. Jamal was born into a refugee camp on the Afghan border of the NWFP but when we are introduced to the adolescent he is orphaned and working as a brickmaker. His uncle agrees to send him along with his cousin Enayatullah to London since Jamal speaks English and can help his cousin face the challenges that lay ahead.

The journey that ensues is the dark world of human trafficking. It involves very little human kindness: a Kurdish family that welcomes them into their home before they travel over the snowy mountain peaks into Turkey; and a few moments of sharing hopes with a young Irani family that is escaping to a better life in Denmark. Rather, as so often is the case, it is a heart wrenching journey that involves financial exploitation, getting caught by the police, horrendous traveling and living conditions, forced labor, and even death for the most unfortunate human cargo.

Jamal’s journey takes him from a life with little hope in the NWFP to a lonely hard life in Europe, selling trinkets on the street, stealing a purse, and stowing away under a tractor trailer in France headed for the UK. Once he arrives in London, the film shifts back to where the journey began when Jamal calls his uncle to tell him he is in London but that Enayatullah is no longer in this world. Jamal is still in this world — but what kind of world is it for him and all the displaced persons like him? Isn’t there more we can do to help people to work legally (and safely) in other countries so they can support families back home and try to make a better life for themselves?

As some of you know I used to be married to an Afghani. We are still very close and I have the most respect for his own journey, which included walking out of Afghanistan from Gardez on foot as a young adolescent; over the mined mountains into a refuge camp in the NWFP of Pakistan; becoming a street vendor at the age of 12 tryng to help support a family of 3 boys left at home, his mother and 5 sisters; teaching himself the trade of jewelry making; paying off a corrupt Pakistani to get him a visa to come and work in Doha as a jeweler, only to discover he was put to work doing construction without any shelter, proper clothes, equipment or even food; meeting a corrupt Pakistani imam who agreed to get him new sponsorship that would allow him to open his own jewelry shop and then stole all his money and even the customers jewelry before locking him out of the shop.

That is when I came into the picture. I was one of those customers and I took the imam to the police on behalf of my friend (who later became my husband) and got his tools, gemstones, jewelry and customer’s property back; as well as went to his sponsor to make sure that he would be allowed to open a new shop and work on his own. God bless his sponsor, a very nice Qatari gentleman, who has never asked for anything from my ex-husband and helped him with visas, licensing and anything else he needs.

My Afghani ex-husband has made quite a journey, too. While married we traveled to Thailand where he made important business contacts and visited London where he met up with some Afghani friends who had made Jamal’s journey in real life. He has since made friends from all over the world as people make their way through Doha, and has accepted invitations to visit them in their homes — all on his Afghani passport that was among the first to be issued to someone here in Doha after the fall of the Taliban.

Yesterday I was in his shop, admiring photos of his travels when I came across a few that were from his time in Gardez and Peshawar. He was such a handsome young boy but had such a serious expression that revealed the weight of his burdens. I thought to myself as I looked from the sorrowful eyes of that little boy to the man with the dancing eyes standing before me: “How far he has come in this world, maash’Allah!”

Stop Trying To Rain On Our Conspiracy Theories!

Is The Internet Supposed To Hurt?

I don’t understand a lot of what goes on in this blog world. I have cyber-friends who I’ve met in real life — a fair number here in Qatar — and share my social circle with. But for the most part my clogging buddies are the ones I read up on most days and who I may exchange emails with. Still others are my IM buddies and we catch up a few times a week. What I dearly love are my sisters who have done all of this with me and taken it to the next level of talking on the phone.

I am 8 to 10 hours ahead of many of my blogging sisters. That means I am not online when many of them are. We also have problems with our internet service fairly frequently here in Qatar, so I may not be able to read people’s blogs for a day or so — and in this fast-paced blogging world that means you can be out of the loop in just a 24 hour period, like I have been over the last day.

Something apparently happened with someone who I considered a dear friend in the last 24 hours that has turned her against me and caused her to write a very hurtful email to me. I suspect there is some kind of misunderstanding because this person thinks I — or a close friend — has done something to her. The problem is, I don’t know what or who she is referring to so I cannot correct my error (if I have made one) or similarly she cannot correct hers (if that is the case) since she asked that I never contact her again.

The reason I am writing this post is because I just think we should be able to disagree about things without taking it to such a personal level. I recently became aware of a disagreement between brothers in the US that was being played out with all kinds of accusations on blogs and via email. I suggested to the brothers involved that they not let their political disagreements sink to the level of character assassination. I would also ask this of my blogging sisters.

I have been accused of causing fitna all over the Internet in order to fill my “void in life”. I’m not sure exactly what that is referring to — whether it is the nature of some of my posts, my comments or my emails. I am a seriously flawed human being and have no delusions about that you can be sure. I don’t mean to be causing pain, suffering and conflict in anybody’s life or on their blog. So if you think I am doing that, please tell me so I can rectify the problem.

And now for something hysterical

And for the IMPROVED VERSION: