Purple Hijab Day Against Domestic Violence

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

International Purple Hijab Day, Saturday, February 13, 2010 is a day to reflect on the deaths which have resulted from domestic violence. A purple hijab is an apt reference for this phenomenon. The hijab—or head scarf, is a symbol of the modesty and piety associated with Muslim womanhood. Purple is a color associated with mourning. Hopefully, a purple hijab will bring to mind what is important for us to remember.

Remember Aasiya Zubair Hassan whose decapitated body was found by upstate New York police after they were told by her husband where to find it. Remember Sandeela Kanwal whose strangled body was found in her Jonesboro, Georgia, bed after someone in her household called the police early in the morning on July 6, 2008. These are just two of the 11 confirmed cases of murder in the US of Muslims by Muslim family members. Two of the 11 cases are of men, one murdered by his wife and the other a murder-suicide. Unfortunately there are other reports of murders in the US due to domestic abuse that can’t be substantiated at this time.

The Baitul Salaam Network, Inc., a national domestic violence awareness organization has put out a call for all in the Islamic community here in the US and abroad to reflect on the cases of death due to domestic violence in the Islamic community here in the US and around the world. “We have a very serious problem of domestic abuse, both nationally and internationally, that we as a community need to face head-on and work together to eradicate,” says Hadayai Majeed, co-founder and administrator of the organization.

So far the call has been answered by other organizations and individuals throughout the US. In Rhode Island the Healthy Families Initiative will host an all day workshop using materials developed by the Peaceful Families Project, a Muslim domestic violence think tank and advocacy organization headquartered in northern Virginia. In Atlanta, Georgia, Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence-Atlanta, an initiative of Baitul Salaam Network, Inc., facilitated by Professor Shyam Sriram of Georgia Perimeter College, has coordinated a prayer vigil. The host is the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam located in East Atlanta, on Saturday, February 13 beginning at 12 noon. In New York City HARIM, a Muslim women’s artist and writers collaborative, will host a literary event featuring South Asian poetry, at 37th Avenue and 74th in Street Jackson Heights. Other events are planned in the Midwest and Far West. On the same day, organizers have called for a moment of silence in the Islamic community, to begin at 12:12 pm, to remember all eleven reported murders of Muslims due to domestic violence and all others that have not been reported in the US and around the world.

Islam does not teach nor condone abuse of any living thing. It teaches Muslims not to harm others and Muslims are taught to believe there is a grave punishment for Muslims who do harm to others or abuse the land, sea or plant life. Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the example of how excellent a human being can be, was known to have never harmed anyone in his family. He only used violence when on the battlefield against a clearly identified enemy. He taught self-restraint and peace during his time here on earth. Muslim domestic violence advocates want to make it clear without any doubt that these heinous crimes that have been committed in some of the homes in the Islamic community are not supported by the Holy Quran or the valid Ahadith (life sayings and teachings of Prophet Muhammad) and are not the norm. These are learned behaviors that have nothing to do with religious teachings or practices.

AltMuslimah, an online Islamic newspaper, has launched a web site (located at UNIFEM Say-No UNiTE) devoted to domestic abuse activism. They also were instrumental in coordinating a multi-racial and multi-ethnic domestic violence advocacy forum, last February, called V2A, hosted by Masjid Dar Al Islam in Arlington,Virginia. The newspaper has compiled a calendar of events for the weekend of February 12-14, 2010, which includes Khutbahs (Friday sermons) focusing on the subject of domestic abuse that will be given at Muslim places of worship throughout the US.

Muslims are uniting against domestic abuse in the US and abroad and want to make it known that domestic abuse in any form will no longer be tolerated in the Islamic community and that survivors of abuse and their supporters are speaking up and out.

To get more information about events associated with International Purple Hijab Day contact Hadayai Majeed at haleem1@aol.com or call 770-255-8500.

Ya Haqq!

Note:  Posted as an act of  public service and awareness.

The Prophet (pbuh) and His Granddaughter

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

The Prophet (peace be upon him) once offered prayer while carrying his granddaughter on his shoulder. “The Prophet (peach be unto him) led the people in prayer while she was on his shoulder. When he bowed he put her down and picked her up when he got up. He kept on doing so until he finished his prayer.” - Sunan of Abu-Dawoud

One commentator wrote:  “The purpose behind the action of the Prophet (peace be unto him) of carrying his granddaughter in the prayer was to set an example before the Arabs who considered having daughters and carrying them around as something bad or shameful. The Prophet…acted differently from them, and carried a girl on his neck in the prayer, and making something clear by example is much more effective than a mere precept.“  – Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 2,

Ya Haqq!

A Woman’s Heart

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man should have to seek Him first to find her” - Maya Angelou

“The word shams (sun) is feminine, and qamar (moon) is masculine. The sun burns itself out to give light and life to everything around, and the moon is muneer, meaning it reflects the light. Within itself it has no light; it radiates the brilliance of the sun. So when we shine as men, the implication is that we are reflecting the glorious light of our women. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’aala be pleased with them.”  – Shaykh Abdallah Adhami

Ya Haqq!

Book Review – Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan by Ali Eteraz

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Ali Eteraz is a thoughtful, intelligent, and at times, bitingly funny writer.  His very popular, now defunct blog, in which he wrote both comic and serious essays about Pakistani politics, Islamic sexuality, and extremist militancy, led to his eventually becoming a contributor to The Guardian UK and writing articles for such mainstream venues as Dissent, Foreign Policy, and The Huffington Post.

In Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan, Eteraz reveals his true gifts as a storyteller. It is a delight to read and utterly charming, lyrically written with exuberant good humor and insightful remembrances. It is also a brave book, driven by a keen and sardonic intelligence, and as he grows and gropes for personal and cosmic answers, one cannot but admire his daring. We root for him to succeed.

The book is broken into five parts, each signified by a different name he takes for himself, each identity a stage of his coming to terms with Pakistan, Islam, America, and his place in each.

The first part of the book, The Promised – Abir ul Islam, (literally, Perfume of Islam), evokes his parents’ hopes for him of a pious life; his father made a mannat, a Covenant with God, before he was born:“Ya Allah! If you should give me a son, I promise that we will become a great leader and servant of Islam.” His mother then went on Hajj with him as a baby and rubbed his chest on the wall of the Ka’ba in Mecca, so that Allah might bless him with reverence and resolve for his religion.  And this covenant did indeed guide his life for the next thirty years.

As a boy growing up in a Pakistan desert village, he joyfully embraces the sweetness of his youth and young manhood among his mother and father, Ammi and Pops, with all the love and strictness of a Muslim family in a Muslim country, surrounded by various grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  I especially loved his descriptions of life in rural Pakistan and of his wonderful mother Ammi, weaving lessons from the Koran with folk stories of Islam and the Jinn into daily living, which inhabited both reality and imagination in his young world. After a short and rather brutal madrassa education, that part of his life ends when his medical doctor father, Pops, gets a visa to work in America, and the family departs for every immigrant’s dream destination, Alabama.

In the second section, The American – Amir, the family moves repeatedly seeking opportunity, finally settling in the Bible Belt. In Alabama (Allahbama) he enters High School and decides to legally change his name to Amir to distance himself from his parents’ growing fundamentalism amid his teenage shyness and sexual angst.  It is the shortest section in the book, but beautifully captures the growing tension between him and his family and him and his loins.

In book three, The Fundamentalist – Abu Bakr Ramaq, he is off to college in Manhattan, his name changed once again after discovering he is descended from Abu Bakr Siddiq, the truthteller, a companion of the Prophet and the first Caliph of Islam (peace and blessings be upon them both). This revelation spurs his own fundamentalism, and he becomes Abu Bakr Ramaq (“spark of light”), representing the passion he now feels for Islam. One of the most intriguing parts of this section is his exploration of his faith, and confronting two of its greatest opponents – extremism and secularism. He dismisses Osama bin Laden as an opportunist and another in a long line of messianic pretenders. And his reading of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses juxtaposed with Islamic thinkers such as Zaid Shakir, who claims that secularism is un-Islamic, convinces him that the real battle is between Islam (and by extension all religions) and reason. The liberating freedom that reason gives is a curse that separates the here from the hereafter, the creation from the Creator.

After growing a scanty beard, and following a series of truly hilarious misadventures with the opposite sex, he finally journeys back to his desert village in Pakistan with his mother and younger brother to find a pious Muslim wife and trace his noble lineage. But he finds out that he is not only unrelated to Abu Bakr, but is in fact descended from a Hindu convert that changed his name from Savekhi to the close sounding Siddique. He is then threatened by Taliban-style thugs just for being an American, and the family must be hastily escorted out of town and out of the country by his uncle’s military unit.

The fourth book, The Postmodern – Amir ul Islam, (literally, Prince of Islam), a combination of the his assumed and given name, suggests that he is reclaiming Islam only so that he can internalize it into something more manageable. He is crestfallen at his failure in Pakistan, blaming its backwardness and close mindedness on not being recognized for the pious Muslim he thinks himself to be. He willfully transfers to a Christian university in Atlanta and sets out to study Philosophy, especially Postmodernism, the bane of Islam and religion in general.  He is admirably honest in exposing his failure as the result of his own ego trying to impress others with his piety, a common young pretension, concluding that Islam and its most ardent followers in the mother country have failed him. Postmodernism is his revenge. And sex.

Yet he still carries the weight of the covenant made before he was born, so to accomplish this double and conflicting task, he strives for and becomes President of the MSA, the Muslim Students Association. He becomes BMOC, Big Muslim on Campus. Leading the Friday prayer, lecturing and give advice as an imam, taking up the Palestinian cause at the start of the second Intifada, he desperately tries to convince himself and everyone else of his Islamic credentials. In still seeking his own Islamic reflection in the mirrored approval of other Muslims, his religion becomes not a sacred obligation between himself and Allah, but a status conscious mirage between himself and every other Muslim on the planet.

Finally, he has had enough. After graduation, he moves to Washington DC, having obtained a fellowship for aspiring lawyers with the US Department of Justice.  A few months later, the planes hit the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on 9/11.

At last we come to The Reformer – Ali Eteraz, the fifth book, wherein he takes his final name, which means “Noble Protest”.  After 9/11, he ignored his work as a legal associate, and wrote, researched, and formed friendships on the internet in preparation of his obsessive drive to save Islam from it “idiots.” In the process, he loses his job, his apartment, his money and his family. He abandons his faith and moves to Las Vegas, Sin City, an almost perfect metaphor. After a few months of despondency, the reenergized reformer travels to Kuwait to convince Arabs to be part of the reformation of Islam. While staying with his friend Ziad, he plans an Islamic think tank of brave and accomplished Muslims to combat the loud militancy of the extremists; he schemes to reinvent Islam as a religion of equality, peace, and justice to fulfill his covenant. Ziad is a modern Muslim who couldn’t care less about such reformist ideas, and acts as his alter ego. Their brotherly back and forth finally breaks through the cycles of transformation and allows him to start over.

While visiting his mother back in California, Ali Eteraz comes full circle:  “My little Abir,“ she say. “You grew up all these years, just to become innocent again.”

Ya Haqq!

Sufi Comics – The Blind Astronomer

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

From Arif and Ali Vakil’s Sufi Comics blog. Reposted with permission.

Indeed,  within us is the greatest universe, a fountain of surprises :)

Ya Haqq!

Monday Musings!!!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Alhamdulillah!  The Al Mihrab blog has named Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel, one of the Five Good Books for American Muslims (and everyone else). Check out all the books by clicking HERE.

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It is told that on many a morning the venerable Khwaja Sheikh Bahaudin Naqsbandi (also called Baha al-Din, and in some parts of the world known as El-Shah) would stand on his doorstep, look out and think: “Everyone is a sheikh these days. Where has the dervish gone? Are there any left?”

(My late Master, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, often said something similar.)

* * *

The name of the Prophet’s (pbuh) mother was Aaminah bint Wahb, and his father’s name was Abdullah ibn Abdul-Mutalib

Translated:

Aaminah, the daughter of Wahb
Abdullah, the son of Abdul-Mutalib

So this means Wahb was the maternal grandfather of the Prophet (pbuh), and Abdul-Mutalib was the paternal grandfather of the Prophet (pbuh).

(For all the grandfathers out there, peace and blessings be upon us all.)

Ya Haqq!

New Year Resolution 2010

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“I shall pass this way but once, any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, because I shall not pass this way again.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ya Haqq!

Happy New Year 2010 :)

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Happy New Year 2010 to all my Brothers and Sister of every faith and race and creed around the world!  May God bless you all this year with health, happiness, wisdom, and love, so that we may better serve God by serving His creation.  I can think of no better resolution for the New Year than to try and live up to these true words:

Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ya Haqq!

Surrendering to Love

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Surrendering to love is the hardest damn work I have ever done in my life. Put me working in prisons to teach murderers how to give good massages or give me tortured women who haven’t slept without nightmares in ten years, but don’t ask me to be open and receive tender loving care of someone who is going to know all my dirty laundry and stick around anyway!

Why is it so hard? Well, I guess I’ve just been on the road so long I don’t know the difference between my feet and my boots and here comes someone to offer a foot rub and I gotta’ feel how tired my feet are and how long I‘ve been wanting some good touch and lay down all those other times of disappointment and confusion and let this in without overwhelming myself or anyone else with grief and longing. I didn’t learn how to do this at home or school. Did you? It takes a combination of mercy and love we give ourselves.

- John Calvi, from True Love, The Friends (Quaker) Journal, 1992

Ya Haqq!

You Are Christ’s Hands

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

In the joyous and loving spirit of Christmas, and to celebrate the birth of Jesus, or as he is know in Islam, Isa ibn Mariyam (pbuh), a poem by one of His sainted devotees.

You Are Christ’s Hands

Christ has no body now on Earth but yours,

No hands but yours,

No feet but yours,

Yours are the eyes

Through which look out

Christ’s compassion to the world;

Yours are the feet with which he is to go about

Doing Good.

Yours are the hands with which he is to bless

Humanity now.

- Saint Teresa of Avila

Ya Haqq!