Why are people so obsessed with hijab?

I found this little "article" today, and for my own part became slightly irritated. I really just think some people have no shame, no shame at all. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/22/to-my-dear-hijabi-sisters/

And here is something else, from another blog. (Emphasis mine.)

"Most men and women in the west work, go to school and live quite comfortably having work mates, fellow students, doctors etc that are not Muslim and are of the opposite gender. If I can walk into a meeting at work, sit at a table full of Non Muslim men, be able to exchange ideas and build projects from the ground up, why can’t I do the same, with such relative ease with my Muslim brothers? Why must we maintain these facades of fake modesty, to the point that we are incoherent around each other or we refuse adamantly to meet each other’s eyes (having no problem doing so with other people?) " http://nisaa.ca/index.php/featurearticles/comments/over_sexualized_muslim_men_syndrome/

I noticed this at an MSA meeting last night. About half the sisters present wore hijab, the other half not. Neither group was being immodest by any stretch of the imagination and the ones without scarves weren't especially flirty nor the ones in scarves being anti-social, but uniformly brothers seemed to have problems talking/listening to a sister in hijab, but not the ones without. Brothers who have no problems in general talking to women who aren't Muslim, or even Muslims without hijab, go totally weird when talking to one in hijab.

Why? Why is there this fake modesty, and why is it associated with hijab?? Are women who wear hijab merely pretending to be pious, and thus deserving the scrutiny of their peers? Or are they actually more pious, and the others are just jealous? Or is there no difference? I hate when people say hijab is just an outward sign, that it's a behavior as well--rather, I hate when they say this with the intention of dismissing the item itself. The truth is, wearing it makes a certain kind of behavior easier, but doesn't make other behaviors impossible. Do they say that women who wear hijab aren't any more modest than those who don't... so they just shouldn't wear it? Is that their point? Does anyone else find that conclusion bereft of logic?

What then, is the reason for the change in behavior? Suddenly a woman dons hijab and then is too high and mighty for communication with men? Men, even Muslim men, who would chat quite freely with women uncovered, and non-Muslims as well. That is fake modesty, a game that serves no one.

Ugh, school.

Yes, it's tedious. I have a large notebook with a collection of class notes, the instructor's notes (printed from online versions), homework problems, my solutions to them, and extra paper. Two classes with the same instructor, same style of notes... tedious.

Has anyone else noticed problems with blogger? My browser seems unable to display the start and log in pages still... very strange--though I haven't tried it on a different computer to see. Speaking of computers... mine is still dead. It will turn on now that I've replaced the power supply, but it won't boot. So... my plans to "maybe" buy a laptop for this semester are moving out of the "maybe" stage. And new exciting summer plans starting to move out of the "I wish I could..." stage and into the "maybe" stage.

What else is a maybe? Maybe I'll finish my homework tonight and get to sleep before 1am.

School for real?!

Alhamdulillah--it looks like I will be able to go to school this semester!! So have to catch up on my homework! I'm still planning to help with the dawah table--inshaAllah, but I just can't afford to spend as much time as I did last semester on it. The coordinator wants us to have it every week... and while that's a noble intention, I just am not sure we have the manpower. Do people care? Will they even show up? I felt like last semester the burden fell almost squarely on myself and another sister, who by the end were the only ones helping. Not to mention at the beginning of the semester it was me and a brother doing most of the work after some original volunteers bailed. It's hard to be enthusiatic when you feel like you are doing extra work and most of the people you're working with don't seem to care.

My computer is currently under the weather... not sure if I mentioned this previously. A new power supply is on it's way and should arrive by early next week, inshaAllah, and then I suppose I can try my hand at replacing it. In the meantime, I am workign way too much this week. I think in total this week, from last Saturday through this Friday, I'll have worked 47 hours and gone to class, and on top of that Monday was a holiday. I am physically and mentally exhausted, not from anything that was especially taxing itself but just from the endurance of the entire weak. I've been getting up at 4 to go work in the lab, then going to class or work afterwards. And after work, going home basically. Last night I worked an extra hour for someone and then hung out up there a little bit longer. I want to sleep, I want to work out... anything but sit in front of a computer! So I guess it's a good thing mine's busted.

My Arabic class is coming along every so slowly... since Ramadan we've learned alif, baa, taa, thaa, haa, khaa, and jeem. And kasrah, fathah and dammah, plus a few conversational phrases like, ahlan wa sahlan, hadratuk(i) ismuk(i), and ana min medinat __. Seven letters though... this is kinda silly. There's a long way to go. Granted, I did try to learn most of the letters over the summer (yeah, last summer) so I can read a little bit better while my pronunciation is awful. I'm making a point to try to read out Arabic when I see it, to understand it... but that's not especially often.

The exam for ING speaker certification is coming up next Saturday, so I'm re-reading the booklet/kit with the guidelines, script, and FAQ's to practice up. It would be fun to try to teach the real basics of Islam in a school once in a while so I hope there is a demand here for speakers. InshaAllah I'll pass and be able to move along.

I spent most of the break certain that paying for this semester would be nearly impossible so ruled out participating in the sorority. Now that tuition isn't going to be a problem, I suppose I could still remain active, but my heart isn't really in it, I can't devote anything to it to really help--and I feel when I'm there that I should, and need to. So even though I could, I think I won't participate this time around. InshaAllah that will keep me relieved of extra stress. It used to be a kind of outlet--to go hang out with girls who actually understood how hard my classes were. Girls who were on the same level--especially when mostly I was seeing guys anyway. But now since I spend so much time with girls (granted, not usually the same kinds of conversations) in general, it's not important to me. And since I have pretty much stopped socializing with any guys here at school, I don't feel like I need a change. Yes, my classes are still full of boys, but I don't find myself talking to them as much.

That's quite a bit of catching up... I should finish the 'between extremes' thought before I forget it! So inshaAllah.......

Thanks for reading
Ma'salama :-)

Been a while...

I was having trouble with the blogger.com/start page and couldn't figure out how to log in until today--that partially explains the delay. The last two weeks have been interesting, trying to decide what I should do with my life. What I want to do, what I can do, what I feel obligated to do... attending school this semester does not appear to be in the realm of things that I "can" do, despite wanting and feeling obligated to. And yesterday I received permission from my boss to work full-time this semester instead of attending school. Then what? Look for another job? Try to return to school? Just work?

I'd rather not disclose some relevant personal information here, but returning to school in the near future does not seem to be a viable option. If I even want to. So, is it something to sacrifice? Not the education so much as the degree. I'm exploring a few other options... other ways to complete the degree, or instead of the degree some certification--which would require far less time and money, and allow me to (inshaAllah) do something I would rather do than engineering--and that is attend an Islamic school. And right now, it seems to be a one or the other kind of deal; first one and then the other is less an option, as the first is slipping out of my hands or else pushing me underwater. Yes, I feel like I'm drowning in going to school. Sad, but true.

The Second One

Alhamdulillah, this Eid certainly was a Best Day Ever--making it Best Day Ever #2! Alhamdulillah. It was really a wonderful day, even though... it started off kinda poorly. Why?

Well, the prayer was at 8. To give some perspective, sunrise was about 7:25. Meaning... you needed to pray fajr first thing and you best be on your way... or maybe even pray fajr at the eid gathering!! I arrived by 8--this must be said. But spent entirely too long waiting in line just to get into the arena! Just to get in! Because women move sooooooooooo slow. It's like they've never prayed before!! Much less in a group! Women irritate me so much.. and I feel like I can say this totally sexist remark because I am a woman. They just do not know how to behave--too many of them causing trouble. First of all, they take up too much space. It's like they didn't even know that had to be in rows, or they thought they were the only ones coming. So they'd spread out a blanket and "picnic" on the tarp when there should be room around them for people on the sides, a row behind, a row in front... grr.. They didn't want to fill in gaps, they wanted to take their strollers in (where are stroller going to fit??) This room is so crowded, totally full, and people still not having room to pray. Quite a lot of people didn't have room to pray thanks to these shenanigans, actually.

Once they started forming rows, they wouldn't fill in gaps. On top of that, the rows were spaced too far apart--a good 10 more rows could have fit in the women's section--and 10 more rows were needed at least to accomodate the women (like myself) standing in the doorway just watching this mess. Then once the prayer started instead of still forming rows people just stopped and prayed in the aisles... mind you, they were in the way, meaning they were blocking everyone else behind them who now had nowhere to go.

Why is there never enough space for women? A few reasons--one, the women take up too much space; they don't close the gaps, their rows are spaced far apart, the kids are running around... but two, they have all the kids anyway!! They need to be stricter and they are lax, and it's such a mess. Talking during the khutbah, walking around and talking during the khutbah!!! Shameful!! I would comment about the brothers doing the same thing, but compared to the sisters, it's not worth noticing. So many women were moving, it was such a disaster. I'm embarassed to be a woman. :-(

But why is that?? Why don't women know how to pray in congregation?? Because they don't. Thanks to the last hundred generations of Muslims who have forbidden women to pray at home--assuring that women have no knowledge of their deen and persist in such foolishness as I saw that day. How horribly embarassing. Oh, and did I mention, that several of the girls were looking around at the mess, from their rows, during the prayer? Yes, the imam reciting, and they're looking left, right, up, behind, anywhere but down in front. Sigh.

But THEN! I listened to the khutbah what of it that I could and afterwards got to greet the sisters I knew. Afterwards, I said. Some sisters were just too impatient, like I said they had to get up and socialize during the khutbah. Why the hurry to get eid over and done with? Why do they not care about the religious aspect but only want to move on to socializing??

Once I left I was invited to eat at someone's house... someone's mother's house, actually, and the food was soo wonderful. And plenty of people came, including my sister's old neighbors (who happened to be Muslim, though I didn't know them really before I converted and really didn't meet them until this Eid.) Then I went to someone else's house... from a boisterous family gathering to a prim and proper daytime social, it seemed like. The second was so quiet and to be honest, kind of boring--and I was there for a while, almost 6 hours. By the time that was over I was just tired, went home and to bed.

But the two hours I spent at the first house was wonderful enough for the whole day. Great food (everywhere), great company (everywhere), and really celebrating an Eid for the first time since I'd become Muslim made it the Best Day Ever. :-)

Best Day Ever

Now I know a kid who spent 2 years in Chile doing mission work--he's Mormon. I've talked to him about Islam a few times, I think he might even be taking Arabic this spring, but what interests me is his outlook when you ask him how he's doing. He always tells me "Best Day Ever #..." with some number. 256, 710... It's something I'm thinking of trying to start to do. In reality every day is a blessing; we say alhamdulillah--all praise is for God, good or bad. But there's actually more good than bad most of the time.

Today was one of those Best Days Ever. Let's start with #1. Today was Best Day Ever #1. Pleasant, charming, intriguing conversation... a day of fasting (for 'Arafat), jummu'ah, and an iftar at night, then more conversation, hm! Seriously, the iftar was special--got to talk to a few people I hadn't seen in a while (in one case, a very long while!) The food left something to be desired, actually... more. But alhamdulillah--so many people came there wasn't much to eat. :-) Whoever said it's good reverts learn Islam before meeting Muslims obviously didn't meet these ladies. They are so sweet, so friendly, would do just about anything to help you out. It wasn't Ramadan but still so nice to see all the sisters come out and in such good spirits. :-)

And tomorrow is Eid! Some plans... some non-plans... some thoughts about what to spend my free time doing. Eid Mubarak to anyone reading, I hope it's a best day ever for you too!

A pizza metaphor, part II (not the solution)

Now if we see that our problem is ourselves to start with, and we must rectify ourselves in the first place--why are we asking for strength against our enemies??

That's what irritated me about the du'a in the first place... we need to tackle ourselves before we even begin to look at the rest of the world. We need to correct our own problems, our own mistakes--our own pepperoni pizzas, until we don't have to worry about any pizza shops in our midst because nobody would buy any pizza! Or at least, hardly anybody.

Maybe then we can worry about "enemies." More destruction to Islam today may be safely and squarely blamed on Muslims themseves. Uneducated, bigoted, prejudiced, immature, selfish Muslims. Want to take over the world? See me smirk at you. You want strength against your enemy? Who is your enemy? India? Israel? The United States? If you can't even stop yourself from eating the pizza, then why, why do you think you can move an entire country to agree with you? Stop yourself, and then stop one person. That's a start. We need strength for ourselves--to keep our deen, to raise our children, to protect our brothers and sisters first from Shaytaan who has preyed on them far too long.

Strength against our enemies?? This was the du'a after softening our hearts. Soften our hearts, increase us in iman--in faith!! To grow in faith, to become good people, to correct ourselves. Then we might have a chance to use any strength against our enemies and then we ask for it.

To me it sounded more like a bleating sheep's battle cry. You need to stop looking through a telescope when the problem can be seen in a mirror.

A pizza metaphor, part I (the problem)

Why should I complain about someone's du'a? Do I even have that right? OK, I'm not courageous enough to do it in person... yet. Or maybe I am but I feel it's bad taste.. here it is:

May Allah swt soften our hearts and strengthen us against our enemies.

This was part of a response to a comment I made about how trying to fix symptoms instead of the real problem with Muslims today should start with tawheed, like the preaching of the Prophet pbuh, and I closed with a du'a for soft hearts, wisdom, and other things.

I so do not see the relationship to any of my comments and "strengthen us against our enemies." For real. Our problem (as Muslims) is ourselves. Pepperoni pizza exists, you can get it on every street corner, but does that mean you have to?? And whose fault is it if you go eat pepperoni pizza? The pizza shop's?? Pardon the humorous analogy, please substitute it with any activity you deem "haraam" that you frequently see Muslims engaging in, or any "not recommended" activity. For example, flirting and socializing between genders, wearing flashy and immodest clothes, drinking alcohol... is removing the pizza shop going to solve the problem? It might stop one from eating pizza, but was that really the problem? No, the shaytaan does not attack us from only one angle, succumbing in one area of our lives demonstrates weakness there and elsewhere. So what's the solution? How can you fix other people? Lead them away from the diversion and distractions and back onto the straight path?

Well if you want to lead anyone, you better be going the right way to start with. And you have to demonstrate some reason for your path--why is it better? Why should anyone want to take it when it's harder?? Because it is harder.

Removing the pizza shop won't solve the problem. Not if people don't care if pepperoni pizza is right or wrong. You have to let them see from your side why it's wrong. Once they get to where you are, they can see it, then they can stop.

May Allah swt help us all avoid those vices in our lives which distract us from this deen.

The Easy

It's hard to complain about a 4-day weekend... and I don't really have any complaints. Saturday and Sunday were largely uneventful--time enough spent chatting on the computer for sure, but what else I can't really remember. I did spend some time reviewing a show I used to like, that I had saved on my computer, that's been mostly fun. Monday was Christmas of course, again I baked pies--very liberal on the spices... something special, those were--and cookies and drove to my sister's house to spend the evening with "family." It was pretty nice... dinner first, then cards with my nieces then opening up gifts... yes, some for me. Mostly nice, albeit useless, things.

I got to have a girly-girl chat with my brother's girlfriend, play checkers with my niece, legos with my nephews, and yahtzee with my sister and her daughter. This way I escaped much of the serious conversation amongst the "adults" and I think I like it better that way.

Tonight I received a phone call from a friend with something I just had to see, on facebook. An acquaintance of hers (I can't say I really know the guy, more than simply who he is) posted an article from islamqa.com (*eyes rolling*) about mixing of genders... should women stay home to avoid mixing? A laughable concept really... while it might have been mildly amusing to do so, I wasn't terribly interested in commenting on the article. I pointed my friend to islamonline with some appropriate answers to the original question that tend less towards the blind and obnoxious self-righteous attitude of the post itself.

Men who hide behind computer screens while imagining a world where women are chained to their homes--forbidden to work, shop, even visit family--have nothing to contribute to this society, in my opinion; nothing to benefit the ummah, nothing to improve the state of mankind. The frustration of their impotency, I'm sure, drives them to oppress and silence the voice of women in the first place. "Nobody is listening to ME, so I must force THEM to be shut up!"

One such coward who replied decided to remark on the boys and girls who had been notified of this post. He claimed that many of them don't even pray (as if he would know!) and that hardly any of the women wore hijab and if they did, they didn't do so properly. To the contrary, a number of the girls wear it and quite satisfactorialy, unless your only standard of wearing hijab means full niqab or something of that nature. Perhaps he could remark instead on the "mixing" of the men tagged by the poster. Mixing with ladies? Even on facebook--this being his post, he the one to find the article and quote it after all--should he so unabashedly seek the attention of women? Even for "advice?" Not according to the standard of that article at any rate. Modesty to the author seems a one-way street.

I don't think such men as this make up the majority, because I don't find these opinions amongst the men that I know personally. If I'm wrong, what a sad situation for Islam in the 21st century--yes I said for Islam and not for women. For if you treat your women this way, what do you expect of your children? Probably shouldn't expect to have any children for one thing. It's a recipe for intolerance, and rebellion, neither a favorable option in the context of Islamic survival.

But I don't think my readers will disagree with me here so I'll just leave it at that.

I've set the blog to notify weblogs.com if you would like to receive notifications of blog updates. Enjoy that happy feature. :-)

Graduation party

InshaAllah the next time I'm invited to a party by Muslim ladies... I'm going to ask... is this a ladies-only party? So inshaAllah next time I won't be unprepared, expecting to be wearing a scarf the entire time and covered, then show up and everyone else looks like a doll and is dancing and I just feel like an uncomfortable oaf.

Now, it wasn't that bad... but it wasn't great. I was invited to a party for a certain sister's graduation. This sister has to be the shyest person I have ever, in my life, known. So.. a party? Seemed strange to me, but nevertheless I went. And the poor girl spent a large part of it out of sight. The first shock when I arrived, however (which was late, as I often make it a point to arrive late to such events--arriving early means more socializing with strangers...) was that I didn't recognize anyone. I just walked into a room of Muslim sisters that I see on a semi-regular basis, well enough to pick any of them out from across a room or in a crowd, even with hijab on (in a room of hijabis) just by noticing their habits, how they stand or tie their scarf, etc. But without a scarf... I'm looking at everyone's face, staring, trying to remember their names! "Uh.. you look kind of familiar..." How embarassing!!

But it was fun anyway. Once I got into it, figured out who everyone was, had some sugar (necessary for dancing...) and made a fool of myself trying to almost pretend like I knew what I was supposed to do when they turned on some Arab music. Event of the evening... what's strange is how I can liken it to a sorority semi-formal almost! Granted, there were mostly two age-groups. Quite a bit older than I am, and quite a bit younger. The college-aged group accounted mostly for me, Sara, Sarah, Nema, Razia, another girl whose name I never learned, and Safiya. The older than I am group started at about 10-15 years older. This group of girls is relatively close to my age, going to about 20--the younger girls, except for maybe 1 or 2, started at 15 and just went down... way down to the little girls. So you had the mothers and the friends of the mother, and their daughters basically. And then a few more single chicas like myself. And there was dancing. Despite being mostly not college aged girls, they weren't afraid to dance and have a good time... though it was this uppity mideastern stuf instead of hip hop (I can do without lyrics telling me to shake something up in someone's face, honestly). And sure, it was fun. Most of the dancing we did at formal/semiformal was just girls--the dates (the men) weren't so into it usually.. and it was kind of a lot like this! Everyone dressed up (except me...). Not quite semi-formal but they did all look nice.

Anyway... nice way to spend an evening.