For Alia

I do not have all of the answers she needs
Knowing she has so many
keys already
And is unknowingly far, far ahead of me
Who am I to teach her?

If the fitrah is purity, she
is the embodiment of such
So much that it keeps me running
in the distance,
For fear she will discover
I am an imposter

Never ceasing to marvel at how much I
have lived and seen and known and felt
Oh daughter, it was not a life.

She is the essence of fourteen hundred years
of wisdom
Having experienced no real injustices from the world
but rather from me
She sometimes withers at the idea of absorbing
the cruel reality of this life
Saying she wants no part of
growing older

Except to be a mother like the one she believes
I am

How can I berate or compare or boast
While knowing inside I am small and selfish and cannot be
Who she is—this daughter, this gift
She, a sanctuary from the haunting of my youth
Will the ghosts ever disappear?

She is not lost, she cannot lose,
Being so far ahead in this game
No spoils!
I pray no spoils will come this way, not from this war
that wages within the one

The one she believes in, confides in…no, I keep
this war private, grotesque, internal.

My defense is to preserve—a preservation of truths
and rights in this world
and she who is the mirror image I wanted to view
but could not, for all of the self-loathing
and fear clouding the
way.

No debris, she brings with her no debris, no
fall-out, no baggage, no guilt
Just khayr and barakeh

The image stares back at me
Smiling, forgiving,
and approving.

Ahlan wa Sahlan

Welcome, readers from Nigeria and Daytona Beach! Feel free to leave comments. Have always wanted to see Nigeria. I think everyone must travel to Africa at some point in his life. EVERYONE. And I don't mean Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, or Tunisia. I mean AFRICAAAAAAAAAA.

Have seen Daytona Beach. Hey, can you still drive on the beach there?

It seems like Br. Umar Lee has a super wide range of readers, and that is great. His posts are timely, rough around the edges sometimes, but he writes from the gut. Or heart. Or both.

Recently I've been enjoying his posts about the rise and fall of the Salafi daw'ah in N. America. Our community in AL witnessed similar happenings, but on a much smaller scale. Can't wait till he opens the comments...I'll need to brew a 10-cup pot o' coffee for that read.

Faltered a teensy weensy bit

Today we had lunch with Umm Zaid. I've been off the white flour for 8 days now. (just whole grains) I ate some today, but did not go overboard. It was a nice lunch, although rushed, because I had to take kids to the dentist. I ate my plate and half of a child's uneaten plate. This is why we moms gain weight...we have to finish our youngins' food! Anyhow, I am not going to say that I fell off of the wagon because I did not do my usual lunch follow-up with a pile of sugary something. With only eight days having passed without getting my daily sweet fix, I honestly don't miss it. I did find some chocolate at Carrefour that is dark, 70% cocoa. Dr. Oz says that this is enough to satisfy a sweet tooth, and he's right. Three or four bites of it, and my serotonin levels are goooooooood.

Some things are still affordable in Amman. Dental check-ups for kids, for example, are 3 JD per child at my dentist's office. She (my dentist) was educated in Germany and the U.S. She is all about preventive dentistry, not the "yank a tooth when it's aching" philosophy. It is unreal how many children walk around this country with black--solid black--teeth. Most parents justify it by saying their kids will lose them anyway, so why worry so much about taking care of the 'milk teeth.' I say the opposite. If you teach them to brush and floss while still young, they will carry on good hygiene habits as they get older. It's the same principle with teaching your kids to pray or have good table manners or whatever you want to engrain in them. You can't just wait till they turn 15 and say "Ok, enough is enough, now you're going to do what I want."

But that's a post for another day.

Still working on my poem.

The Sound of Silence

Ho hum, it has been a very comment-free week. Just feeling a little lonely in blogistan. That's ok.

First Born

I love all of my children. Equally, yes; in different ways, yes.

My oldest child, a girl, never ceases to surprise me. She is an amalgam of all of the goodness that I wish I had. Even as a youngster I know I did not possess all that innate goodness.

MashaAllah, TabarakAllah.

So last night as I was combing her Pocahontas-like hair, I started to compose a poem in my head. She is the oldest, she takes on a lot of responsibilities, she takes the brunt of punishment sometimes, she is my right hand, she studies hard and is kind to everyone, young and old... Anyhow, poem to come, inshaAllah.

A tribute to my gal.

To be 18 again...

In You on a Diet they say that genetics plays a large role in whether or not we will be overweight later in life.

Dr. Oz says to take a look at your parents and grandparents at age 18, and take a look at what you looked like at age 18, and these images should give you insight into your ideal body type.

So, I found this picture of my Mom, circa 1959, at age 18. She was a vision of loveliness. I know my Dad was thin and trim at age 18 as well. And my Grandmothers.

But wasn't everyone relatively in good shape up until the advent of the Swanson's TV dinner??

My kids have gotten such a kick out of looking at this picture of their "Teta." It's from her yearbook, Jones Valley High School, class of '59.

Dar un Paseo

Tariq Nelson has a post about a recent study done on boosting brain power. The key to improving memory and attention is walking. Fascinating, and so simplistic.

The You On a Diet plan emphasizes walking for thirty minutes EVERY DAY, no excuses. You can even break it up into three 10-minute segments if you are not able to walk for thirty minutes at a time. This plan is really, really doable. Again, my overweight or out-of-shape friends, get this book!

Here's a timely quote:

"By trying the very thing that's designed to help us lose weight--a diet--we've created a no-win system of failure that spins us into a cycle of blame. And what's not to blame? The experts blame our societal fatness on free restaurant bread and meals with Mount McKinley-size portions. OR we blame our fatness on fast food (for the grease), magazine covers (for the unrealistic body images that taunt us to smear our self-esteem in daily fistfuls of cheesecake), sixty-hour workweeks (for making us sit down all day), cloud-soft recliners and reality TV (for making us sit down all night), sausage (blech!), or an intervention-worthy Velveeta addiction (double blech!).
But deep down in your gut (there, over by the sticky buns you ate two weeks ago), there's only one thing you blame for the size of your gut:
You.
You blame you."
p. 164, You on a Diet by Mehmet Oz and Michael F. Roizen

Time to end the cycle of blame, no?

Shout Out!

A special "SHOUT OUT" to my friend, Um Omar, for lending me her new book, YOU on a Diet, by Mehmet Oz. It's a fun read and I have a completely new appreciation for my small intestine.

Did you know that most (90%) of the body's serotonin, or "feel good" neurotransmitter, is not produced in the brain, but rather in the small intestine? This is why overeating/depression are so closely linked. There is truth to the term "comfort food."

If anyone has a problem with food or with consistently choosing to eat the wrong things and is on a cycle of endless weight loss/gain, GET THIS BOOK.

Family Extravaganza

Yesterday was a true "Family Day." Alhamdulillah.

It was the first of the New Hijri year, so my husband's place of employment was cerrado.

We set out early, before 11 a.m., headed to the park. The park was still empty and had not yet been invaded by the picnicking garbage dumpers who inevitably feel it is their duty to destroy the natural beauty of the largest and best park in all of Jordan.

I was able to play with my two youngest "jungle gymmers" without fighting other children or parents for the use of a swing or slide. No men were blowing smoke at me or staring at me awkwardly. No kids were cursing at me or saying "Heeya b'tahki Ajnabee!"as if "foreign" is a language of its own. There was just one tall, blonde Russian man and his little toddler sharing the park equipment, and for 20 minutes my kids and his child played together without throwing sand or kicking one another. It was playtime co-existence. It was delightful.

I then joined Abu Farouq down on the soccer field with the two older ones, and we decided to hike all the way up the giant hill where the new, ultra-modern King Hussein masjid sits. We prayed dhuhr, then went exploring, walking and kicking the ball and running all through the park (and I almost coughed up a lung, but that's ok!).

We then went and had lunch at a lovely family restaurant where I was not obliterated by a thump-thump-thump musical beat, having to scream across the table to ask my husband to pass the salt, nor did I have to watch any half-naked ladies dance on the giant screen while I ate my food. Nope, just quiet, nice atmosphere and the kids were SO completely grateful to have a real family day, with their father smiling and their mother relaxed.

Since we moved here, these non-stressed family moments have been few and far between. Alhamdulillah for everything, but yesterday gets a gold star in my memory book.

私は私の中心で日本語である (or, I am Japanese in my Heart)

Octopus salad, anyone?

My sister has joked for many years that although she is an American white gal who struggles with weight, inside she is really a thin Japanese woman.

Me, too.

Last year I had to make an emergency trip to Los Angeles, CA, because my father was gravely ill. It had been 15 years since I had visited LA, but what I remembered about it the most was the propensity of beautifully fit people and good ethnic food.

It was a five-hour flight from Amman to Amsterdam, and then a 17-hour long haul from Amsterdam to LA. Seated next to me was a very large Nigerian man who could have won first place on American Idol, hands down. He sang the whole time, mostly gospel stuff, and in between singing he would tell me about the state of the Muslims in Nigeria, Muslim vs. Christian violence, Muslims in politics, etc. I got the idea that he was not too fond of Muslims and could not conceive of how I had actually chosen to become one, but he tried to be polite.

When the food cart rolled around, we had the choice between...you guessed it! Chicken and fish. He chose chicken. I believe the portion size was 1/8 of a normal breast, smothered in some kind of sauce that did not taste too good. But, because this was KLM, we had a lovely salad topped with a healthy portion of smoked salmon. I was so happy to see my favorite oily fish and I gobbled it down.

The Nigerian brother, however, had never seen salmon, and made a horrid face when he tried to swallow it. So I asked him, "What's the food like in Nigeria?" and he said, "We eat fish from the river, lots of meat, lots of corn products, and that's basically it." He asked the flight attendant for another piece of chicken, and she told him that each passenger was only allowed one meal. I think that chicken was enough to last him, oh, five minutes or so.

When we finally landed in LA, I was reunited with my sisters at the airport. In the taxi ride to our hotel, one of our main discussions was what we were going to eat for dinner. This is just the way our brains are wired--we got it from our Dad, a fan of fine foods. We decided since I had been living in the mostly land-locked country of Jordan for the past four years that I was going to do my best to eat fish every chance I got while in LA.

And I did. We had sushi, lots of sushi. We ate green tea ice cream for dessert. And then we ate more sushi. I think in the four days I was with my sister, we ate sushi every meal. And I felt stupendous! I was on a super duper jet lag and keeping a vigil at the hospital for my Dad, but I felt really, really good. It was such a beautiful change from the gut-filling staple foods of Jordan: bread, rice, bread, rice, bread, potatoes, bread. In twelve days I dropped eight pounds, and returned to Jordan feeling wonderful.

I have never seen Miso paste here, but I did find Japanese sticky rice and sushi wrappers. The problem is, I can't find the good stuff to go in it, without costing me a mint. So I'm trying to do the next best thing, which is to eat as much oily fish as I can, at least once a week.

If anyone reading is Japanese, please, share your secrets.

And 私はある寿司がほしいと思う!

Don't mess with my head, Fred

Someone read a comment I put on Tariq Nelson's blog a few weeks back about not playing mind games in a marriage. This person asked, "What do you mean by mind games?"

If you came from a dysfunctional home (divorced parents, alcohol/drug abuse, physical abuse, mental illness, or a combination of any of these), chances are you may carry on the sickness of dysfunction in your own household, with your spouse and/ or your kids. It is not impossible to break the cycle, but it can be a painful process. Most of the time it requires a huge self-inventory that reveals some unpleasant personality traits or seemingly innate behaviors that must be changed.

Since statistically half of all American kids will come from families with divorced parents, they have that 50% chance of making their own marriages work. Not good odds at all. But, it can be done!

First of all, be honest with your spouse. Women tend to be more honest than men do, mostly due to the man's resistance to opening up his heart and spilling out his innermost feelings. Women want to share and confide and have love reciprocated. But the mistake is that many times we expect to receive the same way we give, and so many men are just not wired to do this. Men tend to want to be admired and have their egos boosted. Recently I attended some classes on improving marriage and being a better wife, and this was the consistent theme: Men want a circle of admiration more than they want love--admiration from their spouse, their kids, and their circle of peers. Now, this might not hold true for all men, but I tried a few simple "ego boosters" on my husband and had great results.

Example: Things as simple as telling your husband when he comes home from work how much you value his commitment to providing for the family, even if you really want to say, "You are such a workaholic and why don't you ever spend time with me or the kids?!?" The nag factor will score you zero points, while the effort to praise, I promise, will delight him. (he may not show it immediately...but believe me, it will affect him)

This is our M.O.: We women withhold admiration. We nag, we berate, we often try to chip away at a man's 'manliness,' with the "I told you so's" and the "what did you go and do a thing like that for's?" thinking that this will break him or make him putty in our hands. But, from experience, I find that this type of psychological approach ends up doing nothing more than driving the man further away, giving him more resolve to be bull-headed or neglectful or hurtful or even, astaghfirAllah, unfaithful. How many times have we heard that the man who cheats does not do it for the sex or because the mistress is so much more beautiful than his own wife, but rather cheats because he is getting attention and no-strings-attached admiration.

Of course, this is a two-way street. Women need attention and admiration and re-affirmation, but in different ways. And men can be masters at mind games as well, usually resulting in the woman losing her self-worth, feeling inadequate--or even crazy. Here's an example:

Husband and wife have gigantic argument where he says she is unstable person and compares her to others and is super nasty, but then days later when she wants to discuss, he says it never happened. Says he didn't say those things at all and her perception of world is skewed. Heck, she even has to take meds to have normal personality.

Mind games!

One only has to look at the anti-depressant market to see that women are the biggest partakers. I'm not a Tom Cruise type who says that true chemical imbalances do not exist, because they do. But why are so many women feeling crazy these days? It starts at home. Somewhere between the age of 18 and when women get married, they start to lose themselves. I do not know why this is. Marriages fail, kids get screwed up, it takes thousands of dollars of therapy or medication, then the women finally come into their own at age 40 +. Do we really have to wait that long to be whole, complete people? I don't want this for myself or for any of my daughters. Yet I see it in most families, practicing Muslim families, non-Muslim, whatever.

I think that largely, women have forgotten how to be women, and men how to be men. As Muslims if we re-visit our roles as laid out by Allah in Quran and Prophet Muhammad in his Sunnah, we will find a richness and simplicity that is achievable. Harmony within the home is so, so possible. But we must educate ourselves, and above all, OUR DAUGHTERS and SONS, empowering them with the tools they need to be complete men and women, and future husbands and wives.

Google Funnies

Someone in Morocco today Googled "Swedish Muslimah" and my site came up. Ha!
Some guy in Morocco is thinking, "I know there is a 6'1" blonde supermodel-ish Scandinavian goddess of love, who just happens to be Muslim, feverishly searching the Muslim matrimonials for her Moroccan dreamboat."
Stranger things have happened.

Sorry, buddy, it's not me.

Someone also Googled "Angry Muslimah" and got my site. That could be me, on certain days, especially now that I'm about to enroll in dieting boot camp.

Challenge 2007

Not that I am shocked or blown away by this news, but perhaps putting it on my blog will solidify its seriousness:

BMI: 29.2
Overweight by: 42 lbs.

Need to lose this weight, starting ayer.

Need willpower and du'a, starting ahora.

Need wonderful corner bakery to shut down: Never, because kids and husband are all still string beans and I don't want to deprive them of their baked goods.

It's going to be a long, hard road. I'm aiming for June, inshaAllah.

I Dream of Jinn-y

When I was on Umrah, one hot afternoon we were in the hotel in Medina waiting for the 'asr prayer to come in. We turned on the several Saudi channels available in the hotel room, and one of them featured a program entitled "Ana Gawazit Ginn," (Egyptian dialect), or "Ana Jawazit Jinn," meaning "I Married a Jinn." I started laughing when the all-too-serious presenter brought on stage a man around 70 years old, an Egyptian 'cleric,' who claimed that his wife was a Jinn. I told my husband, "This is like the Jerry Springer show of the Arab world," and he laughed too. But the thing was, we couldn't quit watching. The man told all about his marriage to this jinn woman, whom he could see but others could not, and how they had little jinn kids running around the house, and how she was a good cook, blah blah blah. They brought on some other clerics to refute the old man's claim, and he became very infuriated, yelling and shaking his cane at the host and the audience members. He looked possessed and deranged. It was a show, for sure.

So today as I was checking Koonj's blog, I ran across this link to a story of a reporter for The Economist who went on a search for jinn. It's an interesting read, to say the least. Thanks for that link, Koonj!

You know how in America, the folks who mostly spotted the alien spacecrafts or who were actually abducted by aliens, or who saw the image of the Virgin Mary on their tortillas or in their hospital room doors, were usually from poor or socio-economically and/or educationally deprived communities? I'm not trying to generalize or stereotpye, but I'm sure there are statistics out there somewhere to back me up.

Well, this article on the jinn kind of comes to the same conclusions: those who are dealing with the jinn on a regular basis are living in the middle of nowhere in Yemen or Egypt, and are typically poor or illiterate. Does being poor and illiterate really make us fodder for the influences of the jinn?

My five year old accosted my two year old for singing in the bathroom the other day. She said, very matter-of-factly, "Don't sing in the bathroom! There are bad people living in here...right, Mama?" I know how she came to think that way...she has older siblings who try to freak her out on a regular basis.

As Muslims we believe in the existence of Jinn. We have been given all of the tools necessary to protect ourselves from them. We acknowledge that they exist, just as we know that angels exist. We do not seek to do business with them or expose them. I think that when we delve into that sort of nonsense, we are only asking for trouble. Sometimes these stories that sound 'supernatural' really might be bona fide, but I'm content to say "Aaoothu billahi min as Shaytan ir Rajeem" and go on with my normal routines.

An Afterthought

I guess part of the reason I posted the last bit about Led Zeppelin is that lately I have been thinking a great deal about the roads I traveled to get to Islam.

I sold my Box Set many years ago. I do not own any music, except for nasheed. Nothing. But I am a marvel for my children, who think I know all lyrics to every song ever written. Songs are buried deep deep in my subconscious, and it doesn't take much to trigger a musical flashback.

My kids, however, have their brains trained like this for Quran memorization. For that, I am deeply thankful.

El Lenguaje de Roberto Plant

Everyone knows that languages are constantly evolving along with pop culture. Words and their connotations change meanings as quickly as the wind blows. The 'hip' vocabulary that is spoken by today's Western youth is something that baffles me, mainly because I no longer live in the West and my kids are not exposed to a hip-hop culture (except for the few snippets they've clandestinely caught of Pimp My Ride) nor are they sitting in chat rooms ripping the English language into irrecognizable shreds.

When girls were trying to be 'fly' or 'phat' or 'all that and a bag of chips,' I was in my 20s, starting a family and trying to learn my religion. I missed the Wagon o' Hipness of the late 90s/early 2000s; it passed me by and it will never return. And that's okay with me, I am happy with whatever amount of coolness I retain from my adolescence. (if any!) I boast no attraction whatsoever to Eminem or 50 cent or anyone else who rose from the ghetto and has made millions. They just don't do it for me.

My sister did write me a poem once, a la Snoop Dogg, using the 'izzle' language but applying it to my life in Jordan. I wish I had saved that poem, but my hard drive crashed and all was wiped out. Perhaps she saved it...I must ask her. The only thing I remember now is "a sandwich o' falafizzle." We often eat falafizzle in our hizzle, at least twice a wizzle.

What does it for me is Led Zeppelin, U2 (older stuff, it ends w/ Achtung Baby), REM, The Cult, Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Sting. (can name many others, like Santana, Crosby Stills Nash&Young, Beatles, heck, even some Rolling Stones) Why? Because these singers and performers all know/knew how to write, how to take words and put them together that actually represent ideas and emotions and not just booty flapping over-sexed lunacy. Albeit, some of their writing was super duper drug-induced, but it's deep, man, deep.

I remember one of the best memories I have with my mother--a teenage bonding moment, if you will--was when we drove from Birmingham, AL to Lauringburg, NC to check out a college there. It was a nine-hour drive, and after the first five hours we started getting tired. We pulled over into a Waffle House, home of the best hashbrowns in the world--scattered, smothered, and covered--and drank coffee together. That was my first time for me to drink coffee and actually enjoy it, and I am still a java woman. Anyhow, when we got back into the rental car, she let me drive the last four-hour stretch. Playing on the radio was a Led Zeppelin marathon. We listened to it for the entire four hours, with me singing every single word to every single song, probably crying through some of the lyrics, always being the ultra-emotional teen.

If the sun refused to shine,

I would still be loving you.

Mountains crumble to the sea,

There will still be you, and me.

Little drops of rain,

whisper of the pain,

Tears of love lost in the days gone by...

Now what seventeen-year old can't identify with that?

So when we reached the motel (yes, MOTEL) where we were staying, the L. Z. marathon came to an end. Mom looked at me and said, "Thank you very much for sharing that with me, I really liked it." We shared a moment, and for a split second I thought she was alright!

I wonder, what moms and daughters are sitting in cars now, bonding over Gangsta rap?

Perks o' Poverty

Like so many American kids, I grew up right at or just over the 'poverty level.' My mom was a single parent who, in 1985, made less than $12,000 a year. I ate a hot lunch at school every day, compliments of the Reduced Lunch Program. We did not receive Food Stamps, although I am pretty sure we qualified. I did, however, eat my share of Government-issued cheese. Please, never offer me Velveeta or any similar 'oil-based' faux fromage.

I was the only child at home, because my brother and sisters are much older and were living elsewhere, most of them out of state. The closest sibling in age to me is nine years older. (although we sometimes joke that we are really twins...I just got left in the womb an extra nine years!)

I lived in the 'hood' of an affluent suburb. If there had been a white ghetto in Homewood, Alabama, my apartment complex would have surely qualified as such. It was a microcosm of families, mostly single-parent homes, with kids who, while not victims of abject poverty, were nonetheless not the wonder kids of the future. I went to school with children of the ultra professionals...the doctors, the lawyers, the real estate brokers, the politicians. Some of my friends' moms were the ex-sorority sweethearts, the pageant moms, the closet alcoholic ex-Homecoming queens.

I did not have any cool gadgets. I did not even have a bicycle. There was no Atari or Sega in my home, although at Christmas time I used to cut out the pictures of them from the Sunday paper sale ads and put them on the refrigerator. I did not have really good manners, because when you're eating a bowl of cereal or a tuna sandwich for dinner, and your mom is the only one across the table from you, there's no real need for that "use this fork for your salad dear" etiquette. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a belching slob or anything, but I surely felt out of place in most social settings.

I did have one thing going for me, however. I had a fantastic imagination, which sprang mostly out of boredom and a desire to improve my station in life. I made super grades, was attracted to culture from early on, and I had a best friend: Brandy.

Brandy came from an identical socio-economic background, except she was an only child. We were two peas in a pod, I tell you. We would sit for hours and hours with a tape recorder, making interviews with made-up celebs (Julianne McNamara, Bianca Blah) We role played and told tales and laughed and laughed and laughed. We were a female Laurel and Hardy duo.

When we wanted to make chocolate chip cookies, most of the time we didn't have any chocolate chips. We'd throw together flour, sugar, butter, and maybe some brown sugar and cook it. Brandy affectionately called it "slop." Necessity is the mother of invention.

During P.E. we would make up routines to popular songs...I'll never forget our "Eye of the Tiger" routine. We would take silly children's song lyrics and turn them into demented, twisted ditties of fifth grade humor. We wore ugly clothes from Sears and KMart (back then, NOT COOL PLACES to shop!), we had bad perms and thick glasses, but we were high on life!

So now, dear readers, I will share with you our greatest achievement: The Lost Lexicon of the N and R Switcheroo.

In fifth grade we made up our own language. We thought it would be funny to take all of the words containing n's and r's, and switch them. Somehow what it ends up doing is making most things sound Scandinavian-Swedish Chefish. This is a vocal wordplay, you have to say the words aloud for it to be funny. (furry!)
Example:
Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fine, loving family members.
After N & R switcheroo:
Happy Tharksgivirg to all of my fire, lovirg family membens.
Another?
A loving, kind man is crucial to a fully functioning marriage.
A lovirg, kird mar is cnucial to a fully furctiorirg manniage.

Try it with your name, if you have some n's and r's in it.

This was one of the perks to being poor: having to use our minds to entertain ourselves. And hey, here I am 25 years later, still laughing about our antics, with fond memories of my childhood and a thankfulness that my kids don't have to live the life I lead, although they could use some more "boredom" time in their lives.

And, I still talk to Bnardy on a negulan basis!

Sweet Nostalgia

Yesterday I checked the comments on Izzy Mo's blog, where she posted a note to me about the new Aramco World mag featuring Muslims at work in Birmingham, Alabama. I was thrilled at the thought of my hometown being featured in Aramco World, but had no idea just HOW thrilled I would be when I clicked on the link.

I shouted "HEY HONEY IT'S EVERYONE WE KNOW!!!" and then began to read the article. Yes, I'm a blubber head, so I started to cry. Why did I cry? Because I realized that these people had touched my family's lives in so many ways, and I've been out of contact with them for years...yet I know that if I go back, I'll be welcomed with open arms and that Muslim-Muslim connection will not have faded away into the realm of forgotten acquaintances. I have always known that one of the greatest blessings in this deen is the deep love we have for one another, no matter if separated by oceans or by time. SubhanAllah.

Anyhow, some folks in particular who were featured in the article profoundly affected me, especially when I was a new Muslimah. So I thought I'd just blabber about them a bit.

Hafiz Chandiwala: Son of Farouk and Memuna Chandiwala, two of the kindest people I have ever known. Farouk and Memuna worked tirelessly to convey the true message of Islam to people in Birmingham. I cannot even count how many interfaith meetings that Br. Farouk hosted, showing slide shows, giving lectures, inviting people of other faiths to break fast with our community in Ramadan. Memuna was a teacher at the Montessori school, always smiling, soft-spoken, and loving. The first time I spent the night at the masjid for Laylut-ul-Qadr, she showed me such generosity and kindness.
Hafiz married Stephanie, a non-Muslim, and their daughter Aneesa was the same age as my oldest daughter. Stephanie was also super southern (a good quality!), sweet, and loving. We both were trying working on our Masters in Education. Memuna never pushed her daughter-in-law to become a Muslim, never harassed her or spoke harshly to her. After many years, Stephanie took shahadah. That was such a joyous time. And when my husband and I were blessed with a son, we named him Farouq... I will never forget at Farouq's aqeeqa, Farouk Chandiwala was congratulating us and telling us how thrilled he was we had named our son after him. :) "It's a good strong name for a boy!" he said. "Now there are two Farouqs in our community!" Different spelling, same good name.
My heartfelt salams to the Chandiwala family.

Sr. Melanie Mahmoud: I'm not sure where to begin with Melanie. The first time I ever saw her, I was at the old Southside masjid, a dilapidated kind of fraternity-house style of a building. I remember I was waiting for a dars to begin. I had taken shahadah about eight days before, and was as nervous as I could be. Melanie walked in with a bright smile on her face, wearing a super wide blue jilbab and a long white scarf. She looked like the Flying Nun. Everyone was extending their hands to me, greeting me with "Assalamu Alaikum," and I barely knew how to reply. When she spoke, I thought, "Whoa, she's a down home girl," because her deep southern accent is hard to miss. She welcomed me, extending her hand (always a hand-shaker!) and I felt at ease.
Melanie suffered from cervical cancer when she was in her early 20s. I met her just after she had finished all of her treatments and was declared cancer-free. She had two children, one of whom I taught for two years. Melanie was always trying to please those around her, and always tried to look at the positive side of everything. I remember admiring her for going back to school after only completing the 8th grade. She worked very, very hard in University, and attended the same one I did. Sometimes she would send me her papers to edit. She kept a tough schedule, between working at the Islamic school, studying for her classes, and pleasing hard-to-please in-laws who, it seemed, were visiting year-round.
She was my daughter's first teacher. Melanie was the ray of sunshine teacher you want you children to have, especially if it is their first experience with school. My daughter loved her so much. Melanie's enthusiasm for teaching and love for little ones was contagious. Even on her darkest days, Melanie was a light to those around her.
Once I went on a da'wa visit with her to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in a rural trailer park area...I believed the ladies attended church with some of Melanie's relatives. They served us donuts from Wal-Mart and fluffy marshmallow salad stuff, which we politely avoided for fear of it containing gelatin. They were so sweet--just like Melanie--and I will never forget their hospitality to us. They were so amazed at the similarities of our faiths and just over the moon to know that Muslims also love Jesus.
Anyhow, Mel, if you ever run across my blog, I love you fisabilAllah, and please know how many lives you have touched. Garbage truck driver: NO! Shaper of young minds: YES!

Dr. Mamoun and Rola Pacha: The first time I ever saw Rola Pacha was at an aqeeqa for another Syrian couple who had just had their first and long-awaited son. I think I was about 8 months pregnant, feeling huge and lethargic, not to mention hungry. I remember eating platefuls of amazing Syrian mezze and sitting next to my friend Mariam, and across the room from us I saw this woman in a long sequined, sleeveless dress--a far cry from the Omar the Tentmaker jilbabs most of us were donning. She looked like a cross between Jeri Hall and Cindy Crawford. I'm like, "Hey, who's the runway model?" and Mariam almost spit out her food. "Don't you know, that's Brother Tarek's mom??" she asked me.
Brother Tarek's mom??? Brother Tarek was a quiet, humble young man who made the masjid his second home. When my husband and I first knew him, he was studying at Birmingham Southern College. His parents, like many Arab families, had not taught him Arabic. He had spent summers in his youth traveling to Syria to learn the language. He exuded noor from his face. He was simple, soft-spoken, and loved people. I kept thinking, how is this the son of this woman I see before me?
It turns out, Tarek's trips to Syria affected him in many ways. He began to come home after spending his summers there, telling his father and mother that Islam was missing from their lives. Pretty soon, Dr. Pacha started coming to community functions, helping out in fundraisers, and contributing to the Islamic school. Tarek had expanded his Islamic knowledge and embraced his deen fully...
And then he became my Arabic teacher. I learned how to read Arabic from taking Br. Tarek's class. He was a super teacher, mashaAllah.
I attended his wedding to his lovely wife Ola, and now I'm reading that he has finished medical school and will be starting his medical specialization.
I know that his parents are proud of their son Tarek, and may the light of Islam from their son continue to shine upon them and open their hearts.

Br. Ashfaq Taufique: Again, I can't begin to talk about all that this brother has done to promote Islam and cultural understanding in Birmingham. As far back as I can remember, Br. Ashfaq has been in the front line of the community, leading and supporting and sometimes fighting to stand his ground on issues about which he feels strongly. He is a passionate brother, a cheerleader, a brother to turn to in a time of crisis, a visionary and an organizer par excellence.

Br. Ashfaq had two sons, Adam and Kashef, who went through the public school system in Birmingham. They were one of the few success stories of boys who did not lose themselves or their Islamic identities along the way. They were excellent givers of da'wa and were role models for our young kids. Now they're married and having families of their own. SubhanAllah, how the time flies.

My husband used to work for the masjid; he was the groundskeeper, the janitor, the school super, the painter, the landscaper. Basically, he left a job that paid really well and offered benefits but was haram, for a job that most people here (in the M. East) consider a position for an untouchable. I remember conversations with his family members while we were still in the states..."You clean the masjid? What kind of a job is that?" But my husband took that job with pride and put everything into it he could, and brother Ashfaq recognized from the beginning that my husband was trying to make that transition from haram income to halal, and he helped us. He fought to pay my husband a just salary for the hard work he was doing. He expressed appreciation all the time for my husband's dedication. Yes, here was a big-wig nuclear engineer giving my husband, the janitor, such dignity and respect. I find it hard to comprehend the same kind of treatment taking place here in Jordan or in Ashfaq's native Pakistan between the higher echelons of professional success and the 'lowly rank and file.' It just doesn't happen.

When there was a fundraiser, a community dinner, a guest speaker, an Eid party, a local news story about something happening in the Muslim community, someone taking shahadah, an iftar to cook, an interfaith presentation, teachers being interviewed to work at the school, and yes, the death of a brother or sister, there was Br. Ashfaq, taking time off from his many work and family commitments, always THERE, smiling, friendly, and helpful.

Once, one of my students, "R," fell into a rough spot. His mom was abusing drugs and he was left alone for days and days in a hotel. CPS took him. Within hours of the news reaching me, Ashfaq and my husband and I headed out to the Boys' home where R was being kept. Without hesitation, Br. Ashfaq offered to open his own home to the boy. When there was a Family Court date to see if R would be given back to his Mom or placed in a home, Ashfaq spoke so eloquently to the judge, making it clear that he wanted to take care of R. And guess what? The hard-ass, tough-as-nails Family Court judge listened. She could have placed him in a non-Muslim home, but she listened to Ashfaq, the bearded, strangely accented Pakistani dude. And Ashfaq kept R in his home for the next eight months or so, a period when I recall R working up to his potential for the first time in all of his schooling. He also smiled a lot then.

I guess I could keep on going about Br. Ashfaq. So much good that he did out in the open for all of the brothers and sisters to see makes me know in my heart that he must have done ten-fold that amount in secret. Br. Ashfaq suffered kidney failure, a kidney transplant, and a major heart attack. May Allah bless he and his family, and help make the next endeavor, building the new community center in Birmingham, a success.

Despotism

des·pot (dspt) NOUN:
1. A ruler with absolute power.
2. A person who wields power oppressively; a tyrant.
ETYMOLOGY: French despote, from Medieval Latin despota, from Greek despots, master; see dem- in Indo-European roots
OTHER FORMS: des·potic (d-sptk) (Adjective), des·poti·cal·ly (Adverb)
From Webster's Online Dictionary

Upon reading my post from yesterday regarding Saddam Hussein's execution and how it saddened me, I began to question if someone reading my blog might think I am a Saddam sympathiser. On the contrary, I am not.

To think of all of the taubah, or repentance, that man must make is what saddens me. He and all of the other thousands of tyrannical rulers who have abused their power over the centuries who have to stand on Judgment Day with their book of deeds in their hands...this is the image I saw in my mind's eye as I watched al Jazeera play the video over and over of Saddam standing at the gallows. The Hitlers and Mussolinis and Francos and Huns and Saddams of history, all standing together before Allah. A horrifying image, for certain. (Need I mention the Bushes and the Rumsfelds?)

So I think that those who can cheer while watching Saddam's execution are not seeing the big picture at all. This is a temporary, fleeting justice and in the long run these despots will be replaced with others whose crimes against humanity will be even more heinous.

May Allah protect us from being oppressed, and keep us from becoming oppressors of others. Ameen.