Changing Flavors of Eid

Eid is the Muslim word for celebration and festivities. I have struggled with the various names for the two eids that I encounter in my Muslim culture and tradition (derived from Arabic terms as well as local cultural adaptations), unsure about which ones stand for the celebrations following Ramadan, a month of fasting, and which ones stand for the eid during the pilgrimage (hajj) season. Now all I do to avoid the confusion is to say this: “Eid-ul-Fitr should find you fitter!” This means that Eid-ul-Fitr is the one that follows fasting, and for this reason, people are fitter when this eid arrives. It is possible that often this is not the case, because some do tend to feast a lot in the evenings and this results in weight gain and poorer health. But the idea is to be fitter, to abstain from the relentless calling of your bodily self, and to nurture your spiritual self in the process through the judicious feeding of your body and mind, leaving one fitter physically as well as spiritually.

The eid in the pilgrimage season of “hajj” is referred to as “Eid-al-Adha” meaning “the festival of sacrifice”. Besides these, comparisons are brought into the nomenclature, and the “festival of sacrifice” (also called “bali perunnal” in Kerala and conveying the same meaning) is referred to as “the bigger eid”, and Eid-al Fitr is referred to as “the smaller eid”. ( I found the exact opposite comparative terms in the book “The Muslim Next Door“, adding to the confusion I already have!)

Religious celebrations bring to display the people who make up the community of the faithful. My community in that sense, has changed over the years from the time of my childhood in Kasaragod, Kerala, to now as a 43 year old, in Austin, Texas. It makes me think about how much my self-identification itself has undergone a gradual transformation by the sheer  necessity to adapt to new contexts and to find a semblance of wholeness and happiness. My faith has only deepened from an awareness of this transformation, for it rescues spirituality from the trappings of identity, and grounds it in its true  purpose- to provide meaning to our existence, to find in our selves compassion for others, to provide us with some foundational values that will facilitate better relationships with kith and kin, and the community at large,  leading us to love and peace, its priceless rewards!

Our conflicts and our suffering stems from our obsession with our selves, and in the larger social and political contexts, it is a similar self-obsession with group identifications that lie at the fault lines of conflict. God calls us to outgrow our narrow selves and grow towards a transcendental self. It is evident in the work of prophets who sought only to dampen the fault lines of identity, never to deepen them, even though they also did not call on them to abandon their identities completely. Such an abandonment is impossible when we consider the social nature of being human. There is enormous power to do good in coming together as a group, being connected by language, culture and values.  Without any identity to hold on to, one would scatter away like a frail and dry dandelion, at the blow of a light wind, just as at the individual level, without an ego, one would not have a vehicle to help the one transcend his/her ego! So, as long as we have a mortal self, we need our sense of self and identity. What is crucial within this reality is to understand that neither our sense of self nor our group identities are rigid concepts, that they are changing and that they need to change.

The month of Ramadan was a very busy one, which coincided with the end of the academic year for my children and the beginning of their summer break. They fasted through final examinations, and other school events. My youngest attended soccer practices while fasting, but skipped fasting on days when there were games. My husband lived through excruciating back pain that forced him to be off from work as well as fasting. And I spent many days learning Arabic with Asif Meherali‘s free video lessons  and Dr V Abdur Rahim’s Madinah Arabic Reader text books. There were outdoor iftars (breaking fasts) at the masjid, enjoying the beautiful weather. Two iftars were interfaith ones, when there were guests from other faiths. I got to break bread with catholic friends from my Sultan and Saint interfaith group,  and chat heartily through the hustle and bustle of a communal meal. There were also nightly Taraweeh prayers at the serene and cozy yoga studio that graciously opened its doors for Muslim Space. The Turkish imam incorporated a melodic song glorifying Allah in between the prayers, apart from the recital of salaats (blessings on the prophet) after each prayer. This “islamic choir” was quite enjoyable for a person like me who likes to sing , but has a bad voice and no musical sense!

A fitting end to Ramadan came in the form of a women’s qiyam night, with a visiting scholar from Karamah, that turned out be an energetic affair focused on women’s leadership. Women sprawled on the carpet and chairs, young and older, and listened to the presentation that cited misreadings from the Quran that limits women from leadership roles, and then reflected on how women need to overcome such hurdles. Ramadan in many ways is like the night of reflection before the dawn of a new day and more action. And call to action is certainly the message that was conveyed!

We spent the night before Eid rolling out little rice dumplings called “kadumbu”. I got my boys to do what I have done many times in my childhood. We would gather around a big pot of ground rice dough, and all of us would pinch from it a small lump for ourselves, from which we would then pinch out even smaller portions to roll out little elongated, cylindrical dumplings that would then be flattened with the help of a small pressure from our pinky fingers pressing on it sideways. It takes some practice to do all this within the area afforded by your own palm. I loved doing this. I would try to be perfect with the ones I made and would silently admire the ones I had made, somehow always finding a reason to believe that mine were better than the rest on the large plate where we dropped them all. These would all then be dropped into a giant steaming tray in a pot that is meant for such steamed food. The following morning, these dumplings would cook in a chicken curry to become a one pot dish and breakfast to feed a large family. This is what we had for breakfast too, on this Eid many years hence,  far away from Kasaragod where all this began!

I do not remember going for Eid prayers in Kasaragod. As I mentioned in a previous blog, there were no prayer accommodations for women then. Women would stay at home, change into new clothes, and supervise the kitchen, or work there themselves if help was not handy. When men returned from prayers, it would be time to go on a round of house visits to neighbors’ and relatives’ homes, which I loved doing for the sake of the eid snacks that we got to eat at each home, and the small pocket money that came our way as eid gift ( Eidi is a term that I heard only in my adult life in US. We used to call it “perunnal paisa” which literally just means “eid money”.) Then there were village fairs that we were taken to by our uncle.  Those trips meant toys – plastic dolls, and small wooden pots and pans with colorful bands enameled on them. But those fairs are memories from a very early age. For some reason, those fairs gradually phased out from the our Eid scene.( I don’t know why. )

Many years later, as a high school girl, eids were in a different town called Palakkad, which is about 7 hrs by train from Kasaragod. There we did go to the mosque for eid prayers, though it was not such a common thing for women to do even then. We met my mother’s friends there, who she worked with in small social projects as part of a women’s organization. I did not have many Muslim friends then, and the eid prayers were hurried obligations to be fulfilled.  In Palakkad,  eid became more about the time we spent together as a nuclear family because we did not have our relatives and the culture of Kasaragod there. My mother would spend most of the day cooking Biriyani, which would then be the highlight of the day. Sometimes we would go on short outdoor trips to the local Malambuzha dam and its attached gardens. Once we even attempted a half day trip to a hill station nearby! There was only time for the road trip with family friends of ours, a few pictures at sunset in the tea estate there, and a meal at a restaurant in the little town, after which we headed back home.

There was always the excitement of new clothes and accessories associated with Eid. This meant a few visits to the tailor who would sew our clothes for us, once to hand him the job, the material, and the measurements, then another visit to pick the finished product up.  And if we had not gotten around to such a commissioning, it would mean hasty shopping in the last week of Ramadan, getting in and out of small shops, looking for a perfect fit. A visit to the small accessory shop called “Just a Minute” would follow. Decking up to the best of our ability was something we always did for Eid.

My experience of eid has changed greatly over the years, and in United States, what I found was the question of how one should celebrate Eid? Eid prayers were now massive, global affairs where we saw traditional clothing of all kinds. There is always great aplomb in how people carry themselves in their traditional clothes here- especially the Africans. Some of the bright colors they wore reminded me of the bright colors in the Kerala “mundu”, a piece of cloth worn around the waist down, like a skirt, by men as well as women. My grandmother would call hers (and she had some very colorful ones)  just “thuni” meaning “cloth”. In the grand eid venues of United States, It seemed like I had no cultural clothing to speak for me. After all, my churidars were worn with so much flair by the Pakistanis and North Indians. Also, salwar kameez and churidars are very recent additions to the Kerala muslim culture. My mother wears saris, and this is what she is seen in on eid days, sometimes very simple cotton ones too. My grandmothers would have been seen in them too. Also, the size of my family had drastically come down, being away from family, and there was just my husband and I before we had the kids!  I remember  that we invited a friend who was living alone to have lunch with us on one of our earliest eids in US. Once we moved to Austin, we found ourselves being invited to large gatherings either for lunch or dinner through the few friends we made here. The crowd and the food would be desi, and there were some people I only met at those gatherings and never in between. The children would take day of from school when they were younger, but as they grew older  and got to high school, they have preferred to attend school rather than make up the missed lessons later. Once Ramadan began coinciding with the summer break, our eids have been during the vacation and we got to spend a few in Kerala too, like the one last year.

This Eid-ul-Fitr, we prayed at the spacious HEB center, and the khutba or sermon was geared towards the kids, based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and focused on the characteristic virtue of each superhero, that was then connected to an Islamic virtue derived from the scriptures. I smiled as I listened to it thinking that my boys would like it. Once we reunited as a family after the prayers that separated us gender wise, I found out that my oldest one thought that the imam had tried too hard and that it sounded a bit farfetched.  Still, he could not but admit that it was interesting, and a commendable effort on his part. We took a few family pictures standing amidst the eid crowd, and then shared them on WhatsApp family groups instantly.

We have been following our prayers with a short visit to coffee shops for many years now. We went to the airy and light ambience of the Taiwanese 85 degrees Bakery, where the golden color of baked goods always tantalize us and tempt us. The drinks were light and not too sweet. I stayed away from thoughts about health and environmentalism. The cups were plastic. The baked goods were made of  white processed flour.

After phone calls to family in India, and some freshening up, off we went to Mainevent for some bowling and games. It was a celebration organized by Muslim Space, as on the two eids prior to this one. We had pizza and drinks for lunch, and I got to chat with a few friends, and then also tire myself through many rounds of amateurish bowling, ice hockey and pool. Interacting with the Muslim Space crowd, that is mostly comprised of individuals raised in this country,  challenges me to understand their manners, language and culture, and forces me out from my comfort zone. Its an ongoing process of learning and growing in the spirit of inclusiveness and diversity, and the friendships are dear ones in the making. In the evening, I found myself once again in the company of my desi friends, some very old and dear ones, almost family,  and others I have been meeting for many years at eid gatherings and masjid iftars. We hung around over biriyani and chicken tikka masala. We played a cheerful game of white elephant and then it was time to wrap up the day.

With so many disparate elements, my eid is nothing but a cultural hodgepodge. Authenticity is not something I pursue anymore, simply because there is nothing that we can call authentic when it comes to cultural matters. Every point in time is built on what came before. My life seems to be in a flux, and I wonder if it is good? Is there unhappiness ahead, an uprooting? Or is it freedom that awaits me?

Like the silvery dandelion, dry and frail, scatter I must. But I ask this: when the dandelion, trapped in sunlight and flailed by the wind, finally gets scattered, is it not also because it has come of age? Is it not because it has finally been released to embrace much more than the ground that grew it?

Women, Religion and Peacebuilding

 

“Women, Religion and Peacebuilding- Illuminating the Unseen,” edited by Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall is a highly resourceful book to learn about women who work as peace makers in the world, the challenges they face and the role of religion in the approaches they take to peacebuilding. Religions have a way of inspiring as well as  restricting the work of these women.

The central issue studied in the book is conflict – the kind that disrupts societies and brings about violence. Historically, conflicts have been about wars, formal and regulated, between 2 or more military forces, and peace was an outcome of peace negotiations, and a peace treaty signed by all parties involved. Today, this is no longer the case, with contemporary wars sustained by multiple social actors, including non-state organizations. Most wars today are asymmetric, that is it involves parties with widely different charecteristics and bases of power. Also, wars are driven and shaped by local and global forces, and the effects of these wars are too destructive and disruptive than in the past eras. Economic and social fabrics are completely decimated in some cases. This leads peacebuilders “to broaden the scope of the term “conflict” and thus the scope of their work- to encompass not only the violence itself, but its causes and consequences in countries, communities, families and individuals. This, in turn, has led to an understanding of peace as meaning more than the absence of conflict; it means the foundation of positive ideals for flourishing societies, along with mechanisms to resolve conflicts justly without recourse to further violence. This involves the establishment of the rule of law- international and national, formal and less formal, by which justice and human security can be assured.” (from page 3 of the book)

Hence, peacebuilding is essentially about building a social system where basic human needs and aspirations are met and which will allow individual as well as collective flourishing. This makes it a broad, complex process that requires sustained effort. Peacebuilding thus becomes much more than peace negotiations and treaties, involving social development programs, the establishment of good governance and just legal systems. This also takes peacebuilding to social realms where religious institutions hold sway.

When there is a conflict, it is women who experience displacement and poverty most acutely, probably due to the fact that they end up being the primary caregivers of children. The sexual and gender based violence against women increase drastically during conflict. Still, women are kept out of peace negotiations and post conflict agreements and policies. On the other hand, when women are made participants in these negotiations and treaties, it is found that there is a greater possibility of sustained peace.

Religions play a major role in conflicts today because of the explicit association of religion to the social identities of people. At its core, religions are meant to give meaning and hope to people by giving them a set of foundational values that guide their action. Peace is a common theme in religions, which is why, even though religions often lie at the fault-lines of conflict, religions also inspire peacebuilding. This is especially true in the case of women as peacebuilders as most of them have a spiritual motivation to be in the field. Sadly though, it is also religious traditions that often lie behind the social norms that restrict women’s activity as peacebuilders.

The book explains at length through 4 chapters the teachings about peace in various religions including Christianity (with a  focus on catholicism for the fact that it is the largest religious denomination in the world with 1.1 billion members), Islam, Judaism , Buddhism and Hinduism. Abrahamic traditions-Christianity, Islam and Judaism- are more preoccupied with social relations, and social justice including the political and economic structures required to achieve social justice. Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism, on the other hand, tend to focus more on inner development. In the view of these traditions, to rid the world of violence and to lessen conflict, the primary thing to do is to address the mental and emotional state of human kind. The spiritual value system in indigenous South American cultures are also explored as part of case studies, even though it is not as elaborately dealt with as the teachings from the major organized religions. These indigenous cultures have religious paradigms that are very nature oriented and protective of the environment, and the peacebuilding efforts of these indigenous people always pits them against big corporations who are looking to exploit natural resources in their lands.

The book explores the challenges women face as peacebuilders and how they navigate social realities in their work. Through some excellent case studies that covers the background of the conflicts cited and also gives an overview of the socio/religious and political condition that women have to deal with, various approaches to peacebuilding work are laid out.  There are examples where women challenge the traditional understanding of gender roles and  try to bring a foundational shift for women towards gender equality,  and then there are examples where women try small, but sure changes to women’s life through education and economic opportunities without questioning traditional norms aggressively. Women in Kaduna, Nigeria, for example, see hierarchal gender norms as God ordained and do not consider themselves limited as they work in non-institutionalized ways that does not give them as much authority as men, and simply expands upon their traditional roles as  wives and mothers. The women in Aceh, Indonesia were instrumental in their role as peacemakers, working at community level, again in non-institutionalized manner, but with a very efficient and strong network that connected the women from the resistance movement (of the Free Aceh Movement or GAM) with women working in the civil society. This network helped in the relief efforts after the tsunami in 2004, which also accelerated peace efforts. But peace negotiations , and post conflict agreements completely sidelined the women and severely marginalized them-  socially, economically and politically. Such examples show that there is a drawback in seeking invisibility and  roles with no authority as peacemaking strategies. Ibtisaam Mahameed and her initiative called Women Reborn (in Palestinian villages in Israel) worked with secular feminist groups without losing credibility within their traditional cultures to progressively bring women out from their unseen and voiceless condition to a place of education, employment and greater engagement in social and political matters. Education of the women in this example also involved religious education wherein they were given a broader perspective on gender related laws in Islam.

Interfaith dialogue and collaboration remains a major aspect of women’s peacebuilding, as many of the conflicts around the world involve religious identities. One remarkable story is that of the all women interfaith peacekeeping force that was set up in Mindanao, Philippines, in the year 2010, under the strong leadership of Mary Ann Arnando.  The group included thirty-three women from a wide range in their age, ethnicity and religious background. Another inspiring example is the Mass Action for Peace in Liberia that brought together Muslim and Christian grassroots movements for peace under the leadership of Leymah Gbowee and Asatu Bah Kenneth, and they successfully brokered peace through various tactics that included pressurizing clergy, praying together, sitting together in silent protest, and forming a human barricade of the building where peace talks where happening to ensure that the warlords did not leave without reaching an agreement. Similarly, in Honduras, secular feminists, christian feminists, Afro-descendent, and indigenous movements continue to forge and strengthen alliances on economic. ecological, political and religious issues in their struggle for justice.

Even though the book primarily is a book aimed at researchers, practitioners and  peace building organizations  to widen their understanding of the role of women in the field so that they can support them and collaborate with them in a more effective way, it awakens in a lay person like me an immense respect for these women. It also opens up a new perspective on what religion means. To be religious can be thought of as to be committed to the idea of peace- both within our inner realm of the mind and consciousness, and also in the social sphere between people and communities. To be religious, one will need to work for justice and human rights. Injustice and poverty are at the root of conflicts and conflicts affect women severely, digging them deeper into poverty and injustice. Conflicts also have a way of drawing women out from their traditional domestic roles to peacebuilding work. But do we wait till conflicts ravage us completely before we begin our work for peace? Not if peace is understood to be foundational for our wellbeing. Not if peace is understood to be community building as demonstrated in the work of peacebuilding by these women in conflict zones. When religion and peace are understood for their intricate connection, the question whether women should be equal participants as men in the religious and social sphere is a no brainer, especially after this deep foray into the world of women as peacebuilders.

 

Way Leads On To Way

 

This time around, on my trip to India, my niece sought my help with a Robert Frost poem called “The Road Not Taken”. I was reading it for the first time. It was hard to conclude if the poet was happy about his decision to go down a less trodden path, or not.

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

two roads diverged in a wood, and I–

I took the one less traveled by.

And that has made all the difference.”

The poem made a reentry into my life when I returned home and found it amidst my son’s school work from the year before.  I pasted my son’s copy of the poem on the wall of my desk, where I see it everyday. Over the days since, I have found that I relate to this poem at a personal level, and I quite understand why the poet sighs as he looks back upon his life. There can be no boasting about the decision to pursue a life against the general vein of things. It comes with its trade offs and hardships. But you know deeply within you that it could not have been anything else.

“Way leads on to way” is a line from the poem that in a short phrase expresses how  a decision about a course of action then leads you to more decisions that take you deeper into the path and entrenches you even more in its peculiarities. If your initial decision was to follow an unconventional and untested course of action, it leads you further into more unique situations and untested waters. Where I see this mirrored most  in my own life is in my religious pursuit.

In order to make sense of my own life, that was shaped for me by many social conditions and psychological conditioning, I turned to faith as I stepped into adulthood. This search for meaning has led me to unconventional approaches to faith, that is totally alien to what is generally spoken of and practiced in my family. Every time I think that I have arrived, and feel ecstatic, or I am completely thrown off track into hopelessness, I have been drawn back to new openings, and new paths. But with each new opening, the path seems to be getting clearer and many old doubts are discarded. The sigh is one of resoluteness, as much as it is about the inevitability of the reality that you live.

Following a few months spent in the study of Buddhist scriptures and the obsessive thoughts about Buddha’s teachings on the conditioned nature of our being, it was truly groundbreaking to see it’s connection to the thoughts of Dr Abdul Karim Saroush, the Iranian scholar who wrote the book- “The Expansion of the Prophetic Experience- Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality of Religion”. In a lecture at a university that is available on YouTube, I got to hear him speak about the historical and contingent nature of prophethood and revelation, and how this understanding brings to light the difference between religion and religious knowledge.

He says: “A differentiation is necessary between religious knowledge and religion itself. Religious knowledge is the collective knowledge based on the understanding of scripture. Religion on the other hand is what is sacred, heavenly, salvific and without any contradiction. None of these can be be attributed to religious knowledge. A distinction between the two settles some arguments and counterarguments. There is a philosophy of science where we should always be on guard and we should not mix what we think and what is in the world. A new interpretation confronts another interpretation, it never confronts the scripture itself. We are immersed in an ocean of interpretation. Your interpretation does not debunk another interpretation. You have only added on to what is already there. Yours will not end the process of interpretation. The last Prophet has come, not the last interpreter of the scripture he brought. It will be an ongoing endeavor and that will always be the case.”

Here is a link to the lecture: Discussion with Dr Abdul Karim Saroush on Revelation, Reform and Secularism.

His thoughts have deep implications in politics as it grounds pluralism and secularism within religious knowledge. It has deep implications in muslim interfaith and intra faith relationships, with the possibility of bringing human efforts together in the solving of our monumental and apocalyptic problems. It brings a cohesion between faith and liberal politics, and it has the scope to bring the empowerment that human beings derive from faith to social and political struggle against the dominant tribalistic/supremacist interpretations of religion.

 

Photo by Dave Robinson on Unsplash

The Anatta of My Nafs

There are 3 marks to my existence, according to Buddha’s teaching- impermanence or “Anicca”, unsatisfactoriness or “Dukkha” and insubstantiality or “Anatta”.  Awareness of one leads to awareness of the other two. For me personally, the best example to understand the insubstantial nature of things is to think of a table and then imagine it dismantled. Once the table has been disassembled, the top and its legs separated and heaped together, can we still call it a table? I guess not.  So, what we define as a table is a coming together of the wooden legs, the cross pieces, and a wooden surface for the fulfillment of certain functions, be it to eat our meals, to work at our laptops, etc.  The table does not have an existence separate from this chain of causation and functional outcome. Similarly, it is possible to think of being human as a collection of aggregates- our body with its sense organs, our feelings, our perception, our mental fabrications (or mental volitions) and our consciousness. These aggregates themselves are not independently existing, and have  been caused by many other processes as well.  Looking at ourselves and the world in this manner brings to our awareness the dynamic nature of reality. We see change and impermanence, and we see the futility of holding on to reality as if it is constant and dependable. There is suffering and unsatisfactoriness for us if we do not find a state of being that is independent of the unreliable and impermanent.

Reading through Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s explanation of self and non-self in the context of this teaching on Anatta or insubstantiality has been enlightening to me.  Buddha never really approached the understanding of self through the factual question- is there a self or not?  Rather, he placed the question of self within the framework of the four noble truths (that there is suffering, that there is a cause for suffering, that the ending of the cause ends suffering, and the last one, that there is a path that leads to the ending of the cause) and skillful/non-skillful action. What Buddha found out is that our self definition itself is an action, that we use as a strategy to find happiness and fulfillment. Over the span of my long life, I have defined what is me and what is mine in many different ways.  As a little girl, my toys were a big part of me. My hometown, especially my father’s village used to be so important to my sense of self. My friends were so much part of me as well. And some of them were more conjoined to myself than others. Friends who seemed extremely important to my happiness did not always remain so. Before I had my children, I always imagined myself as a mother to a daughter, but today I am a mother to 3 sons. As a child, I never imagined myself as a homemaker, and yet here I am, often referring to myself as just that. Yes, our self definitions keep changing, even moment to moment. One moment we could be feeling very important, and the next, we could end up feeling like a complete loser.

In each of these examples, we see that the sense of self produced involves clinging. Clinging to people, things , places and ideas. Hence, our normal strategies for creating our sense of being all involve clinging. During Buddha’s time, there were many ideas about the self. Some thought of it as form and  finite. Others thought of it as formless and infinite. Similarly, there were other combinations of space and form defined as self.  Also, There were many modes of existence possible within each of these beliefs about the self. But Buddha pointed out that all beliefs about the self involves clinging –  to one particular idea about the self. And for Buddha, clinging is what causes suffering. When we perceive clearly the process of self definition for what it is- clinging, we are able to analyze it objectively. There is a disenchantment that we then feel for that old way of defining ourselves. And at that point, we are ready to learn new ways of self definition.

Over the span of our life, we collect many selves, each a response to a particular context, and all these selves exist within us like a chaotic committee. How do we bring order there? We cannot  erase all our self-definitions just because they involve clinging. It is interesting that the word for clinging, “upadana”, also means to sustain or to feed. Buddha’s method was not of extreme starvation. He did not propose that we starve ourself in any manner. Instead, he proposed that we feed our aggregates (body and mind) in such a manner that we develop a healthy sense of self. Hence, the path that he set forth was to use our self identification as a tool to reach the unconditioned sense of being, which is Nirvana or awakening, the final goal in Buddhism. Think about it this way: the conditioned is all that we have to reach the unconditioned. Our self as formed from the manner in which we feed our aggregates is a conditioned existence. Through the careful feeding of the aggregates, the self walks towards non-self, where the last of all clinging is discarded, and one even lets go of the very thought about self. It is compared to the putting away of one’s tools after the work is done. 

The healthy feeding of aggregates and skillful application of self/non-self involves learning of the Dharma, its eightfold path, the moral precepts, and acquiring mental strengths. All of these aid in the skillful application of our sense of self as well as non-self. Control is an important criteria when we decide if something is of us or not. What we don’t control are best defined as non-self. Freud’s categorization of mental action as id, ego and superego aids in understanding the different selves that we carry within us. Id is like the foolish self, always impulsively going after basic desires and pleasures, or acting with motivations of fear and anger. Super ego is our larger-than-our-everyday-action, wise self that understands what is right and what is not, and our ego is what negotiates between the id and superego, and chooses how to act. 

What I find after reading  through Buddhist teachings on self is a focus on the transformation of the individual much like the Sufi teachings on the progression of the self from “nafs e ammara”, which is the self that is clinging to the earthly desires, through the self-accusing self or “nafs e lawwama”, to the “nafs e motmainna” or the tranquil self. The Buddhist teaching of Anatta and Anicca , that stands for the insubstantial and impermanent nature of things is not alien to me as coming from a muslim background, and Quran’s emphasis on the passing away of all phenomenon. “Everything perishes except the face of God,” says the Quran. What we see as common in Buddhism as well as in Islam (with a proper understanding of its spiritual undercurrent that sufis bring to sharp focus) is the call to attain transcendence by becoming one with an Absolute/Ultimate Reality. The path that takes you there has two sides to it- on one side is a void that comes from the realization that everything perishes, and on the other side is a filling of that void with a realization of the Absolute Reality. The Absolute in Islam is the “face of God”, while in Buddhism, it is the “state of Nirvana”. Buddha taught without taking recourse to personalizing the Absolute in any way. This is akin to the negation (nafy in arabic) involved in the first testimony that is spoken as a Muslim, the doctrine “no god but God”. “No god” is a testimony to the conviction that nothing we see here is the Absolute Reality that is God. What Buddha’s teaching does for the world is to remind us that any conception of God – even those we fashion from books of revelation- cannot be identified with the Absolute transcendental Reality or the Divine Essence. This puts all emphasis on the practice of the faiths that we profess, and makes God a goal to be realized rather than a Magic Wand to bring transformation in the world. It emphasizes the basic assumptions that we can all agree upon, regardless of our faith backgrounds and value systems – the human condition and our existential concerns within it. It gives us a ground to work upon in our interfaith and intra faith activity where the prerogative is not just to be understood, but also to understand others. We can hope to develop a shared language to talk about values and to collaborate in the alleviation of suffering, as well as to gather strength in these shared goals against the most base human traits of greed, hatred and ignorance of the human condition. 

Buddha and I Chronicles

Kerala was once a Buddhist hub, but little evidence exists of it today except for a few Buddha sculptures, the most notable of which is the statue “Karumadikuttan” in Alappuzha district, dated to be from the 9th century. The Sabarimala pilgrimage that attracts pilgrims from all over India has Buddhist features, as in the chant seeking refuge (“sharanamayyappo”) that is so very Buddhist in origin. Some words in Malayalam are attributed to its Buddhist past, like the word ‘Palli’ used in reference to schools, mosques, and  churches .  Even though Buddhism has generally faded from India, the land of its origin, Buddhism is still celebrated as a part of the Indian heritage and its history.  The Wheel of Dharma, which is a Buddhist symbol, found its place in the Indian flag.  Hence, even with little exposure to Buddhists, Buddha has been a revered spiritual figure, always present in my consciousness. The noble audacity of a prince who set out out to seek a solution to world’s suffering is sure to leave a mark on anyone. It is definitely a story that has inspired me, and my infatuation with Buddha and Buddhism is an age old aspect of my own life.

I got the chance to turn the mere infatuation into some rudimentary knowledge through Houston Smith’s book, “The World’s Religions”. I think what I read many years back (10 to be exact)  has influenced my thinking in subtle ways, and some of my previous blog posts were outcomes of that early contact. Finding zen in everyday living is sure to attract a housewife and her company of dishes  and laundry! ( I also found out the zen connection to my name; infatuation goes a notch up with such little details!)

But these past few months have been an expedition into Buddha and Buddhist thought through a MOOC on EdX called “Buddhism through its Scriptures”. It became an exciting adventure trying to understand the human mind which was Buddha’s field of inquiry.  It has challenged me immensely being a Muslim who believes in the creator God. To do complete justice to the lessons, I had to put aside a mindset embedded in that God, if it was possible at all, for Buddha never spoke about such a God. He stuck to the general metaphysical language of those times (around 580 BC in India) with a belief in many realms of existence, and transmigration within those realms according to the good and bad karma (deeds) of a person. Existence itself was a product of many causes and conditions, that when deconstructed leads one to emptiness. The emptiness that comes to our awareness does not provide an escape from form, rather it leads us back to it, but with a different experience of that form. This state of being is nirvana, the awakening that The Prince Gotama experienced and made him the Buddha (The Awakened One). The suffering that people experienced, according to Buddha, was a result of seeing existence as permanent and substantial in nature.  The answer lay in an awakening to the impermanent and unsubstantial nature of our existence. An end to the separation and division we feel through contradictory ideas. An end to self as separate from the non self. An end to dualism of all kinds. Yes, these ideas are thoroughly complicated and unsettling.

Yet, what is interesting is that this field of inquiry ultimately leads Buddha to compassion for the world. A Buddhist takes refuge in the three jewels – Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.  Buddha is the example, the right association that makes one believe in the possibility of a change that is being offered. The Dharma is Reality as it really is, and also the teachings that leads one to a realization of Truth. In that sense, Dharma is the goal as well as the path and also the teachings about the path. And Sangha is the spiritual order of Buddhists that faithfully adheres to the practice of Dharma and its preservation. Of these, it is Dharma that is central. And that Dharma can be thought of as a path to wisdom, a wisdom that manifests in the world as compassion.

Taking Buddhas own methods of deconstruction, I have been on a path of inquiry to bring a cohesion to these different modes of thinking about Reality.- one that Buddha expounded and the one that Quran expounds. Interestingly, the last exercise in the course is to interpret a scripture of my choice through tools of interpretation from Buddhism. This exercise throws me in disarray when I attempt such an interpretation of a few verses from the Quran, and compels me to take more journeys in understanding.

Still, somehow, from a level of experience, these two streams of spirituality coexist in me already, like a mad zen koan, urging me to break free of barriers. An expression to this breaking of barriers may have already been attempted by others. There is a book that I am yet to read by Reza Shah Kazemi, that is called “Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism” , which tries to build an understanding of Buddhism in Muslim thought. It has a foreword by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who has been actively building interfaith understanding. According to him, it is not helpful to try and erase all differentiation between religions. Each religion  fulfills the needs and dispositions of its adherents.  But it becomes essential for world peace that we give validity to the Truth in one another’s religious experiences. What is more important and urgently required, he says , is that we show commitment to the goals of our faith, which is to experience Truth through our  practice, and to engage in the repair of the world.

First Women’s Juma Prayer

Muna Hussaini gave the sermon and led the first women only Juma prayer (congregational Friday prayer) in Austin, Texas. Her sermon began with a hadith (saying of the prophet) that highlights the virtue of a juma prayer,  pointing out how every step taken towards it was worthy, and thus, rewarded. She asked us to close our eyes, and run our minds through the steps we had taken to get there. And I did. Soft tears flowed in the minute that followed.

I grew up in Kerala, the south-west part of the Indian peninsula, with the Arabian Sea for its coastline.  It was the hub of an Arabian spice trade and Islam arrived there in it’s very early days. It is said that one of the local kings traveled to Arabia, to meet the prophet, embraced Islam and on his way back, passed away in Oman, and was buried there. Kerala is the land of ginger (zanjabil in Arabic), one of the spices in the drinks of heaven. Women did not attend mosques there until the 1940s when the first progressive movements arrived in Kerala. Having grown up in a very small town called Kasaragod, where these changes arrived even later, I have no nostalgia for the local mosque, that many men of my generation may have. In fact, it was the fond reminiscences from a male friend that made me aware of this reality. I do have memories of the holy mosques of Makkah and Madina, in Saudi Arabia, because my father used to work in Madina and our vacations were spent there. The mosque in Madina was beautiful, and huge. My mother, my sister and I would pray in the women’s section. After the prayers, we would wait in the crowd outside for my father. I did not speak any Arabic. So, it was not exactly a feeling of belonging that I felt then, but an awe for the scale and grandeur of the mosque, and a childlike curiosity for its sights and sounds.

A few years back, My sister and I entered the beautiful Mishkal Palli (interestingly, Palli  is the word for a mosque as well as a christian church in Kerala) in Kozhikode, that was founded by a rich Yemeni merchant, Nakhooda Mishkal, in the 14th century.  It lacks the concrete domes and minarets of today’s mosques in Kerala. Built in the style of traditional Kerala architecture, with its wooden pillars, wooden ceilings, and wrap around verandahs,  it had a mellow lighting inside, a fine breeze and the coolness from a  water tank  meant for ablutions. I was taken over by a feeling of pleasure, for a minute, when a male voice broke the silence and the dream. “Hey, women are not allowed in the mosque!” We told him that we were only looking. An argument was pointless. We walked out and back into the car. I turned back and stared at the mosque as our car drove out from the narrow premises till its sight was lost to us.

My mosque life begins as an immigrant in the United States, in Durham, North Carolina in the year 1999. It was a Ramadan, and I met women from all over the world there, as individual food packages waited for each one of us, in order to break our fasts. Taraweeh (lengthy congregational prayer) was broken into two parts, with the imam reading out the chapter Yusuf in the 15 minute break and offering explanations. Being new, I sat with strangers through the programs,  in the women’s section. There was no dearth for kindness, but by nature, I am an introvert. Still, there were conversations, and small level of friendships.

For a long time in Austin, Texas, as a new mother with three children born over a span of 6 years,  I preferred to stay home and not attend many events at the mosque. When I did go, supervision of the children allowed time for little else.  It is only when my children were all in school, and I became confident with my driving skills that the masjid (as a mosque is referred to here) became a place to go to on a regular basis, to pray, to listen to lectures, to attend women’s groups, to attend communal iftar (breaking fasts in Ramadan), and just to be with friends. As a stay at home mother, I found the time to wander as a reader, trying to understand a faith that I was born into, at a time when it found itself in the crossroads of culture, politics, traditions and modernity. I took the thoughts I formed from those wanderings to the masjid, but without the maturity needed for such interactions. I found out that the community in the masjid was also not equipped for such interactions. The friction that followed has been instrumental in the formation of my independent spirit, looking for my own mooring. Today, I have a fair understanding of sunni Islam, and it’s inner workings. Primarily, I see myself to be part of it only because, in sunni Islam, the seeking of divine guidance is seen as a collective function of the community. But I refuse to be controlled by any establishments within it, especially at the expense of my conscience. There is no seeking without some wandering. I hope that wanderers will not just be tolerated, but also appreciated and engaged with.

So, sitting there with my eyes closed and thinking about the steps taken to be in that moment, I could not help but think about the fuss the event had caused within the masjid community and how I had to sit quietly through frantic opposition to the idea while being the only one openly known to be attending it. The judgement seems to be that it is an innovation and there is no need for such a thing.

Some regard innovation (usually referred to as bid’a in Arabic) itself as anathema to Islam.  If the prophet did not do it, or command it, then there is no place for it. But the truth is that, innovations have always happened in Islamic history.  The congregational taraweeh prayers during Ramadan became a part and parcel of Ramadan only under the leadership of the second Caliph Umar. When the women in Kerala were left out from mosques in Kerala, and thus prevented from becoming active members of the Muslim community of Kerala for close to 1400 years (and as a result creating men-only mosques), it was a departure from the sound example (sunna in arabic) of prophet Muhammad. Innovations too, are China’s women’s mosques, formed after a period of oppression under Ming and Manchus in the 14th and 15th centuries, by  grassroots movements to revive Islamic culture and education. Those mosques with their female imams became the center of women’s life in Chinese villages and towns.

So, innovations itself are not a novelty in Islamic history. Then what makes a women’s only prayer become the target of such fierce criticism? I think it has more to do with the general opposition to the concept of prayer leadership by women than anything else. Not just prayer leadership, any kind of leadership in the hands of women is not a widely accepted idea. No wonder then that in 2005, when Dr Amina Wadud led a mixed congregation during a Friday prayer, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi put out a fatwa against it and  called for her to return to the fold of Islam. Jonathan Brown covers this topic of a woman-led Friday prayer in his book “Misquoting Muhammad” and concludes that “if the issue did not involve the knot of gender and power, the evidence for permitting it would carry the day without any controversy.”

That day, as I sat through a moving sermon that touched on many aspects of inclusiveness – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the human need to belong, the pain of social rejection that registers in the brain as a physical pain, spirituality as a force that brings balance, and the magnitude of Allah’s Mercy for His creation in comparison to which even the enormous love of a mother for her child is nothing, I was touched by the simplicity of the message and the deep yearning for a place that gives you complete belonging, in which you thrive to the point at which your complete potential becomes manifested. It is not a childish demand for fairness that motivates women to gather in such manner, to strengthen their solidarity, but it is the realization that it is not God that limits a woman’s space in Muslim society, but it is simply the stubborn reluctance on the part of a people with a ritualized understanding of religion that reduces it  to many do s and don’t s. Such an understanding embeds any religion (not just Islam) in the dynamics of power and privilege.

Like all my Friday prayers till then, this one was also women’s only, because even in a regular mosque I do not have any interaction with men. The only difference was that I entered through the main door, of a church that kindly offered its space for the prayers, and that the sermon was given by a woman who stood right before us and radiated her core spirituality to the rest of us. Did Allah frown upon us as it happened? In that group were mothers just like the mothers in the mosques across the Muslim world. Their love for their families and their children and their community did not diminish in any way by their act. It was not an act of defiance to Allah, but a true bowing to His greatness. And it is Allah’s promise that when His creation turns to Him in worship and remembrance, He turns to them too.

(The first women only Friday prayer was organized by Muslim Space, a new inclusive, pluralistic Muslim organization in town. It is part of their weekly , volunteer led Friday prayers, all of which are mixed and barrier free, except for one women-only juma every month. Church of the Savior generously accommodates them on Fridays, since the group does not have a physical space of its own as yet. It organizes a multitude of events at various venues and often in collaboration with other groups. )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Shadows Bow Down

 

It must be the power that life wields upon me that I instinctively skip that picture from my recollection of her, unless I decide to try harder and tether myself to her, and to that day. And then, when she appears before me, I feel uneasy, somehow trying to relieve myself of that sight just as I did standing before her lifeless body on the day she passed away. If I forced myself to look at her that day, it was because I felt compelled by the courage she had shown, which made her body a relic from a time of extreme bravery shown by an ordinary person. She had opened our eyes to the reservoir of courage that remains hidden until our adversity forces us to send roots to it. To look at her was a necessary rite of passage in my journey of life. We are, as humans, looking for ways to bring beauty into our frail existence, and a parting kiss was my attempt to bring it to that moment. A parting kiss to an empty shell. There she was, frozen in her last exhaustive breath, like an old fortress that had been vanquished, whose stone walls, open gates, and still air spoke mutely about the people that were gone. She looked aged, ancient, even though she had departed at a mere 37 years of age.  Ravaged by breast cancer that had metastasized to the brain and then to other parts, she was like a shadow that had gone still. A shadow. That was her in the last 4 weeks of her life, when she would not speak much, and preferred to be alone. There was no sign of anxiety or pain or suffering. Just a quietness that had descended upon her thin, ailing body. The shadow aged over the few weeks, growing darker and increasing in its silence, until one day, it went still.

When a person dies, it brings a flood of regrets. I had experienced it with the demise of another friend to cancer at a young age, who died more than a thousand miles away from me. Even though she herself had called me and informed me that she was in hospice care, I failed to reach out to her with any honesty. I was terrified of the thought that she was dying. I remember the last phone conversation between us, when she cheerfully asked me about my children and my life, and I failed to even ask her how she was feeling. I regret the fact that I did not spend any meaningful time with her before she went away. Is it possible to avoid such regrets? It was as if life was putting me through another test, forcibly teaching me that life is woven with the threads of living and dying. I cannot ignore death and run from it, be it my own, or the death of loved ones.

And so there I was, a second time on, watching a dear friend die. This time, there wasn’t those thousands of miles between us. She was one of the first friends I made when we moved to this city. I was a mother by the time I met her and she was a young, newly married girl, who was doing her post graduate studies. It was an easy friendship, no frills, no fuss, no formalities. She made it so by being a person of great humility, kindness, and good humor. Her liveliness and her warm nature were attractive. If there was an immaturity, and indecisiveness,  it was from her perfectionism, paired with her inexperience keeping a home and being on her own, away from her family and her mother who she had relied upon until then. But I watched her grow out of it, and become a working mom to two beautiful children.

She was absolutely and terribly  afraid when she learned that she had cancer, and when she spoke to me about it, she was almost breaking up into tears.  I remember that I hastily comforted her, and reminded her of the excellent treatment facilities available to her. I wanted to believe it myself. And it seemed like it was going well. Again, I wonder if I could have given her more support than I gave her, but she was blessed with a great family, who was with her all the time. I did pray for her with all my heart, pleading that she recovers completely and there would not be any secondary symptoms. But it was not to be so. I was in shock for a long time when I heard about the metastasis of her breast cancer. But the incredible thing was that she was taking it calmly, unlike the first time. I will always remember how she looked that day, her hair that had grown back after chemotherapy, short, luscious and shining, her face looking healthy and energetic, excitedly making phone calls to the doctor’s office and making appointments. It is possible that she was being rushed into everything and she did not have the time to mourn for herself. Looking at her that day, it was hard to believe that the disease was awake in her. It filled me with a deep sorrow and a great fear. But I never saw her afraid and only heard her speak with faith. “Give glad tidings to the patient! This is the only verse in my mind right now,” she texted me after her neurosurgery.

When she was going through her primary round of treatments for breast cancer , she had turned to the Quran for solace. I think that a guilt took residence in her mind that God was punishing her. I remember her telling me that before her illness, prayer was a time of great comfort for her, filling her with gratitude. But after she became ill, prayer was a time of dread, and fear wondering what angered God. I did tell her not to ever think of God as a punishing one, and that mercy was His defining characteristic. It was easy for me to say. But in her situation, it may have been hard to believe that.  In trepidation and awe, she turned to God with her complete self. She read the Quran earnestly. Towards the end of her initial treatment , soon after she was given an “all clear” by her doctor, I had the chance to hear her thoughts on the Quran at a Quran club meeting that I organize, where we meet and we spill our thoughts on topics from the Quran. In that particular meeting, we were to bring a verse and then talk about it. She told us how she had read the whole Quran because she had wanted to just read it all, at least once. She had found much of it difficult to understand, without explanations from an interpreter. But she was struck by one verse that spoke easily to her, clearly. Nobody could misinterpret it. “So remember me, I will remember you,” said the verse. She told us how it brought great comfort to her, because it assured her that she was in God’s remembrance too. It promised a mutual love rather than the relationship of a beseeching one to a distant master. She made no claims to wisdom, and her thoughts were heartfelt, and humble. I was amazed at her character and how much she had grown through her trials. Her faith remained her anchor and her boat for the rest of her life, it kept her whole when her body was being slowly eaten up by cancer cells.

I saw her patience in the face of an age old disease. Yes, cancer is an age old disease, but it is not an old age disease. The way it is attacking young people in such large numbers is a modern phenomenon. In fact, it is the 4th leading cause of death in young adults, both men and women, following accident, suicide and homicide. Modernity also reflects in how it works: unhindered growth of certain cells at the expense of many others vital to life, much like how modern civilization is, where a few are growing in affluence and leaving most others with the hard-scramble living of urbanity, in fierce competition and pollution, thus bringing the earth to the verge of a mass extinction. This uncanny similarity makes me very unexcited about all the expensive treatments and elaborate researches going on to find a cure. The problem seems deeply connected to our misplaced priorities- the extreme pressure to increase productivity and growth with scant regard for balance and harmony, which has pushed us all to an awful overdrive. We have given ourselves up to the market, and market is our modern god. And when disease cripples us, we continue to give ourselves up to the market- this time for expensive drugs, and treatments. She did it too- give herself up to numerous treatments, some agonizing ones, patiently persevering. She would patiently answer our questions about her condition, without ever sulking or complaining.

It was the Quran that nourished her when the medicines and treatment plans began to fail one by one. We would visit her often , and find her on her recliner, quietly reading the Quran on her smartphone. She used to join the conversations initially, but soon, she began to tune out from us. She seemed to have found a shore, and we seemed to be separated from her, full as we were with our worldly excitement, concerns, and travails (it was post election season and Trump presidency was a big topic). She was beyond it, waiting for a different journey. When I heard that her treatment was coming to a conclusion and that she had only a few weeks left of her immobilized life, I texted her an advice that I had read in a book about Pope Francis. At that moment of  time, those lines spoke to me more than anything else I remembered, when I considered being where she was in life, like a shadow growing larger at dusk, bowing down. It was a prayer that spoke of surrender to God’s wisdom, in complete humility, and the pursuit of a purpose to living not entirely apparent or our own.

“Thus for our part, we should not want health more than sickness, wealth more than poverty, fame more than disgrace, a long life more than a short one…desiring and choosing only what conduces more to the end for which we are created.”

She replied, thanking me for a prayer that she could use in both worlds, and then wished that Allah would receive us in the bestest of peace and faith. “How beautiful and strong we would be to get through the little door into the next world, no?” She wondered and hoped. She also sent me a video by Hamza Yusuf, called “Don’t Be Sad”, in which he spoke about suffering, and how inevitable it is, and how intertwined it is with the very idea of living. “This place is designed to break your heart, the foundation of this world is tribulation and trials, ” he reminded, and that “the best worship is waiting for the ease to come from Allah when you are in hardship.” You could just be sitting in your house, waiting patiently, and still be in the best worship, as she was doing.

We had a few more such chats where we shared our faith, our concerns for our children and such. We shared our hopes to be together in paradise in resounding peace. She stopped using her phone shortly after those chats. I found her prostrate on her bed when I glanced into her room on one visit. She was not receiving friends anymore, and had receded from my world completely, except for the light she cast into my heart. I remember that I was not extremely sorrowful then. That would come later on, when I heard about her death late one night, after a long day that she had spent on her bed, struggling with her breath and her last spells of living, her family praying by her side, and making fervent decisions for her medical care. Tears flowed from places I had not known. And that sudden thought emerged that I would never be able to see her again here. It was a thought that had been bypassed in the struggle to cope with the reality of her suffering. And for a few moments, the sense of loss was the only thing real in my world, enslaving me, and emptying me.

I went to her graveside a few weeks later, and found that she lies in a meadow , in a beautiful Texan countryside, with wild flowers, blue skies and the breeze. “When it rains, will not her grave flood?” her father worried. Imagine the tears that poured out from the hearts of her aged parents,  and mine seemed inconsequential. I took solace in the thought that her beauty blends with the beauty of this world, the flowers, the trees, the glow of the sun, and the shadows that draw you to the picture, making it deeper and richer. Like a long woven cloth, life warps with the wefts of dying, and our stories continue, with what we know of it, and what we don’t. Its richness is its reality. We wrap it around us and bow, in complete humility, like the shadows.

“To God bow all who are in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, as do their shadows also, in the mornings and the evenings.” (Quran 13:15)

 

 

 

 

The Burning Bridge

The idea of America is often symbolized in a statue- the famous Statue of Liberty, with Emma Lazarus’ famed poetry etched into bronze, a bold rebuke to pompous lands of ancient times that had failed their poor and downtrodden, welcoming them to new shores with the promise of freedom. But, when I was on my way to this country, I did not have a statue in mind, or liberty, for that matter. I came bearing an image of a burning bridge. Long ago, I had been told the story of a king who took his army to battle after burning the bridge that they would need for a quick retreat. The only choice before them was to win or die. My battle was with my own story. There was no going back. My mind reeled with the problems that I had faced, as a student doing a Bachelors degree in Architecture, unwittingly in a long-distance marriage because of an immature mind that did not really know what it wants, and a culture that sees burden in unmarried girls. The same culture would not have  been kind to a girl who did not make a marriage work. No, liberty was not on my mind then. It was a bridge that burned down,  that brought me to America.

Durham, North Carolina was beautiful. The sky was crimson, and the tall pine trees silhouetted against them looked tremendous, and it was wonderful to be among those trees that looked like they had come out of rendering books. There is something about nature that is medicinal, like a spiritual balm. The husband besides me was kind, and familiar. In a different setting, far away from the homes we had left behind, we slipped slowly into a web of living. We made a home, and even though I had not come looking for it, there was a kind of freedom. After all, many social pressures were left behind. I had to make a marriage work, but what it would look like was left entirely to us. There was freedom from expectations that society puts upon you. In this new land, it was just us. And the absence of a battery of concerned observers, commentators, and experts helped us ease into the demands of marriage.

America was still strange, and would be for many years. My introverted nature would always be an impediment to assimilation. My heart was open to new people and ideas even though I also had strong convictions on many matters. It is strange, but when we rant against cultures that brought us up,  we forget that it has left indelible marks on our personality and attitude. I would look down upon certain American ways, but then simply could not resist the awe many other things inspired. One of them was the English language, and TV became my window into language. I spent hours catching up on culture through the screen. Black and white movies on TNT, and old family oriented sitcoms like Full House and Bill Cosby show opened my mind to new kinds of fun and puns. Humor is big in America. The thing about humor is that it requires a level of familiarity to produce the immediate impact that is intended. To laugh like an American would require many forays into the culture and close interactions with the people. Being a stay at home wife, I did not have real-life interactions, but the screen brought a familiarity with the culture. And when I was out in the real world, i watched it like a sitcom, reluctant to participate beyond what was absolutely necessary. I told myself that I enjoyed the anonymity. I was lying to myself. The truth is that I was self-conscious, afraid, nervous. Yes, America was strange and would continue to be so for many years to come.

 

photo credit: TahoeSunsets <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/64149699@N00/148000609″>Sunset in the Pines</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Post Election Recollections

My last post was many months back. It was written during the Primary season of US Elections. Then, I was rooting for Bernie Sanders and in my thoughts, Donald Trump was only up there to embarrass the Republican Party. I did not take him seriously. Those at the Red Bench may have been more realistic as they were white and must have known the grumbling that was creating his rhetoric and his momentum. I live in relative isolation, grappling with news, ideals and many personal flaws. But there was that one interview with Laura for my history report on the immigrant history of America, while doing a community college course. Laura is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant(WASP- a common acronym) woman who was born soon after the second world war to descendants of poor immigrants who had arrived in the 19th century and who had worked in the mines. Laura herself grew up in an Air Force household, and was one of the first ones in her family to go to college, and to live an independent life, unknown to most women of a previous generation, including her own mother. She calls herself a liberal, and she chose Austin for its liberal culture, and now lives a semi-retired life in Austin while helping Turkish women with English lessons. For me, she embodies what is great about America. From her, I heard about about the nativism that was gathering steam. She agreed that America had changed before her eyes, and had become multi-cultural. She personally loved it. But not many of her relatives. They were clearly anxious. For them, it is a white country that has been taken over by others.

Meeting Laura gave me much hope. For she exudes a wisdom that I crave for more in the world. When I asked her about religion in politics, her answer was simple. It was to be encouraged if it meant politicians would show godliness- the principles of compassion and justice, while in office. But if it means to force a certain lifestyle on the people, then she is against it. The former is much needed, the latter is what we get most visibly.

I love Laura, and I have loved many who have shown an understanding of true godliness, be it from Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews or any other religion, be it theistic or atheistic.  They are my people. Sadly, today a hypocritical godliness has become legitimate. It has existed under the rugs always. But today, it has been given a throne in America (as well as in my “janmabhoomi”-India). I wish to recount over the coming days, my recollections on America and how it changed for me over the years under many political events. As politics churns us around, I am reminded again and again of that wise saying that there is one realm that we truly control. Our inner realm. Writing has always helped me find my moorings. The times are turbulent, and this is when we strengthen the ropes and the sails. Much will be lost to the shores and the waters, and much will be made, and found, with God’s help.

Thank You, Mr. Trump

“O Sacred One, Teach us love, compassion and honour, that we may heal the earth and heal each other,” – An Ojibway Prayer.

It was another evening at Red Bench, the interfaith conversation meet conducted by Interfaith Action of Central Texas, or iACT in short. This one was at the First United Methodist Church in downtown Austin. I was in a mixed group that included two Catholics, two Methodists, a Jew, a non-believer and myself, a Muslim. The topic was “Religious Intolerance”. We talked about our faith journeys in the initial round, and it was interesting to note that most of us had taken our own personal, independent routes to our present beliefs. I brought up politics and religion to the discussion, and cited the mixing of the two as a reason for intolerance. There wasn’t any disagreement to the idea, and two in my group actively endorsed the separation of church and state. The lady sitting next to me expressed her concern for Muslims, and said that that was the first thing that occurred to her mind when she heard about the topic.

I told my group that I had never been a target of any Islamophobic attacks, and my children were also spared from it, possibly because of the fact that we live in a mixed neighborhood in Austin, which in itself is a very liberal hub in a predominantly red state. But, I reminded them, this isn’t just about Muslims. More than anything, it is about the very nature of America and what it stands for. It is about all the real problems out there, which the politicians are seeking to take our attention away from with such fear tactics. As people, we must not fall for it.

It is always a good experience to be at Red Bench, with people who are concerned for the world and who seek an understanding of people different from oneself. And I have to thank Mr. Trump for making Islamophobia understood. There was a time when the word “Islamophobia” stood for an overreaction from Muslims, and we had to look into ourselves and wonder if we were indeed overreacting. But not anymore. Whatever be Mr.Trump’s intention (there are many who think he is fooling with America, that his campaign is a big prank), the support he garners with his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric, brings to the fore what is ugly under the veneer of America. Let it ooze out, and then the veneer can sink deeper, closer to the heart of America. Like all lands, if this belongs to anything, it can belong only to what is true, what is right, and what is just. I have always walked on this land with a feeling of reverence for its ancient self, the one that the native Americans must have known, when land was a spiritual presence that is honored, not mastered and like a mother, when it nurtured all.

For me, Islam is nothing but a recognition of a timeless truth that transcends earth and our earthly existence, a bowing down to that bigger truth in reverence. There are others who call that reverence by other names, with the aid of different texts and different teachers. Let us bow in harmony, know and be known.