Where I Live... and Why?

I live in Madinah. City of the Prophet Muhammed, may the peace and blessings of Allah forever be upon him.

There is only one place I would rather live... that's Paradise, we hope and pray to be of the people of Paradise.

I gave up and left everything I ever knew or worked for to be here. So why do I love it so?

Scenery is not the answer. While it is a beautiful city, it is still a desert city and I come from the lush Great Lakes states. Desert scenery is just no a draw for me.

People are not the answer. Colonialism, oil money and loss of religious education have taken a toll upon the people so that, as a body, they can be very difficult to live with. But I must say, taken as individuals, I have never met more kind, gentle, God conscious people anywhere... and I have been a lot of places.

I can't say I feel completely at home here.... there are many differences in the culture.  Time is the most difficult adjustment for me. It's surprising how much it means to know what time to call people and when to get business done.  Here, the calendar is Lunar based and has entirely different months.  The weekends were Thursday and Friday, now they have changed to Friday and Saturday.  School hours are 7am to 1pm. It's impolite to phone people between noon and about 5pm.  At some times of year, people are available for business in the mornings and in the evenings 'til about 7.  Other times of year, people are available for business from about 10pm 'til about 4 in the morning.

Holidays, because they are almost all religious events, have a major impact on this officially religious society.  Things change for the whole month of Ramadan and for most of the month of Dhul Hijjah.  Then there are the school / government calendars which affect the rhythm of the place because families vacation around them.  There's the summer vacation, the break between semesters and the spring vacation.  Then, the added twist, since the calendar is lunar, Ramadan and Dhul Hijjah move about 2 weeks every year. 

Prayer time is inviolate.  When the call to prayer is made, you see men moving out from their homes and/or places of business toward the masjids.  It's very impressive, especially when you see the enthusiastic participation of the young.  Don't get me wrong.  There are plenty of people who can be seen loitering until the prayer is finished and they can get back to their foosball games but I think they are a minority and if they are a majority, at least they are shy enough to not be public about it.

Shopping is not the answer. What could I possibly find here that I could not find in Chicago or New York?

Ok. In short. Why am I here? What do I love?

There is no reason to be here except to worship God. I tired of a society whose words of worship were for God but whose actions were for nothing more than they were for money. The altruistic have become nationalistic.

Even here, those problems exist, but not on the same level. And there is a balance. The old people with nothing who continue to study and teach about the wonders of God. The children running to school with their Qur'ans on their hearts and their prayer rugs for school bags. The youngsters hanging out in the streets imitating their hip hop heros but dropping everything to pray when the call to prayer is heard. The women within the confines of their privacy coming together to socialize but never forgetting to include God's presence in their chatter, to remind each other of better ways, and to hold time aside to learn more about God Himself.

The cars with labels across the rear window invoking Allah's pleasure and protection.

Signs by the side of the road encouraging all to remember, praise and glorify Allah.

Television programs interrupted with the call to prayers.

Work environments which encourage prayer, give time for it and do not stress the worshipper about the amount of time taken for that prayer.

Laws which prohibit transaction of business during the time of prayer.

A city which has a system for feeding the poor and hungry at least once a day, every day, without singling them out from the rest of the population; access to food with dignity.

A city which welcomes millions upon millions of worshippers and shows more patience than possible all year, every year. Some practice their religion this way, some that way, but none are turned away without practicing in a way which disturbs others greatly.

A city which, until today carries not ghosts but presence, the presence of the great sacrifices and work that was and still is being done in Allah's name and to bring the knowledge and understanding of Allah, His prophet (صلي الله عليه و سلم) and His religion to all who will listen.

Why do I live here? Because, as a community, it meets and exceeds my priorities.  I hope and pray that nothing but death ever takes me away from here. Ameen.

What Madinah Means to Me

I love Madinah. I love the people of Madinah. I love living in Madinah. I love helping Madinah. I love helping the people of Madinah. I see Madinah changing and I want to be a part of the change, I want to help the changes happen in a way that is good for Madinah.

I was blessed with an amazing education, a unique upbringing, incredible people in my life, so much love I haven’t yet found anywhere to put it all and, I have been blessed to live in Madinah. I want to share what I have and who I am with the people and the place.

I hope to see women and children here offered opportunities to flourish as members of this community. I want to be a part of that.

Message of the Years

It seems I was always too young.
Even though I could swallow, I was too young to hold the spoon.
Even though I was walking I was too young to walk alone.
Even though I was six, I was too young to bike to school.
Even though I was a woman, I was too young to date.
Even though I had a job, I was too young to be responsible with my money.
Even though I was an adult, I had not yet had a child.
Even though I was married, I had not yet borne the test of years.
Even though I'd seen the years, I had not yet raised a teenager.
Even though I'd raised a teenager, I had not yet reached his wisdom.
Even though I'd found the decades, my children had not moved on.
Even though children move on, I still lived in the heartache of my loss of life.
Even though I found a new life, I'd not yet reached menopause.
Even though I've felt the tug of years, I've not yet felt their pull.
Even though I reach menopause, I've not yet seen my losses.
Loss of youth. Loss of health. Loss of loved ones. Loss of promise. Loss of my life.
I guess then I'll be old enough. But old enough for what?
Baqiyah and Jennah, I hope.

Birth

Birth is something you just do. Then you learn about the world through your parents’ eyes. Then you explore and find out there are some things you would define differently and some things about which your parents were ever so right. So we all did this, yeah?
Then there comes a day when you question not only how your parents view the world but how the world at large views itself, one microcosm at a time. Your friends, your neighbors, your town and so on, right on up to lets discuss global warming and world peace.
And finally, you settle. Finally you realize that you just can’t be satisfied with only looking over your living room for what needs changing and you will never be the one to achieve world peace, but there is a place, somewhere in between where you and what you can do just plain fit.

God Bless

A--choo. God bless you.

Now I lay me down to sleep... God bless me, Amen.

God bless America. But when did the flag become part of the church?

God bless the Children of Adam.

Worshipping God

I never believed in worshipping anyone except for God. Even as a child, the concept that we should worship Father, Son and Holy Ghost bothered me deeply. I could not understand why the son and the holy ghost should be worshipped… didn’t they worship God, too?

As I grew, I was indoctrinated into Western Society. I learned to leave my modesty and be forward. I learned to read people, understand what they wanted and give it to them. I learned to be manipulative and cold. I learned to use people and discard them when they had no more use to me. I learned to lie. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, little white lies, the lies that get you noticed, the lies that get you out of trouble, the lies that get you through the day. I looked around at my role models. The President, movie stars, businesses, family members, everyone said it was A OK to lie as long as you don’t get caught. All this made me cynical. All this made me doubt that there was a God. I became an atheist. I decided that with this cold cruel world, there could not be a God.

This time was a dark time for me. I believed deeply in God from earliest childhood. With all the potential I was blessed to have, it was more and more being channeled into being a person I did not like at all. But, without a God, what incentive did I have to be anything else?

Finally, the incentive came from not being able to resolve my internal conflict when I didn’t like the person I was coming to be. I had to reach for being a person I could live with. I had to reach for being someone I, myself could like. With this decision, came another. I decided that, whether there actually was a God or not, I believed in what He stood for. I believed in “being a nice person”.

After this, I changed my behaviors and came to like myself again. Having done this, one day I was sitting in a Chemistry class and suddenly looked at the periodic table of the elements. I puzzled over it. I said, this thing demonstrates an incredible order in the way things are. But it’s not an order you would expect like water reaching its own level or potato chips settling into the most comfortable possible position in the bag. It’s an order that has an artistic flair. The fact that the table is not a perfect square or a perfect rectangle, but has places here and there that “stick out” and the transitional elements which don’t even really fit on the page without elongating the paper and making a footnote all combined together to show me the art in that science. I had to say it. “Somebody did that!”

So I returned to my beloved belief in God.

I began to call myself Christian because it was the only monotheistic religion I knew but I also began to look for the Christian denomination that would fit my beliefs. For I still did not believe in worshipping more than one God.

Meantime, I continued to engage in some of the same self-destructive behaviors because they were still a part of what it meant to be a “good person” at that time. Going to parties and staying out late, these were things that you could do and still be considered a “good person” under Western rules. These behaviors left me feeling empty and just as used up as the people I used to use. I began to fail in my life. My schoolwork suffered. My relationships suffered. My family life suffered and I became just as much the victim as those I used to victimize.

I met some Muslims from overseas around this time. We were attending the same school and, at that time, I was actually doing well. They wanted help in their studies so we made an arrangement where I would tutor them and they would include me in their dinners. I enjoyed eating new and different foods and looked forward to the deal.

My association with them was beneficial to me because they were very serious about their studies. It was beneficial to them because I was very intelligent. With their insistence upon hard work and my ability to give them guidance so their work had merit, we all did well in our courses.
At the same time, I was suffering socially. Eventually, I came to them a mere emotional shell. We sat together and told me about Islam. They told me there was only one God.

SubhanAllah, I heard a bell. The bell was so clear and so distinct, I could have sworn I heard it with my ears but somehow I knew with all my heart that the bell had sounded within my soul.

I sat up from the couch and said, “YES!”

Then they told me that Jesus had not been the son of God but that he was a man who had been born without a father and was loved by God. That he was also a prophet and that he was loved and respected by all muslims. I was happy with this explanation because I never thought of Jesus as having been the product of a union between God and Mary, rather a creation of God that had been placed in Mary miraculaously and was just refered to as God’s son. Not that he actually had the same relationship with God that I have with my father, rather that he had the same relationship with God that I have with God. A relationship between a creation and his Creator.

As they were talking, the bell rang a total of 3 times. I remember the ringing but I do not remember what points they were making when it rang.

After this. I went home. I was still very troubled, perhaps even more so. Christianity had always taught me to believe in it without question. It was a matter of faith to just accept the teachings of Christianity, even when they did not make any sense. It was a trick of the devil to try to make sense out of them. So I was afraid. Because Christianity was REALLY not making any sense now that I had a religion I knew existed that had all the elements I had been looking for all my life.

I was up at night pacing and talking to myself. There was a great battle going on inside my head and I felt that I would explode. Should I follow the thing that made sense or should I stick to my faith? Would I be eternally damned for being logical? Would I suffer total seperation from everything I had ever learned? Would I be doing what was right and what God wanted me to do?

I left the house. It must have been very late at night but I do not know the time. I walked. I walked like a woman possessed. It began to rain. At first it was a gentle rain. The more I walked, the harder it rained until I was absolutely drenched. I went to a parking lot. I sat in the rain and cried. I cried and cried until there were no more tears and then I cried some more. I got up. I was cold. It was dark. I was alone. I saw a church. I had never known that church was there. I went to the church.

It was locked. The lights were on so I knocked. I knocked and, eventually, the pastor came to the door and let me in.

I went inside. It was empty. Not that there were no people. It just felt so empty. I knew I didn’t belong there. I left.
I walked home in the rain. When I got home, I took a hot shower. I wrote some poetry. Then I made a decision. I decided that I would be muslim. I decided that Islam was the way God intended man to worship Him. The moment I made this decision…

All the noise stopped. All the turmoil stopped. All the confusion stopped. I have never before or since felt the clarity and peace I felt in that moment. I have never, one day or one time had a doubt that I made the right decision. It’s been 27 years and I am just as convinced today as I was that night 27 years ago. There is no god except Allah and Muhammed is His servant and messenger.

I Wear The Veil

I wear the veil. I choose to wear the veil. No one forces me to wear the veil. I consider it a privelege to live in a society that supports my wearing the veil because I was
born and grew up in a society that allowed it, but made it very hard.

I am tired of being told how oppressed I am. I am tired of being told how badly my husband and other husbands treat their wives. Because we are a private people, evidenced by our choice to veil, we tend not to be the ones to speak out. Rather, it is the verbal exhibitionists who are speaking for us and they have it all wrong.

One of the most impressive things I have ever borne witness to was my first Hajj. I was literally surrounded, night and day, by millions upon millions of muslims, men and women.

I was astonished.

For a month, the conditions mimicked the crowding at football stadiums. For a month, there were NO fights in my view. For a month, I saw example after example of people having patience with each other through very trying circumstances and under the constant stress of living as overcrowded travellers.

These people came from all over the world. From every country, from every walk of life. These people were doctors, beggars, financiers, dishwashers. These people were here to worship The Creator by following the rites of Abraham and I can not imagine seeing the same exemplary behavior maintained in a crowd 100th the size for even 2 hours in a western setting.

These were millions. Upon millions. Upon millions. For a month. Wow.

Oh. And there were women. Not in veils because, that is prohibited during Hajj. During prayer and during Hajj, the veil is prohibited. However, many women still pull a curtain of sorts across their faces to protect their modesty. BY CHOICE.

Now what did I see of the women? Each and every one I can remember was escorted by a man. That man was wearing two towels. And nothing else. Two towels. One for his shoulders. One for his waist. And nothing else.

With the challenge of making sure he does not lose that unfamiliar and unwieldly cover for HIS modesty, you would think he would be pretty much totally preoccupied with the task. But no. I saw men who were surrounded by women. Obviously mothers, wives, daughters. Even baby daughters riding on their shoulders. In a crowd so tight it would remind you of the hot dog stand at the superbowl during half-time.

But again, I was amazed.

Each and every man in each and every circumstance, and believe me, in those crowds I saw many many many of them in a month’s time, was being so gentle and patient with each of those women that… I can only say I was amazed.

When the women had a need, he got busy and saw it met. When the children cried, he comforted them. When they moved too slowly, he slowed down. When they became excited, he enjoyed their joy. When they were sick he attended them in the clinics and the hospitals. Not one man. Not two men. Every man I saw who had a female family member with him.

This does not say that I am naïve enough to believe all Muslim men are so pious. Islam holds the hearts of 1/3 of the world’s population and we are a diverse people. From the best of us to the worst of us, our diversity is great and Islam embraces that diversity. Just as the West has its Jeffrey Dahmers and Adolf Hitlers, Islam has those who profess this faith but practice it badly. These are not examples and neither should you take them as yours. Not your examples for how to act nor your examples for how I, an ordinary Muslim woman, or any other ordinary muslim person acts. Neither do I claim to be perfect. Anyone who chooses to do so can probably find many things for which to criticise me. I do not invite this, nor am I writing this to encourage it. I am writing this to be a voice for those who normally do not speak.

We are a private people. Many of our houses are not beautiful on the outside, they are ordinary. From the outside, it is often difficult to differentiate between the rich and the poor. When wearing two towels and among millions of others who are also wearing two towels, to just whom should we feel we must bow?

As women, we are even more private. We love to be beautiful in spirit and in soul and we love to present ourselves beautifully among those whom we love. We do not share ourselves freely nor with just anyone. That is why you do not hear our voices rise against the injustice of being depicted as the most oppressed people on the planet Earth while simultaneously being implicated as terrorists because we prefer to dress modestly or even to cover our faces.

We are depicted as beat down and downtrodden until one would think we do not even have a right to self-esteem. As if we do not have the wherewithal to walk out of the house and go to a restroom and change clothes if that was what we really wanted to do. As if we can not see how we are treated. As if we are so psychologically damaged that we love being abused…

If this is so, why do I see so many couples, young and old, wandering the streets here holding hands? If this is so, why are so many of the political cartoons here dedicated to how difficult it is for arab men to marry due to the expense? I am told a typical (in one Muslim country) dowry is about $25,000 US. The dowry is paid, not to the bride’s family but to the bride herself. Then the groom must also foot the bill for the wedding, which typically runs about $15,000 US, I am told. Finally, I attended one of these weddings. The bride had a series of drop dead gorgeous floor length wedding gowns that she modeled for the guests (all women) on a runway. Each dress had its own color theme and its own jewelry. She also wore a veil for the last dress. I am sure it must have been her choice for the veil she wore was made of Solid 21 carat Gold. Hmmmm, she sounds like she is just toooooo oppressed, doesn’t she?

There are entire streets here dedicated to women’s clothing shops. There are the shops full of black. The black we wear in public because we are modest. They represent about 10% of the shops. The rest are the clothes we wear under the black or after we take the black off at parties and other social functions. The fabrics are fabrics I have never seen in the West. Maybe I visited the wrong shops. The jewlery shops are draped in gold. Not 14 carat gold, which is barely even half gold. No, 21 and 22 and even 24 carat gold. Just as pure as is reasonable for the application so it does not fall apart in the wearing. Then there are the malls where men are not allowed. Oh, yes, there are things men are prohibited from too!

We don’t drive. Neither do most wealthy men. It’s called a chauffeur. Didn’t you ever wish you had one? Many of us own our own cars but never have to drive them. Additionally, the streets here are full of dangerous drivers so when you do drive, you take your life in your hands. The accident rate is extraordinarily high; I would rather not take the chance of being the one behind the wheel.

Conformity is cited as a reason to remove the veil. “Adopt the customs of the society in which you live.” Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago that Diversity was the watch word of the day? Or should we all be Orwellian and run out and buy identical clothing, live in identical accomodations and say identical things in response to identical prompts?

And be honest, just how many things that are a part of that culture would those who live there prefer not to have to conform to? For example, high crime rates. A need to lock yourselves securely behind walls and bars to keep the “bad” people out. Or how about the public school system and how many of its children are afraid in school or not receiving an adequate education?

Then there is the rat race. Wake up at 6 am to get dressed (must be cute, it’s a part of my personal sales pitch – what am I selling again?), get the kids to school and be at work by 7:30. Then work all day, eat lunch at your desk, work all afternoon and well into the evening because if you don’t, you’ll never get that promotion. Then, end up being late picking up the kids from the sitter who knows them better than you do, run them home, feed them and all go to bed. So you will have the energy to get up and do it all over again tomorrow. But there’s the weekend. It’s time off so you can do laundry, wash the car, clean the house, mow the lawn and get ready for Monday. Oh yeah, and spend time with the kids.

Boy, do I wish I had a husband… for it is also part of the culture to be a divorced, single parent.

I’ll be okay after I have my evening cocktail and a nightcap. I’ll be okay after I pop those nice pills the doctor prescribed to help me keep my nerves in check.

And then there are the homeless and the drug addicts and the prostitutes and all those society forgot.

Must we adopt all these customs too? And, after we do, must we also find out that those kids we worked so hard to raise but hardly know are building guns in the garage to kill their classmates with? Are you reading the same newspapers I am? In America, we used to call this way of life “Working from can’t see to can’t see”… in other words slavery. Now who IS the master?

Progress is cited as a reason to remove the veil. Allah says in the Qur’an, “Today have I perfected for you your religion.” Well, if Allah sees it as perfect, its hard to imagine there is anything better. When you progress to something else from perfect, the only way to go is to worse, unless you would like to go through bad first.

One more thing. The lecturer that refused to enter the room with women present never called them polluted or even less than him… It once again takes the helpful presence of verbal exhibitionists to arrive at this conclusion. Is it not possible that he feared polluting the women present? Is it not possible that he had too high a regard for them to want to enter their presence?

Or, as is probably more likely, is it not possible that he feared his own behaviors, however private and wanted to meet his Lord one day without having to account for what those behaviors might have been?

Please, if you want to have a go at men who are “polluted by women”, focus on strip bars and pornographic websites and thongs on the beach. Then ask yourselves, just who is polluting whom?

We enjoy the privileges of being treated well by our men. They take responsibility for us in ways the women of the west pray for. We also take responsibility for them, in ways men of the west pray for. We love each other, respect each other and work together for the strength and benefit of our families, whom we hold high.

Yes, I wear the veil. I guess I have covered every aspect of this decision of mine except the why. The question is being asked whether or not the religion dictates the wearing of the veil. This is not the question that is important. It does not matter whether it is dicated by the religion or not. What is important here is whether or not wearing the veil is something that Allah accepts as an act of worship. This is a universally agreed point. It is known that Allah ordered the wives of the Prophet, may the Peace and Blessings of Allah forever be upon him, to wear the veil. If they were ordered to wear it then it is clearly an act of worship. This is why I wear it and, in most cases, when anyone decides to interfere with someone wearing it for that reason, they should take into account what kind of Board meeting they are interrupting. Would you interrupt the president or the prime minister or the king in a meeting? Would you interrupt The Creator in His meeting with the one who is worshipping Him?

Life here is wonderful for one reason and one reason alone. Life does not revolve around work; life revolves around worship. I have left the rat race and am racing against my own shortcomings to please my Lord.

Personally, my husband was there for me while I finished my Master’s Degree in Engineering. He cooked and cleaned and cared for our kids in addition to working so I could finish. He then respected my decision to work and, when I decided I would rather come home – both to my family and to the place I love most on Earth, he supported that as well. I am not unusual in this blessing. We trust our husbands and fathers and brothers for the most part. Our faith builds in protections for us that, when they are respected, are sufficient to make up the difference. This is why we don’t need many of the things the west is constantly trying to push upon us, like the right to exhibit our beauty in public. This is also why we don’t need the West to dictate how we live or to save us from ourselves. Just as the ecology maintains a strong but delicate balance, so does our way of life. Just as the ecology is being threatened by the prevalent western approach to “caring” for it, so are the millions of innocent people who have been affected and died at the hands of the same “caring” people.

I could go on. And on. And on. But I will stop here because I believe I have made my point. Thank you for your attention. If I have said anything to offend anyone, I apologise, this was not my intention. Anything I have said wrong, is my own fault. Anything I have said that is right, it is only through the mercy of Allah.

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and I bear witness that Muhammed is His servant and messenger.
Ash hado al laa ilaaha illallah, ash hado anna muhammaden abduhu wa rasuluhu.

-- Umm Abdullah