Anyone who knows me knows I am the rukhsa queen.  It isn’t too hard to keep within the boundaries of Islamic Law if you know where to look for a ruling that works for you.  Seriously.  That is what the Law is there for, to make your life easy within the boundaries of the divine will.  I’m a Sunni, but I gladly take rukhsas from the Shia.  If you got a rukhsa, baby, I’m buying!

I got a little worried about the Islamic propriety of all this wrasslin’ stuff I’ve been up to.  I mean there’s a lot of touching going on.  Even though I wear two jog bras and a couple of t-shirts, the men do not wear cups as if not protecting their genitals is somehow more manly.  There is this one move called a "schoolboy."  It requires me to lie on the floor behind my partner and wind my hand through his legs so that the back of my hand is touching his upper thigh.  You know what I also have to wind by to get there, eh hem.  Why can’t these guys wear cups!? 

The photo is of Randy Orton.  Now my classmates do not look like this (after all Randy is a TV Wrasslin’ Star on Steroids) and they wear shorts instead of little trunks, but I think the photo nicely illustrates my dilemma.

So I contacted Ayatullah Arman, a wrestling fan and self-styled Marja` taqlid in Australia for a fatwa on the matter.  If he keeps up fatwas like this, I’m liable to go back to him with all my scandalous problems!

Where I live, there are (at least) two Islams, and two Muslim communities.

One of these Islams is what I call "al-hamdulillah Islam." This is the Islam of ISNA, CAIR, NASIMCO, the Tablighi Jamaat, the local Rif'ai dervishes. Different as these groups are, they all have one feature in common—-they generally experience Islam as a Good Thing. They tend to be Proud to be Muslims.

The second of these Islams is what I call the Islam of the walking wounded. Some of these walking wounded are refugees who've fled Islamist governments, or Islamist violence in their homelands. Some are torture survivors. Some have had appalling abuse visited upon them right here in North America in the name of Islam.