women

I wake up some mornings and have to remind myself why I became a Muslim. I took my Shahadah twelve years ago, and back then I was full of faith. Over the years, my faith has diminished. I still believe wholeheartedly in the Quran and the Prohethood of Muhammad, yet any connection I may have felt toward the Muslim community at large is gone. I have attended mosques, put myself in the company of other Muslims and only have disgust as a result. I was hoping this Ramadan it would be different, that I would emerge at the end of the holy month with a clean heart and a renewal of my faith. Alas, only a few days into the month and I am disillusioned. I attended an iftar at my local mosque, needing the fellowship, and experience of Ramadan for my young children. I overlooked the billowing white curtain dividing the men and women in the community room. I overlooked the wooden barrier in the prayer hall that partitioned the small women's section from the men's.

You've GOT to be kidding me. How is this guy allowed to be a grand mufti?

"It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."

"Unfair to her"? A 47-year-old man marries an 8-year-old and a judge refuses to annul the marriage, then this guy comes out and has the balls to say something as foul as this? If this is what Wahhabism stands for, then it's utter shit. Mr. Al-Sheikh, you have neither the clarity of conscience nor the common decency of a good Muslim. Allah will judge you, but if he wants a character witness at your trial, I'm first in line. Right behind every woman who wants to cut in front of me.

... that makes you feel humble and, in an almost unfathomable way, proud.

From The New York Times: Afghan Schoolgirls Undeterred by Attack:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’twant women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”

Hot damn. Women will be the ones to pull our faith into the modern world.

Promoted to the front page

I will use some humor to get this started...

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blockquote>

Once upon a time, there was an ancient blind mystic who was very learned. He was schooled in the wisdom of many religious and spiritual traditions; he identified with no religion, for he was of all religions. He knew many languages and could recite from memory the Qur'an, the Gospels, the Torah, the poetry of Rumi, selections from the Bhagavad Gita, and many other religious texts. Every day, he sat in the city square, and as people passed by, he greeted them according to their particular religious affiliation. He did not need to see them, for he could ascertain someone's religion by using his other four senses. One day he was sitting in the square and four men came by:

A Catholic priest walked by, and the blind man felt his priestly robes. "The peace of the Lord be always with you," he said.

Promoted to the front page.

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p>I have just spoken with a friend of mine who has converted to Ismailism (a long and arduous process, I might note) from Usuulii 12er Shi'ah.

The reason for this? She's transgender and queer and there is no breathing room. She was convinced of the truth of the practice of the Ismaili community and its progressive leadership and couldn't stand the suffering and rules-lawyering of the 12er, whom she likened to the fundy-Sunni in their focus on legalism and rulings (and often wild anti-semitism) in the face of Ismailism.

My question in the headline comes from this sentence of an article about the American Christian movement: The religious right is "not simply a religious movement or a political movement; it has also, and above all, been a sexual movement."
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CALL FOR STORIES

Announcing a call for non-fiction, personal stories by American Muslim women on courtship and/or dating to be published in an anthology.

We are looking for talented writers to pitch well-written, surprising and compelling anecdotes for a book on loving and looking for love while Muslim.

I am currently enrolled in a class at a university. It is Islam. I had my doubts at first, but one day, when we all were in class and I was listening to a Recitation of the Holy Qur'an, it felt like a burst of light and joy was coming from my heart. I literally had no idea what was going on, but I let myself feel it. I had tears streaming down my face, and it we were only about ten minutes or so into it, and the Sura was finished. The professor was done giving the example.

German Judge and Legal Orientalism
By  Mohammad Fadel

Originally Posted on Eteraz.Org

The Friday New York Times reported that a German judge denied a Moroccan woman’s request for an expedited divorce from her Moroccan husband – despite the apparently undisputed evidence that the husband had repeatedly abused her – on the grounds that such conduct is “common” in Morocco and that the “Koran . . . sanctions such physical abuse.” 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the March 15 episode of The Colbert Report:

Hirsi Ali
Many Muslims have refused to question the doctrine itself, the submission within Islam as opposed to the majority of Christian who’ve been questioning it for ages, and who have now developed a Christianity that is defined only as love - love thy neighbor, where they’ve abolished hell, whereas most Muslims believe not only in a hereafter, but in Hell, and your not allowed to ask - put question marks on what is in the Quran.

Colbert:
I don’t know what Christianity you’ve been studying, but, uh, Hell’s still fairly prominent in some of the churches I’ve been to.

I just don't get it. Why is this woman taken seriously?