Struggling

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Ack. I have so much I need to do. I am supposed to be writing for stuff online, writing papers, doing pages and pages of Sanskrit. I have a million miles of schoolwork to get done tomorrow. Meanwhile I am falling apart (quite literally).

I quit. Just temporarily. Please forgive me if I owe you an email, a blog post, an IM conversation, or anything that requires any real thought. I might come back out from under my rock in a few days, insha'Allah. I am going to go pray. Hard.

Six Word Memoir

Saturday, March 22, 2008

The Rules

1. Write your own six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere

4 Tag five more blogs with links

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

And I was tagged by the lovely Lina :)

I couldn't decide between...













Or...

Forget yourself and Allah remembers you.

a la Rumi ("Once you forget yourself, God remembers you. Once you become His slave, then you are free.")

Tagging whatsername, tru3woman, Amira, the Angry Muslimah, and Char.

This makes me want to throw up.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Open season for peeping Toms.

Eating disorders, being a woman, academia

I am pontificating. Well, I'm being forced to pontificate. I have to give a persuasive speech, so I chose to do it on eating disorders; it would have been easier to do it on something I don't know anything about that I could have just researched a little and done a bullshit 6-8 minute talk on and not had to actually focus on one aspect or stop talking or not be so passionate. But...whatever. Fighting the good fight and all that. When I have a chance to talk or write about it, I do - not just because it's something I know a lot about, and I talk and write about a lot (and that doesn't make it as much of an easy A as it might seem), but because I'm in the middle of 38000 college students, a large number of which suffer from disordered eating. And I might have a chance to get through to 20 or so of them on some level.

But nevertheless, it forces me to pontificate, which I don't generally enjoy doing but I'm okay with. I have dogmatic views on eating disorders and on eating disorder education and treatment, and I rarely apologize for that, because they're so concrete for good reason. But it ties into how alienated I've been feeling lately, being caught up in academic discourse. I stuck my head out of my religious/women's studies hole the past week while on spring break (with the exception of my forays into the feminist blogosphere) and it was kind of scary and startling to see the sunshine and remember that most people live in the "real world," where critical thinking and academic discourse aren't projected onto absolutely everything.

I think that's what I love about my experience of Islam. It reminds me of when I first began studying Buddhism. I felt like I'd never understand it all, like there was so much to learn and I just wanted to soak it all up. It frustrates me and makes me anxious a lot of the time, but I also love it. It makes me feel spongy.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I was finishing up Days and Nights in Calcutta by Clark Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee for my East/West film/lit class because I have a short paper due on it tomorrow (um, today), and I had just started reading Bharati's part of the book earlier today. I really hated Clark's section, but I related a lot to Bharati's because she has a lot of positive experiences as a woman to speak on, but at the same time, she discusses many of the problems women face in their day to day lives. There was this one quote that really struck me:

To be a woman, I had learned early enough, was to be a powerless victim whose only escape was through self-inflicted wounds....

"Just wait until the girls are a little older, I'm going to tell them everything, I'm going to make sure they're well educated so no one can make them suffer.

It reminded me of the poem "Daughter," by Nicole Blackman.

One day I'll give birth to a tiny baby girl
and when she's born she'll scream and I'll make sure
she never stops.
I will kiss her before I lay her down
and will tell her a story so she knows
how it is and how it must be for her to survive....
I'll make sure she always carries a pen
so she can take down the evidence.
If she has no paper, I'll teach her to
write everything down on her tongue
write it on her thighs....
I'll tell her that when the words finally flow too fast
and she has no use for a pen
that she must quit her job
run out of the house in her bathrobe,
leaving the door open.
I'll teach her to follow the words....
I will make her stronger than me.
I'll say to her never forget what they did to you
and never let them know you remember.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed whenever I read things or turn on the computer or television or walk outside because I am coming to terms with some things in my experience of being a woman, especially since my reversion, and there are so many positive things I have encountered. I occasionally hate how the negative sometimes necessarily overpowers that and I have to acknowledge it because of who I am and how I live my life and the fact that I am so observant of things and I see it. But sometimes I'd just like to be able to watch something or read something or experience something without feeling those undercurrents.

Why do we still need feminism?

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Because, dammit, I want to be able to pee in public in a man's ass or mouth, look at pictures of cute men while I'm doing my business, and buy a Dickcruiser so I can ride around on a bike that makes it look like I'm fucking a male doll with a strap-on.

Not to mention listening to a man-doll pen holder cry while I'm raping him with my newest sparkly gel pen.

Catholic school, Shari'a law, and Feminism

I found an interesting article on a Muslim woman attending Catholic high school; as a woman who attended Catholic school from kindergarten through eighth grade myself, I've always found perceptions of Catholic education to be interesting. I haven't encountered much about Muslim perceptions until now, though.

I was the only non-Catholic every year, except in middle school, when an atheist also transferred to our school. At the school I went to, non-Catholics paid extra tuition and were basically second-class citizens where the administration was concerned, and because of the demographics due to it being a private school, all of the students with the exception of a teeny tiny handful (mostly just me and my best friend) were wealthy. The school was also probably 98-99% white. I wouldn't have called it comfortable or diverse, and I endured many a Catholic religion class, First Communion practice (despite the fact that I couldn't take it), and weeks and weeks of mass and chapel (required attendance for all students, regardless of personal beliefs). But I also gained a love of thinking outside of the box; the fact that my school would only allow study of, at its most diverse, other Christian faiths, led me to want to study all religions and was probably one of the biggest contributors to my academic and career path. And I can't deny the usefulness of a good education; public schools where I live (and probably most places in the United States) turn out students entering ninth grade who can read at a fourth grade level (60% of the ninth grade population in my public high school).

Catholic education wasn't responsible for instilling my love of school, but neither did they pass you if you weren't ready to pass (as public schools often do), and they certainly challenged you. So it also had its rewards. I've always wondered, though, why Christian religious schools are widely accepted in the US but other religious schools are not; there is always an uproar in the news whenever anyone tries to open a Muslim school, for example. I can't speak now for me what it would mean as a Muslim woman to attend a Catholic school, but as a former Catholic school girl who has reverted, I must say it's refreshing to see more perspectives from people who have actually experienced Catholic education.

In other news, Hyderabad has set up a Shari'a court run by women, which I believe is a huge step in countering the belief that any system that uses Shari'a law is innately oppressive and violent towards women. In America, it is often acceptable to be a Muslim as long as you prefer democracy to an Islamic state and denounce the acceptance of Shari'a law into wider society, or even for yourself. While I am well aware that the Qur'an and Sunnah are often twisted through patriarchal scholarly and legal traditions, that doesn't mean that Islam cannot be an entire way of life for both men and women, in my opinion. I hope more courts such as this will help to dispel the myth that women's issues must be stifled under Shari'a law.

And apparently all that's missing from my particular brand of feminism is a conversion to Christianity. It took me a bit to be okay with posting about this particular Townhall.com columnist, because after reading some of his comments on feminism I just wanted to bang my head against a wall until I bled, but I just about spewed water out of my nose laughing at the comment, "Before the Bible was written, women were deemed inferior to men throughout the world – just as they are today throughout the Islamic World. But the early Christian church stood up for women as no other institution had before. The church denounced divorce, incest, adultery, and polygamy." Adams also asserts that feminist discourses on abortion, the beginning of life, and the right to life was settled for Americans: "Fortunately, our Founding Fathers settled that issue long ago," quoting the famed "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" clause.

Adams' logic fails miserably when he ignores the fact that oppression of women is very much alive today all over the world, not just in the Muslim world. Women of all faiths, creeds, colors, etc. experience oppression, particularly in the United States where women still make only 77 cents for every dollar that men do, and women's bodies are continuously appropriated and objectified. And the idea that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" has ever been enforced for anyone besides white Protestant men is simply laughable. In the 7th century, the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wa salaam gave rights to women in an area of the world where women at least were allowed to participate in society if not considered human beings in their own right, when European societies still kept women in seclusion as well as treating them as property.

Perhaps Adams' arguments can be best classified as "straw man." He sets up a picture of feminism that is easy to hate; anarchist, loudmouthed, shouting epithets for vagina, calling for the downfall of all men. And then he presents a picture of Christianity that is easy to love, but is just about as representative - that is to say, not at all.

Because it needs to be said. Over and over again.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

I felt the need to link to this eloquent post by Aaminah, because this issue keeps coming up lately (well, all the time, but especially the last week or so), particularly in my mind illustrated by the recent asinine fucking LA times article thankfully brought to my attention by this beautiful woman.

It also comes up over and over again when I talk about one of my reasons for donning hijab, which was to escape feeling like my body is constantly being appropriated (I can't remember if I've talked about that specifically on this blog before) when I am harassed and constantly surrounded by negative imagery and influence.

I linked to those other blogs because I just do not know how to get this out of my mouth in any logical, eloquent sort of fashion. If you are male, you do not know what it is like. I am sorry. Being passed over for one particular job or being catcalled by that one chick in that one bar just does not mean you know what it is like to be a woman in this country, or any other country or society. You do not know what it is like to study for years to get a job that you love, knowing the whole time that you will often be passed over for men in your field and that you will make less. You do not know what it is like to walk to the store at night and wonder if you won't come home. You do not know what it is like to survive rape and be looked at as nuts for being anxious around men for years after. You do not know what it is like to deal with sexual harassment day in and day out, regardless of what you wear or how objectively hot or cute you are.

And that does not mean that for those of us who do know, painfully well, it is not a real experience. Just because you in particular try to treat women well does not excuse your desire to live in the bliss of ignorance of how things are for us on a daily basis.

This post was originally meant to relate to just the issues of rape and attack in the links above, but it kind of expanded while I was writing it, so I don't want to confuse that with anything Aaminah or whatsername actually meant to say. This is my own cognitive dissonance showing, but I also wanted to mention that, especially as a female religious academic, it always bothers me when we bring this kind of stuff up and the response is, "Well, why are you talking about this? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with Buddhism/Buddhist practice/Islam/Muslim practice/the subject at hand." Er, excuse me. Half the people in this world are women, and this is our daily life. It very much has to do with everything. We don't assume that men's issues, history, perspective, victimization, or anything else relating to men have to be compartmentalized. Why do women's?

This is something I wrote a few months ago, before I reverted, so some of the references are a bit different (also, it was a forum post). But it is still very relevant to me.

i subscribe to the popularly accepted theory that "oppression" is a systematic, instiutionalized phenomenon that privileges one social group over another. the oppression of women is the oldest form of oppression in existence. i'm specifically thinking of what i have read in the book analyzing oppression by ann e. cudd, and i do not entirely agree with her whole book nor do i want to attribute things to her that she may not mean or have said, but what i write in this paragraph is mostly paraphrased from her work. the main idea is that a member of the oppressed social group is objectively oppressed regardless of whether they experience subjective oppression, and that regardless of whether individuals of the group in power personally choose to propagate the oppressive cycle and contribute to it, they do benefit from it solely from being a member of the privileged group. personally, i think it kind of sucks, because, for example, i work as actively as i personally can against racism in america because of my own experiences and past, and it took me a long time to come to terms with "white guilt" - i am a white woman - and i used to be very defensive about the idea that i was privileged by oppression of people of color regardless of the fact that i actively did not want it to be happening.

what personally helped me come to terms with this and see the reason in this particular view is the fact that the point is not to assign blame or say that all men nowadays are the cause of women's troubles or what have you. the point is to recognize that this is systematic, it is institutional, and we inherited it. it's how things work. it's important to acknowledge that this is how things work in order to try and make any progress, in my experience, and in my experience, the concept that we have already gotten past it and thus no longer need to pay attention to the intricacies of things that are unfortunately often beyond our direct control is one of the things that contributes to oppression. for example, what fede mentioned about the phenomenon cudd calls "oppression by choice" - the fact that regardless of, for example, how a woman should be able to choose freely whether to stay home or enter the workforce. cudd argues that choosing to stay home is oppression by choice because it is one of the main reasons that women are discriminated against in the workforce in this country. it is not an individual woman's fault for choosing to stay home - heck, if you choose to work because choosing to stay home enables oppression, you're still enabling oppression by becoming a victim of coercion - but the choice is coerced either way (basically, we're fundamentally screwed). there's no right answer - but the point is to recognize that staying at home is one of the major contributing factors to why women are promoted less, paid less, etc. acknowledging that women themselves are co-opted into maintaining their oppression is part of recognizing the pattern. another example is sex work - women should be able to freely choose to be sex workers, but at the same time, the ability to make that choice co-opts them into their own oppression because sex work is inseparably tied with the objectification of women's bodies.

okay, i didn't mean for that part to be that long. here's where i get to what i personally feel about these issues, being a buddhist woman. i am not even conventionally attractive, and i am sexually harrassed, usually verbally, on a daily basis, either at work, at school, or on the street (usually on the street - i do not drive so i often have other walkers and drivers yelling sexual and sexist comments at me). i don't generally dress provocatively, but even if i did, i deserve to be able to go through at least one day without being embarrassed by someone's comment or even feeling as though i am being leered at, which happens much more often. i'm not a prude. i've considered being a sex worker. i don't mind talking about sex. i'm polyamorous. i'm socialist. i'm not from a conservative christian sect that requires me to wear a skirt. i'm not even a very good feminist - most feminists don't consider me particularly feminist because i feel very strongly about submission in my personal relationships and i'm kind of apolitical and i like talking about women's studies but i tire of feminist intellectual discourse very easily.

and i'm not blaming every man on the earth for my problems, and i'm sorry if i come across as bitter when i discuss this, but it is hard to be objective and nice and remember that i'm sure every man on this forum is very pro-women's rights, etc. when this crap happens day in and day out. it's hard to maintain compassion and to not be very cynical about the subject and to not expect the worst. i've met a lot of nice men, so i know you're not all creeps, and i'm sure even some of the ones who make comments that offend me and who have groped me or who have assumed things about me in the past weren't actually all bad. but i hate having to qualify my life and my friendships and relationships with men because of that. i hate having to think about the fact that i will probably one day enter the american university system as not only a student but a teacher, where women are still paid less than men. i am a rape survivor, and i have heard even the kindest, nicest, i'm sure, least oppressive people say some of the most inane and insulting things in regards to rape and abuse, which unfortunately still primarily happens to women and yes, is a violent function of women's oppression. i have an eating disorder and have been involved in eating disorder and body image awareness for many years, and i know from experience and paying attention that the vast amount of media and concentration on losing weight, dieting, and body image is directed at women. yes, there are men with eating disorders. there are male rape victims. the fact is, though, that it is not a coincidence this mostly happens to women. women are much more likely to starve themselves into their wedding dresses than men are to starve themselves into their tuxedos, for example. the problem is that women actually have to think about these things - oppressed people in general do. we have to constantly be conscious of our identities and ways of being in the world because we have to navigate around more and different potholes. this is documented in oppression of people of color as well. it is a very stressful way to live.

there are all kinds of awful, unfair things that happen to men, but they are also things that happen more often and usually more intensely to women. i'm not devaluing men's experience here, so please do not read this that way, but the ways in which things like this happen systematically and institutionally affect women in ways that men are not affected, and that maintain men as a majority in terms of power. again, this is not about blaming all the men or hating them. i just think it's important to point out the fact that we inherited this problem. i had a teacher on a class on racism once say that the reason we need things like affirmative action (in this case, for women) is because it's like life is a race, and, for example, men started out whole and healthy but we broke the woman's legs beforehand and then she is faulted for not being able to run as well in the race. the fact is, the playing field is not level.

Turkey is not rewriting Islam.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Seriously people. Don't believe everything the BBC tells you. If I read anymore "Turkey's being all radical and rewriting Islam OMG!" posts I think I'll tear my hair out.

BBC claims of hadith reworking unfounded

As a Directorate of Religious Affairs project nears completion, a resurgence in Western media coverage on the topic, including a BBC report, has focused on an alleged Turkish attempt to re-invent Islam to suit the political aims of the secular republic -- but the directorate says that the project is a return, not a re-creation.

Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs launched the "Thematic Hadith Project" in 2006 to re-evaluate the hadith, the second most important source of jurisprudence in Islam after the Quran, with the objective of determining incorrect hadith attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, correctly interpreting misinterpreted ones and re-explaining certain hadith so that they may be better understood by Muslims.

A recent BBC report, titled "Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts," asserts that the Turkish directorate's project is of a "revolutionary nature" and has "altered and reinterpreted" prophetic statements heretofore agreed upon as authentic. Speaking with Today's Zaman on Wednesday, Dr. Mehmet Görmez, the directorate's deputy director, said: "Our project is not aimed at effecting a radical renewal of the religion, as is claimed by the BBC. Our objective is to help our citizens attain a better understanding of the hadith. Though I underlined several times during our interview with a BBC reporter that our project cannot be considered a reformation of Islam, he distorted the facts, saying Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam -- and a controversial and radical modernization of the religion."

The hadith comprise the sayings and actions of the Prophet Mohammed. Six canonical hadith collections possess a semi-sacred place in Sunni Islam and are the most important source of Islamic law (Shariah) after the Quran, serving to clarify and illustrate the text. Though made up of collections gathered at different times by different scholars, they are often collectively referred to as the hadith. The two largest of these six collections are Sahih Bukhari (collected by Muhammad al-Bukhari, d. 870) and Sahih Muslim (collected by Muslim Ibn al-Hajjaj, d. 875).

An attempt to alter these texts as part of a "radical modernization of the religion," as the BBC put it, would certainly be a highly controversial move. The online BBC article alone had generated over 1,500 reader comments as of Thursday evening. For many Muslims, though, there is a crucial difference between altering hadith texts and reinterpreting them.

The hadith texts are not considered by Muslims to be God's word, as the Quran is. Regardless, they are seen as qualified attempts to collect a body of reliable texts for Muslim scholars to use in adjudication. Scholars such as Bukhari and Muslim traveled throughout the Muslim world gathering and evaluating oral reports that had been passed down through generations from the Prophet Mohammed and his contemporaries. Each of these scholars then evaluated the chain of transmission of each saying, taking into account each individual reporter's reputation, memory, etc. Hadith that conflicted with the Quran were discarded, as were those related by personalities deemed to be untrustworthy. Since that time, Muslim scholars have agreed and disagreed about the relevance and importance of certain hadith to certain rulings and situations.

A fresh look at the hadith collections -- the gathering of which began some 200 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed -- and how they are utilized and interpreted within the framework of Islamic jurisprudence, while sure to generate a degree of criticism and controversy, is a far cry from attempting to change, in effect, some of Islam's most important historical records.

On Thursday the Directorate of Religious Affairs issued a press release that expressed frustration with the coverage of the project by the BBC and other Western and domestic media outlets, rejecting the descriptions of "reform," "revision" and "revolution." "We believe that this academic and scientific hadith project, being conducted independent of domestic and foreign politics, will be an important step taken to convey the universal message of the Prophet Mohammed to the 21st century," the statement read. Also on Thursday directorate head Ali Bardakoğlu spoke to the press at İstanbul Atatürk Airport while on his way to Saudi Arabia and commented that some foreign press organs had covered the project without doing sufficient research to back their claims.

The directorate's Görmez said the project is a scientific one aimed at better understanding the content of the hadith. "It would neither be scientific nor correct to expurgate certain hadith. Sometimes insufficient information could be used to reach to precise information. Thus, we will not expunge certain hadith; we will make a new compilation of the hadith and re-interpret them if necessary," he noted.

The directorate vehemently denies that it is attempting to create a new form of Islam for secular Turkey or for political motives, as the BBC report suggests. Instead, it contends that it is taking a long-overdue look at the classical sources of Islam, contextually re-evaluating them for the 21st century to ensure that the texts can continue to be a guiding, relevant spiritual source for Turkey's millions of Muslims. In essence, a return to an original form of Islam that has been diluted over the centuries by various developments.

Görmez underlined that the project is being conducted by the directorate with the assistance of 35 hadith scholars from several Turkish universities and expressed disappointment over seeing distorted news articles in Western media related to their project.

"I had an interview with BBC reporter Robert Pigott around two months ago about the project. I underscored during our interview that it cannot be termed a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam. But, his article read 'the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.' This does not reflect the truth. We are going to take the appropriate legal measures for redress," he added.

The directorate's project will produce a six-volume text that includes Quran exegesis (tafsir) and hadith evaluation. Some 400 topics will be interpreted in the light of the Quran and the hadith. The project is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs was established in 1924, replacing the Şeyhülislam (also Shaykh al-Islam) post in the Ottoman state, which was succeeded by the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Among the directorate's objectives is to "provide religious services ... illuminated by knowledge and good conduct, benefiting from today's technological developments and communications facilities and our historical experiences."