I am Homesick!

aerial view of Hobart

Hobart Wharves (across from the Art School)













































Salamanca Markets

My Beautiful Island

These photographs are of Tasmania, the island where I grew up. Much of the states beautiful wilderness is under threat of being logged . How beautiful is Allah's creation and yet we want to destroy it.

Sorry, I'm not really laughing!

by the grafitti artist Banksy

Not all non-marital relationships are "slutty"

Suroor (Achelois) and PM are discussing issues on their blogs which have brought up the concept of "sluttiness". If I knew how to do that spiffy linking thingy with their names, I would but being a computer idiot, I cannot, sorry. But I do have links to their blogs on my sidebar.

There has been a lot of talk about sex outside of marriage. Obviously all sex outside of marriage is not ok according to Islam, but this doesn't mean that it is always slutty and meaningless for the people involved. There are plenty of people who have very committed long-term relationships without getting married. They may choose not to get married because they do not believe in it as an institution, they may not feel that they need the state to endorse their relationship. This does not mean that they are promiscuous and superficial or irresponsible with no concern for their families. It may mean simply that they see their relationship as valid in itself without needing to be propped up by the law of the land.

What we need to remember is that the validity of an Islamic marriage comes from it being a commitment between a couple to conduct their relationship according to the laws of God. People who have no religious belief obviously cannot marry in this way, but would a State marriage be any more acceptable Islamically? There is no consideration of Allah in a State marriage. I have no idea about the legal considerations of this, my point is simply to remind people not to be judgemental. Yes, there is plenty of "sluttiness" in the world but it doesn't always come from non-muslims. The behaviour of many young Muslim men in my own community is far more slutty than the behaviour of many people I knew in my non-muslim past.

This is not an endorsement of Godless marriage or de-facto relationships, I don't want to suggest that there is not a problem with non-marital sex in the West. I just think it's important to make it clear that statistics which state the amount of people involved in non-marital relationships, cannot be used as examples of sluttiness, because there are plenty of de-facto relationships that could not in any way be described by this word.

Sakina

When I think about how patronizing I used to be about people saying that their religious experiences provided them with "peace", I am ashamed. I was so skeptical, I was sure that this "peace" was just psychological. In a way I envied these people because their religion was able to provide them with a means of finding tranquility. But I thought that really it was self-deception. Amongst my circle of friends religion was something to condemn or laugh about, I could never imagine taking it seriously. Born again Christians were a particular target of our mirth. We had such arrogance, we were so sure that our understanding of life was the correct way of thinking. But in reality we understood nothing. Most of us had a great emptiness inside of us which we tried to fill through intellectual pursuits or just plain hedonism. Amongst that group of people, to suggest that spirituality might have a central role to play in life would be like suggesting that we get the plague voluntarily, it was just not something a "thinking" person did.

It's not surprising therefore that most of my friendships from this time did not withstand my conversion to Islam. I moved from having friends who never thought about God, to having friends who placed religion at the center of their lives. Now I'm so used to taking for granted that someone knows what I'm talking about when I refer to feeling close to Allah, feeling His Mercy and the peace that comes with it, that I no longer know how to explain such things to a non-believer. I remember my own cynicism. How do you explain that the "peace" that accompanies religious experience comes from Outside? How do you explain that you simply "know" this?

In the days following my conversion a non-believing friend made a short film about my decision to enter Islam. She filmed me as I prayed. I so much wanted her to understand the intensity of the prayer, that I made du'a that Allah open her heart. When I finished she appeared quite overwhelmed. She had "felt" something, but she quickly rationalized things by understanding it as an intensity caused by religious devotion. She compared it to visiting churches in Italy. Nothing could convince her that it was more than the effect of extremely focused concentration.

To believe is an act of the will, we have to choose to believe. Allah gifts us with experiences during which He draws us close to him, but ultimately it is up to us to decide what to make of them. I "know" that the peace that comes with Islam is not a construction of my own mind. To become a Muslim is the most transformingly wonderful experience, one that I do not have the power to create for myself.

from a Chinese Qu'ran

Grief is not skin deep

this post was too angst ridden to leave, but the picture is pretty!

On Neurons and Transmitters

This post is now password protected at my wordpress blog.

www.jamilalighthouse.wordpress.com

For as far as you can see...

If I don't get time to myself to sit quietly, reflect and feel close to God, then I become truly ugly! I'm ashamed to say that formal prayer is not always the vessel that helps me achieve this. More often than not, my children are climbing on top of my head or else they are attacking each other.Salat for me is sometimes just survival, can we get through it without a major injury occurring?

When I saw this image of a man praying in the Sahara, my first thought, aside from appreciating it's beauty, was to think how wonderful to be alone with Allah in such a vast space. Have you noticed how when you can see for kilometers without anything blocking your view, the immensity of the landscape can overwhelm you spiritually? It is a very primal feeling, as if something in your being is responding to it's origin. I have never visited the desert but I imagine being next to the sea is vaguely similiar, in the sense of being able to view the same landscape until it meets the horizon.

Is it looking towards the edge that is so evocative of Allah swt? Is it the combination of supreme beauty, vastness and the unknown that makes your heart swell in longing and appreciation?

In brief moments of quiet, I remind myself to step outside of my small life, beyond even ideas and issues of "vital" importance and into that space that defies description. And I feel truly blessed to be able to and I pray that it is never taken away from me.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem

On Hysteria and Stubborn Manliness

From memory I think the word hysteria comes from either a Greek or Latin word meaning womb (Please correct me if I'm wrong). Therefore hysteria is seen as being specifically female, our biology supposedly making us prone to emotional excesses. In nineteenth century England, Hysteria was a considered a common mental disorder but contemporary evaluations of women affected in such a way would suggest that they were just victims of a patriarchal culture. Bored and maligned and given no voice or means of personal expression, they went "crazy". So we have two arguments, the traditional being that it was their biology that made them act that way, the second being that it was their unfortunate circumstances. Which is correct?

In the past I dismissed the biology argument as @#$%. When I came across Islamic sources interpreted using this logic, I was not surprised as I was already aware of such thinking in Western thought, why wouldn't it be a cross-cultural phenomenon? What better way for men to put women down than by saying that we are innately stupid and crazy? Once such a premise has been established everything we say can be dismissed as being irrational and not having a basis in logical thought.

How then do we approach certain base sources that appear to adhere to this line of reasoning? It is one thing to say that it is a matter of interpretation and that the source has been taken out of context. But what if even when considered in context, the source still suggests something that we find unpalatable? One response is to deny it, another is to put it aside and say to yourself that you'll deal with it later.

Suroor's recent post at http://achelois.wordpress.com/2007/01/08/women-the-fitnah-are-dwellers-of-hell/
discusses the following hadith
Abu Said al-Khudri narrated: Once Allah’s Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) on ‘Id-al-Adha or al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, “O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women).” They asked, “Why is it so, O Allah’s Apostle?” He replied, “You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you.” The women asked, “O Allah’s Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?” He said, “Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?” They replied in the affirmative. He said, “This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn’t it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?” The women replied in the affirmative. He said, “This is the deficiency in her religion.” (Bukhari 1.301).
When I first converted to Islam, this hadith bothered me greatly, I could not reconcile it's seemingly misogynist sentiment with the character of the Prophet. He was such a great champion of women's rights, why would he say something like this? So I put it aside and focused on what was more immediately important such as fostering my understanding of tawhid.

Things cannot remain buried forever, however, this hadith kept popping its head up every now and then in different forms forcing me to try and understand what it really means. Over time I have found that I actually find value in it, how can this be? Could it be that I am actually starting to subscribe to the "biology" argument? Or perhaps I have internalized Islamic patriarchy to such an extent that I am now its' willing victim? What has happened?

My conversion to Islam was followed six months later by my marriage. One year after this, I had my first child. In four and a half years of marriage, I have spent twenty seven months pregnant and thirty one months lactating and feeding. I am not advertising my credentials for being a good breeder but rather acknowledging that since my marriage, I have learned first hand, the impact that our bodies can have on us. Yes, as modern women, we can control our reproductive systems to a certain extent, that is we can "plan" our pregnancies (knowing that it ultimately rests with Allah), but we cannot control the effects of pregnancy once it has occurred. And for most women living in traditional societies, even "planning" is impossible. The Prophet was addressing women from such a society.

It is usually understood that what is meant by saying that women are "deficient in intelligence" means not that we are less smart than men but that our intelligence is sometimes clouded by our emotions. Now this is of course true of men also but men are not subject to the same biological factors as women in traditional societies are, year after year. Oh dear, back to that again!WHY? Because it was with shock that I discovered what is is like to be at the mercy of ones body. During my last pregnancy I realised that my behaviour at times bordered on that undesired hysteria. This horrified me. Always known as the calm and peaceful one (my mother calls me 'her serene highness'!) why did I becoming a neurotic harpee? I felt like a blackboard that someone was continually scratching their fingers down! My husband felt that he was in a war zone!

These feelings raised really important questions for me. Firstly, I had to reassess my assumptions that the biology argument was #@!! as I was experiencing first hand the power that hormones have to disrupt your usual life. I realised that I had to acknowledge that I am not just a mind suspended in space but rather my mind is biological. I am a creature and Allah swt has made me in a particular way. Was I at fault then, for my excesses of behaviour, my over-reations? Allahu Alim, if my responses were purely physiological then probably not, we are not blamed for that which we cannot control. We know that the mentally ill person who loses their focus on Allah swt will not go to Jahannum. Allah is the most Just. But I was not suffering from fully fledged crazyness just a little hormonal imbalance, so where were the boundaries of personal responsibilty?How can one know the intricate workings of ones molecules?! How do we know when it is just our blindly straying nafs charging forth into unchartered territories?

Quite simply, we cannot know, for such knowledge is only with Allah. What we can and must do however, is maintain an awareness of our physiology. I am not in any way advocating reducing everything to biology. Allah subhana wa ta'ala gave humans personal choice and determination of actions. This is what distinguishes us from the rest of creation. It is both a great blessing and an enormous burden. It is something we cannot ignore. If we know that we have a tendency towards a certain type of behaviour that is harmful to us, then we must try and reign it in,we must always keep sight of this personal responsiblity for actions and part of this responsibility is having an awareness of one's own nature.

Emotions are particularly confusing. What begins by hormonal prompting often ends up as a wildly raging ego, we are not to blame for the prompt, we are most certainly to blame for the ugliness of an ego in action. So now when I think about the above hadith, I think perhaps this is what the Prophet pbuh was alluding to. He was after all addressing a group of women, it was a message meant for them. It is unfortunate that men have used his words to claim the inherent inferiority of women, how they can do this and see it as fitting the rest of the Islamic message and the Sunnah, I don't know. There is so much to support the opposite of this view.

The words of the hadith are very direct however and I have not addressed them directly. I am just speaking about a feeling that I get from the hadith, there is nothing scholarly about my musings and they may make no sense to anyone other than me! To accept that biology plays a role in our lives may not be PC but my own experience has taught me that I cannot ignore it. Accepting this though is very different from biological reductionism. We have a tendency to oversimplify things, if I accept that part of my 'femaleness' is dictated by my biology, I lead myself to being accused of such reductionism. But instead, I think that we need to find a middle ground, that we accept the role that biology plays on our lives but that we see it in balance with the sociological and spiritual factors that are also present.

The hadith in discussion is often used by those who want to attribute EVERYTHING to biology, those who see only the negative possibilities of 'femaleness'. I have no background in Women's Studies, this is not an area that I can discuss with any authority but it is an area that fascinates me. I disagree wholeheartedly with the way the hadith has been used against women, but I feel that it may have a positive message that has been ignored. That is, it doesn't have to come across as putting women down. We may have the words that were spoken, but we don't have the tone of voice in which they were cloaked, we cannot see the Prophets facial expressions as he uttered them. I have a feeling that this hadith was not meant for men at all but was simply a teasing warning for women to be on their guard, to keep on top of the negative (i specify negative because we know that there are also many positive!) possibilities of their biology.

In all of this talk however, we cannot forget that men are biological creatures also. Do they not also have a reponsibility to be aware of their natures? I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Regardless of whether it is nature or socially constructed it is a fact that many men are not adept at communicating when the discussion revolves around emotion. Frequently in my pregnancy I would dissolve into tears and my husband would say 'what do you want me to do?' I didn't want him to do anything, I wanted him to understand.He couldn't, but at least he could empathize, but this required prompting. Without the prompts I was likely to start beating the walls with my fists (almost:)) and such feelings made me feel strongly for those hysterical women of the Victorian era, a great deal of their illnesses were a result of the complete lack of interest and understanding by the men in their lives. So there is a necessity to communicate and when communication fails just accept and love each other and steer each other in the right direction with kindness and empathy. Too often a man's pride and stubbornness can push a woman over the edge. The accountability lies with both.

Our minds and bodies are the same and not the same, what we cannot deny is that our mind is connected to our body and therefore influenced by it. Modern life has allowed many of us to escape it's influence to a certain extent. The hadith in discussion has nowhere near as much relevance to a woman living in one of the big cities of the Western world as it did to the women to whom it was directed. Nevertheless, wherever and whenever we live we will remain human and we can only be the way we were made. Our societies and lifestyles may affect the extent to which we notice our biological make-up, but we must always accept that we are biological beings.

The way we label ourselves however, is of our own making. To designate hysteria to women is wrong and therefore I dislike the word. One of it's definitions is 'exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement'[Oxford English Dictionary]. Men are just as likely to engage in such behaviour, it's just more likely to be accepted. For example violence may be frowned upon, but a man's sanity will not be questioned, whereas if a woman starts screaming excessively (another means of expressing nervous energy) she will be deemed to have temporarily lost her mind).
Both types of behaviour usually stem from a sense of powerlessness and an inability to overcome an immediate obstacle. The fact that this behaviour was seen to be compounded in women was more to do with their lack of agency than their having wombs. If power was taken away from men, perhaps they would become a bit more agitated and we'd have to coin the term testosteria!

Before it seems like I've totally lost the plot, I'll summarize what I'm trying to say. Emotional "disturbances"are not specific to women. The ways in which we express emotion are often culturally defined, that is, the "type"of emotions we have may be impacted upon by our socialization and considered acceptable forms of expression.Nevertheless there is also a biological factor, our bodies DO influence our mental states. They are not all we are, but they are an undeniable part of us. As women, we can find that our emotions are affected by the functioning of our bodies (whether this makes us more emotional than men is another discussion entirely). As Muslims we accepted the role of khalifa, to effectively uphold this role we need to rise above our biological natures, but the only way in which we can do this is by accepting them and knowing what they are. Perhaps this hadith was just a means of reminding the women to not be deceived by their nafs, to be aware of one thing in their lives that could influence them negatively.
Allahu Alam. What I have realised is that although I will never really know if the hadith is truly authentic (as Suroor pointed out our early scholars were not infallible), I do know that being a woman is not a complete cultural construction. Motherhood and childbearing and simply remaining fertile affect the way that I feel and act. This impacts me positively and negatively. What I want to try and ensure is that it impacts those around me ONLY positively, or at least most of the time anyway. I don't want to fall prey to my ego even if it is set off by my hormones, because I know that to fall for it is to fall from Allahs swt grace, to feel the coldness of seperation and ultimately to risk Jahannum, whatever Jahannum may be. Ya Rabb, please keep me alert and still my mind.

The Power of Visual Media

These are photographs by the Iranian born artist Shirin Neshat. There was a time when I was pre-occupied with what was happening in the contemporary art world, now the closest I get to it is colouring in with my kids! I struggled for a long time with trying to understand the traditional Islamic restrictions on representation of human and animal forms. I'm still not sure how I feel, I still don't put photos up in my house for fear that the mala'ikkah won't enter! Having always loved the visual arts however, I respond to the power of visual media and I can recognize the potential that images have to convey a message. I really feel that this is an underexplored area by Muslims. Why don't we use art and literature to convey information about our religion? It doesn't necessarily have to be figurative.

Shirin Neshat approaches things from a secular perspective, this is not what I have in mind, but I do think that she is investigating issues in Iranian life that need to be addressed. I feel uncomfortable with her approach sometimes, her depiction of the naked female form crosses the boundaries of Islamic modesty I think, but she does not in any way claim to be a "Muslim" artist. I would like to see a positive approach by Muslim artists, a means of showing balance in Muslim perspectives. Dawah doesn't always have to come from our mouths. There is always a place for the Shirin Neshats of this world but it would be good to see depiction of Muslim lives that were not so bleak or frightening (although the Women of Allah series as pictured above is a bit more ambiguous than some of her other work.

If you are interested in her work, just google her name, there is so much available on the net.

Complacency and Shooting our Sisters in the Back

Something has been bothering me for a long time. Something that appears to be a growing problem amongst Muslims in the West. Something that I may have even been guilty of myself. A friend of mine refers to the zeal and conservatism with which some new Muslims approach their faith as 'convertitis'! From my observation it is not only converts who suffer from this, many born Muslims who start seeking more understanding of their religion also develop symptoms of this unfortunate disease. And whilst it may be vaguely humorous to observe from the sidelines, I fear that it has sinister undertones that have the potential to affect womens lives negatively in a global sense. That is, through the inaction of women of privelege and their blind acceptance of laws supposedly 'Islamic' (because of course they are in a position where they will never be affected by such laws directly) they allow their sisters in dire circumstances across the Muslim world to suffer without help. And if I take it a step further, their complacency actually helps condemn such subjugated women, because even quiet acceptance perpetuates the idea that these laws, institutions and customs are "right".

It really sickens me that so many of our sisters are prepared to let this happen, sickens me that there have been times when I myself haven't spoken out against issues that are blatantly unjust (although sometimes I think shock acts as a silencer...I don't speak immediately, I have to gather my thoughts...could such a person be really advocating such a position?). Al-Maraya has again written a really interesting post about standing up to oppression. The thing that I notice most about Muslim complacency is how it is dictated by fear. It is not a fierce fear, like that of someone who is in the firing line, but a more detached quiet fear, 'what if they call me an unbeliever?' and this I think is why converts fall prey to accepting and promoting an Islam that is black and white with no room for discussion. They are always being pushed to prove themselves as exemplary Muslims.

I have been in classes full of women (even led by a Sister whom I really love and respect) where it has been said that there can be no concept of rape in marriage in Islam. And no one says anything, there is just vague questioning and then blind acceptance, because no Muslim man worth his salt would do that anyway. What about those that do? If you were living in a Muslim country and you were in a terribly abusive relationship, wouldn't you want some means of seeking justice? Would you be content with someone saying 'don't worry, you will find justice in the Akhira inshaAllah?

Women in the West talk about "oppression" because someone tugs at their hijab in the supermarket, women in the West go out of their way to explain how things such as Female Genital Mutilation and Honour Killing are not "Islamic" without actually discussing the issue of how to confront these problems when they are being practised by people who feel very much that they ARE part of the religion. It's just all too easy to go home to our comfortable homes and families and leave our sisters all over the world to their plight.

It's not surprising therefore that women in the West feel comfortable with their conservatism because it makes them look like good little Muslimahs because they have nothing to lose whilst women in countries such as Iran and Pakistan are losing their lives whilst fighting for their 'rights". Are these women lacking in religious knowledge or spirituality as is often suggested? I don't think so, they are simply dealing with the realities of their lives, fight or drown.

We have to wake up, we have to do more than discuss these things and shake our heads. But how do we start? Suggestions please.

Question?

Do any Muslim Feminists support polygyny? Or is it always seen as being negative for women?
I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of a river......in between both banks of opposing views. I would like to do a lot to help women in oppressive situations but I feel like no one will take me seriously because of my stance on polygyny....

Identity Fraud and Cultural Crisis?

When I was four years old, my mother read me a very popular English children's story. Apparently, I identified with the main character so much I decided I wanted to change my name to her name. For one month I refused to answer to my name, eventually my mother gave in and started using the name I liked, thinking that it was just a phase and that it wouldn't last. She was wrong, I was called this name throughout Primary School. When I changed schools at the age of ten, I decided it was time to finally revert to my name, it being more mature, I thought!

When I first became a Muslim, I was told that I had to change my name to a "Muslim" one. I had done my own reading however, and I knew that this wasn't the case. We are only required to change our name if it means something bad. Never a person to do things by halves however, I was drawn to the idea of changing my name, I wanted to do something special to celebrate becoming a Muslim. I WAS exploring a new identity, this didn't mean an erasure of my old self but it did mean a distancing from my old lifestyle. I already understood the power of a name change, the possibilities of it's psychological impact. When I said my Shahada, inshaAllah the excesses of my old life were forgiven. Tabula Rasa. I wanted to commemorate this new beginning. I chose the name of a very strong woman and hoped that it would be an inspiration for me to live up to her example. It is not an Arabic name, but it is definitely 'Muslim'.

I was reading Al-Marayas recent post at http://bidayahwanihayah.blogspot.com/// where she discusses how many western converts to Islam who have married Arab men adopt many things from Arab culture, often not distinguishing between culture and religion. As a convert who on the surface appears to have done some of these things, I feel the need to respond as it is not always as superficial or ignorant as it seems.

I have always been interested in cultures other than my own. For my eighth birthday I asked my mother to buy me a kimono and take me to a Japanese restaraunt. I didn't get the kimono but we did go out to the restaurant and I still remember my horror when I found out that the dish I ordered contained raw egg! In a recent post I mocked this fascination with the 'other' that I have because I realise that there is much more to understanding a culture than appropriating it's dress or sampling it's cuisine. That being said, what is wrong with experimenting with things from outside your own cultural perspective? As long as you realise that that is what you are doing and you don't see yourself as some kind of Laurence of Arabia, then what is the problem?

Perhaps ignorance. From converts and their in-laws alike. I recently bit my brother-in-laws head off because he told me it is haram to take my three week old son outside..I was fed up because it was just the last of a list of 'harams' that I had been instructed about from various people. My anger was partly due to my misunderstanding of their use of the word 'haram' and partly because I'm tired of how ethnocentric they are. Apparently, neither my son or myself are supposed to leave the house for forty days after the birth. I said that as far as I knew this was culture and not Islam and he just looked at me blankly. The expectation is that I should adopt the practice regardless simply because I am married to an Arab man. I think the problem here is that they are so patriarchal that it is inconceivable to them that a woman might actually have an identity of her own that she is quite happy to keep. And perhaps some women don't realise this themselves because they are so ready to please their Arabian princes!

I am Australian, dressing in Abayat and cooking kibbeh is not going to make me Lebanese nor is it going to make me a better Muslim. But I think that as long as I acknowledge these facts then it is fine to do so. I wear Abayat sometimes because they are comfortable and practical. I make kibbeh and mehshi (albeit very badly!) because I love my husband and he loves the food of his country. But we also eat Indian, Indonesian, Japanese(but no raw egg!), we don't eat much English food. Why? Because it is bland and boring and I have never liked it very much. Should I start eating it now because I have to adhere to my Australian Muslim identity? I do think that you make a lot of valid points in your post, Al-Maraya, so please don't think that my sarcasm is directed at you.

Here in Australia, there seem to be two camps, those who are out to prove their Australian-ness and how it is compatible with Islam and those who have a very literal interpretation of the religion and therefore have trouble distinguishing between the culture of seventh century Arabia and Islam. Personally, I think that both are too rigid in their approach. One of the things that I love about Australia is it's multicultural-ness. I understand Islam as being open to culture as long as it doesn't transgress Islamic principles. This includes dress. This is of course the argument for wearing Western dress and it is one that I agree with in part, but does being a Westerner mean that you can only wear Western clothes? Does it really matter if one day I wear a suit and the next I wear a Jalabiyyah?

I agree with much of what you have said in your post, but I just wanted to point out that whilst Khadija (once Katherine) may ignorantly adopt her husbands culture mistaking it for Islam, Aisha (once Agnes) may simply be taking bits of Arab culture that she likes and enjoying them for a while. Dawah is important but do we have to continually prove ourselves as being both 'oh so western and oh so muslim'?! Does the political climate that we are living in mean that we have to streamline ourselves into being the perfect Western Muslims? This is not what you are suggesting in your post, I know, but it is the impression I get from many Muslims here. The irony is that if I were to adopt mainstream Aussie culture now, it really would be a case of identity fraud because as I said on another post, I have never been a 'chuck another prawn on the barbie' kind of woman...gimme the kafta any day!

Do you live here? Did you make du'a for me?

How did I get here?

At which point did my journey to Islam begin? This is a question that I've often asked myself. I was seemingly the most unlikely of candidates, but then there is no real prototype of a likely convert, everything is in the hands of Allah swt. He needs only to say 'Be' and the most unlikely becomes the most likely, even myself.

Ever since my transition from one without faith to one blessed with the recognition of the existence of our Creator, I have tried to put my finger on what it means to believe. I cannot, for belief is too powerful to be restrained by language. I know that I always had a sense of something Great, an elusive feeling that Meaning sat just outside of my grasp. A feeling of holyness and longing. I was a vessel that needed to be filled! Now that I am Muslim, these feelings have a structure and I have a focus and a goal, most importantly, I have a method. Islam has given me the means to decipher my spirituality, to understand my human-ness and my life, once ambiguous and lurking, has clarity and perspective. Alhamdulillah! But once more, how did I get here?

Ever suspicious of organised religion but filled with an emptiness and a desire to 'know', at the age of twenty I set out to explore the world. At some point towards the end of my journey, I found myself in a North African village. Here, for the first time, I felt a balance...things were..in place somehow. What was it? I couldn't tell. It was subtle but pervasive. I was too immature for it to occur to me that it had something to do with Islam. I left with a feeling of jealousy, they had something that I didn't. I crossed the border and pulled of my disguise (jilbab and hijab) in full view of the guards, back to being free, so why did I sense that I was leaving behind something precious?

Back in Australia, my friends laughed at my newfound obsession with all things Arabic. I laughed with them. Never content with staying in the tent of my own culture, I had been playing the ethnophile for years. First China, then India, my cupboards full of exotic fabrics, my nights spent reading subtitles. So there was nothing strange about my buying Arabic newspapers that I couldn't read or sitting at home repeating alif, be..the, jeem, my throat getting stuck at 'ain 'ghain. At least to those around me there was nothing strange, but I sensed there was something enduring about my attraction. It didn't feel like a superficial fad. I had always been the first to laugh at my forays into other worlds, this time it was different.

It didn't pass, time passed but the attraction remained. What was it about the Arabic language that I found so captivating? I listened and felt a stirring deep in my being. I sat for hours gazing at Arabic Calligraphy, feeling it penetrate my heart. What gave it such power? How could something so beautiful come from such a backward and repressive religion?

My friends still chuckled to themselves.... until I found my husband. This was taking things too far. I couldn't be serious. Maybe I really was going crazy. Was I really thinking about converting? They discussed me anxiously, what should they do?

How could I explain how the Qu'ran had opened itself to me, offering me its' beauty and vastness? How could I describe how it felt to attend the fajr prayer and secretly watch the men as they prayed? To watch them and not feel like a detached observer, but to understand their love. I didn't have the words to convey my feelings. All I could do was retreat, into myself, my books and turn towards Allah swt and beg that He not leave me alone.

And here I am five years later, knowing that everything that happened could never have occurred any other way. Subhan Allah, please always let me keep this awareness of the immensity of this gift of Islam and please let me convey it to my children as they grow.

The Path to the Watering Hole

I have read that one of the many meanings of the word Shari'a is 'the path to the watering hole'. I am not a linguist nor an Arabic speaker, so I cannot say if there is truth in this, but I like it anyway. By following the Shari'a we travel towards the Source of all things, we travel towards God. But the question that is always in my mind is how do we do so? What does it mean to follow the Shari'a? Is there only one path? Islam as we know, is the 'Straight Path' but how clearly defined is it, how do we know when we remain on the right track?

I have never been a person suited to black and white critiques of the world. My personal experience and intuition have shown me that in most situations there are many 'shades of grey'. To view reality in terms of opposites seems to me a gross oversimplification and a crude attempt to translate the vastness of Allahs swt creation into something tangible and tame. But the fact remains that if there is a 'path' that we have to follow, then we do have to make attempts to discern what Allah swt intends this path to be. This is a task too great for those who are not equipped with the right knowledge. This is not to say that the Qu'ran cannot 'speak' to us directly, but we cannot take this direct knowledge and formulate it into tafsir without the necessary qualifications.

So what exactly are these qualifications? What makes an Islamic scholar? There are all the usual things such as extensive knowledge of Fusha Arabic, knowledge of hadith, seerah etc but there are also things less easily measurable such as the proficiency to absorb sacred knowledge, taqwa and having a pure heart. I once asked a friends husband whether he thought todays scholars were at the same standard as the great Imams of the past. I wasn't surprised that he said 'No' but his explanation I found very interesting as no one had expressed things this way to me before. He said that it wasn't just formal knowledge that was passed from teacher to student but baraka as well. He said that it is this baraka that is missing in the present time. He felt that in the earlier generations this baraka was evident in everything. He also said that whilst in this current time we do have very knowledgable men and women, they do not possess the breadth of knowledge of the scholars of the earlier generations. That is, someone may have a vast knowledge of hadith but their understanding of fusha may be lacking, etc. So where does this leave us?

Of course many people say that the gates of Ijtihaad are almost closed, that decisions have been made about all things except new matters that were not known by the early scholars. I am very uncomfortable with this premise because although these scholars were men of exceptional intelligence and faith, they were still human beings and most human beings do not possess the capability to transcend the culture and time in which they are living. They are men after all and men are not perfect...and this is my second dissatisfaction with adhering to the traditional perspective, where is the female voice?

So how can I traverse the path to the watering hole when I am unsure about what form this path takes? My position so far has been to adhere to a traditional understanding of Islam simply because I don't see an alternative that I can trust at this current time, but I have dissatisfactions. The thing that I try to focus on is 'holding onto the rope of Allah swt' and I understand this to be tawhid. May Allah swt guide all of us to his Straight Path and make truth clear from falsehood.