no words

From The Iraq War, A Troubled Romance In America

Escaped from an abusive family in Iraq, only to become a stripper and a child abuser here in the US.

I do however have words for the commentors who seem to think that this is typical of a cross culture relationship.  I hope NPR does a piece about intercultural families that suceed.  There’s no shortage of couples like this on VJ, including several who met their spouses while serving overseas in the military.

SP fall semester

Alhamdulilah, I signed up for Introduction to Islamic Belief for the fall semester at Sunnipath.  It’s a birthday present from the husband :D  He’s so sweet.  He said sign up for anything you want, but not a sufi class.  Ah honey, I need to take those sufi classes to earn the degree inshaAllah.  Oh well, you’ll have to pay for those on your own.  Thus continues the joys of living in a zahari/shafi’i sufi marriage.

However, I must give him credit where credit is due.  Even though he is not a fan of tasawwuf (ok, that’s an understatement), he hasn’t stopped me from exploring that path.  Alhamdulilah.

If anyone is taking this course, let me know.  We could be study buddies.

dang it…

…now I gotta get married again, just so I can wear one of these.

This is what I got married in

But we never had much of a party.  inshaAllah I can get one of these for an anniversary party here or in egypt.

wives

Two polygany stories in the news.  One seems to show a brother who does it with honesty (if illegally) in the US among others who do it wrong, and one is Safa’s story of how it can all go horribly wrong with deception.

Philly’s Black Muslims inreasingly turn to polygany

GTA’s secret world of polygany

Imam Zaid Days 2 and 3

This will be just a brief post on this weekend.  I took pages and pages of notes, and inshaAllah I will post a few highlights from the lectures and some of my thoughts.

First, the negatives:

• Where were the Minnesota Muslims at?  Seriously, one of the best speakers our american ummah has to offer is right in your backyard, and you don’t represent?  Granted, this meant more access to Imam Zaid, but come on!

Ok, there was really only one negative, and I shouldn’t really complain.  SubhanAllah, it was an awesome weekend for my deen, my iman and inshaAllah, for my marriage. 

• Imam Zaid presented a two day workshop on Islam, Marriage and the Family.  I’ve read probably half a dozen marriage/relationship books, both secular and islam based, and I benefited more from this workshop than I have from all those other books combined.  Some books in my collection are quite good (like Blissful Marriage), but there is nothing quite like having something presented to you by a dynamic speaker in a clear, concise manner. 
• The presentation differed from other Islam based marriage advice, in that it didn’t focus on the duties and responsibilities of the husband and wife.  Instead, it discussed common problems, and offered Islam based solutions that both parties could enact.
• Imam Zaid is funny.  Seriously, we were doubled over with laughter like, every 5 minutes.  No one could fall asleep during this presentation.
• Imam Zaid presented a lecture on the Ethical Foundation of Islamic Civilization at a local university.  Again, the information was presented in a clear and concise manner, and I learned quite a few things I didn’t know before. 
• Imam Zaid performed a marriage on Sunday, alhamdulilah.  It was something truly beautiful to behold.  Plus, we got to sing Tala’al Badru afterwards, so my years of singing along to various youtube versions has finally born fruit.
• I got a lot out of the presentation in part because I took notes.  I have tons of lectures from Imam Zaid, Sh. Hamza, Sh. Nuh, etc, but most of the time I listen to them on the bus and zone out.  inshaAllah in the future when I listen to something that conveys knowledge, I’ll have my notebook out to take notes.
• If this program comes out on CD or DVD BUY IT!!!!  inshaAllah when it does, I’m buying it in bulk and gifting it to all my married friends.  Even if one is not married, they would benefit from the lessons taught therein.  We all have relationships, be they with family, friends or work colleages, and the problems that face a husband and wife in communication aren’t necessarily unique to that specific type of relationship.

Slight detour

 I’m fairly certain that traveling the path of tasawwuf with a sheikh is something I need to do  (I’m never 100% certain about anything.  Ask the husband - I drive him crazy with “I’m pretty sure…” “I think…”  “maybe…”).  The husband, on the other hand, is totally not convinced.  Despite the fact that I’ve prayed istikhara about this and feel that this is what Allah (swt) wants me to do, he isn’t buying it.

We sat down to have a talk on Wednesday, this time about the possibility of me going to a dhikr session.  He wanted to know what kind of dhikr would be said, and upon learning that it was not something directly said by the Prophet (saws), he got worked up.  Now, the husband is really serious about his deen.  That’s one of the things I love about him, and one of the reasons I married him.  The thing is though, he’s serious about Islam in a quasi salafi/ibn Hazm loving/no qiyas/no bidah hasana kinda way, where as I’ve developed my practice of Islam in a more traditional/madhab oriented manner. 

Imam Shafi’i wrote that:

New matters are of two kinds: something begun that contravenes the Qur’an, sunna, the position of early Muslims, or consensus of scholars (ijma‘): this innovation is misguidance. And something begun of the good in which there is no contravention of any of these, and is therefore something new (muhdatha) but not blameworthy. For when ‘Umar (Allah be well pleased with him) saw the [tarawih] prayer being performed [in a group by Muslims in the mosque] in Ramadan, he said, “What a good innovation (bid‘a) this is,” meaning something newly begun that not had been done before. And even though it had, this does not negate the foregoing (al-Dhahabi, Siyar a‘lam al-nubala’. 23 vols. Beirut: Mu’assassa al-Risala, 1401/1981, 10.70).

While many of the practices of the Shadhili Tariq are directly from the sunnah of the Prophet (saws) - emphasis on fard and sunnah prayers, reading a porition of the quran every day, making all the sunnah dhikr, as well as a strong strong strong emphasis on following the sharia and getting rid of all the haram in your life - others, such as the wirds, the gatherings of the tariq and the hizbs, fall into the bidah hasana category.

And, it’s that stuff in the later category that drives the husband up the wall.   He’s not been brainwashed or brow beaten into his beliefs.  He’s come to his position after quite a bit of study with a knowledgable teacher, and he’s not easy to convince that he’s wrong.  Despite presenting him with well written and well reasoned articles about the permissibility of bidah hasana and religious practices that are bidah hasana, he’s just not seeing it.

Thus, we come to the slight detour in the road.  During our conversation, I explained how I felt something was lacking in how Islam had been presented to me - haram haram haram haram, do this, don’t do that.  The “spiritual” aspect was completely absent.  I had gone looking for this on my own, and found some things that helped me draw closer to God (like some of my favorite books of all time, Purification of the Heart and Sufism and Good Character), but that I really felt drawn to taking a tariq and traveling down the path with the guidance of a sheikh to help me to know Allah (swt).

Alhamdulilah, the husband is totally sympathetic with this.  So now he’s on a mission - a mission to prove to me that “ahl al sunnah wa jamaa” has everything I’m looking for and that I don’t need sufism to help me.  He’s writing up some articles and we’ll look for some books to buy that we’ll study together during this next month.  If, at the end of the month, I still feel that sufism is what I need, the husband will grudingly support me in my taking the tariq.  He won’t be happy about it, but he’s not forbidding it either.

Alhamdulilah.  I *heart* my husband. 

Polygany blogs hit the mainstream

Ok, I admit it, I’m an avid reader of polygany blogs. Although I don’t have time to watch soap operas, I’m thoroughly addicted to these online, real life muslim mini soaps that have unfolded in front of my very eyes over the past few years. I’ll recount the tales to the husband, flaburgasted by what I read - OMG, guess what happened to HA this time?

The husband then takes the opportunity to make polygany jokes, to which I remind him that he’s certainly allowed to have more than one wife - I just won’t be one of them. And, as always, he smiles, hugs me and tells me that one wife is headache enough. It’s a long running joke between us, although I do have a clause in my marriage contract that gives me the right to an excellent settlement and divorce if he decides down the road to become polyganous. We continue to have serious, deen-y talks about the subject, exploring hypotheticals, but at this point in my life and most likely in the future, I’ll stick to monogamy.

Now, polygany blogs have lept from the shadows and landed in the mainstream media, or at least at Slate.com. Polyganous Blessings is on my CW (cowife) blog roll, although she rarely updates it anymore. There have been several CW bloggers, but unfortunately, most don’t write for very long. HA and Safa update much more regularly, and I’ve laughed and cried along with them on their journeys down the bumpy road of polygany. There are other CW (and ex CW) blogs out there that are accessable through the spiderweb of blogrolls, but HA and Safa are definately the cream of the crop.

When an intercultural marriage goes horribly wrong

Why Molly ran

When 12-year-old Molly Campbell disappeared from her Scottish home last year, it was feared she had been kidnapped by her father to be married against her will in Pakistan. But, like her name, the truth wasn’t quite as it seemed. Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report

I’ve been following the Misbah/Molly story on and off for quite some time now, and this article definately provides a lot of much needed background.

But even more than being the sad story of a broken family, it speaks of the difficulties that intercultural/interfaith couples face. This marriage started out between a nominal christian/secular young white british girl, and a nominal muslim/secular young pakistani british man. Where as the usual m.o. is that the husband will practice more and become more conservative as he grows older, in this case the wife feels drawn to Islam. Maybe it was a way to feel connected to and accepted by her husband’s family and culture, but for whatever reason, her embrace of Islam draws her husband back to practicing the faith. While I can’t tell for sure what was going on in her mind from the article, it seemed like she longed for acceptance, but didn’t really have Islam in her heart. Islam can seem oppresive if you don’t embrace it with all your heart, and from the article, it looks like Louise was crushed by it.

Women who embrace Islam through their relationship/marriage with a muslim man are often subjects of suspicion. Did they convert because their husbands influenced them? How will their faith hold up if things go south with their husbands? Heck, even those who were muslim before marriage are still viewed under a cloud of suspicion. Alhamdulilah, I’ve seen women become increadbly devout in their practices, content with Islam as a way of life. And unfortunately, I’ve seen women be crushed far too often for my liking.

When an american woman marries a muslim man, she will inevitably be told to watch Not Without my Daughter. We roll our eyes, sigh and try to change the subject. We’re intellegent, independent, and think we know what we’re getting ourselves into. Unfortunately, we often times don’t.

So, I propose that american women who want to marry muslim men read this article. We’ve all heard the nasty things muslim men can do to western women. But how often do we examine ourselves and ponder on the problems our issues may create? Here now is an (extreme) example of what western women can do to themselves if they’re not prepared for an intercultural/interfaith relationship. inshaAllah ta’ala, nothing like this will befall myself or any of my friends in similar situations, but one never knows

Also, on a random side note, either Louise or the article messed up a wee bit on the hajj thing. Hajj isn’t during Ramadan. You don’t (have to) fast during hajj. Maybe they made umrah during Ramadan, but umrah ain’t hajj.