LKH - In Which I Am Ranty McRanty Pants

I was planning on doing this post, though probably over at the fan blog, and then some of you asked about my best/worst from the years reading. Well, this doesn't cover the best but it definitely covers the worst. Which is actually pretty sad for me.

Back when I was in...middle school/high school I was introduced to this new series that was being published. The series was about this character, Anita Blake and she lived in an alternate reality where vampires, werewolves, etc. were all not only real but everyone knew about them and they had gained citizenship (at least in the US). Anita was an animator (someone who was born with an innate magical talent that allowed them to raise the dead as zombies) who also hunted down rogue vampires. It was great. I loved it and I ate it up.

Anita was this strong, tough woman who did a job that was mostly a male dominated position and was good at it 'in spite' of her being a woman. She was pretty, and smart, and tough and everything that girls want to grow up to be. She had a gorgeous man panting after her but she turned him down time and time again. You would read reviews and hear about how this character was a great roll model of feminism. But I didn't care about any of that. I just thought that it was great that she got to kick bad guy ass and have boobs at the same time. I was easy, okay?

Fast forward to today.

All authors put something of themselves into their characters. But there's this phenomenon known as the Mary Sue in writing. It boils down to a female character being introduced who is just...perfect. Absolutely, utterly perfect. Everyone loves her. Everyone wants her. She just happens to have each and every odd and obscure skill that might possibly be needed. And if she doesn't? It magically appears in her. Because she is Mary Sue! Basically it's REALLY BAD AUTHOR INSERTION!

Why is this relevant? Because that's what Anita is. Heck, that's what the other female lead in LKH's other series is as well. They are stand ins for LKH. Even their physical descriptions sound remarkably just like the author. Which, okay. Not the worlds worst sin.

But it is a problem when you are using your work as therapy and getting it so horribly fucking messed up.

Going back to Anita. About 7 books into the series Anita finally 'gives in' and sleeps with the man who has been courting/pursuing her for years. Does she do it because she's realised how deeply she's felt for him? No. Does she do it because she's got an itch to scratch? Nope. She has sex with Jean-Claude because her boyfriend, the one she 'really loves' is a werewolf and he ate someone. So she gets all wigged out (which is not beyond the realm of understanding. I mean, ew) and flees to Jean-Claude and his hotness knowing that this choice, having sex with him will drive Richard away for good. Righty. Kind of iffy choice, but it was her choice. And then a little later on she starts sleeping with both JC and Richard. Again, questionable from certain points of view but all parties know that she's sleeping with both of them and they're working out their power structure. Whatever.

We're now at book, what? 19? I don't even know. It doesn't matter. Because Anita went from being a woman who fought alongside the men. Who was sometimes overpowered and hurt and needed help to being the freaking Wonder Slut. LKH chose to give Anita powers (from the clear freaking blue sky) that make her literally irresistible. It's like the ultimate date rape drug. It goes into effect and it doesn't matter if you even like women in a sexual manner or not, you will be having sex with Anita. And she can just roll over your mind like that. Eat your personality basically so that all you want to do is please her.

Keeping in mind that Anita is a fictional projection of LKH, can we see where this is a problem that probably needs therapy?

Anita is 'stronger' than all the men around her. But why? Because LKH has created all the men in her world as broken. They've all been abused and so they need Anita to be in charge in different ways. She's their 'Princess Charming'. But, dammit, she's still abusing them! Her magical hotness makes it impossible for them to even make a choice. And once they've been whammied there's no way for them to go back to the way they were before. She's addictive.

So LKH has basically made it clear that the only way she feels women can be equal to or stronger than men is if the men are badly broken in the first place and then all of her power is through sex. *rolls eyes*

Also, Anita (like her creator) lost her mother when she was six to a car accident. I do not in any way deny that this is traumatic and painful. Her father remarried someone who looked nothing like her mother and so Anita/LKH has felt like the odd person out her whole life. I'm sorry. But that's not abuse. That is not an excuse to have this 'giant burning pool of hate' inside of you all the time. It is not. It does not give you equal footing when the man you're talking to has just told you that he was beaten and raped and pimped out by his own father and then watched his older brother be beaten to death. Your 'I lost my mother' does not actually compare and all the men should not all of a sudden be all, 'oh, poor you! your trauma is so deep and scaring!' No. Do you know what that makes you? A selfish bitch who cannot empathise with people who have actually suffered deeply. Because it is ALL ABOUT YOU.

I think it's absolutely wonderful that LKH has discovered she likes a little slap with her tickle. That doesn't mean that she has to keep defending it as 'perfectly normal' through her characters. It is normal. Some people like one thing, some people another. The diversity of sexual behaviour is normal. However it's clear that someone has told LKH that it is perverse and some part of her still believes it or she wouldn't feel the need to defend it every five seconds.

And don't get me started on Anita's ability to pull a new power out of her ass every five seconds. Do you want the hero to win? Of course. But upping their power level every time is just poor writing. Can't think of a clever way out of a scenario? *bam* New power.

Bah.

There are plenty of authors who have strong female characters and don't fall into this trap. So I'm forced to conclude that it's a problem with the author and not the concept.

2010 - The Books That I Have Read

Well, it's 2011 and among other things that means the publication of the List.

I didn't even make it through the H's, but my grand total for 2010 is 272. Which is 137 more than 2009. Maybe for 2011 I can hit 300! And, for the heck of it I've decided to keep track of what movies I watch this year. So that'll be movies in the theater, movies on tv, movies I have on disc and seasons of tv shows I have on disc. Because the rules are what I say they are. :)

1. The Red Tent – Anita Diamant (1/1/10)
2. Queen of Dreams – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1/2/10)
3. Wolf Tales VI – Kate Douglas (1/2/10)
4. The Journal of Eleanor Druse – Eleanor Druse (1/3/10)
5. I, Lucifer – Glen Duncan (1/8/10)
6. Hana-Kimi Vol. 21 (1/9/10)
7. Hana-Kimi Vol. 22 (1/9/10)
8. Hana-Kimi Vol. 23 (1/9/10)
9. On Women and Judaism – Blu Greenberg (1/18/10)
10. God is Not Great – Christopher Hitchens (1/19/10)
11. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. I – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1/23/10)
12. Angelic – Kelley Armstrong (1/23/10)
13. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. II – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1/26/10)
14. Virtuous Vampires – Stefan Dziemianowicz (ed) (1/26/10)
15. The 19^th Wife – David Ebershoff (1/30/10)
16. Hotter After Midnight – Cynthia Eden (1/30/10)
17. Reconciliation – Benazir Bhutto (1/30/10)
18. Dracula in London – P.N. Elrod (ed.) (1/30/10)
19. My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon – P.N. Elrod (ed.) (1/30/10)
20. My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding – P.N. Elrod (ed.) (1/30/10)
21. Strange Brew – P.N. Elrod (ed.) (1/31/10)
22. Hidden Files – Sue Kovach (1/31/10)
23. Quincey Morris, Vampire – P.N. Elrod (2/2/10)
24. The Time of the Vampires – P.N. Elrod (ed.) (2/2/10)
25. Bloodlist – P.N. Elrod (2/5/10)
26. Lifeblood – P.N. Elrod (2/6/10)
27. Treasure in Clay – Fulton J. Sheen (2/7/10)
28. Let Us Attend – Lawrence Farley (2/7/10)
29. Begone Satan – Carl Vogl (2/8/10)
30. Bloodcircle – P.N. Elrod (2/9/10)
31. Art in the Blood – P.N. Elrod (2/10/10)
32. Fire in the Blood – P.N. Elrod (2/12/10)
33. Blood on the Water – P.N. Elrod (2/13/10)
34. A Chill in the Blood – P.N. Elrod (2/15/10)
35. The Dark Sleep – P.N. Elrod (2/17/10)
36. Lady Crymsyn – P.N. Elrod (2/19/10)
37. Cold Streets – P.N. Elrod (2/20/10)
38. Song in the Dark – P.N. Elrod (2/21/10)
39. Dark Road Rising – P.N. Elrod (2/23/10)
40. The Devil You Know – P.N. Elrod (2/23/10)
41. The Garden of Ruth – Eva Etzioni-Halevy (2/25/10)
42. The Song of Hannah – Eva Etzioni-Halevy (2/27/10)
43. The Triumph of Deborah – Eva Etzioni-Halevy (2/27/10)
44. Full House – Janet Evanovich (2/28/10)
45. Full Tilt – Janet Evanovich (3/2/10)
46. Full Speed – Janet Evanovich (3/4/10)
47. Full Blast – Janet Evanovich (3/6/10)
48. Full Bloom – Janet Evanovich (3/6/10)
49. Full Scoop – Janet Evanovich (3/7/10)
50. Manhunt – Janet Evanovich (3/8/10)
51. Smitten – Janet Evanovich (3/9/10)
52. One for the Money – Janet Evanovich (3/11/10)
53. Two for the Dough – Janet Evanovich (3/12/10)
54. Three to Get Deadly – Janet Evanovich (3/15/10)
55. Four to Score – Janet Evanovich (3/17/10)
56. High Five – Janet Evanovich (3/19/10)
57. Hot Six – Janet Evanovich (3/20/10)
58. Seven Up – Janet Evanovich (3/23/10)
59. Hard Eight – Janet Evanovich (3/26/10)
60. Visions of Sugar Plums – Janet Evanovich (3/27/10)
61. To the Nines – Janet Evanovich (3/30/10)
62. Ten Big Ones – Janet Evanovich (4/3/10)
63. Eleven on Top – Janet Evanovich (4/3/10)
64. Twelve Sharp – Janet Evanovich (4/5/10)
65. The Assignment – Evangeline Anderson (4/6/10)
66. Plum Lovin' – Janet Evanovich (4/6/10)
67. Lean Mean Thirteen – Janet Evanovich (4/7/10)
68. Plum Lucky – Janet Evanovich (4/8/10)
69. Changes – Jim Butcher (4/9/10)
70. Fearless Fourteen – Janet Evanovich (4/10/10)
71. Plum Spooky – Janet Evanovich (4/10/10)
72. Finger Lickin' Fifteen – Janet Evanovich (4/12/10)
73. Thanksgiving – Janet Evanovich (4/12/10)
74. The Time of Feasting – Mick Farren (4/16/10)
75. Tales of the Otherworld – Kelley Armstrong (4/17/10)
76. Bridget Jones's Diary – Helen Fielding (4/17/10)
77. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason – Helen Fielding (4/18/10)
78. White Oleander – Janet Fitch (4/18/10)
79. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming (4/20/10)
80. Live and Let Die – Ian Fleming (4/24/10)
81. Moonraker – Ian Fleming (4/27/10)
82. The Nanny Diaries – Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus (4/29/10)
83. Diamonds Are Forever – Ian Fleming (5/2/10)
84. Bleach Vol. 28 (5/2/10)
85. From Russia With Love – Ian Fleming (5/4/10)
86. Bleach Vol. 29 (5/4/10)
87. Dr. No – Ian Fleming (5/6/10)
88. Bleach Vol. 30 (5/6/10)
89. Goldfinger – Ian Fleming (5/9/10)
90. Inu-Yasha Vol. 40 (5/9/10)
91. John Adams – David McCullough (5/10/10)
92. For Your Eyes Only – Ian Fleming (5/10/10)
93. Inu-Yasha Vol. 41 (5/10/10)
94. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower – C.S. Forester (5/13/10)
95. Inu-Yasha Vol. 42 (5/13/10)
96. Lieutenant Hornblower – C.S. Forester (5/15/10)
97. Inu-Yasha Vol. 43 (5/15/10)
98. Hornblower and the “Hotspur” - C.S. Forester (5/18/10)
99. Inu-Yasha Vol. 44 (5/18/10)
100. Hornblower During the Crisis – C.S. Forester (5/1910)
101. Inu-Yasha Vol. 45 (5/19/10)
102. Hornblower and the “Atropos” - C.S. Forester (5/21/10)
103. Beat to Quarters – C.S. Forester (5/22/10)
104. Ship of the Line – C.S. Forester (5/23/10)
105. Flying Colours – C.S. Forester (5/23/10)
106. Commodore Hornblower – C.S. Forester (5/27/10)
107. Lord Hornblower – C.S. Forester (5/28/10)
108. Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies – C.S. Forester (5/29/10)
109. Star Trek – Alan Dean Foster (5/29/10)
110. Manhandled – Austin Foxxe (ed.) (5/29/10)
111. Outlander – Diana Gabaldon (5/31/10)
112. Coast to Coast Ghosts – Leslie Rule (6/3/10)
113. Psychic Pets and Spirit Animals – FATE Magazine (6/6/10)
114. Dragonfly in Amber – Diana Gabaldon (6/7/10)
115. Voyager – Diana Gabaldon (6/8/10)
116. Lord John and the Hand of Devils – Diana Gabaldon (6/9/10)
117. Lord John and the Private Matter – Diana Gabaldon (6/9/10)
118. Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade – Diana Gabaldon (6/11/10)
119. I Never Believed In Ghosts Until... - USA Weekend Editors (6/11/10)
120. Hans Holzer's Travel Guide to Haunted Houses – Hans Holzer (6/13/10)
121. Drums of Autumn – Diana Gabaldon (6/15/10)
122. Ghosts Among Us – Leslie Rule (6/18/10)
123. Inu-Yasha Vol. 46 (6/19/10)
124. The Theology of the Body – Pope John Paul II (6/21/10)
125. The Fiery Cross – Diana Gabaldon (6/25/10)
126. The Bible: A Biography – Karen Armstrong (6/26/10)
127. The Orthodox Way – Bishop Kallistos Ware (6/29/10)
128. Close to Shore – Michael Capuzzo (7/3/10)
129. Ghosts of St. Augustine – Dave Lapham (7/4/10)
130. A Breath of Snow and Ashes – Diana Gabaldon (7/5/10)
131. Popes and Patriarchs – Michael Whelton (7/5/10)
132. In Search of Dracula – Raymond T. McNally & Radu Florescu (7/10/10)
133. Haunt Hunter's Guide to Florida – Joyce Elson Moore (7/11/10)
134. An Echo in the Bone – Diana Gabaldon (7/11/10)
135. Phantom Army of the Civil War – FATE Magazine (7/13/10)
136. Naamah's Curse – Jacqueline Carey (7/14/10)
137. Jesus and Muhammad: Profound Differences and Surprising Similarities – Mark A. Gabriel (7/16/10)
138. Sizzling Sixteen – Janet Evanovich (7/16/10)
139. American Gods – Neil Gaiman (7/20/10)
140. Dark and Stormy Knights – P.N. Elrod (ed.) (7/21/10)
141. Anansi Boys – Neil Gaiman (7/24/10)
142. Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman (7/25/10)
143. Good Omens – Neil Gaiman (7/29/10)
144. Waking the Witch – Kelley Armstrong (7/31/10)
145. Bleach Vol. 31 (7/31/10)
146. Misquoting Jesus – Bart D. Ehrman (7/31/10)
147. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman (8/1/10)
148. Smoke and Mirrors – Neil Gaiman (8/3/10)
149. Stardust – Neil Gaiman (8/4/10)
150. Mr. Darcy, Vampyre – Amanda Grange (8/5/10)
151. Inception: The Shooting Script – Christoper Nolan (8/6/10)
152. The Autobiography of Henry VIII – Margaret George (8/14/10)
153. Helen of Troy – Margaret George (8/16/10)
154. Mary, Called Magdalene – Margaret George (8/18/10)
155. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (8/21/10)
156. The Princess Bride – William Goldman (8/21/10)
157. The Killings at Badger's Drift – Caroline Graham (8/22/10)
158. Death of a Hollow Man – Caroline Graham (8/25/10)
159. Death in Disguise – Caroline Graham (8/28/10)
160. Written in Blood – Caroline Graham (8/30/10)
161. Faithful Unto Death – Caroline Graham (9/3/10)
162. A Place of Safety – Caroline Graham (9/5/10)
163. A Ghost in the Machine – Caroline Graham (9/5/10)
164. Something From the Nightside – Simon R. Green (9/6/10)
165. Inu-Yasha Vol. 47 (9/6/10)
166. Inu-Yasha Vol. 48 (9/6/10)
167. Inu-Yasha Vol. 49 (9/6/10)
168. Inu-Yasha Vol. 50 (9/6/10)
169. Inu-Yasha Vol. 51 (9/6/10)
170. Furies of Calderon – Jim Butcher (9/6/10)
171. Agents of Light and Darkness – Simon R. Green (9/7/10)
172. Naruto Vol. 10 (9/7/10)
173. Nightingale's Lament – Simon R. Green (9/8/10)
174. Hex and the City – Simon R. Green (9/11/10)
175. Paths Not Taken – Simon R. Green (9/12/10)
176. Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth – Simon R. Green (9/13/10)
177. Hell to Pay – Simon R. Green (9/15/10)
178. The Unnatural Inquirer – Simon R. Green (9/17/10)
179. Just Another Judgement Day – Simon R. Green (9/18/10)
180. Single White Vampire Seeks Same – Martin K. Greenberg (9/18/10)
181. Tall, Dark & Dead – Tate Hallaway (9/19/10)
182. Academ's Fury – Jim Butcher (9/19/10)
183. Captain's Fury Audiobook – Jim Butcher (9/22/10)
184. Mary of Nazareth – Marek Halter (9/22/10)
185. Wicked Appetite – Janet Evanovich (9/24/10)
186. Anita Blake: Guilty Pleasures Vol. 1 – Laurell K. Hamilton (9/25/10)
187. Anita Blake: Guilty Pleasures Vol. 2 – Laurell K. Hamilton (9/25/10)
188. Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World – Karen Armstrong (9/26/10)
189. Guilty Pleasures – Laurell K. Hamilton (9/30/10)
190. Cursor's Fury – Jim Butcher (9/30/10)
191. The Laughing Corpse – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/3/10)
192. The Circus of the Damned – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/6/10)
193. Bleach Vol. 32 (10/9/10)
194. Inu-Yasha Vol. 52 (10/9/10)
195. Naruto Vol. 11 (10/9/10)
196. Small Favor Audiobook – Jim Butcher (10/10/10)
197. Naruto Vol. 12 (10/10/10)
198. The Lunatic Cafe – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/10/10)
199. Naruto Vol. 13 (10/11/10)
200. Naruto Vol. 14 (10/11/10)
201. Naruto Vol. 15 (10/12/10)
202. Naruto Vol. 16 (10/12/10)
203. Naruto Vol. 17 (10/13/10)
204. Naruto Vol. 18 (10/13/10)
205. Naruto Vol. 19 (10/15/10)
206. Naruto Vol. 20 (10/16/10)
207. Naruto Vol. 21 (10/16/10)
208. Naruto Vol. 22 (10/16/10)
209. Naruto Vol. 23 (10/16/10)
210. Naruto Vol. 24 (10/16/10)
211. Naruto Vol. 25 (10/16/10)
212. Naruto Vol. 26 (10/16/10)
213. Naruto Vol. 27 (10/16/10)
214. Naruto Vol. 28 (10/16/10)
215. Naruto Vol. 29 (10/16/10)
216. Naruto Vol. 30 (10/16/10)
217. Naruto Vol. 31 (10/16/10)
218. Naruto Vol. 32 (10/16/10)
219. Naruto Vol. 33 (10/17/10)
220. Naruto Vol. 34 (10/17/10)
221. Naruto Vol. 35 (10/17/10)
222. Naruto Vol. 36 (10/17/10)
223. Naruto Vol. 37 (10/17/10)
224. Naruto Vol. 38 (10/17/10)
225. Naruto Vol. 39 (10/17/10)
226. Naruto Vol. 40 (10/17/10)
227. Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo Vol. 2 (10/17/10)
228. Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo Vol. 3 (10/17/10)
229. Lost Scriptures – Bart Ehrman (10/17/10)
230. Bloody Bones – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/19/10)
231. The Killing Dance – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/23/10)
232. On Writing – Stephen King (10/24/10)
233. Captain's Fury – Jim Butcher (10/25/10)
234. Burnt Offerings – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/25/10)
235. Blue Moon – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/26/10)
236. Obsidian Butterfly – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/27/10)
237. Narcissus in Chains – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/28/10)
238. Cerulean Sins – Laurell K. Hamilton (10/31/10)
239. Princeps' Fury – Jim Butcher (11/4/10)
240. Inu-Yasha Vol. 53 (11/6/10)
241. Naruto Vol. 41 (11/7/10)
242. Naruto Vol. 42 (11/7/10)
243. First Lord's Fury – Jim Butcher (11/9/10)
244. Turn Coat audiobook – Jim Butcher (11/10/10)
245. Welcome to the Jungle – Jim Butcher (11/10/10)
246. Storm Front – Jim Butcher (11/14/10)
247. Fool Moon – Jim Butcher (11/20/10)
248. Incubus Dreams – Laurell K. Hamilton (11/22/10)
249. The Orthodox Church – Kallistos Ware (11/23/10)
250. Micah – Laurell K. Hamilton (11/23/10)
251. Nanny Returns – Emma McLaughlin (11/24/10)
252. Grave Peril – Jim Butcher (11/24/10)
253. The Dark Sacrament – David M. Kiely and Christina McKenna (11/27/10)
254. Danse Macabre – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/3/10)
255. The Harlequin – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/4/10)
256. Blood Noir – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/7/10)
257. The Harlequin audiobook – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/9/10)
258. Living Islam Out Loud – Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur (12/9/10)
259. Summer Knight – Jim Butcher (12/9/10)
260. Death Masks – Jim Butcher (12/14/10)
261. Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time – Karen Armstrong (12/16/10)
262. Skin Trade – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/18/10)
263. Flirt – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/18/10)
264. Bullet – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/19/10)
265. Counterfeit Magic – Kelley Armstrong (12/21/10)
266. Storm Front audiobook – Jim Butcher (12/22/10)
267. A Kiss of Shadows – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/24/10)
268. A Caress of Twilight – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/25/10)
269. Seduced By Moonlight – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/26/10)
270. A Stroke of Midnight – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/29/10)
271. Mistral's Kiss – Laurell K. Hamilton (12/30/10)
272. Blood Rites – Jim Butcher (12/30/10)

The Old Forms No Longer Work

One of the recurring points that Armstrong brings up is that people who are on the verge of great change in their society or culture tend to cling to their old faiths as a reaction to the change. Basically people don't deal well with new things. It takes us a long time to adjust and to find our footing in our new worlds. We have to rewrite much of what we know so that we can continue to function.

So people at first tend to cling to the old forms of their faiths. Even those who might not have been particularly religious before will become so in an effort to find something solid to hold onto while the rest of the world shifts. But many of them find (sometimes quickly and sometimes after long periods of being conservative in their attitudes) that as they adjust to the new world around them that that old forms of their faith no longer work. They don't fit with the world around them. Not whole hog dissolution of their faith but more that certain aspects of it don't work with the new mindset - slavery, for example. It's accepted at the very least in the Bible and the Qur'an if not outright encouraged. But it's no longer acceptable to have the attitude that it's okay to own other people. So do we reject the world's view that all people are equal regardless of their race and reinterpret the scriptures to fit with that view or do we reject the world and cling to the idea that the world of the scriptures was good and perfect so clearly some people are born better than others based solely on their race and the color of their skin?

Thoughts? Should religious understanding change? Can you think of any 'forms' in your faith that have changed because of the changes in society or things that need to be changed?

Cogito, Ergo, Sum

"One evening, sitting beside a wood stove, Descartes evolved the maxim Cogito, ergo, sum: 'I think, therefore I am.' This, he believed, was self-evident. The one thing of which we could be certain was our mind's experience of doubt. But this revealed the limitation of the human mind, and the very notion of 'limitation' would make no sense if we did not have a prior conception of 'perfection.' A perfection that did not exist, however, would be a contradiction in terms. Ergo, the Ultimate Perfection - God - must be a reality. This so-called proof is unlikely to satisfy a modern unbeliever, and it shows the impotence of pure reason when faced with such issues. Rational thought is indispensable for our effective functioning in the world. It is at its best when directed toward a pragmatic goal or when, like Descartes, we withdraw from the mundane to consider something as objectively as possible. But when we ask why the world exists (if it does!) or whether life has meaning, reason can make little headway, and the object of our thought itself can become strange to us. Descartes beside his stove, in his cold, empty world, locked into his own uncertainty, and uttering a 'proof' which is little more than a mental conundrum, embodies the spiritual dilemma of modern humanity." - Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 71-72

Fundamentalism Starts With Telling People Not to Think

Hmmm...so one common theme that I'm getting as I read the different stories of some (select) fundamentalist movements in history is that they all are reactions to large changes in society.

People who are uncomfortable with changes to the status quo react by reverting back - they look back to a 'perfect' past time that never existed. Religiously minded individuals tend to take the track that if we were truly following the original form of whatever faith they are then this upheaval, this (to them) disastrous change in society won't destroy us. Or won't happen.

And one of the first things they do is start to tell people that all theological or philosophical thought since this 'ideal' time is a part of the problem. That it has removed us from the core, the fundamental of the faith. And they begin teaching people not to think. That they can't think about their own faiths because they don't understand it properly - they have to rely on that particular leader and the interpretation that he has. They close the ability of the people to embrace new thought.

But new thought is important to the survival of any religion. If a religion cannot adapt while still keeping true to the core principles of the faith then it runs a strong chance of dying out or becoming effectively obsolete.

Fundies

So why is it that 'fundamentalists' are supposed to be so devoted to the fundamentals of their specific faiths but they all seem to massively miss the mark and tear their faiths into little bitty pieces in the name of their vision?

Let's take 'Christian' Fundamentalists. What (aside from faith in one God and redemption through Jesus Christ) is the fundamental commandment of Christianity?

'Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

Think about any group that labels itself or you would label as 'Christian' Fundamentalist. Any of them feel loving to you? They don't to me. They feel and act like they're all about judging everyone else in the world who isn't *exactly* like them to be wrong and damned and causing all of the 'evil' that they see everywhere around them.

Did Christ say only love those people who look and act and think and believe just like you, otherwise they're fair game to be spat on and kept from their rights and shoved into the dirt and told that they're freaks or unnatural or damned? Maybe the fundies have a different copy of the Bible than I do...

Book: Muhammed - Done

Okay, so I finished it.

It's a really easy read and I enjoyed it. I enjoy Armstrong's older works, clearly.

However, the major problem with the book is that Armstrong's bias toward Islam and Mohammed in particular makes it impossible for her to write a balanced book. She writes Mohammed as a man who only wanted the best for everyone and who was forced to compromise his vision because of the baseness of his companions.

I think she's taken her old Catholic belief in Christ and His perfection and begun to project it onto the founder of a religion that she finds more palatable since she rejected her roots and lost her faith in Christianity. That being said, so far as I know Ms. Armstrong remains an agnostic.

Nothing bad that ever happened while Mohammed was alive was ever the fault of his not seeing the consequences of his actions. It was always everyone else who took something wrong or couldn't stand the social reforms that Mohammed was trying to implement.

Don't get me wrong - I don't subscribe to the view that Mohammed was this blood thirsty pedophile that I see him portrayed as by some people. I see him, as I have said as a typical man of the era. Perhaps because of his own background he was more sympathetic toward certain segments of the population (women, orphans, the poor and dispossessed) than others. He may have even believed that his social reforms were necessary for the survival of his people. It's well evident that the old tribal ways were not going to ensure the tribes survival over the long term - not in any significant way.

Some of the stories were interesting - I found the description of the building of the mosque in Medina fascinating as well as the fact that it wasn't only a place of worship but actually where Mohammed and his wives lived. And that the wives didn't have fabulous accommodations - their huts were so small, apparently, that most people couldn't stand up straight in them.

Armstrong does mention conflicts in Mohammed's life, including the strife amongst the wives caused by jealousy. But she glosses over or ignores some of the more questionable actions by Mohammed. You know, not even 'questionable' but things that make him less kind and gentle and perfect as she seems to see him and more like a leader who has to do things (or order them done) that don't sit well with modern sensibilities. And she completely leaves out the assassinations of the two poets that Mohammed if not directly ordered then implicitly did and then brushed off as if they were nothing. Because that doesn't fit with the fluffy Mohammed that Armstrong imagines.

So, all in all, interesting but not, in my opinion a very realistic image of Mohammed.

My next book is also an Armstrong book The Battle for God.

Book: Muhammad - Mecca pt. 1

Mecca in the time of Mohammed was something of an unusual place. The Meccans had carved out a living and made their city a thriving center of trade when most Arabs were nomadic by necessity.

The vast terrain of Arabia was barren - only a few places were suitable for agriculture - Yathrib and Ta'if, the later of which supplied Mecca with most of its food. Elsewhere farming was impossible and so the people lived nomadic and difficult lives.

The nomadic life was hard and as a consequence the Bedouin spent most of their time on the edge of starvation. The ghazu or acquisition raid was a vital part of life. It was a regular feature of the nomadic lifestyle and done with great care - the raiders wanted to come away with camels, cattle and slaves but they did not want to kill anyone. A death would incite a vendetta and those (as I'm certain everyone realises) could get way out of hand and go on forever. You kill one of my tribe and I kill one of yours. Then your tribe comes back and retaliates and on and on and on until there's nothing but blood and sand.

'The Bedouin were not very interested in conventional religion. They had no hope of an afterlife and little confidence in their gods, who seemed unable to make any impact on their difficult environment. The tribe, not a deity, was the supreme value, and each member had to subordinate his or her personal needs and desires to the well-being of the group, and fight to the death, if necessary, to ensure its survival. Fantasy was useless in the steppes; they needed pragmatic, sober realism. But they had evolved a chivalric code, which, by giving meaning to their lives and preventing them from succumbing to despair in these harsh conditions, performed the essential function of religion. They called it muruwah, a complex term that is difficult to translate succinctly. Muruwah meant courage, patience, endurance; it consisted of a dedicated determination to avenge any wrong done to the group, to protect its weaker members and defy its enemies. To preserve the honor of the tribe, each member had to be ready to leap to the defense of his kinsmen at a moment's notice and to obey his chief without question.'

Muruwah made a virtue of the necessity of sharing ones 'wealth' with other members of the tribe. The karim - the 'generous hero' - was one who cared little for his material goods. He would evince no concern for where his food or shelter or livelihood would come from tomorrow and had to be prepared to squander everything he had in one night in order to put on a lavish feast for his friends. Of course this led to a lot of families yo-yoing between having enough to care for themselves and then being thrown into abject poverty at the drop of a hat.

The only solidarity encouraged by muruwah was tribal solidarity. The generosity and care of the poor only extended as far as ones own tribe - there existed no concept of universal human rights. One lived and died with ones tribe and with the traditions and way of life (sunnah) of that tribe. The tribe was all - to deviate from the way that things had always been done was death. Desert nomads could not afford to innovate. To ignore the shari'ah was to invite disaster - if your ancestors had been following the same path to the water hole you should follow that same path because that way was known and sure. Any other path could lead your whole family and possibly the tribe to death.

The Bedouin men were proud and aggressive. It was considered a virtue to respond violently to any perceived threat or slight. The karim were encouraged to be self-reliant to the point of recklessness.

The only way to escape this harsh lifestyle was to find a place that was suitable for settling. One could do that by taking over an oasis as the tribe of Thaqif had done in Ta'if. Or one could become an intermediary between two more powerful civilizations in the region. The Ghassan tribe did this - they converted to Christianity and formed a buffer state between Byzantium and Persia.

In the sixth century the Bedouin invented a better saddle for their camels. It allowed them to carry heavier loads and merchants began to use these camel caravans to transport their merchandise and to take the road through Arabia rather than the longer paths around. And they hired the Bedouin to guard their merchandise, drive the camels and guide them from one oasis to the next.

Mecca became a station for these northbound caravans. Conveniently centrally located it was important because it had an underground water source - Zamzam. The miraculous existence of this water in such an arid place made the site sacred to the Bedouin long before there was a city there.

The Kabah may originally have been a part of the cult of Zamzam. The spring and the sanctuary (haram) went through the control of numerous different tribes but in the early sixth century controlled rested in the hands of the Quraysh - Mohammed's tribe.

Unlike other tribes that had controlled the area the Quraysh were able to abandon the nomadic lifestyle. They managed to monopolise the north-south trade and to control the mercantile activity within Arabia that had been stirred by the influx of international commerce. Several fairs were held throughout the region through the year - they cycled in a clockwise fashion with the last five fairs being held in the area in and around Mecca. This fair was held right before the month of hajj - the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kabah.

Because the Quraysh had become men of peace - they couldn't grow their own food in Mecca, the ground was unsuitable for it so if their trade failed they would starve and be forced to abandon control of Mecca - they had to make Mecca a place where merchants and traders could come without fear of attack. They made special agreements with the Bedouin tribes so that they would not attack the caravans during the trade fair season. In return the Bedouin were permitted to act as guides and protectors of the merchants - compensating them for the loss of income they suffered for not raiding the caravans.

Trade and religion were inextricably combined in Mecca. The pilgrimage was the climax of the fair cycle and the Quraysh reconstructed the cult and architecture of the sanctuary so that it became the spiritual center for all the tribes. Even though the Bedouin didn't put much stock in the power of their gods each tribe had its own presiding deity with a stone effigy to go along with it. The Quraysh collected all of the totems of the tribes that belonged to their cooperative group and placed them in the Kabah so that in order to worship their ancestral deities the tribesmen had to come into Mecca.

'When they reached the Kabah, surrounded by the 360 tribal totems, they began to perform the traditional rites in Mecca and its environs, which may originally have been devised to bring on the winter rains. They jogged seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwah, to the east of the Kabah; ran in a body to the hollow of Muzdalifah, the home of the thunder god; made an all-night vigil on the plain beside Mount 'Arafat, sixteen miles outside the city; hurled pebbles at three pillars in the valley of Mina; and finally, at the end of their pilgrimage, sacrificed their most valuable female camels, symbols of their wealth and - hence - of themselves. The most famous ritual of the hajj was the tawaf, seven circumambulations of the Kabah in a clockwise direction, a stylized enactment of the trade route round Arabia, which gave the Arabs' mercantile activities a spiritual dimension.'

Any of that sound familiar to anybody? I find it interesting that all of the rituals of hajj existed in pagan form. Of course it's a question of chick and egg I guess. If you believe in the Qur'an then you believe that these rituals existed because Abraham and Ishmael brought them there in their pure form of worship of God and that they were corrupted by later generations. If you don't then you believe that Mohammed co-opted the existing rituals for his own religion.

The Meccans had become settled but they hadn't managed to escape the old ways entirely. They had lost the old communal spirit but had kept the arrogance and greed. Families vied with each other for wealth and prestige. Those who had hoarded it and those who hadn't 'made it' were pushed aside and looked down upon.

Book: LIOL - Last Post

I finished the book. The posts I did are only a few of the stories out of the collection. A lot of them have some angst and sadness and pain. Not always abuse but sometimes. Some of the stories were just sad and touching. Like the last story which was that of a woman who has an autistic son. It focused on her attempts to be the 'perfect' Muslim woman - she went to the extremes, doing everything that she might possibly do so that God would 'fix' her son. And then her journey taking her son to an experimental kind of therapy (the therapy took an entire year) to try and get him to have some sort of functionality and how this journey - having to focus on her son and his problem and not the thought that it was somehow her fault because she wasn't good enough brought her out of her self imposed punishment and made her realize that her sons autism wasn't a 'fault'. It's a very touching story - I was sort of sniffling while I was reading it on the treadmill - and it's painful on a purely emotional level. No one does anything wrong in it - just people muddling through and suffering because we're all human.

Anyway. I do think it's an interesting book. Some of the women I liked better than others. There's at least one that I feel comes off as extremely arrogant and self aggrandizing but she probably wouldn't like me either! :) It's a good read.

My next book is Karen Armstrong's Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time.

Book: LIOL: On the Edge of Belonging - Khalida Saed

This is also one of those things girls get hospitalized for, like masturbating.

'As long as I can remember I have teetered on the edge of something. I have not always been an American. Sometimes I wasn't a Muslim. I never wanted to be a lesbian. But I have never had any doubt that I don't belong fully in any of these identities. I teetered on the edge of belonging to the lesbian community and being invincible within it, on the edges of being American and Iranian, and on the edge of Islam. I have been juggling several identities all my life, and it never occurred to me to complain at first. It seemed that the less I complained, the less people would notice that I wasn't fully part of their community - and community is the reason for everything I do.'

Khalida came out as a lesbian to her mother when she was fourteen. Her mother was 'distressed'. She cried, she screamed, she hit Khalida and locked her in her room. She wound up missing two days of school because of it. Her mother told her that it was 'just a phase' and that it was because she was too 'Americanized'. Khalida says that the last argument might have some weight - if not for her American half telling her that she had the right she probably would just never have said anything. But she still would have felt the way she does. They have never discussed it again. 'Honestly, it never occurred to me that my person sexual orientation would hurt her. I was THAT naive. Our relationship today is as close as it can be when two people refuse to bring up the pink elephant in the middle of the room.'


'We are not unlike many American immigrant Muslim families. Sexuality of any kind is not discussed. She would have been more supportive of me if I had never come out to her at all and we had left it unsaid all these years. Sex has been the one issue we cannot get over as a family. Sex has been the one "condition" in the unconditional love parents are supposed to offer their children. A woman's virginity is the most valuable bargaining chip she can bring to the marriage. And she will get married one day, or else it reflects badly on her entire family and ruins the chances of marriage for her younger siblings. Bringing up lesbianism was the ultimate form of discussing sexuality. Not only was I talking about sex, but I was refusing to participate in the biggest institution religion ever created: Heterosexual Marriage.'

"They don't have jobs, they live on the street, and they want to be men, for God's sake!"

Growing up, Khalida believed that in order to be a 'real' lesbian she had to have short hair, listen to Melissa Ethridge, etc. She only knew the stereotype lesbian because she had no access to the wider world. Her out of the home activities were closely monitored by her parents and older brother so she didn't have the opportunity to access any LGBTQ youth communities in New York City. She remembers being lonely and isolated throughout her youth. Her sexuality pained her - she knew it was a death sentence on family relations. Khalida thought that she would have to choose between her family and her own identity. She chose her family - she did what she knew would please them. She began wearing hijab and formed the Muslim Student Association in her high school. She collected all the signatures and then stood back when the elections came so that the boys could all fill the positions - with no mention that she had done all the work to make this MSA even exist. 'I thought I was on my way to becoming fully Muslim and belonging to that community. But I never managed to stop being queer.'

Every time I get a new girlfriend, I have to introduce her as my best friend to my parents. They think I'm very social.

When Khalida was a freshman in high school, she met Jane. Jane was her first girlfriend. They only dated for about a month and kept it very quiet. A little kissing, some hand holding. Soft things. But the important thing that she and Jane did together was get to some meetings for youth at the local Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Khalida remembers them getting to her when it was time to introduce themselves and just blurting out everything about herself. 'We all had a need to be known by somebody. I felt like I had a real chance to find someone with whom I could share all of myself.'


If you wear lots of makeup it will make you look sixteen, then the truant cops won't pick you up, but the lesbians won't know you're a dyke...

When she was supposed to be at school was the only time Khalida's family couldn't monitor her movements and dictate what she did. So she started cutting school and slipping down to the East Village. Stress in her family turned ugly - her parents felt that they were losing their children to America. Khalida equated everything Iranian and Muslim with being anti-gay and therefore anti-her. Her sister regarded all things Muslim as completely foreign to her and anything she might care about. 'My parents tried to control us through fear and anger.' Khalida rejected Islam in all it's forms because she couldn't find any place for herself in it. She left the MSA and turned her back on all of it.

Being gay and Muslim? That's like sinning automatically, for no reason, all the time!

Khalida left home to go to college. It devastated her family - it was just not done. She was the first person in her family to do it and they had no idea what to do with it. She says that it was hard, being away from everything that she knew - she faced 'racism, homophobia, and worst of all, defeat.' But she learned to survive.

At twenty she stumbled onto a website for the Al-Fatiha Foundation - a national group for LGBTQ Muslims that was unapologetic. She 'pretended to be horrified' every day she looked at it for a whole year. In 2001 her girlfriend took her to her first Al-Fatiha conference in Washington, D.C. The first day they just sort of hung around the edges and didn't join the conference. 'This was my last hope of finding someone to tell me that it was OK for me to be who I was.'


'When I finally joined the conference, it was a wonderful and soothing experience. I don't think I lied about who I was once the entire time I was there. I even prayed more regularly than I have ever prayed before in my life.'

Khalida joined the board of Al-Fatiha immediately - 'because I wanted to give that feeling of belonging to other people.'

'Al-Fatiha restored my faith in Islam because it included women in its leadership and insisted on inclusive prayer spaces where women were not relegated to the basement and forced to wear hijab even if they did not wear them normally. Women were even encouraged to lead prayer.'

So you don't want to get married? What did you waste all that time going to college for, if not to be more appealing to a husband?

Khalida's family has come to terms with her refusal to enter an arranged marriage. They don't acknowledge the fact that she is in a long term relationship with a wonderful woman that she met in college. Khalida's s.o.'s family is very supportive and they have embraced her as one of them. They want to get married, but keep putting it off because Khalida wants to tell her family - shouldn't they be there for such a joyous occasion? But she knows that some of them would react violently and others would simply cut her off and bring her more pain. So she puts it off. Because she has this fantasy:


'In my heart I secretly wait for the day when I will gather up my courage, walk into my mother's house with my head held high, and ask her to sew me a wedding dress, just like her mother sewed hers. And while we're on the subject of family scenarios, I imagine her wiping tears of joy from her eyes as she leads me to the sewing machine to take my measurements. She will then do the customary passing down of jewelry. She'll take out my grandmother's pearl set that her mother gave her on her wedding day and extend it to me, saying, "You know, I always liked that girlfriend of yours. Tell me more about her mother and her family."'

Book: LIOL: Fumbling Toward Ecstasy - Yousra Y. Fazili

Yousra, though born a Muslim didn't really become interested in her faith until she developed a crush on a Sufi boy named Ammar when she was sixteen. It was studying her faith in order to get into this boys life that led her to a deeply personal relationship with God. It caused her to adopt hijab and abaya as well.

Her crush on Ammar eventually ended, but her faith did not. She learned more and more and became interested in different exegeses of the Qur'an. Eventually she 'de-hijabed' because of what she felt it said about Islam and sexual expression.

Like all Muslims, she was taught that sex was reserved for married people. So the struggle for young, unmarried Muslims full of hormones was to repress those natural desires until they met and married Mr/Ms Right. Though taught to repress their natural sexual feelings the idea of sex lay hidden in the shadows of Islamic etiquette. At the age of twelve, children are separated by gender at Islamic religious schools. They are segregated in mosques by heavy partitions or walls or entire rooms - sometimes even put it different buildings. 'The underlying reason for all this was that all men were assumed to be sexual animals who would not be able to concentrate on prayer if they looked at women. I always found this insulting to men. This entire system was designed so men would never fear public arousal. I also found it highly naive to think that women lacked a forceful sex drive and therefore would not ogle men at the mosque.'

'Ask the most liberal and conservative hijabi why Islam sanctions the wearing of hijab and there will surely be mention of the fact that Muslim women must be modest and unalluring so they are not seen as sex objects; they simply want to be seen as people. The problem I have always had with this reasoning is twofold. First, it is impossible to desexualize one's self - our sexuality is an integral part of who we are and a part of our humanity that Islam celebrates within the domain of marriage. Second, this reasoning takes all responsibility away from men and places it on women. Men are not taught to have self control, but women are repeatedly instructed to dress and behave modestly so as not to arouse a man.'

Yousra says that in not acknowledging their sexuality, Muslims are left not knowing how to react to it. 'In other words, when we are confronted with something we have spent so long repressing, it is difficult to have a healthy response to what is life-affirming, natural, and a gift from God: the ability to love and make love.'

At the age of nineteen, Yousra 'de-hijabed'. She had been learning more about her religion and came to believe that rather than being fard, hijab was sunnah. She says that three books were crucial to her intellectual development as a Muslim woman: Women and Gender in Islam by Leila Ahmed, The Veil and the Male Elite by Fatima Mernissi and Al-Tabiri's History of Islam. 'The first taught me to reexamine assumed norms of of jahiliya society and to reassess the radicalism of the Islamic revolution in seventh-century Arabia. The latter two led me to reexamine the Qur'an and hadith regarding women, hijab, and intergender relations in Islam. What became apparent from my foray into the world of Islamic academia was that our religion had been far more liberal in its past, and that our current understanding of Islamic norms gives primacy to hadith and exegesis over the word of God.' She decided to live her life with the Qur'an as her guide, not a jurist's understanding of the Qur'an as advanced by any particular madhab.

In the summer of 2000, Yousra and her two best friends all met the men who would be their loves in very different ways.

Sarah met Michael while in Syria studying Arabic at an institute. They had a shared love of Arabic poetry that grew into a deep friendship which then grew into more. The first time Michael reached out to hold her hand she withdrew, surprised at the warmth that the contact brought to her. Despite the fact that she wore miniskirts and tank tops she was a devout Muslimah - she made all of her prayers and fasts, she never had any inappropriate contact with anyone all through her life. The feelings she felt for Michael surprised her and confused her. Wasn't this only supposed to happen with a Muslim man?

When he finally confessed his love to her in a sweeping, romantic gesture on the beaches of Latakia all she could do was lament that he wasn't a Muslim. He reached again for her hand and she hesitated. But he was patient and eventually allowed him to take her hand and they walked down the beach together. Once they returned home from Syria they kept in touch through email and hushed late night phone conversations. He wasn't Muslim. She couldn't marry him. But he could become Muslim. 'And so he did, and he came to meet her parents, who were charmed by his wit and sensitivity. He is Muslim, she told them. He is white, her father reminded her. It is love, her mother said, and so it was. And it was final. They married idyllically and Sarah, true to her beliefs, was a virgin even after her wedding night. They took it slow - the kisses, the caresses, sleeping together, and he waited patiently because this was love.'

Aisha met Omar at the gym. She was running on a treadmill - trying to get under a nine-minute mile. He was lifting weights - trying to get away from the stereotype of the skinny Indian boy. He came over and introduced himself, recognising her as doing research in the lab next to his on campus. He offered to show her around Cambridge and she accepted. They dated, going to Shakespeare on the Common for their first date. Around campus they began to be known as a power couple - perfect together and destined for marriage. Four years after they started dating Omar's mother became critically ill. Aisha and Omar's families were close and Omar's mother's illness struck Aisha hard. She went to visit the woman in the hospital, surrounded by the smell of death and ammonia. As she stood there, Omar's mother told Aisha that she knew Aisha loved her only son and that Aisha would care for him once she was gone. Aisha, of course, told her that she would be there for a long time to come. Omar's mothers response was, 'Or not.' She wanted to see Omar and Aisha married before she died, to know that they were settled before she died.

So they married there at the hospital so his mother would know peace before she passed. They had a second, larger wedding a year later, a traditional service. And a year after that they had twins.

Yousra met Abdullah at a party in Cairo. She was there because there was a musician playing at the party that she liked. She stayed on at the party long after the friends who had brought her had left - she was determined that as long as the musician was there she would remain. Abdullah ran into her out on a balcony as they both sought fresh air. They spoke for about ten minutes before a fight broke out inside the apartment. As they parted Abdullah asked for her phone number. She surprised herself by giving him her real number.

They met in group settings and got to know each other. It soon became clear to Yousra that, even though marriage was the last thing on her mind that was where they were headed. On their one month anniversary he surprised her with a special night out. They had a lovely dinner and then went to a friend's apartment that had been graciously vacated for them for the evening. The room was filled with roses, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. And Abdullah was there in the center of the room, handing her a letter. 'In the letter he said he loved me, its foolish to love someone so much so soon, but it's true and he understood if I did not feel the same way, too.' Tears in her eyes, she looked up at him and told him that she loved him too. He told her not to say it if she didn't mean it. No, no, she really meant it. They hugged, they kissed, and then, when the kiss ended Yousra told Abdullah that she was a virgin and would be so until the day she married.

'"You are?" He was incredulous. I was insulted. What do people think of us American girls? "I'm Muslim," I said, somehow forgetting that all of his lovers had been Muslim also. "No, I mean really Muslim."


'And it was funny that my American Islam would be more "real" than their Eastern Islam. He was so happy he swung me around, proclaiming that even if I begged for it, he would never have sex with me, to keep me pure. My inner feminist wanted to take back my words because I was upset that he was so delighted I was a virgin. And I was also upset that I was so upset that he was not. We kissed like we could not kiss on the streets of Cairo, we kissed like it was the beginning of a new life. And it was.'

Book: LIOL: Marrying A Believer - Asia Sharif-Clark

Asia is a born Muslim woman who was raised by a single parent - her mother. Her husband James, who she met while attending college was also raised by his mother. But James is not a Muslim. He 'considers himself neither Christian nor Muslim but simply a man who fears God.'

Asia considers herself privileged to share her life with a man who 'understands my commitment to my Lord, my marriage, and motherhood.' They are designing their own concept of marriage as they go.

'Most Qur'anic exegesis agrees that regarding marriage, a Muslim man can marry a "believing" woman ("believing" meaning one who is Muslim or a monotheistic Christian or Jew). Conversely, a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man. The reason given is that the woman would be subjected to and adversely affected by the laws and customs of her husband.'

I even have a book that's supposed to be a guide for new convert Muslimah's that instructs a woman if she is married that she has to leave her husband immediately unless he has converted with her. Their marriage, according to this book, is not valid at all.

Asia and James met while attending college. They had mutual friends and saw each other often while in these groups. During a group get together a friend explained to Asia that James was interested in her. She was surprised and certain that there was some sort of a mistake there. She had given him no reason to show any interest. They knew each other, but not well. Asia felt herself to be at a disadvantage - during the group gatherings James had managed to find out so much about her, her views and ideas, but he spoke little and listened so much that she hadn't learned about him.

Over the winter break they began to see a lot of each other and for the first time in years Asia began to listen instead of speaking. She learned more about him in two weeks than she had in a year. Over the next year Asia and James really got to know each other - they discussed marriage, children, Christianity, Islam, their goals, everything. James understood how important it would be for her to raise her children in Islam even though he had no interest in converting. With her major concerns addressed and with no fear, 'I called James at work one evening and asked him if next Wednesday would be a good day to get married. He said yes, and on March 7, 1993, we were married.'

Asia says that her family embraced him with ease. Her mother has always been a people person - she developed connections with others with ease no matter their backgrounds, religions, politics or anything else. It was no different when she met James. 'My mom got what she wanted - a son-in-law who believed in God, feared God, and was good to me. She has never been disappointed, and our families and communities supported our desire to create a lifelong partnership.'

Asia says that their getting married required arrangements, but staying married required strategy. They both made some mistakes early on. One of hers, she says, was expecting James to fall into the role of the traditional Muslim husband. She explained Islamic etiquette and gave James all the mechanics and procedures so he would fit in, but she didn't give him time to get comfortable with the faith. She was overly zealous in many areas and came off as pushy. So there were many times when she would show up for juma prayer or Eid celebrations with her sons and no James. It wasn't until a friend pointed out to her that 'Allah has blessed you with a wonderful husband who adores you.' that she realized just how happy and lucky she really was and that she was pushing too hard for James to fit into this imaginary ideal that she had.

'Awakened to my gratitude for James, I realized that Allah wanted me to be true to myself and true to Him. I reminded myself that I signed on for this relationship, with this man. What I had done was change the rules. I wanted him involved in Islamic activities to make me feel better, and that wasn't fair to James. He'd given me exactly what he proposed, and he'd been honest from the beginning.'

'I am grateful to Allah for so many reasons. As a child He gave me a mom who made me believe that anything was possible for me, and today I live life without limitation. As an adult, Allah gave me a dad who's taught me to practice Islam with sincerity and consistency. As a woman, Allah gave me a husband who works, struggles, and laughs with me. Allah gave me children whom I protect like a lioness protecting cubs. I thank Allah for the opportunity to care for others, and I awake each morning saying, "In the name of You, Allah, thank you for allowing me to wake up and work for peace and productivity." Each day, I make a conscious decision to live Islam through motherhood, marriage, and work. I've been blessed for too long, and been given too much, to deny the favors of my Lord.'

Book: LIOL: My Own Worst Enemy - Manal Omar

'There is a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad that says a person's worst enemy is between his two sides. As I reflect on my hyphenated life as a Palestinian-American woman, I realize how many self-imposed struggles I have had to overcome, and also that I have always been my own worst enemy. I imposed upon myself cultural and religious norms that I inherited from my family and community. Though unspoken, I internalized the message that being a quiet and demure girl was the path to being a respectable and pure woman, and that by the time I finished college I should have a husband. And thus I entered a vicious cycle of making mistake after mistake, trying to prove that I was something I was not.'

Manal says that the part that bothers her the most about her mistakes, in retrospect is that she has always been passionate for women's rights. As a child she would argue constantly with her mother about the unfairness of her having more chores to do than her brothers. Her mother would remind her that the idea of boys doing chores at all was progressive compared to the way families worked back in Palestine but Manal found this answer unsatisfactory. After all, they weren't living in Palestine and here in the states chores worked evenly whether you were a boy or a girl.

She gave talks in college about the rights that Islam gave women - especially those related to marriage. 'I always found it progressive that within Islam women reserved the right to place conditions in their marriage contract (a sort of prenuptial agreement) that were fully binding on the man. Whether it was a woman reserving the right to charge her husband for housework or a woman being able to request a divorce due to lack of sexual compatibility, it always instilled in me a sense of pride that our rights were guaranteed. However, I also realized that there was a gap between what we practiced and what we preached.'

With a desire to please her family in her choices, Manal set out to find a husband that they could love. The first was a man she calls 'Cousin'. Manal and her family had spent the summer in Jordan with extended family when she was 17. Toward the end of that trip her cousin's family approached her family for her hand in marriage. Manal's family told them that they would need to consider the proposal - they had always been against marriage between cousins. 'My confusion led to my silence and my silence became my consent. Somewhere while crossing the oceans, this "considering" became a promise, and I found myself semi-engaged by the time we landed in the United States.'

Manal says that she knew neither of her parents would ever force marriage on her, however at that age all she really wanted to do was please her father and make him happy. Cousin was a very educated, respectable man. He was, on paper, perfect. She tried to convince herself that the little things like love, friendship and romance - things that she didn't feel for Cousin - weren't important. Eventually, however, she realized that it would be a horrible mistake to marry Cousin. She confessed her troubles to one of her brothers and the family drama began. The drama was not within her own close family, but between them and the family across the ocean. Despite the engagement being called off, Cousin pursued her for another two years before finally giving up.

Shortly after that, Manal went to college and made a point of having as little interaction with Arabs and Muslims as possible. She graduated with a degree in international relations and subsequently moved to the Middle East. She spent the first year in Jordan working as a freelance journalist and then taking a position with UNESCO. It was there that she met the man she refers to as Baghdad Beau.

They were friends first, and romantic feelings developed slowly between them. When Manal realized how they felt for each other she panicked. This was coming close, she felt, to breaking the boundaries that she had set for herself as a good Muslim girl. She was also having some issues with her work - she was unhappy with the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Program and wound up resigning. She left Baghdad and Baghdad Beau intended to follow her to visit her family and ask for her hand in marriage.

Her mother, however, would hear nothing of it. Baghdad Beau's parents were uneducated and he had more than eight siblings. For Manal's mother, the prestige of the family was at stake. When Baghdad Beau arrived in Jordan a month after Manal, he found her already engaged.

Her parents had found her a man she calls Virgo-Texas-Psychophrenic (VTS). He was blond with blue eyes, but had the manners of an Arab man. VTS was 'religious, yet liberal; educated, yet fun; and we shared similar backgrounds'. Manal moved back to Virginia (while he was still in Texas) and began planning their wedding. And then it all changed.

VTS abruptly changed personalities - he started to make odd comments about her hijab. He wanted to know why she didn't wear tighter jeans and a smaller headscarf. But while encouraging her to wear more provocative clothing he simultaneously claimed that women who did those things, or women who wore high heels and makeup were nothing but sluts. He kept saying that women had to obey their husbands unconditionally. He complained that she didn't have a job and that women should be independent. So she went out and got a job. He kept complaining. She started her master's degree and he complained about that too, saying that it was unnecessary for women to be educated to that level. Despite her views on women's rights, Manal kept bending to his whims, trying to please him. She quit the master's program.

'As I realized the fallacy in the equation of sacrifice plus appeasement equals loyalty and affection, I finally realized that I did not care what he wanted. It should not have been about him, at least not to that degree - it should have been about me. So I called him and told him where he could buy quality clay with which he could mold the type of woman he wanted to be with.'

Finally came Sequel, who she actually married. She believes that her experiences with Baghdad Beau and VTS, the emotional roller coaster, left her vulnerable to Sequel and are why it was so easy for him to slip into her life.

'I felt guilty for not fighting for Baghdad Beau, and my parents felt guilty for being so adamantly against Baghdad Beau and for rushing into VTS; they did not want to be seen as always standing in my way. So Sequel was my choice and my choice alone, although to be honest, I knew my parents were not entirely happy with him. Sequel was an Iraqi - not the Palestinian that my parents had always hoped I would marry. He was eleven years my senior, and he was what my friends always referred to as an F.O.B. (Fresh off the Boat). For us, an F.O.B. was someone who was caught between the extremes of living as if he were back in this country of origin and desperately proving he was an American. It later dawned on me that he was actually an S.O.B. (Still on the Boat)!'

The wedding was lovely. But the honeymoon was hollow. She says her first red flag was when he asked her to start a load of laundry the day after the wedding, while they were waiting for their ride to the airport. Then came the public temper tantrum that he threw in Heathrow Airport. The worst, she said, was when she accidentally saw an email that he had sent to a gynecologist. He had emailed this woman asking her how to tell if your wife was a virgin if there wasn't a lot of blood when they consummated the marriage. The doctor's response was basically, 'Just ask.'. But Manal felt humiliated. She hadn't bled a lot, true, but the distrust that this showed made her furious. It made her feel that her identity had been called into question. Sequel, somehow, managed to convince her that it was a sign of how much he cared for her. After all, he argued, many men wouldn't have bothered looking into it. They would have just assumed that she wasn't really a virgin and divorced her on the spot.

The marriage got worse. Nothing she did was right. She was all wrong all the time. Her response was to try harder. It was like the engagement with VTS where she just bent to his whims, only worse because she felt that since they were married that this was it. She had to make it work. It came to a head when an instructor at a sculling class asked her to come and have lunch with him and his family so they could continue discussing Islam. He had been curious throughout the class and she enjoyed talking about her faith to him. Well, when she went to ask Sequel if it would be okay he flipped out. He stood there on the dock yelling and screaming at her, insulting her and the instructor. Embarrassed as she was, she dealt with it the way she dealt with all the other incidents - she acted like nothing happened.

Later, when she got home from work she received a call from her brother. Sequel had called him to tell him about the incident that morning. Only in sequel's version Manal had been asked to go out on a date by the instructor and had just strolled up to Sequel to tell him that she was going. 'I was not sure which was more infuriating, the fact that Sequel had manipulated the story to such a degree, or the fact that my brother, of all people, believed it.'

The last straw, though, came the next morning. She received a call from the institute where the instructor worked. Sequel had called them, wanting the instructor to be fired. They were calling to explain, again, that the instructor was a married man with children and that he had meant no disrespect. Then the instructor got on the phone with Sequel and Manal could hear him - he was apologizing profusely, explaining that it was his ignorance to blame and "not the fault of your wife". He kept repeating that part over and over again and Manal realized that the instructor was afraid that his innocent desire to learn might cause Sequel to hurt her. She went upstairs and packed a bag.

Manal left and divorced Sequel. She saw a therapist and began working through her own issues. Manal threw herself back into her work - she covered Afghanistan and Iraq, covering the effects of war there on the women.

'Throughout this time of contemplation, I have become aware that despite all the work that I do on behalf of women, when it came to my own personal life I didn't have the strength to work the muscle of my voice. The most basic example was the fact that I did not put a single stipulation to guarantee my God-given rights as a Muslim woman in my marriage contract. Even the most common rights, such as a dowry, or the right to pursue an education, or to be able to work, I did not include. I have led many workshops for young Muslim women about their religious rights within the framework of marriage and the importance of making stipulations within the marriage contract. Yet in practice, I was unable to stand up to the cultural pressures, which deemed stating certain things "offensive." Moreover, I realize that I was consistently playing the role of self-censor, stifling my own true personality. I tried to be something I was not. In an attempt to control and monitor my feelings and to behave appropriately, I have always been my own worst enemy, enforcing all kinds of gender-bias stereotypes on myself and building walls around my emotions.'

Book: LIOL: To Be Young, Gifted, Black, American, Muslim, and Woman - Precious Rasheeda Muhammad

'I carry the torch of an Islam predicated upon universal human excellence, to the chagrin of cynics who claim it impossible for the faith itself to do so, let alone someone of my ilk.'

Precious is a third generation Muslim. Her grandmother converted and her mother was raised as a Muslim. Her father came from the Deep South and moved to Boston, eventually joining the Nation of Islam (NOI). This is where he met and married her mother.

Born in 1975, Precious suffered from a chronic skin disease for her entire childhood that sometimes covered eighty percent of her body, including her face and scalp. Her mother would have to shave her head and her clothes would stick to her and have to be peeled off, slowly. Sometimes it hurt her to even move. She says, though, that this affliction taught her from a young age the effect that suffering had on the human spirit. It gave her an acute sense of empathy with others, no matter their pain or status in life.

'I prayed with a brain-dead patient's grieving family, read from the Holy Bible for a male AIDS patient with failing eyesight, and witnessed a premature baby take his last breaths as he was baptized before passing away. None of these people cared it I was a Muslim and I did not care that they were not. I truly believe my own sickness was God's way of preparing me for leadership by humbling me, sensitizing me to injustice and opening my heart to tolerance.'

Growing up, Precious' mother placed a high premium on the education of children. She would haul home crates of books and taught neighborhood classes in her kitchen. Aside from attending regular school, any child was welcomed and encouraged to come to their home and take advantage of the general educational tools she had amassed as well as the Islamic studies tools. Her father was a great believer in investing in the communities where they lived. On Saturday mornings, rather than watch cartoons like most children, they would go out and participate in local projects - cleaning neighborhood parks, for example. 'I was taught that a Muslim should do good works because that is what God put in our nature, not because we expect some reward.'

She was raised in a loving community, surrounded by strong Muslim women who felt empowered. They weren't kept back or barred from this or that because they were women. They were free to be who they needed to be and being Muslim was just a part of their identities, not something that hindered them.

When Precious left home for the first time, she realized that the rest of the Muslim world was not like that. She was suddenly surrounded by 'a sea of women who had been raised differently. In many of these circles it was considered inappropriate for a woman to recite the Qur'an publicly at all, let alone in unison with males, or to sit with male family members during religious celebrations, or to pray in a room that did not have a partition, or to hold positions of leadership in mixed-gender Muslim associations, and the list continued. The women who were teaching me these things were well educated. They approached the understanding of these roles with vigor and firm belief. It was I who felt oppressed, not they. No matter how hard I tried to understand, I could not convert to this way of living. It did not sit right with my soul as a Muslim nor as a descendant of slaves.'


'I had been taught to go directly to the Qur'an, to look at the life of the Prophet Muhammed for myself and use critical reasoning. That is something I could do immediately while continuing to pursue the study of Islam throughout my life. And so I simply refused to wait for Muslims to resolve their standoff between who should or should not speak for Islam while crimes against humanity were being committed in the name of my religion and anti-Islamic sentiments abounded.'

Precious is an historian specializing in the experience of Muslims in America.

'Education is the great equalizer. I believe that when we are knowledgeable about our neighbors as opposed to being afraid of what we do not know, we are more inclined to live together as one humanity, one global community, and to share in the possibilities for our posterity that universal human excellence allows. And so I have poured my heart into educating people about the growth and development of Islam in America, about the Muslim American experience, and I cannot stop now.'

Book: LIOL: How I Met God - Samina Ali

The first essay proper is from a Muslim of Indian descent. Her parents moved to Minnesota from Hyderabad, India in 1970.

She was raised in a fairly small community of other immigrant Muslims and their families. They were all from India or Pakistan and had come together out of loneliness - the desire to be with people who remembered places or things that you spoke of. People who spoke your native tongue.

It was an insular sort of childhood. Even though she went to public school the religious and social constraints kept her apart from most of her classmates. But, she says, growing up she wouldn't have changed places with the other 'normal' children for the world.

She and her friends were raised knowing that they were simply better than all their other classmates. 'Being South Asian, being Muslim, was an honor.' Chief among the concerns her mother raised again and again was that, should she ever have sex, everyone would know. She described daughters as valuable vases - even the faintest crack renders it useless. She enjoined her daughter again and again to not become 'useless'.

At the age of 19 she entered into a marriage arranged by her parents with a man from India. She lived with him and his parents in India until his green card could be approved. Samina quickly discovered that her husband would never be able to have sex with her. He found her body repulsive and whenever he came close to her he would have to rush to the bathroom to vomit. 'He blamed me, saying I was "too Americanized" for him. He wanted someone who was more "pure". Naive and still a virgin, I fervently prayed that Allah would rid me of any impurities I might be housing in my body so that my husband would consummate the marriage.' This, of course, never happened.

Two years later, back in the States after his permanent green card was received he revealed to her that he was gay and he moved to another state to live with a man. He sent her divorce papers from his new home. On top of the pain and anger that she was feeling - betrayed by her husband and betrayed (as she felt) by God, since the marriage had been contracted in the Islamic fashion and only after a series of istakaras which had all come out in favor of the marriage - the Muslim community that she had grown up in blamed her. They believed that she was only *saying* that her husband was gay to cover up her own failings as a wife and a woman.

Eventually she had to leave the place she had grown up in. Samina wound up in the University of Oregon's creative writing master of fine arts program. For the first time in her life, at the age of 24 she was on her own and away from everything that had formed her into who she was. Still feeling betrayed, she ignored religion entirely. During this time she met and fell in love with another student. They eventually married. Her father, in protest of this second marriage didn't speak to her for three years.

Samina's second husband and his family were atheists. At the time of their marriage his mother was dying of cancer. Her death had a huge impact of Samina. It was the night of the funeral and she accepted what her new family had been trying to tell her - that the body is without a soul. That belief in heaven and hell is childish and simple. She buried that old self with her mother-in-law. For a while this life was enough. Samina and her husband did what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it. But she felt a discontent deep within herself. It grew slowly, but it was there.

Then she got pregnant. It was sitting in her garden, sunning herself and watching the natural life move all around her that she realized - there is a higher order to all this. She turned to Buddhism, but couldn't get behind the idea that people had to give up their egos. Her ego was her 'best friend.' It protected her, so how could she eradicate it?

She stumbled into Sufism by chance. Looking through the bargain bins at a store she found a book in which the author discusses how the ego is given to us by God and therefore should not be judged. The line, 'Allah is waiting for you to widen your eyes and see Him' opened up a well of repressed emotions. It brought her back to a place where she could feel and relate to God.

Later, during delivery of her son, Samina died. Twenty minutes after delivery she suffered a grand mal seizure. A later CAT scan showed two brain hemorrhages and they discovered that she'd had a heart attack as well. Basically, every organ in her body had either failed or was badly damaged. They doctors were essentially waiting for her to die. Samina says that during this period, when she was dead, she met God. Doctors call her recovery 'miraculous'. She is now healthier than when she went in to deliver her son and there is no sign of the traumas that she suffered.

'One cannot meet God and return unchanged. In these past five years, I have continued my studies in religion and have discovered that, at the core, all faiths say the same thing: God is omniscient, God is compassionate and forgiving, God is love, God is right here and everywhere and no where all at once. He accompanies us on this journey through life, this evolution of our souls. He is the breath within our breath, the light brightening our own.'

Book: LIOL: Intro & Saleemah's Story

This is an anthology of essays and some poetry written by women who are born both Muslim and American. There are no converts in here and no immigrants. Their parents may have been converts or immigrants but these are women who cannot recall a time when they were not both Muslim and American.

'Our education was a colorful mix of home schooling, the local mosque, and Public School #9. We wore Underoos and watched MTV. We know juz 'amna (the final thirtieth of the Qur'an) and Michael Jackson's Thriller by heart. We played Atari and Game Boy and competed in Qur'anic recitation competitions. As we enter our twenties, thirties, and forties we have settled into the American Muslim identity that we've pioneered.'

These are women who believe that there does need to be an American Muslim identity. They have been told, by some, that this is not necessary. That they can simply apply the Qur'an and the sunnah to their lives. But this is simplistic and unrealistic. For example, the editor and author of this introduction, Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur does not observe the rules of mahram and cannot imagine marrying as the contemporaries of Mohammed did - for political and business reasons with no thought to love or affection. In addition, she says, much of the Islam that American Muslim women know has been defined and interpreted abroad in cultures that are foreign to us. That's why Muslim women in different nations dress differently. Each culture has its own interpretation, so why not American Islam?

She believes that Islam is in the midst of a global transformation. That more and more Muslims are acknowledging the problems in their communities and are preparing to step into an egalitarian and humanistic future. This transformation is being led by Muslims in the West because they have access to certain academic freedoms along with the freedom of speech and the freedom of worship. 

The author travelled the country for three years, speaking to American Muslim women and listening to the issues that they face. She's grouped them into seven categories: intersecting identities, hijab, relationships, culture juxtaposed to Islam, sex and sexuality, activism, and spirituality. All of the essays that she included in her book deal with some aspect of these issues, though she says that all of the essays unintentionally dealt with the same two issues no matter what the piece was actually about. The juxtaposition of culture and Islam in general and hijab.

To get the collection started the editor tells her own story. She was born to Muslim converts in 1974. They named her Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur which translated means peaceful and servant of the most forgiving. She grew up in a middle-class suburb in New Jersey and led a fairly happy but sheltered childhood. Her parents were fiercely overprotective and she wound up being isolated socially. She had a small circle of friends that her parents approved of and, of course, co-ed activities were out of the question. When it came time to go to college she had to stay at home and commute because living on campus was antithetical to the life of a good Muslim woman. Prior to college Saleemah had worn hijab off and on, but her mother declared that the start of college meant that it was time to wear hijab full time. And so she did.

Her mother made all the decisions about her life and her father allowed it. He believed that a mother knew the best way to raise a daughter and so rarely interfered with what his wife decided was best. Saleemah was not a rebellious child and didn't want to displease them so she went along quietly with what they decided. As a result of her upbringing she never learned how to interact with men in a social and platonic way. She 'always felt uncomfortable when a man approached me or spoke to me. I became defensive around men and internalized a general distrust of men.'

The reason her mother gave her for limiting her social sphere was 'Muslims don't do that.' And so she believed that all the limitations were prescribed by Islam and that, as a good Muslim girl, if she complied then her reward would be a picture perfect life. 

After returning from hajj with her parents in 1998 she married an American Muslim convert. She believed that this was all a part of her perfect Muslim life - her reward for being a 'good girl'. Several days into her honeymoon cruise, however, her husband stopped speaking to her. When she finally convinced him to tell her what was wrong he told her that 'I don't want my wife to run the dinner conversation.' Apparently she had offended him by leading a discussion during the evening meal with other diners. They talked it through but nothing was ever resolved.

Upon returning home it became clear that she was not her husbands idea of a proper Muslim wife. Somehow she was always doing something wrong or inappropriate. She even needed a lot of instruction on the 'proper' way to do laundry and cut potatoes. They argued frequently and he told her that she didn't know how to be a woman. He stopped speaking to her for days at a time. He wouldn't touch her at all, even in the most casual of terms. So she would plead with him to speak to her, to talk the problem out with her and occasionally he would respond. But it was always with some reference to the Qur'an or a hadith - never trying to actually work through whatever issue was currently angering him. Once he justified his silence by quoting a hadith saying that a Muslim could be angry with another Muslim for up to three days. The author doesn't include any references to Qur'anic verses or hadith but I'm guessing that this is the hadith her husband likely quoted: '402. Hisham ibn 'Amir al-Ansari, the nephew of Anas ibn Malik whose father was killed in the Battle of Uhud, that he heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "It is not lawful for a Muslim to snub another Muslim for more than three nights. As long as they are cut off from each other, they are turning away from the Truth. The first of them to return to a proper state has his expiation for that inasmuch as he was the first to return to a proper state. if they die while they are cut off from each other, neither of them will ever enter the Garden. If one of them greets the other and he refuses to return the greeting or accept his greeting, then an angel returns the greeting to him and Shaytan answers the other.' - according to the site I looked this up on it's from Sahih Bukhari. So her husband wouldn't speak with her for the three days and then would 'make up'. These 'fights' would be followed by periods of harmony.

While most of their friends remained ignorant of the problems they were going through, Saleemah's parents were aware and they did seek marriage counselling from several imams. Finally one imam recommended that they see a professional marriage counsellor. They went, but after a few sessions her husband refused to continue, insisting that she was the one with the problem and therefore the only one that needed counselling.

All through this time their fighting grew worse and worse and he became violent. It started with a push and then slapping the phone from her hand. And finally, one morning after she woke him for prayer he hit her in the face and threw her across the room. Rather than call the police, which she knew she should do, she called her parents. As she waited for them to arrive her husband told her to wash her face and then sat down to watch the morning news. Over the next few days she stayed with her parents and continued to go to work and live her life as normally as she could. She learned that her husband and confessed to an imam what had happened and that the imam was very upset by it. He had been one of the people who had vouched for her husbands character before the wedding and he now felt a degree of responsibility. 

They met with the imam and the imam explained that it is forbidden in Islam to hit someone in the face and made her husband apologize immediately. Her husband did, saying that he hadn't known he couldn't hit someone in the face. I've found a couple different hadith for that one. One that talks about not hitting livestock in the face or branding them there, but I'm pretty sure that's not one that would be extended to people. There's another hadith: 'If you fight your brother, avoid striking the face, for Allah created Adam in his image.' Narrated from Abu Hurayra by Muslim and Bukhari that would seem to apply as well as this one: 'Narrated Mu'awiyah al-Qushayri: Mu'awiyah asked: Apostle of Allah, what is the right of the wife of one of us over him? He replied: That you should give her food when you eat, clothe her when you clothe yourself, do not strike her on the face, do not revile her or separate yourself from her except in the house.' - Abu Dawud.

Oh! And I should point out that I don't understand the whole rating system for hadith, so all I can do is quote what I find. However, I only take the hadith from Muslim sites so I can try and avoid the hadith that people who are anti-Muslim use because those tend to be the ones that Muslims turn around and claim are weak.

Anyway. Saleemah was angry at the clinical nature of the discussion of her abuse and the fact that anyone would need a sacred text to know that physical abuse was unacceptable. But she kept silent, though there was something inside of her that noted how dehumanizing and ridiculous her marriage had become. She returned to their apartment that night - against her parents' wishes and against her own better judgment.

That night her husband apologized again and asked if she would forgive him. She said she would, and cried. He embraced her and the comfort turned to sex. She did not want to have sex with him at that time, but remained silent yet again. 'In the back of my mind ran the hadith that I had heard during many Muslim marriage ceremonies. This hadith stated that if a man approached his wife for sexual intercourse and she denied him, the angels would leave her until she responded to her husband's request.' Which I think is this hadith: "If a husband calls his wife to his bed (i.e. to have sexual relation) and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning." - narrated Abu Huraira (Bukhari)

She remained in her marriage for a year before admitting that it was not a true marriage and divorcing him. Still, even after that she says that a part of her was convinced that it was her fault. That somewhere along the line she had not been the perfect Muslimah and that was why her marriage had failed. She remained depressed and the whispering at the mosque about her and her marriage didn't help. Being relegated to a small, cramped space for prayer, shunted off to one side enforced her feelings of being 'less'. It was at this point that she attended her first thikr (a session chanting remembrances of God). The imam welcomed her to the group and as she introduced herself the imam's wife asked what her name meant. She explained that it meant 'peaceful' and the imam corrected her, saying that it actually meant 'sound, as in without defect'. She says it was as though God spoke to her through the imam, sending a message affirming that she was okay as she was. This early morning was a major turning point of her life. 

Saleemah knew she needed to get herself back. Aside from the thikr she stayed away from mosques and many of the Muslims she knew. The mosques were not helping her get closer to God, they were not helping her find peace within herself. The fire and brimstone sermons  and people disrupting her prayer to correct her dress or actions distracted her and made it impossible for her to begin to heal.

She says that one day, during this period her mother, half joking said to her, 'Whatever your father and I have done to mess you up, let's discuss it and resolve it so you can move forward.' With that her mother gave her permission to acknowledge the issues of her upbringing so that she could move forward. They began to discuss her childhood and the restrictive nature of it. During one of these conversations she discovered that her mother had been assaulted at gun point when she was in her 20's. Due to this she became determined to protect her daughter from any chance that it could happen to her. She internalised this fear to the point where she never even realized that she was using Islam to hide her daughter away from the world. 

Saleemah reevaluated her life and specifically the rituals she performed. She decided to stop wearing hijab because she realized that she had never made the decision, for herself, to wear it in the first place. She put it on because her mother expected it and kept it on because of others. She has developed a profound understanding of taqwa (God-consciousness) and knows that her faith is not contained in her outer appearance. That if something doesn't resonate within her then she doesn't do it. She doesn't need to find proof in a sacred text because she already knows the truth of it within herself. Saleemah has learned that during the time of Mohammed women and men prayed in one common space and that Mohammed allowed women to lead mixed-gender congregational prayer. Her faith has grown stronger as she is 'no longer weakened by outside sources'.