ABC News Story About Hijab is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

• Reason Number One: It is technically inaccurate–and pagan.
• Reason Number Two: What exactly is there to celebrate?
• Reason Number Three: It usually involves un-Islamic practices.
• Reason Number Four: It is against the spirit of Islam.

There are a lot of celebrations in the United States that are technically inaccurate. The Declaration of Independence wasn’t actually signed on the 4th of July, for instance. As for paganism, is a holiday pagan just because it doesn’t have its roots in Islam?

If those were the rules, then Muslims wouldn’t participate in any holidays except for the two Eids. There are those, of course, who think that we shouldn’t, but most Muslims at least recognize the existence of holidays that are civic rather then religious. After all, most of us live in civic, rather than religious, societies. (I prefer the word “civic” to “secular” because we are governed by a concern for the common good more than by a desire to be non-religious.)

As Muslims, we do have our own New Year to celebrate, but in non-Muslim societies life is arranged around other calendars, most notably the Gregorian calendar. We go to work and school and conduct our business according to that calendar. The Hijri calendar is invaluable to Muslims in the observance of our faith, but we cannot force non-Muslim societies to operate according to it.

New Year’s Eve and Day are traditionally set aside for celebration and for reflection. Not all celebrants go out to bars and drink. In my family, for instance, we spend New Year’s Day sharing a meal together, reminiscing about the year just past and sharing our hopes for the year to come. That could be done anytime, but New Year’s is the time when we are all reminded to do so. (Since my family is non-Muslim, I don’t expect them to observe the Islamic New Year.)

Holidays are there to make us stop and remember things we have decided, as a society, are important to remember. New Year’s reminds us that we made it through another year, which is no small thing in this day and age. It reminds us that we’re all in this together. And it reminds us that we have more life to look forward to, God willing. How does that go against the spirit of Islam?

Some Muslims are scared to acknowledge cultural traditions other than their own for fear that they will lose their Muslim identity. Well, I’ve got news for you: there’s a difference between culture and religion. Many things that Muslims observe as Islamic are actually cultural traditions that technically have no place in Islam as a religion. Being a Muslim is a state of one’s heart and soul, not a matter of language or food or local customs.

Many new Muslims are confused by the things born Muslims tell them they must do because they can’t see how they have anything to do with the observance of Islam. Because Islam developed in certain cultures, it’s hard to separate Allah’s requirements from people’s traditions. Too often, when a convert comes from a non-Muslim culture, he is made to feel inferior and in danger of going to Hell if he observes his own cultural traditions.

I’d like to make a case for new and born Muslims who find themselves in a non-Muslim culture to find ways to incorporate their faith into their daily lives. What’s wrong with celebrating the Gregorian New Year’s by going to the mosque and making special prayers for the world? Why can’t we get together with our families and friends and tell them that we value the life that Allah has given us?

There’s one more step that we could take to counterbalance the influence non-Muslim society has on Muslims: we can and should be putting more emphasis on our own New Year. Usually it comes and goes with no mention of it anywhere, sometimes barely even in the mosque.

There’s nothing wrong with what New Year’s stands for. It’s how we celebrate it that counts.

Does New Year’s Have a Place in Islam? is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

On the blog GOATMILK, as part of its ongoing series of debates,  a guest blogger recently wrote an article about why Muslims should be allowed to practice Halloween. (See article here.) Basically her reasoning went like this:

Other cultural practices lack an Islamic origin or a pure history, but have permeated into the fabric of our lives, and have evolved to become part of mainstream Muslim culture, too, like engagement rings, white wedding dresses and even the Hajj. …

Halloween allows kids to participate in a larger community outside their homes and classrooms.  Think about how Muslim kids appear/feel when they are barred from partaking in Halloween activities. How would Muslims appear to the world if we shunned the Olympics? …

Halloween is a cultural tradition that should be as permissible and mainstream to American Muslims as sporting events or other cultural traditions here. …

I have a few problems with her premises. First of all, Halloween is not on the same par as the Olympics.

Although many Halloween customs have their origins in pagan rituals, the holiday itself was given a religious spin by the Christian Church. According to Wikipedia:

It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints’ Day, and All Hallows’ Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving onto the next world. To avoid being recognized by a soul, Christians would wear masks and costumes to disguise themselves, following the lighted candles set by others to guide their travel for worship the next day.

Secondly, if we followed the author’s criteria, it would also be permissible to receive gifts from Santa Claus or participate in Easter egg hunts. Those practices have become secularized and commercialized, but they still have ties to religious doctrine. Giving gifts at Christmas is in imitation of the Three Wise Men who brought gifts to the baby Jesus; the egg is the symbol of new life, as in Jesus’ resurrection. To pretend that they are merely secular inventions is a way of kidding ourselves that there is no harm in observing them.

Thirdly, since when do we decide what practices are haram and halal by how much they alienate us from non-Muslims? By that reasoning, we shouldn’t wear Islamic clothing, or use Arabic phrases in our speech, or pray five times a day, or do any number of things that make us seem different from other Americans.

On the contrary, we should stand proud as Muslims and insist on our right to be considered American, too. What kind of country would this be if everyone had to be alike? And what are we teaching our children if we allow them to conform to the majority just to be accepted?

I’m not saying that I think we should avoid doing everything that is not distinctly Islamic. Even Muslims don’t agree about what exactly is halal and haram. But one thing we do agree on is that our religion is unique. People should be able to tell the difference between a Muslim and everyone else.

Can Muslims Celebrate Halloween? is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

What About Those Who Are ALWAYS Hungry? is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

See this article, “Why Are New Muslims Leaving the Faith?” from Islam21c.

I’ve been a Muslim for three years now and I can relate to much of what is written in this article. I haven’t been tempted to leave Islam, but I’ve sometimes wondered if I have what it takes to be a Muslim. I know that all it takes to become a Muslim is the statement of faith (the Shahada). But being a Muslim (a “good” or practicing Muslim) is another thing altogether.

Here’s where I think things go wrong for many converts:

1. Muslims are not completely honest beforehand about what is expected of the new convert.
2. Muslims bombard the new convert with all these rules that he is suddenly supposed to live by.
3. Many of the rules have no basis in Islam, but are cultural conventions.
4. There are so many differing opinions about some issues, the new convert becomes confused.
5. Born Muslims have no idea how hard it is for the convert to completely change his or her life.
6. Most new converts are handicapped by the fact that they don’t know Arabic.
7. Converts are often isolated from other Muslims and find it hard to break into new groups.
8. Muslims expect too much too soon and get impatient with converts who take a long time to adjust.
9. Muslims expect converts to just “pick up” how to be Muslims on their own.
10. Converts are afraid to admit how much trouble they are having and don’t know where to go for help.

I was very fortunate that when I became a Muslim, I had a lot of born Muslims who befriended me and whom I saw every day. They always asked how I was doing and were ready to help in any way they could. They invited me into their homes and went with me to the masjid. It was a wonderful introduction to Islam and I will forever be grateful to Allah for bringing these people into my life.

But things change. Now most of these friends have moved away. I have no one to go to the masjid with or to ask for advice. The only consistent fellowship I have is on Facebook. I’ve begun to slip in my commitment to pray and to wear the hijab. Eids have become a lonely time for me. Ramadan seems pointless.

Much of this is my fault, I know. If I need help I should ask for it. I should do all I can to increase my iman and develop my deen. I need to pray more than ever and ask Allah to help me. I should keep in touch with all my Muslims friends and be honest with them about how I’m doing. (This is really hard!) I don’t have to do this alone.

But I think we all feel that we should be able to. That there’s something wrong with us if we can’t. However, speaking for myself, I feel so overwhelmed by all I don’t know that I just don’t know where to start. Should I learn Arabic? Memorize the Qur’an? (In English??) Force myself to go to the masjid (which, by the way, is doubly hard for a woman)? Watch YouTube videos about Islam and how to be a better Muslim? Sign up for forums and ask strangers for guidance? Bug my Muslim friends with complaints and questions?

What makes it even harder is that I live in a predominantly Christian nation. People just assume that everyone is Christian (unless told otherwise). I was raised as a Christian and most of my family and spiritual memories revolve around Christian traditions and rituals. Being a Christian comes as naturally to me as breathing. Being a Muslim does not.

It’s also hard when Muslims form groups and cliques according to their ethnicity or nationality. If you don’t belong to their group and speak their language, you’re the odd man (or woman) out.

You know what my greatest joy is? When someone says “Asalaam alaykum” to me when I’m out running errands. Those are the times when I feel like a part of the great big wonderful community of Muslims. Those are the times when I feel like I belong.

Another convert weighs in on this issue here.

Feeling Lost as a Convert is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

I was born into a Christian family and baptized as a baby. As a child I went to Sunday School almost every week and attended Vacation Bible School almost every summer. I was confirmed into the Lutheran Church when I was 15. And if I ever had any other questions about God or Christianity, I turned to my grandfather who was a Doctor of Divinity and Lutheran minister.

My religious education didn’t stop there. I married a ministerial student when I was 20 and for the next ten years I studied the Bible, helped my husband with papers and, after he graduated, became a full-fledged minister’s wife, which meant that I was very active in the church.

I was no theologian, but I had a good basic understanding of Christian doctrine. I knew the history of the Christian Church and the differences among the various denominations. I’d read the Bible several times and knew many passages by heart. I could hold my own in a discussion about Christianity.

But when it comes to knowledge about Islam, I’m at a disadvantage, since I didn’t become a Muslim until I was 57.

And to tell you the truth, Muslims don’t make it easy to learn about Islam. That’s because they have a schizophrenic attitude toward knowledge.

On the one hand, the Prophet Mohammad reportedly praised those who sought knowledge.

The superiority of the knowledgeable man over the worshiper in Islam is like the superiority of the full moon over the rest of the planets. And the scholars are the inheritors of the Prophets, but the Prophets did not leave behind wealth but they left behind knowledge. And whoever takes this knowledge takes a great fortune. (Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah, Tirmidhi)

But on the other hand, many Muslims (including—or even especially—scholars) discourage the practice of thinking for themselves. If they have a question about some facet of Islam, they are to seek out the opinions of the shayks (scholars) who have made it their lives’ work to study Islam. That’s not so different from what adherents of any religion do of course, with one important difference: Muslims are taught that the age of discovering what is true about Islam and how to live Islamically is in the past.

To understand what I mean, it’s important to know the meaning of the terms ijtihad and taqlid.  Ijtihad is the making of a decision in Islamic law (sharia) by personal effort (jihad), independently of any school (madhhab) of jurisprudence (fiqh).  The opposite of ijtihad is taqlid,  which is copying or obeying without question.

As long as Mohammad was alive, questions about how to live one’s life as a Muslim were referred to him. Even today, Muslims use his teachings and example (the Sunnah) as guidelines. But not everything is covered in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and it is here where ijtihad came in.

There were basically two ways that ijtihad could be utilized. One was through the schools of thought or jurisprudence that developed over the centuries after Mohammad’s death. The other was through personal reasoning which emphasized freedom of thought and the quest for truth.

Over time, a concern arose that the latter type of ijtihad could lead to errors in judgement and by the 10th Century (C.E.) a consensus developed that the time for independent reasoning was over. Only a very select group could issue decrees on various issues and then only based on scholarship that occurred before the closing of the door of ijtihad.

Today many Muslims seem caught between ijtihad and taqlid. As they seek to find ways to make Islam more relevant to their lives, they’re confused about how much they can figure out for themselves and how much they have to defer to a mujtahid (properly-qualified scholar).

Let me give you an example: Shortly after my conversion I was told that I should divorce my husband because he isn’t a Muslim. (Actually, some of my “advisors” said that I had to divorce him.) They based their admonition on the ruling that it is unlawful for a Muslim woman to marry an unbeliever. In my opinion, this is taqlid.

The reasoning behind the rule is that if a Muslim woman marries a non-Muslim, she is running the risk that her children will not be raised as Muslims. There is also the concern that she would not be treated according to Islamic principles; i.e., her husband would not be obligated to support her and the family, she would not receive a dowry from him before marriage, money she earned would not be her own, and so on.

But there are several things in my situation that make this rule irrelevant: 1) I am past the age of childbearing and have no minor children living at home with me; 2) I didn’t go out and marry a non-Muslim; I was already married to him; 3) I have my own financial resources; and most importantly, 4) my husband is completely supportive of my conversion to Islam.

It took me a long time to make peace with my decision to stay married. As a new convert, I was overly concerned with following all the rules. I thought I’d be a bad Muslim if I didn’t.

But that’s just the problem: there are so many rules in Islam that it’s impossible to know them all. And since even the scholars differ, there is only one other higher authority to go to: Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the All-Knowing.

The cornerstone of Islam is prayer and I believe that is no accident. Allah requires that we seek knowledge, but He also reminds us that He alone knows all the answers. Prayer is not supposed to be a rote ritual; it is supposed to be an active conversation with Allah. We are to ask Him for all that we need, and that includes all that we need to know.

Learning About My Religion is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Sure, we all pray “together” five times a day and fast at the same time during the month of Ramadan. And there are mosques where we can gather for prayer and other events. But unless you live in a Muslim community or country, it’s hard to feel like you have access to actual brothers and sisters with whom you can share joys as well as afflictions.

This is a big problem in the United States. Outside of communities where there are a lot of Muslims (for example, Dearborn, Michigan), there are too few masjids to serve the needs of Muslims who are scattered all over the country. In my own area, there are none close to where I live and the ones that are closest tend to be made up of close-knit groups who share the same ethnicity or nationality. As a white American convert, I don’t feel at home in any of them.

Another problem is that Muslims don’t have clergy the way that Christians do. If you belong to a church, there is always a central person you can call on for help or guidance. He or she will pray for you, visit you in the hospital, baptize your children and officiate at your death. And if you’re new, it will be the priest or minister who will either personally or through an assistant visit you and welcome you to the church.

I’ve been a Muslim for almost three years and I have never received a call or visit from anyone at the mosque where I said my Shahada. I don’t even know the name of the man who heard my confession of faith! I’ve never been called by anyone from any masjid where I’ve attended, partly because the masjids I’ve gone to don’t keep records about their members, let alone about people who have just visited.

Most churches encourage new visitors to stand up and be recognized so that people can come up to them after church and make them feel welcome to come back or to attend Sunday School classes. They also encourage them to become members of their particular congregation, and if they do, they are entered on the membership roles.

I’ve often wondered how masjids get enough money to operate on when they don’t have any way of identifying who their members are. The only appeals for money I’ve ever heard were made informally after prayers. In Christian churches, if you’re a member you will be contacted about giving money to the church on a regular basis. While there are times when this can be irritating, I still don’t see how a religious institution can function without it.

And yet somehow mosques do flourish, even without formal requests for money. This is partly because charity is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Every Muslim knows that he has an obligation to give of his own bounty toward the aid of others.

This is one of the things I love about Islam: the emphasis on personal responsibility. We don’t wait for someone to remind us that we’re supposed to do something (not even Allah); instead, we’re supposed to be constantly seeking ways to be faithful to the tenets of Islam. We are to educate ourselves about our obligations. Imams and fellow Muslims can give us guidance and inspiration but it’s ultimately up to us to do what’s right.

But all too often individual efforts to help are hit-and-miss.  Masjids are run by volunteers, but what if they don’t get the volunteers that they need? Without a formal clergy, strong leadership and an organized structure, many basic needs go unmet. This is one of the weaknesses of Islam.

The way I see it, the ummah is only as effective as its individual members.  There is no professional clergy whom Muslims pay to do their work for them. Each Muslim is held accountable for what he or she does (or doesn’t do) in life. It does no good to complain about what the community is not doing for us when we ourselves are not doing anything for the ummah.

The Individual and the Ummah is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

One of the sisters who writes for the magazine sent me a thoughtful email about this policy:

I was wondering if we should encourage this at all. A Muslim women should remain hidden as she’s precious. Since [the magazine] is not exclusively for sisters, it will also be read by brothers and I don’t want it be a source of fitna instead of education. I’m sure everyone on [your staff] as well as the readers are really nice people, but it’s the shaitan we cannot trust.

It took me several days to send a reply because I wanted to carefully consider my answer, which was in part:

I do understand your arguments and I’m not saying that they are without merit. I agree that women are precious and need to be protected to some extent, but I lay some responsibility at the feet of the brothers to withstand the temptations of Shaytan. I also think it is awfully difficult (although not impossible) for a woman to have a voice when she does not have a face. My personal opinion is that we hurt the cause of Islam more than we help it when we make women invisible, not to mention what it does to the individual woman who is being told that she cannot be seen.

What is your opinion about this issue? Should Muslim women practice modesty to the extent that they are not seen at all? And if so, then does that mean that they shouldn’t speak in public or appear in a video, even if they are teaching or advancing the cause of Islam? And how do women feel when they have no role models that they can see and identify with?

As a feminist, I reject the idea that women should be invisible when men are not required to be as well. I also can’t help but wonder if both sexes would profit from being invisible, at least publicly.  After all, it could be a form of self-aggrandizement to have your picture in a public venue. What do you think Mohammad would do if he was here today?

Let me know what you think!

The Invisible Woman is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Don’t you think it’s puzzling that we’re all born with amnesia wondering who we are, why we’re here and where we came from? Time to remember… wake-up! Move into the heart to remember! ♥

The woman who wrote this isn’t a Muslim, but her sentiment reminded me of what it felt like when I discovered Islam. Muslims believe that we’re all born Muslim—that is, connected to the One God, our Creator. But for a variety of reasons, we lose that sense of connection as we grow up in this dunya (the temporal world).

I like to think that babies still have that sense when they enter this world. They are so trusting, so eager to smile and to laugh. It’s not hard to teach a child to enjoy life and to feel loved. The tragedy is that so many of us forget what that felt like as we grow older.

We forget because we get distracted and damaged. People hurt and mislead us. We allow ourselves to get sidetracked by our desire for their acceptance. We seek fame and fortune instead of communion with our Creator. We forget what real love feels like.

And then there are the things we do to ourselves. We treat ourselves and others badly. And then we deny that we feel guilty. We try to justify our actions. We don’t see that we need reconciliation with our Creator.

But we never stop missing Him. We always have this vague sense of unease, as if we’ve lost our way and are afraid that we might be lost forever.

And yet He never moved. He is still there, our light and our guiding star. All we have to do is open our hearts to Him.

And when we do, we remember.

Have You Forgotten? is a post from I, Muslimah. © Copyright I, Muslimah, 2011. All Rights Reserved.