A walking headscarf and murder in broad daylight

My latest blog post at Religion Dispatches mourns the murder of Marwa Sherbini and the attack on humanity, justice, law and security.

Martyr of the Hijab: Marwa Sherbini, a Walking Veil?

How not to rescue Muslim women

This piece was published at the Religion Dispatches blog in 2007. Something similar was circulated recently and I thought I’d bring this out again.

I like visiting cafes. Cafes are to me what the phone booth is to Superman. Except I never go in Supermom, sparkling with sugar sprinkles. Nor do I emerge Exceptional Academic, rippling with cerebral muscles. I go in Struggling Momma, and I emerge Dr. Barely There. Cafes help me transition from one mode to the next. In my study, I can’t really transition (surrounded as I am by onesies and jangly toys) , and I end up blogging about the challenges of motherhood.
One day, I left my toddler in her father’s care, and went to a café. I like my baristas. I enjoy making conversation with them about the media, Athens, and health-care (or, I should say, health un-care, since I am in the US). The baristas are young, clean-cut liberals – my peeps, in relative terms, especially here in this red state – college-educated, middle-class, pleasant young people.

One of the baristas is a local student. She was unhappy with one of her professors that semester. The professor claimed that girls in the Middle East were almost universally married off at early ages, with barely any education at all. The professor went a step beyond outrage: she called upon the international and American community (via her undergraduates, if you please) to save Muslim women in the Middle East. America, she entreated, should penalize Middle Eastern nations. Any country that disadvantaged women to the extent that they could not easily pursue careers, and where they were married under family arrangements instead of purely personal choice, should not receive US aid.

(Heck, under that principle, I thought, we should go in and save Pakistani men – plenty of them marry spouses selected by their parents. My brother married a wonderful woman that my parents found for him; I (the daughter) traveled to the US and married an American.

Naturally, that afternoon, I gave up every attempt to jot notes for the public lecture I was preparing. I dedicated myself to studiously being the weird woman eavesdropping on the baristas’ conversation.

I dealt with mixed feelings as I listened to the two young people disagree with the professor. “So she says that American authorities should publicly criticize countries where women are married off early, and don’t have rights to choose their own husbands, and have to get arranged marriages,” Emma said. Peter chuckled rather unenthusiastically. Emma threw her hands in the air. “You know?” she said. “She thinks we should go in and change what people in other countries do, and how they treat women there.”

“Why should we go in to change what they do?” Peter said. “Who died and made us president of the whole world?”
“Exactly,” Emma said. “And it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to change how they feel. Why should they accept our point of view, when we think they’re wrong? Maybe they think we’re wrong because we meet people and marry whoever we like.”

(Uh, the little brown woman here? She’s one of them, and she met and married the man she liked).

“What they’re doing might be relevant to where they live, and their culture,” Peter said. “Maybe women in the Middle East don’t need as much education. Why should we force them to get more education and to marry late?”

“Well, don’t we have enough problems of our own right here?” Emma said. “Women don’t get paid as much as men do, and women get turned down for jobs because they’re going to get married and pregnant, and women don’t get treated equally to men at work either.”

“There’s another side to the problem,” Peter said reflectively. “I wish the whole world could agree on basic moral values today, so we could all enforce them collectively. The UN was supposed to help us achieve that dream of universal human rights. But we’re far away from agreeing on any moral and universal values today. Least of all on women’s rights. Other cultures and other religions will just do things differently, whether we like it or not. What we can do is live up to our own principles of equality and leave the rest of the world alone.”

“People in different cultures will never agree on certain things,” Emma argued. “It’s just something we have to live with, and stay out of people’s business. Would we like them to interfere with our values and our lifestyle? Of course we wouldn’t. So why do we expect them to welcome us with open arms and say, ‘Oh, please come and turn our societies upside down. Please change the way we work. Please make us do things the opposite from how we do them. We love America and we love equality. We love feminism. Come and teach us how to do it.”

As the two baristas chatted, agreeing on culturally relativistic values on gender, I struggled on my private darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of discomfort and delight. When a young American calls for non-interference in “their” business because “they” are different, I am relieved and disturbed. I contrast the non-interfering liberal with the large young Midwestern ex-GI in my class years ago: “Saddam is the Antichrist, and we’ve got to go in and fight him,” he told me solemnly. So I like the tune of non-interference. A little. In relative terms.

But the background harmony assumed total difference. People in the Middle East were different. They treated their women differently. They treated their women unequally. That’s the way “they” like it. Let “them” be. We, here, we like it different. We’re all feminists around here. We like our human rights and our nightclubs. They like their arranged marriages and their veils.

The combination was sort of Samuel-Huntington-with-Edward-Said.

My feelings reminded me of the fall of 1996. Just as I felt in the café – stimulated, troubled, confused about my feelings – I had felt in my graduate classes. I had just arrived in the US that summer, and was very unsure of myself. I had much to say, to be sure, but I recall how I struggled to find my thoughts and words in the conversation. I felt like I wanted to speak a different language.

For me, the struggle became an issue of how to insert myself into the conversation. How was I to re-examine the very bases of the discourse and then to re-examine the conclusions? How could I bring the incisive debate to a grinding halt and deconstruct the binaries – binaries that were foundational to the discourse? How could I challenge the very basis of the debate? And how, then, could I offer the same conclusion, but with a different emphasis? Or how could I offer a new perspective on the whole debate and face the blank surprised faces? – My baristas happily ranted about their professor and I agreed with them against the professor but I was struggling with the very basis of their opinions.
Neither one of my baristas, for all their liberal, distant, hands-off respect for “other cultures,” had even vaguely entertained the notion that  norms of gender equality could possibly be shared by strange, brown Muslim folks in distant lands.

As a Muslim feminist from Pakistan – where feminism is local and has many colors and isn’t always called “feminism” because “feminism” is owned and run by White women who bring White men in fighter planes – I felt wracked with discomfort. I heard the baristas’ assumptions about Middle Easterners and Muslims. I thought of Pakistani activists, scholars, lawyers, theologians, politicians, writers, and lay-people that allied themselves with feminist causes.
It hadn’t occurred to my baristas that “those people” had already come up with ideas, strategies, and jihads to try to change patriarchal norms and oppressive customs. It hadn’t occurred to them that brown and black folks who spoke funny languages were sometimes engaged in a life-and-death struggle to change societal practices. Weren’t they all swarthy, bearded males featured shouting furiously about America on the cover of Newsweek? And weren’t “we” all feminists and enlightened?

And then there was the professor. She was so filled with outrage over oppressive practices that limited women’s choices that she wanted the US to engage in a political war with those countries to change what they did. So little did she know about the local contexts and so little credit did she give them that the only hope for them lay in “us.” And “us” meant marines from Alabama, Mavis Leno, or President George Bush (whose mythical cv features only one entry under ‘feminist activism,’ and that entry is labeled Afghanistan slash Oil).

When the white knight knows so little about his damsel in distress, how does he expect to rescue her? When she turns around and tells him to call her Ms. and to stop telling her what to do, will he be outraged at her ingratitude? When she says she’s quite happy wearing a traditional outfit, thank you, but could she please get maternity leave, will he snort in disgust at his charge? When she wraps her head in a veil and stands up for her Islamic prayer, will he throw up his hands at her inability to throw off Islamic slavery? When she says why thank you for your help, but I need my husband out of Guantanamo, and then I’d like to open a Qur’an school for girls – what will he say then? When she says she’s got her own ways of effecting the revolution, and it doesn’t involve selling out brown men to America, will he decide against trying to rescue her after all?

Muslim women are done being rescued. Muslim women are done being defined. Muslim women are done being told what they need.

But Muslim women could use help, doing what they think they should doWomen could use help in the worldwide community of patriarchy. Muslim women are engaged in struggles for humanity, equality and justice as are their global sisters. They sure could use some help. But when they reach out for assistance, to fellow warriors for all kinds of justice and equality they call for a few ground rules:

Respect. Give us some credit. Understand that we’ve been engaged in the struggle for gender equity for a very long time, even if you hadn’t “discovered” us before. As fellow feminists, you’re our peers. To you, we are not victims and certainly not your charges.

Empathy and support. Respect does not go with indifference. Respect does not mean that you must leave us to our own devices. It is not inherently disrespectful to feel for the suffering of others: the recipe combines respect and empathy. Support the cause of gender equity, and offer every assistance that you can, as long as it is combined with respect. This will mean a continuing internal jihad for you, along with the jihad for gender equity.

Don’t infantilize. Even as you empathize, make sure that you do not infantilize. When I feel sorry for my crying child, I gather her into my arms and cuddle her; I try to control her hands so that she does not hurt herself; I protect her from forks  and messy food by feeding her spoonfuls of food with my own hands. Well, don’t treat Muslim women like that. Don’t tell them you have exactly the diet of morality and values they need. Don’t tell them you know what they need, and what they should refrain from.

Humility. As you support others, and as you empathize with their struggles, do not forget to exercise humility. This means remembering that you do not have all the answers, that (sadly) your own communities and homelands are not free of inequalities. Remember that your theologies and your cultures have as much patriarchal content as do Muslim women’s – and yet you do not abandon them. So do not call upon Muslim women to abandon everything they know and love for the sake of their rights. Share your ideas and experiences, humbly, but never assume you know. Which means -

Embrace your ignorance. Do not fear your ignorance. We sally out into the world armed with assumptions because otherwise we could not function. But a modicum of uncertainty about your own assumptions is useful. Do not have confidence in Fox News, CNN and Geraldine Brooks, or even in merely the present writer (who is a member of the post-colonial elite). Yes, I know that sounds like you can never truly know, but the best thing you can do is -
Learn and listen. At the conclusion of a lecture, a young White woman approached me and asked me what she should do about the “problems” of Muslim women. She wanted to help people, she said, and she didn’t want to be disrespectful. I reflected for a moment: had I, in my lecture, created a moral impasse? I had lectured passionately on the need for gender equity in Islamic theology, and I had mentioned the dangers of Western cultural imperialism. What was the answer? Very simple: the best thing you can do, I said, is to listen. Talk to people who are different from you. Listen to them, and process what they say. Even then, don’t assume you know all about them. Never assume that you are done knowing. I am a Pakistani and a Muslim, and I still haven’t figured out my own people entirely. You can’t put us in a box. The “different” folks of the world aren’t an easy minor in a college course for affluent White people to “master.”

Don’t crash the party.  As you humbly, respectfully and empathetically listen, learn and support, take care not to barge into the struggles with guns blazing, and expecting applause. You are not Michael Douglas in The Ghost and the Darkness, you are not Lawrence of Arabia, and you are not any other White savior of Miserable People of Color. Offer support as Muslim women engage in their own struggles. Ask them what they need. Don’t appropriate their struggles. Ask them if they really want your letters to pour into the President’s mailbox. Ask them if they want statements of protest. Sometimes the last thing a local third world feminist struggle needs is loud shows of support from Washington, DC. Foreign supporters of a movement can destroy the hard-earned legitimacy of local movements. You can disrupt the delicate pattern of evolutionary struggle with your desire to see change occur overnight. When you fly in to “rescue” Muslim women, you can do serious damage to the work and to the credibility of feminist activists.

Me on the Sarzoky burqa affair

My latest post at Religion Dispatches: a satire, Take it off. Or we’ll make you.

What, indeed, is/was the problem with Michael Jackson?

I was a girl of fifteen in 1983 when “Thriller” came out. That event was somewhat eclipsed by my graduation from school, and my new-found very teenaged-emotional religiosity. I was determined to avoid the materialistic, the faddish, the glitzy, the – well, anything too entertaining that might draw me away from spirituality and religion. So “Thriller,” the number one selling album of all time, passed me by. But not unnoticed. Even for someone like me, determined to avert my gaze, “Thriller” still encapsulates much of the era, though my own 80’s era is obviously a mix of the Afghan war, the General Zia regime, and things like “Thriller.” The childhood and very White world of Jaws, the Six Million Dollar Man, and Star Wars I was behind us. And now, with “Thriller,” “What a feeling” and “Maniac,” here was a much more complicated world, a mixed up one, heavier in many ways.

“What is the problem with Michael Jackson?” the Iraqi soldier in the movie “Three Kings” asks Mark Wahlberg. “Your country make him chop up his face!”

Michael Jackson’s many problems, psychological, physical, physiological, personal, have sold thousands and thousands of magazines and news broadcasts. I do not intend to speak of them here. Perhaps because now it’s too late to ask “What is the problem with Michael Jackson?” for it to benefit Michael Jackson himself.

But the question poignantly sums up a whole litany of questions. Why is humanity so fragile? Why do the twisted and the angelic lie so close to each other? Why is the world so hard to make sense of?

What is the problem with fame and fortune? Why is talent so often a ticket to disaster?

Why do we cannibalize others’ humanity? Why does our emptiness so greedily feast on Michael Jacksons and Farrah Fawcetts? Why are the MJs even considered irrelevant in terms of the consequences of our cannibalism to them? They are our meals and this is why we buy them, like so many packaged goods off the supermarket shelves.

In 1982, one of my teachers was once speaking critically of the Pakistani diva Noor Jehan – her behavior, her daring artistic style, her flamboyant clothing, her mannerisms. Noor Jehan’s daughter was in my class, and her inward reaction – never made public – made us all uncomfortable. But it’s okay, my teacher said gently, for us to speak of Noor Jehan, since she is after all a public persona.

What are the consequences of our consumption of these public personalities? How do celebrities pay for our appetites? And then, when we are done, we spit in their faces in disgust – weird, twisted, psychotic as they are. Why are they so out of reach and yet so tantalizingly close to us via the big screens inside our living rooms? Why do we know them and yet know nothing of them? They are like the unattainable beloved of Urdu ghazals.

Ishq mujh ko nahin, vehshet hi sahii
Meri vehshet, teri shuhrat hi sahii

(If you will not permit that I am in love, then, fine, I am crazy. But if nothing else, let my craziness  serve to become your fame.)

Our admiration and our horror struggle with each other: Why are they so obscenely wealthy? The answer lies in our own consumption of these idols. We consume them, and we pay for our consumption. It is a business exchange and it is based in our own appetites. Like prostitutes in a rough neighborhood, many of these celebrities eventually end up in the gutter, victims of our appetites. Then, of course, we are free to malign them, since – used, abused, and twisted – they are so disgustingly useless to us now.

Victoria’s Secret’s never-ending catalogues

I am so very sick of them. They seem to arrive every few days. Here’s the new winter collection! Hey, and here’s the late winter catalogue. Oh wait, here’s the clearance winter catalog. … In case you forgot, here’s the winter leftovers … and it goes on. The anorexic models continue to exhibit unhappy pouts that make you want to call a hotline for help, and they continue to twist their bodies into angles one would not consider physically possible. And now, there are the new underage-looking models in their grownup-mimicking styles (don’t you just see your tweenage daughter modeling this stuff some day? Perhaps she could practice).

They offer an easy way online to get ON their mailings. Okay, and to “reduce” mailings (I guess, to just under 75). BUT to STOP their mailings, you have to call 1.800.411.5116. And when you call, you waste 10 minutes waiting for the end-catalogues option which DOES NOT HAPPEN. You ask for customer service and the honey-toned voice insists that “I think you asked for Customer Service but I can help you if you just give me a little more information.” So you hope for the best and pronounce your address clearly, whereupon the voice assures you excitedly that in just a few minutes you’ll be able to RECEIVE their prolific mailings (NOT remove them).

So you hiss Customer Service and the voice cannot seem to make out what you are saying and asks you to repeat. Then you eventually get through to a person (of course you have your inevitable wait) …. And congratulations! I have at last gotten off the mailings (Of course they are pre printed so it will take 90 days for me to stop receiving them.)

Meantime if I make the mistake of ordering a single pair of PINK socks from VS, the deluge will resume. Thank goodness it’s not being taken from the Canadian caribou for now – though who knows where else it’s coming from. If you are one of its victims, don’t feel alone: your catalogue is counted among only about 400 million mailings.

Who are we

You’ve seen her – the uncaring, almost cold individual you work or live with. But then one day, when you pull up in the park, you see her buckling her child into his car-seat, smiling tenderly, talking gently to him. You don’t really want to look at that persona: it’s confusing. Who is she? Is she the kind, tender, considerate person in this moment, or is she the unpleasant, harsh person she is to almost everyone else?

We’d rather deal with the simple, one-dimensional estimation of the nasty person, because otherwise, how do I conceptualize the world, if it is all uncertain, if it is all still in process, or indeed, perishing and coming into being every moment?

You’ve read about criminals, murderers even, who will turn into blubbering sentimental idiots when they speak of their mothers, or their children, or their beloved. They exhibit great self-sacrifice, almost self-forgetfulness, vis-a-vis these loved ones. So who are they, really? Is the real self manifested in those moments that they connect with or speak or think of their loved one/s? Or is the real self really manifested in those other, many moments of cruelty and selfishness? Or is the real self the good, self-sacrificing one, and it is blocked from growing – like a stunted vine – over into other connections?

Who are YOU, really? Are you the charming, sweet, kindly person who helps little old ladies cross the street? Or are you the cold, selfish person who wouldn’t let the other car pass just because? Are you the generous, giving soul or are you the envious, angry heart? Are you both? Which are you more? Which one tips the scale? Why doesn’t the kindly person grow through like a vine into the selfish driver? What are you in your everyday persona, and what are you in bud, or in potential and promise?

Savoring well-being

It’s a hot day. June 1st in Oklahoma – what do you expect? I just got home after picking up my daughter from preschool. I felt sweaty and hot even in a lightweight outfit. She wanted to drink her milk right away, and then she dozed off.  I’d turned on the air-conditioning (we are careful because our old rental house here is a monster for utilities), and it was still hot so I turned on the fan. I lay there by her side in a cool room, knowing it was hot outside. She nuzzled into my body, threw her limbs over me for safekeeping, and fell to a gentle snoring.

I lay there, cool, in my pajamas, comforted by the tranquil sound and feel of toddler sleep, with the knowledge that I was part of the toddler’s tranquility.

I was flooded with a sense that said I was well and at peace. I reminded myself, in body, soul and mind, that I was full of well-being. I was at peace. I was happy in the deepest sense in this moment. This is a moment to treasure and concentrate that sense of well-being. My mother tells me, “Khushi dhoonda karo” (Search for happiness). She means that it doesn’t just happen. You can’t wait around, wondering when it will appear and gather you up in its arms like a fairytale prince. You have to search for it, recognize it, find it, savor it, roll your tongue around it, and capture the flavor.

Then, like Wordsworth, you can recollect that emotion – except not in moments of tranquility but in moments of non-well-being. The life of this world is not an endless series of moments of happiness. You have to find those moments, and hold on to them. And then make your way through the other moments of not-happiness, accompanied by the warm comforting sense of well-being, like the taste of a delicious meal lingering on your palate.

Immigrant religion: curbing the impulse

Read my latest Religion Dispatches post here: An Immigrant’s Tale: The Pull of the Homeland.

Highly objective commentary on the situation in Pakistan

Recent events in Pakistan over the past few years have left me broken-hearted. Some have wondered why I, as a Pakistani expat, don’t comment on these events. Why don’t I write an op-ed? A letter of protest? An analysis of the issues?

The truth is, I am speechless. Yesterday, after a long time, I was forced to speak. And I realized the only way  I could express my feelings was in verse. So here’s a poem from 2002.

My mother’s home

Prayer of a Pakistani expatriate for her homeland

Black clouds race across the skies

Over my mother’s home.

O come, do come, and shade the roof

With dark green leaves of the mango tree.

My mother’s house stands alone.

My father’s tired horse pulls

the cart and hurries across stones.

The river rumbles and rises higher.

No one will give my father shelter,

and my mother’s home stands alone.

My brother’s child plays in the dust

With paper horses and dolls of clay;

She does not see the clouds ahead.-

Run, child, run into the house for

Lightning cracks over your innocent play.

My sister embroiders her crimson shawl,

Smiling to think of her wedding day.

But the mad wind in the peepul moans

And tugs upon my sister’s shawl,

And my mother’s house stands alone

Across the seven seas I sit

At foreign windows and watch the sky

Until the last of the swallows has flown

And I wait until my tears alight,

Praying for my mother’s home.

My burly cousins in the neighboring town

Can thatch a roof and mend the walls,

But their own house is made of stone

And they have harvest time today

And do not think of my mother’s home.

My mother’s home stands low with no

brick wall, or gate, or dome.

The harsh wind buffets it from all sides

No one comes to my mother’s aid

And her home stands all alone.

O if I were the river I’d embrace the banks.

I would swallow the clouds if I were the sky.

I’d shade the roof if I were a tree.

If I were light I’d embrace the land

And protect her home from the evil eye.

5/28/02

Immigrant Eid

And here is another poem that strikes a similar note. Some of you have already read it, and I thought it could use a re-run.

- immigrant eid -

they announced Eid today.

my house is silent.
i hear more sirens than usual outside.

my husband’s at work.

this morning
i couldn’t get out of bed and go
to eid namaz.

i really should push myself, i thought,
and go, but thought, then, go for what?
so my husband and i can split up
at the mosque front door to go and sit
with our respective strangers inside?
so aunties in abayas can look
at my pants, because they’re shabby and
because they’re pants, and then look up
at my face unseeing-
When we’re done i come out and wait
for him in the cold parking lot
watching people hurry to cars
and segregated parties in their
tight little colour-coordinated groups-
while a bearded man in a jalabiya
stares at this female body jammed
outside in a twisting river of men.

when i got out of bed at last, i didn’t
want to, and i couldnt stop crying
in the shower.

In Lahore,
ammi has cooked two types of sivayyan
and put them out in glass bowls,
with carrot halva and Kashmiri chai.

My Eid outfit complete with sparklies
is lying ironed on the bed.
Auntie Shaista in the drawing room loudly
waits to see how my outfit looks.

Little Izza is knocking at
my door, asking when i’ll be ready,
when I will come out to admire
her pink sharara and bright new shoes.

Asad is watching TV, but
the corner of his eye is waiting for me

Abbu and Imran are just returning
in white kurtas from eid namaz.

but here
in the fortunate first world
where I’m supposed to be bettering my life
and speaking english all the time–
here, where there is no dust, no flies,–
here, in the warm clean tiled shower
i can’t stop sobbing

Alone, with sirens screeching outside,
i prayed two rak’ahs afterwards
with seven takbeers
and seven tears hit the ja’inamaz
with far too loud a splash, and then
i read some pages of the eleventh sipara
–ironically, ya’tazirun–
and sent sawab to the Prophet,
my shaykh, my uncles and aunts,
grandparents, like ammi does, and then
i said,
I’m sorry i didn’t go to Eid namaz
and then i couldn’t stop crying again
my heart broke right there on the rug
and spilled wide open

and i said please don’t be mad at me.
look, i’m here, and my outfit’s in Lahore,
and Izza’s knocking on the door,
and I have no sivayyan,
and my heart the poor tattered heart
that I know You love
is broken today.

He looked at me, with those quiet eyes
and said, yes, I know. i cried again
and said that eid is eid
only because You’re here with me.

ten years in this new home of mine
and still eid day is not quite eid.

They say it’s eid today, but there,
on the rooftops of Lahore, young boys
saw a little sliver of moon that shone
through smoggy clouds and snaky cables
as an eagle swam across the sky.

Here, i saw no moon, i saw
moonsighting.com, and wrote an email-
eid mubarak exclamation point-
and cc’ed it to everyone.

i thought of calling ammi to say
eid mubarak. but i was afraid
my voice would catch, and she would hear
who i am here

and then i’d know for sure that she
was there, and there are no sivayyan
on my IKEA table, no halva
on the stove, no kashmiri chai
steaming in pretty china cups
no smiling niece outside my door
and no red kurta on my bed