An Inside Job

 

A few years ago, I was featured on another Jubilee Media video, this time highlighting opinions of women from different backgrounds on various social issues. After the video came out, I started receiving messages of support, hate, advice seeking, and more. Then a friend of mine who established and operates a Muslim scarves fashion brand (please note I did not say hijab as this intentional omission is relevant) shared a screenshot of the video, praising and tagging me and another woman on set who identified as a conservative Christian. It was a beautiful shout out and a pleasant coincidence to see the smallness of our world that this Muslim friend was a mutual friend with someone I recently met. I asked my friend how she knew the other woman in the video and to my surprise she said, “Oh, we hire her to model hijabs for us!” Speechless and disappointed, I logged off Instagram without replying, wondering why we feel entitled to outsider respect when we ourselves don’t respect the sanctity and value of the headscarf in Islam?

When the subject of discrimination against Muslims comes up, the default assumption is always external racism and Islamophobia. While there is no denying the existence of these ongoing injustices, the continuous silence about the internal discrimination and prejudices within the Muslim communities is just as harmful, especially to women and women who practice the religious act of wearing the headscarf.

Some could consider it a stretch to deem the use of non-Muslim models for Islam based fashion discrimination, but when we examine this act more closely, and in conjunction with the other internal discriminatory acts of micro and macro aggression Muslim women face for practicing this part of the faith, we recognize the significance of how detrimental these behaviors are. And the issue is we are often reprimanded for speaking out against these internal issues—headscarf related or otherwise. The reason? Fear of the white gaze. Basically, it’s the pressure we as non white (or non mainstream) communities carry to appear flawless for fear of being further targeted. For Muslims, it’s subliminally coercing our members to cover up any and all flaws to avoid having them weaponized against us in the Islamophobic agenda. As a survivor of domestic violence, I understand this fear because by default everything we do or say becomes weaponized, but if we never address these issues and take the risks, how does change happen?

This fear of the white gaze is why Muslims took too long to speak up against the ongoing internal racism, colorism, and classism. It is why Muslim women are silent about experiences of sexual harassment and domestic violence. And it is why only recently have women in headscarves become more vocal about the abuses, harassment, and prejudices they face from their own Muslim communities. And an example of this is that they are overlooked by brands supposedly catering products for them in a market that constantly excludes them.

When I began researching this subject of internal discrimination Muslim women face, my searches came up empty. Every article, journal, or publication focused solely on the external racism women in headscarves face. It reminded me of when I was invited to speak on a panel at UCLA for World Hijab Day and the expectation was that I would echo what all the other Muslim panelists shared about their experiences of wearing the scarf in America: harassment, marginalization, discrimination, etc. by non-Muslims. Instead I shared my honest experience. While I had a handful of racist encounters following September 11th, the majority of the painful experiences related to my scarf come from Muslims (and still do).

The men “courting” me each had some issue with regards to my scarf, asking me often if I would reconsider wearing it. (Two of these men tugged it off because they were bothered by it and felt entitled to see my hair.) I heard about a job opening at a Muslim Arab owned business and inquired about the application but was told they wouldn’t hire someone in a headscarf. Often I am marginalized and alienated from various social spaces and groups because I am the only “visible” Muslim in the group and it is a discomfort to the “discreet” Muslims. The irony is I am constantly welcomed and treated better by non-Muslims for (a) my headscarf and (b) embracing my full cultural and religious identity, things I am rarely praised for by my own people. My “visibility” has never really been an issue for me as an American in America.

I have been wearing the scarf since I was seven so it has become a proud and integral part of my identity that any outsider’s hate never fazes me. Rather, it is my own people’s loathing that subconsciously makes it heavy. We experience this daily and so insidiously that it’s almost an acceptable unspoken hate. It’s even been injected into our own media productions that I’m not sure Muslims themselves even recognize its normalization. The series Ramy is a perfect example of this, among many other Muslim and Arab based films and shows that subliminally layer an antipathetic tone around the headscarf.

The idea of religiosity, and visible religiosity, among Muslims has become associated with negativity. In these media depictions, the headscarf is either worn by old women (depicted as outdated and ultra traditional) or by women of the lower socioeconomic classes. Religion and wealth are portrayed at odds with one another when nothing in Islam demands such a vast separation.

I recently binge watched an Egyptian drama on Netflix and paid attention to the fact that the only woman (of the entire Muslim characters) to wear the scarf was the darker skinned Bedouin midwife who appears twice in the show and is paid under the table to handle a pregnancy scandal. The rest of the women were instead adorned with diamonds, perfectly blow dried hair, and the classic 50s headbands. The show takes place between the years of 1949 to 1952 and is saturated with adoration of Eurocentrism. While the show was primarily in Arabic, the occasional English and French were thrown in as an accent to their high class. This is still a pretty relevant act Arabs do across the Middle East, as if to give a nod to higher status that is white culture and brush off their original culture.

Needless to say, I’ve become infatuated with understanding the history and context of Arab culture and Islam in relation to imperialism, and how this played a role in affecting Islamic interpretation and teaching. In the Quran, the word “hijab” appears multiple times, but never in reference to the headscarf. Rather it means barrier or partition and refers to a tangible wall or curtain that creates a separation between people or places. Therefore, when people state that “hijab” is not mandatory, they’re actually correct, because how can a woman be mandated to “wear a partition/wall”?

However, what does come in the Quran about the headscarf is one simple clear verse in Chapter 24 that shows us the correct word is khimar.

So I can’t help but wonder how and why did this switch happen? And why hasn’t it been avidly addressed? In the age of “language matters” why have Muslims allowed centuries to pass without recognizing the gravity of what calling our headscarf “hijab” does to the culture of women?

I won't only pinpoint Muslims as the religious group that sustains male gatekeepers of religious knowledge, I know it happens in many other religions, but as Muslims whose scripture calls upon us to “Read” and to use our minds and question, how have we let this continue? How have we assumed that the internal sexism and prejudices we face for choosing to practice this part of our faith is unrelated to the culture that language and terminology create?

When you call what a Muslim woman wears a hijab, a wall, a separating partition, you are establishing a solid platform for marginalization and harassment. You are enforcing the standard that a woman is to be distanced and controlled. You are telling her she is no longer part of the majority, the community of believers. She is held to unreasonable and unfair standards to the point where so many Muslim women get exhausted and begin contemplating taking it off. (And many have done so because of this but do not reveal the reasons publicly.)

All of this led me to research further and create a space to start this conversation. This began with an online survey where Muslim women who wear the headscarf anonymously answered questions that sought to understand how they experience these prejudices and abuses and why they feel they were happening. Below are infographics of some of the data collected that left me feeling hurt but also empowered to move forward in continuing this necessary conversation for change.

My goal is to not only keep an open space for Muslim women to safely share their concerns, but also begin initiatives to get our community to start using the correct language in association with this religious practice. I believe this needs to start with all these Muslim fashion brands who continue perpetuating not only the wrong term, but also the mainstream sexualization and objectification of women to sell their products.

Our religious dress code doesn’t need to be unattractive, but it also doesn’t have to be sensationalized to fit the white gaze (nor the male gaze) as a means for acceptability. This is actually one of the reasons why these brands pursue non-Muslim models and it’s another part of the problem. They know that the way they position their models and the way they dress them do not align with the religious guidelines, so instead they hire outsiders to make sexy what should be a sacred expression of faith. Other reasons for hiring non-Muslim models (when I asked around) were:

Seeking professionals — which really didn’t cut it for me as an excuse because again, what are we modeling? A race car? It’s a headscarf that should be comfortable, versatile, and do its job. Also, it takes a good photographer with effective communication skills to get great shots from a comfortable “model”.

Preferring attractive women — yikes! When I learned this one, I was pretty disheartened. Muslim women in the headscarf face constant spoken and unspoken beauty and self esteem struggles, but instead of providing a place to uplift and empower them, these “hijab” brands are furthering the unrealistic beauty standards of the white (and male) gaze.

Like I said before, there is so much to unpack and research here, but that excites me because it means there’s a long and full journey ahead that includes learning more about the experiences and narratives of other Muslim women, the historical context of external influences on culture and religion (primarily imperialism), and how language and (mis)translation continue to impact the proper education of religion.

Perpendicular Universe

There was a post on Instagram at the start of this month that asked, “What would the world look like without domestic violence?” Such a simple question but it made me stop and write. What would the world look like without domestic violence? What would my world look like? What would my community look like?

It wasn’t really serendipity—this month is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, after all—but it did inspire the way I would shape my awareness campaign this year. Since the pandemic, I have been more deeply focused on understanding community culture; how it develops, where it fails, how it balances with growing individualism, the impacts of gender and the patriarchy on norms, and much more. I took this focus with me to my doctorate program and have been developing projects that center around the Muslim/Muslim Arab communities, particularly areas where they could step up for their members, especially their women. Domestic violence is most certainly one of those areas.

I’m not the first survivor and it hurts to know I won’t be the last, but I kept thinking about that Instagram question and realizing I cannot imagine a world without domestic violence without understanding its core causes. And what better way than to learn from the narratives of survivors?

The first week of October, I asked survivors to share what they wish they had during their experiences that would have helped them. I was really honored that many survivors were willing to open up and share their vulnerable confessions, but I have to admit, it was also disheartening to read them. Not because they were triggering but because they illustrated how painfully disappointing the community has been to its members, especially its women, and nothing concrete changes.

Each year, I pick a certain theme about domestic violence to focus on during October. It’s usually more personal reflections to differentiate from the education and awareness on DV throughout the year—quotes from my poems, firsthand examples of the types of abuse vs. definitions, red flags and lessons learned, and the community’s role in the whole cycle, which is this year’s theme.

What struck me the most from the responses I received is that each survivor expressed the same final point: they wish they had community support. I want to give space to their other responses first, because they are important, but after I read through everything, I found that they all do in fact link back to community. Survivors wished they had access to better financial stability and support to sustain a living after leaving. They wished for more diverse and culturally aware therapists who could understand their backgrounds. Other survivors wished that religion and culture were not manipulated and used as a fear-mongering tactic to keep them in their relationships. That shame and concerns over community reputation wasn’t so heavily used as a threat. That they would be believed and not judged or betrayed.

By the end of the responses, I felt heavy but in a way that reinforced my plan to launch my AFTER THE UNMAKING video series on community’s role in the perpetuation of domestic violence. In a total of four short episodes, I am hoping to illuminate the same pain points of these other survivors (that I too suffer from) and carve a pathway for foundational change. Storytelling has always been one of the most effective teachers (hello, Hakawati from Syria!) and as a writer and poet, it’s my forever go to. I found a calling in my survival and if sharing my experiences can bring a sense of solidarity and a sense of awareness to the spaces that need them, so be it.

While there are so many beautiful and valuable traditions we should honor and uphold from our ancestors, there is no need to pass down the culture of silence that keeps nurturing the seeds of abuse, violence, and sexism. We deserve better and can, most certainly, be capable of it!

 

After the Unmaking

photo collage of moments in my own aftermath of unmkaing over the past seven years

 

"Nostalgia is denial—denial of the painful present…. The name for this denial is golden age thinking. The erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in. It’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present."
 
Every time I watch Midnight in Paris, I'm struck by this quote and I can never pinpoint if I absolutely love it or if it's a painful coercion to face something I don't quite have a grasp on within myself. Then, on the other hand, Hanif Abdurraquib tells us "Nostalgia is a gift for the living," and I find myself asking, Is nostalgia really a gift for the living or is it a curse? And how do we define “the living”?

As I was putting this piece together, I remembered the last relationship I was in and how he often called me “nostalgic girl”—among other things. After I ended it this past Spring, I tried to retrace my thoughts and behaviors to hone in on this so called nostalgic nature. (Should I call that irony?) I think he was right (as was Paul from Midnight in Paris in the quote above). I spent the final few months of the relationship in a state of agonizing nostalgia because of how suddenly it shifted from a hopeful, inspiring connection to an anxiety inducing and emotionally manipulative bond. Once I had reached a state of dread, eerily familiar to the one I experienced when things got serious with my ex-husband eight years ago, I ended it and started to see what Abdurraquib is telling us.

Something I believe every survivor knows is that nostalgia becomes embedded in our newfound DNA. I may not be a scientist but even in my current studies we are reading about the powerful impact culture, environment, and biology have on genetics, and I cannot deny the physical and metaphysical change I have undergone since surviving domestic violence and sexual assault in this past decade. We change—quite a bit—and some may see it evidenced vividly, others misinterpret it. By default, then, it makes sense that we carry a small briefcase—let’s call it, instead of baggage—of nostalgia wherever we go, because we will forever mourn the pieces and whole selves we were before the trauma. Before the unmaking.

I recently launched my annual Domestic Violence Awareness campaign on social media and I started with a photo of one my favorite poems, “Me (Part Duex)” in my latest poetry collection, Contortionist Tongue. It’s an homage to bridging the gap between who we were before, and who we’ve become/are becoming after the unmaking. The journey is messy, painful, shocking, eye opening, just to name a few. Sometimes you think you reached the final destination and two years later you realize, you in fact, did not. Sometimes you try really hard to evoke your old spirit back into you only to discover doing so will only bring a ghost to haunt you. That those who have passed should be left alone now and that who you have left of you, who you are slowly nurturing back to health, is just as valuable as the one from the past.

Am I a nostalgic girl? Sure. I do think that there are many things of the past times that are better than we have now, but it doesn’t mean I am incapable of living in the today. That’s probably why I couldn’t make sense of that ex's commentary. My yearning for the good of how it started, just months prior, was in no means, a contribution to its demise. It was a coping mechanism, a form of protection through meditation and reflection of where I was, where I am, and where I want to be. This is the beauty of embracing the unmaking and the first step in the aftermath.

As I begin formulating my doctorate work and bridge together so many ideas, I keep finding myself coming back to the idea of community. What it means, what it does, what it should be doing, what it shouldn’t be doing, and specifically for women in marginalized communities. I think of survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Of the perpetuated cycles of abuse in work places, houses of worship, schools, homes. I think of what I needed when I became a survivor seven years ago and embarked on the first steps of my unmaking.

This semester, I’ve decided to focus my projects on women survivors and their various roles. I have three classes and all are requiring I partake in research projects to explore culture and the re-imagination of our futures. The process of re-imagination is messy, especially for us perfectionists who like certain structure, but I decided to embrace this mess and launch my project AFTER THE UNMAKING with an introductory cento poem of the same title.

The cento is a poem is a collage poem, crafted of different quotes from other literary works. I was so moved by the various works I’ve come across in class—including texts I did not agree with or like the endings of—that I pieced together some of the lines that struck me most into this cento. Each source is credited below and links are made available where possible to find the full readings for reference.

I struggled to figure out how to introduce Unit 1 of my project because I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted more time. I wanted to cover every angle of a re-imagined future. Then I realized I needed to accept the mess, the disorientation, remembering that when I left my ex-husband, I was 25 and working in a corporate HQ that required a 4-hour daily commute, that left me exhausted at the end of the day playing a mental Russian roulette to decide whether that night I would eat or shower or fill out divorce papers online before I had to do the routine all over again. (Crying was a given with each option.) The unmaking is ugly and stressful, but it’s the pressure we have to get through in order to reach the starting point—after the unmaking—and this is what I hope to present in this cento. An acceptance of what has happened and a preparation of what we will do next.










A F T E R   T H E   U N M A K I N G

How does one mark time / think historicity / engage the iterability of the performative / if nothing ends / Aims to inform / inspire / invoke change / Every piece of art is someone / communicating / an idea to you / A thumb drive becomes a key / to post-apocalyptic safety / and self care becomes / not self-indulgence / but self-preservation / An act of political warfare / Is this too much reality / No wonder we so often project alienness on one another / When one looks at people / healthy or ill / and wonders / what kind of young they could produce / And another sees the sick / problems she had not seen before / and wonders / whether she could defeat their disease / But man thinks her spoiled / for having known too much / freedom / with nothing to do but study herself / and try things not thought of before / Why not see / this offering / as a shaping / As a water joining the river / As a lesson in moving beyond / beautiful deconstruction / and finding a teacher in reconstruction / Let it not be death / the leveler / And the revealer / Nostalgia is a gift for the living















SOURCE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“The Comet” by W. E. B. DuBois

“Death, the leveler!” he muttered. “And the revealer,” she whispered gently….”



“The Monophobic Response” by Octavia Butler

“Is this too much reality?”

“No wonder we so often project alienness on one another.”



“The Crown Ain’t Worth Much” by Hanif Abdurraquib

“Nostalgia is a gift for the living.”


 

Speculative Placemaking Collaborative (Class Document)

“Creative Constraint: A thumb drive as a key to access various levels of post-apocalyptic safety.”
 

“…aim to inform, inspire, and invoke change.”
 

“Every piece of art is someone communicating an idea to you.” —Boots Riley
 

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare" Audre Lorde



Emergent Strategies by Adrienne Maree Brown

“I see this offering as a noticing that can shape our next steps, as more water joining the river.”
 

“…how do we move beyond our beautiful deconstruction? Who teaches us to reconstruct?”



Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

“Doro looked at people, healthy or ill, and wondered what kind of young they could produce. Anyanwu looked at the sick—especially those with problems she had not seen before—and wondered whether she could defeat their disease.”
 

"She was spoiled. She had known too much freedom. Like most wild seed, she had been spoiled long before he met her.”
 

"You made me learn very much. Much of the time, I had nothing to do but study myself, try things I had not thought of before.”



“The Social Life of Social Death” by Jared Sexton

"But how, then, does one mark time and think historicity, how does one engage the iterability of the performative, if nothing ends?"

What Good Are Hands of a Savior When They Too Belong to An Oppressor?

 

 

Last year a colleague and I were having coffee and discussing a community arts showcase on feminism he wanted me to lead. I immediately began brainstorming names of incredible women artists aloud when he sternly cut me off. “Yeah, you’ve done plenty of women events. Time for us men to have one!” I was confused. “You want me to curate a feminism event of ALL men?” He sat back in his seat, cocky and smiling. “Yeah, let the men have the stage to express their appreciation of women.” By his intonation I knew what he meant. “You mean an entire panel of tasteless erotic poetry that sexualizes women?” He laughed, the same condescending laugh he let out after I confronted him about his predatory behavior I later experienced, and said, “If that’s their expression of feminism, so be it.”

I met him halfway and coordinated a panel of male speakers I required could only share work on toxic masculinity and their responsibility as men to uphold feminism amongst their bros. But by the time the event date rolled around, my colleague’s predatory nature (i.e., grooming, abusing, manipulating, the whole nine yards) surfaced and he made the smart move not to show up.

It was severely disturbing and infuriating to not only experience this but also to continue witnessing the immense perpetuation of this behavior, even in places built to be “safe” like art and social justice. I was so shaken up that I dedicated my last pre-pandemic poetry feature entirely to addressing this subject. The most painful part? The number of women who approached me after the set to whisper gratitude that someone FINALLY acknowledged the misogyny in our over glorified art world. Some shared their firsthand encounters of assault, others about the men they wish they could report. My heart sank, but not at all in surprise. The patriarchal agenda is so deeply sewn into the human system that men have found a way to continue these crimes in a hassle free way: getting women to do it. See, after I confronted my colleague, he removed me from my position and began working more closely with another woman that subjects other up and coming women artists to abuse and harassment, stating he was not pleased with my behavior (no longer quiet and welcoming to his physical and verbal advances) and so begins this article.

When the stay at home orders kicked in last year, my skin freaked the hell out! I’d love to blame the sudden facial revolution solely on the pandemic, but I knew it stemmed from experiencing back to back trauma, from my father’s death to sexual harassment and abuse to my grandmother’s death to the pandemic. Despite trying various remedies like supplements, sleep modifications, diet changes, etc., I caved and decided I’d have to support it with a reformed skin regimen too. Four years ago I stumbled into the universe of clean beauty—skincare and cosmetic products that follow strict European standards of non-toxicity when it comes to their ingredients—and it was the best stumble.

Many of these clean beauty brands are actually women founded and I was ecstatic because shopping a women dominated field should be incredible, right? Finally browsing products made by us and for us, but I noticed a theme: the sexualization of women is still the only marketing ploy, even in the hands of women. The objectification of women cunningly slipped straight through the fingers of men (in power) and landed smack dab in the palms of women, sugarcoated as supposed empowerment and feminism so well, that today’s generation is swallowing it whole.

I decided to write this now because MARA Beauty, one of the brands I’ve heavily invested in since the pandemic that incredibly revolutionized my skin, released their latest product, an oil based sunscreen. The first teaser excited me: a video of a wave kissing a sunny shore with the announcement that something SPF based was coming. But before I knew it, post after post became an illustration of women and their mostly naked bodies holding the coveted sunscreen in overtly sexual positions or not even holding the sunscreen at all. I started to question whether or not I wanted to support a brand that so ridiculously exploited women’s bodies for products (and facial products at that) and restarted my search for a new skincare line. But brand after brand, I discovered similar ads for an eye cream or a makeup remover or a retinol gel, all juxtaposed with a breast and an erect nipple or a woman’s entirely exposed behind and the product just ever so slightly concealing what Instagram would deem guideline violation. Or simply a post of a naked woman in the distance just to wish everybody a “Happy Weekend!” From MARA Beauty to True Botanicals to Odacité to all the other brand ads Instagram and Facebook stuff in between posts, they are all built on the foundation of a woman’s body, as if there’s no other way to sell a product.

Back in the day, when men dominated most fields, including marketing, we understood (better yet, tolerated) this male gaze basis of advertising. It was practically normalized to see women as objects, slapped on as accessories to sell anything from burgers to beers to cars. We anticipated that with the so-called breakage of the glass ceiling and the rise of diversity and inclusion, the male gaze would soon diminish, but it’s become evident that the male gatekeepers successfully passed on the baton to ensure their agenda continues.

In January 2021 UNICEF released an article titled, “Not An Object: On Sexualization and Exploitation of Women and Girls.” The authors powerfully delve into this subject, providing data from the American Psychological Association and the Dove Self Esteem Project on how severely prevalent and subliminal this hyper sexualization of women is and its global impact on girls and women emotionally, psychologically, and socially. The consequences of these depictions include appearance anxiety, body shame, eating disorders, self-esteem issues, and depression, all of which are phenomena that today’s social media driven era thinks it’s abolished with the perpetuation of the same behavior through the incorporation of ethnically diverse women and body shapes/sizes. Truth of the matter is this has only escalated the psycho-social impacts on girls’ and women’s body image issues.

On top of that, it’s affected the male populations as well, further reinforcing unrealistic ideals of male perception and behavior towards women. In recent conversations with two different men, I learned that only now were men awakening into the realization of how to humanize a woman outside the context of a sexual object. Thanks to porn and basically the soft porn that is social media, boys are still growing up with this deeply ingrained view of women as tools—for their pleasure, for the sales of products, for the aesthetics of something. We see the latent effects of this in our day to day to experiences at work, in social spaces, in family circles, in the entertainment industry, in politics, you name it. But somehow it’s become acceptable today because it’s now being produced by women?

That’s the part that irks me most. Too many women and women dominated industries are still operating under the restraints of the patriarchal agendas, convinced it’s a feminine one and therefore a feminist one. I see these posts and ads and think of the men like my aforementioned abusive colleague who justified his behavior by stating he purposely pursues attractive counterparts. I think of my exes and their abuses. I think of the rest of the males in our societies that we’ve worked with or engaged with on some level, and I watch them sit back, relax, and reap the benefits of the patriarchy, but now without having to lift a finger. Women are doing the work for them. So much so that daring to speak up or go against this patriarchal agenda costs you. We’re seeing this in Europe with the court ruling on women wearing hijab. We saw women’s sports teams get reprimanded for choosing to wear slightly less revealing clothes. I remember not being allowed to try out for both basketball and volleyball in grade school because they said I couldn’t participate with pants and a long sleeve shirt. But hey, if I want to wear bikini bottoms, I’m most welcome. I drove down Fairfax last week and there were six billboards with practically naked women lying in extremely sexual positions. The men on every ad were fully clothed and the one shirtless man on a billboard was a dancer advertising an upcoming show in a modest and casual pose.

When you think about it, it’s quite sadistic. In our desperate (and necessary) fight for equality, somewhere some women sold out to get ahead. If it meant exploiting our bodies for social and financial capital to make it ahead, so be it. But is it worth it? I guess when you’re making money, attracting cult following, and sustaining the approval of both the male gaze AND the white gaze, you’re “winning”. But down here in the unfiltered reality of ongoing beauty ideals, surrounded by the growing fragility of women’s self-esteem and the surge in dangerous cosmetic procedures, I see more cons than pros. There are plenty of studies and documentaries now proving the data on how toxic these media platforms are for what and how they present, and the objectification of women is a significant part of that.

I’m not a fan of cancel culture, but I struggle justifying giving my money to brands who continue to promote and normalize this agenda, especially when many of these brands actually have remarkable quality products that could sell themselves on reviews and word of mouth alone, as well as the ability to explore best practices from other successful brands that don’t exploit women’s bodies for profit. We did not and are not fighting for equality just to reach the top and continue what already exists, what’s oppressed us for centuries and only benefited the select few exclusives. It’s our utmost responsibility as women with the revolutionary platforms and privileges to use them in ways that empower beyond the physical, beyond the patriarchal agenda, and carve a new path for us and our future generations. We deserve better!

Ready for the Sacrifice - Readiness: A Ramadan Mini Series

 

There is no easy way to write this last piece for a number of different reasons. No one I know ever wants to say goodbye to Ramadan. It feels like just yesterday we were preparing dinner for the first blessed fast breaking. Like yesterday I was splitting a date with my dad by the couch to the sound of Quran and clanking pots. Yesterday, we were breaking fast around a hexagon table in Damascus, listening to my grandfather make his prayer before we eat.

I struggle though, to write about nostalgia and hope when the world continues to hurt. Watching Ramadan come to a close with the stories of Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, India—it’s almost unbearable to process. The past six days I’ve spent crying, debating whether or not to even write a final installment or just take a step back and grieve, but considering the relevance of this piece’s message—sacrifice—it’s worth sharing.

A part of this article started many Ramadans ago and I knew one day it’d become archived somewhere in the realms of my writing. As was usual, mama had Quran playing in the background as we all took in the blessing of fullness following a fast breaking dinner. I was washing the dishes, feeling the hot water spill over their royal blue hand-painted designs. I grew up knowing these dishes but only recently learned they were wedding gifts my grandparents gave mama about 30ish years ago.

It’s quite customary for most Muslims to increase readings of the Quran during Ramadan, but sometimes (as is expected with distracted minds) we end up losing focus and not paying attention to all the words our eyes are scanning. So for years and years, I’ve read over the coming verse, but that night, I really saw it for what it was saying, for the first time, because it was being read aloud behind me while I washed priceless dishes.

أَحَسِبَ النَّاسُ أَن يُتْرَكُوا أَن يَقُولُوا آمَنَّا وَهُمْ لَا يُفْتَنُونَ

“Do people think that they will be left to say, “We believe,” without being tested?”
(Chapter 29, Verse 2)

Maybe some are reading this thinking, “Yeah, and?” but that’s the beauty of scripture. It strikes each of us differently at various times and in our lives, and probably when we need the reminder the most. I remember almost breaking the dish because I was so overwhelmed with the powerful verse in its sheer simplicity. In its question that also provides so many answers. During one of my most difficult years, this verse found its way to me and reminding me that faith is far beyond just an utterance of words. God will ask us to prove it.

For anyone who thinks Ramadan is simply a 30 day experience, brace yourself, I’m about to blow your mind: It’s not! Ramadan is only the beginning. It’s the physical, mental, and spiritual preparation for the year ahead. Personally, I never understand people who spent the month complaining about it (the hunger, thirst, exhaustion, etc.) but never seemed to mind when their gyms hosted nutrition and fitness competitions or signed up for high intensity trainings for tours and marathons. Are we incapable of sacrificing one month out of the year to go the little extra mile for a bit of blessings and rejuvenation from Allah? A push to revolutionize our internal environments in preparation for the external?

Every Ramadan is a time to spend reflecting on the past year and finalizing the blueprints for the coming year. Like I said in the first article, so many people struggle with its arrival because we fear facing ourselves. What were our strengths? What are our many improvement areas? Where can we grow? Who do we have to make amends with? How do we forgive ourselves? And how do we ask the Lord to forgive us too?

We watch our world crumbling but people still refuse to address their inner ethics—and I’m not entirely referencing religiosity here, but rather akhlaq, the morality and decency, of a person. The whole world and their mothers quote the following two verses often, but it always seems like lip service. Twice Allah (swt) reminds us in the Quran that He will not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves first—Chapter 8, Verse 53 and Chapter 13, Verse 11, so how do we induce this change and what is it exactly?

 

It’s the readiness to make the necessary but difficult sacrifices in our lives. The same readiness we center ourselves on when starting any other 30 day challenge or two week cleanse or whatever the newest hype is, except for the sake of Allah. It’s establishing a readiness to receive what our mission as caliphs are on this earth is and how well to execute it. Knowing that the journey isn’t easy and that some days we are going to be tested so hard, but just like the final home stretch of any workout, we need to hold on just a little bit longer when we feel like we want to give up.

A long time ago I saw a friend of mine sobbing heavily on Eid morning while saying her Takbeerat so I asked her why. Wiping tears she said, “Allah gave us the privilege of living to experience another Ramadan, be forgiven, and now we’re here, unwrapping the gift of another year to continue being better.” Her words are forever etched in my mind and I think about them every Ramadan, especially on the last day. This year, I spent every Ramadan afternoon taking about a two hour walk (part of my resolutions for the month this year) and it yielded such an indescribable catharsis. While listening to Quran and podcasts, I soaked in a sun I neglected under pandemic, inhaled real air my lungs had been so thirsty for, and processed my present and future.

I cannot and will not prescribe methods for sacrificial efforts because they’re genuinely personal initiatives, but in too many recent encounters with peers, friends, family, and the media, I constantly come across the very enabling culture. The bare minimum is absolutely acceptable to the point where it’s become some relatable meme. As Muslims, we can’t just throw a hashtag beneath a solid colored post with a few dollars and call it a day. True, Allah (swt) requires financial jihad, but jihad of the soul always comes first in the Quran because that one is the greater effort with the greater reward. And the two aforementioned verses are stern but gentle reminders that there is a fine line between resting and enabling, and the truth is, we actually do know deep down when we’re blurring the two. If we want to change what is happening in/to our worlds, we need to change what’s happening within us and this takes that inconveniencing and hard work I described week one.

That’s why Allah grants us Ramadan, the preliminary phase to build better habits. The four weeks where we cannot necessarily escape from many of the things we often turn to like food, sleep, people/parties/entertainment, all the things that enable our avoidance of dealing with our truths—the good, that bad, and the ugly. So I’ll wrap up this final piece with a pray, asking Allah that may this year’s Ramadan be the one that finally readied our ummah for the necessary sacrifices.

May it have healed all those who were hurting. May it have strengthened all those who struggled with issues known or unknown, seen or unseen. May it have humbled us too caught up in egos and selves. May it have planted within our hearts a deeper love and commitment to our faith, our Lord, and our worship of Him. And may we please Him for the next 11 lunar months, and may He grant us the next Ramadan to grow again. Our ummah needs us.

 

Ready to Trust Yourself - Readiness: A Ramadan Mini Series

“I used to be so fluent in God. / Now, / I don’t even understand the language.”

To my knowledge, mama and I have not shared the following story with anyone outside of our family, quite possibly because anyone who didn’t experience it firsthand might not understand the gravity of the meanings behind it. But she and I speak the same language. We always knew that when our intuition said something, it was a tiny elbow nudge from God—a yes or a no. Sometimes though, it’s a foreshadowing and with time we begin to strengthen our skills in the language of God. Here’s where this story begins. Cue Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls.

Picture it: Summer 2013. I woke up one morning to the sound of my mother shrieking, “Shu sar?!?!” Quickly, I rushed downstairs to check on her and found one of the most unforgettable sights of our lives. The large, almost floor to ceiling sliding glass door that leads to our backyard had completely shattered but in place. So it looked like a glass mosaic from top to bottom, holding on for dear life within its frame, too afraid to surrender to gravity. We looked at each other, confused, shocked, and somehow severely mesmerized by its poetic disaster. It felt like the spindle from Sleeping Beauty—you know you shouldn’t touch it but you just want to.

We didn’t. Well technically, mama did, but not like that. She decided the safest thing we could do until we found a repairperson was to cover the entire door with sticky laminate. Remember the old school clear sticky book covers we used to be forced to cover our textbooks with in grade school? Mama was OBSESSED with them and she apparently still had a stash in her magic closet of Islamic Narnia. She retrieved them and began softly taping the glass in place from floor to ceiling. In the process, she cut herself, at least that’s what we thought. Life would later prove a very strange turn of events as her finger continued to hurt her for years. Once she was done, the repairperson arrived, called her a genius, and replaced the door. Basic story, right?

The issue was something about the shattered glass felt like a sign, a warning of coming danger that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. However, I wondered if it had anything to do with the man I just started dating literally the day before. That man was none other than the notorious ex husband. Dun dun duuun!

It took me about four years to really heal from the experience and I look back at that door story and wonder if God was teaching me His advanced language earlier than I anticipated and so I didn’t receive it as easily? I don’t know. I think God takes us on various journeys that break and remake us and this was one. I remember going through the worst of the healing journey and not realizing it, thinking the worst was already over. I wrote a lot during that period—including the epigraph poem at the top of this article. My faith was really shaken; not that I left religion, but my relationship with God was a little damaged. Being in that space was hard because not only was I disconnected from God, but that in turn meant a disconnection from myself, and maybe I needed it. I needed a little bit of that reflective dip in the darkness to remember how strong my language with God used to be. How much wisdom He gave me to trust in myself. How to shift gears and come back to Him as a better me. Come back to me as a better me. Believe it or not, when that divine merger happened, mama’s finger—the one we thought she only cut on the glass but continued to hurt far after—revealed a piece of the glass that had been wedged in there despite being probed and tweezed by three different doctors. Some things even modern science and medicine can’t really explain. God is above all.

In a recent encounter with a therapist I dumped quicker than a guy on a dating app, she asked “Do you trust yourself?” condescendingly. Without hesitation I said, “Yes, I do. I always follow my gut because I trust it to steer me in the right direction.” She frowned. “Hmm, really, how can that be? Didn’t you end up in an abusive relationship?” You don’t have to be a therapist to recognize the toxicity of this question, but somehow she didn’t. Or maybe she operates on this new trend of therapy I’ve begun noticing where therapists gaslight clients overtime to develop a sense of codependency from their clients. Secures them quite the income at $320 per session.

Obviously I felt attacked and very much blamed for something that wasn’t my fault, which she did often, and so there I was required to explain (to a god damn therapist) what an abusive relationship is. “Well, I was experiencing something called gaslighting, severe emotional and psychological manipulation, verbal assault, and daily threats from my ex husband that led to prolonged isolation from myself and family. I don’t know how else to explain it to you."

I wish I could say that was the only time I was victim blamed or shamed, and if you haven’t experienced it, it feels awful. Suddenly you feel so small, worthless, and like an idiot. In 2017, I hosted two release parties in SoCal for my poetry book Oceans & Flames, a collection focused on the experience and survival of domestic violence. Believe it or not, at each of these events, I had someone ask me the same exact question during the Q&A session. “What advice can you give girls and women to avoid making the same mistakes you did so they don’t end up in an abusive relationship while searching for a life partner?”

As if it wasn’t already difficult to survive the relationship. As if it wasn’t already a challenge to write about it. As if it wasn’t utmost courage to publish it into a book as a means of raising awareness. I had to face this from “my” people? No one tells you that surviving domestic violence is only the first hurdle. Surviving your society’s abuse is the next. Neither one of those people had the wisdom to shift blame to the abuser. Neither one acknowledged community responsibility at mitigating domestic violence but instead made it entirely the victim’s responsibility. And neither recognized that abusers possess power dynamics that make it almost impossible to catch their red flags, unless you’ve been a victim yourself. I can educate, raise awareness, and share my story, but I will not be blamed for the actions of another nor will I be required to take on their responsibilities, all while silently coerced into a corner of eternal self doubt.

If you’re an avid reader of Lady Narrator, you remember my online dating debacle of 2020, and how the story ended with the return of my precious poetry book, Contortionist Tongue, slashed and scribbled with ridiculous notes in English, Arabic, and Chinese, from a man I rejected after feeling very unsafe with on our second date. As if that wasn’t traumatic enough, he attached a three page “love” letter confessing his intense feelings for me after only two dates and four days of knowing each other. But here’s where this comes full circle. He ended his letter with the following:

“The most important lesson I learned, in both my science & liberal arts classes: you cannot trust intuition, because once you get past elementary basics, intuition is always wrong. Never right.”

Intuition should know no gender, but I have to say from life observations, I hear it discredited the most from men. Maybe it’s the privilege speaking, specifically that of white/white passing men? Being able to cruise through life and not have to rely on internal cues? I don’t know, but I have seen it doubted even more so from men who’ve been rejected by women who follow their intuition, like the aforementioned bro.

What’s really frustrating about this reoccurring devaluing of intuition is that it is yet another example of how society entirely discredits people as being experts on themselves, specifically women. This is especially more exhausting for survivors of domestic violence and/or related trauma because we already had to jump through hoops to get you to believe our experiences in the first place. Now we’re being expected to surrender to a label of weakness, like we don’t know how to trust ourselves or our choices? As if becoming a victim was our fault?

I’ve said this before but it will always be worth repeating. As survivors of domestic violence (and other similar traumas) our instincts and trust in self become very fine tuned. Whatever internal alarm bells we marginalized before become our northern lights moving forward in life. So really, it’s no longer just #BelieveSurivovors for our stories, but also believe us when we express our needs, thoughts, and feelings. No one is a greater expert on themselves than a survivor, and I say this knowing that even my family, my incredible support system, doesn’t know me the same way that I know myself anymore, and that’s okay. Trauma changes us and as long as we learn to evolve with the revolution and find ways to love the newness of ourselves, it gets better. The key to this transition though is the reliance we establish on our intuition, on trusting ourselves, something humanity has severely disconnected from.

A few years ago, my friend recommended documentary called InnSaei. Honestly, I highly recommend it too, especially in Ramadan when our souls are thirsty for an awakening. The film is about the power of intuition but explores how humanity’s over reliance on technology has a caused a disruption in this connection. One of the things I loved about this film (and similar research) is it looks at village elders and wise folk, who the therapists and counselors were/are in older societies. It’s always the group of people most in tune with themselves and life experience. However, as we become so addicted to our devices, we’ve hindered our ability to really listen and trust ourselves, resulting in a loss of internal guidance and heavier dependence on external reassurances and validation.

Social media hasn’t helped with this at all. To say it bluntly, social media (especially Instagram & TikTok) have become the new WebMD of mental health, and I mean that in the worst possible way. You cannot unlock your phone and not be immediately bombarded with some psychological post (or a dancing doctor) profiling your personality, emotionality, and mentality. It gets abhorrently annoying and exhausting, especially when it comes from non-clinical folks, includes frequent and consistent typographical errors, or sounds like cheesy fortunes straight out of a cookie. And that’s the trick, using generic click-bait language the masses simply like, follow, and believe. The relationship ones are especially worse. You can’t even escape them! Lord knows how many blocks and deletes I’ve clicked and they still pop up. While I understand how helpful it can be to have tangible tidbits of relevancy and validation when going through something, this extreme overexposure—especially on a platform built for mindless consumption—perpetuates a dangerous and toxic over reliance on looking outward for self confirmation vs. looking in.

Recently I was listening to a Clubhouse talk on Relationship OCD (ROCD). As informative as it was, I felt compelled to speak up and share a caveat to the concept of ROCD because at one point it almost began to resemble victim blaming. ROCD “is a subset of OCD in which sufferers are consumed with doubts about their relationship. They question their love for their partner, their attraction to their partner, their compatibility with their partner, and their partner’s love for them.”

Maybe the talk had no room for disclaimers, but I had to step in, especially as someone clinically diagnosed with OCD as a child and experiencing it used as a weapon against me anytime I followed my intuition. I emphasized that doubts, or “sticky thoughts” as they called them, in a relationship cannot always be disregarded as ROCD. Sometimes it’s a toxic relationship, sometimes it’s an abusive one, and sometimes it’s just not the right one. (Can you tell this last point is a big point here? We aren't everyone's someone!) We can’t constantly create space for people to so deeply doubt their doubts. This further silences one’s ability to self reflect healthily.

I thought about my ex husband as I spoke. About how often he would call me mentally crazy, citing my diagnosis every time I’d cry following one of his abusive episodes. He’d frequently claim it was the devil whispering in my ears and that I wasn’t being strong enough to overpower satan’s attempts at breaking us apart. Then I thought about a recent relationship I ended just before Ramadan. While it was not abusive, it began developing very unhealthy elements that my intuition was picking up on. Once again I was left feeling guilty and insufficient for not reciprocating the same way that was expected of me. I was often questioned about my mental health practices and whether or not I’m just struggling with residual trauma from the domestic violence. I found myself gaslit and exhausted, all because something within me was saying, “This is not the right relationship for me.” I know myself better than any man does, and having OCD and being a survivor of trauma do not negate the significance of my intuition or how well I’ve healed.

 A big part of the healing journey includes seeking spaces and periods of solitude to detox, rejuvenate, and repair our sense of self trust. For survivors of domestic violence, it begins to yield a recognition of how many other toxic and/or abusive people and things are normalized around us, so we redevelop boundaries. We amplify the volume of our intuition and stride differently through life. It doesn’t help when those around us try to dismantle this growth by reigniting the victim blaming or the past shaming or whatever other excuses people use towards others to negate one’s own strength and intuition value.

That’s what makes Ramadan so significant. Last year, so many people complained about Ramadan under pandemic and how isolating it was going to be. But maybe that was God’s way of reminding us all that we deserve some alone time to practice His language and practice reconnecting to our spiritual core. Maybe that door was a sign for 23 year old Dania, maybe it wasn’t, but it serves as a reminder that even in the most finite cracks, God’s language is available to us, we just have to trust ourselves, and sometimes that takes a bit of solitude.

Ready for Death - Readiness: A Ramadan Mini Series

All Photo Credit: Ehab Tamimi

It’s a bit of a grim title, I know, but there really has never been a way of sugarcoating the truth. It took me five rounds of editing to put this article together because it’s one of the most important I feel I have to share.

In less than two years, I lost my dad, my grandma, and my grandfather, each about six months apart. For some reason though, death tends to make me think of life more vividly. Mama always taught us that a cemetery exists more so for the living than for the dead. It’s a place for those left behind to visit and reflect on, not just memories, but purpose. While so many of our loved ones are no longer here, we still are, so how do we live?

For as long as I can remember, I never feared death. Maybe I feared dying—how it will happen, if it will hurt—but not death. If you haven’t already guessed, I grew up in quite the nontraditional household. While upholding our religion and culture remain a priority, we never fell victim to the rigid (and often misconstrued) traditions. Whether it was openly talking about sex and sexuality in Islam while preparing lunch together on a Sunday afternoon or discussing how to acknowledge and dismantle toxic masculinity in our families and communities, we talked/talk about it. Death was just another dish on the table; its normalization, its inevitability; its purpose, and that only made my relationship with life all the more sacred.

I was 24 when I got engaged to my now ex-husband. Obviously, it was not a happily ever after, domestic violence can’t be, but the thing is abuse is often times too insidious to be seen early on. Red flags are not visible and the emotional manipulation is so subliminal, a victim becomes overwhelmed with confusion and self doubt. Truly, I could write essays on every single angle of domestic violence to educate, and over the years I’ve been doing so bit by bit, but that’s not the focal point here. The point is that it was during this relationship, for the first and only time in my life, I feared death unequivocally. However, because of the severe abuse and gaslighting, I couldn’t reconcile why. I found absolutely no stability to think clearly or take any inventory of my heart and mind. Something I advise ALL couples in every phase of their relationship is to take some solitary time to gauge and assess on your own. Being constantly in each other’s space (especially if it starts to mirror elements of abuse or toxicity) makes it absolutely impossible to make good judgment calls or understand what you’re experiencing.

It’s an incredibly scary feeling to fear death and I heavily empathize with those who experience this fear chronically. Living becomes an exhausting minefield. Anxiety, depression, and paranoia intensify, and after a certain point it feels impossible to deescalate. I began contemplating suicide, also for the first time in life, and it only added to the pressure because it clashed so painfully with the incrementally growing fear of death. There’s a night I remember so vividly, on the Huntington Beach Pier. We were sitting on a cement bench smack dab in the middle of the pier, right above the blackest ocean I’d ever seen. He was yelling, cursing, gesturing so wildly I wondered when I’d become the bullseye of his hands. I envied the loud waves for being able to drown out his voice when I couldn’t. I looked down at the water, couldn’t see a thing, and considered what leaping would feel like. How long it would take to drown? Would I suffer? Would he hurt me if I dared survive the jump?

There are small cracks of awareness that come and go when you’re under abuse and you see a bit of the light. Once enough light makes its way through, clarity starts becoming tangible. Realizing I had developed such an immense fear of death was the first of many cracks. It bothered me so much that I was no longer ready for death because that meant I was no longer living the right way. The contentment, fulfillment, and happiness I held for my life was stolen, making death a frightening loss I was not yet ready to face.

Allah (swt) tells us in Chapter 2, Verse 30:

“And your Lord said to the Angels, “I will create, upon the earth, a caliph.” They (the angels) said, “Will you create upon it one who will cause corruption within it and bloodshed and we declare your praise and sanctify you? He (Allah) said, “I know that which you do not know.’”

I think of this verse very often, even more so over the last ten years as I’ve watched the corruption and bloodshed all the way from the white supremacy on this American soil to the ongoing turmoil of Syria. Allah obviously has a reason for our existence. After all, He created us with the intent to be caliphs. Yes, caliphs! I know the term was, dare I say, coopted to refer to only a certain group, but when the Quran itself tells me that Allah declared this title for His creations—humans—I take the dare.

The test of life is legitimately to see which of us caliphs takes our mission lightly and which of us manifests the great potential we hold. Bottom line, each of us is on this earth for a reason and a purpose. We all have something significant to offer even if we don’t necessarily see the fruits of our labor. We still plants the seeds. Some we get to see bloom in our lifetimes, others we don’t, but that shouldn’t negate our efforts. That shouldn’t discourage us from putting our best out there and succumbing to the corruption. But when we don’t pursue that purpose, we are no longer going to be ready for death.

Take a look at history or even media and pay attention to who holds on to the fantasy of immortality the most. Dictators, villains, the insecure, the angry, the entitled, the ones who weren’t living the truest mission of life. They were living for ego, desire, money, fame, power, and all the things that don’t serve the greater good. There is also a second group that fears death and it’s those who don’t stand up for themselves, who don’t acknowledge what they want out of life, and who are not living their passions.

Remembering this verse and its interpretation was when it clicked for me. Death and my readiness for it are my moral compass (of sorts). They are what tell me whether or not I am living the right way, the best way. I remember the instant I left my ex’s house and arrived to my family’s home safe and sound, I felt a liberation no amount of poetry has been able to fully express. It wasn’t passive suicidal ideation, but I suddenly no longer felt afraid to die because finally, I was back to being the leader of my own life again, and it was exhilarating. It was like a realignment with my destiny and faith again and I felt whole. No more severe disorientation or chronic disassociation. No more anxiety induced wake up calls. No more loss of self and purpose. It was kind of like the moment I took the bandages off my eyes after laser eye surgery, miraculously seeing things so clearly without needing any lenses. My intuition was breathing a sigh of relief.

So many people don’t recognize whether or not they’re fulfilled and content with themselves and their lives and it yields a fear of death. Why wouldn’t it? Someone who’s confidently lived their life to the best of their ability really has nothing to fear about closing this chapter of their soul. But if they haven’t, it makes absolute sense they fear death. And for those who abide by certain faiths, the readiness for death is a whole other level. It’s the next route for reunification with our Lord, something we are to be striving for as caliphs on the journey of spirituality and human service.

There are too many people out there living for other things or even for other people, which makes for a terribly heavy life. Many—not all—of the mental health struggles develop from this kind of lifestyle, which begins at an early age. Whether it’s child abuse, even the most vague of kinds, or the unrealistic expectations placed on children’s futures, it dislodges one’s connection with their true selves and calling. Therefore, feeling genuinely content about how we live is closely tied with our fear (or lack thereof) of death.

I have held on to these truths close to my heart since my divorce and I remind myself to check in with my intuition often and gauge how I’m feeling to ensure that I haven’t lost my sense of self and purpose. Anytime something begins to threaten my internal security, shaking my readiness for death, as in living how I am destined to, I acknowledge it and take action. None of us deserve to be unprepared for death with an unhappy and unfulfilled life. Take time with yourself, my friends, and listen to your intuition and what it’s calling you to do. Trust me when I say, it’s always speaking to you and always steering you in the best direction. Just listen.

The good news from all this is that as long we are still here, we have the capacity to reconnect with our true selves, and Ramadan is the perfect time to begin. It’s never too late to get ready for death by ensuring that you are living your best, living your truth, and living for Allah. After all, He reminds us, “And I did not create the jinn and humankind except to worship Me” (Chapter 51, Verse 56).

Ready for Ramadan - Readiness: A Ramadan Mini Series

In a lecture I gave at a sociology class a few years back, I decided to make a bold statement to a classroom full of freshman students living in the era of social media established self-care rituals and beliefs. In a world that has so successfully taught an entire generation to believe that selfishness and individualistic ideals (masked behind mainstream glamorized posts) are the ways to thrive and make the world a better place, it’s going to be a battle to try and change the narrative. “Sometimes the truest acts of self-care are actually doing those things that really inconvenience the self, are actually getting your to-do lists and tasks at hand done. This over-fixation on the idea of never making yourself uncomfortable in the name of self-care is what is causing the demise of our societies.” A lot of faces stared back at me in disapproval, but I initiated a conversation long overdue in this modern era. Social media based self-care trends have enabled stunted emotional intelligence, empathy, and change by placing personal desires at the focal point of survival instead of personal well-being. To initiate real life change requires a lot of inconveniences, a lot of shifted comfort zones, and a lot of preparedness.

❥    ❥    ❥

Is it ironic to be writing the introductory article of my Ramadan mini series on readiness to the tune of Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball”? Probably not, considering Ramadan has always been a time of picking up the pieces of ourselves demolished by life and gluing them back together. But that process is never an easy one and every year, a part of me genuinely dreads the Ramadanic obligation of facing myself and the year I just finished. For a while, I thought I was the only one who experienced this anticipatory anxiety, until I came across a life changing podcast (which I have mentioned once before here on this blog), The Amreekies Podcast.

Five days of binging every episode and I received so many gifts from the podcast that I am grateful to hold on to as I enter another blessed Ramadan, including the fact that sometimes what God asks us to do will be heavy but manageable no less. To clarify, this isn’t a dislike of the month—come on, y’all know me and passion for faith!—but it’s a vulnerable acknowledgement of the work ahead, and after a year, it builds. It’s like the child who makes a fuss about not wanting to go to camp only to realize how revolutionary and amazing the experience was after all.

I was always that child and Ramadan was always my camp, and every year, I’d cry more leaving the month than coming into it. This year, however, I found myself counting down the days leading up to Ramadan, praying to God that He keeps me alive to witness it. My soul was hungry for it (no pun intended), excitedly anticipating that one month of dedication to soul care and active resolutions, which really are the ultimate forms of self-care: a preparedness to being my best self for society.

Ramadan has a different flavor when you’re eagerly looking forward to it. There’s a powerful wave of relief that hits you when it begins at sunset because you’re spiritually surrendering to no other power than God’s healing. No one can deny how difficult 2020-2021 has been—from physical to emotional to mental to spiritual, we’ve all suffered so much, some of us maybe too much, so this month becomes the threshold to cross into relief.

Now here we are, lavishing in the first day, drawn to the magnetic pull of belief in a coming change. It’s not going to be easy, it never is, but it’ll be worthy, and I love that every Muslim I know understands exactly what I’m talking about. Understands there will be nights of heavy crying, nights of repentance, nights of vivid recollections and self analysis, and that those are all necessary components to savoring as much of this month as possible.

I don’t know why that child throws a fuss about camp, just like I don’t really know why my anxiety kicks in the days before Ramadan, maybe it’s fear of the unknown or fear of what I know I will have to inconveniently let go of, but what a different experience it was to view the horizon of this month through a different lens. That’s when I knew that this year, my Ramadan Reflections Series will be dedicated entirely to the concept of readiness. Each week, I’ll be sharing an article on readiness within a different subject, in the hopes of inspiring readers to live with even more purpose. Sometimes our relationship with “being ready” is so misunderstood, so almost stereotypical, that we’re not aware of how and when we are ready and what that actually means. So I begin the series here, with a smile and an open heart, surrendering to the gift that God gave me of finally experiencing readiness for Ramadan before the month began versus after it began, Alhamdulilah.

As we watch the first day end, reminded of how quickly this month always flies by, I encourage us all to set daily small intentions the night before for the coming day. Write them down by hand. Cross them off as you finish them. Reflect on the list before breaking your fast. In my home each year, mama asks us to set a main prayer we want to make for the year. Last year, we dedicated it to praying for my dad and asking God to reunite us with him in the hereafter, and asking God to bless him for the incredible gifts he left behind to support us. Set your duaa for the month (which, by the way, doesn’t mean no other things can be prayed for) and remember it throughout the day. Face ugly truths you kept marginalizing since the last Ramadan and be honest with yourself about how you will try to tackle them differently this coming year. Acknowledge your humanness and shortcomings. Embrace all of that in this month of exceptional Mercy, but then remember that this Mercy exists even when the month is over. It exists in Allah, but it also exists when we keep close the teachings of how to be merciful to ourselves and our communities too.

Getting ready is not an overnight task. It also isn’t neat and easy to compartmentalize. Sometimes it takes us the first week of Ramadan to get ready for Ramadan. But all I can say for sure is it takes all of Ramadan to get ready for the year ahead, so may this month give humanity all the readiness it needs to thrive!