onto more important things

I'm catching up on current events. A few days ago I learned my cousin was forced out of her short-term rental (a place away from her husband so she wouldn't have to spend two hours commuting each way to work) because her roommate caught her praying. She is a British-accented, non-hijab wearing, modern career woman with degrees in accounting. I, on the other hand, only reveal my religious heritage only after direct scrutiny, and the fact my last name gives it all away. Through my years working within the U.S. military and government agencies, I have often found I'm the minority, and my colleagues are hyper-sensitive to anyone coming close to inferring I have terrorist ties, with the exception of my Irish Army polygrapher. I don't want to make anyone tip-toe around what is a politically charged issue that is intrinsically linked to my namesake and of course, my identity. I've found a pretty thoughtful editorial (the link is in the title).

It invokes many images for me. One is of a regional Taekwondo tournament I participated in where I got my butt thoroughly beaten by a hijab-wearing black belt, coached by an Egyptian American. I have never met a more ferocious, powerful and fast woman in the competition ring in my life. I'm also thinking about the article I read in JO magazine, Jordan's version of The Washingtonian, about how 85% of Jordanian women believe their husbands have a right to physical beat their wives. I'm also taken back to a Facebook wall argument I had with a friend of a friend about health care, when he callously turned it into a debate about my personal background based on what he thought he knew about the origins of my name.

So what is the point of all this? I'm glad I'm not alone in having to defend something that is part of millions of peoples' identity, and two, I'm glad to have known such a wide diversity of experiences, which only three of which I've illustrated here out of a multitude; to show that it is exactly about that, diversity.

ninja women

Thank you New York Times for reporting on this. I am consistently pounding my head against a wall when I'm trying to break down stereotypes Westerners have of Muslim women. When I went to Qatar I tried to use humor to make the American guys I was with see the other side of the story.

Me: I want to buy an abaya and wear it.
Them: (look of concern on their faces)
Me: That way I could wear it at meetings and nobody would know that I was asleep
Them: (howls of laughter)
Me: And I could walk down the street and pretend not to see people that I didn't want to talk to, and best of all, they wouldn't even know it was me!
Them: (howls of laughter)

quelling anti-arranged marriage

I get into arguments about people who seem to know more about my culture than I apparently do. Example, arranged marriages means forced marriages. B u l l fucking s h i t. I don't deny that in some rural water-logged or water-deprived developing country, far from central government influence, 11 year olds are married off to spindly mean red-eyed seventy year olds who beat them and essentially make them slaves, but I object that all arranged marriages are characterized that way.

The simplest way to think about it is your family or close friends of your family playing matchmaker. Okay, maybe you do only get to meet them once or for a week before you have to say yes or no, and um that sucks, but in some families, you can date for months. The point is, it depends on the family and individuals. Islam prohibits women from being forced by her parents into a marriage. I can't deny that families can pressure their daughters, but again, that's a case-by-case situation. Families are very close in other cultures, its not about the American 'nuclear' family, which I think most sociologists can debunk; but the extended family.

Imagine meeting a dude: "Hey here's my dad, here are my brothers, here are my uncles, and cousin-brothers." READ: You f(*& with me they'll break your legs and string you up from a tree branch. Yeah! It's like Godfather. But with a less unhappy ending. It provides the marriage with a readily available support network, but anyway I'm getting off the topic. Tradition is not necessarily something to demonize, neither is a practice that once everyone in the world practiced, including Americans, a godawful thing.

weddings

At one point do they become a disaster? This weekend I attended two lovely ceremonies for members of my family. The first involved my cousin who's wedding was very last minute. They had originally cancelled it because of some difficult news. We had it at my aunt's. Tens of us crowded in a townhouse in Centreville. It made me appreciate the simplicity of having close friends and family, to not worry about wedding photographers, a venue that doesn't require a contract, home cooked dinner instead of questionable catering, and all that other racketeering that goes on with weddings.

The second wedding I went to was unexpected. I thought it would be an engagement party, instead it turned out to be the actual exchanging of the vows (the reception won't be until December). Again, close family, no acquaintances, or people crashing just for the dinner ... it was nice that it was simple and not too frilly.

Luckily these were both Muslim weddings so there was very little complications. Both services used the same imam. But what do you do when you've got two different cultures? For example what if Asian (South-Muslim) marries a WASP-y type person? No alcohol at the reception first off. Second, how do you agree on a cleric? A Muslim family will never accept a Christian or Jewish cleric, has to be an imam. So then what do you do? Also there are other interesting issues. For example, parents who are divorced. If you have two families who cannot stand eachother at all. I'm sure these are old questions that have solutions for them, but since I've got two colleagues who've got weddings on the mind, I've been avoiding this stuff. Apparently I'm next on the chop block. The only conclusion is to elope!!! Haha, not that I'm in any danger of that since there are no prospectives (and the idea is still abstract to me).

missing the boat

Once again, when it comes to Islam and understanding, Westerners are completely missing the boat. Case in point: this NY Times article on An Islamic Alienation. I don't buy the premise that Western culture is so at odds with whatever 'Islamic culture' they are talking about that creates disenfranchised angry underemployed Muslims who then want to fill a rucksack with explosives and blow themselves up at King's Cross tube station.

Fact is England and the European countries are different in their treatment of Muslims but not better. Note: why hasn't the United States had an attack by American Muslims? Okay, I may be jinxing/knocking on wood here, but why hasn't it happened? And why does the 9/11 commission report even explicitly say that Mohammad Atta's radicalization occurred not in Saudi Arabia but in Belgium, where he went to school?

England has little communities of immigrants, Muslim and other's who are kept separate from society. Western europe is probably worse, hate to say it, but Germans are into keeping themselves 'German,' and the Italians are bent on keeping themselves 'Italian.' There really is no hyphenation, like American-Bengali ... its not a melting pot or a mosaic. With that there's little opportunity to rise. Little reason to break out of community. But then where do the youth go, and what can they do?

I'm not saying that its the fault of Western countries, to some extent there is a level of fearing to break out of a community on the part of immigrants, but its not lopsided where all the blame for this lies.

bengali in DC

Cuisine that is? Forget it, unless you get an elusive and rare invitation from me for dinner or know Bengali families, the closest you'll come is Brick Lane in London's Aldgate. Buuuuuut ... you could go to Chinatown and check out Burma Restaurant. Yes, the review is written by someone who's never probably had Bangladeshi cuisine so when they described Burmese food, they described it in terms of Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Cambodian food. What they forget is that Myanmar borders Bangladesh (the only other country besides India) and particularly in the seafood dishes, the taste of another drenched water-logged and silty river delta country come to mind. I had the recommended tea leaf salad, which is actually more like a dressing on shredded cabbage, very tasty refreshing, and light. My mother got the fish curry, a salmon steeped in tamarind, ginger, and other spices. We also got some fish broth soup, which I didn't like very much, but my mother claimed it was made from shutki, which is sundried fish (a famous and rather smelly delicacy in Bangladesh). Also there was the coconut cake, which was much like besbusa, another favorite of my family, made from cream of wheat. And this place was cheap! Lunch for my mom and I was less than $25 (both of us, not each). This place gets packed at lunch, recommend going early.