My (earnest, irate) thoughts

I was first exposed to Islam by my husband, Yusuf, who is from Turkey. As the proud descendant of Ottoman sultans and Sufi mystics, my husband was everything I wasn’t — sure of himself, his culture and his faith — and eager to discuss all the topics I had found trouble engaging others in, like religion and global politics and the search for the meaning of life. That’s what got me more than anything. Here was someone who was like me — someone who couldn’t rest without answers to the Big Questions, someone who needed friends and theoretical conversations like other people need food and air — and yet he was comfortable in his own skin.

I read every book I could get my hands on, I had long discussions with Muslims and non-Muslims about religion, I compared and contrasted Islam and the Qur’an with Christianity and the Bible. It took me nearly five months of wrestling with myself before I could say my shahada — my testimony of faith in one God, and in the last prophet, Muhammad — and many more months before I could tell anyone besides my husband and a few Turkish women I’d been blessed to meet.

First, I want to be honest. There’s something totally absurd about being an American Muslim. It seems counterintuitive to everyone, even me sometimes, that a person of European descent from a Judeo-Christian background would convert to Islam. Maybe because it’s seen as a religion of the Middle East, which is typically thought of as a sweltering, barbaric sort of place where swarthy men and frightened women live.

Islam is tainted in the Western mind by being synonymous with misogynistic backwaters like Saudi Arabia. And to convert now — especially right now, while the West is well into its campaign to colonize the Middle East(1), and the news agencies are doing their part by so routinely portraying Muslims as reactionary and intolerant that it’s not just a stereotype anymore — well, that’s just crazy.

But Islam’s beauty is like the sun; it can be hidden only from those who shut their eyes. Here are the answers to common misconceptions about the religion, sort of like "Hey, kids! It’s not just for Arabs anymore!" What appeals to me most about the religion is that faith doesn’t require me to stifle my curiosity. There’s a quote I love by John A. Hutchinson: "Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind." With any rule or regulation handed down — five daily prayers, a prohibition on pork and alcohol, the headscarf, etc. — I am never discouraged from asking, rather I am actually encouraged to ask, "Why?"

In this space, I will tackle all the topics, big and small, that occur to me in this unusual life I am living — as an American Muslim woman in the 21st century.

Footnotes

1. See "Terrorism is what other people do" for an interesting theory.

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