Culture

Altmuslimah’s Asma Uddin talks with Jomana Siddiqui of ModernEid, a party decoration company that promises “nothing gilded or tacky.” With designs covering the spectrum from Ziggy and Sparkle to Arabesque and Casablanca, ModernEid is a unique and fun byproduct of American Islam.

Last summer, I went to see a local production of Rent here in Toronto. The characters in this rock musical include an exotic dancer, Mimi Marquez, normally played by slender women of Afrocentric heritage (such as Rosario Dawson, who plays Marquez in the film adaptation of the musical). In the performance I saw however, Mimi was played by a Caucasian, heavyset, curvy performer. Mind you, these features hardly kept her from doing justice to the role.

The New York Times” recently published an opinion piece in which Ayesha Nusrat—-who, like me, is a new hijabi—defended her choice to wear hijab as an act of agency and empowerment. I have been blessed enough to live in a tolerant and open-minded community and can’t complain, so far, of any instances in which I felt harassed or ostracized because of a piece of cloth that sits on my head.

A few weeks ago, with the temperature reaching as high as 37 degree Celsius and the kids cooped up and restless, I decided to take them swimming mid-day. Before this conjures up a stereotypical image of a Muslim woman, who cannot swim, idly sitting poolside while the rest of the family splash in the water, I should point out that I was a trained lifeguard and a competitive swimmer in my early teens.

I didn’t mean to misplace my spirituality. I just lost it while searching for my identity. After a tumultuous marriage and divorce, all I wanted to do was scrape the remnants of the relationship from my being. In Pashto, a girl’s reputation is like a mirror, a chip or crack makes it look ugly. Thinking that my divorce was a mar on my honor, I wanted to not be me: the 24-year old girl married and divorced while her friends had just graduated. I wanted to be someone else, someone without a chip on her mirror.

Praying at night during the Holy month of Ramadan is said to bring great reward, and the act of praying in congregation is said to be even greater. The formal Arabic term for the evening prayer during Ramadan is called Taraweeh. The Quran reminds again and again that our world is rife with signs of God’s power and benevolence for those who pay attention, for those who pause to consider. I write this not as an Islamic scholar, but from the perspective of a student and teacher of natural health practices. This Ramadan, I developed a deeper understanding of the physical benefits of Taraweeh and this knowledge, in turn, helped me to remain fully present during the prayer.