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<\/a><\/p>\nMy favorite striving wonderful Muslim sisters are married and single, shy virgins and confident matrons, mothers of five and mothers of none, stay-at-home keepers of the hearth and successful entrepreneurs.\u00a0 They laugh at silly jokes, trip on the hems of their abayas going up stairs, sometimes swear in several languages when they get cut off in traffic, burn dinner, make gourmet meals, maintain a beautiful home, and barely manage to keep the dust bunnies at bay.\u00a0 They speak out against injustice, counsel their husbands before said spouse blows the rent money on a \u201csure\u201d investment he heard about from a brother at the mosque, bite their tongues when their mothers-in-law criticize they way they fold the towels, make sure some money is set aside for the zakah box at the masjid, fight to make sure the women\u2019s prayer area is maintained, drive to work, drive to the grocery store, drive the kids to school and soccer and karate, buy only organic meat, spend too much time on Facebook, knit badly, crochet well, and basically live lives that are busy, crazy, chaotic, and incredibly fulfillilng.<\/p>\n
We are not caricatures.\u00a0 We are living, breathing, striving Muslimahs.\u00a0 We pray and fast.\u00a0 We wear niqaab or hijab or just long skirts and loose tops.\u00a0 We listen to lectures on Paltalk.\u00a0 We finish nursing degrees.\u00a0 We write.\u00a0 We try not to sound stupid when we practice our Arabic.\u00a0 We try to increase our imaan bit by bit, day by day, and some days are better than others.\u00a0 We do what women have done throughout the history of mankind.\u00a0 We are ourselves.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some women have lost the ability to be themselves.\u00a0 She read in a book somewhere that a woman is supposed to be subservient to her husband, to be chaste and quiet and not have friends that her husband doesn\u2019t like.\u00a0 She heard a lecture by some famous sheikh that a woman should only go out of her house three times in her life \u2013 when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies.\u00a0 She truly wants to be a good Muslimah so she clamps down on\u00a0 her personality.\u00a0 She smiles when she wants to laugh.\u00a0 She wears a huge all-encompassing overhead abaya when she really would rather wear something a bit less overwhelming.<\/p>\n
She locks up her jewelry so as not to make a display of herself.\u00a0 She makes a grocery list for her husband because he doesn\u2019t want her to go out, even though she knows how to shop the sales and he\u2019s for sure going to forget half of what\u2019s on the list.\u00a0 She stays off the computer, even though she really loves to keep up with her friends, because her husband gives her the stinkeye if she is online when he\u2019s home, even though he\u2019s on his iphone half the evening.\u00a0 She sits in the room while he watches his favorite show, not working on her stitching or reading because it \u201cdistracts\u201d him.\u00a0 She only cooks the ethnic food he likes even though she misses her favorite food.<\/p>\n
She stays away from the mosque because he says it\u2019s too much of a fitnah, though he goes every day to pray.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t go back to school to get the five hours she needs for her associate\u2019s degree because her husband says it\u2019s not necessary.\u00a0 She refrains from mentioning an idea she had for a business because he will say it\u2019s not a good idea.\u00a0 She goes without more than one abaya and a couple of thrift-store dresses because he doesn\u2019t want her to waste money on a lot of clothing since she never goes out.\u00a0 She stays inside the house instead of going out for a walk while her husband is at work because he wants her to stay \u201csafe\u201d behind a locked door when he\u2019s not there to keep an eye on her.\u00a0 She only calls her mom when he\u2019s not home because her mom is not Muslim and her husband disapproves of her.\u00a0 She builds a box around her that she has been told is piety, but which in reality is oppression.<\/p>\n
She thinks the problem is her.\u00a0 She thinks she\u2019s a bad Muslimah and she approaches despair.\u00a0 But she goes on, for the sake of the children, or because everybody knows that divorce is the most hated thing in Islam, and that if she speaks out and causes a divorce she\u2019ll be in the Hellfire.\u00a0 So she sits in her prison of piety and dies a little more each day, until only a shell is left behind.<\/p>\n
Wow, dang, you say.\u00a0 Overly dramatic much?\u00a0 What a big imagination you have!\u00a0 Um, no, not really.\u00a0 Everything, every single sentence in that last paragraph, I have seen a friend or acquaintance of mine go through.\u00a0 Right now, I know many of my Facebook friends and contacts, and real life friends in my local community, are in such unequal, unrealistic,\u00a0unislamic<\/em> relationships.\u00a0 They have been fed a line of crap by men who want to practice HISLAM and they are suffering because of it.<\/p>\n I am here to tell all my sisters in Islam that it doesn\u2019t have to be this way.\u00a0 There is room, among the one billion Muslims on the planet, for you and your very own personality.\u00a0 There is room for you.\u00a0 Room for the sister who snorts milk out of her mouth when she guffaws in a most unladylike fashion.\u00a0 Room for the woman who goes to university and wants to become an engineer or an architect or a doctor.\u00a0 Room for the woman who wants to homeschool her children and have a small business on the side.\u00a0 Room for the woman who complains like clockwork because the board at the mosque (all men) tries to relegate the women to the balcony even though there are disabled among them who can\u2019t manage the stairs.<\/p>\n Room for the woman who manages the checkbook, does the shopping, and expects her husband to talk with her before he spends money on a car or a business opportunity.\u00a0 Room for the woman who says, yes, we can send money back to your country, but we have to take care of ourselves as well.\u00a0 Room for the woman who has her own income and cannot be guilted into giving it to her husband to pay the light bill.\u00a0 Room for the woman who demands that her disabled child be accommodated at the Sunday school.\u00a0 Room for women who are not quiet.\u00a0 Women who are strong, believing, striving Muslimahs, not perfect by any stretch, but working day by day to improve.\u00a0 There is room for you and you are the role model of Islam, as much as the shy retiring, never-say-a-word-or-leave-the-house lady<\/p>\n Do NOT allow yourself to be boxed in.\u00a0 Do not think that changing certain\u00a0behaviors<\/em>(dressing modestly, not drinking alcohol and going to pubs) means you have to change your personality.\u00a0 If you are that somewhat loud woman who laughs at all the jokes, go ahead and laugh.\u00a0 If you are the woman who absolutely hates to clean, that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re a failure.\u00a0 If you want to be a career woman, then do it, but make damn sure you marry a man who will let you be yourself and fulfill your dreams.\u00a0 Make sure the man you marry will be your partner and your helper, not your judge and jailer.\u00a0 Marriage is not a master \/ servant relationship, but I see far too many women acting like it is.<\/p>\n I look to myself.\u00a0 My parents divorced when I was 14.\u00a0 I learned early on to take care of myself.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t always do such a great job of it, but heck, I was FOURTEEN.\u00a0 I got a job when I graduated high school, advanced rapidly to manager, bought myself a car, got an apartment, bought my own groceries, fixed flat tires, did laundry, kept the apartment looking good enough for friends to come over, started college, joined a gym, visited with my family, learned about different religions, stopped drinking alcohol and eating pork, stopped dating, learned about Islam, continued to work and drive and pay bills and live my life.\u00a0 So, how come I\u2019m supposed to just go all helpless when I get married?\u00a0 Am I to take all that life experience and set it aside in order to make tea and wait on my husband?\u00a0 Uh, no.<\/p>\n Today, after twelve years of marriage (and a lot of bumps in the road, because, c\u2019mon, we\u2019re only human), I am nurturing my writing with my husband as my biggest cheerleader.\u00a0 I have a full partnership with my husband in our business.\u00a0 I have primary responsibility for the kids.\u00a0 I cook, I clean (though we got some help with that now that I\u2019m working more), I tell hubby I\u2019m not cooking today because I worked all day so let\u2019s get pizza, I pay the bills.\u00a0 I know where EVERY PENNY of his, my, and our money is.\u00a0 My husband consults with me before he makes any big decision, except when he is around the house too much and decides to rearrange the furniture.\u00a0 I teach the kids their Islam and I call my mom (not as often as I should) and I do often sign off of the computer when hubby is home NOT because he gives me the stinkeye but because I want to spend time with him.\u00a0 I work on my cross stitch or crochet when we\u2019re watching some shoot-em-up bang-bang movie that he loves because I want to be in the room with him but I can\u2019t let my fingers sit still for two hours.\u00a0 I sometimes explain movie plots to him as the show goes on (No, honey, the chimpanzee in \u201cPlanet of the Apes\u201d can\u2019t really do all that because this movie is\u00a0fiction<\/em>).<\/p>\n When we were first married, sure, I was on my best Super Muslimah behavior for a while, but over time I loosened up because no one can sustain an act for that long.\u00a0 I let him see the real me and I guess it\u2019s okay because he hasn\u2019t kicked me to the curb yet.\u00a0 I am the real me because the real me is pretty okay and I see no need to chop up my personality into little bits and toss it into the wind.\u00a0 That way lies madness, and binge eating and sitting on the couch watching Jerry Springer and being unmotivated because nothing matters.\u00a0 No thanks.<\/p>\n I know a lot of you are married, a lot of you are divorced, a lot of you have never been married.\u00a0 I know a lot of my friends have good, strong, healthy marriages based on Islam and honest caring for one another.\u00a0 But I know there are a lot, way too many, dysfunctional marriages that have skewed toward the master \/ servant model and that is just not right.\u00a0 You are equal to a man in the sight of Allah.\u00a0 Yes, we should be chaste (men, too).\u00a0 Yes, we should pray and fast and not flirt and not watch TV programs with nudity and bad stuff and we should try to keep the house clean and make edible food if we are the main ones cooking.\u00a0 Yes, we should support our husbands and rub their backs after they\u2019ve had a long hard day at work.\u00a0 Yes, we should love his family and help them financially if they need it, and not buy expensive clothing or waste money on ten different purses or fancy shoes.\u00a0 Yes, we should be smart, and pious, and frugal, and helpmates for our spouses.\u00a0 But we are NOT servants.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t give up our hopes and dreams when we become wives.\u00a0 We don\u2019t stop being people.\u00a0 In a healthy marriage, your husband will see you had a rough night with the baby and he\u2019ll stop and pick up a roasted chicken so you don\u2019t have to cook.\u00a0 When you are feeling under the weather he\u2019ll mix you up some weird concoction recommended by his mother and stand over you while you drink it.\u00a0 He\u2019ll hold the baby so you can take a shower, he\u2019ll praise you when you go back to school, he\u2019ll rub YOUR back some days.\u00a0 He\u2019ll be your partner, not your boss.\u00a0 Wow, what a concept.<\/p>\n [divider]<\/p>\n The perfect Muslimah.\u00a0 She is shy and retiring.\u00a0 She covers from head to toe in voluminous black clothing, uncovering nothing of her face and only one eye to see her way on the road.\u00a0 She walks silently and with gaze downcast.\u00a0 She avoids talking and laughing so as not to allow the sound of her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,52],"tags":[1222,10,1221,579,1220,1223,1199],"class_list":["post-2680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family-marriage","category-perspective","tag-dreams","tag-featured","tag-ideal-muslimah","tag-marriage","tag-perfect-muslimah","tag-personality","tag-spouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2680"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2685,"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions\/2685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplyislam.sg\/muslimbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\nThis post was first published on Patheos on January 18, 2012 by Nancy Shehata<\/a>.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"