False Islamic Standards

Being born in a conservative societal set up yet having a pair of sane parents is one thing I haven’t been able to figure out yet as to whether it is unfortunate or a blessing. Well let’s just get to the main point. Because I do not behave in the way most Muslims do doesn’t give them a right to stereotype me. The sad part is that we the Muslims have a tendency of justifying everything we do through our religion. And we aren’t any better than those jihadis or Taliban who have brought such disgrace to Islam.

I belong to family where religious practices are very strict and I am expected to abide by certain things due to religious obligations. And even when people know I’m 22 and responsible for my own doings, I am asked to do certain things. Let’s take praying and covering my head as an example. So I am compelled to cover my head just because it is an essential in my religion. But hey! Didn’t Allah say that elders are supposed to guide the kids and not impose stuff on them? Sadly I have started developing a disliking for such practices.

I happened to go to a family wedding a few months back when I was decently dressed (and fully covered) but stopped by a relative auntie clad in burqa and got lectured on how I dress. According to her standards, I was not covered the way I should have been and she didn’t even consider how I would feel after her pointing fingers at me like that in public. Later when I wept in front of my parents and disclosed the whole story they questioned her as to why she did that. And this is what she had to say:
“Well she was not observing purdah and it was my duty to tell her that. I would have been a sinner otherwise. Islam makes us responsible to tell people what’s right and stop them from indulging into wrong doings.”

This is just one instance out of the innumerable ones that I’ve come across so far. I felt like asking her later “What about Huqooq ul Ibad auntie?” But her ignorant and carefree attitude stopped me from doing so.

Islam has made it a compulsion on us to practice it promptly but is Islam only about praying and covering ourselves? Isn’t observing rights of our fellows an integral part of Islamic practices too? Some would argue here that Huqooq Ullah are more important but are they forgetting that Allah forgives us if we ask for forgiveness after committing such sins but doesn’t forgive us if we usurp fellows’ rights or utter heart-rending comments for them until they forgive us themselves? On what basis do you prioritize Islamic practices and beliefs?

Not just this. There are so many other actions of ours that we do and justify them through Islamic principles. Our feudal lords when marry multiple women respond by saying they are permitted to do so by Allah. Our men not letting us take professional careers give examples of Bibi Fatima quoting that she was a good mother, a good daughter and a good wife but forget that she was a mentor to the women of the entire Muslim Ummah too. Didn’t she take the role of a mentor to impart Islamic knowledge to Muslim women? Wasn’t she the most educated of all women at that point in time?

I worry a lot about how we the Muslims have come across such practices as a misinterpretation of Islamic laws and guidelines. Is making your women cover themselves and restricting them to home Islamic in any way? Is imposing religion on a mature person Islamic in any way? Is denying women their basic rights Islamic? People need to go in an in depth research of the Islamic teachings and way of life and then preach and pass Fatwas.

A piece of advice: Be a paragon of Islamic way of life yourself instead of just correcting others around and meddling into other peoples’ personal spaces and the world will start respecting us as the followers of the great SYSTEM Islam.

Fiasco…

After a long, tedious and demanding month of mid terms, my friends and I decided to go out for Johnny English Reborn and decided to watch it at Cineplex rather than at Atrium Cinema, since it was convenient for all of us. We were surprised to see how the once cluttered cinema was now almost vacant without much traffic around. It was a week day thus we assumed that people were occupied with work. We bought 4 movie tickets and were told that the show will begin at 3 pm sharp. We waited for a few moments and then were directed to a hall only to discover that it was just the 4 of us in that cinema that day. For a moment we felt extremely royal at the thought that we would be able to enjoy without anyone judging us. We grabbed seats in the centre row and began munching on our pop corn sipping our drinks. 15 minutes passed and the show didn’t start. We started becoming restless since a couple of friends had been really exited about the release of this one. They demanded that the movie be played ASAP. It finally began around 3 30 pm. Excited for the movie, we ignored what had happened and started enjoying it. After a few moments the screen went all blank and we could only hear the actors chatting and the background sounds. Got that fixed. After a few moments, a little demarcation appeared on the screen dividing it into two halves. Later at least thrice the screen projection lost its actual position and the heads started appearing at the bottom while the remaining body went at the top. Once, even the entire movie stopped. All of us were really disappointed since we had been waiting for this one movie since like ages. Also the movie itself was not up to the expectations. After leaving the hall we decided never to go back to that place ever again. Cineplex lost another set of its customers. Unsatisfactory performance and inconsistent quality is one of the reasons why Cineplex has a declining market share and the remaining one is being gobbled up by Atrium too. Cineplex needs to revive its business strategy, else it will go extinct within no time.

Cultural Shocks

As I landed at the Medford Oregon airport, I started looking for a short curly haired woman who was to come to pick me up all the way from Ashland to drive me home. This was no one other than my host mother who had volunteered to host me for an entire academic year. There she was standing with a tag having my name printed on it. After going through customs and all the necesarry formalities, we got into the car to head back home. I went towards the left side of the car to take the seat next to the driving seat and was surprised to find out that the left side of the car had the steering wheel. “Annie, the right side!” She uttered. Oops. I had ignoringly taken the wrong side and felt like a moron for a slight matter of a second. Cultural shock, yeah? Anyhow, I went to the other side of the car, got in and shut the door behind me. I had not known that driving without seat belts was against the laws in the United States and I felt stupid again not knowing the fundamental regulations that shaped the American society. Another cultural shock. Man I was already terrified and was wondering what more was waiting for me to experience.

Anyway, the experience started shooting up when the car started moving on the road. As we began to chat about random things I told her how my life was back in my country. Flashback into some amazing memories is what I had experienced at that particular moment. I was recalling how my mom used to wake me up every morning to get to school on time and how I never picked up after myself and my maid had to do that. Also how I was used to taking naps in the afternoon. Not that I was not expecting any major changes in their lifestyle but I still had to go through a series of cultural shocks one after the other. I felt like a building getting those jerks that it gets when an earthquake has hit. It didn’t take me a lot of time to adjust to the American society as the people around me turned out to be extremely friendly and accepting, contrary to what I had thought. Yes, I had come all the way to the United States of America as an ambassador of my dearest country Pakistan. I was an exchange student who had to live for a whole academic session with an American host family that treated me like a member of their own family.

My first day at school was terribly surprising too. My elder host sister had already taken me to a visit around the campus that was divided into separate units of disciplines of education i.e. the Humanities block, the Science block etc. I had a school route map to assist me yet I had a very hard time getting to my first class. To make things worse, I discovered that day only that getting late to a class got you the status of tardy for that day and two tardies led to one absence….Oops. “I better become responsible enough now, else I’ll end up getting a TARDY every day,” I thought.

The next class was in a different block and I had only 10 minutes to get to the class. So I started running like crazy and got there on time, grabbed a chair and sat down. I could constantly hear students chatting about random stuff: parties, basket ball etc. Also overheard some guys checking girls and GUYS out. I had known about homosexual relationships being common in the US. Thank God :P Anyhow as I was listening to the gossips, I heard someone saying “Hey Gabe!” behind me. I turned around to see who Gabe was and was shocked to see a man moving towards the front part of the room. He was the teacher Mr. Gabriel. Oh shit. Yes many kids in the US call teachers by their first names. This was too much of a cultural shock for me. Everything from the school campus, the kids, the lockers, and the P.E. rooms to the the school cafeteria were so different. Not to forget the streets, the traffic rules, the layout of buildings and homes. But I got used to all that and within no time a year had almost gone by and I was preparing to come back home.

Now more than 6 years have passed and I still cannot forget those cultural shocks that I got when I went there. But most importantly I remember how I had changed perceptions, both of myself and the Americans and how my American family, friends, teachers and colleagues helped me to settle well amidst those cultural shocks.