The most unlikely writers are coming out as People of Faith, but this essay was particularly intriguing to me. Thanaa El-Naggar, at Gawker:
… I walk into a store. There’s a woman shopping in the store that I can clearly identify as Muslim. In some scenarios she’s standing behind the cash register tallying up totals and returning change to customers. She’s wearing a headscarf. It’s tightly fastened under her face where her head meets her neck. Arms covered to the wrists. Ankles modestly hidden behind loose fitting pants or a long, flowy dress. She’s Muslim. I know it. Everyone around her knows it. I stare at her briefly and think to myself, “She can’t tell if I’m staring at her because I think she is a spectacle or because I recognize something we share.”
I realize this must make her uncomfortable, so I look away. I want to say something, something that indicates I’m not staring because I’m not familiar with how she chooses to cover herself. Something that indicates that my mother dresses like her. That I grew up in an Arab state touching the Persian Gulf where the majority dresses like her. That I also face East and recite Quran when I pray.
“Should I greet her with A’salamu alaikum?” I ask myself. Then I look at what I picked out to wear on this day. A pair of distressed denim short shorts, a button-down Oxford shirt, and sandals. My hair is a big, curly entity on top of my head; still air-drying after my morning shower. Then I remember my two nose rings, one hugging my right nostril, the other snugly hanging around my septum. The rings have become a part of my face. I don’t notice them until I have to blow my nose or until I meet someone not accustomed to face piercings.
I decide not to say anything to her. I pretend that we have nothing in common and that I don’t understand her native tongue or the language in which she prays. The reason I don’t connect with her is that I’m not prepared for a possibly judgmental glance up and down my body. I don’t want to read her mind as she hesitantly responds, “Wa’alaikum a’salam.”…
However, I am a practicing Muslim. I pray (sometimes), fast, recite the travel supplication before I start my car’s engine, pay my zakkah (an annual charitable practice that is obligatory for all that can afford it) and, most importantly, I feel very Muslim. There are many like me. We don’t believe in a monolithic practice of Islam. We love Islam, and because we love it so much we refuse to reduce it to an inflexible and fossilized way of life. Yet we still don’t fit anywhere. We’re more comfortable passing for non-Muslims, if it saves us from one or more of the following: unsolicited warnings about the kind punishment that awaits us in hell, unwelcomed advice from a stranger that starts with “I am like your [insert relative],” or an impromptu lecture, straight out of a Wahhabi textbook I thought was nonsense at age 13…
El-Naggar quotes a Muslim sutra: “‘Lakum deenakum wa liya deen,’ meaning for you is your religion, and for me is my religion.” I never successfully embraced my parents’ Irish Catholic faith despite twelve years of parochial school (if you’ve seen the movie Doubt, that was my childhood), because attempting to practice that faith made me a mean, small-minded logic-chopper. I expanded into animism because attempting to practice animism, as I understand it and to the best of my abilities, made me a happier person and more useful to the general community. For me is my religion; for you is your religion — or not-religion, if so you choose.
Baud
Sometimes I think I should have been religious for the social networking aspect of it.
Major Major Major Major
I’ve always found animism appealing when I’m on mescaline.
Tree With Water
“I have never seen much point in getting heavy with stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don’t bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I… And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there’s a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots.”
Hunter Thompson
Hildebrand
My wife is a Lutheran pastor. She just started at a new congregation a couple of weeks ago. During the Q&A after the first service (a way of getting to know the new pastor better), one of the confirmation/catechism kids asked if it was okay that they didn’t quite believe everything in the creeds. She said, ‘absolutely, questioning and doubt is a real part of who we are – the most dangerous people are the ones who have stopped asking questions because they think they have all the answers, that includes questions about God and faith and the creeds.’ A good number of folks said later how refreshing it was to hear such an answer.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tree With Water:
Good quote, and I can see a lot of sense in that. As long as they’re not interfering with other people they can follow whatever’s in their head for all I care. It’s not like any of us has a lock on the truth, whatever that is.
Ruckus
@Hildebrand:
I think many people are afraid to question religion. It is such a huge part of any culture that I’m sure many are amazed that questions can even be asked. This society is one of the few that has at least attempted to open itself up to whatever you want to believe. Or not believe. I don’t know that this country has ever really grasped the significance of a separation like ours is supposed to be. I think if we more of us did this would be a much better place.
Splitting Image
Among Catholics, there is a disparaging term used to describe people who follow some but not all of the religion’s doctrine: “Cafeteria Catholics”, implying that they pick and choose which parts of the religion they follow like they were ordering at a lunch counter.
Muslims are probably the most Catholic-like people in the world outside of Christianity in this sense, although they do have their Opus Dei types. People who scrupulously document the moral failings of everyone else, especially men who go on about what women ought to be doing or not doing, are usually the least consistent practitioners of all.
Anne Laurie
@Hildebrand: For your wife:
Botsplainer
@Splitting Image:
Most of the Muslims I interact with routinely are the equivalent of Easter-Christmas-Wedding-Baptism-Funeral Christians. They’re not devout and participate on the big events like Eid and Ramadan just because, and family celebrations because they want to. They drink, live lives and raise their families like Westerners; their women tend to be very much in control of their own destinies and aren’t afraid to punt them out.
Hildebrand
@Anne Laurie: We have discovered that Christianity works best when you simply try to do the things that Jesus of Nazareth fellow said you should do – feed, clothe, visit, welcome, forgive, love. Show, don’t tell, also works.
aimai
Love the essay, would love to meet the writer sometime. She sounds lovely. I feel the same way about my religion. So say we all.
Ruckus
@aimai:
Didn’t go to the link, is this a man or a woman? I got man but had no real reason to, I could have just as easily gotten woman from the writing.
And agree on the sentiment.
karen
My aide is Muslim, from Ethiopia. She wears a headscarf, a long dress with long sleeves and boots so nothing is revealed. She is religious but not rigidly so. She has gone to school to become a nurse and I think that if she was a wahabi (sp) Muslim she wouldn’t have been allowed to go to school. She’s shown me that just like there are different sects of Judaism, there must be different sects of Islam as well.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Splitting Image:
The people who use that sneer are mostly conservative Catholics who ignore the church’s teachings against capital punishment and war. They’re making their own cafeteria choices but like to claim that they aren’t, or that their cafeteria choices are better than the liberal ones.
Tree With Water
@Splitting Image: To the day I die I will thank God that my altar boy father turned his back on the Catholic church when he attained the age of reason. Although so enlightened, he shocked my mother in the final year of his long life by wondering aloud if he should re-up with Rome. My mom thought poorly of the idea and said as much, and that’s the last she ever heard of it. I was shocked too when she told me about it after his death.
SarahT
Read the Gawker essay last week & just loved it. So glad you’ve posted it here.
schrodinger's cat
My problem with the religious is that many of them try to force their choices on to you or try to convince you how their version of god/spirituality is the right one.
Bonnie
I was raised in a protestant church and wasn’t much interested in the Roman Catholic religion as I saw it growing up in the 50s and 60s. But, after reading about its history and seeing movies such as Oranges & Sunshine, Philomena, and The Magdalene Sisters, I have grown to absolutely loath that church and its doctrine. Add the pedophilia that runs rampant and my loathing turns to disgust. It appears to me that the Roman Catholic church has hurt, harrassed, humiliated, and destroyed more children than it has ever helped. I hope all those nuns and priests who committed those atrocities are rotting in hell.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
As the Louvin Brothers said, “Others find pleasure in things I despise”.
Some people like going to church. Of course, many go because they think they are supposed to. Personally, I have hated going to church as long as I can remember.
I don’t think that anything convinces me that that there is not a God so much as going to church.
Though I sometimes think I might be willing if I could find a secular Yeshuan church. One that actually promoted following the teachings of the man they call Jesus and not those of Saul of Tarsus.
schrodinger's cat
Three of my housemates when I was in school were Muslim. A brother and sister from Pakistan and a Turkish guy, who was also in Physics, there was another Irish Catholic nursing student. We all got along well. The Muslim woman from Pakistan was religious, did not wear a head scarf but said her prayers before eating dinner, she was also a feminist. The Turkish guy was an atheist.
The Sufi version of Islam practiced in India is extremely tolerant and most Indian Muslim women I have known only cover their heads when they pray. I also love Urdu poetry.
No Muslim person has ever tried to proselytize me or tell me what I needed to do to save my soul but I have been at the receiving end of such talks from evangelical Christians and my MIL who is a devout Hindu.
satby
@Bonnie: No longer a Catholic, but “that church” and it’s doctrine are not the acts of those that abused the trust of their congregation. I don’t agree with all the doctrine, and I haven’t been a Catholic since age 13, but just like we don’t tar Islam with all the acts of it’s extremist believers or Protestantism with the Westboro crowd, the Catholic Church doctrine is not it’s abusive clergy. [They do have to answer for how they tried to cover it up.]
Hellene
I read Ana Marie Cox’s confession. She basically says she turned off critical thinking and now thinks she has a personal relationship with someone who’s supposed to have come back from the dead 2,000 years ago — although she confesses she is not actually familiar with anything he said.
I’ve marveled over the years at how this woman managed to turn a stint as a blogger for a popular blog talking about anal sex and politics into a multi-media career. She wasn’t smart and wasn’t particularly well-informed. There were so many other early bloggers who were so much better (hint: Digby!) in every conceivable way but were never embraced by the mainstream media in the same way.
Ana Marie Cox is not very smart and certainly not a reflective person. If anyone has any doubt, go read her christian apologetic. Platitudes and pathetic drivel. The very idea of “coming out” as nothing more than just another christian in a nation dominated by christians is too insulting for words.
fuckwit
Mu.
Snarkworth
El-Naggar quotes a Muslim sutra:
I think you mean a sura. Sutras are found in Hindu and Buddhist texts.
/pedant
sparrow
@Hellene: But it fits their pathetic worldview as perpetual victims.
Linnaeus
I had little exposure to religion growing up, but what I did have came mostly from my grandmother, who belongs to the United Church of Christ. So I’ve gotten a good sense over the years of what the UCC is like, and it’s a pretty open church. Were I ever to follow a religion (not likely), it would probably be that one.
Randy P
@Splitting Image:
I find your comment reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “Christian”, from “The Devil’s Dictionary”:
Hildebrand
@Hellene: Conservative/Fundamentalist Christians are very quick to deny the title of believer for anyone who doesn’t fit their mold (e.g. see what they say about Obama), and frankly their words and actions have dragged Christianity through the mud to the point of it being seen as ridiculous or dangerous by many. I imagine that Ms. Cox feels that many of her progressive readers will simply assume that any professed Christian is of the Mike Huckabee variety, and wanted to try to forestall such thoughts about her.
You may find this hard to believe, but there are entire denominations of Christians out there who have been laboring for quite some time to atone for the failings of previous generations (the Lutheran-Jewish dialog and reconciliation of the late 70s and early 80s being a good example).
But it is the dangerous and the demagogue who gets in the news – people just going about their business, doing their best to be good to the people in their communities, not shoving their faith down people’s throats, just trying to live it the best they can – from any religion – don’t make the papers.
chrome agnomen
@Randy P: i have owned one copy or another of that book since my dad showed it to me back in 1957 when i was a wee lad.
Wally Ballou
@Hildebrand: Even if you hadn’t specified that the pastor was your wife (and, ergo, a woman), I would’ve guessed the Lutheran denomination as ELCA. You certainly wouldn’t have heard that kind of response in the LCMS church of my youth.
Morzer
And judging by the ever greater number of inhabitants of Casa Cole, John is expanding into animalism.
maurinsky
Raised in a very Irish-Catholic family, I was a skeptic from the first time I heard the story of Adam and Eve, which I thought was ridiculous, since I had lots of siblings and I already knew that women were the ones who made other people, not men’s ribs. My mother was very worried for my soul and asked her two older sisters, both Franciscan nuns, for advice, and they said pretty much what Hildebrand’s wife said.
I am an atheist. I don’t believe in any God. I spend a ridiculous amount of time in church, though, because I sing in a church for money. Yesterday’s gospel was all about how awesome death is because heaven, and how great it was that God killed his own son to save us from sin (eliding over the fact that we keep finding new and creative ways to “sin”). It still sounds insane to me all these years later. I will never understand how someone else’s suffering and death is a gift to anyone.
Chris
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
This. Cafeteria Catholicism is quite uncontroversial, as long as you’re picking and discarding all the same items as the right wingers. I’ve had it explained to me by various Catholics that abortion and gay marriage are important political issues, and that yes, of course helping the poor is important too, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the government should help the poor, it’s important to let everyone settle that one in accordance with their own conscience… And the same, presumably, for the death penalty, and torture, and war of aggression, and the environment, and…
@satby:
I would have to agree with this, but it doesn’t really make me feel better.
When I ultimately peaced out of Catholicism, it wasn’t even because of the problems I had with its doctrine. It was because of all the tribal bullshit that went with the community – all the unquestioned assumptions that weren’t actually in the doctrine. The above assumption that all good Catholics should be Republican or at least anti-Democrat is one. The constant persecution complex about how terrible Catholics have it in this godless, secular society (which affords them more freedoms than most Catholic societies have throughout history). The repeated whining about how the child abuse scandal is all blown out of proportion and it’s all a big conspiracy because people just hate Catholics. It’s all stuff that doesn’t actually have any doctrinal basis, but at least in the places I’ve been, is at least as big a part of the worldview as anything in the Bible or the catechism. Question it and it’s like farting in church.
And part of the reason I’m reluctant to get back into a religious community, even a different one, is the feeling that that sort of tribalist horsecrap is going to be there in some form or other no matter where I go – I’ve heard enough about it in other religions from people who grew up inside them. Judaism? A close friend of mine is a lapsed Reform Jew whose basic summary of his past congregation is “yeah, we can take or leave Jewish doctrine, we’re not at all sure about this ‘God’ thing, but Israel, Israel’s infallible.” Heh. Yeah, just what I need. Islam? Heard similar things from people who grew up inside the Islamic faith too – that obsession with the crimes of the West and Israel, and the growth of Islamophobia in these societies, offers a convenient reason to ignore and sideline discussion and criticism of the extremely real problems in conservative Islamic societies. (“Yes, yes, Saudi Arabia still has honor killings, but LOOK OVER THERE A JEWISH SETTLER!”)
It’s not even the religions themselves I have a problem with. The doctrines are what they are – never going to be one that I totally agree with anywhere. But the speed with which religious groups just devolve into Montagues and Capulets, that I really have no interest in. And it seems to be freaking everywhere.
Gus
@maurinsky: You have to understand ancient societies. Christ is a religious sacrifice, much as in most ancient religions, they sacrificed animals to their gods, burned (or cooked) the flesh and ate it, a ritual sharing of a meal with the gods. Thus “Lamb of God” and “this is my body, take and eat.” I’m not saying it makes sense, but that is the background, as far as I know.
maurinsky
@Chris – the assumptions in Catholicism do differ from parish to parish. I’m sure there are a fair amount of Republicans in the church where I sing, but I know most of the choir members are much more liberal.
@Gus – I understand what they did in ancient societies. I don’t understand why people still think that one person suffering and dying makes up for other people doing bad things. I will forever be a person who walked from Omelas!
Gus
@maurinsky: Like I said, I didn’t say it made sense. :) It’s a weird amalgam of ancient myths and beliefs. I don’t get it myself (despite a very Catholic upbringing).
Jado
@schrodinger’s cat:
If YOU disagree, how are THEY supposed to remain certain of their own opinions? If they can’t convince you, how will they continue to convince themselves?
Paul in KY
@Hellene: Digby didn’t blog about anal sex, that was the flaw in her business plan, it appears.
boatboy_srq
@Hildebrand: Most of the older Protestant denominations rely heavily on doubt – since after all it was doubt that made them Protest in the first place. Modern FundiEvangelist Xtianity conveniently forgets that its entire existence is only possible because somebody way back when didn’t believe the Catholic priesthood (most point to Martin Luther, though there are other resources).
@Tree With Water: I was the token Protestant in my Catholic school. If anything, that reinforced my doubting, especially as differences in interpretation of Scripture came to light as I got older. My own faith is strong (enough) – but the distinctions improved my skepticism significantly. The experience was especially useful later at university, when facing down my certainty-stricken SBC classmates.
boatboy_srq
@schrodinger’s cat: “Evangelism” (in its absolute sense, that is the spreading of the faith) is a requirement of Christianity, and I believe Islam as well. However, the original idea in Christianity was preaching to peoples who had not been previously exposed (Roman and post-Roman Europeans, Native Americans, Asians, Africans etc). That push at least had the virtue of bringing the philosophy to those places for the first time. The “evangelism” of the modern age, however, has the disturbing element of “preaching to the converted”: much of modern missionary work consists of FundiEvangelist efforts to convert the heathen in places like Spain and Italy – which heard the Word nearly two centuries ago, thank-you-very-much, and aren’t especially inclined to react positively when they’re treated like the Great unWashed Masses. It’s no great surprise that Fundie missionaries are the basis for so much of the “repression of Christians” clamor when their perceptions are so out of whack and when their target audience is often what the rest of Christendom considers its home turf.
pseudonymous in nc
@Hellene:
Ana Marie Cox was writing (incisively, and well) for suck.com long before Wonkette (or blogs, for that matter). She’s been completely open about her steps and missteps in journalism. Your grapes, they are sour.