Alhumdulilah. Many months back my brother-in-law gave me a wonderful textbook  that has 23 Surahs, their translation, and transliteration. I was studying it a bit back in fall ’07 but I got busy with school. Now since it is summer I am studying again, and so far it has been such a success. With a cd of the recitation of the Quran, I plan to learn all 23 surahs in this book in preferably 23 weeks. But we shall see how much I actually learn (I’m hoping for a t least 12).

For the most part these Surahs are very short, but you have to understand that I am not merely learning how to recite them. Yes, I blog before you saying that I am also learning the translation of these Surahs as well. ::GASP::

Now you may wonder why is that so shocking? Why exactly should you be shocked by such an ambition? Well I mean to point this out because from my experience, learning how to recite Surahs of the Quran has pretty much stopped right there. I have found myself several times in Quran classes where all you learn is to recite, but never learn its translation. And I really feel that this is the sentiment for most families and even amoung most Quran schools across the United States.

Case in point: My cousins. My cousins have spent weekend after weekend of their childhood going to Quran school. And praise be to God they can read Arabic very well! My eldest cousin of the group can read it really well and you should see the way that she can just zoom through it. But do they know its translation? No. They just know how to put this letter with this vowel and read! That’s it. And i bet that if you were to ask most Muslims in the U.S. of A. the meaning of Al-Fatiha and whatever other surahs they may know they couldn’t tell you.

Because of this I have to say that I have pretty much never been interested in Quran school. And if you have a very smart child, who is interested in foreign language, can read Arabic somewhat (doesn’t even have to be great), and yet you find that he or she can’t stand getting up for Quran school…. this is probably the reason why. My interests stopped once I was able to put some letters and vowel sounds together. After that, I wanted to learn the meaning— because obviously that would improve my reading, but that never happened. I thought everything else was foolishness and a waste of time. Because of this my arabic obviously did not benefit, and I would say that I am definitly not at an advanced level and I am just out of the woods of a beginners letter. I often start off going syllable by syllable first and then I piece it all together, and after maybe 10 tries I can read it pretty smoothly (but not perfect).

I am not even half-way impressed when I hear of another party being thrown for someone who has “memorized” the Quran and yet they don’t even know it’s translation. Do they really know the Quran? What do they know about the oneness of God? What do they know about the Prophets? What do they know about heaven? hell? Mary? Jesus? Arabham? I mean they have the book right in their head, what do you mean they can’t tell you?

I mean, i know that there are people looking down on me because I know less than 5 surahs myself. But I don’t have much to look up at them when they know so many and can’t give me a translation. But people don’t understand the problem with this. I don’t understand why, but they don’t. Can someone shed any light?

Anyway, like I said I am really trying to learn and it is such a wonderful experience. The Quran is very repetitive so sometimes I catch myself understanding many of the words that I am reading in a new Surah. And after I break it all down, remember the transliteration and all of the good stuff, I really understand what I am saying when I am reciting Arabic at the same time. WEE!

I hope that I can pass on this sort of experience when I have children. I think that what I have realized that because of where I am at, where i plan to be, I have no real interest in learning Arabic for conversation. I am not in Arab land, don’t know many Arabs, never plan to live in an arabic speaking country. But I will be completly thrill if I learned hte Quran and its meaning too!

Anwyays, for information about this textbook that I am using it’s:

“Twenty Three Surahs, Plus Ayatul Kursi and Duas from the Holy Quran: With English Translations and Transliteration”

Printed by:

A-1 Printing and Graphics, Inc.

22873 Lockness Av.

 Torrance, CA (California) 90501

310-530-6777

www.a1prints.com

I called them but it wasn’t clear if they were a secular printing company (who just happened to print some Muslim stuff) or a Muslim-based printing company. Either way their print job is really good.

On top of that that preface of this book says that “Anyone wishing to make copies may do so without permission”. So this would be great for anyone who would like to just order one, and yet share with others by making copies (but it would be good to support the people who composed the textbook together by buying as much as reasonably can).

Also I have that one was printed in ”06/05″ (whatever that means) and is the “Second Edition 2m” (whatever that means too). Just for some details if you would like the exact copy I have, which I believe is really good because it starts off with very short Surahs.

salaam

So my last post and some other reads got me thinking. What kind of feminist am I?

I think that all that I can say is that I’m just a feminist that is particularly concerned over Muslim issues. I say this because when it comes to women issues I am most concerned over what Muslim women face in the Muslim community. Very rarely do I look at issues that are prevalent in a secular society as “women” issues. Just recently I started thinking of abortion and how that may affect me as a woman, since it does concern the female body.

I am constantly reminded of the things that women face and must overcome when it comes to the Muslim community. The gender apartheid— yes, I said, “apartheid”—, the expectations, the limitations, and often the shame that many Muslims put on women.

Just two weeks ago I was at a bbq and there I really felt looked down on by the men. I wanted a hamburger, and the man grilling barely could acknowledge me and practically shunned me as he insisted that it was “upstairs”, which it was not. I ended up waiting at the top for about 20 minutes as the men happily grilled and talked. Finally I went back down and requested my hamburger, which was done and had been sitting there fore about 5 minutes. This time another gentlemen looked as if he was hiding his shocked that I was back down there.

Attitudes like that, that try to dictate where I should and should not be because I am a woman, piss me off. And I say this because I doubt these men treat non-Muslim women the same way. It is when they are around Muslim women they start acting foolishly and as if we are the ultimate sin! As if we are not even human and are not even worthed a breath of “As Salaam Alaikum”. Seriously.

I guess that you can describe me as an agry Muslim woman when it comes to the way that men and women act towards one another. It’s like no matter what, I am still looked as a sex object.

This is why I don’t believe in much of the hype that Muslims like to stress about modesty. Becuase often our actions still prove that we (women) are still treated like sex objects. For instance, I am a married woman. But if a man can barely look at me, speak to me, acknowledge me, etc what does it say? Not only does it say that he think we are not two equals, but frankly its saying that I am still a SEX OBJECT to him. Truly if these dress codes that Muslims have made up were about liberating women from being looked at sex objects, niqabis would be drinking coffee with Muslim men all of the time.

Another issue that concerns me is that Muslim women are constantly taking the blame and told to make sacrifices (much like other women in this world). For example, I can imagine right now that someone who may be reading this and does not agree with the last paragraph would say, “Well if people [which really means women] wore their hijabs correctly they could, but they don’t.” Haven’t you heard this excuse too? So what it says is that we cannot even be reasonably presentable no matter how hard we may try. STILL we are sex objects. Especially when some people barely want to cross the street to get to their cars because there are men near (yes, I’ve witnessed this).

Anyways… that’s my rant for the day.

peace

Fox News is reporting that in France there was a marriage between Muslims that was annulled because the woman was not a vigin:

The annulment of a young Muslim couple’s marriage because the bride was not a virgin has caused anger in France, prompting President Sarkozy’s party to call for a change in the law.

The decision by a court in Lille was condemned by the government, media, feminists and civil rights organizations after it was reported in a legal journal on Thursday.

The case, which had previously gone unreported, involved an engineer in his 30s, named only as “Mr. X,” who married “Ms. Y,” a student nurse in her 20s, in 2006.

The wedding night party was still under way at the family’s home in Roubaix when the groom came down from the bedroom complaining that his bride was not a virgin. He could not display the blood-stained sheet that is traditionally exhibited as proof of the bride’s “purity.”

The husband went to court the following morning and was granted an annulment on the grounds that his bride had deceived him on “one of the essential elements” of the marriage. The woman then acknowledged that she had led her groom to believe that she was a virgin when she had already had sexual intercourse. She did not oppose the annulment.

Critics ran out of superlatives to condemn what they depicted as a dangerous aberration. Valérie Létard, Minister for Women’s Rights, said that she was “shocked to see that today in France the civil law can be used to diminish the status of women”.

Requests for annulments have risen sharply to nearly 2,000 a year in France, but experts could recall no case involving non-virginity. source

Now the only thing that I find repulsive about this situation is that it appears that the family still believes that you can predict a woman’s virginity by the tearing of the hymen. This sort of tradition has lead to the oppression of women and even the death of many! Some hymens are really “strong” and do not tear easily, on top of that there are plenty of women who have torn their hymen during other activities, such as stretching, sports, etc, etc. BUT I would like to say, being the sceptic, that this article doesn’t really make it clear if the “sheet” ever, in anyway, existed. Are they just trying to apply that to them because of other backward stories that have involved bloody-less sheet? And WOW, are these people, during thier wedding parties, really having sex with the family and friends downstairs? WHOA.

But as far as I am concerned the only thing that bothers me about this story is some sort of “test”.

I can’t really find any outrage over a man divorcing his wife because she LIED about her sexual history. Yes, she did. Now I would be upset if a man married a woman who he knew wasn’t a virgin, and then divorced her over this reason. But is it really wrong for a man to divorce a woman because she wasn’t a virgin, when it is discovered that he was decieved? I don’t think so.

In my head I like to think of myself as a feminist because I care about uplifting the social and economic status of women, but I’ve never been a part of any organized system or any specific version of it so I too am a sceptic of this very fanatical sort of feminism that clearly dismisses one’s sexual history as if sexual partners have no right to know about it. Let’s think about AIDS people.

These same feminist would be upset if it was socially OK for men to screw as many people as they like and then pass as a virgin, decieving their wives.

I hate to sound like an elitist, but I just can’t find how any person who believes that lying is wrong and one should remain a virgin before marrige would think that his reason for divorcing her is crazy.

Is virginity really no longer an issue even in Western society? Does no one value it anymore? I don’t believe so, this is why I believe that these feminist, and anyone else who thinks that is wrong, are really out of touch and represent something fanatical!

I mean sure, there is a whole lot of OPEN fornication in Western society… but just because someone does something it doesn’t mean that they don’t value the other— it’s just that something has become more socially acceptable. I mean you can find many fornicators who often wish that they’d remain a virgin, and many of them go as far as saying that their actions is do to “weakness”. So even amoung fornicators, i would bet, that there are is a really good portion of them that do value and understand the whole concept of “virginity” and don’t actually think of it as a 14th century way of life before marriage.

I mean we can all examine this case and really get into a ”what does it mean” conversation…. You know, how are women treated when it comes to sex in this community? Are they allowed to be sexual beings? Are they forever labeled as a “whore” if they fornicated just once, which happened to happen 35 years ago, but the community clearly remembers it? Are they even labeled a “whore” if they dared approached their husbands for sex? Sure, that could reveal a big picture. But still, I can’t be mad at a man who was lied to.

I mean I’m not saying that virgintiy is the deciding factor for me when it comes to starting or ending a marraige. BUT I do understand that are some people who are virgins who would like marry a virgin. Now as for once having been married, and you still want a virgin? That’s greedy, and matter of fact I DO have a problem with that. There are many divorced people out there, so you do’t have to settle for a fornicator. High standards are not neccesarily good standards.

And yes people, I am going to label this as a Islamophobic… something I don’t use often at all. Muslim valuing virginity, how awful!

I came across this picture here, and read an article about it here.

Now I guess this occured in February where African nations were playing for the African Cup in soccer. It’s May now so I’m quite sure I am late on speaking on this subject, but still. After reading the article and some of the comments left, I am left thinking of how this is really ironic. And really how it shows something deeper, which I am not applying to this player, but it really does show something… it starts with an “r”.

This player was playing against Sudan.

I’m just saying… if you know what I mean. He was playing against Sudan and this is what he came up with?

Sure, Gazans have it really bad… but compared to other people, they have it good, I mean when it comes to publicity and all. Muslims probably cheered over this when this happened, Muslims who don’t have anything to do with Gaza. Did any of them think of what country he was playing against?

Am I the only one who could see how this could be a really big slap in the face to the Sudanese players?

I mean you can’t protest against everything, but wow.

I know it’s a competition but can’t you show some solidarity with the people you are playing against?

African Cup. African Nations. Yet still Arab-nonAFrican issues

And i only mention this because I found this because I heard about it through Muslims, and most of the players on both teams are likely to be Muslim. (and people love to talk about Gaza and pass it off as a Muslim issue)

So I know that I said that I would not be blogging until July 1st, which will be over the Quran, but I have come across something that is too good to not blog about and that is Umar Lee’s series about the feminization of Muslim men. Plans have changed and I have decided to blog about his analysis which I intend to do with every part of the series. Yay!

Just in case you do not know anything about Lee, Lee is a white-American Muslim convert. I discovered Lee through some “bean pie” documentary, where I was totally floored by his “blackness”— lol, his voice, his posture, his clothes all read “black” to me. So I went to his blog and started reading it and so far it is really good. He’s even a friend of mines on facebook, but he never says “hi”sa on my wall so I feel neglected. But that’s all that I know about him so there. Now on topic.

In the first blog of his series, Lee comapares Baltimore men with D.C. men. which he finds the two areas having two different cultures with very little in common. I would say that it isn’t until his fourth paragraph that he begins to talk about the “feminization” of men, which he begins by examining white men.

The following in bold (and anything else in this blog) I only assume he considers feminine: “Males walking around in tight shirts, coochie-cutter jeans, and man-bags chatting away on I-phones in high-pitched voices on their way to overpriced coffee shops and restaurants.” (para 4)

He beleives that this sort of behavior makes it hard to distinguish between the straight man and the gay man, and he also believe that this behavior has infiltrated amoung men from different age groups. These men, according to Lee, admit to not having traditional lifestyles (which I have no reason to doubt).

Now this particularly analysis raises major flags to me. The reason is because Lee goes on to say that these men reject religion, God (atheism), and embrace sexual deviancy which he believes Muslim males in that area are graviating towards.

My question are:

Is he attributing atheism to a feminine attitude? WHAT?!

What does he mean by sexual deviancy? If he means gay male behavior then I will give him that because even I would say that attraction towards a male is a feminine attitude since it is forbidden in Islam to practice your lust with people of the same sex. But if he means promiscuity, then I believe that it is completly wrong for him to attribute promiscious behavior to a feminine behavior. In the Quran these is no sex that is blamed for promiscuity. On top of that both men and women are commanded to lower their gaze. I mean, if women were really the promiscuous then I would only think that it would be women who be commanded to lower their gaze (but I am not God so I don’t know!), as it would be men who could handle their attraction farely well. On a cultural note– I would just like to say that this idea really contradicts the behavior of many Muslim communities. If women are really thought of as being the promiscious ones then I would only say that it would be the men covering up in niqabs and stressing how important it is to only show their beauty to their wives (but i guess a woman could be promiscious with her looks).

Is tight clothing really a feminine thing in Islam? Again there is nothing in the Quran that would suggest that it is (please give me the verse if I am wrong). On a cultural note— again this idea really contradicts the behavior of many Muslim women, since many of them try to wear very loose clothing. Even at female-only parties I don’t think I’ve ever really seen anything outrageously tight on them.

He thinks of man-bags as feminine, but what does he think of thobes (man-dress)? Again this is a cultural standard and not an Islamic one. And I don’t mean to say that we should ignore cultural behavior, but when trying to apply an idea of what “Muslim-Male Masculinity” should be, this should surely be backed up by the Quran and not by people’s idea of how men and women should behave. Don’t get me wrong I can see how he can think of a man-bag as being feminine, but as a Western man I just think that he would be harping more about Muslim [American] boys wearing man-dresses (thobes) first.

In Lee’s fifth paragraph he writes about the “feminization” of black males. He says:

How did the DC black male get this way? I think of his path to feminization as different than the white male. Unlike the white male this male is not a product of an anti-male/boy public education system and more than likely were not the sons of middle-class soccer moms who worshiped at the altar of secular anti-male/boy academia and child psychology. No, this male grew-up without a father, and some of their mothers did the best they could do and taught them how to be the best human they could be. Unfortunately, that human is a woman and they are men, so we have a lot of young black men in DC, gay and straight, who look, act and speak like women. (para 6)

I am not going to lie. I to believe that boys need postive male role models in their life. And if young boys are around women long enough, then yup they are going to possess the ways of a woman, culturally.

But Lee goes on to say that Muslim males can turn to the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, as he beleives in hadiths. But I don’t think that would solve his issue with males talking in high pitched voices, wearing man-bags, attending overpriced coffee shops and restaurants, and chatting on their I-phones… (i don’t know what, or which, hadiths hadith followers follow… but I mean, wow, if there really are hadiths covering those too).

Lee also says:

We have a lot of black Muslim boys with long braids in the DC area sashaying around the Masjid behaving in this way (para 5)

Aren’t their hadiths that claim the Prophet Muhammad had long hair? google it

Now besides my concerns that he may be contributing promiscuity and lack of religion as feminine, I think that his 7th paragaph raises some big red flags too

Men work hard so they look hard and are toughened for the battles of life and are well-conditioned to be leaders. They spend more time repairing old couches or building them than they do on a shrinks couch

On men should be conditioned to be leaders, I agree. I believe that in Islam we are all suppose to be conditioned to be leaders becaues we are responsible for ownselves and we are not suppose to just blindly follow anyone. We have to think for ourselves. But I don’t think that not being conditioned to be leader is “feminine”. Women are to be leaders too!

::sighs:: Now I don’t really know what to say about Lee and the “shrink couch” comment, but I do believe that, that comment is dangerous because it can lead, and matter of fact is leading, a lot of black [Muslim] men to a thug mentality. Are we really saying that men should not be emotional? Men shouldn’t express their problems and try to heal them? Does this not lead to the abuse of women? Does this not lead to the abuse of children? Does this not lead to families being unhappy?

::sighs::

I think that Lee’s first entry was very interesting but as you can see I have found many issues with it. Again, I can agree with much on a human-cultural aspect of it. But I cannot agree with most of it at all when it comes to Islam because for the most part ideas of feminine and masculine attitudes are not mentioned in the Quran. Much of this perception depends on a person’s culture. Like I said in a comment I left to Lee, I can completly agree with him if this stuff was actually mentioned in the Quran… and I could understand his way of thinking if he brought up hadiths. Unfortunantly Lee has not mentioned any Quran verses to support his ideas of what is leading to the feminization of Muslim men. Neither has he mentioned any hadiths, so I can understand his way of thinking. Thus this really isn’t good enough to be considered a Muslim standard of how Muslim males should and shouldn’t be.

salaam

 Reader Rasheeed Moore writes:

But forget about homosexual or the new term metrosexual behaivor back in the day they used to say he seems like he’s got a little sugar in his tank. Now we have coined the term metrosexual. All these behaivors are deviations that have become socially acceptable due to the fact that they are wide spread. But while seemingly innocent the problem of metrosexual and homosexual men cut’s deeper and that is boys no longer have MEN to look up to so they grow up weak.

So readers, what do you think of the comments in bold? How should we view change? Being “metrosexual” basically means a heterosexual man enjoying what is often thought of as feminie interests, such as fashion or even making sure your nails are clean. So how should we as a society approach change when it comes social behaviors changing? Should we condemn them? When is it ok to say “well, I guess that’s now acceptable”? How long do we hold on to our traditions and rules of conduct, when obviously there are new ideas of what should be socially acceptable, particularly amoung the youth? (i want you all to think of this when there is NO evidence from the Quran that would condemn either behavior)

I have decided that beginning July 1st, I will begin blogging the Quran. I do this to invite everyone to Islam and discover the truth.

Until then I will focus on other things going in my life and hopefully I will have those things up and running by then.

As Salaam Alaikum