I won’t lie – when I embraced Islam I still believed this! No damn way was I going to marry a stranger! I couldn’t think of a bigger disaster, and I was relieved that much of current South African Muslim society ended up doing the dating before marriage thing. Sure, you’re not allowed to SAY you think it’s a super dumb idea to marry someone you don’t really know – but you can always think it, believe it, and secretly stand by it.

As a new Muslim I was aware that I probably needed some time to just be Muslim and learn what that really entailed before I jumped into being a wife too, even though that’s what everyone kept chirping in my ear (when are you getting married? You know my son’s such a great guy, you should meet him… etc. etc. etc….). My plan was to meet a Muslim guy who shared my outlook on life, get to know him well enough to certainly say that I knew everything about him (no surprises) and then get married. I had so many ideas in my head about how this would play out, there was not even a sliver of doubt in my mind that things would happen differently. I knew what God’s plan was for me. Well, did I? I told myself I’d go with God’s plan, but secretly I was scared that it wouldn’t be what I wanted. So I went with my plan, and called it God’s plan.

It wasn’t a success, but maybe it was God’s plan to let me try it my way first. Maybe I would have had crazy doubts afterwards if I hadn’t first tried it my way. I mean I’m always right (hahah). So I did the dating thing, but it came with grey areas. Huge, grey misty areas, too many questions, and the inability to label the experience drove me mad. What were we doing? So I grazed my knees, confused the hell out of myself and eventually swore off men entirely.

I think I spent a full 2 weeks crying my eyes out and in deep prayer when God decided we were going to do things a different way. Without any intention from my side for romance or even friendship, a man entered my life and proposed to me, within hours of meeting me. Normally I would have run a mile, but something made me stay. We talked rationally. We weren’t overcome by lust or infatuation. He didn’t annoy me and we had a strong friendship, above all else.

A week later everyone in Ahmed’s family had been told by him that he had found his soul mate. A week after that we had met and spoken to both families. I still hardly knew Ahmed, but every quality he displayed was one that I could live with for the rest of my life – happily. He understood me, but his edges were smoother.

When I married him, I liked him a lot. Since then we’ve wrung each other’s proverbial necks, had screaming matches and swearing competitions. I’ve learnt some crazy things about him that have shocked me deeply. I never thought I’d go near a man who’s owned multiple guns in his life. But, oh my goodness, I love him more and more as I get to know him. He is my best friend in the world, the person whose free time is the only holiday I want, the one best decision I’ve ever made. I don’t even think I can really take credit for the decision though – I have a suspicion God was just gatvol of seeing me make all the wrong choices!

And I’m well aware that people thought we’d lost our minds. It must have looked so terribly short sighted and stupid! But it taught me something important about choices. Sometimes you see a gorgeous pair of shoes in a shop window and you wait months to buy them, and when you do – they’re not all that. Sometimes you buy them immediately, and they’re also not all that. But if you remove the urge to buy them, and sit down and look at them properly, you’ll know whether they’re right for you or wrong for you. And then if they’re right you may as well not wait months or years to buy them.

Discovering your spouse within the safety of a marriage is an exciting thing. It’s also a scary thing. But both parties have a certain responsibility to one another that is absent in the absence of marriage, and this responsibility breeds deep respect. Sure – it also means that you’re learning how to deal with one another without a trial, but there is no such thing as a trial in life, really. Every moment is real.

I thank God every day for giving me Ahmed; letting me marry my best friend (even before I knew he’d be the best friend). I wonder how many people are as lucky as I. I wonder, every day: what were the damn chances?

“Let the free women, the virgins, and the menstruating women go out to attend the Eid prayer, and witness the good and the supplications of the believers. As for the menstruating women, they should stay away from the musalla. (i.e., should not participate in the prayer itself).”

I have been a Muslim for almost three years now, alhamdulillah, and in retrospect I give much thanks that I was able to learn about Islam in my hometown of Cape Town and that I did not stumble upon the deen in a more northern region of South Africa. Owing to widespread and misinformed beliefs that Islam disregards and undermines women, it was to my surprise that I learnt that women are in fact revered and respected – and looked up to! – in Islam, no less by the Prophet Muhammad (saws) himself who held women in the highest regard, masha’Allah. Whenever someone asks me why I embraced Islam, I will tell them about the first time I visited a mosque. I was not even Muslim at the time, yet my experience of that Jumu’ah salaah moved me to the core of my being. Perhaps in times like these the mosque is one of the places where the essence of Islam is most palpable; where a life lived for God is most remembered.

I know that I am a better and more God-conscious Muslim when I am able to attend the masjid; to breathe in the congregation – the gathering of souls who commit their lives to God, and to living as God prescribed us to.

Our beloved Prophet forbade all men from preventing any woman from visiting the masjid – this no one disputes. Yet the plush, over-sized, over-funded mosques in Durban, Johannesburg, and surrounding areas overlook to cater for 50% of the Muslim community. It’s a deep pity that whoever sanctions such decisions (omitting to provide accommodation for women in mosques) will carry the sin for defying our Prophet’s wish. Someone should tell them that come J-Day they’ll be having to answer for quite a bit.

Anyway, the result is that men up north don’t have to contend with spiritual competition from the fairer gender because there’s no place for them to pray other than at home – where everyone ends up believing they belong. They also don’t have to acknowledge Muslim women as spiritual figures – they can easily be seen as mere food makers and child carers, and after a while it’s entirely forgotten that women were welcomed in the mosque in the first place. Kind of sneaky.

No, not “kind of”. It’s more than sneaky. Kind of sneaky would be forgetting to build extra sections on mosques and saying “oops” when women knock on the door at Asr time to make their fardh salaah. As is both their Islamic responsibility, and right. More than sneaky is when you cook up fatwas to prevent women from joining congregational prayers held outside of the masjid, say on a field. Congregational prayers like the Eid salaah, which the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) commanded women to attend – even women who aren’t able to pray. That’s more than sneaky, in my opinion. That’s un-Islamic, to start with. It also implies that whoever issues such judgement thinks he knows better not only than most international scholars, but also than the founding Prophet of Islam. In short it’s a middle finger at the Prophet, and is how cults and dangerous religious offshoots begin. I’m sure you’ve all heard of Jim Jone’s interpretation of Christianity. Astaghfirullah.

Here’s the “fatwa”:

QUESTION
IS IT PERMISSIBLE FOR WOMEN TO GO TO THE EIDGAH OR TO THE MUSJID FOR EID SALAAT?

ANSWER
IT IS NOT PERMISSIBLE. EID SALAAT IS NOT WAAJIB NOR SUNNAH FOR WOMEN. THE COMMAND OF THE SHARIAH SINCE THE AGE OF THE SAHAABAH HAS BEEN PROHIBITION.

I am happy and proud to be a Muslim, as I believe Islam is God’s message to us. However, I am not happy when patriarchal, sexist muftis defile the word of God and God’s messenger. It’s an embarrassment. It’s an embarrassment to Islam intellectually, spiritually, and it’s offensive to most literate society. Worst of all, it perpetuates myths about Islam that we truly don’t need, and prevents sensible people from choosing an Islamic lifestyle on the basis of some of Islam’s non-sensical (yet over-vocal) adherents.

If mufti AK Hoosen told you to smoke some crack, would you do it? If he passed a fatwa saying you could take seven wives, would you believe him? If he told you the rest of the world is praying toward the wrong Qibla, would you follow? What would you do if he told you that your wife couldn’t join you on an open, public field for Eid salaah?

When I took my shahadah, I wondered how it could be prophesied that Islam would segregate into 73 sects by the time of Qiyamah. I wondered how this was possible when the word of God and the Prophet were for the most part unambiguous – I mean, Muslims aren’t sheep right? They can read.

Now I just wonder why on earth the very muftis who are supposed to be leading and strengthening the ummah are the ones intent on fulfilling these prophesies.

Source: Women and Eid Salaat – A Dumb Woman’s View and its Refutation (this drivel should come with a disclaimer)

Please also read this article published last year by Safiyyah Surtee

In an off-guard moment I am inevitably transported back to high school, and afternoon drives between Stellenbosch and Cape Town; to the root of my unease. The untold neuroses – building blocks of my youth. Thursday evening meetings at a clinic in Claremont where we’d all sit in a circle and play mind games. Grown women, being patronised by our male facilitator pretending life as we knew it was normal. We wouldn’t pay much attention when the fat ones spoke because, let’s face it, they weren’t quite getting it right were they? After all, we weren’t there for the help.

When your career is starvation, and your every thought is of food and sinful indulgence, you need some acknowledgement for living off coffee, water, and the occasional grape. Not once did I walk out of those meetings knowing intrinsically that there there is life after Thin. Even if no one else cared, being one of the thinnest attendees of such meetings really made my week. It helped me reconnect with my label. I would sit there, impervious to reason, positively giddy as the games kicked off; the pleasure of being a legal fly on the wall to such performances was indescribable. No, it’s nothing like the support group meetings they show on TV. There’s none of that “Hi my name is so and so and I’m a…”. It’s the sort of stuff young megalomaniac girls are born to revel in. The societal elite. Glucose to the vein of a starving woman.

I used to have to try my best to keep a straight face as one of the fatties (anyone of or above a medically healthy BMI) sniffed and messed her make up, explaining how she didn’t eat anything the whole week because she felt so worthless, blah blah blah. Of course we all thought she was kidding because you couldn’t eat nothing and look like that, right? The tears arrived, and the evening commenced. Everyone’s weep was different. And it seemed that whoever jumped up to grab the tissues was more eager to gloatingly hand them over to the sobbing wreck than to offer any real consolation. Just as well, because if their concept of support was anything like mine, the poor girl would have drowned in her own tears and mucus.

A few chairs down sat the thinnest lady in the room. A woman so emaciated she couldn’t keep herself upright in her chair and needed to sit on a cushion because her ass was too bony to deal with a hard surface. Yes, we stared at her in envious awe and privately felt irritated that she must be checking out our able postures and cushion-less seats. She glowed of self-indulgence like no other. I had to make a concerted effort not to stare and/or drool. She didn’t radiate power; she looked defeated yet smug. “Hey, I’m almost dead, but I win,” her misty blue eyes yelled at the room. I decided to ignore her when she started crying about the prospect of having to give away her “thin” clothes if she gained weight. Where do you shop, woman?

I was a bitch who could talk my way in and out of the darkest depths of any emotion. I was never passed the tissues. I didn’t care for lingering on the abject sadness of my existence – I had much more fun dishing out highly insightful advice that I had no intention of taking myself, and sneaking in as many unchecked verbal incisions as I could get away with sans reproach.

Don’t ask me how I got over it; I don’t know. It was a long stay in that egocentric bubble; the narcissism of which was just insatiable. I was young and I suppose no one claims that the transition into adulthood is an easy one. It was rough, tough, and painstakingly fat-free.

When Ramadan approaches, my mind takes me back there. Deprivation. The beginning of Ramadan is always tough and frustrating, and I think on a deep level it raises that same anger. It becomes better as the fast progresses, but for those first few days the contrived dream of abstinence is a match hovering dangerously close to a fuse string. I hope to one day never associate this holy month with fear… inshaAllah.

I want to say very unambiguously that I don’t apologise for a word of it. Domestic abuse needs to be highlighted and when it isn’t, our society suffocates on its own silence. I remember a night about two years ago when a friend of mine was speaking about domestic abuse in our communities on the VOC radio channel. For the entire two or three hour slot, not one caller phoned in. Personally, we all know at least 10 muslim women who are being physically abused – but no one says anything. Anyone who looks down on Jehaan for being publicly vocal needs to at least agree that they adhere to a culture of silence and not the deen of Islam. Islam does not permit domestic violence.

My words regarding our MJC were gentle; I didn’t mention names and I did little but ask questions. The heavily sexist culture promoted is only the start of the problem and very little of the unhealthy reality was raised.

I do appreciate the commentary – positive and negative. It provides a lot of food for thought; unfortunately most of those thoughts are sad.

We were all glued to Al-Jazeera during the recent Egyptian revolution, yet in our own homes we promote silence? We feel offended when someone speaks up about something that is wrong?

I don’t understand it. Ya Allah, give us strength to change our homes and neighbourhoods before we try to change the world; report the domestic abuse taking place in our own families before we point our Muslim fingers at America, Israel, or women who go to mosque to make their prayer.

Scandalous.

We met in the early days of the new year in 2009; I visited her home one evening. The woman who greeted me at the car was not the one I had expected. She was full of life; full of love! I take a while to warm up to people but within minutes I was happy and at ease, drinking her coffee, smoking her Dunhill menthols and laughing at her mad sense of humour. I grilled Jehaan and her husband about Islam, about their life, I blurted out all that was knawing on my mind. I think I even must have written a list of things that I’d wanted to ask Jehaan (I’m organised like that, yo). I’d walked into her home high on Islam – when I finally left that evening, I must have been absolutely intoxicated. The most powerful thing I took back with me was that a woman, like me, who had lived the party life and dressed the part too, was now a happy and outspoken Muslim lady with a cosy home and a gorgeous family. And she was happy!

It must have been that day that my Muslim-Woman-box (stereotype) was re-evaluated. On 31 January I took my shahadah at Jehaan’s house.

I loved Jehaan from the day I met her, but despite our unspoken sisterhood we were worlds apart. She was a wife; a mother; nine years my senior. She had a job and a full life – I was 20 years old. Our lives knitted in and out of each others’ for months; she was often sick and cancelled plans at the last minute. I couldn’t understand why she was always unwell. Her husband didn’t want her to have Facebook, so our communication waned and I didn’t see her for many months.

The next time I met Jehaan was over a year later. It was late 2010; summer. The woman who met me at the car that day wasn’t the one I remembered. She was beautiful, breathtaking. She was strong and focused, and I knew something had happened in the time we spent apart. Her hair was lighter and she looked years younger. She had a Facebook account and she had quit smoking. She still didn’t have a drivers licence, but on our way to the farm we were visiting she told me that she had booked her drivers test. She also said she wanted to leave her husband. I didn’t understand. Secretly I agreed with her, but my response was that love is a choice – I thought that was the responsible thing to say. We spent the summer eating watermelons and comparing tans. I started my first job, and our lives drifted again.

Jehaan emailed me in May to congratulate me on my marriage. Her husband was moving out. She had a car and her drivers licence. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew it must have taken a lot of courage. As the emails bounced back and forth she told me that her husband had been physically abusing her for years. We spent a lot of time together in the weeks that followed and she told me more and more. I couldn’t believe my ears. She was afraid, she kept saying that – how would she cope with the months to follow? Would she be okay? Was she doing the right thing? Was she ruining her children’s lives?

As a child who lived through divorce myself, I told her that as long as both parents let the kids know that it wasn’t their fault and that they had a place and were wanted, they would grow up just fine. The best thing a mother can do for her son and daughter is to set a good precedent, model a good, loving and non-abusive relationship. While I could see this clearly Jehaan obviously carried more responsibility and worried about it.

Things got worse as time progressed. Her husband started harassing her and making her believe that she was ruining everyone’s lives. He threatened not to pay the rent, their children’s school fees, or fulfill any of his financial obligations should she seek a fasakh. He even called the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) to promise he’d sue whoever granted Jehaan a fasakh, because apparently that is the right of a Muslim man. It seems that a lot of our day-to-day Muslim lives are governed by “appartently”s.

Jehaan had to be put through months of meetings, discussions and counselling before her fasakh was approved by the MJC, despite her having numerous doctors’ reports confirming physical abuse over a prolonged period of time. She had also obtained a report from a psychologist to confirm the emotional impact that the abuse had had on her – but this didn’t encourage the MJC to assist her any quicker. Finally Jehaan was taking the plunge, but where was the support of the Muslims she had embraced as her family? Islamicly, she was still at the mercy of her husband, because the MJC said that they were married until further investigation. Her husband was pitching up at her home making threats to her, and who did she have in her corner? I was shocked and disgusted by this – were these the people I had afforded the authority of my own nikkah to? Hell. It was a nauseating collection of thoughts.

Every morning Jehaan would phone the MJC, and every day there was another excuse. The one I liked best was that the sheikh who oversees the process of obtaining a fasakh was “on holiday in India”. Well, I suppose we shouldn’t dare disturb his vacation. All this was going on after her husband had admitted that in 2004 (seven years previously) he had given Jehaan her third talaq! In subsequent legal documentation I read that he had abused her and locked her up for several days at the time of the final talaq. The MJC also admitted to her that his previous marriage had terminated because he was physically abusing and cheating on his ex-wife.

Tell me: why the hell does the MJC allow a young revert woman to marry a man whose history they are aware is dangerous? What is fundamentally wrong with the system, and why isn’t it protecting women? Is it any surprise that women like Jehaan don’t say something sooner?

Jehaan’s fasakh was granted the day that her (Christian) father called the MJC. He told them that since Jehaan had embraced Islam, she had endured nothing but abuse and he doesn’t understand why she hasn’t left the deen after all that she has been through. He gave it to them straight. He said that if Jehaan was a Christian woman, her husband would have been divorced ages ago and would probably have multiple charges of abuse against him. Her father told them that clearly Muslim women have no basic rights at all.

Oddly enough, the fasakh was able to be granted without the assistance of the sheikh holidaying in India. Three years ago I wanted to know why Jehaan embraced Islam. Her father currently wants to know why she refuses to leave Islam. Looking at the way she has been treated, I sometimes wonder myself – I know for a fact that in Christian societies there is more support for women who have been abused; I know that they don’t become the outcast.

Jehaan is a beautiful woman, with an amazing heart and the greatest imaan. She is one of the most loving mothers I have ever met; her children are her whole life. I want her to know that she has done the right thing, though I can’t begin to imagine how lonely it was.

This story has a good ending though – my friend Jehaan is now engaged to a man whom she sees a very bright future with. They are to marry in December (or sooner!) inshaAllah. I can’t wait for her new life to blossom and for her to be loved and cared for the way she has deserved for so many years. May Allah (swt) keep Jehaan (creative mind) safe; bless her marriage; shower her children with happiness – and may she never again be tested and hurt by other Muslims.

Sometimes I just feel exhausted by how big the small picture is; how religion has distorted into something your parents teach you or you pick up from your friends at school or you learn at madressah – as opposed to an intelligent message sent to us from God to assist civilisation and aide human cooperation. Just because your teacher says something or believes something doesn’t mean you should believe it! The minute we become superstitious about the evil powers of a piece of pork (or any other object for that matter) we know there is a problem with our way of thinking!

I became a vegetarian when I was 13 years old. That means that I have not touched pork in over 10 years – long before I became a Muslim. About a year ago I began eating chicken, but have continued to avoid all other meats including fish. This is just my choice. One evening about two weeks ago I grilled some semi-prepared chicken breast for myself as my husband was working late. This particular style of chicken reminded me of the taste of ham and while it was probably pleasant tasting and was most definitely halal chicken, I was forced to throw it away because I absolutely could not stomach it. But, had another Muslim been eating it next to me I wouldn’t have lost my appetite. Why? Because, as a former vegetarian, I’ve had a lot of practice in tolerance and letting others eat the way they choose to eat without taking personal offence.

While I will not eat off a fork that had just been used to eat lamb, I would eat off it if it were to be washed. Imagine a vegetarian walking into your house and refusing to eat off your plates because chances are they’d been touched by meat! I’m sure you wouldn’t invite that individual back into your home.

Where I’m going with this must be clear – but I’m not suggesting we be “nice” at the expense of our spiritual values. I’m not saying it’s okay to mingle with pork or to let our guards down. What I’m saying is, THINK. God told us not to eat pork. Did God tell us to shun pork eaters while we’re at it? If avoiding pork was half as important as Muslims make it out to be, it would be the sixth pillar of Islam. We have to separate the undesirable from the wrong. We have to think and engage our reasoning – if we don’t, we’re nothing but superstitious sheep (excuse the metaphor).

According to the shari’ah, there is punishment for sex out of wedlock, adultery, fraud and theft – and these punishments are quite corporal in nature. Is there a punishment for eating pork or drinking alcohol? So why are the latter two sins avoided like the plague where all too frequently the former are quietly tolerated?

Am I missing something?

What’s the melodrama about the halal status of a Cadbury chocolate to you if you’re cheating on your spouse? Excuse me if you find that crude but I must ask. Have we lost the plot entirely or is the sheep-run just beginning?

People sometimes ask me how I manage to eat at my family’s homes when I know that they consume pork and alcohol. My response is that there’s more barakah and integrity in their food than in the food I’ve eaten in many a Muslim household. When people work hard for their food and they offer you a plate of halal nourishment despite them not being Muslim themselves – you tell me, what meal could be filled with more blessing?

Maybe avoiding pig is just the easiest part of being a Muslim.

It has been three weeks and every day I discover a little more about who you are and how you work. What makes you the man you are. How you operate, how you do the small things. How you clip your nails and where you throw your laundry. Each of these discoveries fills me with love – you were right, you saw a bigger picture than I did. We are indeed crafted from the same bough.

For four years post my matric and relocation to Cape Town we lived mere metres apart and had no knowledge of one another. We must have crossed paths countless times and never known it. I was growing up and learning about the world and you were dealing with recessions and life post-30. I often think how strange it is – two lives separated by worlds and simultaneously only by streets. Allah is all-knowing.

We met late 2009. It was one of those meetings that you brush off as inconsequential and random, but I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t moments that I referred back to something you’d said. I’d felt no attraction to you then but I knew you were the kind of person I could call up years later and just speak. And that’s what I did, eventually. When I drove into the parkade at Cavendish that Friday evening I passed my father and my brother and I had this “oh, crap” feeling – a prelude to a memorable coffee chat which you (the eternal opportunist) converted into an early dinner. I went with the flow that evening; something I hadn’t done for a while. I let it be, and after fighting it tooth and nail, I let you take my hand.

At the time of course I didn’t take note of the figurative significance of the privilege I had afforded to you. But Ahmed, thank you for persevering. Only an individual as stubborn as I could put up with my protestations and access my core. You were built for this job (though I made you prove it, time and time and time again). I’ll probably still whip out the hoops for months to come, but I no longer doubt your ability to launch through them. You are remarkable in that regard, and I couldn’t pray for someone better. God has given me something amazing in you and I never imagined that being a wife would feel anything but dead. It feels the opposite!

I worry that writing this may be premature – we’re supposedly in a (pre-honeymoon) honeymoon phase. It’s because I know myself that I’m going to contest this. I think we’re in the teething phase. We’re sanding down the many rough edges. We have our screaming matches and we get over them, and it’s our ability to reconcile the biggest of dramas that makes me know things will only get better. You are my ultimate partner in crime. Partner in life too, but we’re criminals deep down. I’m pretty sure we’ll rob a bank together one day (and get away with it). We’ll have to distribute the bounty to needy folk of course.

Embarking on this journey with you, I feel inspired. The holy grail awaits us! You are my oyster. And I am yours. We are both crazy and that’s okay. I hope that we never forget to be grateful to God for one another, to pray and to be good to each other. May things always feel natural. May our life together be blessed with many a rain-shower. May our seeds grow into something beautiful, inshaAllah.

I have my plough in hand.

This question first stunned me – and then proceeded to horrify me. Was I even asking myself this? When my process of idealistic and politically correct shock had enjoyed its moment, I found myself asking whether human rights is actually God-bestowed or whether it’s a human construction to sustain societies that are not God-aware. And anyone who can get me to ask myself questions about human rights, I can assure you, must be speaking a whole lot of logic! I have to give it to her, Amina is one clever woman and I’ll definitely be following her Twitter profile closely.

Mrs Wadud’s discussion began with the intricacies of language and how language is the basis of all human thought. While she was speaking, I was thinking about how this has occurred to me on many an occasion and specifically in Islamic contexts. Translation of holy texts is no mean feat, and the difference between one respected translation and another respected translation can be immense. It is easily possible to derive entirely different messages from a verse depending on what translation you read. Ultimately we have to accept that we will never have a translation – or even an Arabic explanation – that reveals the meaning of the Qur’an beyond our own limitations, both as interpreters and as readers.

What I expected to be a lecture attended by liberal ‘Islamic feminists’ and few others turned out to be a gathering of thinkers. Many were not ‘liberal’ and I doubt there were more than a handful of people in attendance who would have termed themselves ‘Islamic feminists’. I must be honest, the demographic surprised me – and what impressed me most was the cooperation that ensued. I could feel the respect in the discussion – and it really was that: a discussion about Islam.

This concept of discussion resonates a deep chord in me. It’s what made me fall in love with Islam as a way of life. Amina asked questions – and while she posed suggested answers, she kept urging us to question and to think, and to never just accept what people say Islam is. Islamicly, we are required to find truth and to understand why we do things the way that we do them; why we say things the way that we say them.

I walked out of Amina’s lecture [discussion] feeling moved. If someone had walked up to me at that moment and asked, what do you know about Islam, beyond any doubt? I would have been able to count my answers on one hand (ha, ha!).

I was transported back to an evening about two years ago: I was working a late shift at Canal Walk when a man approached me. He was Jordanian. He introduced himself and asked me about myself and my journey to Islam (I was a very new Muslim at the time). I told him about some of the struggles I was facing as a revert. His reply to me was simple and heartfelt. He told me that Islam isn’t in books or mosques or people or family or clothes or actions. He said that Islam is between me and Allah (SWT), and if that relationship has integrity then I will begin to know Islam. The only Islam worth knowing.

I think he was right.

How can I possibly sleep.

The first scarf I bought was milk-chocolate brown, light loosely woven cotton with lines of sequins going lengthways. I didn’t know how to do a scarf properly; I wrapped it over my head a few times. I remember walking out of the shop wearing it, feeling like a different person. It was the proudest feeling, knowing that anyone who looked at me would know that I am a Muslim (or in my case, was seriously considering being a Muslim).

Over the next few months I bought many many scarves. It was a lengthy process of trial and error to come to the conclusion that I’m only comfortable wearing black and that certain materials are absolutely useless. I now have drawers full of scarves I’ve never worn… stashed in the hope that one day I’ll have to wear a colourful outfit and might locate the perfectly coordinated colour scarf therein. Perhaps I’ll grow out of my black movement.

My life changed a lot in my first year of Islam, and my scarf was a constant reminder that I was being watched over; that I was walking a path that I was deeply in love with. I felt safe in it and in the identity that it offered me – for the first time I felt free of pressures to look a certain way, be a certain weight, dress a certain style. I felt as if I had a place in the world and that I was accepted – not because people around me necessarily approved, but because I was trying to live a life in accordance with the Divine.

The hijab is something that I have had many questions about, and few people are willing to engage in genuine and honest discussion on the topic. The Qur’an and ahadith are vague on the subject, yet unofficial ‘hijabi law’ abounds. For example, why do people believe that if some of a woman’s hair is showing, her hijab is incorrect?

But there are deeper questions with regard to the core of the hijab that inevitably begin to emerge – most importantly, the question of modesty. At what point does wearing hijab become a useless practice? If my heart is dirty and immodest, is the hijab a farce? Many Muslim women don’t wear a scarf, and their reasons are varied and valid. I think the more idealistic we become, the less easy it is to wear a scarf – because we fail to realise that our scarves form part of the middle ground.

I slipped up a few months ago. I became increasingly idealistic and internally divided. I began to feel like a hypocrite wearing a scarf when my clothing wasn’t “Islamic enough”. It became an either-or scenario, where one day I’d look Muslim and the next I’d look like any other white girl. After a while I began to realise that there was an interesting relationship between my scarf and my state of being. That the notion of wearing a scarf only when we’re “good enough” to is sort of like putting the cart before the horse. Sometimes our scarves pull the whole wagon.

In times of spiritual drought, remembering my first visit to that scarf shop has been deeply uplifting and inspiring. I become filled with such joy, such wonder; I feel the feelings I felt that day so strongly and all I want is to be a better Muslim.

I don’t believe that hijab has to be rigid; I think it just needs to be modest: hiding every strand of hair and even wearing niqab does not necessarily equate to modesty. But attempting to do my best with regard to hijab – that is very important; it breeds a mindset and a way of living that is modest.

It is my prayer that 2011 will bring modesty in immodest amounts, to me and all my sisters. And that I will find some nice new black scarves.