Netanyahu’s war cabinet unanimously decides to press on with offensive.

My daughter deserves a better life.

Network anchor claims if not for student protesters, he really would cover Gaza.

Every time he walks down the dimly lit corridor toward his dorm, Isa crosses the room of the Residential College Advisor—an upperclassman whose role is helping first-year students like him acclimate to life at Princeton. A faded Wawa plastic bag with a handful of condoms dangles from the doorknob. “Please help yourself,” nudges a yellow sticky note pasted on the door. Isa walks past this offer of self-help. Though sex on campus has been normalized—last Valentine’s Day, Princeton had even invited students to a condom art contest and exhibit—Isa, like thousands of Muslim students in colleges across the US, strives to avoid sexual activity on campus. What animates this resistance to a pervasive feature of modern college life?

Media portrayals of young Muslims’ sexuality have tended to focus on less insightful but more eye-catching questions. The hijab’s alleged repression of Muslim women continues to make headlines, and to inspire rebuttals championing Islam’s purported liberation of women from their objectification in Western capitalist societies. Until recently, mainstream media was captivated by stories linking the supposed sexual repression of Muslim men to religious violence. The hottest issue now is the question of Islam and homosexuality, especially the perceived conflicts between Islamic scripture and progressive politics. Implicit in much of this media coverage around Islam and sexuality is an underlying assumption: young Muslims are sexually repressed, ever-burdened by the disconnect between their other-worldly aspirations and their sensual present.

Of course, there are other stories too, such as those about the long tradition of explicit sexual discussion in Islam, or the much-discussed New Yorker piece exploring one way that Muslim college students are addressing their sexual desires: secret marriages. But such well-meaning articles risk reinforcing the notion that the many Muslims not giving in to their sexual desires—outside or inside marriage—are sexually repressed. In my own experience, and through extensive conversations with Muslim students and chaplains from different campuses across the US, I find a far more complex picture of Muslim sexuality. Young Muslims resisting sexual interactions make meaning of their choices in ways that disturb the neat links between desires, actions, and identities conceived in secular imaginaries. In resisting sex, Muslim students transcend the binaries of repression and liberation, the sexual and the spiritual. 

***

Given that most Muslim communities in the US disapprove of sexual relations before marriage, many Muslim students never have the opportunity to explore their sexuality—until they enter college. (I have obscured the identities of the students who spoke with me for this piece, for obvious reasons.) 

“The parental oversight is gone, you’re living in mixed-gender dorms, you have hormones raging inside you—it’s hard not to be tempted,” admitted Maryam. “You have freedom like you never had before.” 

For international students coming in from Muslim-majority countries, the contrast is dramatic. “There are literally no restrictions here,” reflected Wakeel, a graduate student. “Anyone can be in anyone’s room at any time. In my country, miles separated the gender-segregated hostels, and students attempting to cross the distance faced disciplinary action.” 

With logistical ease come the ideological challenges that make college life harder for Muslim students wishing to adhere to Islamic limitations on premarital sex. Many residential universities require all incoming students to attend safe-sex sessions. According to Sana, a sophomore at an Ivy League university, the takeaway is clear. “If you want to have sex—and who doesn’t!—only two concerns matter: one, is it consensual, and two, is it safe? Nothing else matters,” she said. “These lessons soften the moral question of premarital sex, so it starts to become more like an Islam problem than an ethical one.” 

Perhaps the biggest temptation is the pervasive party culture across campuses. For Muslims going to places renowned as “party schools,” the challenges are even harder. 

“When all your friends—including some Muslim friends—are going out every Thursday and Saturday night to have some fun, sooner or later there comes a point when the FOMO hits you hard,” said Zeeshan. 

He invoked a narrative that recurred frequently in my conversations: the story of Prophet Yusuf (the biblical Joseph). In one of the most evocative scenes in the Quran, a young, dashing Yusuf finds himself alone with the beautiful wife of the minister who purchased him. She locks all the doors before inviting him: “Haita lak (come on).” To some students, the cool breeze blowing across campus on party nights still carries that faint but unmistakable echo: Haita lak.  

***

Haita lak – [PC: Saif71 (unsplash)]

Dealing with one’s desires is difficult enough, but communicating your choices to others can be a challenge of its own. 

“I could avoid going to a party on campus—I’d just steer clear of the street where I knew there was trouble,” shared Ayhan, who graduated last year. “The bigger problem was when the dorm next door would have a party, and I’d get a text from my neighbor: Hey come over. It’s hard to say no because they know you’re in the room and they know you’re not doing problem sets Friday night at 9 pm.” 

Saying no can be a particularly thorny issue because some Muslim college students do attend parties—and have sex. Zahra, a junior, attends a large public school in which fraternities host events “where the entire point is to get drunk and get laid.” Invoking her Muslim identity to turn down these events is hard because there are other students—Muslims—who do attend such events. 

“I’m then in the awkward position of saying ‘sorry, I can’t come because Islam prohibits these,’ which indirectly sounds like I’m holier-than-them,” she said. 

But if she believes that Islam does prohibit sexual interactions outside marriage, isn’t that an accurate judgment? Zahra disagrees. 

“Look. There could be someone who goes to these events and commits many haram acts but is still dearer to God than me. ‘He knows better who is more guided’, the Quran tells us. So only God can judge individuals. But I can judge actions, because the same Quran has established a clear moral compass to distinguish between the permissible and the prohibited.” 

In practice, however, judgments are hard to avoid, and expressing one’s feelings, even to other Muslims, can be difficult. Muhammad grew up in a conservative Muslim-majority country, where religious gatherings—and many other public spaces—were segregated by gender. He was told that this promotes modesty. But even same-sex spaces can have their temptations.

“In my all-boys madrasa, there were one or two guys who I just couldn’t stop staring at,” recalled Muhammad. I would get goosebumps when they spoke to me or when our hands met. I couldn’t understand these feelings; they thrilled and frightened me.” 

Confused, Muhammad began frequenting a larger madrasa nearby, where many students lived on campus. The scholars there would openly warn against the temptations that other young boys could arouse—hence the madrasa’s policy, for instance, of prohibiting two students from sleeping under the same blanket. 

“I realized now that my own feelings were nothing unnatural but simply one version of the different trials through which Allah tests His slaves,” reflected Muhammad. “The temptations remained, but since they were acknowledged as temptations, I was able to better deal with them.” 

But when Muhammad came to the US for the first time as a college student, he experienced a shock. He shared his struggles with same-sex desires with some Muslim friends, at which “one of them jumped back, gasping ‘You’re gay!’” 

Here was Muhammad’s first introduction to the sexual culture of the US. 

“It’s a strange culture, where your feelings define your very being,” he said. “Unfortunately, Muslims are affected by such ideas too, so that the moment they hear you have certain desires, they put a label on you. And if you refuse that label, they think you’re closeted or something.”

Muhammad eventually found solace through an online support group. But his first few years of college life tested him to the brink, as he recalled:  “So many guys and girls around me were exploring their sexuality, and there were times when I wondered if I would get through with my chastity intact.”

For Muhammad, as for many of his peers, being in college is a bit like being Yusuf in the house of the minister: hearing the same invitation, facing a similar challenge—mustering the strength to refuse the call. 

***

How does one deal with powerful sexual desires without fulfilling them? For some students, the necessity of exercising caution in entering physical relationships comes from observing those who, as they perceive it, don’t. 

“You hear so many girls in physical relationships complaining about an overwhelming emotional emptiness, about feeling neglected and used,” said Fatima, a member of a peer counseling team on campus. “Even as you support them, you feel grateful that Islam protects you from such relationships.” 

To Ahmed, who admitted being envious of his friends in high school who were dating and pursuing romantic relationships, the experience of living with some of them as roommates brought a realization: “You know what, these guys aren’t actually happier than I am; in fact, many of them are pretty miserable!” 

Other students commit to avoiding intimacy in hopes of what they see as a more wholesome relationship in the future—marriage. “I strive to ensure I don’t do anything that I wouldn’t want my future spouse to have done,” was an ambition frequently echoed, as was the related goal of keeping oneself “pure” for the “one.” According to a Muslim chaplain at one Ivy League institution, this reasoning is particularly salient among Muslim men who are all too aware of the double standards that Muslim (and non-Muslim) communities have generally applied to male sexual relations as compared to female.

And the double standards are certainly prevalent. Most American Muslim families and communities avoid discussing female sexual desires, focusing on general discussions of modesty and “virtue.” The latter can sometimes be taken to unhealthy extremes, according to Rachel, a graduate from a college in NYC. 

“I had roommates who had boyfriends who would spend the night at our dorm,” she said. “I had a burning desire to explore that [sexual] side too. But I had so much fear. It was drilled into me that, if I sinned, my future husband would find out; I would be divorced, my life ruined, my family humiliated. I just wish someone had acknowledged my desires positively, or at least reminded me that no amount of past sins are greater than Allah’s Mercy.”

Even amongst her friends, noted Nura, a graduate from an elite private institution, female sexual desires could be taboo. Though some of her Muslima friends openly discussed strategies like running on a treadmill to cope with intense feelings, others shied away from any mention of them—even if it pertained to religious teachings. 

To illustrate, Nura recalled a time when she and some friends made wudu (a ritual washing of the hands, face, and feet; which is a prerequisite to performing the five daily prayers mandated on Muslims). On their way to the multi-faith prayer room on campus, one of them met a male friend and they hugged. She then asked the other girls to return to the bathroom so she could make wudu again. Nura was surprised for, per her understanding of Islam, nothing had transpired that would break the wudu. Her friend explained that Nura’s knowledge was correct according to the school of Islamic jurisprudence followed by Nura. However, the friend’s family had raised her in a different school which considers the wudu void if you touch a na-mahram, a person from the opposite gender (such as a friend or cousin) who you could legally marry. 

Upon hearing this, another girl rejoined that, actually, the wudu is void only if the touch arouses an intense bout of passion accompanied by fluid discharge. Controversy ensued.

“The other friends who were with us suddenly became visibly agitated and exclaimed that we shouldn’t be talking about such shameful things,” Nura recalled. “But the Quran itself mentions female desire!” 

***

The open acknowledgment of sexual desires in the Quranic account of Yusuf surprises some modern Muslims—the discussion appears to them a bit too explicit, perhaps even erotic. For centuries, however, Muslims across the world have celebrated the narrative, versifying it in poetry and illustrating it in manuscripts. This is partly because these Muslims recognized—as do many Muslim students today with whom I spoke—that powerful desires are a gateway to God.

Resistance through worship [PC: Ashkan Forouzani (unsplash)]

“In resisting his desires, Prophet Yusuf became closer to Allah ,” reflected one student. “Living on a campus with all these temptations is likewise an opportunity for me to get closer to God. But like Prophet Yusuf , I must be humble. When faced with the seductive offer, he sought refuge in Allah —and then ran to the door. So I have to ensure that even as I’m seeking Allah’s help, I also don’t put myself in spaces that I know are seductive.”

For Siddiq, the relationship between desire and spiritual growth was revealed during his sophomore year. Infatuated with a fellow Muslim student, he experienced heartbreak when she chose to remain his sister-in-faith. The experience, however, transformed him. 

“Until that moment, I had never tasted true love—love as an obsession, where you can only see this one person and everything else ceases to be visible, even to exist, [where] all that matters is to speak with her, to be near to her,” he recalled. “This, I realized, is a glimpse of how the lovers of Allah see Him,” he said. 

In terms of the Muslim profession of faith, La ilaha illa Allah (No god but Allah ), Siddiq now had experiential knowledge of that first negation: la. 

In his struggles with same-sex desires, Muhammad, too, has reached the conclusion that unfulfilled desires can lead to God. The way he sees it, “this world was never meant to be a place of ultimate fulfillment.” When Prophet Musa (Moses), out of his overwhelming love for God, desired to see Him, God replied: “You cannot see Me.” According to the reported sayings of Prophet Muhammad , the ultimate blessing in Paradise will be to gaze at God.

“This life, however, is not— cannot—be the place where the veils are lifted between the lover and the beloved,” said Muhammad. “So I strive to channel my insatiable feelings toward getting closer to Him, hoping for union in the next life. It’s not a solution for everyone, certainly, and it doesn’t always work for me, But it gives me strength, at times, and hope.”

Even to those students whose desires may find a permissible outlet in this world, the spiritual is not out of sight. For Urooj, fantasies of a fulsome sexual relationship after marriage are made more meaningful in spiritual terms: “The pleasure of sexual intimacy is a taste of the flavors of Paradise, according to our scholars. It’s something to enjoy together with one’s spouse, so that both may be grateful for the blessing bestowed by Allah .” 

Thinking about marriage has also transformed the very meaning of sexual intimacy for some Muslim students. Witnessing what he saw as the strained, sometimes broken, marital bonds of some of his close friends, Ahmed felt his rosy image of marriage wilting—until he spent time with what he described as more stable Muslim families. The peace and meaning he experienced in their homes alerted him to a new way of conceiving sex. 

“I realized that, in Islam, sexual intimacy is situated within a wider cosmic space of a much deeper relationship,” he said. “In contrast, for some of my friends who were sleeping around in college, the act had lost meaning. It seemed that they felt a post-climactic emptiness, like you feel after a binge watch, or when you devour a lot of dessert. On the other hand, these Muslim couples—even though they too would fight and quarrel—seemed to be basking in the pleasure, close to each other, closer to God.”

For Aysha, the realization that your relationship with your spouse could be a metaphor for your relationship with God came through reading: “I was perusing a 17th-century text on Islamic mysticism and came across the line: ‘does not every lover desire to be near their beloved in the darkness of night?’ I thought the author was describing marriage—he was talking about tahajjud (the voluntary night prayers).”

The seductive echoes of haita lak are thus not the only ones reverberating through the campus air; the morning breeze also rings with hayya ala al-salat (come to prayer), hayya ala al-falah (come to success)—the words of the azan recited in mosques across the US. To some, the two calls can often be heard simultaneously. Together, they symbolize the temptations and aspirations that college life presents for many Muslim students in America.

 

Related:

– Modesty And Gender In Islam: A Reconciliation

– A Statement From Straight Struggle Muslims

– How University Made Me a Better Muslim

 

The post Beyond Repression: Muslim Sexuality On Campus appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Families are being torn apart.

[…contd. from Part I]

 

Selyane

The werehyena snorted, then recoiled, seemingly surprised by her outburst. “As gruesome as my appearance is, I am no jinn.”

Jameela’s lip twitched. The beast her father had told her about had spoken! When she was little, her siblings had told her stories of the mustadhaba—the werehyena unbound to the moon, who could transform on command.

“So a part of you is still human,” she said softly.

He turned up his nose. “An insignificant one.”

“But one all the same.” She smiled, feeling relief that the beast was not so beastly after all. “It’s one thing we have in common with animals: hearts.”

He hummed, and muttered something under his breath—or perhaps he was merely trying to string a sentence together.

“What shall I call you, Seedee?”

“You may call me whatever you like,” he harrumphed. “… Anything but that.”

“Well, you must have a name!”

“… Selyane.”

She giggled. “You certainly are a man of your name—unique!”

The werehyena scoffed, baring his fangs, and Jameela shuddered. Then he swallowed and stopped hunching.

“Again, call me whatever you like. Even ‘Beast’ will suffice.”

Jameela shook her head. “And earn bad deeds in the holiest month when I do?”

The clock in the salon struck. What an interesting thing, Jameela thought, that it would tell you the times of the prayer! And you had no need to look at the sun. “Will you not pray, Selyane?”

His two hind legs shifted uncomfortably. “I have not prayed since I was little,” he confessed. “And besides… I am more animal than human. I do not think I should!”

“I was only wondering, because if you would want to pray, then I would do so behind you.”

Selyane considered her explanation. Then, after a shake of his head, he confessed. “I’ve forgotten how.”

She gasped. “No—don’t worry. Let me offer my dhuhr, and then I will have something for you.”

When she finished the last raka’t in her room, she found an abundance of paper and paints. For the rest of the afternoon, she illustrated the positions of salah, transcribing each step with care.

When she brought them to the werehyena, his ears perked up with curiosity. Then he snorted and looked away. “It’s already too late.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “That’s all right. You have three more chances for the rest of the day.”

He groaned, much like her brothers had before their farm duties, but consented. She realized only when the clock struck again that she had forgotten the steps of wudhu. Quickly, she transcribed them for him, promising to draw them later.

Selyane grasped the papers in his clawed hands, doing so as gently as he could. Jameela, meanwhile, offered her ‘Asr, praying to Allah for a solution as to how he refused to transform back.

She found him outside, near the pond bordering the desert roses. It appeared as though he had performed ghusl rather than wudhu! Water had splattered all around him, and his feet and arms were dripping wet.

Jameela knelt beside him. “It would be easier if you transformed into a human.”

“I cannot!” he burst in frustration. He growled and stood with effort. “If it weren’t for that other werehyena…”

“What do you mean?”

He snarled. “I refused to offer him shelter in the desert winds. When I emerged to care for my beautiful roses, he bit me and cursed me—that if I did not learn how to rectify my monstrous behavior by the end of Ramadan, I would be cursed for the rest of my life.”

“That sounds like what Ramadan is for everyone,” she said gently. “All of us come to it a little… ‘monstrous.’ But we emerge from it, insha’Allah, better.”

“I hope so.” He sounded defeated this time. “… Are the papers wet?”

She laughed. “No, alhamdulillah, they are not.”

Selyane prayed his ‘Asr. Jameela returned to her room and drew out the steps of wudhu. She wondered what Selyane had looked like, before his unfortunate curse. Had he been on this veranda all alone? Where were his parents, his siblings? Had he been abandoned?

She decided to ask him at iftar. He stumbled inside the dining parlor clumsily. Puzzled, she asked him why.

“We’re supposed to be fasting, aren’t we?” he asked. “I had my suhoor separate from you and your father. I imagined that you wanted it alone.”

She sniffed. “That’s very considerate of you. But we wouldn’t have minded if you joined us. There are blessings when you eat together.”

He threw up his pawed hands in the air. “Must everything in this religion be done together?”

“Not everything, no,” she said with a chuckle. “But it is nice to have these moments together, as believers.”

“I am so used to doing things alone, I am not sure it would be quite so nice.”

“Well, we’re together now, aren’t we?”

“You really don’t mind me eating with you? Be honest, you think me a beast. I’m horrid-looking, and I bring fear to all who see me.”

“It does take some getting used to. But I know humans who act more beastly, who are even more beautiful.”

He raised his furrowed brows. “They treated you in this way?”

She nodded sadly. “I’m glad to be here instead of at home. I’ve not had suhur ever prepared for me, nor iftar.”

“Anything you ask for, you will have. This is your home as well as mine.”

“Jazakum Allahu khayran, Selyane.”

“Wa… What is it, again?”

 The Proposal

The first ten days passed. They prayed together five times a day and ate together twice. Jameela could not remember the last time she felt so happy. She had ample paint and paper for her to trace the letters of the Qur’an, helping her memorize more verses, and she could visit the beautiful rose garden whenever she wanted.

Then the second set of ten days passed. The inevitable slump—and the crippling homesickness. She missed taraweeh in Marrakech, spending time with her family. Selyane directed her to the magical mirror in her room. Like the compass he had given her father, all she needed to do was have someone in her heart. An hour before iftar, she saw every one of her siblings get married, one by one, until her father was all alone in the house. When would she have her chance, she wondered?

Mirror – PC: Inga Gezalian (unsplash)

She arrived sluggish and quiet to the dining parlor for suhoor. Selyane asked if he preferred that she be alone, to which she shook her head.

“Your presence does not bother me, Selyane,” she said. There was still sadness in her voice. 

“Still, after all this time, you still do not find me wretched or ugly?” he asked.

Jameela swallowed.  “I do not wish to lie, but I do not wish to hurt you, either.”

“Do not worry about hurting me,” he said, hanging his head. “What ails you? It is more than the fast. I know you.”

“I watched all of my siblings—my three brothers, my two sisters—get married. My father is now all alone. Everyone always said I was like him, and I think that that may be true in more ways than one.”

“I can help,” he said softly. “You may either visit him again, or you may stay here longer.”

Her eyebrows raised. “How would staying here help?”

Now it was his turn to swallow. “Jameela, would you be my wife?”

Her jaw dropped. Selyane was wealthy, the son of a sultan, and pious, but… she could not bear his appearance. The fangs that bore themselves every time he spoke, the tail that lashed to and fro from his back, and the way he prowled when he walked. How would such a marriage even work? 

She looked into his glowing gold eyes. She had seen his frustration, and heard of the rage he had shown her father, but what would happen after a rejection?

… He wouldn’t dare hurt her. 

Quietly, she shook her head.

His heart broke before her eyes. The long ears she had just lamented sank, and his back only hunched further on the table.

“Then rest comfortably tonight,” he said. “But it will be the last night you spend here. The remaining ten nights of Ramadan with your father, and then the Eid.”

Jameela beamed. “Truly?!”

“Yes,” Selyane said, pain laced in his voice.

“No,” she insisted. “I ought to return. My father made you a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

“You know as well as I know that your stay here is hardly permissible. I only ever had the intention to know you as a wife. And if that cannot be the case, then there can be no friendship between us. Hardly any residency. It was never proper in the first place, and I curse myself for it. No wonder I was made a beast.”

Such kindness. She was torn—even though he had the authority to command her there, he would not. “Selyane, may I at least consult with my father about it? I will only take ten days and the Eid.”

He smiled sadly. “Alas, I can only hope that Ramadan is twenty-nine days this year. Come, let us pray Fajr now.”

No sooner had they completed their prayer did he rise and lead her back to the garden. A pearl-white Arabian stood waiting for her, and she was amazed. She and her father only had one horse that they had to share.

“I will go with you; I cannot bear that you travel alone. The scent of your father still lingers in the air from whence he was here. I shall find your home.”

Her sisters would have turned their noses up at such a statement. But Jameela found it sweet that he would not let her face the elements alone. 

Both horse and beast rode on their four legs, traveling swiftly throughout the desert. The sun was barely at its zenith before she reached her countryside home. In her excitement, Jameela leaped from the saddle and rushed towards it, forgetting to invite Selyane to come with her. By the time she looked back, he was gone; as quickly as he had come.

For What Did You Marry?

“Jameela?!” Aderfi burst. She burst into tears and ran into her father’s arms. The two wept profusely, and her life for the past twenty days was as distant a memory as it was in physicality.

At iftar, her father told her everything that had happened in the short time she had departed their home. His sons were all in charge of the souks they had worked in but were all too preoccupied to stay at home. Their wives deeply missed their company, and to salve the wound, they spent not the time with their husbands, but rather their wealth. This resulted in a vicious cycle of work.

Jameela thought of Selyane, who looked at her drawings as though they were masterpieces from the greatest artists, and who never interrupted her when she spoke. Each day, there was a splendid new galabiya, even though she had never asked for it. Food was always prepared, and she never knew how. Surely he knew how magic was forbidden. Had it been cooked by him the entire time?

Selyane. Before she could ask her father about the proposal he had mentioned, the door opened. Her sisters had arrived from Marrakech. Her father looked equally as surprised, but welcomed them with open arms. Jameela made ready for their guests.

Her sisters eyed her the entire time. After such travel, she had changed to something more suitable—a lovely kaftan, courtesy of Selyane.

“My husband would never give me such a thing,” the eldest commented. “He was so handsome when I met him, the most well-kept of all diplomats, but he has become so plain now that I live with him. All I ever wear are rags to keep up with our home. Guests come all the time, in and out, and it must appear beautifully to others.”

“Oh, mine is the same!” the middle sister complained. “Since he is a minister, he always does things with others in mind. I admired his family reputation—we have known them since we were young—but it seems like they are the only ones he really thinks about. It feels like I am always being watched.”

“I am sorry, dear sisters,” Jameela responded. “I did not know marriage could be like this.”

“Yes, you must be very careful,” the eldest said.

“Especially if that beast should propose to you. Someone so ugly on the outside surely must be just as ugly on the inside!”

“On the contrary!” Jameela blurted. “He has been nothing but kind!”

And so Jameela continued. As it was an odd night, all three sisters stood up waiting for suhoor. Jameela yawned, attempting to go to bed early, but her sisters kept telling her to stay, that they had not seen her in so long. Feeling her guard slip with every hour, she confessed the proposal to them.

“Never!” the eldest said, looking sick to her stomach. “Remember, Jameela, he had such glowing, horrid eyes! And the voice that Baba described him with—you really think, after you have had a terrible day, you could look at him, hear him, and feel better?”

The tune of the second sister had changed almost immediately. “And you do not even know his family. Did they abandon him? It certainly sounds like it! Sure, he might have been the son of a sultan, but he does not act like it. Just think of what others would say. Not just of you. But of us. And Baba.”

Stricken by their words, Jameela thanked them for their advice. For the sunnah of her Fajr, she prayed istikhara. But she was so tired at suhoor, that she did not ask her father for advice.

She slept until dhuhr, and hoped to inquire of him then, but there was cleaning to do from her sisters’ departure. As she folded their sheets and swept their room, she remembered how Selyane had traveled with her to her destination. Her brothers-in-law had not done that. Jameela cursed herself for not even giving him salam.

The rest of the ten days followed similarly. Aderfi needed her help now more than ever after suhoor. And at iftar, he would ask for her advice—should he sell the farm? Which of her siblings should he live with after she was gone? When her father did have a spare moment, he spent it reading Qur’an, sending salawat, and making du’a. It was Ramadan—should she really be thinking about marriage now? There were better things!

Eventually, they decided to sell the farm. The two set off for Marrakech to meet potential sellers, and to see which of her brothers would be willing to take their father in. They spent iftar at a different one of their houses, but neither of them appealed to her father.

“Why did you marry her?” Jameela asked a different brother.

“Her wealth,” the head of Souk Chouari said. He was a carpenter, so he was attracted to the promise of security.

“Her family,” the head of Souk Haddadine said. He was a blacksmith, often covered in ashes, so the appeal of a high-ranking family was too much to miss.

“Her beauty,” the head of Souk Smata said. He was a cobbler, someone who was entranced by well-crafted things.

None for their piety? Jameela was astonished by each one of their responses. There was hardly even a moment to bring up the proposal from Selyane, as their brothers sat, ate a few bites, and rushed to taraweeh. Jameela remained behind to help her sisters-in-law.

By the time they were finished in Marrakech and heading home, it was approaching the twenty-eighth night. Her father, consumed by worries now, was quiet on their ride. Interested buyers would soon be coming, but only after Eid.

“Father, come with me,” Jameela begged on the day they were returning home. “Selyane is kind, pious, and thoughtful. To this day, I do not feel as though I was a prisoner. I was a guest.”

“That cannot be,” he said, shaking her shoulders. “Jameela, my sweet daughter, did he cast magic on you?”

“No, Baba, not at all. The horse I rode in with was a gift. And he came with me to ensure that I was safe.”

“Oh, Jameela, you must understand—he was doing so that he would know where to find you if you did not keep your promise. The horse was only a bribe. Even he gave me a gift, to try and help me—but this is what the wealthy do, ya binti.” He looked torn. “It is a good thing that we are selling the farm. After Eid, we must sell the house quickly, and set off for Marrakech immediately. Far, far enough where he cannot track our scent.”

“Baba, please—I want to marry him! He—”

“Ya Allah! No—I forbid such a thing!”

She tried to persuade him otherwise, but it was no use. Jameela retired to her room, defeated. Well, she thought. It could be Laylat al-Qadr.

She lowered herself onto her prayer mat and begged. Her hands opened wide and her tears freely flowed.

Ya Allah, soften the heart of my father. Allow him to see what you have shown me—that no matter his appearance, nor his wealth, nor his family name, it is his piety that matters most. Ya Allah, I wish I never said no to Selyane—I wish I had a second chance to tell him yes! He is a good man, he will take care of me and my father! Ya Allah, forgive me, but if Ramadan should end early, then let me arrive early to the veranda, and accept his proposal! Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!

“Jameela?” 

She had fallen fast asleep on her prayer mat. It was time for fajr. She wiped her face and went to take her place behind her father. She thought of how Selyane had last led her, and she wept.

When they concluded their prayer, Aderfi was at her side in seconds. She swallowed, saying that she wished she had woken up in time for tahajjud, and that she had prepared suhoor for her father. All true, but masking the real reason for her sadness.

“Eid Mubarak, ya binti,” he said softly. In his hand was the compass that Selyane had given him. “All you need to do is think of him, and the compass will show the way.”

She gasped. The tiny compass already began to redirect itself. Selyane had never left her heart since she had returned home.

“I thought about what you said, all night. Our Prophet ﷺ said that we marry people for four reasons: wealth, status, appearance, and religion. And which do you think he recommended that we marry for?”

Jameela embraced her father, and he began to chuckle. “Now, let us hurry. The moon sighters say that we will see the hilal tonight. Shall we introduce your future husband to the sunnah of looking for it?”

The Compass and The Sultan

They both rode their horses, making as much use of the remaining time as possible. Jameela said istighfar over and over again—for not teaching Selyane as much as she should have, for not advising him more, for never having helped with suhoor, for rejecting him when Allah had provided such a good man for her.

The compass needle began to twitch. They were getting closer. The veranda appeared, but Selyane was nowhere in sight.

The compass (PC: Dunamis Church [unsplash])

Jameela dismounted. She shook the compass, but it gave her no more directions. Aderfi volunteered to go inside, and Jameela resigned to the outdoors. She passed by the water, assuming he might be making wudhu, but did not find him. Panic seized her, and she began running frantically through the garden.

She found him collapsed in the rose bushes. She cried out and rushed to his side.

“Selyane!” she exclaimed.

His eyes blearily opened. “Is it that I am in Heaven, dear Jameela? I…” he coughed. He was ill, and thinned from when she had last seen him. Had he even been eating at all? “I can see no other reason as to why I might be seeing you again.”

“You will see me in this life and in the next, bi idhnillah—” she urged.

“Then I die happily,” he said, eyes slowly shutting again.

“No! I swear to be yours only. I accept, Selyane—I want to be yours. Please be mine.”

There was no response. Only total darkness. Then suddenly, shining moonlight from overhead—the hilal. Jameela looked up above. How could a crescent give off such light? To the point where it was blinding?

It shone even more brilliantly, and she was forced to cover her eyes. She heard the sound of fireworks, of merry celebration as everyone in the Land of the Sunset welcomed Eid. But Jameela felt nothing but grief in her heart; as though she were at a janazah. She choked back a sob. She was too late.

“Do you regret your decision already, Jameela?”

She gasped. Hurriedly, she looked to where she had heard a new voice. Before her was a sultan of astounding handsomeness, clothed in rags and with a disheveled beard.

Selyane!

A smile spread itself on her face. “Selyane! It’s you!” she cried out. 

“Indeed. In the flesh, and not in the fur,” he said with a wry smile. “The curse has been lifted. For me to fall in love with a lady for more than her beauty, and for that lady to reciprocate in kind. Did you mean it?”

“Of course! Forever and always, inshAllah!”

The two were married within the veranda, with Aderfi and the other dwellers bearing witness. 

After Eid, they walked together into Marrakech. The sultan had once more regained power. Selyane, his son, was welcomed into the palace once more, and Jameela as his beautiful wife. And the two lived happily ever after in the Land of the Sunset.

 

Related:

– Searching for Signs of Spring: A Short Story

– Short Story: Hijab, My Crown

 

The post Bismillah, The Beast [Part II] – A Short Story appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

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Despite being full of provable lies, the so-called documentary is receiving uncritical media coverage.

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The false conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is being wielded to chilling effect on US campuses.

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The spooky comedy franchise may seem an unlikely place to find an ethnicity and faith adviser, but productions are increasingly aware of a duty to make sure communities are truthfully represented

The “sensitivity reader” is a well-established, if controversial, figure in the publishing world, offering advice on whether a book’s content might cause offence. The film and TV industry has also been forced to confront similar issues, with “intimacy coordinators” now widely employed to ensure that filmed sex scenes neither harm the actors nor outrage audiences. Perhaps less well-known, but now gaining ground in film and TV, is the role of a “cultural consultant” – advisers taken on by productions to help them navigate the choppy waters of sensitivities around ethnicity and faith.

Sajid Varda, founder and CEO of media charity UK Muslim Film and director of the UK’s inaugural Muslim international film festival, recently completed an assignment on Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the latest instalment of the popular and long-running series of supernatural comedies. Varda says the key to such roles is “authenticity”; it is, he says “not just saying what is wrong with this, but how can we make it better and improve it?”

Continue reading...

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Ahmed aspired to be Gaza's Ronaldo.

by Ibrahim Moiz for MuslimMatters

May 2, 2024

UCLA Students and Faculty Horrified at Extent of Violence

The campaign against pro-Palestine protests on American campuses took another unsavory shift this week in Los Angeles when an encampment at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) was stormed by armed Zionist thugs, who set about attacking the protesters with practical impunity and with no response from either police or campus security. The assault continued for hours in the night, leaving both students and faculty horrified at the extent of the violence and its indulgence by security who are meant to protect the university community.

UCLA pro-Palestine encampment

Overwhelmingly nonviolent protests have spread across the United States in recent weeks, as students protest for universities to divest from companies that profit off the internationally illegal, but liberally indulged, occupation of the West Bank and Palestine. Although the United States has long claimed brokerage between Israelis and Palestinians, in actual fact, it has indulged Israel’s occupation under the pretext of security, and much of the American political and business class has engaged with and invested in an internationally illegal occupation.

Cowardly Leaders Fail to Protect Students

Pro-Israeli thugs attack protesters

In a typical diversion, Zionist organizations and their sympathizers in the corridors of power, as high as Joseph Biden himself, have attempted to paint the opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza as an episode of antisemitism, notwithstanding the hundreds of Jewish protesters and the mounting disapproval for Israeli policies among even a traditionally sympathetic Jewish-American populace. Thus the White House’s only response to events at New York’s Columbia University, whose British-Arab president Minouche Shafik caved into political pressure and ordered the police on her own students a fortnight ago and where students occupied a historic hall in solidarity with Palestine, was to condemn antisemitism and paint the Arabic term intifada, commonly used in various uprising-related contexts around the world, as an antisemitic slur.

At the other, western end of the United States, leadership has been similarly craven. In an interview with Ian Masters, professor and director of the UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy Ananya Roy described the university’s failure in protecting its students, whose “calm, contained, peaceful encampment” was repeatedly menaced by Zionist agitators. This failure, Roy says, led directly to the “unchecked violence”, dumbly watched by passive security forces as students and faculty who tried to protect them were assaulted. The administration, according to Roy, “resolutely refused to recognize the safety and well-being of our very own students who are in that encampment and really have the right to protest at university.”

Campus Administration Negligence

Pro-Zionist thugs attacked protesters

Not only did the university administration fail to have the attackers arrested, but their statements and messaging “downplayed the need for safety and well-being for the students in the encampment”. It was in this context that some two hundred Zionist thugs launched an armed night attack on the encampment, savagely laying about the students and chanting genocidal slogans such as the call for a second “Nakba”, referring to the original expulsion of Palestinians from their land at the foundation of the Israeli ethnostate in the late 1940s.

Though UCLA chancellor Gene Block has since responded to the assault with a condemnation, Roy describes the administration as having been negligent in the days leading up to it. Complaints about the behavior of a Zionist counterprotest over the weekend – a counterprotest funded in part by the wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld – were ignored.

Belying widespread attempts to portray the protests as antisemitic because of their criticism of Israel, Roy noted that many of the students and, indeed, faculty who opposed Israel’s policy were Jews, who were nonetheless endangered by violence in the name of the “Jewish state”. She described how one Jewish student on whom she checked after the violence replied, “I’m okay – but the university was really trying to kill us last night.”

Many comments on social media expressed shock at the violence and its apparent impunity.
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1785614477561344489

Others grimly noted the parallel with Zionist militia violence in Palestine, where thuggish Israeli settlers regularly brutalize Palestinians with the protection, and frequent participation, by the Israeli state.

https://twitter.com/BenEhrenreich/status/1785606983065739581
https://twitter.com/thaqafatalhind/status/1785642951697154131

Related:

– Callous Campus Crackdowns On Pro-Palestinian Protesters Grip The United States – MuslimMatters.org

We Are Not Numbers x MuslimMatters – Ramadan While Under Attack In Gaza

The post Zionist Instigators Storm Los Angeles Campus appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.