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San Francisco Woman Lawyer: Why I Am a Muslim
Asma Gull Hasan, 29, is a lawyer in San Francisco, an author, and a speaker. Sheâs also a self-described "Muslim Feminist Cowgirl" who grew up in Colorado and went to prep school on the East Coast. The daughter of Pakistani immigrants and born in Chicago, she considers herself an all-American girl. Hasan, who writes frequently for Beliefnet, has just published a new book, Why I Am a Muslim. ... When I was at the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] convention last year selling my first book .... there were also young, traditional men [who] would come up and say, "Why arenât you wearing a cover? And how can you expect me to buy a book when thereâs a picture of you on the front and youâre not wearing a cover?" And I would say, "Look, you donât have to buy the book." Meanwhile, a rumor got spread around that on a certain page of my book I wrote that the head cover is not required. So throughout the convention, young men would come up in groups of two or three and pick up the book and go right to this one page. .... ... about 10 percent of Muslim women in America wear the head cover. I have no idea where they got that number. But based on what Iâve seen, I would say that statistic is pretty accurate. But when you go to an event like ISNA, thereâs a lot of peer pressure to wear the head cover, because literally every woman is wearing the head cover. Probably out of all the women wearing the head cover there, less than half actually wear it every day. .... Now certainly in a mosque, when youâre praying, both men and women are supposed to cover their hair. Men are supposed to wear a prayer cap and women are supposed to wear a scarf, so in the mosque I cover my hair, no question about that. But I donât think in daily life itâs required. ... Here in America, the young women who wear it, say, in college, feel that itâs their way of protest. Some of them feel that itâs a feminist thing. Itâs their way of protesting judgment based on their appearance .... I was at an event at the Islamic Center of Southern California and there were two high school-age girls buying my book. I remember them because one of them was listening to an iPod, but sheâd taken the headphones out. The music coming out of the headphones was "Milkshake," which is a hip-hop song. .... and she said to me, "Itâs so great to see a Muslim woman. Every time we come to the mosque, itâs always a lecture and itâs always some old guy." Other Muslim women were saying they have nothing to give their daughters thatâs positive about Islam to read. Or nothing to take to school to show their teachers. When I was writing this book and listening to my own iPod, I heard "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper, which was a big hit when I was young. And I thought, you know, as Muslims we never get to have fun anymore. Itâs all serious. Itâs all business. .... I think the number one issue for Muslim women, for my generation, in their 20s and even 30s, is how do we find a suitable Muslim mate. Some Muslim women have chaperones and they meet over the phone and email. .... But thatâs limited to conservative, traditional Muslims .... If I were to go out on a date with a Muslim man, and we would date for a couple months, that would almost give me a bad reputation in the South Asian community and the larger Muslim community. Thereâs only a certain amount of finding a spouse that you could do thatâs within the parameters. Itâs very difficult for us to figure out how we go about this. Younger Muslim women who are in high school and the tweens and the teens are having a difficult time also, but itâs more related to how they dress. .... Then in March 2001, I was speaking at a conference at Harvard University on Islam in America and a man was sitting next to me -- a Sufi sheikh. The first thing I noticed about him was he was dressed almost funny. ... It looked like something out of Star Wars. .... And he was very calm. Iâm definitely a high-energy person, and I talk a lot. So here I am sitting next to this person whoâs dressed funny and is incredibly calm, and it almost made me nervous because every attempt to prompt him into chatting didnât work. But then, once I started to accept that this guy wasnât going to talk about the weather, his calm started to have an effect on me and I started to give in to it. ... Then he gave his talk, and when he was speaking he had so much energy. If he didnât have the podium in front of him he would have flown over it into the audience. Later on, a young Muslim woman who was in the audience was asking me questions. Her questions were not unfair, but she was basically yelling at me. The Sufi sheikh was sitting next to me and this woman was just berating me. Nothing I could say was letting her get some resolution. Finally the Sufi looked up at her and said, "Youâve told her your opinion. Youâre welcome to write your own book. And that should be the end of it." Afterward, I reread a lot of what I had read about Sufism in college, and I saw it in a new perspective. This Sufi sheikh embodied several Sufi principles, including not letting your emotions control you. The Sufi philosophy is, "Donât give in to those emotions because it will hurt you in a spiritual way -- and you need to be spiritually open because you want to be able to experience things." Sufis believe that the Prophet Muhammad was spiritually open, that he had an open heart. He was always an optimist. And thatâs how he was able to receive the revelation of the Qurâan. Had he been negative and closed, he wouldnât have heard the revelations. I think Sufi principles come down to a "go with the flow" philosophy. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-05-20 |
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