Passing in the Mid-West

For the last month, this blog has been pretty much neglected—by me, anyhow (though unfortunately, not by the spammers). I’ve been insanely busy with school and work and family, and the blog itself has been suffering from technical difficulties. And aside from all that, recent current events have been getting me down.

I tried to ignore the recent glut of media attention on allegations of child abuse on a polygamist ranch in Texas as much as possible. I usually try to avoid things that trigger memories of living in polygamy; it’s still too painful. But at the same time, I also feel drawn to such representations: they’re similar enough to my experiences that I can identify to some extent, yet they are different enough that I can remain at a safe distance—or at least, I think that I can. So one night, I gave in and read an article on the whole controversy—and then another, and another, and another…. (more…)

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One of the things that seems to go along with blogging about polygamy is that I get all kinds of comments supporting polygamy and/or polyamory, as well as the odd person who finds threesomes interesting. Goes with the territory, I suppose, but as a polygamy survivor, I continue to find reading such comments painful.

So, for a while I have tried to avoid thinking too deeply about such comments: just take your poly-whatever and shove it, ok? I just don’t even want to deal with it. At all.

Shouldn’t be too difficult not thinking about it, I had thought, as long as I stay away from conservative Muslims—which I do as much as possible, anyway. That’s not too hard where I’m now living.

But when I went to Pride last year, what did I see but a woman wearing a “poly and proud” T-shirt. I tried to look at the Indigo Girls performing up on stage instead, but my eyes kept returning to her shirt despite myself.
And, those pro-polygamy comments are still now and again posted to my site.

And, my older daughter brings up the subject of polygamy nowadays. She wants to talk about how it has affected her.

I am clearly not going to be able to simply avoid this issue.

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Just watched the movie, “Latter Days.”

The dialogue between Aaron and his father as the church is about to excommunicate Aaron for being gay really spoke to me:

[Father] “…The shame you’ve brought to this church… our family… our ancestors…”

[Aaron] “Wait a minute, our ancestors? Dad, your grandfather had half-a-dozen wives. Same goes for every single person in this room. I’d say we were the original definition of ‘alternative lifestyle.’”

[Father] “Are you calling us hypocrites?”

[Aaron] “No, we’ve gone way beyond hypocrisy, Dad. Now we’re just being mean.”

I’m not a Mormon, I’m a Muslim. But so many of the dynamics between the Mormons themselves, as well as between them and non-Mormons they interact with seem to be talking about my life when I lived as a conservative Muslim.

Squeaky clean, almost too-good-to-be-true, remarkably self-righteous Mormons who think that they embody all that is righteous, divinely approved and “normal.” They can’t stand back and see themselves from others’ eyes, nor do they have a self-critical sense of humour. Ironically, they usually fail to see how strange and “abnormal” they appear to outsiders. While they scorn the ‘alternative lifestyle’ supposedly lived by gays, they can’t see that in fact Mormonism is about as “alternative” as it gets, though in a right-wing way. (more…)

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Half a year ago, I managed to get a job, which finally enabled me to leave my polygamous and emotionally abusive marriage of over twenty years. I was so glad to cross that border from Canada into the US. I’d been increasingly miserable in my marriage, and the strain of inhabiting a twilight, in-between world unrecognized by most Canadians where the only law that was believed to really merit respect was the Sharia had taken a heavy toll on me and my kids.

But I’d had a few Muslim friends who knew about my situation, and led me to believe that something better was possible. Not only did they encourage me when I was ready to give up, but they had managed to extricate themselves from much worse situations. If they could do it, I hoped that I could too.

I was talking to one of those friends recently, and she made the comment, “…well, it’s all behind you now.”

But the thing is, it isn’t.

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My daughters are watching “America’s Next Top Model.” They begged me to watch it with them, but I refused. Can’t stand Tyra Banks, for one thing. Have a lot of work to do, for another.

They watch for about 10 minutes, and then come back into my room during the commercial break.

“There’s a Somali girl on the show this time,” my teenage daughter says. “And she’s circumcised.”

“What does “circumcised” mean?” my pre-teen daughter chimes in.

Oh god, how do I explain this?

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I’ve been reading some recently published academic stuff about North American women who convert to Islam.

I’m still trying to figure things about. Like, what drew me in the first place, and now keeps me in, yet also tears me apart.

The author mentions that a number of converts say that they’re impressed with the “sisterhood” they find in the Muslim communities they join. Sisterhood–oh yeah. I remember sisterhood. I heard about it first at an ISNA-sponsored sister’s camp back in the 1980’s.

Whatever “sisterhood” meant to most of the attendees, for most of my “orthodox” Muslim life–as a convert on the fringes of my (ex)husband’s immigrant community, and as a longtime member of a very controlling, neo-traditional Muslim group–it has largely meant frustration and pain. For the “sisterhood” I had was seldom treated as really analogous to “brotherhood.”

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Today, I happened upon Tariq Nelson’s post, The New ‘Passing,’ which talks about the trend among some African-American Muslims to marry non-African Americans in the hope of gaining more social acceptability for themselves–or, at least, for their children.

Marrying an Arab (or other non-African American) is seen by some as a survival strategy in a largely racist Muslim world (to say nothing of a largely racist immigrant North American Muslim community). Such out-marriage is believed to enhance immigrant Muslims’ perception that one is a “real” Muslim, as well as to increase the probability of having children who will be less “black-looking,” and hence, less likely to face scarring, full-frontal racism from immigrant Muslim kids. Nelson’s post also mentions other ways of attempting to elude immigrant Muslim racism, such as playing up any non-African ancestry one has–or fabricating it, if necessary.

That post certainly attracted a lot of impassioned responses, many of which were almost as interesting as the original post itself. (more…)

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Last year, Sana wrote two posts which touch on a convoluted and highly controversial question: essentially, why should a white feminist remain a Muslim?

Sana writes:

“I’ve finished reading your archives now and I’m struck by one crucial difference between you as a critical Muslim and Irshad Manji or Asra Nomani as critical Muslims: You don’t identify culturally, as a Muslim. You talk about Christianity, choir-singing, churches, and you identify overwhelmingly as a white person. I can understand what’s keeping some very critical Muslims in the fold of Islam. I see no such ostensible reason for you to stay. Granted, you’re free to do what you want — I’m certainly not questioning your rights — but it’s very incoherent to an observer.”"

My initial response to this was to shrink inside. “White” and “Muslim”; oil and water. One or the other must rise to the surface; they cannot coexist publicly, much less form one harmonious whole. Haven’t I heard that often enough in the last twenty-three years?

And what does it mean to be “overwhelmingly” white? I mean, last year I blogged a lot about polgamy (hardly a typical “white” problem, except perhaps in some parts of Utah or northern Arizona…). And I haven’t blogged at all about what I regard as stereotypically “white” things—hockey, or Elvis sightings, or fridge magnets (none of which interest me very much, BTW).

But white female converts, especially if they are feminists, are troublesome. (And if they’re queer as well, then they’re even worse.) Not only because of whatever they might say and do, but because their very existence disturbs a number of nicely ordered, discrete categories.

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Part of my relearning how to inhabit an unambiguously white body (after ceasing to wear hijab) is also coming to terms with white privilege in the Muslim communities I lived in and its impact on me.

The first thing I notice when I try to think about it is that I can’t find much written in detail about white privilege in North American Muslim communities. It’s rather a taboo subject, apparently. Which alone says volumes.

What I do find informs me that whites are privileged over black, brown, latino/a, native and other converts of colour in a number of ways: (more…)

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I haven’t been able to blog for a month.

It’s not that nothing is happening out in the world that’s worth blogging about. Or in the blogosphere that’s worth responding to. Or even that nothing’s happening to me that I want to write about. Quite the contrary.

It’s that I haven’t been able to.

The killing of Aqsa Parvez shook me to my roots. It brought so many things back. It was hard for me to get much work done for at least three weeks after it happened.

The Islam-haters had a field day, while the “mainstream” Muslim organizations tried to do damage control, serving up the usual stuff that they do every time something like this happens: Haven’t we always said that Islam is inherently violent?/Islam is the religion of peace. See, we always said that hijab is oppressive/Hijab is a woman’s choice and has nothing to do with oppression. See how much Muslims hate the West–they kill their own children when they become “too Westernized.”/This is a problem of parent-child communication, and we need more counseling programmes.

Whatever. None of anything that was said had much meaning for me. Yes, many immigrant Muslims–and other immigrants–in North America feel highly ambivalent toward their kids’ “westernization” (though to say that they “hate the West” is usually an overstatement). Of course we need more counseling programmes. The more the better.

What is all this hate-filled speech (responded to with bland social-work-inflected platitudes) other than the language of disavowal? (more…)

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