American Bedouin: Traversing Northern Qatar

"So we live in our old van; travel all across this land.

We drive until the city lights; dissolve into a country sky."

-Free, Zac Brown Band

So, back in Colorado it's one of my favorite activities in the whole wide world to load up my dad's Chevy Suburban and drive off into the mountains of Colorado. I've traveled those highways and backroads since I was a tiny tot, so I'm comfortable blasting down the highway, and four-wheeling over jeep trails. I find that when one needs to feel that sense of freedom, of overwhelming joy and tranquility, that feeling that all is well with the world; the road is your best friend. 

I've had dozen of impromptu road trips that have saved me pieces of sanity, calmed my heart, and re-situated me within the universe. That all sounds like such hippie-dippie talk, goddamn. But I guess I'm an introvert at heart, and some of my happiest days are those that I've spent elevated, cruising down the highway with a twangy country song wafting through the speakers...

In search of something remotely similar to clear my head of the incestuous city of Doha for a day, I loaded up tons water and my chihuahua in my little Toyota Fortuner - and hooked up my iPod, loaded to the brim with the best country music in my collection. 

The problem with going anywhere outside of Doha is that this country seems to be fundamentally opposed to maps, and good directions are almost as hard to come by. I had been planning a trip out of Doha for a while, but owing to my odd sleep/work/class schedule, I could never really make it happen. So when I happened to wake up early-ish on this most lazy of Fridays, I took it as a sign that I should take the plunge. After gassing up the tank and grabbing an extra-large karak, Farrah and I took off heading North, up Al Shamal road.

Initially, I was apprehensive to go, as I knew most of the journey would be on that awful Qatari highway, five lanes with no uniform speed average... Cars going 80 are interspersed amongst Land Cruisers flying by at 200kph. It's not a relaxing journey, and every now and then there happens to be that one car that has to drive next to you for 2-3 kilometers, staring intently, just to make sure they really are seeing a white girl in a car with Saudi plates. Yeah, go ahead, take a picture...

Anyways, eventually I reached the turn off for Al Ghuairiyat (otherwise spelled Leghriyat on the road signs), and was oh so pleased to discover that just past the (under construction) overpass the highway slimmed down into some familiar looking two-lane country. I even saw a sign that said "Highway 59", and my heart leapt a little in excitement. Finally, I really was away from Doha for just a moment. As I burned up that highway 59 tarmac, Farrah asleep in the passenger seat, I kept stressing that I would miss the turn-off for Al Zubarah fort, a monstrous landmark restored in 1937 by Sheikh Abdullah Bin Jassim, and I could not have been more wrong. The Zubarah Fort loomed in the distance a good while before it was even clear where one should be turning. I pulled in to the well-paved parking lot, and leapt out (Farrah in my arms, since there were 2 Filipino security guards milling around the parking lot). With a dozen other tourists, all of us speaking English, I read the signs that were posted, and took a handful of shots of the fort itself. I was not too impressed; only glad that I had made it to one of those gentle, introductory "historical" sites in Qatar. I heard some heavily accented English, and asked a Portuguese man to take a picture of me and Farrah over by the fort.  His companion, a pinky, round, Scottish man with teeth missing, asked me where I was from ("I figured you were from the States, but where?"). He went on to tell me that this was the first time he had left Doha in 6 months. Whether this was the total amount of time he'd since been in Qatar I didn't ask. After a quick pit stop (they have great bathroom facilities here!), Farrah and I loaded back up and went in search of the tiny abandoned fishing village of Al Jumail.

Having heard that it was visible from the road, and seeing tons of pictures before I went, I sort of knew what to look for. Just a little ways before Abu Dhalouf and the adjoining Al Ruwais, I spotted the rounded shape of the abandoned minaret in the center of Al Jumail. Pulling onto the rough, but in no-ways impossible, track to the village, the town came closer into view. I found a shady spot to park in amongst some of the buildings, and Farrah and I again got out to explore. Al Jumail is a really great spot to see in Qatar. Ruined houses and clearly defined streets (which you know aren't so old but feel ancient) lead to a (dirty) beach.

Having read a blog which talked about how the old minaret was still accessible and climbable, I left Farrah in the car and trudged over to the old masjid, keeping away from the various Qataris hovering around in their Cruisers. I entered the old mosque ground, right foot first, and traversed what must have been the old prayer grounds, spotting the qibla on my right. I entered the small doorway of the minaret, and climbed a small, dingy staircase to come to the top of the old mud tower. Four windows speckled the dome, and the view from each was equally splendid, though the Westernmost window was unparalleled in the serenity it exuded. From it one could look out across the town, down towards the beach, with its wet patches and visible sand, due to the low tide. Beyond that the Gulf stretched out in mellow tranquility, soft and open.

Minaret at Al Jumail Masjid

Horsemen across the beach

I sat for a long while in the top of the minaret, trying hopelessly to catch the feeling of the moment with my little iPhone camera. Through the Southern window, I suddenly saw three horsemen appear along the waterline, dressed in dazzling white, each with a red-checkered ghutra. They had a fourth horse with them, not tied to any saddle or bound by any rope, the fourth horse trotted playfully alongside the horsemen, clearly familiar with them and their respective mounts. I lost site of the men as they rounded the Al Jumail beach, but just as quickly as they had appeared, I suddenly saw them loping leisurely along the beach through the western window, northwards up the coast, heading towards Al Ruwais. It was a moment lost in time, a moment non-repeatable, one unable to be captured by lenses or technology. 

Eventually I tired of the dome at the top of that tiny minaret, or it tired of me, and I made my way back to the car. I continued northwards just a bit, until I reached the signs for Abu Dhalouf Park & beach. When I pulled up at the far west edge of the cornish area (I hadn't wanted to go to the main paved area since Farrah isn't always received well), and was immediately uncomfortable. Two or three teenage boys would not stop whistling (at Farrah, but still), and almost sooner than I'd showed up I was gone, back on the road to Al Jumail. It seemed better to return by the two-lane country track than by the big, noisy, Al Shamal Road for the whole journey. 

The sun was setting, the country music was blaring, and the numbness was setting in. I kept pulling over periodically to take snapshots of the glorious sunset, typically Qatari in its magnificent splendor and extravagance. You could not have bought a more brilliant dusk. Meandering down the way, I caught sight of a cloud of dust and a strange, black moving mass on the horizon. As I rounded the corner, I came upon a scene straight out of the 1970s. An old, weather-worn man trudged along at the head of a large heard of floppy-eared goats. The man matched the animals, skinny yet tough, with a long-sleeved shirt a size too big, hanging about his torso like fur that needed a trim. In one hand he held a long wooden stick. I screeched to a halt on the side of the road and rolled down the window. Farrah quickly rushed to the window to stare at this odd pack of "dogs", and a cross cultural exchange of the next level transpired. The man saw what I was doing, and held out his arms to bring the flock to a stand-still. Once the goats stopped walking, and began looking around in confusion, the man put his arm up and waved. Hastily, I snapped as many shots as I could... It was one of those "National Geographic moments" as my Dad said.

I shouted "SHUKRAN" to the man, rolled up the window and continued on my journey. As I picked up speed, I realized that the whole situation had probably been equally bizarre to each of us. As one of those few rare glimpses into the traditional life of this tiny peninsula, I was overjoyed and floored to have ran into this man and his goats, just as the sun was setting. It was unforgettable. Though I thought, more-so for him. He had simply been running his sheep along, (he was experienced to boot, judging from the way he'd stopped the flock on a dime), when an SUV with Saudi Arabian plates had slammed to a halt, only for a little white girl with her chihuahua to emerge through the driver's window to snap a few shots with her sparkly iPhone. What a place, what a fantastic country.

I spent the rest of the drive collecting my thoughts and ruminating on everything I had seen.

Doha is incredible; an amazing place with the most fitting name that means: "The Big Tree". I love this name, because it's so accurate. Everybody within the city is from a neighboring branch of humanity, although often from a branch so far away you've only ever heard of it by name. Despite this romaticized image, the city can get incestuous and overwhelming. It's easy to lose yourself in the bad driving, unending traffic, city lights, late nights, and smoky mornings.

In Colorado I would just drive myself to sanity, going as far as I was able and comfortable - to get away from people and everything about society that depresses me. That's not possible to do all the time in Doha, but if you make a point of it and plan the journey well, it's something you can squeeze in over the weekend between deadlines. 

There should always be time to take a back-road and watch the sun erupt over the sea into broad, sweeping flame.

"Yield"

Don't forget that we live in a natural world.

Peace & love always <3

Mary was a Prophet

"O Maryam (Mary)! Verily, Allah has chosen you, purified you (from polytheism and disbelief), and chosen you above the women of the 'Alamin (mankind and jinns) (of her lifetime)."

Rather, Mary was a prophetess.

This is going to be such an unpopular blog post, but I really just want to open some eyes and get people to think.. I mean really THINK about their religion. One of the biggest problems with Islam is that so many people are under the impression that in order to be a good Muslim, one just has to blindly accept what they are told, and perform the duties they see as "obligatory/fard" like ticking items off of a checklist.

I don't subscribe to that view, and I've always been under the impression that people should open up their own eyes and THINK. Don't fall victim to the 10%; don't be a sheep. God gave you a brain, so you'd better start using it.

I can't go into extensive detail in this blog post obviously, but maybe I can open up some doorways for further inquiry. Firstly, consider why it is that you (Muslims) get so upset or up in arms when you hear/read this: "Mary was a prophet". 

Exactly why do you get so hung up on it? I'm guessing it's for one reason: Mary had a vagina.

Every other prophet we have been told to accept in Islam is a male. That's fine. I'm not arguing against the prophethood of any other individual, only for the inclusion of Mary in the lineup.

Secondly, you might say, "Maria, Mary was never mentioned in the Qur'an as a prophet!". True. But can you tell me any other individual that is mentioned more often, or has an entire chapter devoted to him/her? As far as I know, Mary is mentioned in the Qur'an more than Mohammed himself. This is not something to be taken lightly.

Historically, it seems that prophets are individuals who receive revelation from the divine (whether it be through angelic intermediaries or direct divine revelation). A prophet is also someone who either leaves a scripture behind as guidance, or tries to use their message to reaffirm faith for large swaths of humanity.

Mary epitomizes this description/understanding of prophethood in Islam. Not only did she receive direct spiritual guidance from the Angel Gabriel, she bore the next Prophet - Jesus - through miraculous immaculate conception at the hands of Allah. In the words of Michael Muhammad Knight's character Rabeya (The Taqwacores): Mary may not have left us a scripture, but I say that her book was her son.

I don't find the argument that her name is not explicitly mentioned as a prophet in the Qur'an a very convincing one. I do believe that the Qur'an was the direct word of God. Unfortunately, we in 2013 will never really know what the word of God was. All we can go by is the version of the Qur'an that has made it down to us today. Never forget that there was a gap between Quranic revelation and Quranic compilation. Even after that, who's to guarantee that the non-prophetic companions of Muhammad didn't make some final tweeks? The word of God as revealed to Muhammad is nothing more than perfect. But I maintain that we cannot be assured that such perfection has been maintained in its entirety until today.

I find the story of Mary, and her revered status in the holy Qur'an to be more convincing of her prophethood than the fact that she is not considered a prophet by mainstream Islam simply because she was not named as such. Don't lie, she isn't mentioned or labeled as a prophet because she had a hymen (perfectly intact, I might add), and I don't find that a convincing argument in the slightest.

Islam has been transformed from an egalitarian movement of the people, into a male-dominated, exclusionary society. I refuse to give in to that anymore. Women are equal to men in every way, shape, and form. God has told us that. On the day of judgment there will be no preference given to men over women, so why should we act out such idiocy in our mortal lives? If men and women are equal in every sense, as God has instructed in the Qur'an, how can women not be prophets? Trying to say as such is illogical.

I am a woman. I have a vagina. I am a Muslim. I love Allah. And I believe that the blessed virgin Mary was a prophet of my religion.

Peace and love always <3

From Prescott to Doha: Islam 5 years on

What follows is a deeply personal account of my conversion to Islam, in a way that I've never written or accounted it before. Since coming to Doha I've begun to reconsider my relationship with Islam, and while I couldn't be happier about my relationship with Allah, I have found that my relationship to "Islam" itself is much more muddled. It's difficult for me to put this all out there... Please be kind.

Some of you may be familiar with the story of how I came to Islam. At 16 I got engaged to the most extraordinary Pakistani man. A senior in mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado, he was worldly, well-traveled, pure, and good to his very core. The legality of the marriage would be a green-card sham for sure, but we were absolutely committed to getting a civil marriage so he could stay in the country. Later, we agreed, when we were ready we would hold the symbolic public spectacle, crossing all the messy intercultural bridges later. His family knew about me but were not pleased in the slightest. It helped that he lied and told them I was a devout Christian (I was raised atheist). In Islamic tradition, it's acceptable for a Muslim man to marry a woman who belongs to the "ahl al-kitaab" ("people of the book"), a tribute to the shared Islamo-Judeo-Christian muddle. His family really pushed us into opting for the marriage earlier than we should have; upon discovering that their son was smitten with some blonde American infidel they threatened to bring him straight to Canada (where his parents were set to move from Brunei) as soon as he graduated in a few months.

Before all of this had happened, I had accepted an offer to start my BA in Arizona, about an 18 hour drive from Boulder through Grand Canyon and Four Corners country. It's one of the most beautiful routes in the desert southwest, to be sure. The first few months went ok, but when I found myself slipping back into a well-known and comfortable near-alcoholic pattern I had a typical first-semester breakdown and called my new fiance in a fit. He agreed to drive down at the end of the week and help me look for a healthier living situation. The next morning I awoke to a single text message from Muneeb: I love you - sent at 1:24am. I cleared out my inbox (back in the Stone Age when cell phone inboxes could fill up) and went out to attempt a jog down the way.

By noon I hadn't heard from Muneeb and started to get a little miffed; why hadn't he answered any of my calls? I broke down and called my mom to ask if she'd seen him. A few weeks earlier, his parents had kicked him out of his sister and brother-in-law's house in Denver after he refused to stop seeing me. My parents had happily given him meals and support, allowing him to move into my childhood bedroom. My mom finally dropped a big enough hint that he had taken off early, and was already on his way to Prescott; he should arrive right after my last class. It was a Wednesday.

I went to my first class. It was called something like "interpersonal communication and creative writing" or something New Agey like that. We had an in-class writing assignment and were then broken into pairs to go over our work. Not five minutes after finishing, two college administrators I knew walked over and had a few words with the professor. I sat on a boulder facing my partner. I don't remember who that person was - faceless - but I remember the sun shining gloriously on the pinyon and juniper on the hills just behind them. The instructor came over and asked me to go with the administrators. It was a tense and awkward walk about a block to the main offices. They told me to sit and to call my mom, she needed to give me some news. I remember thinking it would be something about my dad: he was in the hospital. He hadn't come home from a long run...

When I called my mom, I could hear that she was sitting on an airplane, the typical "dos and don'ts" were coming through the PA. She was in tears.

"Maria..." She sobbed

"Yeah, mom what's -"

"There's been an accident," she interrupted me with an uncontrollable wail "Muneeb is dead."

I shut my tiny Samsung flip-phone in a millisecond and threw it at the floor. I weaved my fingers into my hair and started to pull, eyes wide.

~

The rest of the day is a blur until I collapsed, a weeping mess, into my mom's arms at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. After that it's hard to sift through memories of individual days - it all just melted together. I know that I slept in my parents bed that first night back, drugged up on sleeping meds like a small child. I didn't go into my - his - room until my second day back I think. I found a soft, green prayer rug (that I first thought was just a fancy carpet for hanging on the wall) and an English translation of the Quran. I only wore his clothes.

Muneeb Anwar Kamal died on October 6th, 2008 between 1:24 and 6:34am, some time before a trucker reported seeing a white Toyota Avalon upside down at the bottom of a ravine on I70, just after the on-ramp at the 214 Cisco exit a few miles over the Utah border. He was driving to come see me, and was half-way through the journey. All the mountainous sections of difficult driving were behind him. In fact, he was found at the bottom of the only ravine for at least 50 miles in either direction. It's a flat, unimportant piece of road - the last few miles before I70 officially ends just north of Moab.

I read the Quran I found. I went to Muneeb's funeral at the Abu Bakr Mosque of the Colorado Islamic Society in Denver. His family met and accepted me with outstretched arms and tears in their eyes. We cried together.

It was inevitable that I would turn to Islam after that.

Islam believes in angels. And I expect that Muneeb may have been an angel, made of light, and sent to this earth for a higher purpose. It's generally accepted by Muslims that angels have no free will, and can only do as they are commanded by Allah. Allah ordered Muneeb to die that night, on that highway, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy - millions of memories with hundreds if not thousands of people. I am convinced that he is the reason I became a Muslim. He completely altered the course of my life. Everything that I have done over the last 5 years, everything, is due fully to him (and to Him).

As I draw nearer to another paradigm shift in my worldview five years later, I find myself thinking back more and more to Muneeb, and realize that I haven't been comfortable being alone with myself and my haunting past since he died.

I was born with a pain inside... A pain that lead me to experiment with drugs and alcohol FAR too early in my childhood. By the time I was 14 I could hold my liquor better than most college frat-boys. I started on crack-cocaine not much later. After 9 months of rehab and therapy I was cured of my drug addiction, but found that the pain had not left me.

For the past five years I've lived with this same pain, tripled by the weight of Muneeb's death. Five years later I can really look back at all of this from a substantial enough distance to make some sense of it...

Even though it was Muneeb and the hardcore Pakistani Salafi Islam that originally hooked me, I've gotten so far away from that it's hard for me to sit through a traditional, puritanical Sunni khutbah anymore.

I recently moved to a new part of Doha, a place with a bit more permanence and a "residential" atmosphere.  There's a big mosque a few blocks away that belts out the adhan five times a day, and then continues the prayers through the PA. Despite the fact that I normally abhor traditional practices of Islam, lately every time I hear the adhan and the subsequent lyrical Quranic recitation I am drawn without effort into prayer. My knees buckle, my waist folds.... Sometimes I haven't even washed wudhu, mostly I'm not fully covered.

My relationship with Islam right now is complicated. I'm not sold on the mass-consumption, Burger King, "one-size-fits-all" version (which is the ONLY version sold en masse in Doha), but I'm definitely not ready to give up on it altogether. It's hard carrying this burden around with me... I wear a hijab on my head, and cover myself in public because I feel it's the right thing to do. But I don't always pray, and I still wear makeup. I smoke. But when the fajr adhan is called, I can't stop myself from crawling to the window and following the lead of the muezzin.

I'll never be a "good Muslim" - but I'd rather keep walking around with Allah in my heart.

Allahu akbar.

Peace and love always <3

No Mosque for Me: the solitary Muslim

"The mosque needs to be a hospital for the broken, not a guild for 'good people'."

-Nihal Khan, Mosques are Missing the Point

I took my shahada with two of my very best friends in the whole world - Ali Alqattan and sayyed Hussain Yaseen - as well as a man I'd never met and an Iraqi (I think he was Iraqi) shaikh, at the Al Zahraa Islamic Center in South Denver. Honestly though, I really said my shahada at about 1am on a cold October night in 2008 a year before. This shahada, the moment when I really surrendered my soul to God, will never be recognized by established Islam. Why? Because there was no witness but Allah and I. There is no better witness than He...

I have been living in the city of Doha, Qatar for about 6 months now. I could not be happier that I decided to fling myself across the globe and land in this chaotic, dirty, and sometimes frustrating place. I do love it here, and as the 'isha call to prayer begins its slow ripple across my unpolished corner of the city, I can feel my heart begin to swell. Every day, five times a day, that beautiful reminder comes calling to us from the lips of hundreds - maybe thousands - of dedicated muezzins. I wish there was a better word to use in English... The Arabic, adhan, seems much more fitting, because for me this adhan does not always call me to 'prayer' in the way that Muslims are prescribed.

When I first converted to Islam, I was told to seek out other Muslims, since one cannot practice Islam in solitude. I was told that Islam is communal, and that it is only through community that one can experience the full range of the religion. For me this has never been the case. I took my shahada alone, and I have aways been a solitary Muslim.

I don't feel welcome in mosques. Perhaps it's different for the brothers who frequent various mosques, anonymously joining different groups and masjids. Today, as a woman, I do not feel welcome in the mosque. Any mosque. I have yet to find a masjid where I feel as if I can connect with God or experience any remnant of spirituality.

One of my favorite lines from Michael Mohammed Knight's The Taqwacores is when a group of 5 characters visit the Rochester mosque after dark. Muzammil, a gay punk Muslim expressed my exact sentiments: "The only thing that ever made me uncomfortable in a masjid, was people..." As a woman, every single time I want to visit a masjid I have to run through a mental checklist that begins first and foremost with the hope that the mosque even accommodates women. In Doha it's all too common for there to be no section for women at all. If it were up to me, I don't give two shits about praying next to men, but unfortunately 90% of the Muslim population doesn't agree with me on that.

Even if I find a masjid that has a section for women, it is usually run or staffed by self-righteous khaleeji types who scold you to stand in a straight line, or chastise you for making wudu with fingernail polish on. Women these days have a tendency to dissect one another, picking each other apart piece by piece in an effort to boost their own self esteem in comparison. I do it too, I won't lie. The problem is that too many people do not leave these habits and unhealthy emotions at the door of the masjid. They carry them inside, heavy as weights, ready to cast them upon someone else. I don't like going to the masjid anymore.

Let's be honest, as a female convert who identifies as Shia, who has light skin and light blue eyes, I attract attention in any masjid I decide to visit. The problem with being an obvious convert is that my brothers and sisters, praise them, always think they are helping me by pointing out my flaws. God bless them for trying to help (if they really are saying it for the right reasons), but most of the time I'm aware of the tiny "flaw" they're pointing out, whether it be nail polish or letting my hijab show part of my neck, and I could not give a flying fuck.

I don't go to the masjid because I want to know about the "latest scholarship" from mullah so-and-so that's  going to set Muslim thinking back another few years. I go to the masjid because it is the house of my God, and I want to be closer to Him. I want to come to the masjid because it is a safe place to be, and a place where I can feel the arms of God closing in around me...

There is no mosque for me... No masjid I can visit and feel welcomed and swallowed up by Allah. At least none that I have visited yet. This strict, robed vein of Islam that now throbs through the tribal sandscape of the Arabian peninsula is dead to me. I do not see in it a reflection of the Allah who witnessed my shahada on Quince avenue in Boulder that frozen October evening.

Is He not the God of all this Earth? Islam should be open and embracing, not cold and exclusive.

If there is no masjid for you, should you build your own? I came across this amazing occurrence of women only masjids in China, and totally fell in love with the idea. Reading about the phenomenon on OnIslam.org, within a paragraph or two the reader is assured that "Prayers are led by a male imam in a mosque 100 meters away with the service usually piped into the room through a loudspeaker to the female worshippers." The women are also "masculinized" through their 'dubious and heavy workload'. That's all bullshit. 

I read another article on the same topic from China Daily  that describes something much closer to reality. It talks about how this phenomenon spread across China hundreds of years ago, after women felt unwelcome in mosques and set out to create their own holy space. It talks about how many women trained to be imams, so that they could lead their fellow worshippers in prayer. I can hear the words bubbling up from your lips already "That's biddaa!! Women as imams?? Blasphemy!!"

In my humble opinion, I think that the prophet might smile upon such an initiative, when women no longer feel welcome in mosques today. "Children of Adam, take your pleasantness to every Mosque." (Qur'an 7:31) he might say...

This leads me to imagine what my own "utopian women only mosque" might be like. All criticism would be checked at the door, none would be allowed to call out another for their appearance, or for their words and actions outside of the mosque. It would be a safe place where women could come and lay down their souls before Allah without fear of reprisal, a place where they could truly connect with and experience the divine in almost any way they saw fit. No Muslim woman would be excluded. 

The fact that this description is laughable to most Muslims worries me. Has Islam so fundamentally lost its way that it cannot imagine such a space for its women? Where is our mosque? The mosque for women and converts, Shia and uncovered, the unclean and the junkie? 

I'll tell you one thing for certain, it's nowhere to be found in Doha.

Peace and love always <3