The struggles of being a single female in Doha

Being a woman is tough. In and of itself. I don't think this needs much explanation, and to anybody confused by this statement: why are you even reading my blog? Seriously...

Being a woman in Doha is even more difficult. In a country where the sex ratio is 2.00 males/females (and 2.47 males/females in the 15-64 age range), you can actually feel your own presence as a woman wherever you go. What do I mean by this? I mean that in a strictly numeric sense, women stick out in this country. Seeing a woman is not as common as seeing a man, and therefore it's often a noticeable event. In a country where the vast majority of foreign workers are males (think: construction industry, drivers, manual labor, etc.) who have left behind their families and often their wives so that they can make a living, it's sometimes painfully annoying to be a woman.

For example, when I leave the house, I know I'm going to be stared at. Let me also clarify, that it doesn't matter what I'm wearing. I could be dressed like a stereotypical American, a vanilla hijabi, or be wearing a big black abaya and I will be stared at no matter what. I repeat, it does not matter what clothing I choose to wear, the staring is constant. I'm not just talking about being stared at by the hordes of male students who gather to smoke at the door right by office, I'm talking about standing in the grocery store trying to decide which pasta sauce to buy, only to look over and realize some guy on the other end of the aisle is undressing you with his eyes. I'm talking about going to a fully professional foreign policy event at a notable think tank and getting eye-f****d by the guy across the hall. I'm not trying to channel "damsel in distress" here, I've seen and heard this happen to every single one of my female friends as well, Qatari and non-Qatari.

When I first came to Doha I thought it odd how many of the Qatari women were closeted, and not that enthusiastic about going out in public or public events. While I initially thought it was exemplary of what so many in the west choose to call the "subjugation of women" in the region (ie suppressing their presence in public life) I now totally get it. I've been here only a little over a year, and already I'm starting to get fed up and frustrated with the way that women are devoured and coveted by the male population here. I'd so much rather stay home so much of the time.

To be clear, and also to dispel the myth of the sex-crazed Qatari male chasing after western women, I have personally been stared at, harassed, hit on, followed, tailgated and flirted/hollered at by every nationality under the sun. From Indians to Qataris, Egyptians, Khaleejis, Africans and even other westerners. The only commonality amongst these guys is simply that: they are all men.

I've been able to handle and deal with this as most women here are forced to do, but there are always those certain events that really put things into perspective. This past week the biggest story in the Doha scene is that of Lauren Patterson: a 24-year-old British primary school teacher living in Doha who was murdered (allegedly by two Qatari males, though this remains unconfirmed), and whose body was burned beyond recognition out in the desert. This is unprecedented in Doha, though the event does come about a year after another European female teacher was murdered by a (Kenyan) security guard. Of course, these things don't happen often in Qatar. These events are so rare here, and really we are lucky to live in a country that is, for the most part, incredibly safe.

This said, it really shakes me a bit to hear the story of Lauren. I can guarantee that every single female expat in Doha (and even the married ones when away from their husbands) has felt what I have talked about previously. I myself have had a handful of times where I've actually felt genuinely nervous or scared because of the approaches, actions, or words of a male (whether a friend, acquaintance, or some random guy in the grocery store). What I'm trying to say is that while the case of Lauren Patterson is obviously an extreme act committed by some seriously MESSED up guys, but it is also symptomatic of the gender dynamic in Qatar. We females are always on guard, and hearing stories like this just makes us even more nervous, and raise our guard just a little bit more.

I honestly can't think of a proper solution for this problem off the top of my head. My only recommendation would be for the government to possibly make it easier for expatriates to bring their families and/or wives (but of course, then here you run into the problem that the government doesn't actually WANT to encourage family life/settlement here). Really, the gender ratio should be more equal, and the half-assed segregation of so many places should really stop. I see this all the time at Qatar University: half-assed gender segregation gone wrong. It's one thing to have an area be strictly male, or for it to be fully integrated. But having a male area that is open to females should they want/need to go there makes the presence of any female in said area a noteworthy (hint: stare-worthy) event.

How do you males think this makes us feel? Yes, in your mind you can't miss the opportunity to hit on this female creature that has just crossed your path; while in our minds, you're just the 15th guy to whistle, "tss tss", or holler at us on our way to work. Seriously. Just stop. STOP.

This isn't to say that I feel unsafe in Doha at all. Far from it. Doha is one of the safest places I've ever been in, for sure. But if left unchecked, this sex ratio imbalance and the annoyance it breeds amongst resident and local females will continue to rise and threaten the general livelihood of women in Qatar. To be sure, it is the state of society and NOT a government policy of "repressing women"that is to blame here.

The best solution is with you, men! Simply: STOP STARING! Walk on by! Don't harass us at every traffic light! Don't follow us home! Don't stalk us in the grocery store! Don't softly whistle or "tss tss" us as we walk by! For serious, people! Just leave us be on our daily business. We are exactly like you, save some of our anatomy.

Ok, that's all for now. Apologies if it was super "rant-ish" but I just had to get it out of my system...

Peace & love always <3

Writing about Islam on drugs: a review of Michael Muhammad Knight's "Tripping with Allah"

I have literally just finished reading Michael Muhammad Knight's latest production, "Tripping with Allah". Even though everything I know about reviews of anything tells me that I should wait to give this plenty of thought, the other half of me is so  ridiculously wound up over everything I just read I just want to SPIT IT ON OUT!

I should mention that I've been waiting to read this book for ages. It was released 2 days after my flight to go back to Doha for my second semester of graduate school. After an unsuccessful attempt to buy the book online and have it shipped to me (the package was seized and destroyed by customs officials), I attempted to find it on a short trip to London, only to discover that the UK release date wasn't until next week and again, I'd miss it. I asked Foyle's Bookshop to save me a copy when it came in anyways. I then tried (unsuccessfully) to convince a number of my friends who frequently traveled back and forth between Doha and London to smuggle me a copy back somehow.

All of these attempts were unsuccessful, and I was forced to wait to get my hands on a copy until I was back in this fine democracy, where everyone is absolutely free to be a total idiot.

Prior to this point, I had (accidentally) the pleasure of discussing the author (Michael Muhammad Knight) and his works with a friend back in Doha who shall remain nameless, but who directs some serious research at an equally serious policy institution out somewhere on the Qatari peninsula. Apologies if the conversation isn't completely accurate, it was a long time ago and my memory is shot to pieces. Somehow the conversation had drifted, and I was mentioning something about MMK's Taqwacores to this guy.

"Well, some people find his work really controversial."

"How so controversial...?" He asked in this way that just reinforced my already strong perception that he knew everything and I was just a wide-eyed white-girl adrift in the Persian Gulf (I've become exceedingly familiar with this tone, unfortunately).

"Well, you know, Muslims drinking and doing drugs and stuff... But I still find it hard to say that they definitively aren't Muslims."

"I know what you mean, I had this friend here for a long time," he paused and shifted out of the Dr. Academic frame for a few moments, "She wore hijab and would always pray on time and everything, but she would go to these crazy parties out here and sleep around without shame." He sat back definitively and puffed on his shisha. "I know about Michael Muhammad Knight... I remember all these guys I knew from the Muslim Students' Association getting swept up in the Taqwacore thing."

This kind of floored me. Maybe it's just that I grew up in Colorado, surrounded by only a handful of Muslims - 90% of whom were straight FOBs from Saudi Arabia coming to study at American universities, and to fuck and drink and stay up late watching porn and playing video games. So until talking with this guy, I've only ever interacted with one other person on a real-live basis (excluding conversations about the topic online) who had even heard of MMK or the Taqwacores. It's safe to say that there is no counter-Islamic culture in Colorado, and definitely no Taqwacore just yet.

He took another long drag of shisha, and exhaled. "So what, then, you're like one of his groupies or something?" Again, back to Dr. Academic and the wide-eyed intern who gets eye-fucked from across the room at foreign-policy events. Never you mind I would have gladly played the part of the wide-eyed intern getting a stern reprimanding across the desk of my big bad boss....  But I'll blame that on Knight's recurring erotic descriptions of houris and masturbation; my mind's polluted. Shame on you.

While I consider myself to be an American Muslim, I'm really not connected to this American Muslim "scene" that apparently exists somewhere out there in densely populated parts of the USA. I didn't even know enough about being an "American Muslim" to know that liking and praising Knight makes me a veritable persona non grata to the ICNA-type crowd; the protectors of the "real" American Islam.

I don't give a fuck one way or the other if liking the books of Michael Muhammad Knight disqualifies me as an "American Muslim", or even as "American" or "Muslim" at all. My Islam is not for the world. No longer will I wrap my scarf so tight, parading my conversion around to be gawked at - a reaffirmation for the rest of the Muslim world to cluck and coo "mashallah, look at how she became a Muslim and was born again." I hate that. Nobody can be "born again" after converting to Islam. Some people tell me that all of my sins will be erased. Assuming that they mean my sins before converting, I would still have a heck of a lot to repent for. Converting to Islam didn't suddenly remake me into an abaya wearing, rule-following, chaste piece of property that a man could one day own. That's the other thing I hear all the time that just makes me want to scream "ya habibiti, you know now you can only marry a Muslim man. Are you nervous about that?" Shut. Your. Mouth. I'll marry whoever I want to marry (if I marry) and I will not be consulting you about it.

Should I actually say something about the book itself? Perhaps...

This book is remarkably well timed to speak to my own transformation not only as an American-Muslim, but also as a writer. It seemed to me that the most heartfelt passages, and the ones that spoke to me the most, lamented Knight's transition as a writer - a pain I often feel as I transition from ranting blogposts and raunchy short-stories to essays and dissertations. It's painful, and I could see - even before Knight reveals himself in the end of the book - that it was a work of someone in transition. Not really research, not really a road novel, and not really a work of nonfiction, the book is solely the creation of the author's addiction; his drug of choice. At times it did feel labored, but even these passages seemed to have something more to say. I know this awkward style that he's writing in well... It reminds me of my own work. Labored, not sure how much (if any) passion to insert into a particular piece... The soul-sucking feeling of writing academic papers in a never-ending cycle just suuuuuuucks.

That's what stuck with me the most, really. I have to say that I just LOVED the climactic piece with Fatima and Ali... Perhaps because I can relate to the experience of spiritual soul-searching with a hallucinogenic/psychedelic aid. I had never given much serious thought to reconciling my Islamic identity through the consumption of psychedelic drugs, but MMK's book had me googling the nearest Peyote Way church of God and checking my bank account balance. Keep kids off drugs, don't let them read Tripping with Allah.

Overall, I just have great warm fuzzy feelings about the book, much the same as I do when I read his other books. I suppose most people probably finish and get angry or feel unsettled. I'm just walking around with a big smile on my face thinking "thank Allah there are freaks out there that think like I do.... But seriously, I mean goddamn! That sex scene where Knight became Fatima was hot. Wish that had been me."

Gender seemed to be a running theme throughout the book, but now I don't want to emphasize this book's discussion of gender over his others, as Knight clearly states that often people don't realize when he is writing satirically about gender. As a female it's interesting to read about male struggles with feminism, sexuality, gender, etc. - but at a few points I kind of felt as if Knight was almost hijacking femininity. Don't get me wrong, I salute the courage of any male to openly admit he's a feminist, or supportive of total equality between the sexes (not to mention having experienced Fatima as "the divine feminine"), but when men become the ones to experience, talk about, and analyze femininity, it cuts out the most important piece of the equation: the woman herself. It has now, apparently, become possible to discuss femininity without involving any females (with the exception of the ayahuasca-induced vision of Fatima). In the world of today, the feminine has become an object of male discussion just as the female body has become an object of male exploitation.

This is probably why they tell you to wait to write reviews, since now I can't hardly remember all I wanted to say about it. I almost wish that this book had been Knight's next book that he briefly foreshadows at the end of Tripping with Allah. I liked the main body, which had a lot to say about the context of drugs in Islam, and analyzing academic writing, as well as Knight's "set"- but it left me a little hungry. I had almost expected to be told about the amazing visions and Knight's own experience (albeit with some background, for sure) and then be treated to an in-depth sort of analysis of what it brought up. Maybe we won't get this, maybe we will. Who knows. I'm quite satisfied as is.

Whatever the point of Knight's latest and greatest, it was so so welcome, and a long overdue celebration of the kind of American Islam that I know and love. I'm glad I was able to slip it in somewhere between all these heavy academic tomes on the Gulf and this hanky-panky conference I'm attending in the UK next month.

Peace and 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