Weekly Update: March 27 - April 2

Assalamu alaykum!

I'm guessing there are some of you who are wondering where I disappered to. Well, for those of you who do not already know, I am currently in the United Kingdom...London to be exact!

And it is an amazing place here, especially for someone who has spent her whole life living in a predominantly white Christian society since birth! There are so many different people walking the streets, so many languages the ears hear. Best of all, there are an awful lot of Muslims.

It’s not uncommon to be walking down the street or through the park and see many, many Muslims along the way. Hijabs and niqabs, thawbs, beards…none are out of the ordinary here. In certain parts of the city and surrounding boroughs, many stores and restaurants lining the streets boast a halal food sign. Almost 3% of the population is Muslim, compared to less than 1% in the US and 2% in Canada.

One of the locations I received the chance to see was the London Central Mosque, the largest mosque in London as well as the rest of the UK. Alhamdulillah it’s a beautiful place, with Muslims coming and going in a steady stream. Unfortunately, I was unable to enter the mosque, but I did manage to get a few snaps of the exterior:

The London Central Mosque is not the only sightseeing I've done during my stay here. I've also had the chance to see some other well-known places of interest, such as Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament...

...the London Zoo...

...the London Bridge...

...Tower Bridge...

...and the London Eye (okay, so it's not actually a photo of the London Eye...it's a shot of the southern part of London as seen from the Eye...the Waterloo Underground Station is in the foreground).

But, if you know me, I don't like to stick with just the 'normal' tourist attractions. I enjoy getting out there and seeing what others might not, like the site of the 2012 Olympics...

...the Lord's Cricket Ground...

...Primrose Hill...

...and Angel Underground Station, home to the London Underground's longest escalator.

And, for you fellow Harry Potter fans, the reptile house at the London Zoo, where the Burmese python scene in the first movie was shot...

...Platform 9 3/4 (unfortunately the King's Cross Station is undergoing some updates, so the platform isn't as real looking as it should be...and in case you're wondering, yes, most workers at the station know where Platform 9 3/4 is)...

...and Millennium Bridge, the bridge the Death Eaters destroyed in the beginning of the sixth book and movie (please excuse my camera's inability to take good photos after dark).

The sights haven't been the only amazing things during my stay here in the UK. The food is awesome too! I have never eaten such delicious and spicy cuisine -- all of it halal. Most of my meals, with the exception of breakfast, have been taken in some of the many small eateries around the area. One of these eateries had the best -- and I mean the best! -- wings I have eaten! If you're ever in the London area and you're looking for great food, check out Al Nasar Kebabish in Leyton, Greater London. You won't regret it insha'Allah!

While most of my meals have been outside, a few were homemade. First, their was some delicious chicken curry (my favorite!). I was supposed to cook it, but I ended up doing more watching than cooking as I have never made chicken curry beyond the simplest dish with what little spice we can get in Northern Minnesota. But, I did have the chance to cook one night, and settled on spaghetti. I ended up doing some experimenting due to lack of Italian spices and everyone's distaste of beef. So, I substituted chicken for beef and garam masala and red chili powder for Italian spices. Alhamdulillah it turned out great, so much better than I had expected!

Okay, enough photos. It's time to answer the question I hope you're asking: when will I start posting again? Well, it's hard to say. Insha'Allah I might get the chance to post a few pieces this week, probably nothing in-depth or fancy. However, it's still up in the air what I will be doing for the next couple of weeks, so I can't say for certain if I'll have the ability to post anything. However, I myself am itching to write something, so insha'Allah I'll find some time!

'Daily Qur'an and Hadith' will be returning this upcoming week insha'Allah!

Before I close this update, I would first like to thank all my readers who have been periodically checking the site. Even though I haven't been writing and posting, I have been keeping an eye on the stats. Every time I log in I'm delighted to see I'm still getting visits. I expected the visits to stop a couple days or so after I stopped posting without any explanation, but some of you are still dropping by! Alhamdulillah! That's great, and I can't tell you how happy that's made me! Insha'Allah I hope to keep getting those visits!

Ma'asalama

Iman

Feeding the birds!

Daily Qur'an and Hadith

Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim

My believing servants! My earth is vast, so worship Me and Me alone. Every soul will taste death, then it is to Us that you will be returned.

-- Surah al-‘Ankabut verses 56 and 57

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Narrated Hasana' daughter of Mu'awiyah: She reported on the authority of her paternal uncle: I asked the Prophet salallahu alayhi wassalam: ‘Who are in Paradise?’ He replied: ‘Prophets are in Paradise, martyrs are in Paradise, infants are in Paradise and children buried alive are in Paradise.’

-- Dawud, Book 14, Hadith 2515

From Behind the Mask

Okay, so I’m going to be lazy today. Well, actually I’m having trouble concentrating, and I can’t seem to sit down for more than a few minutes without having the urge to get up and do something. Plus, I have a lot to get done. The next week is going to be crazy busy for me, and my to-do list is frighteningly long.

Rather than writing a full post today about a news article, like I was planning on doing, I’m just going to include the article and let you read it. Easy, simple, and less work for me. However, there is a point I would like to make at the end insha’Allah.

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"I had so many dreams for my life, but when I saw him, they just disappeared." Saraya spoke softly, her hunched-over body and nervously twisting hands testimony to all she says she has had to endure.

"I told my father I didn't want to marry him: 'why are you doing this to me?'" She continued: "My father said 'you are of an age to be married and this is my decision, not yours.'"

Saraya says it only took three days for her to realize she had been married off to a madman.

Emotions and turmoil she never dared publicly speak of tumble out freely -- concealed, along with her face, behind a mask.

Half the mask is pale blue, the color of the "chaudari" or burka, symbolizing the oppression of women; the other half white, representing innocence.

This is Afghanistan's new revolutionary TV show called "Niqab," meaning "The Mask."

"I was always desiring to have something like the mask, like this show in our media," Mahdi said. "I was not very sure about the concept and the format, but I was very sure about the mask, you know. Because in Afghanistan, it's very difficult for women to talk about their difficulties and their problems, and the violence they are facing in their home."

Her identity safely concealed behind the mask, Saraya said she was forcibly married off to a known rapist, a man with an existing criminal record when she was 15 years old. He was 58.

"When my youngest was just four years old, my husband brought women to the house and raped them.

"My child asked me: 'who are these women?' I could not say anything to my child -- my husband would just beat me."

She said she eventually ran away, fearing that he would harm their daughter. She said she firmly believes that if her husband ever found her and their three children he would murder them all.

But she says, she had to speak out for the sake and future of her children and other women.

"I am not sure we can make a difference for the victims," Mahdi said. "You know for the women who are coming here and talking about life, sometimes I think they are victims forever.

"But we can use the life of these individuals as an example to show the people, I am sure we can make some changes in the life of the women. And I am sure we can change in the minds of men in Afghanistan."

The studio audience is made up of a panel of religious and legal experts, as well as human rights campaigners, who offer their insight, opinions and advice.

"Your marriage at such a young age to such an older man is against Islam," a religious expert told Saraya. "His behavior is against Islam and against the law."

Mahdi said the inspiration for the show came from watching his mother.

"In the mind and eye of the people, her work is not worthy although she is doing much more than I. I am not talking just about my mother, I am talking about all the mothers in Afghanistan," he said. "Maybe there are a lot of mothers, thousands of mothers who are living in the same situation, they don't have a tongue, they don't have a voice to talk about what they are suffering."

Although the situation for women in Afghanistan has improved since the days of the Taliban's oppressive regime, women have been treated as commodities for centuries.

At least 59% of marriages in the most recent survey done by an Afghan non-governmental organization, Women and Children Legal Research Foundation, were considered forced marriages. Of these, 30% were "badal" or "exchange" marriages in which men trade their daughters or other female relatives for women or girls from other families for the purpose of marriage.

Another 17% involved a female given in marriage as compensation for a crime or other act of aggression committed against a man in another family.

"During the second episode, the victim, the guest, was a lady who was 12 years old when she got married," Mahdi said, noting this was a "badal" marriage. Her brother had murdered a man. She was given to the family of the victim.

As she spoke of the abuse and torture she endured, Mahdi says everyone in the control room broke down.

"They were crying ... they were crying," he recalled. "There are a lot of realities in Afghanistan, but when you talk about realities publicly, I am sure it will shock people. I was shocked."

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The only thing I want to say, or point out rather, is what the religious expert said: ‘Your marriage at such a young age to such an older man is against Islam. His behavior is against Islam and against the law.’

Most people immediately blame Islam for the oppression of women in the Middle East and other Islamic regions. But the comment of this religious expert underlines the problem: men are the oppressors, not Islam; society is the oppressor, not Islam; people are the oppressors, not Islam.

Insha’Allah this topic will be part of a future post: ‘The Oppression of Muslim Women: Fact or Fiction?’ I’m not sure when I’ll get around to writing it as this would be a much longer post that what I have been writing; something more along the lines of a college paper type project. In other words, some actual research included and more than a couple pages in length.

But the point of this post is to show people that in truth, Islam is not blame. When they hear about something bad happening in a Muslim country or something bad happening that involves Islam, most non-Muslim will blame Islam automatically. However, the blame lies with the people. In the past, I’ve touched upon this in the Pakistan and Infanticide post. Unfortunately, many Muslims make Islam fit their culture, when they should be changing their culture to fit Islam.

Keepin' it Halaal

Writing has been part of me for quite awhile now. It’s hard to put a date on when exactly I began to put pen to paper and actually construct stories. My guess would be sometime in my early elementary years. But when doesn’t necessarily matter; all that matters is that I have found interest and joy in writing for a long time.

While I do a lot of non-fiction writing for this blog, my true writing genius lies in my fictional writing. My non-fiction writing, such as what I do on this blog, does not compare to my creative writing. Or at least I think does. I’m probably not as good as I think I am. But that’s the subject of a future post insha’Allah.

More specifically, I write novels. I did not identify myself as a novelist until a couple years ago, but a couple years before that I attempted my first novel. As soon as I would come home from school most afternoons, I would begin clacking away at my grandma’s ancient hand-me-down PC. I only managed to get a few chapters into the story, but it was the beginning.

I become serious about novels in my senior year of high school. Ramadan coincided with the start of the school year, so I spent my lunch times in front of the office, reading. I had just purchased a novel I was very excited to read, ‘One Way to Pakistan.’ About halfway through, I began to say to myself, ‘I think I could do this. I think I could write a book.’ By the time I had finished the book, I knew I wanted to try writing a novel myself. When people ask me what gave me the inspiration for my first novel, I often credit this book. Indeed, ‘One Way to Pakistan’ is why the setting of my first novel is in Lahore, Pakistan.

My writing is all posted on Booksie, a website dedicated to aspiring authors and their work. I chose to display my work on such a site because I was looking for feedback on my novels. Insha’Allah one day I would like to possibly publish a novel or two, so it would be nice to see whether people enjoy them or not.

However, while I do have my regular readers Alhamdulillah, I do not get very many reads, at least not nearly as many readers as some of the other novels on the site. This is because I choose to stick to my morals when I decided to write. A reader once emailed me and commented, ‘I love your writing. You use great descriptions! It’s surprising you don’t have many readers. But I think if you thought about writing romance, you would probably get more reads. Just a thought:)’

Unfortunately, this commenter is correct. Take a quick look at Booksie and you will immediately notice the stories that receive the most reads are those of the romance genre, or worse, those of the erotica genre. Even the pieces in young adult genre, which is where mine are, do not get nearly as many reads as romance pieces.

Booksie readers tend to be drawn towards novels with what any Muslims would consider haram content. Just simple physical contact between a girlfriend and boyfriend or a slight peck on the cheek falls into the category of haram. If a book doesn’t have stuff like that included, then an author can be certain their book isn’t going to get many reads, at least not there. But even the bestsellers, physical novels and ebooks alike, are probably romance novels.

Despite the fact that I know I could get more reads and more publicity if I began writing romance novels filled with all that kissing and making out and such, I choose not to. Rather, I stick with what I feel is best.

I will admit there is some swearing in one novel, ‘My Sacrifice’ (aka ‘Meri Kurbaani’), both in English and in Urdu. However, whether or not that remains is yet to be seen. And while I do allude to sex in ‘The Bond of Sisters’ (aka ‘Behnon ka Rishta’), I never go into detail, it’s only implication, and it’s between a married couple. As for my latest work ‘A War Without Reason,’ well, I’m only one chapter in but I don’t foresee any haram scenes coming into play.

Instead, my writing focuses on social issues. The first novel I wrote and completed, ‘The Bond of Sisters,’ is about two exceptionally close friends who are forced into arranged marriages. One turns out great, but the other is filled with abuse and oppression. The sequel to my first novel, ‘A War Without Reason’ centers on the well-known tension between India and Pakistan as well as setting up the plot for the third book in the series, which will be about Islamic extremists in Pakistan. ‘My Sacrifice,’ perhaps one of my favorites, is about a young Pakistani American Muslim who becomes radicalized but begins to fight an internal war over what is right.

So, while I may not receive many reads or much feedback, I’m content with the type of writing I do. I do have my regular readers Alhamdulillah, all of them Muslim, which is far better than nothing! Insha’Allah there are more people out there who would be interested in my writing, I just haven’t reached them yet. Yes, I may not write in the genre that garners the most attention from Booksie users, and yes, I do not get nearly as many reads as I would if I did. But Islam is the most important thing in my life, and I want my writing to reflect that. Thus, I stick to my morals, keepin’ it halaal.

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If the hyperlinks in the text weren't enough, here are the links to all my novels:

-- The Bond of Sisters (Behnon ka Rishta)

-- A War Without Reason (sequel to The Bond of Sisters)

-- My Sacrifice (Meri Kurbaani)

-- Meri Kurbaani sample (an excerpt of the book)

-- My main Booksie page (with all of my posted writing listed)