Obviously a child with pink glittery heels is not going to want to go outdoors and jump in puddles and catch ladybirds in the garden, be it a boy or a girl. Put boys in those shoes and see how many are suddenly not running around anymore. Put girls in good shoes and see how many are no longer playing with Barbies and cooking with a toy kitchen set.
It is at socials like these, where exclusion towards Muslims is often heightened, with drinking culture being mostly to blame. In the corporate field, it is no surprise that drinking is the primary way teams socialise. It boosts staff morale, strengthens personal relationships and in some cases, even gives employees a deeper insight into the business and clientele itself. But for non-drinkers like myself, these occasions are approached with dread. I sometimes feel my seniors are closer to the other juniors in our team as they regularly join them for after-work drinks, whereas I do not. Consequently, causing me to worry that my career progression will be negatively impacted.
What stands out to me about ‘Lady Parts’ as a show is that it exemplifies Muslims as not being a monolith. Instead of being reduced to one stereotype, they’re allowed to exist freely as who they are, accurately reflecting the melting pot of different individuals that form the religion. This subsequently allows Muslim women to reclaim their power — they’re allowed to just be, beyond their religious identity.
Islamophobia exists in Canada and it has existed for a long time, to the point that it has become normalised, whether people realise it or not. This is why we need to have laws protecting people from acts of hatred. Because children are not responsible for having to recognise acts of hatred and speak out against it.
Her marriage to the Prophet (PBUH) took place in Sha’aban on the third year of the Hijra (and not after Uhud as commonly thought) at the age of 21 or 22 till his death when she was 27. She loved the Prophet (PBUH) dearly. After her marriage to the Prophet (PBUH), she had an inquisitive nature, often immersed herself in studying the deen, and would engage him and ask him questions about the deen. On one such incident, during Hajj, she asked the Prophet (PBUH) why he was still in Ihram, while he had instructed the sahabah to take off their Ihram. Then the Prophet (PBUH) replied that he couldn’t remove his Ihram until his sacrificial animals were slaughtered. And from this incident the fatwa was obtained, about a type of Hajj (Qiran) where the one doing Hajj couldn’t remove the Ihram, until the animals were sacrificed, as opposed to another type of Hajj called Tamattu’.
I had grown up in an environment surrounded by non-Muslims. My teachers, classmates, and friends were non-Muslims. I was, in fact, the only Muslim girl in my class. People made awful comments about my religion. Friends deserted me because I was Muslim. I vividly remember when a friend brought a book, which portrayed Islam in a bad light, to school. I cried bitterly that day, wondering why I was Muslim…why I couldn’t be like everyone else, why I couldn’t live without the risk of being judged or ridiculed on the basis of my faith.
What makes it more difficult is that the attitudes of Muslim men and lots of Muslim women always run contrary to the egalitarian values of Islam that you have told non-Muslims about. So it feels like we’re just making things up to protect this religion and make it look good. This is in addition to being sidelined by close friends and family for believing that you, as a Muslim woman, have God-given rights. People constantly try to ostracise you, telling others to avoid you if they want to keep the faith. Being an activist feels really lonely.”
I didn’t have a name for what I was going through. My trauma vocabulary didn’t include domestic violence, spiritual abuse, victim blaming, or power and control. But it sure was full of self-loathing and blaming, helplessness, and hopelessness. I had internalized every woman-hating khutba (sermon) that echoed outside of my apartment once a day, if not more, at the nearby mosques.
When people pontificate on my freedom or lack of it because of my burqa, this is the reality that none of them sees. For all the love of revolutions and disruptive activism, we forget to acknowledge a nuance where not everything is a violent disruption. There is a ‘quiet activism’ where we change things from within. It is impossible to embody values that stress a community and then expect them to reform in any way. Nobody trusts an outsider.
There is surely something to learn from the power that women can have from being free of the shackles of being an object catering to a man’s every desire. We are not walking fantasies. We are people who should be able to spend our brain cells and precious time pursuing things beyond making our shells look as shiny as possible.
