'Just Like Khadija': The Sisters Are Coming

By Ahmed Nassef

This weekend, I was blessed to be invited to attend a retreat organized by the ASMA Society, the organization headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan.

I picked up my good friend Ani (she wrote and sang our official MWU! anthem, "Ummah Wake Up!" [Download: mp3, 3.47 MB]) at the airport Saturday morning and we drove up to the Garrison Institute, a beautiful former Franciscan monastery north of Westchester County on the Hudson River. It was my first time meeting her in person, although as with so many of the beautiful people I met over the weekend, I already feel like I've known her forever.

Ani is a person whose love for Islam and Muslims is so infectious--she makes even jaded New Yorkers like me (I can't believe I just called myself a New Yorker--perhaps my first admission that I have left Los Angeles for good) leave aside their cynicism and suspicion, at least for some brief moments.

We got to Garrison as Imam Feisal was concluding his opening talk to the hundred or so people invited to the gathering. I sat in the back of the room, looking around, trying to match faces with the names that have figured so prominently in my life over the past two years.

As people stirred after Imam Feisal's talk for a short break, I saw Asra Nomani. We hugged and she introduced me to her dad, a slight man in his seventies with a white beard and broad smile that exudes sweetness and love. He became one of my heroes during the weekend as I watched him follow his daughter around videotaping her and the various panels. Dr. Nomani was the founder of the mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia that is now the object of such controversy. He came up to me at dinner that evening and described how his mosque used to have Shi’is and Sunnis worshipping together before it was hijacked by people who preferred unanimity of dogma to the unity of the community. Nobody’s perfect, he told me, but I stand with my daughter because as a Muslim, I have to stand for truth and for what’s right. Dr. Nomani’s example, the way he was willing to risk lifelong professional relationships for the sake of his love for his daughter and for doing the right thing, gives me so much hope for our community. Over the years, I have seen what happens when families don’t stand with their children, even when it’s what justice demands. So much of what will happen in our community in North America over the next decades will depend on how first-generation immigrants of Dr. Nomani’s generation will react to the cries and pleas of their children. Will they extend their hands or turn away. Dr. Nomani has made his decision, and I love him for it.

Throughout my time at Garrison, I was struck by the inescapable reality that our future as a community in North America is in the hands of women. The challenges, questions, the refusal to sit down and choose correctness over right, the courage to speak truth to power, the strength to show what is in one’s heart, the honesty of displaying grief and joy—they were most clearly displayed at the retreat by the women. Women like Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, the former editor of Azizah Magazine and author of a forthcoming anthology of Muslim women’s writings, whose strength and focus is inspirational; Sarah Eltantawi, long-time activist and spokesperson and one of the retreat’s organizers, with her unshakeable honesty and conviction… no bs or empty adab around her; Ani as she sings "Just Like Khadija" and proclaims that never again will men be able to bury the voices of Muslim women as they used to do in pre-Islamic Arabia; Asra Nomani who made the decision to brave the abuse and maliciousness of self-righteous men afraid of her truth and honesty; Samina Ali, the pioneering novelist who cuts through the fog of pettiness with embracing words of compassion; Inas Younis, the mother of three from Kansas who so eloquently reflects a journey of enlightenment and maturity that some of the rest of us can only hope to reach and whose smile warmed my heart; the 25-year-old African American sister in white hijab whose name I never got but whose moving spirit and enthusiasm I will not soon forget.

While some of the men, myself included, still hid behind superficial displays of showing off their Qur’anic Arabic or bowing to the unquestioning authority of this or that molana or shaykh or scholar, so many of the women there were just plain… real. Alhamdulillah.

And I remember the words of that gentle brother Kamran, the civil rights attorney and member of AMAL, the Chicago-based group of Muslim activists and learners that, along with groups like AMILA in the Bay Area, are beacons to our future. He described how his current vision of gender justice and equality stems from his own mother, how as a child he never forgot her anger at being excluded and shut out from her mosque, how this has shaped and instructed him as a man. As he said this, I recalled my own mother, now living thousands of miles away in Cairo, and I understood exactly what he meant.

The Saturday evening program ended with music and poetry from Rumi and Hafez. The music and words spoke to the heart, and the heart wanted to speak back. But most of us in the audience sat there, a little uncomfortable—it’s a “Muslim” event after all, and many of us had learned to erase outward expressions of joy at such gatherings. But that young woman in hijab go up and began to dance. A few moments later, I saw half a dozen women get up and join her. Truth was being spoken again, and it was beautiful. By the end, there was even a young man who gathered enough courage to get up. Dancing at a Muslim event! Imam Feisal and Daisy Khan, the two visionary sponsors of this gathering, smiled. Thank you God, I thought, for giving them the wisdom, vision and courage to make this extraordinary event happen.

Before I knew it, it was midnight, and I walked up with Mike Knight, whom I also met for the first time this weekend, to the third floor lounge to sit and talk some more. I knew I had to leave at 4am to drive Ani back to La Guardia airport, and he wanted to wait for Fajr before he started on his 6-hour drive north to Buffalo. We sat there for hours. Mike in person is one of the most thoughtful, gentle and brilliant souls you could possibly hope to meet. Some people are surprised when they see him in person—they expect someone very different. But for me, that’s exactly the person I knew I would meet—a person who is not afraid to be as he is. Before pretense took over, it used to be that honesty was a prized quality.

Mike and I talked about everything from Master Fard to PMU to the funny irony of us being invited to a gathering called the “Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow.”

But driving back with my lovely sister Ani through the early morning fog of the Taconic Parkway, I knew that while our challenges, fears and worries are many, our future as Muslims in America is in good hands, and I felt so very blessed and honored to glimpse it unfolding.

Ahmed Nassef is editor-in-chief of MWU!