Slave Girl Inspires Muslim women

By Anwar Iqbal

An unwed mother stood before the holy mosque in Mecca, holding aloft her child in a crowd of pilgrims orbiting Islam's holiest shrine. Women would stop near the little pilgrim and say, "This is according to God's will," a prayer Muslims say, especially, when praising a child.

Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, found comfort in these words because she believed her conception was a will of God too and the prayer strengthened her desire to protect her son "from the negativity of judgment."

She conceived the child while reporting for WSJ in Karachi, Pakistan, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. When she realized the would-be father was not willing to share his responsibility, she walked out of that relationship and back to her hometown in West Virginia. In Karachi, she also lived through the kidnapping and ultimately slaying of her colleague, Daniel Pearl.

In her situation, most Muslim mothers would have withdrawn to a remote corner of the world, living the rest of their lives in guilt and shame. Not Nomani. She decided to stay in the mainstream and challenge the traditions that allow people to judge her and her son, Shibli, named after a renowned Muslim scholar of undivided India.

But these traumatic experiences did shake her faith in the religion she was born into and in the people who shared her faith. But instead of abandoning Islam, she decided to give her faith a chance. The search led her to conclude that there's nothing in her religion that allowed people to judge her or her child and that she could live a normal life, like any other mother.

In the process, she also discovered that it was medieval Arab and South Asian traditions that had forced women deep inside the harem, away from the spotlight. She decided to reclaim the status that Islam gave to women, both in and outside the home and also in the mosque where they are often forced to pray in the basement, separated from men. She wants them in the main prayer room along with men, as is done in the sacred mosque in Mecca.

But before she launched her campaign to restore a woman's status in the mosque, she went for the annual Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj to see what all this meant to her and to mingle with about 2 million people who come for Hajj every year.

And what she encountered was an experience she could have never imagined. "With awe, I looked at the diversity in front of me. It was a window for me into the breadth of the Muslim ummah (nation), and I was struck by its plurality. What I saw was people who were very different from each other coming together for a common purpose."

The pilgrims had come from all corners of the world to present themselves before God, for they believed He alone is the one who can judge. Yet many among them would not have hesitated to judge the unwed mother had they known.

But Nomani was not there to find out how other Muslims would react to her situation. She was looking for a source of inspiration, something that would encourage her to stick to her faith and to struggle from within to restore the status she believed Islam gave to women.

She found what she was looking for in a slave girl who lived thousands of years ago. In Mecca, she reenacted the rituals linked to this slave girl, drank from the well attributed to her and returned home to resume her struggle.

Muslims believe that it was Mecca where Abraham had abandoned his second wife, Hagar, and his son Ishmael. Jewish traditions say Hagar was a slave girl Abraham had purchased in Egypt and later abandoned along with the child she bore him when his wife Sarah became jealous.

But Nomani was not there to verify which version was correct. Hagar -- or Hajra, as Muslims call her -- was the source of her inspiration whether a slave girl or a wife. She wanted to follow the footsteps of this "most remarkable woman" who once ran in desperation between two hills, searching for water for her son.

According to Islamic traditions, Hagar asked Abraham when he was abandoning her and the child, "Has God commanded you to do so?" When he said that God had indeed so commanded him, she said: "Then God will cause no harm to me."

Abraham had only left her and her son a bag of dates and a skin full of water. She began to suckle her child and drink water out of the skin. Finally, the water ran dry and she ran dry. Ishmael started crying for milk.

Desperate, Hagar ran seven times between two hills, now called Safa and Marwah, searching for water. As she ran she yelled, "Oh Lord, forgive, have mercy. Ignore our sins. You know what we know not - only You are the Holy, Merciful."

Hagar was about to start the eighth trip when she collapsed next to Ishmael. Her eyes turned to her crying son, who was kicking the ground in agony from thirst. Where he kicked, Hagar saw water oozing out of a hole in the ground near her child.

Muslims believe the well in Mecca called Zamzam is the same that God caused to spring out of barren stones for Hagar.

And for the past 1,400 years, millions and millions of Muslims have run between the two hills seven times each to honor her and her struggle as a mother. During the annual Hajj pilgrimage, millions perform this ritual together, repeating Hagar's words as quoted in the Koran.

The story, detailed in Nomani's book "Standing Alone in Mecca," has a personal significance for her. "What is so important to me about her story is that this woman did not crumble when the father of her baby took her to the desert to leave her there alone with her son. She had the courage to decide to raise her son by herself."

Hagar, says Nomani, gave her courage in her decision to raise her son alone. But this unwed mother was not just seeking an affirmation of her decision in Hagar's story. For her Hagar's story is "timeless and universal and gives strength to all women and men who make lonely choices in life and who face alienation from those choices."

To be a single mother, especially if never married, is difficult for all women who desire to do so. But it is particularly tough for a Muslim woman because Muslim society is not ready to accept those who defy Islam's ban on sex without marriage. Such women are rejected by the entire society. Their journey through life is indeed lonely.

So it is no surprise that Nomani narrates Hagar's story in her book with so much love and admiration. And in doing so she has given Muslim women a new and powerful symbol for demanding their rightful place inside a Muslim home and inside the mosque.

Courtesy: UPI