Stories Of New Muslims

12. Sister
Penomee

(Dr. Kari Ann
Owen, Ph.D.)

 

 

July 4, 1997. A salaam aleikum, beloved family.
"There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is his messenger." These are
the words of the Shahadah oath, I believe. The Creator is known by many names.
His wisdom is always recognizable, and his presence made manifest in the love,
tolerance and compassion present in our community.  His profound ability to guide us from a war-like
individualism so rampant in American society to a belief in the glory and
dignity of the Creator's human family, and our obligations to and membership
within that family. This describes the maturation of a spiritual personality,
and perhaps the most desirable maturation of the psychological self, also.

My road to Shahadah began when an admired director, Tony
Richardson, died of AIDS. Mr. Richardson was already a brilliant and
internationally recognized professional when I almost met him backstage at the
play Luther at age 14. Play writing for me has always been a way of finding
degrees of spiritual and emotional reconciliation both within myself and
between myself and a world I found rather brutal due to childhood
circumstances. Instead of fighting with the world, I let my conflicts fight it
out in my plays. Amazingly, some of us have even grown up together! So as I
began accumulating stage credits (productions and staged readings), beginning
at age 17, I always retained the hope that I would someday fulfil my childhood
dream of studying and working with Mr. Richardson. When he followed his homosexuality
to America (from England) and a promiscuous community, AIDS killed him, and
with him went another portion of my sense of belonging to and within American
society. I began to look outside American and Western society to Islamic
culture for moral guidance. Why Islam and not somewhere else? My birthmother's
ancestors were Spanish Jews who lived among Muslims until the Inquisition
expelled the Jewish community in 1492. In my historical memory, which I feel at
a deep level, the call of the muezzin is as deep as the lull of the ocean and
the swaying of ships, the pounding of horses' hooves across the desert, the
assertion of love in the face of oppression.

I felt the birth of a
story within me, and the drama took form as I began to learn of an Ottoman
caliph's humanity toward Jewish refugees at the time of my ancestors'
expulsions. Allah guided my learning, and I was taught about Islam by figures
as diverse as Imam Siddiqi of the South Bay Islamic Association; Sister Hussein
of Rahima; and my beloved adopted Sister, Maria Abdin, who is Native American
and Muslim and a writer for the SBIA magazine, IQRA. My first research
interview was in a halal butcher shop in San Francisco's Mission District, where my
understanding of living Islam was profoundly affected by the first Muslim lady
I had ever met: a customer who was in Hijab, behaved with a sweet
kindness and grace and also read, wrote and spoke four languages. Her
brilliance, coupled with her amazing (to me) freedom from arrogance, had a
profound effect on the beginnings of my knowledge of how Islam can affect human
behavior.

Little did I know then
that not only would a play be born, but a new Muslim. The course of my research
introduced me to much more about Islam than a set of facts, for Islam is a living
religion. I learned how Muslims conduct themselves with a dignity and kindness
which lifts them above the American slave market of sexual competition and
violence. I learned that Muslim men and women can actually be in each others'
presence without tearing each other to pieces, verbally and physically. And I
learned that modest dress, perceived as a spiritual state, can uplift human
behavior and grant to both men and women a sense of their own spiritual worth.

Why did this seem so
astonishing, and so astonishingly new? Like most American females, I grew up in
a slave market, comprised not only of the sexual sicknesses of my family, but
the constant negative judging of my appearance by peers beginning at ages
younger than seven. I was taught from a very early age by American society that
my human worth consisted solely of my attractiveness (or, in my case, lack of
it) to others. Needless to say, in this atmosphere, boys and girls, men and
women, often grew to resent each other very deeply, given the desperate desire
for peer acceptance, which seemed almost if not totally dependent not on one's
kindness or compassion or even intelligence, but on looks and the perception of
those looks by others.

While I do not expect
or look for human perfection among Muslims, the social differences are
profound, and almost unbelievable to someone like myself. I do not pretend to
have any answers to the conflicts of the Middle East, except what the prophets,
beloved in Islam, have already expressed. My disabilities prevent me from
fasting, and from praying in the same prayer postures as most of you. But I
love and respect the Islam I have come to know through the behavior and words
of the men and women I have come to know in AMILA (American Muslims Intent on
Learning and Activism) and elsewhere, where I find a freedom from cruel
emotional conflicts and a sense of imminent spirituality.

What else do I feel and
believe about Islam? I support and deeply admire Islam's respect for same sex
education; for the rights of women as well as men in society; for modest dress;
and above all for sobriety and marriage, the two most profound foundations of
my life, for I am 21 1/2 years sober and happily married. How wonderful to feel
that one and half billion Muslims share my faith in the character development
marriage allows us, and also in my decision to remain drug- and alcohol-free.
What, then, is Islam's greatest gift in a larger sense? In a society which
presents us with constant pressure to immolate ourselves on the altars of unbridled
instinct without respect for consequences, Islam asks us to regard ourselves as
human persons created by Allah with the capacity for responsibility in our
relations with others. Through prayer and charity and a commitment to sobriety
and education, if we follow the path of Islam, we stand a good chance of
raising children who will be free from the violence and exploitation which is
robbing parents and children of safe schools and neighborhoods, and often of
their lives.

The support of the
AMILA community and other friends, particularly at a time of some strife on the
AMILA Net, causes me to affirm my original responses to Islam and declare that
this is a marvellous community, for in its affirmation of Allah's gifts of
marriage, sobriety and other forms of responsibility, Islam shows us the way
out of hell. My husband, Silas, and I are grateful for your presence and your
friendship. And as we prepare to lay the groundwork for adoption, we hope that
we will continue to be blessed with your warm acceptance, for we want our child
to feel the spiritual presence of Allah in the behavior of surrounding adults
and children. We hope that as other AMILA'ers consider becoming new parents,
and become new parents, a progressive Islamic school might emerge... progressive
meaning supportive and loving as well as superior in academics, arts and
sports.

Maybe our computer
whizzes will teach science and math while I teach creative writing and
horseback riding! Please consider us companions on the journey toward heaven,
and please continue to look for us at your gatherings, on the AMILA net and in
the colors and dreams of the sunset. For there is no god but Allah, the
Creator, and Muhammad, whose caring for the victims of war and violence still
brings tears from me, is his Prophet.

A
salaam aleikum.