Atheists I have loved

Alain de Botton

I’m in the midst of a blistering spiritual drought.

While I am happy that so many people have connected to my book on a deeply personal level, the 24/7 promotion and publicity machine coupled with parental unhappiness with certain aspects of said book have resulted in a rapid and vast spiritual desertification unlike anything I have experienced before.

In the face of this, I did what any good Muslim girl experiencing a spiritual drought would do: I went to hear an intelligent atheist hold forth at the  Jewish Community Center.

I’ve loved many atheists in my life, and they have all had the effect of helping me fall back in love with my faith and religion in a way that often co-religionists do not. It’s not because of their abrasive, militant stance against religion  - that’s not the style of atheist I’m attracted to –  but rather their curiosity, and willingness to engage with and to listen to someone with a different belief system.

Even people of other faiths can help me see my religion in a renewed and beautiful light. It’s often other Muslims I struggle the most with. They are the ones who make me feel furthest away from the beauty and light of my own faith. Perhaps it’s because I expect more of them.

So, I went to hear the charming, brilliant & self-proclaimed “gentle” atheist philosopher Alain de Botton speak about his new book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion.

His insights into the meanings of the ritual, forgiveness, community, art, and other aspects that are so central to religion were poetic, insightful & moving. Even his remarks on the necessity of daily spiritual breaks like prayer or the use of water as a cleansing and focusing agent were lovely in a way that  lectures on the fiqh of salat or wudu have rarely been. Indeed, they revived my own faith in a way that little has since January.

I only wish that we had more people like him – affiliated with religious traditions, or not – who are devoted to exploring and sharing the qualities of beauty, wisdom, empathy, curiosity and compassion.

As members of a secular society, we need that so desperately in this day & age in which romantic love and financial success are deemed the ultimate arbiters of success and yet so often leave us feeling empty and longing for something deeper, something more.

As believers, we need more poets and lovers – people who are ablaze with the loving and generous spirit that is supposed to illuminate the legal structure of faith.

Didn’t Imam Shafi say that he considered everyone he met to be his teacher? Last night, Mr. de Botton was my teacher on the special strengths of faith and the bridges that are possible between people with opposing views on God.

If Mr. de Botton’s lecture was a love letter to believers, this is a love letter to atheists in honor of all that I have learned and continue to learn from them.

The divided heart: art & motherhood

I went to an extraordinary theater event tonight by Golden Thread featuring four playwrights/artists of Middle Eastern heritage – Denmo Ibrahim, Jennifer Jajeh, Rohina Malik and Maryam Rostami – in celebration of International Women’s Day. Each woman spoke in a voice utterly her own, in a male or female character of her own creation.  I was struck again by the power of storytelling & the way it builds unexpected bridges of understanding between people as well as epiphanies within oneself.

At the end of the evening, the talented women, the theater directors and groupies (like me) walked next door from La Pena to  Cafe Valparaiso to chat over empanadas and tea. And then it struck me. I had to get home. Now.

Much as I wanted to discuss topics like the unfolding dialogue between audience and writer and how each impacts the other; the different ways of connecting to one’s ethnic heritage beyond immigrant nostalgia; or facing the story inside you that terrifies you and yet still yearns to be told – the truth was that I was exhausted and had a two-year-old who was going to bounce out of bed bright & early in the morning and expect an alert, patient and compassionate mother to be his companion all day.

So, I left.

And thought about what I was leaving behind and what I was returning to without resentment – but with a longing, backward glance. I understand that my life is different than it was when I called time my own, that my needs and responsibilities are built around someone else right now.

At times I struggle with this, and I know I will at some point soon again. Being a mother is an incredibly exhausting and also creative force in my life. Sadly, I rarely did anything creative with the immense amounts of time I had before I had a child, but somehow I managed to put a book together with a toddler in the house.

That “somehow” of course encompasses flexibility and support from family & friends (as well as paid nannycare when needed), but is also a testament to my newfound ability as a mother to focus, be disciplined, and creative for my own sanity’s sake with the time I could snatch during his naps or absorption in play.

I read Rachel Power’s book The Divided Heart: Art & Motherhood and felt both relief at knowing that I was not alone, and frustration that motherhood and art are a constant balancing act for every creative woman. There is no silver bullet. Money helps, but in the end these women are driven by the desire to create. One refrain that stayed with me:  Never use your child (or children) as an excuse for why you didn’t create or do something you truly wanted to do.

In a conversation with NPR’s Michael Krasny, Eavan Boland speaks beautifully about being Irish, a mother and poet – juggling multiple identities as we all do. She said that during the years she was raising her children she did not write much poetry but only had time to quickly draw an image, scrawl a few words, anything to briefly capture that day or emotion.

Years later, she returned to those images, sentences and notes to begin to craft poems about that time, saying “[Motherhood] certainly takes a lot of energy & time but it also opens a lot of windows that I’m not sure would have been opened [otherwise]. There definitely was some element in the life I lived, that was really a life capable of revelation & vision, & I didn’t want that to be apart from the poems I wrote.”

I guess that’s what I’m trying to remember: that this state isn’t forever and that it holds its own unique blessings and challenges. I looked back at the table of laughing, excited, talented (& mostly childless) women and walked back to where I am needed right now, no matter how much my heart longed to stay.

Today’s feast is set at another table.

NYT article: “In ‘Love, InshAllah,’ American Muslim Women Reveal Lives”

Editors Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi

Remember how when you’re young they tell you to follow your passion and pursue your dreams? Later, all that gets lost as practical considerations intervene and guide our lives.

I took this year off to focus on my twin passions – my son and my book – and the unfolding has been surreal & blessed. Yesterday, advanced readers reached out to tell us that after reading the stories, they finally felt like they had a home within the ummah, that they were no longer alone.  Today, the New York Times featured the anthology. Tomorrow, it ships to the thousands of people who pre-ordered it, prompting our publisher to print the second edition before the first even hit bookstores.

You create and work on something close to your heart and then release it into the world, where it takes on a life of its own. So very proud of the 25 brave and sassy women who dared to write the truth about their lives and share it with the world.

Sexy Muslim women bring the trolls to the blog

It’s been a crazy three days.

On Tuesday, our article headlined at HuffPo Comedy and brought the nation together in our shared love for Jon Stewart.

Yesterday, our amazing friends and families rallied in support and our book climbed to #8 on the Amazon women’s studies bestseller list.

Today, a light-hearted excerpt from our anthology was published by HuffPo Books – with a photo of a niqab-wearing woman heading it.  That was enough to bring the Stealth Sharia Islamophobe trolls out in force and there are almost 1,000 comments on the piece already.

I had to stop reading after awhile; too much vitriol. But this must be said: the many readers standing up against the hatred are what makes this country great.

I’ve learned a few things from the drama surrounding our book excerpt in HuffPo Books this morning:

1. Sexy Muslim women bring the trolls to the blog (943 comments & counting)

2. Ask & ye shall receive – once the editors understood how the photo perpetuated stereotyopes, they changed the niqabi pic – to a pair of juicy pink lips

3. There is no such thing as bad publicity. We are now #5 on Amazon’s women’s studies bestseller’s list and in the top 450 books in the nation.

Suck THAT, trolls.

Top 5 ways to support Muslim women writers today!

Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women hits the shelves in just three weeks! It’s a moving and provocative non-fiction anthology featuring 25 American Muslim women speaking openly for the first time about their search for love.

Here are the top five ways you can help amplify Muslim women’s voices right now:

• Order the book today!
• Share this post with your family, friends, and networks and ask them to support Muslim women writers by ordering the book
• Select Love, InshAllah for your book club–we’ve included discussion questions at the back of the book
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter - and then ask your networks to do the same!
• Connect us to your university or a community organization (e.g., place of worship, student association, non-profit org, etc.) to organize a reading/panel discussion

This book wouldn’t have been possible without our wonderful writers, families and friends. Thank you for supporting Muslim women in telling their own stories and sharing their perspectives!

Why Muslim women find Jon Stewart irresistible

Our latest piece, “Muslim Women for Jon Stewart 2012,” is up on The Huffington Post:

Buried in the “controversy” over Bradley Cooper’s selection as People magazine’s most recent Sexiest Man Alive is a little known fact: If you had polled American Muslim women the winner would have been — wait for it — Jon Stewart.

Read more about our campaign “Jon Stewart 2012″ on The Huffington Post!

Call of the wild

Bean is almost 22-months-old and in the past month has started singing, reciting memorized portions of storybooks, and jumping off of every object he can climb (as he says, “Big Jumped!”). He dances to birdsong, waves, wind chimes, jazz, and even Arabic recitations of the Qur’an. For him, this wondrous world  inspires some serious grooving.

At my parents’ suburban home over the Christmas holidays he gazed out of our bedroom window directly onto an apple tree, largely denuded of leaves but with a few bright fruit still hanging stubbornly on in the mild California winter. I could see the connections being made in his mind – those are apples! on a tree! birds are eating them! and then pooping! – as he stood there awestruck for long minutes, watching.

And that is when I was struck again by my recurrent desire to move to a more rural area. I want Bean to know where his food comes from, to grow his own, to develop a connection to and curiosity about nature, to have unfenced green spaces to roam in and explore. But, at the same time, I adore San Francisco and cherish many of the values of urban living where everything we need is in walking distance or a short train ride away and we don’t even own a car. And, of course, a connection to nature can be wrought here too for Bean.

There is a part of me that only flourishes where I hear trees growing. There is a part of me that contemplates and writes more often and deeply when surrounded by forests and water. But, as I’ve often said to Basil, ‘I love nature – from behind glass.’  Do I have it in me to move from my  city of joy and urbanite lifestyle to the self-sufficiency and solitude that small town life has to offer? Does adding a car and commute to Basil’s day outweigh the benefits of living more lightly on the earth in other ways?

I’ll be thinking about these issues as the new year unfolds. Have you ever moved from the city to the country, or vice versa? What did you love or find challenging about that shift? What brings you joy where you live now?