Six years ago, I moved from Mexico City to Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada. Although I moved here to study, my trip to the north resulted to be a whole religious experience. Having grown up in a nuclear family that had left Catholicism and had sought dogmatic atheism, I was largely unfamiliar with religious diversity. Thus, coming to Canada quickly sparked my curiosity, and here I am six years later with a degree in Political Science and Religious Studies. My first... Read more
Previously, I told you about Ramadan in Cairo, Egypt in a general way. Now I’m going to tell more personal details about what Ramadan is to me. This year it is very different, since it’s my first Ramadan as a married woman. Yes it’s exciting and nice to be married, but let’s call a spade a spade: it’s a mess! I mean, I can hardly maintain any energy for myself to stay awake to work, or study, recite some Qur’an... Read more
The 2012 London Olympics have had a strong focus on women: for the first time women will be competing in all sports and every country has sent at least one female athlete. While this does all look mighty good on paper, “male” sports remain overall more popular and male athletes are often better paid, make use of better facilities (flying business vs. flying coach) and receive more face time than their female counterparts. And while much of the attention female... Read more
This post was written by guest contributor Sya, and originally posted at her blog, as well as in Dutch in “Ramadan” Al-Nisa, Islamitisch maandblad voor vrouwen (Islamic monthly for women), 31st year, No. 7/8, Jul/Aug 2012. I am a Malay Singaporean who has been living in the Netherlands for almost two years now. There are about 1 million Muslims in Singapore and they make up about 15% of the total population. Muslims in Singapore are mostly from the Malay ethnic... Read more
This week I will not include any Olympic news, and there is plenty of it, in the Friday Links; a post on Muslim women in the 2012 Olympics will follow. Thanks to a new law on gender parity, a record number of women have been sworn in as legislators in the new parliament of Senegal. Women now have 64 seats out of 150. After the murder of Farida Afridi in Pakistan’s tribal area, working women in the northwest region are now fearful of... Read more
For me, growing up as an expat, Ramadan has been largely about celebrating my Pakistani heritage. Living in Buenos Aires, in the late 80s when Muslim communities were still a rarity, the act of observing and celebrating such an occasion was often relegated to a handful of Pakistanis who were able to brave sundown in the Argentinian capital. At the time, the country was going through one of its worst economic crises; burglaries and home invasions were rampant and almost... Read more
My conversion experience deeply informs my Muslim experience. We (converts) have varied experiences in our journeys and paths to Islam. Some have it easy—finding the transition relatively seamless—and others have a bumpy ride peppered with moments of angst and frustration. As an Egyptian-American convert, mine is the latter, driven by the disownment of my own family and the clumsy amalgamation into my husband’s Pakistani family and into an often dysfunctional spiritual family. Admittedly, I find myself having way too many... Read more
I’m in a weird place this Ramadan. Not just spiritually but geographically as well. Almost exactly a year ago I finished my MA thesis and moved back home: home being wherever so my parents were living, regardless of roots and attachments. A few months before my less-than-triumphant return to the moist womb, my parents had made the move to Northern Alberta for business. While I have always been one for living and experiencing a new city, town, state, province –... Read more
Ramadan for me personally has always been a month of compassion, congregation and contemplation. However, last year in Ramadan, my entire days and nights revolved around caring for my then-one-month-old twins. Time passed by like a whirlwind; I have vague memories of feeding, burping, changing, and rocking babies to sleep – all the while trying to maintain some semblance of spirituality. Just one Ramadan before that, I had all the time in the world to pray, attend congregational prayers and... Read more
Hello all, and Ramadan kareem to those celebrating it. I hope you’ve been enjoying the Ramadan post series so far! We’ve got lots more posts on the way for you. I’m linking the stories that we’ve posted so far at the bottom of this post, and will be adding to those links as the month goes on, so that the posts can easily be found in one place. I wanted to take a minute to back up and give a... Read more
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