Maybe there's enough talk about this...

But I still feel the need to say something! KimDonesia leaving Islam and Erin (thevintagegoth) as well from what I can tell. I haven't had a chance to watch their videos on what exactly happened, but what I got from blogs and posts was that Kim fell into a depression following the death of her dog and started to question things... And that lead to her wondering if Muhammad is really a prophet... She decided that no, he was not and now is agnostic. And Erin found herself a "bad Muslim" and is taking a break of sorts to reconsider her beliefs... It's all very shocking for me and very weird. I watched their youtube vlogs regularly and enjoyed them. They are both very sweet girls. But obviously really confused.

I always felt that Erin was not very educated about Islam and didn't really understand it that well... But it was none of my business to say anything or even to think about it too much because even if she focused on hijab and niqab on her vlog, she very well could have had much much more going on in her real life. A vlog is not representative of a person's life in a lot of cases. But I still got that impression from her. Maybe the way she said assalamu liakum? Was super cute, but the letters were not in the right order, like a typo being read out loud.

I thought though, that Kim was very dedicated to Islam. I knew that she had a lot of tries in many other sects or religions or whatever, and felt like Islam could be one of those in the very beginnings of me watching her vids, but I didn't with time. She really seemed to adapt to Islam... But I think it might not have been more than that after all.

In the end, I think they both are very young and didn't understand Islam well. Hopefully they continue to learn and find their way. :) I wish them the best.

It was not halal!

I just learned that the place I went to for halal meat was not halal afterall! They lied! The advertized halal and lied to our faces when we asked in person! Feels like we can never be sure... I'll have to look for a place owned by Muslims. This place was owned by Christians and we knew it, but I figured they were doing halal for good business (which it was) and had no reason to cheat us.

So in the end, they did want to just cheat us, it seems... I think it would be safer to go with Muslims, since they probably actually care about halal... I will need to look for another place!

I am DISAPPOINTED!

"Je porte le voile" ("I wear the veil") documentary

I can't give any real critique on this documentary because I haven't seen it, but I still have to mention what I know about it... It's a bit weird!

I was talking about Eid yesterday and my co-worker was saying that I shouldn't try to understand everything, I never will with "this religion". Kind of an insult, she obviously has no positive feelings towards Islam.

She tells me she saw a show where a woman who put out a documentary was being interviewed about it. She converted to Islam after marrying an Algerian Muslim man and began wearing the veil when her now 13-year old daughter was born. She started making the documentary as a way to show her daughter the beauty of the veil and the reasons why to wear it. At this point, I was like... Aw, that's nice. (Why is this co-worker using this as an example to show that Islam is hard to understand?)

That's when she says that she actually was not wearing the veil in the interview. And that through making the documentary, she started wondering herself why she wears the veil and ends up taking it off... So in the end, she gives the impression that even a Muslim who wears it out of free choice (like she did) is really doing it for her husband or for following the norm of what a Muslim woman wears (which is pretty much what she discovered). From what my co-worker said about the interview, she made herself seem so confused about whether hijab was part of Islam or just culture, all while trying to explain that it was religious...

Great... more reasons for non-Muslims to think they have the right to ask a woman to remove her hijab.

Sirat al mustaqeem - The straight path

My husband knows I will be mentioning him in this post :p

I made him read an excerpt from something I was writing; a fictional character writing a letter to Allah. In it, she asks Allah help keeping her on the straight path and continues, describing the path as what Allah has laid out for us to follow in this world. (What we should do as Muslims, how we should live, to gain Allah's favour as we continue on in this life).

This is how I see the straight path. It's everything that we should do in our religion for Allah. So if we are doing well, we are on the straight path... If we are doing wrong, we are deviating away from what God has told us to do; away from the straight path.

My husband said this was a mistake in what I wrote. That the straight path has nothing to do with this life and that it's a line we will need to walk across on the final day where we either fall to Hell or make it across to Heaven.

I'd heard this before, but I never thought a person could dismiss the straight path as simply a physical path we'll need to deal with only after we die!

The straight path is something I strive for in this life. The straight path is all that is right that I hope to be able to achieve. When I hear sirat al mustaqeem, I think of myself and how I need to do better to follow what God has laid out for us in his perfect system. I don't think about a path over Hell that I could either fall into or manage to walk across.

Are there any scholars that actually don't believe the straight path has anything to do with this life and the way we are supposed to live? Are there any who actually see it as nothing more than a line we'll walk across? How do you personally see it?

Parenting as a Muslim

My Nora is only a toddler, so Islam has not had that much influence on the way I parent. I have always been an attachment parenting type of parent, and I continue that now. She's too young to have issues need to be dealt with in an Islamic way like boys, starting to pray, wearing hijab, thinking about partying and alcohol, all those things. But I start to realize how quickly these things are coming!

It started with my co-worker's niece who started school in September (kindergarten, I think). My co-worker told us about how the little girl got home sometime near the end of the first week in school and declared that she had "un amoureux" (means a lover in French)! A few days later, more development to the story... there's an other little girl who is "into" this boy and the other little girl is dissing the competition (co-worker's niece). Like... what the heck, they are 5!!

Kids so totally don't need this type of drama in their life when for them, what would be natural would just to play together and have easy-to-solve fights. How ew that they have learned somehow to put themselves in adult roles (boyfriend, girlfriend, lover, etc.). I am starting to think more about what Nora watches lately because of how early things can start to have an influence. I'm happy not to have cable or satellite right now. We only download what we want to watch. But not everything me and Ahmed might watch is really suitable for Nora and she is often there with us or at least in the room when we watch TV.

The show that is bugging me most right now is the Simpsons because of how much she likes it, but how adult a show it really is... Looks like a kid show but it is not suitable for kids. She's as interested in it as her toddler baby shows but it contains adult themes and violent content (stranglings and the Itchy and Scratchy show they watch). I don't download actual kids shows much, and I'm actually scared of the new shows that have come out. One of them that plays on kids channels here is Samantha et Chantal and it's two dudes dressed as girls! I don't know anything more about the show, but it's so confusing gender roles and just plain homo looking! Here is a link to the image search results on Google. And I saw some ads for other shows with lots of gross vomiting stuff....

Then there's these stupid Brat dolls. I think they have a show too... They just disgust me. Why should being a brat be a good thing, first of all? And then there's their look. Tiny with huge heads and lots of make-up. They also have new troll dolls out that have the big colourful hair in the air, but they are skinny. UKH.

I'm scaring myself writing this post. I don't want to shelter Nora from everything that is out there because that will not help. So that means she will have to confront the things that are out there, but I need to make sure she knows what is what... There are so many little things that could happen. I won't be with her all the time... She will be with friends and they will talk about things. Communication will be SO SO SO SO SO IMPORTANT to make sure I can make her know the right thing the day she hears something that might be off. What about the very subtle things like getting a negative body image, etc? Being happy with my body and keeping her away from images that often cause a person not to be unhappy with her's is a very good beginning and major part of my plan, but she could get influenced into disliking her body from other places... Just a few images and a few people around her like friends who dislike their body. A comment from a peer. Anything...!

I'm scared!

Note: Yeah, this had nothing to do with Islamic parenting after all... I just scared myself writing this and thinking of all the things that could happen. And that I would have tried to avoid for her were I Muslim or not.

Buying a Book

When I announced I was converting, a very sweet sister sent me a book. It was a dua book I love to look at. So many beautiful words and ways to remember Allah. I need to work so much on encorporating it into my daily life so this book was perfect for me.

I am trying to pass this on by sending a book to a new convert I know. He is a gaming buddy of my husband's who lives in Sweden and he pronounced his shahada just recently. :D I am trying to think of what book I should send him. What kind of book would you send a new convert?

I'm still a closet Muslim

I'm still a closet Muslim. Hardly anyone knows except my husband (and that Jehova's Witness man I came across on the street that I wrote about a while back!) but I'm starting to get to the point where I don't want to hide it anymore. I want people to know that I am Muslim. I want to start being able to show, from example, what Islam is, and possibly make a person interested in learning about this religion.

I have to admit that I do not see Islam the same way as the average Muslim... I think I just see Islam in a more open way... A person not knowing about the Qur'an still being a Muslim in following his inner God-given sense of what is right, and believing in Allah (the creator, with no partners). And even though I know that the best way is to follow Allah 100%, and the best way to attempt that in these times is to read the Qur'an and follow its teachings, I also think that it is sufficient to enter Paradise for a person to be a good person (more good deeds than bad, more good influence in this world than bad, etc). Of course, even I believe that the person will have to believe in God alone because shirk cannot be forgiven without repenting. But only Allah knows if I am right in this. I'm just stating my belief.

I feel that most Muslims put a much higher status on people who consider themselves Muslims. Whether or not they are being good ones, it's as though they will be recompensed for just being born in a Muslim home. On the contrary, they have had every chance to learn the right way, and if they didn't take it, I believe they will be punished more severely. And I don't think that an agnostic person who is always doing good will be going to hell simply for not being part of the Muslim community. Even I often don't feel like I want to be part of the Muslim community as it stands now. I don't think regular Quebeckers here understand me. I am much more conservative than they are! But I don't really fit in with the Muslims either. Not with the non-practicing ones because that's far from what I want to be and I don't respect that (I don't respect in myself what I am lacking in the way I practice Islam either) but I don't fit in better with the more fundamental Muslims because as much as I would like to be practicing like them, I don't see the big picture in the same way as they do. And of course, I don't fit in with the cultural ones who can't tell the difference between Islam and their culture because that's just annoying.

I'm lucky not to have had bad experiences though. But I also didn't really find anyone here who shares what I believe.

If I were to come out of the closet to my parents like I wish to, I feel sure that the first thing I would want to say is that I don't believe exactly the same thing as most Muslims. Sad, isn't it? But that's how it would go. I'd want to explain in simple terms what Islam is to me. It's submitting to God alone. And I'd explain that I believe we all have in us the knowledge of what God wants from us, which means that I believe anyone, whether they consider themselves Muslim or not, could be Muslims/Submitters to God. To separate myself from the Muslim community and make them see that they too, might even be part of what I see Islam as.

I wouldn't feel the need to separate myself from the Muslim community so much if I were to come out to co-workers and just random people. In fact, I'd love to try to show of the good in Muslims with them especially, like I do now whenever we talk about Islam. I want the Ummah to become stronger...

This has been a pretty honest post for me. I guess the only thing left to add to that would be that I'd feel the need to add that I don't follow hadiths like most Muslims do, but any details would be for another post, so I don't really want any comments on it if at all possible!

OH! Have to add that today at work, we were talking about foster parenting, which I really want to do as soon as I am able to get an apartment with an extra bedroom, and one of the girls has been a foster parent, so I asked her about the procedures and all, and then asked her if they'd be more likely to place a Muslim child with us if there was one, considering we were "a Muslim family". I didn't say that I was Muslim myself, but they know my husband is, and I called us a Muslim family. I then continued talking with them and talked about having been in the mosque more than in the Church, etc. This was with the two newest employees at our office, so I might just have given them the impression that I'm Muslim. I was quite happy about that! I don't think I could say "no" if anyone asked me if I was now. :) It's progress.