Muslim women in America re-discover their roots
http://tinyurl.com/73lbk
By Mary M. Byrne
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Sunday, October 16, 2005
ATLANTA -- Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a self-described "Jersey girl turned Georgia peach," likes to observe the month of Ramadan on her balcony, quiet and alone.
"I pray and break my fast and eat out here, and I think about Muslims around the world who are doing the same," she says. There is "the wonderful sense that you are connected to billions across the world, and yet I'm doing it right here in northwest Atlanta."
But Abdul-Ghafur is also an activist and editor of the new book "Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak" (Beacon Press, $15). That puts her on the vanguard of a new, lively movement to rethink what it is to be Muslim today.
As part of a global faith community that is diverse and evolving, Abdul-Ghafur and other American Muslims are organizing, writing and speaking on contentious issues they say Islam hasn't dealt with -- such as inequalities between men and women, the right to faithfully dissent and reinterpreting the sacred text of Islam, the Quran.
"We are not creating an American Islam or a reformed Islam," says Abdul-Ghafur, who was a chief executive with Azizah, a magazine for and about Muslim women. She is a board member of the Progressive Muslim Union and works with Hands On Atlanta.
"We are simply reclaiming what we believe to be Islam. And we have the right to do that because we're in America, and no one can corner the market on what Islam is or is not," said Abdul-Ghafur, who grew up in suburban New Jersey, graduated from Columbia University and went on a pilgrimage to Mecca with her parents in 1998.
Muslims have many ways of marking Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar-based calendar, the time Muslims believe Allah first revealed the Quran to the prophet Muhammad.
Most regard it as a time for reflection, prayer and study, and many will abstain from eating and drinking from dawn until sunset. Each day, they will break their fast with iftar, a meal eaten soon after sunset. Ramadan began the first week of October and ends with feasting and prayers at Eid al-Fitr, or the Festival of Breaking the Fast.
Because of her new book, Abdul-Ghafur's observance of Ramadan will take place partly on the road. Contributors to the book include former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani, who writes of working desperately to locate her friend and colleague, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan.
The writers also include a lesbian Muslim, who remained anonymous for her safety; Asia Sharif-Clark, CEO of a consulting company who married a non-Muslim; and Mohja Kahf, poet and professor at the University of Arkansas, whose experiences working with battered women transformed her faith.
Reform movements are not new to Islam, says John Iskander, professor of religion at Georgia State University. But a new voice is emerging: Western-reared, yet dedicated to Islam.
The progressive movement, Abdul-Ghafur says, is largely led by Muslims in the West, who have grown up with an expectation of inalienable human and civil rights -- rights which, she argues, are in harmony with Islamic principles.
By Mary M. Byrne
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Sunday, October 16, 2005
ATLANTA -- Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a self-described "Jersey girl turned Georgia peach," likes to observe the month of Ramadan on her balcony, quiet and alone.
"I pray and break my fast and eat out here, and I think about Muslims around the world who are doing the same," she says. There is "the wonderful sense that you are connected to billions across the world, and yet I'm doing it right here in northwest Atlanta."
But Abdul-Ghafur is also an activist and editor of the new book "Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak" (Beacon Press, $15). That puts her on the vanguard of a new, lively movement to rethink what it is to be Muslim today.
As part of a global faith community that is diverse and evolving, Abdul-Ghafur and other American Muslims are organizing, writing and speaking on contentious issues they say Islam hasn't dealt with -- such as inequalities between men and women, the right to faithfully dissent and reinterpreting the sacred text of Islam, the Quran.
"We are not creating an American Islam or a reformed Islam," says Abdul-Ghafur, who was a chief executive with Azizah, a magazine for and about Muslim women. She is a board member of the Progressive Muslim Union and works with Hands On Atlanta.
"We are simply reclaiming what we believe to be Islam. And we have the right to do that because we're in America, and no one can corner the market on what Islam is or is not," said Abdul-Ghafur, who grew up in suburban New Jersey, graduated from Columbia University and went on a pilgrimage to Mecca with her parents in 1998.
Muslims have many ways of marking Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar-based calendar, the time Muslims believe Allah first revealed the Quran to the prophet Muhammad.
Most regard it as a time for reflection, prayer and study, and many will abstain from eating and drinking from dawn until sunset. Each day, they will break their fast with iftar, a meal eaten soon after sunset. Ramadan began the first week of October and ends with feasting and prayers at Eid al-Fitr, or the Festival of Breaking the Fast.
Because of her new book, Abdul-Ghafur's observance of Ramadan will take place partly on the road. Contributors to the book include former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani, who writes of working desperately to locate her friend and colleague, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan.
The writers also include a lesbian Muslim, who remained anonymous for her safety; Asia Sharif-Clark, CEO of a consulting company who married a non-Muslim; and Mohja Kahf, poet and professor at the University of Arkansas, whose experiences working with battered women transformed her faith.
Reform movements are not new to Islam, says John Iskander, professor of religion at Georgia State University. But a new voice is emerging: Western-reared, yet dedicated to Islam.
The progressive movement, Abdul-Ghafur says, is largely led by Muslims in the West, who have grown up with an expectation of inalienable human and civil rights -- rights which, she argues, are in harmony with Islamic principles.
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