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The Guardian: Love, Inshallah, a book that goes to the heart of Muslim women

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For The Guardian’s Comment is Free

Love is in the air, floating under burqas and hijabs. Muslim women are in love. And, you know, doing what lovers do. Wahabi guys, best look away. Now.

Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women is a collection of 25 modern Muslim love stories. They aren’t fictional, they are personal accounts of what happens when you meet someone and fall in love – only you can’t really fall in love because a) your parents will go crazy and b) you’ve been told it’s against your religion to fancy someone.

The book, which was officially released in the US on Valentine’s Day (it’s available on Kindle, and will be published in March in the UK), has been compiled by two Muslim women – Ayesha Mattu, a civil rights lawyer, and Nura Maznavi, a human rights consultant. The friends dreamed up the idea five years ago while joking about what a Muslim dating movie – now there’s an idea – would be like. They turned to Facebook to ask American Muslim women, of all backgrounds, to send in their love stories. The ones they liked best made it into the book.

This isn’t a book review, but it’s worth mentioning some of the stories that stand out, because they show a side to some Muslim women that most people don’t think about.

There’s the story of a convert who believes fervently in God and is also a lesbian living with her burqa-wearing partner. Political activist Tanzila Ahmad has a wild affair with a member of a Muslim punk band. Zahra Noorbakhsh shares the hilarious story of her mother’s sex talk (“You have a hole. And for the rest of your life men will want to put their penis in your hole”) and the disappointment of losing her virginity to a boy called Dean. There are also tender tales of falling in love via semi-arranged marriages and what it feels like when your mum tries to set you up with some aunty’s son.

Some Muslims say there is no need for this book. Some worried it would be a “salacious exposé” of Islam (some stories reference pre-marital sex; there are two lesbian stories). One of the negative reviews on Amazon says: “This book is not meant for nor is it any reflection of any practising Muslims … I’m not sure what purpose this book serves … This book is not befitting to have Allah in its title.”

Pre-empting another point of view, some readers may argue it’s annoyingly anti-feminist because it reinforces the myth that the focus of every woman’s life is to find a man; that writing about emotional or sexual experiences isn’t empowering. But of course it is. For a Muslim woman, surrounded by stereotypes of silence, forced marriages and oppression, how can it not be?

There has rarely been a space for a Muslim woman to talk openly about sexuality, heartbreak, love or lust (only one other book, Love in a Headscarf, comes close but not quite). These are things that “good” Muslim girls don’t “do”.

But life can be a balancing act for a modern Muslim woman, negotiating different cultures and pursuing romance within the confines of her faith – it’s the Muslim woman’s marriage predicament Comment is free has talked about before. So many western-born Muslim women are struggling to find the one. So it’s cheering, heartening, to read how Muslim women, like all women, make choices, sometimes make mistakes, but work it out in the end. Sure, these women struggle with their faith sometimes. It doesn’t make them bad Muslims. It makes them honest.

On another level, to read the words of Muslim women, written on their own terms, who have taken ownership of their bodies and created their own identity, without feeling ashamed of what others might say is brilliant and uplifting – plus it shows there are some funny, incredibly thoughtful and great Muslim female writers out there.

When I got married, the imam at my London mosque told me that when love enters your heart you must cherish it and never let it go. And it doesn’t matter whether you believe in God or religion to believe in that. Love, InshAllah is not asking for religious judgment of the women it features and nor is it reflective of every single Muslim woman in the world; it’s just a book, but one with stories that very much deserve to be told.

The Observer: Ageism, Miriam?

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I know just how Miriam O’Reilly feels.Last week, O’Reilly very deservedly won her age-discrimination case against the BBC.

“You’re going to have be careful about those wrinkles,” one colleague said to her. “Is it time for Botox?” joked another.

Someone else suggested (how rude) that she might not pass the prime-time test of being young and pretty. I imagine a cameraman hovering around her in some random field, waving a can of black spray just in case she needed to touch up any grey.

Yes, truly, I know just how she feels. Even if I am 24 years younger than she is.

To explain: I’m not suffering from some weird reverse-ageing syndrome like Benjamin Button. I haven’t got grey hair or wrinkles. But that’s the problem. I suffer from the Reverse O’Reilly Effect. She got judged for looking too old. I get judged for looking too young.

Click here to read the rest of the original piece

The Observer: It’s true, we Muslims keep our heads down

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Published in The Observer, Sunday 6 July 2008.

Tomorrow night, on the eve of the third anniversary of the 7/7 bombings, Channel 4′s Dispatches returns to one of its favourite subjects – Muslims. The programme, called It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim, looks at how life has changed for Muslim families in the UK since 9/11. It recounts vicious stories of horrific, racist brutality against Muslims, not the extremist ones, but the ordinary, law-abiding ones; stories that are rarely reported in the press.

I imagine this will annoy a hell of a lot of people. They’ll probably post comments on websites of all political hues about how insensitive it is to focus on the so-called plight of Muslims, asking what right ‘they’ have to play the victim card and speak out about the attacks they’ve suffered when it was ‘they’ who started it in the first place.

When people start talking about 7/7, 9/11, terrorism and Osama, rationality is lost and prejudice and stereotype emerge. Most people are so (understandably) full of rage at what happened and what’s still happening that they don’t want to hear that not all Muslims are terrorists, illegal immigrants or uneducated illiterates that the rest of the nation has to ‘respect’. Ultimately, it’s far easier to lump us altogether.

Peter Oborne, the well-known right-wing columnist who is behind the Dispatches programme, pointed this out in two pieces published last week, one in the Daily Mail, the other in the Independent. He spoke out against Islamophobia and how the press is to blame for producing ridiculous stories about Muslims, like the one that appeared last week (funnily enough in the Mail) about how a police advert featuring a puppy sparked ‘outrage’ from Muslims who find dogs offensive.

For the record, I’m Muslim. Trust me, we don’t have an issue with puppies.

Click here to read the rest of this piece.

The Observer: I’m the wrong kind of Muslim for TV

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Published in The Observer, Sunday 27 April, 2008. Click here to read the original piece.

Something’s been missing in my television viewing pleasure and it’s not just Ugly Betty or The OC. What could it be? Oh, it’s been a while since we had our latest round of ‘Let’s look at Muslims’ documentaries; there’s been no Make me a Muslim or Divorce Sharia-style for ages.

Perhaps it’s because Alan Sugar is doing such a wonderful job of filling the scary-old-man-with-beard quota on The Apprentice – who knows? But if anyone has been missing their near-weekly dose of jilbabs and jihadis, fret not – the good old BBC is bringing Muslims back again. Woohoo!

A new five-part series on Muslim women called Women in Black starts next week. The series boldly goes where no undercover Dispatches investigative journalist has ever been before. Yes, you guessed it, under the burka. Ever wondered what lies beneath? Jack Straw did.

Last summer, I was asked to take part in the programme. The makers said they wanted to shatter stereotypes and show the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman (presumably because we haven’t gone off the rails like the modern, young, British, uncool Muslim man). Would I take part? ‘Of course,’ I said. Am I not empowered and modern and Muslim and cool? Hell, yes.

So I met the production team and one of the women (not Muslim, by the way) pulled out a little camera and filmed me saying, among other things, how irritating it is that non-Muslims act surprised that I’m Muslim just because I choose not to cover my head.

It went well, I thought, and so they said. But – and this was quite a big but – they were a bit concerned about my appearance.

‘Your dress is quite Western,’ they said ruefully. I was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved top (yes, I really do remember what I was wearing that day. How could I not? I thought I was going to be famous and on TV), but I was hardly scantily clad. So much for the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman; turns out what the BBC really wanted was a authentic, well-covered one instead.

You see, burkas make good TV. I don’t. I’ve just taken a look at the show. What we get is the presenter donning an abaya and going to Yemen to show us all the fun things us Muslim women do, like wear long, black cloaks, party in the women’s quarters and put sparkly eyeshadow on. ‘Waxing’s a big deal among Muslim women,’ she says, causing an cringe from me. ‘Having any hair is a complete social faux pas. The “Hollywood” that all the celebs are doing started in the Middle East’

From Yemen, she is heading to Dubai, before returning to London to do it presumably again, only this time with less gaudy eye make-up (I hope).

Sadly, my story, the fairly common, non-conflicting story where cultures don’t clash, but sit quietly side by side with minimal effort required, is one that never gets the limelight.

But it’s the one that needs to be heard so that British Muslims can simply get on with being who they are instead of continually being defined on other people’s terms and in other people’s words. Women in Black – even the name says it all.