Tag Archives: Islam

The Guardian: How do Muslims celebrate Christmas? Turkey, Top of the Pops and Shloer

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I absolutely love Christmas.

Baking mince pies, choosing presents and then wrapping them all up and writing Christmas cards … I’m possibly not nearly cynical enough, but I love all the festive stuff that goes with this time of year. I love how everyone gets a day off. I love how everyone travels back to their parents’ house on Christmas Eve, like some sort of ritualistic voyage. I love the telly listings and the food and the noise of everyone being together. Love it. It’s up there with Eid. This year, I’ve outdone myself – I organised my Christmas presents last month.

Some of my favourite childhood memories are of Christmas day – the family round the table, my dad carving a huge halal turkey which we’d have ordered weeks in advance, heaps of brussels sprouts, sticky carrots and roast potatoes and a bottle or two of Shloer (our version of a, er, posh non-alcoholic drink) to pass around. We’d play Scrabble and Monopoly and watch the Queen’s speech, Top of the Pops and the EastEnders Christmas special. Sometimes my mum would do the Asian thing and we’d end up with 40-odd family friends joining us, which would mean less leftovers, but that was OK too. Last year, my Christmas-loving brother was in charge of the menu – he went so far as tracking down an organic, halal goose.

Christmas in my Muslim home was obviously not a religious thing: it was (and is) about being on holiday and getting together with friends and family, something festive and bright to cheer up the winter drear. I imagine this is how it is for most people.

But at school, where we kneeled every morning after assembly for the Lord’s Prayer, it was different. I was in every school nativity play, often a wise man with a keffiyeh-styled tea towel on my head, and I sung hymns and carols in every school Christmas church service, ending with big happy shouts of “Merry Christmas everyone!” and plates of mince pies passed round as we’d bundle out the church door.

The traditions are passing on: soon, my four-year-old nephew will be making his debut in his school Christmas play. He plays the part of a hen. We are not sure how that falls into the Christmas story, but we are rolling with it, in the spirit of the season.

Growing up learning about one faith at school and practising another at home, where we had Arabic lessons, read namaaz (prayers), fasted and celebrated two Eids, wasn’t as confusing as it sounds. I can’t really explain it, but somehow, we just got it and we still do.

When it came to Christmas, as Muslim kids we always knew that Jesus was our prophet too, which justified in some way our enthusiasm for the season.

We may not have had a Christmas tree and our parents may not have given us Christmas presents (another way they differentiate Christmas from Eid: my family only exchanges presents after Ramadan, whereas on Eid-al-Adha we give to charity rather than to each other), which was sometimes tricky to explain at school, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t still take part in it. After all, at the crux of it, pushing the consumerism to one side, Christmas is all about goodwill, forgiveness, thanks, charity and gratitude – and that’s what Eid is all about too.

Lady Warsi recently said Muslims “should” celebrate Christmas. But what she ignores is so many of us – along with people from all faiths and no faith – already do. Whether it’s cooking a Christmas dinner, decorating a Christmas tree or joining in with carol singing, so many of us “minorities” Warsi refers to are keeping traditions, albeit little, secular, seasonal ones, alive in our own homes, in our own ways. It’s something I’ve seen my parents’ generation, who arrived here in the 60s and 70s, do for decades. Those of us who “do” Christmas do it because we want to.

This year, I’m celebrating Christmas with my in-laws. They are Christian (my husband converted to Islam), and last year was the first time I spent Christmas with them. I won’t pretend I wasn’t at first anxious as to how it would be, but it turned out their Christmas is no different to the Muslim-Qureshi version of it I’ve always known, except they had a tree and gave each other presents. But other than that it was the same – lots of family, lots of food, lots of chatter, natter and fun. I’m guessing it’s sort of the same everywhere.

Though Warsi made her point clumsily and patronisingly, it surely can’t be a bad thing to celebrate different traditions from cultures and religions that aren’t necessarily your own (if that’s what you want to do and don’t want a government minister telling you what you “should” be doing, that is).

I recently invited a young couple, who weren’t Muslim, over for dinner during Ramadan, as part of an initiative to bring people of different backgrounds together: it was brilliant. When I was at school, I went to pujas with Hindu friends, our Christian next-door neighbours send my family Eid cards and gifts, and vice versa on Christmas. My mum always prepares trays laden with Eid food for the neighbours – a friendly, simple gesture that says so much about people living side by side, believing different things but not letting that get in the way of normal life and friendship.

It’s simple really, it just comes down to thoughtfulness, respect and having an open mind. Sharing religious or cultural celebrations opens traditions up, so that we can all get to see, and be a part of, the best, warmest and most generous, most welcoming parts of society. If it sounds like I’ve got that fuzzy feeling, it’s because I have. What can I say, Christmas does that to me. And that’s reason enough for me to celebrate.

The National: Trading fame for faith

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There was a time when Kristiane Backer was a household name among teenagers, and probably their parents too. Back in the early 1990s, Backer was one of the very first presenters on MTV Europe, entertaining young people and interviewing pop stars.

Not everyone will remember Backer from MTV, but in Muslim households at least she is becoming known again, in the unlikeliest way. Across the world, she is upheld as a shining example of what happens when you turn to Islam.

Backer embraced the religion in 1995, leaving behind the dazzling lights of TV fame for a more spiritual life. In many Muslim circles, the shift has been well known; now it is fully documented, with the English publication of her long-awaited book, From MTV to Mecca, which was published in German in 2009.

It is not a story that has always been easy for Backer to tell; for some time she had no choice but to keep it under wraps.

“When it first emerged that I was Muslim, I was told that if I ever wanted to work in Germany again, I had to keep quiet about it,” she says. “So I did. But as a journalist, I was itching to speak out, especially because whenever I opened the German newspapers, they depicted Islam in a way I didn’t recognise my beautiful faith.”

Eventually a book agent contacted her, asking her if she would share her experience.

“I felt it was an opportunity and I wanted to show my story – show that if I can be a happy, practising Muslim, then there must be something to it.” The end result portrays the challenges Backer has faced in choosing her faith and reconciling it with her European identity.

On the book cover, Backer, 46, smiles serenely at the camera, her hair partly covered by an elegantly draped pale blue scarf. Meanwhile, inside the book there are a few pictures of Backer from her MTV youth; she is all shiny hair and sunglasses, surrounded by stars. The first part of the book, which charts her burgeoning career and brush with stardom as she began to get recognised, is littered with the names of all the famous people she met and tales about the parties she went to. Does any part of her miss that life?

“No – I lived that life to the max for seven-and-a-half years, but it’s a well-closed chapter now,” she says. “I don’t miss any of it, but I don’t regret any of it either. I look back with great fondness and gratitude. I have never looked back with a tear in my eye.”

Backer’s faith has deepened since the days when she taught herself how to pray using a children’s prayer book; in 2005, coinciding with her 40th birthday, she went on the Hajj.

“It was exhausting and I felt like a zombie, but I enjoyed every moment of it, hard as it was,” she says. “It was a blessed Hajj. You get into the spirit of things. It’s wonderful for learning and building your personality. It makes you realise you are with God wherever you are and there’s this invisible bond with all the other people there, all of us in communion with God. You feel connected.”

Searching for a connection is something you sense Backer is constantly looking for in her book. She admits that in the past, Eid has been lonely as a new Muslim without a family or a husband to share it with. In her book, she talks openly about her failed relationships, first with the Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, whom she credits with introducing her to Islam, and then her former husband Rachid, whom she met online and married very quickly – too quickly, as she concedes.

But her London friends are her Muslim family now and Backer says she is hopeful about what it means to be a Muslim today.

“There is such a vibrant Muslim scene and culture in London; there is so much going on here and it’s so exciting. It is entirely possible to be a Muslim, European woman. I can simply be who I am here.”

 

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/trading-fame-for-faith#ixzz2BRQJ2xMv
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The Guardian: The day I invited non-Muslims guests to iftar

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Published in g2

I have two strangers coming for dinner. This is nerve-racking: who in their right mind invites strangers into their home? Also, I’m worried I’ve over-seasoned the curry I’m making, but there’s no way of checking: I’m fasting so I can’t taste as I go.

I’m taking part in Dine@Mine, an initiative set up by 25-year-old Maryam Douale from Manchester. The idea is that Muslims host an iftar (the meal with which you open your fast) for non-Muslims, to forge better understanding over food. “Ramadan at my house is loud, fun and full of love and good food,” Douale says. “It’s my family at its warmest and best. I thought what if we could give non-Muslims a chance to see what a normal Muslim family is like? Food plays such an important role in cultures and traditions … it brings people together”

My guests, Jack and Jenni, live nearby. I email to say we will break our fast at precisely 8.49pm, while my husband, Richard, wonders helpfully if it’ll be “really awkward”. Meanwhile, I have a meal to prepare. I think of what I grew up with in Ramadan, my mother’s big steaming pots of hearty, spicy Pakistani food.

After a thorough phone consultation with her, I settle on my dishes: salaan (a yoghurt-based chicken curry infused with heaps of coriander), sabzi (a vegetable curry of chickpeas, spinach and potatoes) and muttar pilau (peas and rice) with mint and cucumber raita on the side – particularly satisfying when your tastebuds haven’t been used all day. I skip the deep-fried pakoras and samosas that feature at most iftars as I find them heavy after a day’s fast and for dessert, I’m including a good old British fruit crumble to reflect Richard’s background. We’ll open our fast the traditional way, with a date and water, a practice that goes back to Islam‘s beginnings. (And dates give the instant sweet energy rush needed after a day without food.)

Jack and Jenni arrive. We offer them elderflower drinks, explaining we will wait until we’ve opened our fast, but they say they want to wait with us. Although they haven’t fasted ahead of the meal, they are excited about joining in: “When would I ever get the chance to experience any part of Ramadan?” Jenni asks.

At 8.49pm, Richard passes the dates round. Then we help ourselves – there’s no formality with Pakistani food. Our guests’ plates are laden with rice and both curries, and, reassuringly, they both want seconds. Jenni asks what we normally eat in Ramadan, and I confess that when I lived alone, I’d gorge on pasta, which left me bloated after a day without eating. Now I cook Pakistani food for special occasions – after a day’s fast, there’s nothing like it.

I was worried the experience might put us on show – Look! Here are Muslims who fast! – but it hasn’t at all. Friends and colleagues are intrigued about Ramadan but shy of asking questions and I want our guests to feel they can ask anything. Being used to fasting, I forget this is what baffles people most. “Do you really get up at 3am? Is it like a midnight feast” asks Jenni, who thinks sehri, the pre-fast meal, sounds “magical”. I tell her that eating bagels while half asleep is quite mundane. They’ve been reading up on Ramadan, and instead of bringing flowers, made a donation to a charity for the homeless.

Religion can be one of those subjects you steer clear of at dinner with strangers, but in this context it’s easy to be open and honest with our views.

The simple act of sharing a meal together has laid down the foundations of a new friendship – Douale will be pleased to hear we’re going over to theirs for dinner after Eid.

The Guardian: Ramadan and the Olympics – to fast or not to fast

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Published in g2

Abdul Buhari has been fasting for Ramadan since the age of 12, but this year he will be missing the holy month. He has good reason for it: Buhari, 30, is one of the UK’s top discus throwers and will be representing Team GB in the men’s discus event at London 2012. He has decided not to risk his Olympic performance by being without food or water.

“It was a really difficult decision because I’ve fasted all my life for Ramadan – it’s incredibly important to me. But if I fast, it will be impossible to stay in peak condition and perform at my highest level in the Games,” he says. “I believe God is forgiving, and I’ll make up for every single day I’ve missed.” He plans to fast later on in the year.

This is the second time Buhari has missed Ramadan; last year, when it coincided with the athletic world championships in Korea, was the first. After much discussion with his coach, wife and several imams, he concluded that fasting and competing in top-level athletics just weren’t compatible. “I went through it with my trainer, looking at whether I could get enough calories for the nutrition and energy I needed, but in the end we decided it would be too risky.”

In Korea, Buhari shared a flat with fellow Team GB athlete and Muslim Mo Farah for the championships. “We both weren’t fasting and we found that really hard. No Muslim wants to miss Ramadan.”

All four of Team GB’s Muslim athletes (Buhari, Farah, rower Moe Sbihi and fencer Husayn Rosowsky) have decided not to fast during Ramadan this year, so as not to jeopardise their Olympic performance. While Farah and Rosowsky will also make up for it later in the year, Sbihi has instead decided to provide 60 meals a day for the poor for every day of fasting he misses. He came up with the charitable solution after consulting with Muslim scholars in Morocco, where his father is from.

More than 3,000 Muslim athletes are expected to participate in London 2012, although the games organisers say it’s impossible to know how many are fasting. Still, they are prepared: fasting athletes can order “breaking-fast packs”, filled with dates, water and energy bars, and the canteen will be open 24 hours so anyone fasting can eat sehri, the pre-fast meal consumed just before sunrise, in the early hours.

But is it really advisable for athletes to compete or train while fasting? In 2009, the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s nutrition working group began investigating the impact of fasting on sports performance. A team of scientists, led by Ron Maughan, professor of sport and exercise nutrition at Loughborough University, analysed more than 400 articles on Ramadan and sports, and published its findings in the British Journal of Sports Medicine last month. The report concluded: “Fasting of short duration or intermittent nature has little or no effect on the health or performance of most athletes … Ramadan observance has only limited adverse consequences for either training or competitive performance.”

“Everyone tends to assume that performance is going to be affected by Ramadan, but there’s nothing unusual about playing sports in Ramadan,” says Maughan. “Most people who fast for Ramadan, whether they are athletes or not, have been fasting for years. They know how to cope and how far their bodies can go. So it’s perfectly safe.”

Even though they have opted out of this summer’s fasting, Buhari, Sbihi and Rosowsky have all trained during Ramadan in the winter months without problems. As Rosowsky puts it: “You just focus, man up and get on with it.”

Buhari weighs 20 stone. He eats six meals and drinks six litres of water on a normal day. On training days during Ramadan he would wake up extra early for sehri, eat a large variety of slow-releasing carbohydrates from porridge and seeded bread to sweet potatoes, brown rice and pasta, along with plenty of water and electrolytes to prevent cramping. At the end of the fast, he’d repeat the process. “Sure, sometimes I would feel thirsty, but ultimately my faith was my motivation. I could draw on that to get me through,” he says.

Being able to train during Ramadan is one thing for a competitive athlete and another for your average person, warns Drew Price, a performance nutritionist who works with athletes and Premiership footballers who observe the Ramadan fast. “Ramadan isn’t as difficult as people think for athletes, but they have a whole support team to monitor them while fasting. The average person won’t have that, so if they want to exercise and fast, they should listen to their bodies. Generally, the fitter you are, the easier it is. Ramadan is only a few weeks out of the year, so you can afford to take it easy in terms of the intensity and volume of exercise you do for one month if you train well the rest of the year.”

Personal trainer Imran Ilahi owns a health club in St John’s Wood, north London, and last year published Fit4Ramadan, an online fitness manual about how to stay in shape while fasting. He works out during Ramadan, preferring to train before sehri, rather than during fasting hours.

“The key is to focus on maintaining your fitness during Ramadan, rather than improving it or making it worse,” he says. “You can still eExercise before you start the fast, or after you’ve broken it. Just do slightly less than you normally would and you’ll find it gives you more energy.”

Asif Ahmad, a 26-year-old from London who goes to the gym three times a week during Ramadan, agrees. “It’s a strange concept to comprehend, but playing sports really does mean that adrenaline overshadows most of your natural reactions such as thirst or fatigue,” he says “It’s all about discipline, after all.”

The Guardian (CiF): Online abuse – we’ve all suffered it too

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Contribution to Comment Is Free panel about the online abuse ‘minority’ journalists face. My extract:

Huma Qureshi: “I know I’m going to get it from both sides”

Reading through the comments responding to Mehdi Hasan’s piece, I can see why his wife is sometimes reduced to tears. You need a thick skin, and I didn’t (sometimes still don’t) always have one.

I started writing about being Muslim and female and Asian for the Observer’s comment pages when I was young and inexperienced. I didn’t know what to expect and copped out pretty early on after some of the comments started saying horrible stuff directed towards my family, whom I’d mentioned in passing a particular piece. Most of those comments were removed, but at the time they unsettled me enough to ask the comment editor not to run my next piece.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I’m more prepared for what might be in store when I throw myself into the lion’s den and write something about Islam.

I know I’m going to get it from both sides. There are some Muslim readers who automatically assume I must be some liberal heathen, who have accused me of “Islam bashing”, blasphemy and changing Islam to “suit my whims” – when I’ve done no such thing. I try to be indifferent, but occasionally these sort of comments make me angry, because for all their talk of piety, who are they to judge me on my faith? I’ll engage with them on Cif, but mostly it’s like talking to a brick wall.

Then I get it from non-Muslims who use any Cif piece about Islam as a chance to point out what an abusive/violent/oppressive/uncivilised religion I belong to, and how much they hate everything about it and everyone who is a part of it. Again, I try not to get involved, but those comments showing such hatred make me sad, because I don’t see myself like that. It seems that, although people often ask to hear the “moderate Muslim voice”, when they do they still don’t listen.

I choose what I write about very carefully, so I’ve been spared what some Muslim writers receive. (I mostly get harmless “Can’t believe you get paid to write this shit” comments.) But the worst, serious abuse I’ve got was a lengthy email, sent anonymously after I wrote about Muslim marriage contracts, and listing everything they didn’t like about me, saying my marriage was “fucked”, that I was an “epic failure”, and that I “didn’t deserve happiness”.

I misguidedly read it while on honeymoon and it left me shaking. It was vile. Part of me is worried that this post might be an invitation to another email from whoever it was. But with hindsight I take it as a backhanded compliment that I provoked such irritation in this reader – that’s the way I now try to deal with the comments that hit way below the belt.

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 Guardian: Muslim model agency supports modesty on the catwalk

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If the guests atttending the Stella McCartney party are anything to go by, then flesh will feature prominently in London fashion week. If so it will be a far cry from one fashion show in New York last week, which coincided with the launch of a new agency for Muslim models. Could the trend for modest couture catch on here?

Underwraps is the brainchild of fashion designer Nailah Lymus, a 28-year-old American-born Muslim who believes that Muslim models shouldn’t feel obliged to compromise on covering up. The agency will ensure its models won’t have to wear revealing outfits.

Lymus, from Brooklyn, New York, says: “Being modest isn’t just a Muslim concept; it crosses many religions and cultures. Beautiful women who have always wanted to venture on to the catwalk but have declined because of their beliefs now have a chance.”

Underwraps currently represents three models, who appeared at Lymus’s own show and were sent to castings during New York fashion week. Two of them have been signed by a bridal boutique opening in London this year.

So far, US Glamour and online magazine Fashionista.com have commended Lymus’s attempts to diversify the modelling industry.

According to Bethania Matheus, director of BM Models agency in Brighton, an increase in faith-based fashion has led to a demand for Muslim models internationally – she has received inquiries from designers looking to cast Muslim models, and applications from Muslims wanting to become models. “Modesty appeals to millions. Photographers shouldn’t have issues with models who are specific about what they will and won’t do – this could be a great opportunity for very creative shoots.”

British Muslim model Shanna Bukhari (pictured), who was criticised by some Muslim organisations when she appeared in Miss Universe last year, says: “This is something I would definitely sign up for. I’ve turned down work after being told to compromise my modesty so if a model has the option not to reveal too much skin, then it’s perfect.”

Some fashion followers are more sceptical. Jana Kossaibati, who runs the Muslim fashion blog Hijab Style, says: “I don’t think the way forward is simply to create the hijab-clad version of Claudia Schiffer. That reduces Islamic beliefs to the superficial.”

“It is everyone’s moral duty to help someone if they are being persecuted for their religion”

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Scarlett Epstein

As the world joins together to commemorate the Holocaust this week, eighty-nine year old Scarlett Epstein (pictured) says she will be remembering not just the plight of the Jews, but also the support of European Muslims in Albania to whom she says she owes her life.

“Albania was the only country that let my family in,” says Epstein, an Austrian Jew who arrived in England in 1939 and still describes herself as a Jewish refugee today. “I am alive because of the kindness its people showed me, most of whom were Muslim.”

During the second world war, Albania’s Muslim leader, King Zog, defied the Nazis and issued 400 passports to Jewish refugees. It is estimated that at least 2,000 Jews were offered shelter and support by Albanian Muslims during the Holocaust.

Epstein fled Austria with her parents months after German troops invaded Vienna in the spring of 1938. Upon arriving in former Yugoslavia, the family was given an ultimatum to either find another country to live in or return to the Austrian border and risk being sent to a concentration camp.

“It was a matter of life or death. I went from consulate to consulate to secure visas for another place to go, but not a single one would let me in because my passport showed I was a Jew with a big, red “J”,” she says.

“I found the Albanian consulate by accident. The consul stamped our passports there and then. I didn’t even know where Albania was, let alone what religion its people were.”

Albania’s population has historically been majority Muslim. National statistics show 70% of Albania’s 3.2 million population follow Islam today, making it the country with the largest proportional representation of Muslims in Europe.

Epstein and her parents stayed in the port city of Durres for just under five months, sharing a building with roughly 40 other Jews. Their makeshift home was protected and watched over by Muslim policeman whose headquarters were next door. Epstein earned an income from teaching languages to the daughters of a wealthy Muslim family whom she befriended.

“Religion was irrelevant,” she says. “It was not a problem that they were Muslim or that I was a Jew. There were differences of course; I was in short skirts and socks while the Albanian women wore veils and lived in purdah. But we were welcomed with open arms. The Muslim police were so worried about our lives, they gave us instructions to hide when the Italian troops arrived. They did not want to see us be captured and bundled off.”

Photographer Norman Gershman, founder of the Eye Contact Foundation which promotes global tolerance through the use of portrait photography, travelled to Albania to meet and photograph Muslim Albanians who took Jewish families in during the war for his book, Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II. Most of the Albanian Muslims featured are now elderly, and were teenagers or children when their parents opened their homes up to Jewish refugees.

“The Albanians believe in a code of honour, that is called Besa,” says Gershman, an American Jew. “It means that should anybody be in need, friend or foe, then you have an obligation, a duty, to take them into your home and protect them. It’s an ancient code that forms part of their culture. It is a lesson to the world.”

Merushe Kadiu is one of the Muslims featured in Gershman’s book. She grew up in the Albanian village of Kavaja and her family sheltered two Greek Jews, a brother and sister, for five years during the war.

Kadiu said: “My father said that the Germans would have to kill his family before we would let them kill our Jewish guests.”

She later became head of the Albanian-Israeli Friendship Association and received a Righteous Among The Nations award from Israel, a title bestowed on non-Jews who helped Jews during the Holocaust.

Agim Sinani was nine-years-old when his parents took in a Croatian Jewish family. He said: “We did nothing special. Any villager would have done the same. We did what any Albanian would do. We are all human.”

Gershman’s collection of stories, photographs and interviews form the basis of The Missing Pages campaign, an initiative launched last year by by the Muslim charity, Exploring Islam Foundation (EIF) to highlight examples of Muslim and Jewish solidarity.

Albanians were not the only Muslims to offer protection to Jews during the Holocaust. In their book, The Grand Mosque of Paris, authors Karen Gray Ruelle and Deborah Durland DeSaix reveal the little-known story of how French Algerian Muslims in Paris gave 100 Jews shelter in the city’s Grand Mosque.

Epstein, who now lives in Hove, Sussex, and continues to work as a development economist and anthropologist, adds: “The future generation needs to know that it is everyone’s moral duty to help someone if they are being persecuted for no other reason than their race, religion or gender.”

The Guardian: How I gave up on a modern Muslim marriage

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Three years ago, I read on Comment is free about the launch of a new Muslim marriage contract. The contract would “change the face of British Muslim family life”; it would confirm and re-establish the Islamic rights for women upon entering marriage that some cultures had blurred along the way.

The contract, which was relaunched this summer, does away with a lot of old cultural baggage. It stresses loyalty, mutuality and equality between husband and wife, protects the wife’s financial rights and points out that there is no obligation for a bride to live with her in-laws.

It goes further. As someone who is determinedly independent, it baffled me why I should need a wali, a male guardian, to grant his official permission for me to marry before my consent was asked. I’d come to accept that was just the way it was. But the new contract confirms that in Islam, a woman of adult age doesn’t need a wali; she can declare her own intention to marry without someone else’s official permission being given first.

Like most Muslims, I’d also assumed that witnesses to the nikah (the Muslim marriage) always had to be men, but the new contract states that Islamic law only says a witness to marriage should be a sane, responsible adult, with no conditions on gender or faith – meaning women and non-Muslims can be witnesses too.

To me, this new marriage contract was symbolic: it gave recognition and respect to British Muslim women of my generation and to British Muslim couples too. So, reading about the contract in 2008, I vowed that the day I would get married, I would marry under this contract and sign my name to the rights my religion afforded me.

Fast forward three years, and my wedding day is nearly here. In three weeks’ time, I will be signing my civil ceremony papers, as well as mynikah contract.

My fiance and I read the contract through online. Since my father had passed away and a wali wasn’t necessary anyway, we wanted my mother to be a witness for the nikah. I felt it was meaningful, respectful and reflective of our close relationship for her to play a key part in our marriage proceedings, and hoped to set a positive precedence among our family and friends (we don’t know anyone who has married under this new contract). My fiance in particular felt strongly about setting an example by including a female witness. We also thought that it would be nice to include one of my fiance’s parents (he’s a convert to Islam) as the second witness, so that they’d be involved in the Muslim ceremony too.

But it hasn’t turned out that way. We asked the imam at our mosque in Regent’s Park for his thoughts. He hadn’t heard of the contract; I emailed him a copy, along with links to the Comment is free pieces, explaining the changes and the Islamic basis for them. He said that it was “probably best” if my mother wasn’t a witness and concluded without providing any religious basis for it, that it was “better” if both witnesses were Muslim.

My mum, who felt touched to be a witness, asked family friends for their opinion – the overwhelming majority said my marriage contract would be void if I a) didn’t have a wali and b) had my mother as a witness. They said we should do it the way it’s done. The doctor who is conducting our Islamic marriage (it doesn’t have to be overseen by an imam) says my fiance’s father can be a witness, but that my mum probably shouldn’t be. He also says I need a wali. No one we have talked to has even heard of the new Muslim marriage contract.

The Muslim Institute took four years of extensive and careful Islamic research to come up with the marriage contract, seeking clarification between cultural assumptions and religious facts. It’s been endorsed by the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, the Muslim Law Council, the Imam & Mosques Council and the Muslim Women’s Network – so surely, if the contract wasn’t Islamically valid, then none of these bodies would have put their weight behind it.

But the Muslim Institute’s good and hard work seems to have achieved little. Despite investing in a website and relaunch this summer, it’s astonishing and disappointing that so few people appear to have even heard of the new contract.

Those my mum, my fiance and I have spoken to seem reluctant, nervous and wary to embrace something which isn’t in line with what has always been. It’s in turn made my mum now feel anxious over signing the new contract too, which means she’s decided not to follow through.

Some people will think my fiance and I have been fussing over nothing; that a signature is just a signature (if that’s the case, if it’s really not that big a deal, then why not just let my mum sign the papers?). My future father-in-law will be my fiance’s witness. My fiance feels frustrated that we’ve given up trying to prove a point; that things will never change if no one takes the first step; that it’s the principle of it. As for including my mum – well, there’s still the civil ceremony, where at least UK law will validate her gender as a witness without it being subjected to debate.

The Guardian: The next sporty must-have is not just for Muslim women

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Move over, Nigella’s burkini – you are so last season. The latest addition to the modest Muslim wardrobe is the ResportOn, a sleek sports hijab designed for female Muslim athletes who like to keep their hair covered while working up a sweat.

The ResportOn, whose tagline is “Be Yourself. Unveil your performance”, is the brainchild of Iranian-born French-Canadian designer Elham Seyed Javad.

She came up with the idea after five Muslim girls were banned from competing in tae kwon do tournaments in Montreal because of their hijabs (the headscarves were considered a health and safety risk). Javad, who doesn’t wear a headscarf herself, heard about the ban and figured there must be a way to make it easier for hijab-wearing women to participate in sports.

Made from a white antiperspirant sports fabric, it’s a tight-fitting hoodie attached to a turtle-neck T-shirt, with a special opening at the back allowing easy access for wearers to readjust their hair. Each one is custom-made in Javad’s Montreal studio, where she was set to design hijab tops for the Iranian women’s football team for the Olympics next year – only they’ve just been banned from a crucial qualifying match by Fifa, which forbids players displaying “political, religious . . . or personal messages”.

Javed receives orders from Muslim women all over the world, but also from non-Muslim women and men wanting to keep long tresses out of their faces while exercising. Perhaps we’ll see the shaggy-haired Barca captain Carlos Puyol in one soon.

This article appeared in G2 on June 7 2011

The Guardian: Bride and prejudice

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It was 35 years ago, but my mother still remembers the day she arrived in the UK from Pakistan. My dad, like many men from the subcontinent, was already living and working here, a doctor in the NHS. Immigration rules meant my mum had been forced to wait a year before she was allowed to join him.

She stood in the immigration queue at Heathrow, impatient to get through and finally join her husband. Then, right there in the airport, at the order of UK immigration officials, she was subjected to a virginity test. Why? She has no idea.

“I went through immigration and then I was sent aside for a medical,” she says. “They took me to a room. They asked me to undress and made me lie down, and then they did it.”

My mum can’t recall now whether the doctor was male or female, but she still remembers the deep embarrassment. “I was young. I went along with it. All I wanted was to get outside and join my husband. We were newlyweds and I couldn’t wait to see him.”

She never told my dad about it; she thought, or was given the impression, that it was normal procedure. “You forget about things when you start a new life. But when I think about it now, it was a violation of my rights.”

A few other young Pakistani women, who had also been on her flight, were similarly taken aside for tests. “They were only asking the women who were travelling on their own to go to one side,” she says. “It was embarrassing, and also it felt a little shameful.”

Being forced to prove whether or not you are a virgin is degrading, humiliating and belittling. It happens in other parts of the world to some women on their wedding nights, when inlaws demand to see a blood-stained sheet the morning after; it happens in some Zulu tribes; and it happened two months ago during the Tahrir Square protests, when the Egyptian army rounded up 18 women, strip-searched them and then checked whether they had yet had sex.

So why were virginity tests happening at Heathrow airport, of all places, to young Asian women travelling on their own?

This week, a study by two legal academics in Australia, Dr Marinella Marmo and Dr Evan Smith, revealed that in the late 1970s, more than 80 south Asian women were ordered to have a virginity test. My mum was one of them.

At that time, immigration rules stipulated that an engaged woman coming to Britain to marry her fiance within three months did not need a visa, whereas a bride (like my mum) required a visa in order to join her husband. If immigration officers suspected a woman was married, but was pretending to be engaged to avoid the wait for a visa, she would be taken away for an examination.

Although it was known before this week’s report that Indian and Pakistani women arriving in the UK had been subject to virginity tests, it was not thought to be so widespread. In 1979, the Home Office admitted to just three tests (after initially denying the practice). Its admission came only after the Guardian reported the story of a 35-year old Indian woman who was examined by a male doctor at Heathrow. Virginity testing was subsequently banned.

But while researching for a paper on immigration practices for an academic journal, Marmo and Smith, of Flinders University in Adelaide, found evidence of at least 81 cases of virginity testing in confidential Home Office files. Marmo says there may be many more. “We suspect that the documents extracted may well be the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “We fear that many cases occurred.”

The official documents never included the names of those tested. “This is quite distressing as it corroborates our argument that women were just seen as ‘bodies’ to be checked for sociopolitical purposes,” says Marmo.

Marmo and Smith say the immigration officers justified the tests on the stereotype of south Asian women as “submissive, meek and tradition-bound” and on the “absurd generalisation” that Asian women were always virgins before they married. Their report says: “Even if this generalisation had some factual element to it, the practice of ‘testing’ virginity through an invasive medical procedure was still a major violation of the migrant woman’s rights.”

My mum didn’t meet the stereotype of a “submissive” or “meek” south Asian woman back then, any more than she does now. She arrived in the UK with a master’s degree in politics and strong-minded views, fluent in three languages, confident and excited about what the future here would hold. My parents had already proved their marriage to British officials, submitting the marriage certificate and my mum also already had a visa, allowing her entry into the UK.

So why, then, considering she had all the correct legal documentation required to enter the country, did she still have to go through this degrading test?

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe it was the colour of my skin and where I came from. They didn’t do it to the women coming from Europe or Australia or America, did they? I suppose it was just to prove that they had power in their hands.”

Marmo says she is shocked that a married woman, with a visa already in place, was subjected to a virginity test: “It opens up a new can of worms. There was no limit here, and it’s even worse than expected.”

The UK government is now under pressure to issue an apology to the Asian women subjected to these tests, although there is no way of knowing just how many there were, unless they come forward.

Like Marmo, my mum also suspects that many more than 81 Asian woman of her generation went through these apparently routine virginity tests. She hopes that by sharing her story, it will encourage other women to do the same, and expose the way in which the Home Office allowed migrant women to be treated.

Does she want an apology from the government? “Yes. I’d forgotten about it, because I thought it was normal. But it makes me angry remembering it. I was naive then, I went along with it. But I came here lawfully, to join my husband who was contributing to the economy. We didn’t deserve that sort of humiliation.”

• Were you forced to have a virginity test? Should the government be made to apologise?

• If you want to take part in ongoing research, please emailevan.smith@flinders.edu.au or marinella.marmo@flinders.edu.au