veiled4allah: 'Surviving the War Zone on the R Train' veiled4allah: 'Surviving the War Zone on the R Train'...I remember the day I took out the Koran from my bag in order to read it on the way to work. It was, I am ashamed to admit, my first and last day. It took only a couple of stops for someone to make a comment. "You’re making people uncomfortable". I turned to find a man scowling and a couple of people staring blankly at me. I asked the owner of the voice what exactly I was doing that was making people uncomfortable and he told me straight out that it was the Arabic "shit" I was reading and that I should put it away. Anything written in Arabic has to be a threat of course. I did not quite know how to respond to him. I looked around and saw the clutter of newspapers declaring war on innocent Iraqis (is there even such a thing?) I saw women reading their bibles in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Polish... ...I was told by friends and family not to read the Koran in public anymore. "No sense in provoking people," they said. And as I mentioned before, I am very ashamed to admit that I have not read it in the subway since that day. I have developed a certain kind of self-censorship that I am not proud of and try to fight daily. My war zone scares me because I do not know what I am fighting against. I do not having anything tangible to battle and do not even have allies. How can I protect myself against something I cannot grasp? How can I reclaim my space?...There are times when I feel the way she describes.
...What one considers a simple subway ride I have begun to consider a daily struggle. I struggle to maintain my identity, struggle to find the strength to stop hiding. I do not want to live in a war zone. I do not want to feel terror. Every moment I spend on the subway I spend FIGHTING for my existence. I have not taken out my Koran; I have not been able to be quite that defiant yet...
All comments are copyright their authors
Here's who's pinging me:
The following is a list of the ten most recent entries in veiled4allah as of Mar 09, 2006:
View a list of all entries in veiled4allah
This entry has been tagged as covering the following subjects: islamophobia. The following is a list of the ten most recent entries in Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs that share any of these tags:
A semantic analysis of this entry also suggests the following keywords to search for related content on: muslim leaders, imagined every, bad here, feeling apologise, stereotypical ideas, people, Muslim, muslim, Muslims, muslims, because, islam, Islam, here, feel, bad, arabic, read, Arabic, public, know, something, want, war, being
What links here: View a list of other entries in this blog (if any) that link to this entry
To learn more about Islam, please see Introduction to Islam.
To learn more about the issue of Islamophobia, see Links about Stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims.
Or look generally for informational pages on my website tagged with islamophobia
A semantic search of Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs suggests the following as the ten entries most closely related to this entry:
Check out other web pages (if any) that I've bookmarked via del.icio.us that share the same tags: islamophobia
Explore reference materials from Answers.com about these subjects: islamophobia
Read news stories at Common Times about these subjects: islamophobia
View search results at gada.be metasearch service for these subjects: islamophobia
Find books at Amazon.com on these subjects: islamophobia
Check Waypath for blog entries generally related to this entry, or Technorati or Bloglines for blog entries that link to this entry.
Technorati tags: View blog entries, bookmarks and photos tagged by others with the same subjects as this entry: islamophobia
For external resources on the topic of this entry, you can run a search for its title 'surviving the war zone on the r train' (Google, DayPop, Feedster) or keyword(s) islamophobia (Google, DayPop, Feedster). DayPop is a search engine similar to Google that focuses on searching news sources and blogs. Feedster searches blogs via RSS feeds.
Subject: Re: \
I know what people can do, though without the personal insecurities of actually being Muslim. For two years I had Arabic in the early morning, and would try to review for quizzes and tests on my bus ride into campus. I found I couldn't do this dependably, because there were a couple of times when someone I was sitting next to would provoke an argument over my questionable choice of subjects. One person wanted to know why I didn't study Chinese or Japanese rather than people who always wanted to start wars. I also tried to read a book about women in Oman outside once, and, suffice it to say, wound up going back to my apartment before I had intended to.In my opinion, people who make these kinds of comments are simply rude. But to be honest, anyone who leaves their narrow nest for a brief period will encounter some form of religious prejudice. I am a Baptist, which means to most people I should be out forcing women to submit to their husbands and carrying conservative banners around campus preaching. Once at my Catholic undergrad school - I can't remember the exact context, but it involved attempting to find common ground with a Muslim - I made some comment comparing Baptists and Muslims in terms of media image and reality. The people around me got angry because they said I was being offensive to Muslims, except for one person who said quietly to a couple of people that because I was a Baptist I probably didn't realize how offensive that sounded to most people. I once knew a guy who was Catholic and frequently complained about the evil of Protestants, yet was hurt when he went to a county fair and people complained that Catholics were little more than pagans.
Sometimes people can be pretty narrow about life - and that goes for everyone.
Subject: Re: \\
Thank you for sharing those stories, Brian. Although I agree that there is a lot of prejudice in general, the amount of public rudeness that I've experienced in the last two years from random strangers when I'm walking down the street or riding the bus or doing something else in public is beyond what I've seen or experienced directed at other groups; similarly the amount of hateful rhetoric directed at Islam seems like it ought to belong to an earlier, less enlightened era.It may be that the author and I feel more threatened because of being women out and about on our own than you might feel; but that's purely speculation on my part.
There is an ugly attitude towards Islam growing in this country, the kind of attitude I thought we had outgrown.
Subject: Re: \\\\
I would agree that Muslims get it worse than everyone else right now. But in the end, its all situational. People understand less about Islam, and have lots of pre-conceived ideas about it made worse my current events. Some of those people on the subway would do well to spend time in places where people have odd ideas about their religions. Just a small dose would shake them up a bit.Subject: Re: \\\\\\\\
Yes, I think that learning to put ourselves in other peoples' place is the key.I was also struck by something you mentioned before. The thing that really gets me about this is how rude it is. To come up to a complete stranger and say things about them like that.
Subject: Re: \\\\
I posted a comment on an entry here a couple of days ago, but I think it escaped notice. In it I was venting frustrations about how bad the attitude here is towards Muslims (I'm in southern France). You put on hijab, and you cease to exist. They don't want you in jobs, they don't want you in educational facilities. Harassment and discrimination are more common here and you have much less legal recourse than in the US. I've nearly completely withdrawn into my own world, really it doesn't get more medieval than here in terms of public attitude.What provokes more resentment in me than anything else, is the fact that there are tons of Arabs here, poor immigrants from North Africa, who behave the part. They reject Islam (though the French don't realise that), they're the ones committing all the crimes small and large, they are violent, ignorant, anarchic. It's so embarassing. The section of town where Arabs are predominant is full of garbage, the smell of urine, dilapidated buildings, burned-up stolen cars, vandalism everywhere. So the French look at them and say, "So, this is Islam!" I can't stand to go downtown because it fills *me* with hatred against them. When you're there, you suddenly start to understand where people like Jean-Marie Le Pen are coming from.
I've had store clerks be outright rude and pedantic to me. As I said in that comment I made on a previous day, a friend of mine who dares to wear niqab was asked once in a hospital emergency room if she knew how to read or write so she could sign the entrance forms. That's just unacceptable. But it's the norm here.
Something else I've never experienced in the States...there is a nasty and strong but small extremist Muslim movement in this region, and I have been harrassed and threatened by *them* more than anyone else. Apparently, as an American convert, I not only don't count as a Muslim but I deserve persecution as well. We have had to change and unlist our phone number and keep travel plans secret because of it. People pick fights with my husband because he married me (fortunately he is a reasonable man who manages to diffuse situations like that).
I'm not trying to play the part of the whiny martyr, forgive me if I seem to be doing that. I do appreciate the patience and dependence on Allah Ta'ala that this is teaching me. But just to let you know, you enjoy much more by way of rights and security in the US. If you ever doubt that...by all means contact me and come on over, I'll show you myself what's going on and your jaw will drop.
Subject: Re: \\\\\\\\
Thanks for sharing your experiences, sister Zafira. I did see your earlier comment but didn't get a chance to respond to it.On an absolute scale, things are not that bad here. I've only had one genuinely frightening incident, mostly its an annoyance and a drain (as sister Maryam mentioned). But it's bad compared to where America should be and I fear that it is only getting worse here. Hopefully never as bad as what you've described in France, inshallah.
May Allah give us the strength to deal with the trials that He sends us, and increase our sabr.
Subject: Re: \\
i think masyallah .... i'm very2 sad to hear that and of course i'm want to help u all'zz i'm proud of our prophet MUHAMMAD SAW and i hope the stupid war will be stop by somebody who is really brave and i'll be proud of him/her and lastly i just wanna say PEACE NO WAR !!!!! ilove u all'zz muslimin...Subject: Re: \
I had to smile when I read Brian's comments about trying to revise Arabic on public transport for an early class. I can still remember my memory trick for the Arabic word window' (shubak) because I pictured Chewbacca staring through the train window at me. I too used to revise Arabic on public transport.It sounds like things are not quite so bad here in Oz (well Melbourne at anyrate). I'm visably identifable as a Muslim (I wear a headscarf) but I usually don't draw comments, just looks. The exception is when something awful happens in the Muslim world, or is linked with Muslims. Then I have felt very uncomfortable. I feel like screaming 'but I didn't do it, and the religion I follow doesn't really teach that stuff either' but usually I try and smile and look innocuous.
It's being put in a position of feeling like you have to apologise and account for every bad action (real or imagined) of every Muslim that exists, or to explain away all the stereotypical ideas of what Islam teaches that drains me. Just a few days ago there was a letter to the editor in a local rag here that proclaimed how backward Muslims are because Muhammad said women who wear perfume in front of men are fornicators. No discussion of hadith sciences, no contextualisation, no differentiation of scriptural authority - just a blanket condemnation.
Another local drum-beater, Andrew Bolt, (in the same rag) has a real anti-Islam bias (and I'm not being overly sensitive, he manages to get digs in at the Muslim community on totally unrelated topics like Aboriginal rights). Because two people who claim to be Muslims have been linked with an al-Qaida suspect, he went and dragged out months *old* comments from Muslim leaders (which had nothing to do with the current accusations) about one of these chaps which went along the lines of 'we don't want to discuss it' or 'everyone is innocent until proven guilty'. Bolt made it look like the Muslim leaders had said that about the current accusations and then proceeded to accuse local Muslim leaders of not doing enough to denounce terrorists in our midst. How can you win????
Subject: Re: \\
"It's being put in a position of feeling like you have to apologise and account for every bad action (real or imagined) of every Muslim that exists, or to explain away all the stereotypical ideas of what Islam teaches that drains me. "I see this same thing happening when I teach. I can talk about something in class as Umayyad views of something, or an individual ruler fighting a war of aggression, and even go to the extent of saying it has nothing really to do with Islam, but I know in my heart many students remember only the fact Muslims were fighting wars or doing whatever that goes with their existing stereotypes. Muslims in the class will, of course, recognize this, and perhaps feel uncomfortable when certain subjects come up. The discussion of the life of the Prophet often gets dicey. (Slightly off-topic: I once had a girl come to my office almost in tears because our reading began by listing Western stereotypes about Islam and Muslims before debunking them, and she said she'd never heard anyone criticize her religion before.) And of course outside in the real world its worse, when the media start carelessly making blanket statements about Muslims without the context and enforced etiquette you can at least get in a classroom.
Subject: Re: \\
Yes, I feel exactly the same way. Drained. And its hard not to start withdrawing into yourself, as an individual and as a community. I am just so saddened by the things I see happening these days.Subject: Re: \
I don't know whether it's because I am a guy or don't look the part of a religious Muslim or give out a "don't mess with me" vibe to strangers or live in an environment where there are lots of diversity and educated people, but I don't get any rude behavior or unfriendliness from strangers.Subject: Re: \\
I think that it's probably a little of all of those. When I was going to school, I never experienced even any rudeness on campus. Both the faculty and students were accustomed to diversity. I have also been very fortunate in my internship and my current position as the people there have been very kind and welcoming to me. The only time I have faced problems is when I'm out and about in the general public. I also don't want to give the impression that I feel as besieged as the author of the essay does; but I can't deny that I feel more and more like that, especially around The Anniversary, and (as sister Maryam noted) whenever anything bad happens in the news that involves Muslims.Subject: Re: \\\\
It's too bad that some people can be so rude.I fly home usually a couple of times a month and usually take the train to the airport. I always read a book when I am travelling and my reading has included books about Muslims and Islam as well as those in Urdu (Urdu uses a script similar to Arabic and Persian). Nobody has ever commented on that either.