Khutbah #2  Transformations, Personal and Cosmic

We all know our lives are transformed by the birth of our first (or only) child.  Suddenly, our own self is no longer the sole focus of our most intimate attention.  My own transformation began when I was about two months pregnant with Sara.  I remember the time and place when I felt her soul communicating with me – “I am ready to come into the world, I have chosen you to host me.”  Projection?  Maybe, but that’s not what it felt like.

I felt the transformation of my self again when she was ready to be born…when the whole focus of my whole being was on pushing her out into the world. 

For almost 25 years, she has continued to transform the way I see the world.  I follow what she does, and wonder. 

From the age of about 8 until college, Sara wanted to be a marine biologist.  She was obsessed with the ocean, and fish, and dolphins.  That made sense to me – not just because her granddad took her on a boat ride in the Keys when she was 8 and the boat was surrounded by a pod of dolphins, but also because the ocean is culturally neutral.  We would travel to Egypt every year to visit her father’s family – across the ocean and back – across the cultures and back.  She knew from the beginning that she was not fully one thing or the other - however you define that “thing.”  The ocean was safe.  She had dreams about being underwater with the fish, in their world, where she could just “be” and not have to “be – ware” of how she acted or what she said or didn’t say to who.  Maybe she was intuitively responding to a primordial connection - the earliest manifestation of life on earth, before culture, before human beings. 

God says in Surah Al-Ambiyya (The Prophets), Ayah 30:

Are, then, they who are bent on denying the truth not aware that the heavens and the earth were [once] a single entity, which We then parted asunder?  - and [that] We made out of water every living thing?  Will they not, then, [begin to] believe?

And in Surah 24, An-Nur (The Light), Ayah 45:

And it is God who has created all animals out of water; and [He has willed that] among them are such as crawl on their bellies, and such as walk on two legs, and such as walk on four…

And in Surah 25, Al-Furqan (The Standard of True and False), Ayah 54:

And He it is who out of this very water has created man, and has endowed him with the consciousness of spirituality and strength in social relationships…

In college her interest in the natural world was extended to encompass the creatures of the earth which came before – several evolutionary iterations before, the record of the fossils… the evidence of the ongoing transformation of God’s creation….the evidence to match His message, from Surah 11, Hud, Ayat 6-7:

And there is no living creature on earth but depends for its sustenance on God; and He knows its time-limit [on earth] and its resting place [after death];  all this is laid down in His clear decree.

And it is He who has created the heavens and the earth in six aeons; and [ever since He has willed to create life,] the throne of his almightiness has rested upon the water.

Now, in graduate school, Sara’s focus encompasses geology - the historical trajectory of the earth itself.  And thus, she has again changed my perspective of history and time, and the transformation of the earth.  And when I look in the Quran, I find that God shared this, in Surah Yunus (Jonah), Ayah 6:

Verily, in the alternating of night and day, and in all that God has created in the heavens and on earth there are messages indeed for people who are conscious of Him.

Sara is making a career of studying those messages.  Subhan Allah.  One of her former professors at the University of Chicago, Neil Shubin, published a book recently called “The Universe Within,” about the connections, not only between all life, but between life on earth and the elements of the universe.  I quote:

Through eons on earth, seas have opened and closed, mountains have risen and eroded, and asteroids have come crashing down as the planet has coursed its way through the solar system.  The layers of rock record era after era of changes to the climate, atmosphere, and crust of the planet itself.  Transformation is the order of the day for the world:  bodies grow and die, species emerge and go extinct, while every feature of our planetary and celestial home undergoes gradual change or episodes of catastrophic revolution.

Rocks and bodies are kinds of time capsules that carry the signature of great events that shaped them.  The molecules that compose our bodies arose in stellar events in the distant origin of the solar system.  Changes to Earth’s atmosphere sculpted our cells and entire metabolic machinery.  Pulses of mountain building, changes in orbits of the planet, and revolutions within Earth itself have had an impact on our bodies, minds, and the way we perceive the world around us. 

God shared this, in Surah 51, Adh-Dhariyat (The Dust-Scattering Winds), Ayat 47-48

And it is We who have build the universe with [Our creative] power, and, verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it.

            And the earth we have spread out wide – and how well have We ordered it!

I heard on the news this week that the first craft humans sent into space in the 1950s, the Voyager, is now outside the bounds of our solar system.  Voyager is in interstellar space, outside of that system which is composed of material from our sun.  To quote one astronomer, “Voyager is not from the material in which it now finds itself.”  What more will we learn from the data it sends back about the nature of transformations?  About the birth and death, not just of planets, but of stars?  The fact that our earth, even our sun, are created entities, with a beginning and an end, is now part of human consciousness – not just in faith, but through verifiable scientific investigation.  But rather than being terrified by that awareness, we can take comfort in anticipating our greatest transformation to come.  For God has shared with us the nature of that which endures – the truth that can save us from destruction, from ourselves.  God also shared this with us, as in Sara’s favorite Surah, Az-Zalzalah (The Earthquake):

            When the earth quakes with her [last] mighty quaking,

            And when the earth yields up her burdens,

            And man cries out, “What has happened to her?”

On that Day will she recount all her tidings, as thy Sustainer will have inspired her to do.

On that Day will all men come forward, cut off from one another, to be shown their past deeds.

            And so, he who shall have done an atom’s weight of good, shall behold it;

            And he who shall have done an atom’s weight of evil, shall behold it.

Khutbah # 1

Having failed to change the policy of our local mosque regarding the separation of the women's and the men's prayer areas, (the former of course being vastly smaller, in the back, and blocked from a view of the minbar by a grey wall), a friend and I decided to start our own Friday prayer.  The first was at my house and included myself, my friend and her three children.  I thus gave my fist khutbah, and led prayer for the first time with non-family members.  She asked me to post the khutbah, and so I comply, to the best of my ability.

The topic that has been most on my mind recently is war.  It started this summer while I was in Maryland, helping my mother recover from heart surgery.  My parents live near the Antietam Battlefield, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the U.S. Civil War.  I noticed a sign as I drove through Funkstown, the little town about a quarter of a mile from their house, announcing that there would be a re-enactment of the much smaller "Battle of Funkstown" while I was there.  I had seen a re-enactment or two as a child, but never as an adult, so I decided to take a short break between hospital visits, and go to see the re-enacters.  They had set up camps in the local park...one campsite for the Confederate soldiers, and one for the Union soldiers.  They had tents just like you see in the pictures of the Civil War, except they were cleaner.  They had uniforms just like the soldiers had worn.  I've been told some of them even wear wool underwear, because they want to be as close to authentic as possible.  I spoke to one of the Confederate soldiers, and he told me he's been doing this for years.  It's a great hobby.  Pack up all your gear in a trailer, take off on the weekends, go to another re-enactment, and play pretend war.  Funkstown was awash in Confederate and Union flags.  I missed the actual "battle," but I was told the armies skirmished back and forth the main street of the town for about three hours on Saturday morning.  I pondered over this.  Why do grown men get so much meaning out of re-creating war?

After I returned to Chicago, the situation in Egypt descended into chaos.  Police opened fire on the encamped demonstrators who were protesting the deposition of Egypt's first democratically elected president.  Hundreds were killed, a curfew imposed, and yet demonstrations continued, and more were killed.  How could this be happening in Egypt, my adopted country, two and a half years after the revolution deposed a thirty-year dictatorship?

And then, more escalation in the civil war in Syria, with evidence that the government used chemical weapons on civilians, killing over a thousand.

When I was young I believed that humankind was supposed to be progressing toward a more peaceful world.  World War II had ended, Vietnam finally ended, even the Cold War ended.  We were supposed to be evolving as a species, I believed, and that evolution should inevitably be toward peace.  More democracy, more prosperity, more peace.  And now, here we are and wars keep coming, new ones.

Why?  Sure, every war has it's economic and socio-political reasons that are analyzed and debated.  But what about the broader metaphysical question?  Why war?  Why have we not been successful at eliminating the human propensity to kill for what we want or think we need?  I looked to the Quran, to see what revelation has to say about war.  I found this in Surah Al-Imran, Ayat 169-174:
But do not think of those that have been slain in God's cause as dead.  Nay, they are alive!  With their Sustainer have they their sustenance, exulting in that which God has bestowed upon them out of His bounty.  And they rejoice in the glad tiding given to those who have been left behind and have not yet joined them, that no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve:  they rejoice in the glad tiding of God's blessings and bounty, and that God will not fail to requite the believers who responded to the call of God and the Apostle after misfortune had befallen them.
A magnificent requital awaits those of them who have persevered in doing good and remained conscious of God:  Those who have been warned by other people, 'Behold, a host has gathered against you; so beware of them!' - whereupon this only increased their faith, so that they answered, 'God is enough for us; and how excellent a guardian is He!' - and returned [from the battle] with God's blessings and bounty, without having been touched by evil: for they had been striving after God's goodly acceptance - and God is limitless in His great bounty.  [Translation by Muhammad Asad]

And this is what those words said to me:

1/ Revelation reminds us  our physical world, beautiful and compelling as it is, is but a pale reflection of the greater Reality Who created it.  Quran reminds us of that in several ayat, notably in Surah 29, The Spider, Ayat 63-64:
But most of them will not use their reason:  for [if they did, they would know that] the life of this world is nothing but a passing delight and a play - whereas, behold, the life in the hereafter is indeed the only [true] life: if they but knew this!  [Asad]

2/ Revelation reminds us that we shall we return to that greater Reality - our Creator - Allah - as long as we remember and cherish our connection.

3/  Revelation does not tell us which side is right and which is wrong in any of our current earthly battles.  We all believe we know, but we cannot see the whole Truth because our experience of Reality is limited to our three-dimensional frame of reference.  Each side in a battle believes that they are in the right.  Only Allah can know all the dimensions, all the reasons for the course of human history.  But revelation does tells us that each one of us, individually, is responsible for our intention, for what is in our heart.  And it tells us that if we are forced to fight and die, or be sacrificed for a cause greater than our earthly selves, for the greater Reality of  God, we need not grieve and we need not be afraid - neither for ourselves or those who have already died in that intent.  They, and we, will be returned to the greater Truth.

After the khutbah I asked the children "So why do you think people like to do re-enactments of battles?"  And the oldest one reminded me of the many battles that have been fought throughout time, that war has always been part of human history.  And the thought occurred to me that maybe when we are not in the middle of a battle, when we are not fighting or fleeing for our lives and calling on God to protect us, maybe we feel a need to remember that sense of danger, of immediacy... that sense of nearness to death... that sense of nearness to God.

Edward the Goat

Edward the Goat

“Oh darn it, not again!  Give me back that spoon!”  My mother yelled at Cheetah.  Our small, tan and yellow spider monkey was waving a wooden spoon in his right hand as he clung to the side of his cage with the other.  He chattered back at Mom in high-pitched squeals.  My two brothers and I had just sat down at the kitchen table for supper.  

“I’ve had just about enough of this darned monkey!”  Mom huffed.  “Why did your father have to make this cage so big it won’t fit anywhere but right beside this stove?”

It was the sixth time in two days that Cheetah had reached through his cage to grab a spoon from one of Mom’s cooking pots.  He would usually find some food sticking to the spoon’s surface, and proceed to lick it off.  But this pot had been full of peas, and they had flown through the air when Cheetah flipped the spoon and dragged it through the cage’s wires.  Now he had nothing for his effort, and he was as annoyed as Mom. 

“Your father keeps bringing home these animals because he feels sorry for them,” Mom complained as she stooped to pick up peas.  And then I’m the one who ends up dealing with the consequences!”  (Of course, we knew she loved Cheetah as much as we did.)

Dad did have a habit of bringing home new animals.  It was a good thing we lived on a farm, I thought, and could always find a place to keep them.  Dad had found Cheetah in a garden store, all alone and curled up, looking miserable in a tiny cage.  Dad could not leave him there, any more than he could leave a stray dog beside the road.  He’d brought him home in the tiny cage.  Then he’d carefully measured the back door, into the kitchen.  He’d built the biggest cage he could, that would still fit through the door.  But, it turned out that the back door was bigger than all the other doors in the house.  Cheetah’s new cage was too big for all the other doors, and so it was confined to the kitchen.  And the only place it would fit in the kitchen was right beside the stove.  Seven-year-old Jim scrambled from his chair to help Mom gather peas from the floor.  He picked them up, one by one, depositing each pea in the bottom of Cheetah’s cage.

“Don’t give those peas to the monkey!”  I admonished.  At ten, I was always feeling a need to educate my younger brothers.  “He’ll just keep taking Mom’s spoons if we reward him for it.  He gets his own food.”

        

“It doesn’t matter if he gets them or not,” eight-year-old Dave answered.  He always had an answer for me.  “He’s already learned the trick.  He won’t stop doing it now anyway.”

Cheetah had dropped the spoon, and was scurrying around in the sawdust, popping peas into his mouth.  Jim reached his small hand under the cage’s wires and grabbed the spoon, before Cheetah could even notice.  Beaming, he handed it back to Mom.

        

“Thank you Jimbo,” Mom finally smiled, in spite of herself.  “You’re my hero.”

Just then, we heard the crunch of tires in the driveway outside.  The crunch sounded deeper than usual, like the stones were groaning under the extra weight of a truck with a heavy load. 

        

“Daddy’s home!”  The boys cried out in unison, jumping up from the table.  Dad had left early that morning in his big truck, the one he used to haul horses.  He had gone to a horse sale.  It was April already, and we needed more horses for the spring session of our horseback riding school. 

        

We ran outside, and up to Dad’s truck as he rolled to a stop in the driveway.  We started asking questions before he could even get out of the cab.

        

“How many horses did you get Daddy?”

        

“Are you going to unload them now?”

        

“Can we see?”

        

Dad ignored our questions.  “Is dinner on the table?”  He asked.

        

“Yeah, we were just starting to eat.”

        

“Well then, let’s eat first,” he said.  “I just want to unload this goat, and we’ll get the horses later.”

        

“Goat!”  We cried in unison.  “You got a goat?  Why did you get a goat?  Is it a boy or a girl?  Are we going to have goat’s milk?”  I remembered having goat’s milk at a friend’s farm one time, and I had not liked it at all.

        

“It’s a male goat,” Dad answered.  “He came from a race track, so he’s used to horses.  As a matter of fact, I do believe he half thinks he is a horse.”  Dad walked to the back of the truck and began to unhook the latches.  He lowered the ramp and we peered into the back.  Several horses were tied securely into the truck’s stalls, but at the front of the row stood an enormous white goat.  He wasn’t enormously tall, but enormously wide.  In fact, he was nearly as big around as he was up and down.

        

“Man, how did he get to be so FAT?!”  Dave exclaimed.

        

“Well, he used to go into the race horses’ stalls at the track and help them eat their food,” Dad explained.  “In fact, that’s why the track owner had to sell him.  One of the thoroughbreds just got fed up with sharing his dinner.  He got all riled up about the goat, and the owner complained.  So he had to go.  His name is Edward.”  Dad walked up the plank and untied Edward, and hooked a lead shank around his neck.

        

“Can I lead him, can I lead him?”  Jim begged.  Dad handed him the rope, and Jim tried to pull the animal down the ramp.  But Edward planted his hooves in the straw-lined truck bed, and leaned back with all of his big round weight.  Jim was a skinny kid, and he could not budge that goat.  I tried a tug myself, and so did Dave, and then we all three tried together, with no luck.  The goat was not going to move. 

Finally, Dad squeezed himself between the goat and the horse beside him, planted the bottom of his boot firmly against Edward’s rump, and pushed him down the ramp.  The goat bleated pitifully as Dad dragged him by the rope toward the barn.  He kept turning his neck to look back at his traveling partner, a tall chestnut thoroughbred. 

“That horse has been retired, from the same racetrack as Edward, and they’ve been friends for years,” Dad said. 

We put Edward in a stall in the barn and went back to the house to finish dinner.  We could hear him bleating as we sat around the table, all the way from the barn.

        

“A goat?”  Mom asked a little loudly when we told her what the noise was.

        

“Dick,” she said to Dad.  “What on earth possessed you to buy a goat?  What are we going to do with it?”  She had said the same thing about Cheetah.

        

“Well,” Dad took his time answering her, as he usually did.  “I bought a nice thoroughbred from a fellow who was retiring him from the race track.  He had this goat  - it was born at the track and had always lived there.  And the goat’s right partial to this horse... always slept outside his stall, followed him around, ate with him and everything.  The fellow offered to throw the goat into the deal.  I figured he might at least keep the horse calm in the truck.”

        

“Can we ride him Daddy?”  Jim piped up.

        

Dad chuckled.  “Well, I don’t know that he’s ever been ridden before.  But I guess it can’t hurt to try, as long as you can get your legs around that belly.”

Jim tried to ride Edward the very next day.  We all ran to the barn after breakfast.  Edward was standing at the end of the thoroughbred’s stall, where he’d spent the night.  We rigged up a halter for him from a rope, and led him out of the barn.  Jim took a running start, ran toward the goat, threw himself over the broad white back, and then tried to swing his right leg over to the goat’s other side.  Edward was not amused.  He immediately took off running, as fast as he could go.  His enormous barrel flounced around on his short, jerky legs and Jim bounced right off.  Then Dave had to try (they were always trying to outdo each other).  He couldn’t stay on either.  I couldn’t even get my leg over the goat’s back before he bounced me off.  Daddy, hearing our squeals of laughter, came out of the barn as Jim was sliding off the goat’s right side yet one more time.  Wide-eyed Edward trotted madly toward the end of the barnyard.

        

“I believe that’s about enough,” he said.  “You kids have got that goat all upset now.  Better just get in here and get these stalls clean before the riders start coming.”

        

Every Saturday in those days, children and their parents would come from all over town to take riding lessons from Mom and Dad.  Us kids all helped with what we could do.  My job was to feed the horses.  The boys cleaned the stalls.

Dave and Jim were just finishing their job, throwing the last pitchfork of manure and straw into the wheelbarrow, when the first of the riders arrived.  Dad and I began to get the horses to be used in the first class out of their stalls, and hook them to the crossties that ran the whole length of the barn’s aisle.  You could fit four horses there at a time, head to tail.  The others would be groomed in their stalls.  The first class of the day was for the more advanced riders.  They would clean their own horses, and put on the saddles and bridles. 

        

Within half an hour, the riders were all ready to go.  Each person led his or her horse out of the barn, and they all formed a line behind the barnyard gate.  Dad went to the head of the line, opened the gate, and told everyone, as usual, to walk on the side of the road and not cross it until he gave the signal.  Dad and Mom always worried about this part of the riding ritual, more than anything else.  The riding ring where they gave the lessons was on the other side of Beaver Creek Road from the barn.  And there was a hill just above the riding ring.  So cars driving on the road could not see what was ahead of them until they got to the top of the hill and looked down... down toward the riding ring to the left, and the barn to the right.  Mom and Dad had put signs up all along the road saying “CAUTION!  HORSE CROSSING!”  But some drivers would ignore the signs and come speeding over the top of the hill.  Mom and Dad worried that someday a driver might be going too fast while the horses were crossing the road, and would not be able to stop in time.  Edward was about to change all that.

I held the barnyard gate open as Dad and all the riders went through it.  I began to swing it closed as the last rider went through, but I was too late.  Edward had already dashed through, and was now loose on the road. 

        

“Daddy!”  I yelled, “The goat’s out!”  Dad looked back at Edward, who was walking calmly toward the riding ring, behind the last horse. 

        

“What the heck,” he said.  “Just let him come.  I don’t suppose he can hurt anything.”

When Dad was sure there were no cars coming in either direction, he yelled the standard order, “Cross over!”  The well-schooled riders and horses immediately crossed to the other side of the road in unison.  But Edward had a different idea.  He crossed halfway over, and continued walking in his place at the end of the line, but now in the middle of the road.  Dad went back and tried to push him over to the other side.

        

“Get over!  You dumb fool, you’re gonna get run over!”  But Edward just went on walking, right down the middle.  Dad tried kicking him in the side with his boot.  But it was like kicking an over-inflated inner tube.  The boot just bounced back.  So Dad gave up and went back to the head of the line.  The riders were all giggling into their hands.

        

“Alright,” Dad said to Edward, “have it your way.  But don’t blame me if you find yourself flattened by a speeding car.”  I was wondering if the car would bounce off.

Sure enough, he had no sooner said this than a red sports car came over the top of the hill.  Its’ tires squealed and the smell of burned rubber filled our nostrils as the surprised driver slammed on his brakes to avoid smashing into the goat.

        

“What the blazing.....?!”  We heard the driver exclaim from the car’s open window.  “Hey mister!”  He yelled at Dad, “Get your blasted goat out of the road!  Are you trying to get somebody killed out here?”

        

“No, no, I’m awful sorry,” Dad answered, trying not to sound as if he was beginning to enjoy this.  “I’ve tried to get him to move over, but he just won’t budge.  He’ll follow us to the riding ring, and we’re about there - you can see for yourself.  But you’re welcome to try pushing him aside, if you like.”

The man got out of his car, slammed the door, and walked up to Edward.  He placed a well-heeled boot against Edward’s side and pushed.  This time Edward did not just ignore the assault.  He turned, and lowered his head into butting position.  The man backed up fast, and got back in his car, muttering under his breath.  Edward maintained his place in the middle of the road, until the horses finally arrived at the riding ring gate.  Then he followed the last horse through.  The man slammed his foot on his gas pedal and took off, squealing more rubber onto the road. 

That night at dinner, we all laughed as Dad told Mom the story. 

“That goat could turn out to be mighty useful after all,” she concluded.

And she was right.  From that day on, Edward would follow the horses to the riding ring every time there were lessons.  He was not allowed in the ring with the horses, so he would wait outside the fence until the lessons were over, and then follow the horses back to the barn.  He always walked right smack in the middle of the road.  And the drivers who used the road grew to expect him there.  They stopped zooming over the top of the hill, at least during the times when riding lessons were given.  We all felt safer, thanks to Edward.

        

But the drivers were not happy.  They would call the house and complain about the goat.  Dad would tell them to think about taking another road.  But they did not want to have to go out of their way because of a goat.  Then, one day, Dad got an idea.  He was patching up another of Edward’s horse bites.  Edward had continued his bad habit of walking into the horses’ stalls - the straight stalls that were open at the end - so he could share their dinners.  Well the horses did not like to share their dinners (not even Edward’s old friend, the thoroughbred).   They would let Edward know they were annoyed by biting or kicking him, wherever they could reach.  Edward’s head, neck, back, and sides were always covered with wounds.  Dad was always putting medicine on them, so they wouldn’t get infected.  The  medicine he used was the same kind he used on the horses.  It was called Gensen’s Violet, and it was bright purple.  It looked pretty funny on Edward’s white hide.  One day Edward was particularly stubborn about leaving a horse’s stall, and he got a particularly large number of bites in return.  By the time Dad had patched them all, the bottle of Gensen’s Violet was almost empty, and the goat almost looked spotted.  So Dad just kept going, painting purple dots all over Edward until he was transformed from white to pinto, with purple spots.

The next day Edward followed the horses up the road in his usual manner.  The first driver to come over the hill stopped his car and got out, and walked over to Edward to get a closer look.

        

“Is that thing for real?”  The driver asked in astonishment.

        

“It’s a real goat, if that’s what you mean,” Daddy responded, deadpan.  The driver’s mouth twitched, then broke into a smile, and then he started to laugh.  Dad laughed too, and so did all the riders.  The driver shook his head, and walked back to his car without another word.  He kept shaking his head and laughing until Edward followed the horses to the riding ring, and he could drive away.

We didn’t get any more calls complaining about Edward after that.  In fact, it seemed sometimes that people would drive their cars over the hill at riding time on purpose, just to watch the goat.

Things went along like that for a while with Edward.  And I wish I could tell you that his story with us ended happily.  But it was not to be.  His eating habits finally did him in.

This is how it happened.  The thoroughbred was bought by a family whose boys had been taking riding lessons for over a year.  They wanted a horse of their own to keep at our farm, so they could ride whenever they wanted.  The horse’s life stayed pretty much the same, except that now only those three boys rode him, and they spent a lot of time with him in the barn.  And this presented a problem.  Edward didn’t care who owned his old friend.  He still went into the horse’s stall, and the horse still chased him out, with hooves and teeth.  Only now, sometimes, there were one or two boys in the stall along with them.  And Mom and Dad knew that, sooner or later, one of those boys would get caught between a hoof and that goat, and that would not be good.

And so, with much regret, Dad decided that Edward had to go.  We watched teary-eyed when he loaded him back into the truck in which he had come, only this time he was alone.  Edward bleated pitifully the whole way down the road as they headed off to the sale barn.  When Dad returned, he told us that he had found a good home for Edward.  He had sold him to a man who had a goat farm.  Edward would finally, for the first time in his life, be with his own kind. 

We didn’t hear any more about Edward until the next spring, more than a year later.  Dad came home from another horse sale, and sat down to dinner with an unusually sad look on his face.  Cheetah was no longer in the kitchen by then.  Mom had insisted that Dad make him a smaller cage, and he had been moved to our playroom.

        

“I ran into that old guy I sold that goat to, you remember, Edward?”  He said, “I asked him how Edward was doing, fully expecting to hear about how happy he was with all those goats.  Well, you won’t believe it.  That darned goat up and starved himself to death, just refused to eat.  Imagine that.  I told the old fellow I wished he’d called me.  I would’ve taken him back.”

I cried a little that night, thinking of Edward.  But then I imagined how happy he must be, up in heaven.  Up there, I thought, he could be a horse as much as he wanted.

Are you Too Afraid? 

(Part Two)

Are you too afraid?

Rejectors of the ancient scholars

to read their words anew?

Will you leave the legacy of interpretations past

on dusty shelves

scorned, unopened?

Are you too afraid

To mine the wealth

from stories of Revelation

to understand their context

and perceptions?

Are you too afraid?

Oh ye of little faith

Trust Allah, that God will guide you

through Mercy, Forgiveness

Consciousness

The Message speaks

to all who open their minds

to understand the box.

Are You So Afraid?

Are you so afraid?

Followers of the ancient scholars

to liberate Quran

from the bounds of interpretations past?

Will you guard it in their boxes

high on shelves

adorned, unopened?

Are you so afraid?

To share the wealth

of Revelation with untrained ears

that they might hear something

not yet perceived?

Are you so afraid?

Oh ye of little faith

Trust Allah, Our God

The Unseen, All-Seeing

Consciousness

Whose words still speak

to all who open their hearts

to all who open the box.

A Story of Pure Fiction (In the spirit of defying convention)

Shelby stared at the document again, for the umpteenth time.  And again, for the umpteenth time, she considered her options.  She was, indeed, the recipient of a rather large inheritance.  She did not need the money.  Even though she had, essentially, given up her "career" to support her husband and raise her children, her husband was successful, a good and honest man, and he had adequately provided for her.  Never mind the internal battles and sacrifices "giving up her career" had engendered over the years.  She did not regret her decisions, or her internal battles.

And yet, would it not be wonderful to have a source of funds all her own, that was not tied to his efforts, that she could spend without discussion and compromise?  Shouldn't she keep this money for herself, in case of need, or whim?

But she was also pulled by a sense of responsibility.  Inheritance was a gift, a privilege not shared by all.  She felt responsible to share this wealth.  She felt obliged to share it, as a person of faith, but how?  Simply donate it to a charity of her choosing?  Which one?  Was it more important to aid the refugees of the wars of liberation, or the children living in hunger and poverty in far away countries, or the victims of violence and circumstance closer to home, or help provide medical care to those most in need...?  And how could she know that it would really make a difference?

She thought again about her other option.  There was, at that very time, a campaign to build a new mosque in her community.  The mosque board, all men, had begun a concerted effort to raise the last chunk of money needed to complete the prayer hall.  The community, however, was maxed out of giving potential, having raised just enough to get the land and construction started.  She considered her other idea.  Give the mosque board the entire sum they still needed to raise, but with one stipulation.

Could she make that stipulation?  Her heart told her she had the right to do so.  But it would buck centuries of tradition.  She reviewed the arguments supporting her heart's conviction.  Her heroes were the modern commentators:  Khaled Abou ElFadl, Lela Bakhtiar, Amina Wadud, Azizah Al-Hibri and Asma Barlas.  That the message of Quran is divine and universal, in this she had no doubt.  But while some of its passages were universal, others were revealed for a certain community at a certain time, and must be understood for their deeper meaning.  The deep meaning of the Quranic passages on women was, first and foremost, that men and women are equal before God.  Quran gave women specific rights at a time when they were viewed as property, and even killed in infancy.   Some of those specifics today seem unequal and unfair.  But Quran did not specify that the project of equal rights should end with the specific prescriptions necessary in 7th century Arabia.  The movement toward equality between men and women, as between all human beings was set in motion by the Prophet's revelations, not set in stone.  She understood Quran to be a living document, to be read as the living word of God, again and again re-imagined as applied to each new époque.  

Shelby made her decision.  She asked for a meeting with the mosque board, to discuss a substantial donation to the prayer hall.  She decided to wear a headscarf to the meeting, to make them feel more comfortable.  "I have received a substantial inheritance." she began.  The men's sense of anticipation reflected on their faces, approval in their eyes.  "I feel that Allah is guiding me to share this inheritance with my Muslim community, in the form of a significant donation to the prayer hall.  But Allah has given me a vision of a prayer hall with absolutely equal access to men and women.  My stipulation is that the hall be divided into two spaces, separated by moveable screens, beside one another behind the mimbar.  Women are not in the back, or in the balcony, or in the basement.  They are on the main floor, equal before the Qibla, equal before God."

At this point I leave it to the reader to imagine the expressions on the faces of the men of the board, and their responses.  But I assure the reader that in Shelby's imagination, the equality of the prayer space in the new mosque gave the women an opening to re-value themselves and their importance to their community.  The energy this generated led them to create many exciting new projects - projects that addressed the needs of refugees of the wars of liberation, of children living in hunger and poverty in far away countries, of victims of violence and circumstance closer to home, and helped provide medical care to those most in need.  The men (most of them anyway) got used to having the women beside them, and watched this energy unfold and, after a time, congratulated themselves on the decision they had made to support their women's rights.  

ON THE MILLION WOMEN MARCH

I learned this week that my blog has another reader, besides my daughter.  My daughter is excuse enough for me to continue this, but thank you Lane!  I am encouraged to write more…..

Much has happened this week, in Egypt, and Libya, and the U.S. that deserves response, but I have been most moved to reflect on the “Million Women March” that took place on International Women’s Day (Tuesday, March 8^th), in

Taharir Square

.

[First, a note on why I insist on spelling it “Taharir” as opposed to “Tahrir,” as in most other sources.  Transliteration from Arabic to English is an imperfect science, but the way I hear native Arabic speakers pronounce this word sounds more like “Taharir” to me, since the “h” in this word is aspirated.]  

I was not at all surprised to learn that less than a thousand people showed up for the “Million Women March,” or that so many “anti-feminist” men showed up and began attacking women.  Various theories have been proposed as to why so few responded to the call for women to demonstrate for their rights, among them:

            -    the demonstration was not planned well enough in advance or well advertised;

-    women in Egypt are still too subjugated in a patriarchal society to get out and

     demand their rights (i.e., feminism has not yet taken hold in Egyptian society);

-         both women and the male members of their families consider women to be too

vulnerable to possible abuse in such a public forum.

Various theories have also been proposed for why a large group of men launched a counter-protest and attacked the women and the men who tried to protect them:

-         these men were anti-feminists opposed to women’s rights;

-         they were men whose understanding of Islam precludes women holding positions of authority over men (i.e., President of Egypt, etc.);

-         they were men who have been deposed of their previous positions of privilege in Mubarak – era Egypt, who were taking advantage of yet another chance to oppose any kind of change (i.e., Mubarak thugs trying to disrupt yet another manifestation of the revolution). 

All of these theories might have some marginal applicability, but they miss, I believe, the main reason why so few Egyptian women showed up in

Taharir Square

for this particular demonstration. 

The issue of women’s rights in Egypt is a potent one for me.  I began to research this topic twenty-one years ago, as a Ph.d. candidate at the University of Kansas.  I interviewed Egyptian “feminists” in Cairo, old and young, secular and Islamic.  I wrote a paper which won an award, and presented at conferences on the topic.  But when it came to choosing a focus for my dissertation, I backed away from feminism in Egypt.  Some of the women I interviewed had been imprisoned.  I had learned that carrying forward with that research could be viewed with suspicion by the Mubarak government, and I did not want to put my in-laws in political jeopardy, through their association with me.  I, as a U.S. citizen, could always leave Egypt.  They could not.  Most women I know in Egypt have stayed away from political controversy in general.  Their main concern under the dictatorship has been keeping their families safe. 

Discussions of “feminism” and “women’s rights” in Egypt (and the rest of the Middle East) were initially equated with “westernization,” and the history of colonization and imperialism.  The first generation of Egyptian feminists were western educated, and tended to challenge religious authority.  By the early 1990s, I found a few pioneering Muslim women who were searching for new definitions of feminism within Islam, the so-called “Islamic feminists.”  They were beginning to find their voices in a society looking to its religious heritage for an indigenous model of organization and development.  But any meaningful discussion of religion was blocked by a dictatorial regime threatened by destabilizing progress.  At the same time, understanding of religion was unduly influenced by the rigidly uncompromising and misogynist Wahabi / Salafi interpretation of Islam (thanks to the largess of oil-rich Saudi Arabia.)  [See Khaled Abou El-Fadl’s The Great Theft for a complete explanation of how this happened.]  As a consequence, the development of a fully articulated indigenous feminist perspective in Egypt and the rest of the Muslim world was stymied.  I expect much progress in this regard moving forward.

But that brings me back to this week in

Taharir Square

.  I learned that one of the organizers of the demonstration on Tuesday was Nawal El Sadawi, one of the early “secular” feminists in Egypt.  I was not familiar with the names of other organizers, but I do know that El Sadawi is viewed with suspicion by the middle class Muslims I know.  Her crime is to be equated with western-style secularism, a non-starter in most of Egyptian society.  Noble as her aims may be in seeking to right the many injustices against women in Egypt, she will never bring a million Egyptian women to

Taharir Square

.  What is more, if the primary organizers of the march could be perceived to be too “westernized” to be attuned to the sensibilities of most Egyptians, this could be misused – and it looks like it was – as a ruse by disenfranchised Mubarak supporters to justify their attack on the demonstration and the demonstrators themselves. 

The Egyptian women I know do not claim their rights as women by demonstrating in public forums. They are Facebook organizers, and many stood along with the men in

Taharir Square

during the first weeks of the revolution.  But whether or not they were visible in front of the cameras, the idea that they are not as involved in the Egyptian revolution as the men is laughable – a thought that would not occur to the Egyptian revolutionaries, male or female.  The women I know in Egypt perceive themselves, and are perceived by the men I know, as co-equals.  They understand and take responsibility for their essential role in the foundational unit of Egyptian society – the family. The women I know are either full partners, or take the lead in running the affairs of their families, whether or not they also work outside the home.  They suffer and fight for the preservation of their families, but the younger among them are more likely to leave abusive husbands or loveless marriages, or choose not to marry (or re-marry after divorce).  They are highly educated, and take the lead in educating their children.  Many of them are professionals:  physicians, teachers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, university deans, and some are now considering running for political office in the new Egypt.  They tend not to go to mosques, preferring to practice their religion in their own homes.  They do not debate arcane references to women in Qur’an that some use as ammunition to deny women their rights.  They simply understand the Qur’anic emphasis on equality for men and women in Islam, and they quietly act on that understanding in running their lives, their work, and their families.

The notion that there needed to be a separate demonstration of and for women in

Taharir Square

would have felt to them, I believe, like a foreign idea.  And this, in my opinion, is the main reason that the demonstration was poorly attended.  I have no doubt that we will be hearing much from the women of Egypt moving forward.  But, as with everything else about this revolution, it will be on their terms, in their voices, their way.