Who: Katelyn and I and our JUA group
What: We traveled today to Boston University to visit with the Islamic Society Group. They were a group of individuals who were both born and raised Muslim and converted. There was one woman who talked to us about her ideas of her religion. Her perspective and ideas were different from the woman who we talked with at the Cambridge Mosque. We noticed that she was not wearing a head scarf so we asked her if she saw that as a sin. She said, “Yes, it is a sin, but that is not who I am. I do wear it when I go to the mosque and pray, but I don’t wear it around because I don’t want to put on a show. I’m not ready. I would rather wear it when I was ready with meaning and full knowledge of it than to wear it and not fully respect it.” We thought this was interesting because the woman from the Mosque said that it was a BIG sin to not wear and she does extra prayers each day asking for forgiveness for all the times she did not wear it.
Where: Boston University, Boston, MA. We went into their prayer area within the campus.
When: December 19, 2007; second day of J.U.A. Temperature was very cold, sun was out.
Why: We went to visit this group to, again, learn and educate ourselves about the Islamic culture and how they feel in America. We asked many questions about the religion itself and how they feel, if anything, living in “this society”. They gave us very detailed thoughts about how they live. They, again, taught us about their holidays and how they celebrate, which is very different from us Americans. There is no alcohol or such involved in their celebrations. They were very open and let us tell them about what we thought about the Muslims as a whole and were very thoughtful.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
"...the woman from the Mosque said that it was a BIG sin to not wear and she does extra prayers each day asking for forgiveness for all the times she did not wear it."
This thinking, taken to extremes, is what got a 16-year old young woman strangled to death by her father in Toronto, Canada last week. He was angry that his daughter was not wearing a headscarf, so angry that he murdered her, with help from her brother. It's very sad that the woman from the mosque would make such a statement. Her belief is not shared by all (or even most) Muslim women. She represents a fundamentalist kind of Islam on this issue. The majority of Muslim women around the world do not wear hijab all the time. The pressure for Muslim women to wear headscarves and hijab has largely come from Saudi Arabia and only in the past 20 years. The Wahabis want all Muslims to act like Saudi Wahabi Muslims, even Pakistabi and Indonesian Muslim women, who traditionally have never worn such headcoverings.
Post a Comment