Collard Green Muslim

Words to the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation:

On the Occasion of the Inter-Religious Family Dinner: November 11, 2017

I am so pleased to be here tonight representing my diverse faith community, and within it, the Islamic Society of Baltimore. Thank for this outreach to our community. It is a very kind gesture that will remain long in our hearts.

This occasion is ripe for reflecting on one of my favorite verses from the Qur’an, the text which Muslims believe God revealed through the Angel Gabriel.

O humankind! We have created you from a single male and female, and made you into tribes and families so that you may know one another. Surely the noblest, most honorable of you in God’s sight is the one best in piety, righteousness, and reverence for God. Surely God is All-Knowing, All-Aware. (Al-Hujurat 49:13)

O humankind! It says. Not O Muslims! O humankind. It addresses everyone on earth, not only the community of Muslims. I am being addressed along with all of the members of my human family.

We are connected by origin, by membership in the human race. Connection is a vital ingredient in a meaningful and pleasurable life. The need to connect socially is powerful. Our emotional and even our physical health depends on the quality of our human connections. In languages around the word we use the language of pain to identify social pain. So, we say, “He broke my heart.” Or “She hurt my feelings.” We are biologically “wired” to connect. I believe we limit well-being if we limit our connections to people who look like us and worship like us. We have the freedom to expand our connections to all of humankind!

Then the verse says: “created you from a single male and female,” which is our common ancestry in Adam and Even. Our Jewish sisters and brothers may refer to the Misnah, Sanhedrin 4:5 which states, “Furthermore, the first person was created alone for the sake of peace among men, so that no one could say to another, ‘My ancestor was greater than yours.”

When we view our individual selves on a continuum dating back to our first mother and father, the idea of racism, is dumb, even laughable. Thinking people will arrive at the rational conclusion that there is no pure race, no better people, no real hierarchy in the human family, beside the ones that we fabricate in our imaginations.  And this is intentional, because we come from one origin, one mother and one father.

So, there is no hierarchy. We are all the same, right? But no, we have evolved in a way that we are very different. We have differences and those differences are the inspiration for hatred, blood-shed and community-inflicted trauma. We niche out privileges based on color, class, culture, beliefs. Wouldn’t it be so much simpler, so much more peaceful if we were all exactly the same, if there wasn’t this overwhelming variety within us? It’s chaos, isn’t it? Why within our human family is there intentionally so much variety? What’s the point?!

This is a question that my eight-year-old son decided to ask me a few weeks ago, before my morning coffee. While I was all blurry-eyed, he asked:

“Why can’t we all just be the same. Why didn’t Allah create us all to be alike? It would be so much easier.”

He is a minority in a secular public school. Even though it is secular, in reality the special art projects and extended holidays cater to the cultural identities of Christian Americans. At school, our children make Christmas ornaments, Easter-themed spring decor, Valentine Day Cards, etc… Never Jewish dreidals or Ramadan Lanterns.  In fact, when a Jewish friend and I recently teamed up to point out this obvious fact, another PTA mom responded that it is important to celebrate the “prevailing cultures” holidays.

So, on Christmas ornament making day, my Jewish friend asked me to take her children for the day to play together. It happened to be a Friday and she gladly gave permission for her children to attend our Friday services in the Mosque. Two weeks before our daughters attended a youth group program in a synagogue where my daughter enjoyed an up close and personal reading of the Torah scroll and heard a beautiful recitation of it. We have to arrange these opportunities for our children, so that they will have an appreciation for their unique identities even if they are not celebrated by the “prevailing culture” as the mom phrased it.

In each instance, both at the synagogue and the mosque, our children were completely absorbed, looks of innocent fascination on them. They were totally in the moment, completely connected to the moment, to the people welcoming them, showing them: this is how we worship, this is what we say, this is how we sound, this is how we begin and how we end. The children were encountering and connecting to people. Connection.  The hearth of physical and emotional well-being.

We cannot truly know each other unless there is some mystery, some questions and discovery between us. We are species who, when living in a natural state are deeply curious, and able to be completely absorbed into the moment of discovery.

But then, how to convey that idea in simpler words to my child, in a way that he would accept my answer?

So, I said: “Well, Laith, I want you to imagine a world in which everyone is the same: same religion, same color, same culture, same language, all same. Same, same, same. If you want, close your eyes and imagine that kind of world.”

He paused.

“What is that world like, Laith? Do you want to live in that world?”

“No, he said, very determined. That world is boring. I don’t want to live there.”

“Then, aren’t we fortunate that God did not create us to live in such a boring world, that we have different foods and we can learn each other’s languages, and beliefs, admire each other’s clothes. That we get to know each other. That we get to connect through getting to know each other?”

“Yes! We’re lucky.” He smiled.

The third part of that verse I mentioned at the beginning: the noblest, most honorable of you in God’s sight is the one best in piety, righteousness, and reverence for God. In other words, do good deeds. Actions speak louder than words.

It aligns with the Babylonian Talmud Gitten 61a: “Our Rabbis taught, ‘Give sustenance to the poor of the non-Jews along with the poor of the Jews. Visit the sick of the non-Jews along with the sick of the Jews. Bury the dead of the non-Jews along with the dead of the Jews – Because of the ways of peace.”

In other words, we are all in this together. We all have shared interests. And right now, in America, we are at a heightened awareness of the need to celebrate our shared interests as religious minorities in our country.

Since last year’s election and even before, during the campaign, hate crimes and hate speech against Jews and Muslims skyrocketed.

We are witnessing a sharp rise in Nazi symbols, this year the White House intentionally omitted mention of Jewish victims in the President’s Holocaust Remembrance Day message. On the very same day, Trump issued a ban on refugees and anyone from seven majority-Muslim countries. Wearing a public symbol of the Jewish or Muslim faith, for example, my hijab or a Jewish man’s kippa, makes one a walking target for hundreds of organized hate groups, operating and gaining legitimacy.

Jews and Muslims are coming together to do good like never before. This year dozens of rabbis were arrested outside of Trump Towers while protesting the ban against Muslim refugees, and Muslims raised $100,000 to restore Jewish cemeteries which were destroyed by vandals in the wake of the hateful political rhetoric which brought Trump to an electoral election win.

We are sharing our common interests as citizens who are religious minorities in America and we are doing an even bigger job of making America arrive at a “more perfect Union.” We are always perfecting it. And it has always fallen on minorities to do the heavy lifting of advancing the human and civil rights, which are embodied in our Bill of Rights. Through our adherence to our respective religious texts and our consequent fellowship with one another we are making the ideals of our Nation’s founding, live and breathe instead of sleep as lofty words in a museum.

On behalf of my Muslim community at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. Thank you for this invitation. Thank you for this uniting gesture. We are sisters and brothers to one another, in common ancestry and purpose.

He shoved a body board into our overstuffed vehicle and closed it with a Spartan rush. If he flinched for even a millisecond and the van belched, torrents of non-essential camping gear would tumble to the hot pavement. One day my husband and I will master the art of simple living. We will leave behind the extra (just in case) towels, (not sure if that can be fixed) lantern, and assortment of breakfast options. Once we’ve evolved into that sort of species we likely won’t have kids arguing over seating priority and sleeping bag assignments. We’ll revert to a small sedan into which we’ll sling an over-the-shoulder tent for two. And we’ll make camping reservations on Thursday night instead of two months in advance because we’ll be spontaneous, like that pulsating flash of a firefly suspended in the blended hue of night, as it turns from a blushed day into a dark ripple.

Irreverently, I sat in the passenger’s wing greedily fixated on my e-reader instead of kick-starting the family excursion with a sing-song or road game. And besides marinating the chicken and packing a few things, I hadn’t done a whole heck of a lot to make this plan go down, as I usually would. My husband did most of the packing without any, I’m at my wits end!!, fanfare. He just did it. Nineteen years of marriage, reassuringly whispering a subtle tune into the sore heart: some moments don’t insist on an explanation; they belong with the inexplicable.  My lover says.

But if explanations needed to be given, well then, suffice it to say that I hadn’t been feeling myself – perched on that glorious, ruptured fault line nearing middle-age, and not on a wholly tragic scale. Metamorphosis takes more than a few still hours. It is as rare as an eclipse, but more drowsy like a humming melody down a winding summer trail. The soul bursts out to meet it, to brace itself for that much anticipated awe-glittered moment, but in that covey of expectation, flaring outside of time’s capsule, appears a quivered slice of lightening. It startles like a rapid hush consuming a clamoring crowd. In that space, kneeling alone, jagged stones are hurled from all shadowy directions — stones born from every muffled, young trauma that I ever endured– giving breathe to the most violent sadness and yearning scream that was never heard, nor held, nor soothed.

Who will hold this for me?! Who is strong enough?! The answer swoops down like a steadfast, speckled falcon on its unsuspecting prey, hard and enduring: No one, but you!

But, damn if I’m not happier in that exhaling sublime space than I can ever remember being in my entire life. More content than ever imagined in this lyrical landscape of soulful existence in which nothing is settled because it’s all crisply new. In that space where everything is perfectly the same and yet deliciously different — a swaying old song played on a new instrument.

Our campsite came into view after a few wrong turns and mean glares at a GPS system gone awry. We tumbled out to survey our home for the weekend. A shady, gravel pad tilted awkwardly to give us the shining view of the neighboring campsite, inhabited by a young couple whose SMART car fit all of their essential belongings. At sprinting intervals our eyes caught their loafing, wilderness adventures, and their eyes caught ours. A new camping pastime we’d all collectively and bashfully discovered. Neither couple could resist noticing the other, like curious characters peeking into a fairyland mirror, a magical model, which lets its users glimpse in fast-forward and reverse. And the glimpses gave rise to sputtering commentary.

Ah, see that’s the little generator I was telling you about? $300, but keeps it all running.

When we’re old, we’ll sit up for as long as we want in hammocks like those. Ha! Never mind, we’ll probably have grand-kids to push us along by then.

Everyone is wearing tattoos these days and beards are back.

He’s splintering the wood.

Wearing a fat towel on her head the whole time, not even tryin’ to impress! A nice rut, but still a rut. Done that. Yeah, I’m totally inappropriate. But seriously, when they leave it will be like the campsite TV turned off. Bummer. (laughter)

My wife, crazy (more laughter).

Two kids in diapers, three a.m. pediatrician visits, fevers, finding good schools, if they have the kid track on play. Had fun, but glad that’s over for us.

Our kids ran in and out, oblivious, gobbled up helpings of hot barbecue and chips. Warm globs of marshmallow crusted around their eager mouths. They smelled of ketchup stains and the potent lingering smoke of sulky campfires. As typical, their emotions grazed – they fell happily into our familiar laps, arms around our necks, kissing cheeks, giggling, then suddenly sad over some perceived injustice or pushing out a betwixt rebuttal to our game-plan. Over and over their alternations worked like chiming bells echoing into our hearts, sometimes grating, and at other times like flushed warm light, washing us.

The fire mesmerized with its sporadic ear-pleasing crackles shot from ruminating heat. From time to time my husband doused it in lighter fuel, producing scorching high crescendos to cheerful, approving claps: “Do it again, Baba. Do it!”

In the closed canopy of wooded night, lanterns alighted faces. Our kids along with their co-traveling friends in the same loop, bedecked themselves with ring-stacks of glow sticks, saturating their spry bodies. We saw them, their neon formations– running and hooting loudly as intergalactic tribesmen, which startled us into laughter, a momentary rush of reason-less joy that we shared with our young neighbors. The only moment we willfully acknowledged, at once, suspended – two sets of eyes locking with two others, whispering into the phantasmal mirror, Is that you? The gleeful unexpected occasion to indulge all of the otherwise monotonous tasks: eggs cooking, pan scrubbing, bed making, hunched over coffee, nose blowing, paper reading, paper shifting, phone scrolling, teeth brushing, sleep snoring, adjusting positions on the mattress that we brought home together on that drizzling dreary day…adjusting assuredly into the nesting, warm nook of the other lover’s curled body, arms wrapping to bring the other in, like a harbor crying ‘home’ for only one voyager.

We sat back down in our folding chairs, by now closer to the dissipating fire. A glowing heat concentrated into the belly of wilting logs, its scalding orange brightness worked into embers, sighing wispy white ashes into the absorbing black night. A lull between us. Soft, full bodied silence. The silence that speaks so eloquently, and more precisely than spoken words, because it has the capacity to listen. Silence on the page that if someone else picked up, they would see blankness – nothing – nothing spoken, but from which your lover reads volumes, recognizes you easily. Though blindfolded, could pick you out of a crowded mute room by your hand, out of that suffocating hovel into sublime airy togetherness, alone. Your lover sits near you just to be near. You travel your way. Your lover travels too, though, not the same road. No one, but you! Still, together in ruptured silence, your lover is there, over soul eclipses and un-glittering, monotonous joy.

The month of Ramadan is here when Muslims, the world over, fast from sun up to sun down. We end the month with a big celebration known as Eid-ul Fitr. Here are some wonderful images from the Boston Globe which features Muslims around the world initiating this occassion.

What is so important about the month of Ramadan? It is the month when Muslims believe the Qur’an was first revealed in the form of a recitation by the Angel Gabriel (Gibril, in Arabic) to the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him). Here is a more eloquent statement on the reason why Muslims fast by Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

In my own words, we fast simply to become closer to God. In doing so, we draw closer to the source of mercy and love; therefore, as a family we draw closer to one another. This becomes evident in so many small ways. This evening while I recited Qur’an, my soon to be 10-year-old son was getting dressed in his jellabiya (traditional clothes for attending the mosque). I saw him from the corner of my eye. His last gesture before he walked out of the room was to lean down and give me a kiss on the cheek. “Bye, Mama,” he said. Such simple, loving gestures make a mother feel like she is sitting on a river of gold.

During Ramadan we find that the chore to constantly grind calories and fill up our schedule with limit-less activities, when put aside, helps us focus more acutely on the purpose of our life in this world and of our desire to be in much closer proximity to our Creator in the afterlife.

We hibernate during Ramadan to find, hopefully, the spiritual sustenance to give us energy for the year ahead. Ramadan comes about 11 days earlier every year on the lunar calender; how wonderful that this year it comes just before the school year descends.

In Ramadan it is encouraged not to spend the whole day excessively planning and thinking about collard greens, fried chicken and mash potatoes, and how good a glass of sweet tea would feel in our dry mouths. However, there is a period of the day given wholly to preparing a special Ramadan meal, to enjoy at sundown, known as the iftaar. My Collard Green-Arab kids love this part. We often huddle in the kitchen together and whip up comfort foods that we want to share together. Even though the little kids are not fasting, they anticipate this shared meal as much as if they were fasting.

I don’t cook many Southern comfort foods. I turn out a variety of Moroccan holiday meals passed down through the generations. I want our children to grow up with special memories of the Ramadan table and since the Moroccans have been perfecting that craft for a few hundred years, why re-create the wheel. Plus, this bonds my children even more to their Moroccan culture and identity which they weave with their Collard-Green roots.

Regardless of culture, Muslims the world-over traditionally break their fast with dates, because that was the tradition of the Prophet Muhammed and his companions. These are the lovely medjool dates, plentiful in California. We bought 11 lbs and we will likely need to purchase more before Ramadan is over. Forget about those dried, pitted dates at the local grocery store chain. These are so much better.

Here is what I’ve been preparing it the gluten-addict category which is my favorite Ramadan food-group.

This will become batbout – a Moroccan flat bread that is cooked on the stove. Mmmmm…..

You have to try this with strawberry preserves and butter. If you like cornbread you will love this and the texture is especially heavenly.

This will become Melloui, a Moroccan crepe-like pancake, which is traditionally served with butter and honey instead of syrup.

That sheen on my hand is straight-up oil and butter. This stuff is not for the Jazzercise queens. It’s ridiculously fattening and yummy! You must not die before eating melloui.

I wish I could insert the sizzling sound it makes while cooking. The kids keep asking: “Is it iftaar time yet?!” They can hardly resist.

Gosh, and I must mention krachel. It is a sesame and anise sweet roll scented with orange flower water. Our kids love preparing the dough and it gives my kneading hands a rest for a few minutes.

 Oddly, it resembles a hamburger bun, which is what I thought it was the first time I saw it and started preparing it for the Ramadan table. The deliriously delicious recipe for these rolls can be found on about.com where Christine Benlafquih reveals traditional recipes passed down from mother to daughter.

Even though Ramadan is a month of abstaining from our regular routine, which includes breakfast and lunch; it is really a month of indulgence; indulging our inner earning to be closer to God and closer to one another. The meals we prepare and anticipate in those moments before the Ramadan meal is served are opportunities to slow down and savor the company of one another and eventually the flavorful delights we have given up all day long for the sake of quenching our higher thirst for God’s favor and closeness to His mercy.

Since I last posted our family has been super busy with all the outdoor adventures that make summer so great. I’ve also whipped up another website to satiate my blogging appetite.

Collard Green Muslim isn’t going anywhere, but I don’t have as much time as I would like to update it with more musings and memories. What I would like to do is regularly update ya’ll on something I’m very passionate about (doesn’t that sound so professional and philanthropic?)

No!!!!! Don’t go away! I know what ya’ll are thinking: dang-it, did she just say, ‘something I’m passionate about???’ That sounds boring. Is she going to ask me for money to save endangered ladybugs in the rainforest??? I’d like to pay money to send my old lady to the rainforest instead. That’s what I’m passionate about!!!!

Alright, maybe I didn’t choose the right word. Let me try again: What I would like to do is regularly update ya’ll on something I think ya’ll will get a kick out of; so if you follow me here at Collard Green Muslim you’ll want to hop on over to www.kidsonnature.com.

I’m going to be a little more smarty-pants over at Kids on Nature because I know a thing or two about giving your kids an outdoor childhood… and what I don’t know, I hope you’ll teach me. I’ve got as much to share as I’ve got to learn about how to help my kids, and the kids in your life, want to venture more outdoors and work to conserve mama earth for future generations.

Purty please subscribe to www.kidsonnature.com and with a cherry on top go on over to http://www.facebook.com/kidsonnature and say you “like” it.

Till next time….eat your collards, call your mama, and behave yourself!