Standing Alone (21 page)

AMMAN
,
JORDAN
—Royal Jordanian flight 2239 touched down at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, the capital of Jordan, and my family and I glided off the plane, each one of us breathing a sigh of relief that we hadn't been arrested, detained, or harassed in Saudi Arabia. Our pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina was as complete as we could make it. We had one more important stop to make on our journey. We planned to visit the third holiest mosque in the Muslim world. It sat in Jerusalem. To get there, we were going to go through Jordan despite a U.S. State Department warning against travel in the region.

For me, Jordan was an important bridge between puritan Islam and the West. As we stepped through the tiled airport, my mother, Safiyyah, and I ripped off our hijabs. To some, that would have been an act of blasphemy. They believed that new
hajjahs
, or women pilgrims, should mark their rebirths by covering their hair. But if you believed the scholarly evidence that hijab isn't mandatory—as I did—then this wasn't an issue. Perhaps I also took off my hijab to defy the puritanical Islam in which we'd just immersed ourselves, with its rules, laws, and edicts so oppressive that we feared for our safety lest even a strand of our hair caught the glimmer of the sun. There was something fundamentally wrong with a society that was so totalitarian in its rule that a strand of hair could be a source of crime and punishment. The hijab had become a political symbol of Islam—a mandatory part of the uniform for claiming identity as a Muslim—and lost its real meaning of simple modesty. As a result, countless resources were spent by Muslim organizations, leaders, and activists on a single issue for women: covering their hair. It struck me as another way to divert attention away from more pressing issues, such as protecting women's rights to have a voice and provide leadership in our communities.

Muslim women had more freedoms in Jordan, including the right to choose whether to cover their hair or not. To understand why Muslim women had won more rights in Jordan than in Saudi Arabia, I remembered a book I'd read by the Moroccan feminist scholar Fatima Mernissi,
The Forgotten Queens of Islam
, about fifteen female rulers in the medieval world, women who reigned from Asia to North Africa as either monarchs in their own right or powerful consorts who acted as de facto heads of state. In Yemen two queens even had the honor of having their names announced in the mosque, a sign of their accepted power. Jordan has given the world models of strong Muslim queens in the modern day.

In 1978 a globe-trotting graduate of Princeton University married King Hussein of Jordan. I knew about Lisa Halaby, an American airline executive for Royal Jordanian, from my days covering the airline industry for the
Wall Street Journal
. She was the daughter of Pan American World Airways founder Najeeb Halaby, whose father was a Syrian Christian immigrant of Lebanese descent. Lisa converted to Islam upon her marriage, took the name Noor, meaning “light,” and henceforth became Queen Noor. My honor as an author was that my book would be tucked in alphabetical order in the autobiography section at Barnes & Noble between Queen Noor's autobiography and Azhar Nafisi's
Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Queen Noor had a profound influence on expanding the roles and responsibilities of Muslim women in Jordan. For example, women had become a part of the workforce. There were women working behind the counter at the Hotel Inter-Continental when we checked into our rooms. I never saw a single woman at work in Saudi Arabia except for the religious policewomen clad like ninjas. Queen Noor had succeeded as a strong-willed woman in Muslim society. That wouldn't be possible in most puritanical Muslim communities.

Amman is a cosmopolitan city with five Chinese restaurants and two French restaurants on its road map. The face of the new queen of Jordan, Queen Rania al-Abdullah, beams from a photograph tucked into a corner of the map, her mane of slick golden hair tumbling over her shoulders as she leans over a chair on which her husband, King Abdullah Bin al-Hussein, sits. Nowhere in Saudi Arabia did I see a single photograph of the queen of Saudi Arabia. The only image of a Saudi woman of royalty I ever saw was on a
Vogue
spread with a Saudi princess in a sultry dress.

The Star
, Jordan's weekly newspaper, featured Queen Rania in a form-fitting black dress with tiny white buttons down her chest, her eyes glistening and her wide smile brightened by rosy red lipstick. I generally don't
take notice of what a woman wears, but in the Muslim world women's dress is a window into ideology. Queen Rania looked nothing like the women I saw in Saudi Arabia. Did that make her less Muslim? I didn't think so. In the photo, a man is handing her the German Media Award for her work in improving the quality of the lives of women and children in Jordan and building tolerance. Queen Rania won the award jointly with Queen Sylvia of Sweden, the first women to win the prize.

Queen Rania was in the rank and file of the Muslim “generation X.” Only five years younger than me, she was born in Kuwait to a notable Jordanian family of Palestinian origin. King Abdullah bin al-Hussein married her on June 10, 1993, when he was a prince. I had just turned twenty-eight and was recovering from my divorce. After the death of his father, King Hussein (Queen Noor's husband), the prince became king, and the princess became queen. After that, Queen Rania moved easily between villages in rural Jordan, empowering women's cooperatives, and five-star hotels in Paris, coordinating microfinancing projects, her sleek hair her hijab. She was a woman to whom I could relate. Why, I wondered, did Saudi Arabia and other puritanical societies have to order women to cover their hair? It should be a personal matter left to choice, I felt. Nowhere in the Qur'an is it explicitly stated that women have to cover their hair or abide by a specific dress code. There are two references to modesty but they don't even mention scarves. “O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks over their bodies [when outdoors]. That is most fitting that they could be known as such [i.e. decent and chaste] and not molested,” says Verse 59 in Chapter 33 of the Qur'an. And, then, in Verses 30–31 of Chapter 24 of the Qur'an, it says: “Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their gaze. And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and adornments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers . . . (and a list of exceptions).” The strict customs of veiling and secluding women in separate areas came three or four generations after the prophet's death when Muslims adopted traditions practiced by Greek Christians of Byzantium. Islamic scholars have widely differed in their interpretations of how hijab should be applied.

What became obvious to me in Jordan was that the Saudi brand of Islam doesn't define Islam, and—most importantly—it doesn't have to define Muslim society. For one thing, it felt freer and more festive in
Jordan. The Amman Marriott advertised a program that merged America's Valentine's Day with Islam's Eid, the Muslim holiday of sacrifice that had just ended: “Romancing Valentine's into Eid.” And when our guide took us to meet his newly arrived aunt from the hajj, sparkling red lights framed the front door, like the kind used on Christmas trees in the West. A bright sign covered the front door. It said,
HAJJ MABROOR
(an “accepted hajj”). This wasn't just a reflection of Jordan being entrapped by Western globalization; it was clear that Saudi Arabia was equally susceptible to the presence of multinational corporate branding. Rather, Jordan was a society that seemed to allow for more plurality of expression.

But it was also clear that women didn't have their full freedoms. When we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken in Amman, an image of Colonel Sanders greeted us, and the hostess welcomed us with friendly conversation and toys for the children, but she expressed frustration with the restrictions her family imposed on her, invoking Islamic law. “I'm trapped,” she said.

Women were raising their voices against inequities and injustices with legal appeals, and there were still wrongs to be corrected. Women were campaigning for seats in Parliament. They were in the
Jordan Times
criticizing as too small the six-seat quota the government had just assigned women. They were led by inspiring human rights activists such as Asma Khader and May Abul Samen. Asma Khader was a lawyer and founder of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, an organization that created literacy and legal assistance programs for Jordanian women. Elected to the Permanent Arab Court as counsel on violence against women, she had become a leading advocate of a campaign to outlaw honor killing. About twenty years earlier, a mother's plea drew her into the cause of defending women. The mother had come to her office for help. Her husband had murdered their fifteen-year-old daughter, who had become pregnant after being raped. Her husband had received only a six-month sentence because he claimed that he had killed his daughter for the family's honor. The shock: the mother revealed that the rapist was the father. The court believed his denial.

Advances had hardly brought full justice to women. Asma Khader had most recently been defending a young Muslim woman in Yemen, Layla Radman Aiesh, whom a religious court had sentenced to be stoned to death for
zina
, or illegal sex, while the man with whom she had had sex was sentenced to one and a half years in prison. In my research on Jordan, I discovered a gloomy picture of mothers' rights in Jordan at Iexplore.com,
a travel website. “Child custody decisions are made in religious courts; it is difficult for an American woman, even a Muslim, to obtain custody of her children in an Islamic court unless she agrees to stay in Jordan. Husbands/fathers may deny permission to travel to their wives and children, regardless of religion or nationality.” The site included a link to the U.S. State Department's website and a phone number for reporting child abductions.

Nevertheless, Jordan served as a model of a Muslim society coexisting peacefully with other faiths and histories. My family and I climbed by car to a place called Mount Nebo, where Christians say Moses was buried. I stood where the pope had reveled not long before in the beauty of the Holy Land below. Of course, on the other side of the Jordan River, toward Palestine and Israel, there sat a building where the Muslims say Moses was buried. We also wandered through the ancient ruins of Petra, where one of the Indiana Jones movies,
The Last Crusade
, immortalized the pre-Islamic civilization that flourished under the Romans. In a sign of her blessing, Queen Noor had visited the set.

       
Glory be to He

       
Who carried His servant by night,

       
from the Holy Mosque

       
to the Furthest Mosque,

       
the precincts of which

       
We have blessed

       
so that We might show him

       
some of our signs.

       
Surely He is the All-Hearing,

       
the All-Seeing.

JERUSALEM
—My name came from the seventeenth chapter of the Qur'an, “Al-Isra,” or “The Night Journey.”
Asra
means “to journey.” The passage tells the story of a magical journey that the prophet Muhammad supposedly made from Mecca to Jerusalem, flying through the skies on a mystical winged creature. Yusuf Ali, a renowned Qur'anic translator from
modern-day Pakistan whose lyrical translations I'd grown up reading, called the tale of the
miraj
(mirage) “a fitting prelude to the journey of the human soul in its religious growth in life.” I'd always had a dream to live out the journey that was my name.

The story goes that in the ninth year of Muhammad's mission, about 620
A
.
D
., when he was forty-nine, the prophet was sleeping in the holy mosque in Mecca one night when the angel Jibril, or Gabriel, stirred him awake. He led the prophet to the edge of the mosque. In one version of the story, Jibril had the prophet Muhammad prostrate and took out his heart, removing a blood clot in it and saying, “That was the part of Satan in thee.” Then Jibril washed the prophet's heart in a golden basin filled with
zamzam
, the holy water of Hajar, healing it and putting it back in the prophet's body. Jibril brought the prophet a white-winged creature called
al-baraq
, “an animal white and long, larger than a donkey but smaller than a mule.” “Each stride stretched as far as the eye could see,” the story says. The prophet mounted the strange creature, and it flew him to a mosque in Jerusalem. This was an important symbolic destination, for Jerusalem was the focus of the first qiblah, or direction of prayer, until a dramatic moment in Medina. Dissuaded by his conflicts with local Jewish and Christian leaders, the prophet Muhammad turned the qiblah to Mecca to distinguish Islam from Christianity and Judaism.

When the prophet arrived in Jerusalem, the story says, he entered the mosque and prayed two rak'at (prostrations). It's said that Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets prayed behind him. When Muhammad came out, Jibril brought him a vessel of wine and a vessel of milk. He took the milk, and Jibril said, “You have chosen the true religion.” It's said that Jibril then took the prophet to Heaven and opened the gates of Heaven. “Who are you?” a voice asked.

“Jibril,” he answered.

“Who is with you?”

“Muhammad.”

“Has he been sent for?”

“He has indeed been sent for.”

The gates opened. “Lo! We saw Adam,” the prophet told his friends. Adam welcomed him and prayed for his good. Then Jibril took the prophet Muhammad from the second heaven to the seventh heaven, and on each level he saw another prophet—Jesus, known as Isa in Arabic; John the Baptist, or Yahya; Joseph, or Yusuf; Enoch, or Idris; Aaron, or Harun; Abraham, or Ibrahim; and, finally, God, or Allah. After tough negotiations with God, the prophet whittled the mandatory number of
prayers a Muslim must say every day from fifty to five. As the story goes, Moses persuaded the prophet to keep going back to God to reduce the number, round after round, even urging him to go one more time to reduce the five mandated daily prayers, but the prophet balked at doing this, noting, “I returned to my Lord until I felt ashamed before Him.”

Jerusalem held great importance for Muhammad, as the last prophet in the Abrahamic tradition. It was near Jerusalem in Hebron where Abraham supposedly lived with Sarah and Hajar before Abraham took Hajar to the desert. As the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and the pioneer of monotheism, Abraham made this city important to all three faiths. The Old City measured less than a square mile. All three religions revered this city. In the Muslim world, Jerusalem was al-Quds, or “the Holy.”

After the prophet's death in 632, the Muslim ummah spread beyond Mecca and Medina, but it was always fraught with the tension between worldly ambitions and spiritual aims. The first caliph was Abu Bakr (632–34), a companion of the prophet; he united Arab tribal chiefs in the lands around Mecca and Medina during his two-year reign. Taking power in 634, the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab (634–44), conquered much of the Persian Empire. In 638 he conquered Jerusalem and subsequently controlled Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the North African coast. When Umar entered Jerusalem in 634 he guaranteed freedom of worship for all faiths. Finding ruins covering the rock from which the prophet ascended to the heavens, he cleared the rubble and built a mosque nearby and called it al-Aqsa, meaning “the Distant Place.” The area was known as al-Haram al-Sharif, or “the Noble Sanctuary,” but also was referred to as al-Aqsa. In November 644, a Persian prisoner-of-war stabbed Umar in the mosque of Medina. Six of the prophet's companions elected a man by the name of Uthman ibn Affan (644–56) to succeed him that year. Uthman belonged to a family called Umayyad, and his armies seized lands from Tripoli in what is today Libya to the eastern parts of the Persian Empire. Discontented Arab soldiers assassinated him in his home in 656. A fierce five-year civil war broke out between allies of the prophet's son-in-law, Ali, and a man by the name of Muawiyah, the son of the prophet's old enemy, Abu Sufyan. Muawiyah won and power became entrenched in the Umayyad family during his rule, from 661 to 680.

During the period of rule by Umayyad leaders that followed, Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik started work on enclosing the rock of the prophet's ascension into a grand mosque and expanding al-Aqsa into a more ornate mosque. His son, al-Walid, apparently completed it in 705 as a symbol of
Islam's permanence in Jerusalem, a city with a Christian majority. It has remained essentially unchanged for over thirteen centuries. The mosque is called the Dome of the Rock, and its glittering golden dome is Jerusalem's most visible icon.

In a twist on Abraham's story of sacrifice, Jews believe that Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac, not Ishmael, on God's command. For Jews, the site of that sacrifice is the same place where Muhammad ascended to the heavens, and Jews call it the Temple Mount. Jews venerate it as the place where Solomon built a temple that was destroyed and then rebuilt by Zerubbabel. The puritans of Judaism and Christianity believe that God will miraculously destroy the mosque through earthquakes or other means, leading to the building of a third temple, where, they say, Jesus, or the Messiah, will rise again. Meanwhile, the Muslims have claimed it for themselves. And we have all fought for control over this parcel of land.

After control over the Dome of Rock switched through many hands, a Muslim Kurd leader in the twelfth century named Saladin reclaimed the Dome of the Rock Mosque, called by some in the Muslim world “the jewel of the signet ring of Islam.”

Over the centuries Jerusalem fell under the jurisdiction of many rulers, from the Canaanites to the ancient Hebrew kings, the Islamic caliphate, the Christian crusaders, the Ottomans, the British, and now the Israeli government. What has transpired in the region is one of the most dramatic and endless conflicts in the world. The roots of the conflict lie in the historic claim to the land that sits between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

For the past one hundred years Palestinians—who are mostly Muslim but also Christian—have faced colonization, expulsion, and military occupation in the land of their father, Abraham. For the Jewish people of Israel, the land represents a return to the land of their father after centuries of persecution.

Key to the struggle is the place where we were going to try to pray together as a family—the holy sanctuary where the prophet is said to have ascended to the heavens. To this day the prophet's ascension makes the mosque the third-holiest mosque in the Islamic world, after the mosques in Mecca and Medina.

Modern-day politics over the creation of the state of Israel transformed the experience of the al-Aqsa mosque for Muslims. In 1948 Jewish settlers proclaimed the state of Israel. British troops left the region, and fighting
broke out between Israel and its Arab neighbors, ending in October 1949 with some 700,000 Palestinians fleeing or being driven from what had been British-mandated Palestine. Israel annexed large tracts of land and gained control of Jerusalem in the west; Jordan took over control of Jerusalem in the east, where the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa sit. In June 1967 war broke out between Israel and its neighbors. The Arabs were convinced that they could defeat the small nation of Israel with their collective might. But in six days Israel defeated the Arab armies, giving the conflict its name—the Six-Day War. In its victory, Israel grabbed wide stretches of territory from Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. In a symbolically devastating move, Israel seized control of East Jerusalem and the ancient Old City from the Jordanian troops who had controlled it. For the first time, the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock were under the control of Israel.

Visiting this mosque used to be a part of the Muslim pilgrimage after the hajj, but few Muslims ventured there after the latest chapter of trouble in 2000. In September of that year, Ariel Sharon, at the time an Israeli opposition leader, ventured into the courtyard of this holy space in Jerusalem's Old City while Muslims had gathered inside for the Friday midday prayer, considered the holiest in the week's prayers. Sharon arrived with a small army of soldiers and police “to see what happens . . . in the holiest place of the Jewish people.” Men assembled for prayer threw shoes at him and yelled, “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and “Murderer, get out,” as he moved from the compound's west side to the east and back again. Palestinians responded with an intifada, or uprising, which became the Palestinian resistance to Israeli military forces. Israel clamped down on Muslim tourists in Jerusalem.

A wall-sized photo of Jerusalem with the trademark golden dome hangs on a wall in a restaurant on High Street in downtown Morgantown, but I had never understood its political, historical, and religious symbolism. As a Muslim, I had only started learning about the noble sanctuary, with its holy mosques, when I was preparing for our pilgrimage there. Before we left America, I had started to read Bruce Feiler's best-selling book,
Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths
, but I couldn't pretend to make sense of the claims and counterclaims to this land. I couldn't even keep the name of the mosque with the golden dome straight. The Mosque of the Golden Dome? The Golden Dome Mosque?
The Dome of the Rock. The Dome of the Rock. The Dome of the Rock
. I tried to memorize the name but kept getting caught in mental tongue twisters.

One result of Arab-Israeli tensions was that my generation had been robbed of a real appreciation of this historical place. When Israel took control of the Dome of the Rock during the 1967 war—two years after I was born—it fell off the map of pilgrimage for my generation in part because of the disdain by many Muslims, particularly the puritanical, for Israel, coupled with the difficulties that Muslims experienced traveling there.

Despite this history of deterrence, we set off for Jerusalem from Amman to pray on the third leg of the pilgrimage. As we left, the question for us was simple: could we get inside Jerusalem?