Standing Alone (23 page)

Whereas the hadj is a culmination for most pilgrims, it felt more like a starting point to me.

MORGANTOWN
—When we returned to Morgantown, winter was thick in the air. I returned to my parents' house with Shibli and threw myself into the momentum of my life as a new author and new mother. Family called from all over the world to congratulate us on completing the hajj. Friends came over to drink from the
zamzam
—the holy water that we brought back.

My first book,
Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love
, hit the bookstores as spring flowers started to bloom. I was proud of the honesty with which I had written about my life's journey, including Shibli's conception, but I knew that speaking truthfully could be costly. A fatwa had been issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989 for his fictional writing. How would Muslims respond to the truths I wrote about sexuality, worship, and identity? I braced myself with the only weapon I had: knowledge. For three days I sat in the last row of a lecture hall on the campus of George Mason University in an unusual course: fatwa school. My teacher was none other than my guide on the hajj, the young Canadian Muslim Sheikh Muhammad Alshareef.

I donned the same hijab I wore in Mecca. Camped out beside me, Shibli played in his Evenflo Portable Fun UltraSaucer, absorbing vicariously the systematic process of Islamic jurisprudence, or
fiqh
(rhymes with
pick
). Fiqh refers to the bodies of law collected through interpretation by
scholars into the different schools of jurisprudence that have defined the Muslim world for centuries. By the end of the weekend I had learned the first lesson in liberating myself from fear of reprisal. For any fatwa issued to condemn me, I could find a fatwa to affirm me. Sheikh Alshareef called it fatwa shopping. As I drove away from the weekend seminar, I saw one of my fellow students in full black nikab, looking like a Saudi Arabian woman. I read the bumper sticker on her car: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Even though she and I probably ascribed to different interpretations of Islamic law, we at least agreed on that one point.

My first review arrived with the delivery of our local Morgantown newspaper, the
Dominion Post
. “Nomani bares soul in beautifully written tale,” it said. This recognition meant so much to me, even if it came off the pages of my local paper, because I had received so many cultural messages marginalizing the value of women's voices and so still struggled with insecurities.

In New York I sat down for an interview with a reporter for
India Abroad
, a weekly magazine I'd grown up reading. I had never felt fully understood by the people of my culture, but the reporter, Aseem Chhabra, pierced my skepticism. He related to my identity struggle. The next week I stared at the result of his work. “Divine Love,” the headline read next to a full-page photo of me smiling adoringly at Shibli as he stood on my lap on the banks of Manhattan's East River, gazing eagerly off camera where my parents were making funny faces at their grandson.
India Abroad
represented to me the rigid expectations of my traditional society. But here on its pages my honesty was celebrated.

The first test of how far I was willing to go with my newfound clarity came when an e-mail shot around the world and into my in-box: Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman who'd had a daughter out of wedlock, would be stoned to death if she didn't win a pending appeal. I stared at the warning, looked at my blossoming son, and thought:
There but for the grace of God go I
. I felt as if I had to take a stand. Her possible death forced me to catapult into action because of the life that had sprung from within me. To even my own surprise, I found the answers and liberation in Islam itself. I found brothers in Islam who didn't act as judge, jury, and executioner of Muslim women. In Rhode Island, Omid Safi, a Colgate University professor and the editor of
Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism
, rejected the criminalization of mothers for
zina
. “Islam has a strong tradition of humane judicial reasoning, or
ijtihad
, which is used to mediate questions of law,” he told me.

“
Ijti-
what?” I asked. I'd never heard this Arabic word before.

“Ijtihad,” he said. “It is based on
istihsan
, equity, and
istihsal
, the needs of the community.” Dr. Safi grew up in Iran, where his mother became his icon for an ethic of compassion. Like her, he was dedicated to devoting himself to love and service to others.

Alan Godlas, the professor of religious studies at the University of Georgia, exchanged e-mails back and forth with me to explain how postcolonial Muslims, fueled by Saudi Arabia's financing of Wahhabi doctrine, were turning to puritan Islam to set themselves apart from the West.

That political and theological analysis made sense to me. In the name of religion, puritanical Muslims were unleashing a vigilante force on women. Yet they were imposing man's law, not God's law. I had entered Saudi Arabia as a criminal in the eyes of Saudi sharia, guilty of zina. I prayed in the holy epicenter of Islam. And God did
not
send a thunderbolt down to earth. I survived. Islam survived. The Ka'bah survived. Karen Armstrong explains in
Islam: A Short History
that by the fourteenth century community leaders known as the
ulama
“liked to believe that these laws had been in place from the very beginning of Islamic history. Thus, while some Sufis, such as Rumi, were beginning to glimpse new horizons, many of the ulama believed that nothing ever changed. Hence, they were content to believe that the ‘gates of
ijtihad
were closed.'” Reeling from invasions, “the
ulama
had transformed the pluralism of the Quran into a hard communalism, which saw other traditions as irrelevant relics of the past. Non-Muslims were forbidden now to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and it became a capital offense to make insulting remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.”

I knew what I wanted to say. Muslim societies would do well to heed modern thinkers who would have us love the soul—both the mother's and the child's—without loving the sin. The sting of shame and stigma is emotionally as deadly as a physical stoning. I chose, however, to liberate my son and myself with the truth, because I didn't want him to inherit a legacy of shame. To punish mothers seemed to me to be not only cruel but a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states in article 25, section 2: “Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.” The shame and stigma so prevalent in traditional Muslim societies also struck me as a rejection of the value Islam put on motherhood.

It's said that a man asked the prophet, “Who among the people is the most worthy of my good companionship?”

“Your mother,” the prophet replied.

“Then who?”

“Then your mother.”

“Then who?”

“Then your mother.”

“Then who?”

“Then your father.”

After 9/11, Muslims and Islamic associations distanced themselves from terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam. I argued that with the trial of Amina Lawal, Muslims should renounce the harsh punishment of women for such intimate “crimes” as zina and join with human rights and women's rights groups, such as Amnesty International, that are defending women indicted for zina. I saw that I was not alone as a Muslim opposed to the criminalization of women's sexuality. A Muslim woman in Malaysia, Zaitun “Toni” Kasim, helped found Sisters in Islam to fight sexism that criminalizes women's bodies. In Pakistan, a team of lawyers led by two sisters, Asma Jehangir and Hina Jilani, defended women charged with zina. And a Muslim woman named Ayesha Imam, a lawyer and activist, was leading the defense of Amina Lawal in Nigeria through her group called Baobab, which was also defending other women in Nigeria. I remembered the term
baobab
from the story
The Little Prince
. The Little Prince, who comes from an imaginary planet, describes the baobab as a tree with roots that could overrun his small planet if untamed. Ayesha Imam and other Muslim activists chose Baobab as the name of their women's rights organization because in Africa the baobab is a tree of strength.

I discovered that in Morocco, where the police expect doctors to report single mothers giving birth at hospitals, a group called Solidarité Féminine runs a job-training shelter in Casablanca for single mothers. Morocco's King Mohammad VI decorated the founder, Aicha Ech-Chenna, despite fundamentalist Muslim protests that she and her shelter encourage prostitution. She was trying to help children of single mothers obtain identification cards, which they need for schooling but can't easily get because they're dismissed as illegitimate. I was amazed at this activist's drive. She was also pushing for DNA testing to establish the paternity of these children.

It was clear to me that if Muslim society is to mature, we must move away from punitive responses to the realities of this world. Why not support mothers instead of stoning them? It seemed particularly important to reconsider the issue considering that there is no consensus on the issue of
punishing zina. The clerics who condemn mothers to death simply subscribe to the most puritanical interpretation of Islamic law from among the four diverse—and often conflicting—schools of jurisprudence that have survived into modern day in the Sunni sect of Islam. And there is no reference to stoning in the Qur'an as a punishment for zina.

It seemed obvious to me that zina laws are not a humane, fair, or judicious response to social realities. Because it is difficult to find the four witnesses required by the Qur'an to prosecute zina, the men involved are usually released. Pregnancy, however, is telling, so pregnant mothers are imprisoned even though majority sharia opinion concludes that pregnancy is circumstantial evidence.

I knew the sad truth. It is women—rarely men—who become targets of these punitive sex laws. Increasingly, women charged with zina have ended up in jail, often with their babies, to face the sentencing of death or lashings while the father goes free. The man Amina Lawal named as her baby's father denied paternity and was released. In 2002 the man whom Zafran Bibi, a Pakistani woman, charged with raping and impregnating her also denied the allegation and was released. She was sentenced to death by stoning—a ruling that I read about while I was in Pakistan, carefully guarding the secret of my own pregnancy. Her sentence was later overturned. But every day there are untold numbers of Muslim women who abort their pregnancies, dump their babies in rubbish piles, or secretly abandon their children so that they won't have to face the consequences of having a child out of wedlock.

I felt good about one thing. I wasn't going to be lashed. I was in West Virginia. There I had the support of loving parents and was shielded by the progressive laws of a country where religion and state are constitutionally separated and where consensual adult sexual behavior has largely been decriminalized. Every morning, like mothers everywhere, I playfully nuzzled my infant son, drawing a smile from him. Shibli was my joy, but in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries run by sharia, he was more than that. Shibli was proof that I, an unmarried Muslim woman, was guilty of zina.

Many cultures and religions inveigh against premarital sex and adultery and consider these activities sinful. But I'd learned that much of Western society and moderate Islam have long concluded that humanity and God are best served by separating the sin from the sinner. I could accept the rebuke of those who believed that what I did was wrong. I understood that there would be consequences for my son and me as I struggled as a single mother to raise him. Although my judgments about men may not always
have been great, my son would always be a joy to me. I certainly didn't believe I deserved to be jailed or lashed for what I had done.

In countries such as Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca and the spiritual center of Islam, tradition has perpetuated these sex laws, which were propagated in part by the strict Wahhabi movement. In countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan, Islamists have implemented or strengthened these laws and enforced them rigorously. Muslim societies that punish women for alleged crimes of the body contradict the fundamental principles of forgiveness, privacy, and motherhood in Islam.

A mother is considered a
jihadi
, or holy warrior, by virtue of conceiving her baby. It's said that if she dies in childbirth, she becomes a
shaheed
, or martyr. As a society, Muslims should support those who reject the criminalization of sexuality and are risking their lives to protect mothers and their babies.

Pending her appeal, Amina Lawal wasn't incarcerated, but she was imprisoned by judgment and condemnation. When I saw the photo of her daughter, Wasila, I thought of my son, crawling by my feet as I wrote. I thought about how in my native India, all elders are “aunties” and “uncles.” Amina Lawal would be “Amina Auntie” to my infant son. I pulled out a T-shirt on which I wrote, “Free Amina Auntie.” Shibli and Wasila are children of the same generation from different worlds in homes defined by the same religion. Both deserve futures with their mothers.

As the prophet Muhammad said, “Heaven lies at the feet of your mother.”

I sat at my laptop and wrote an essay defending the rights of women such as Amina Lawal and me to live without punishment for alleged crimes of our bodies. It was a huge departure from my usual silence in simply being a spectator but not a commentator. The
Washington Post
published the essay in its Outlook section, “She Shouldn't Be Stoned. None of Us Should.”

When my article was published, I was ready for a fatwa condemning my challenge to puritanical Muslim jurists' interpretation of sharia. The newspaper ran the image of Shibli and me on the banks of the East River juxtaposed dramatically with a grim picture of Amina Lawal sitting alone on a bench facing a panel of male judges. To my surprise, I received about fifty e-mails from Muslims expressing their support.