Standing Alone (36 page)

       
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

       
I took the one less traveled by,

       
And that has made all the difference.

LOS ANGELES
—“The professor would like to invite you, your mother, and Shibli to visit him at his home,” said Naheed Fakoor, an Afghan American woman who was the assistant extraordinaire to UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl. She mentioned delicately that he rarely invited anyone to his home. I understood the power of this invitation. In my estimation, we were getting an audience with the pope of tolerant Islam.

A year earlier I had not even known that this professor existed. It had taken me months to memorize all the syllables of his name and the order in which they are said. More often than not, I referred to him as “Abou Khaled . . . oh, you know, the UCLA professor of law.” My kindred spirits within the Muslim world knew of whom I spoke. When I told Dr. Alan Godlas, the Islamic studies professor at the University of Georgia, that I was going to be meeting “the Professor,” as Naheed allowed me to call him, Dr. Godlas got excited. “He is the best hope for Islam in America,” he said. Not only could the Professor speak to disenfranchised Muslims like me, but he had the grounding in Islamic jurisprudence and original texts to be able to communicate with the mainstream puritanical set who
were in positions of authority in our communities. His students and friends had created a website for him called scholarofthehouse.org, inspired by an award he received by that name when he was a student at Yale University. They called him “the most important and influential Islamic thinker in the modern age.”

How had I missed him? Like liberal movements everywhere, he wasn't well funded, and though he'd published extensively, he couldn't compete with the publishing machinery that he opposed intellectually and ideologically—the Wahhabi brain trust coming out of Saudi Arabia. Until the summer of 2004, he was a visiting professor at Yale Law School; he had just returned home to California, where he was a professor at the UCLA School of Law. He sprang from American academia, earning a BA at Yale, a JD at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an MA and PhD from Princeton.

What separated Khaled Abou El Fadl from many intellectuals was his training in Egypt and Kuwait in Islamic jurisprudence: he was a highranking sheikh. I didn't know about him until a friend sent me a copy of a book he had written,
The Place of Tolerance in Islam
. My mother read it first. When she was finished, she closed its cover with a sigh of relief. “Since my childhood days,” she said, “I was told that only Muslims would go to heaven and no others. I would ask, ‘Why?' We were born Muslim by accident. Why should others be denied heaven because they were born Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or Hindu? Nobody would answer me. They would tell me not to ask such stupid questions. For the first time, someone has answered my question and confirmed my belief that this assumption is wrong and that, in fact, the doors of heaven are open to all good people.” She paused. “Khaled Abou El Fadl is a great man,” my mother said. “He is the first person who helped me understand and
believe
in Islam.” When I had called him to seek his guidance on the trial that I faced, I told him my mother's story. “Al-hamdulillah,” he said, simply. Praise be to Allah.

It was enough to speak to him by phone. It was an honor to be beckoned for an audience. My response surprised even me. After all, I had met with senators, celebrities, and heads of state. What was a
professor
? But I knew I had to make this trip. I just didn't know why.

In Los Angeles I framed the Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in Mosques for the Professor and wrote below it two words: “In Gratitude.” I dressed Shibli in an ornate silk vest from India. I brought a copy of
Time
magazine with an essay in which I'd written about the struggle for the soul of Islam and an article in which the Professor argued against the theological
logic that al-Qaeda leaders such as Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi use to sanction the beheading of prisoners. Since Danny's beheading, militants from Iraq to Saudi Arabia had turned to this execution-style brutality to kill hostages. The Professor told
Time
, “Al-Zarqawi searches for the trash that everyone threw out centuries ago and declares the trash to be Islam.” His words resonated with me on so many levels, including in the battle to win rights for women in our Muslim world. Having some idea that the meeting would certainly be meaningful, but not knowing quite how, I departed for his home with curious anticipation.

After winding slowly through rush-hour traffic, we arrived at the Professor's house at the corner of a street in a Los Angeles suburb. It was surrounded by a security fence, a reminder of the danger in which he lived. He had taken on Wahhabi ideology with frontal attacks on their theology as flawed and un-Islamic. Even Muslim American organizations lashed out at him when he penned an op-ed for the
Los Angeles Times
after 9/11, criticizing Muslim leaders for not condemning the attacks.

The Professor's assistant, Naheed, warmly beckoned us through the gate. His wife, a gentle and beautiful woman by the appropriate name of Grace, welcomed us at the door with a smile and embrace. The door opened into rooms that swept into each other. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with one thing: books. The books in some sets were lined up next to each other so that their bindings spelled words in Arabic. Shibli climbed up the stairs, ready to explore without a guide, and gazed upward at a wall tapestry of pilgrims circling the Ka'bah. He absorbed the familiar scene and exclaimed, “Ababooboo.” Appropriately, it was time for the sunset prayer.

The Professor emerged in a flowing black cape, under which an embroidered collar peeked out from the traditional Arab gown he was wearing. What struck me immediately was his physical vulnerability. He leaned on a cane and walked smoothly but slowly with small steps, extending his hand toward me gently. This in itself was significant. Saudi scholars had ruled that a man shaking hands with a woman was “evil” and
haram
, or unlawful. I took his hand gently. “Thank you for the honor of this invitation to visit you,” I said. Not close enough to extend her hand to the Professor, my mother raised her cupped right hand to her forehead in a high-browed Indian Muslim gesture of respect between men and women. “Adhab,” she said, in an Urdu greeting.

The Professor immediately lent me his support in the trial that my mosque had started against me. He reveled in the spirit of the Islamic Bill
of Rights for Women in Mosques. “This is good,” he said. And he cheered the writing that I was doing.

When it was time for prayer, the Professor did another remarkable thing. He prayed with his son on his left side and his wife on his right side. Naheed, my mother, and I lined up behind them. He needed help going into prostration and then standing up again, but his spatial arrangement was more than just practical. He believed in the intrinsic right of women to stand on a par with men.

In prayer at the Professor's house, I felt free for the first time in so long. Even though I was physically behind the Professor, I did not feel disrespected. Many Muslim men say they are expressing respect for women in their desire to protect them through segregation. But I knew the Professor didn't want to silence me. We sat around a circular dining table until late into the night, and he honored me when he revealed that he had read my first book and supported my voice. “It is a great victory that you are writing. You can only testify to the truth that you know,” he said. “And you are doing that.” He spoke with candor, even using the word
sucks
, and he lamented that Muslim leaders ran their communities as if they were playing Monopoly, collecting properties and building symbolic hotels of power.

The next night we returned, and my mother, Naheed, the Professor's wife, and I prayed in the same row as the Professor and his son. When we broke from prayer, the Professor led us through a tour of his library. To call it a library is an understatement. His books filled every wall in his room. (“Does he sell them?” my mother asked afterward, perplexed about why he collected so many books. “Mom!” I admonished her, but privately I could understand her curiosity.) He pored through Arabic texts to show me the works of the two thousand women jurists Islam has had since its inception in the seventh century. A year earlier I couldn't even name the century in which Islam was born. Now I knew the number of women jurists we've had. I was both amazed and astonished. On these shelves was the secret history of feminine power that centuries of male domination had erased. He pulled down a book published by a
madhab
, or school of jurisprudence, that had been destroyed. Both the school and its prayer had been led by a woman, he told me. “What?” I exclaimed. “A woman?”

“Yes, a woman.”

I was surprised to see a familiar book on his shelves—my first book,
Tantrika
. And it was the hardcover edition with the image of a woman's bare torso on the front. Some Muslims had protested the cover when
editor Ahmed Nassef put it on the Muslim WakeUp! website. I had put a yellow Post-It over the torso when I took the book to the Islamic Society of North America convention. But here it was, uncensored, beside the works of the great Muslim jurists. And to my shock, the Professor asked me to autograph the book. So many men—and even some women—within my religion had discounted me and discredited me because I wrote truthfully about the most intimate challenges in my life. But the Professor did not make me feel ashamed. Instead, he affirmed me.

I handed the book back to him with an inscription that couldn't capture the gift he had given me with the respect he had shown for my intellect, voice, and being. As he stood, he lost his balance and his cane slipped from his grip. My heart fell as I witnessed the physical vulnerability that accompanied the Professor's spiritual fortitude. Grace moved swiftly to help him regain his balance. Without pause, he looked me in the eye and took my hand, gently, in parting.

“Asra, do not let anyone deter you. Continue to be courageous,” he said clearly. “You are on the right path.”

“Thank you, Professor,” I said quietly. Touched by his words and his sincere gestures of kindness and respect toward my family and me, my heart wept. He recognized that I had struggled hard to resolve the dissonance between the intimate areas of my life and my religion. So often we live with guilt about our sexual lives. But I had found a peace with the decisions I'd made about my body, and I had claimed the worthiness of my spirit. I could embrace Islam.

Religion isn't meant to destroy people. The Professor recognized that I had struggled to answer the question of who I am and where my faith rests in my identity as a Muslim woman. I knew he was not speaking just to me but to all people—women and men, girls and boys—who choose the path of honesty, justice, tolerance, and compassion. This has been my struggle, but it is the struggle of all people as well. Every time I've spoken out, there have been people ready to take me apart. But I've constructed my own identity, and my son is a vital part of it.

Shibli was by now in only his T-shirt. I had taken his President Musharraf jacket off long before as I struggled to get him to sleep. He flew toward an ornate room divider, ready to knock it down. Stopped midstream, he bounded over to a rescued blind dog. Afraid for its safety in the company of an energetic twenty-month-old, I scooped Shibli into my arms and bade farewell to the Professor and his wife. From what I could see, he was as close as Islam comes to having a Dalai Lama who preaches
peace and tolerance. It was fitting that I should end one phase of my journey with him and, emboldened, set off from there to move forward.

The next night I found myself in the most unexpected of places—a Democratic fund-raiser for presidential candidate John Kerry. Screenwriters, producers, and agents spilled through a sprawling home in Hollywood for the event. Only in America, it seemed, could I go from the home of the pope of tolerant Islam to the front row at a backyard concert by African American pop star Macy Gray. When she took the stage, her Afro seemed more like a halo. In a moment of abandon and glory, she yelled to us in the audience, “Look up at the heavens! And yell to the heavens with the glory of you!”

I yelled to the heavens with the glory of me. I could feel the spirit of Hajar in the twinkle of the stars above me, just as I had felt her spirit when I walked in her footsteps in Mecca between the hills of Safa and Marwah.

Only a free individual can make a discovery.

MORGANTOWN
—After our plane from Los Angeles touched down, I was afraid my father would have a heart attack as he nosed our Chrysler minivan south on Interstate 79 to Morgantown. My brother and he had just picked up my mother, Shibli, and me from the Pittsburgh airport. He was agitated about a comment posted on Muslim WakeUp! by a person who didn't appreciate my Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in Mosques. The critic had posted a note under the subtle ID of “deathtoasra” and the false e-mail address [email protected], trying to suggest that the message had originated from the government of Saudi Arabia.

Even with all of the barbs I'd received, this was the first call for my death. And over what? Over my support for mixed congregational lines, as we'd had in Mecca, and women prayer leaders of mixed congregations. The posting tried to attack the place that so many people considered a woman's Achilles' heel: my sexual honor, suggesting that I had had sex with Mike (I had not, and Mike had never written that we had). But in the repressed world of puritanical Islam, men and women being friends and, God forbid, praying together was hedonistic in all ways.

Another aggressive posting was also disturbing. It reflected the double standard in Muslim society, as in so many cultures, toward women. Mike Knight had written about his own sexuality and in one of his articles had recounted a conversation in which he told a woman, “I have sex with girls!” There were no protests about his sex life in the comments to the article. In my article I had mentioned that a few of those who read my article about women's rights in mosques were judgmental about my unwed pregnancy. The second disturbing posting seized on this line.

My father was clearly disturbed by these e-mails. “Dad, it's okay,” I reassured him from the backseat. “It's about power and control. The people protecting the status quo don't want to lose their power and control, so they try to make us afraid of speaking out. Don't worry. I
will
find out who is behind the postings.”

With some sleuthing, I traced the threats to a Pakistani American honors undergraduate at Penn State University, just hours from me in Morgantown. He was the bug-eyed young man who had challenged my sources for the bill of rights. I reported him to the FBI, and it opened a criminal investigation. Then I took on the more introspective task of processing the impact of his threats on me.

I had known that the two issues that disturbed the Penn State student—women prayer leaders and mixed congregational lines like the kind in Mecca—were controversial. In fact, he did me a favor: he made me take a position and fully embrace these Islamic rights that scholars, including Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Dr. Amina Wadud, Dr. Omid Safi, and Dr. Aminah McCloud, had told me women have in mosques, namely, the right to lead prayer and the right to freely assemble anywhere, including the front of the mosque and shoulder to shoulder with men.

So often in Muslim society, as in most societies, fear is used to control people. Being American, I have freedom of movement, thought, and voice. Democracy and these freedoms bring me closer to my faith. I didn't know these realizations would come to me as a result of my pilgrimage, but they did. We do not need repression to engage people in the spiritual life. When I confronted the traditions in my Muslim society, I discovered that the gem of Islam is quite pure and good below the layers of repressive sedimentation.

One evening I took Shibli outside and knew that before me stood the fruits of my pilgrimage. He wore a shirt from a clothing label, Mecca,
popular among rap artists; it said “Mecca Since Day One” on his sleeve. By traveling with me on my pilgrimage as a baby, Shibli embodied for me the essence of Mecca. My son gazed through the evergreen trees at a waning full moon and smiled and squealed in delight.

“Moon! Allah hu,” he said, in the expression of the universal divine breathed in and the exhalation of the internal divine breathed out. I was teaching him to admire the divine in all of creation. God is. The divine is.

“Allah hu,” I answered, smiling. “Allah hu.”