Sister to sister: Two black women writers talk about love and leaving Islam

“Are you participating in Ramadan this year?”

My sister and I often ask ourselves this query, even when we already know the reply. That’s a matter I don’t desire to answer or be asked. It jogs my memory that I’m a Muslim only in word and name.

Islam is my mother’s religion. In her seek for something to imagine in, she met my father, a ruthless man who happened to hold the important thing to her salvation: Islam. My father got here to Islam through cliché; while trying to escape the Vietnam War, he was ultimately arrested and imprisoned for nearly two years. While in prison, my uncle Ahmed sent the Holy Quran to my father. In Chicago, a city with a big Muslim population anchored by the Nation of Islam, my mother and father met, modified their surnames, and created a brand new family name for themselves and their children: Karim. They hoped that we can be a generation of Muslims that had transcended the sadness of our previous incarnations.

Islam gave the impression of a utopia with the promise of peace and salvation through faith, prayer, fasting, modesty and community. I wanted to be a part of this utopia. I wanted to be a part of something greater than myself. I wanted to be accepted and embraced by the community.

However, the faith created by the prophet (peace be upon him), continued by the master, and later congealed by the pastor didn’t entirely serve the curiosity that was inside me. I had far too many questions that seemed to haven’t any answers, which led me astray.

So far I actually have been “wandering” for 25 years.

When I first heard about Aaliyah Bilal’s collection of short stories, Temple Folk, I used to be delighted. Here’s a book that focuses on the experiences of black American Muslims – but truthfully, I wasn’t planning on reading it. Apparently, I actually have come to terms with the choice to stay as distant from the mirror of my past as possible. However, the universe had other plans for me. In the next months: a New York Times article on Bilal when her seminal text became Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for FictionI actually have had more conversations about Islam and my experiences lately.

Then the query got here up as to whether I can be open to talking to her. As a author, my answer was a convincing “yes,” but I still felt anxious. Was I ready to open the book alone story again?

In Temple Folk, Bilal takes us on a journey into what it means to be a part of a movement that deserves more respect in its name. “The way people talk about the Nation of Islam and its culture is extremely negative,” she said after I spoke to her on behalf of Grio. “And it is so strange to me because I believe: don’t you understand our history? Do not understand?”

I see. Story after story, I was drawn into my past and faced with what could be my future. “Temple Folk” destroyed me – in the most compassionate way. As I spoke with Bilal over the Zoom call about our history with the Nation of Islam and what each character in its history has meant to me and the culture at large, I found solace in our conversation — and in those short three hours: a sisterhood so urgent and possible , even after leaving the Nation.

(.)

Zainab Karim: First, I want to start by saying “thanks.” I immediately understood the emotional depth of what I was reading because it was my experience.

Aaliyah Bilal: Wow. Thank you .(…)These stories were born from a deep need to see ourselves in this culture. I have simply never been able to uniformly address the representation of the Black experience that our literature provides us with; provided to us by our film and television. There are always these points of contact, but I never feel like this is my life – “This is me.” I’ve always wanted to see my own experience – experience – really beautifully portrayed.

I also know that there have been some works of art about black Muslims in America, but I have never really connected with this work. It’s as if a lot of these jobs are for other people, trying to convince the average white American that we are decent, nice people. And I just felt like I didn’t need to be convinced about it. I just want to see myself because we have so many rich stories to tell. I think that was the seed of “Temple Folk.”

ZK: I don’t even remember a book where I was so close to it, where I felt like someone got my diary and started writing about my life. Especially the character Intisar from the story “Sister Rose”… I was the same age as Intisar when I left (the Nation). … I just left hoping there was a place for me there. And after 25 years, I still haven’t found one. So after reading “Sister Rose” I cried for a long time…

And I think there are more Muslim women who, if they were more honest, could see themselves in many of these stories. We talk about how we left our community, and the theme of escape constantly comes up in your stories.

AB: As you can see from all the stories, this is just my bias… for example, the story doesn’t work if we don’t see the main character transform. That’s why I try to bring all the characters in these stories as close as possible to the moment of transformation in which they find themselves on the other side; where we see them “before” and “after” a key moment in their lives. “Sister Rose” is a story I wrote for myself. I think of every Muslim woman I know. Our stories are very similar. I say, “This is only for us.” And this is admittedly medicine for (me), because I actually have walked away from myself mosque feeling: “Something is really wrong here.” I began to understand this after I was in college. Like, “Oh, they’re attacking us. This entire world is set up to privilege men and feed women the belief that by covering up, we can only be respected if we behave that way. That’s right! And that’s when my feminist awareness really started to grow.

But at the same time, I was getting messages from friends, people I really respected and loved who were still in those spaces. And only now have I really come to terms with the fact that we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are many genuine, beautiful people that I would like to feel like I still have access to, even though I have gone through a personal evolution in the way I relate to my faith. That’s why for me this story is the most fantastic, otherworldly and truly fictional story in the book. It’s my fantasy to continue to be in community with people I disagree with in some ways.

ZK: I want to touch on something else: In “Cloud Country”, Your upcoming graphic novel, you’re writing: “Being Muslim, I felt like I lived on the margins of this culture.” I felt that way too. How did it feel then and how do you’re feeling now?

AB: I mean, it just felt like a punchline. I felt prefer it was the primary time I saw black Muslims on this culture (character) Oswald Bates from In Living Color. You know (to paraphrase): “First of all, we now have to internalize the flagellation of the matter. You know, ruling out the difficulty of world domination would only mean bypassing, sorry, circumcising my redundant, quote-unquote, digestive tract. Like what? I do not know if you happen to remember this, but on one hand it was funny, but however I felt prefer it echoed loads of representations of black Muslims.

ZK: Yes! It was embarrassing.

AB: It’s as if we were individuals who failed to match Malcolm’s eloquence, that we were unworthy heirs to his legacy, and those idiots who sometimes overused big words in an attempt to appear smarter than us. And then disillusioned women who allow themselves to act like they live in 1st or seventh century Arabia once they could have had all these modern conveniences.

That’s how I felt growing up. It was as if people didn’t understand that we were smart and that we actually carried this heritage inside us. Many of us are working class. I grew up working class. Like we’re touching on that reality, but there is a more dignified way to talk about our experiences as an alternative of just reducing us to these caricatures where we’re just silly, clumsy idiots who will spend the remaining of our lives in prison, ?

ZK: Or the one path to Islam is thru prison.

AB: Yes, and that is how I felt growing up. (But) being on the fringes of culture also had benefits because you’ll be able to see all the pieces more clearly than everyone else. I do not have this pristine, indoctrinated view of America. It also connected me to the world because Muslim communities are so scattered and we now have so few friends that race is usually a barrier. Race might be lowered within the Muslim space in a way that provides access to Indonesia, Malaysia, (the) Middle East, North Africa, , even Eastern Europe.

This is what I meant by being on the margins of culture. We aren’t mainstream, but not being mainstream gives us a novel perspective on what it means to be American.

Zainab (Zee) Khadijah Karim is an assistant professor of English at National-Louis University in Chicago and a author who has published in Ebony/Jet, MadameNoire, and Midnight and Indigo magazines, amongst others. She learned from other Black women writers who helped shape her ideologies, and now explores the facility of anger and feminism in her sub stack Crazy Feminist.

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