COMMENTARY: The Tough Choices Facing a Liberal Muslim Woman in New York City

c. 2005 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ Sometimes a city can decide your norms. I went into a shop on Broadway and bought a black knit top, cut slightly low in the front. It wasn’t risque enough to be on the television series “Sex and the City,” but it made me blush. I wouldn’t […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ Sometimes a city can decide your norms.

I went into a shop on Broadway and bought a black knit top, cut slightly low in the front. It wasn’t risque enough to be on the television series “Sex and the City,” but it made me blush. I wouldn’t have been able to wear it in Pakistan, yet no one in Manhattan gave it a repeat glance.


How far can I go? It’s a question I have been asking myself repeatedly since I arrived in New York City in August. I’m 23, and a practicing Muslim, which makes some decisions easy to make. Pork is off-limits, as is getting drunk, making out or dressing immodestly. Other areas are more gray _ should I eat only halal (food slaughtered in a specific manner)? Is it OK for me to hang out with friends in a bar? Can I return a hug from a male friend?

I don’t know if there are any right answers to these questions. The choice I’ve made is to take the middle road. I stay away from vodka but not from the occasional sip. I buy the scoop-neck T but not the halter top. I observe Ramadan but not ardently. All this makes sense to me but baffles conservative Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

But I know I’m not the only one in this quandary. Liberal Muslims have often been described as the silent majority. I think of them as the lonely crowd: conservative Muslims meet regularly in mosques, but liberal Muslims tend to shy away from each other. They avert their gazes at bars and turn their backs on each other on the dance floor, always afraid that someone will pass judgment on them.

A few days ago, a colleague asked me if I identified myself as a Muslim.

“How else do you expect me to identify myself?” I responded, shocked and dismayed.

“As an agnostic,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you don’t seem to practice Islam.”

This, then, is the quandary many liberal Muslims are thrust into. We don’t just have to defend Islam, we are forced to defend our affiliation with the faith too _ sometimes from both sides.

Often, even simple invitations can turn into comical situations when people don’t realize where I’m coming from. Almost every weekend, I am asked to join friends at bars. I willingly go along but opt for orange juice over the more choice variety of beers. American men can never understand why I am saying no when asked out on a date. I try telling them that as a Muslim woman, I am expected to think of men only as professional colleagues or family members.

“So Muslims can’t date but they can wear jeans?” asked one man.

Despite all the confusions, I have been having a much easier time in Manhattan than I did in Pakistan. I was born into a somewhat conservative Muslim family in which young women get married to men their parents select and aren’t allowed to wear jeans once they turn 16. In Pakistan, my family, my teachers, my colleagues and society at large would all pass judgment on me. In New York City, I am the only one passing judgment on myself.

America is in the throes of an emerging Muslim population. It’s not rare to come across people who are far more ardent followers of Islam than I am.


They rarely hesitate to tell me what they think of me.

“You should pray more often,” chastised a Muslim I recently interviewed.

Maybe I should and maybe I will go to heaven if I do so, but I don’t want to change my habits. At least not today.

(OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

I sometimes feel liberal Muslims are in a more difficult situation than my more religious Muslim colleagues. Not realizing I’m a Muslim, some Americans have voiced Islamophobic sentiments to me at length.

A few weeks ago I was interviewing a prominent Roman Catholic priest, the author of numerous books. He said he hoped Islam never became as popular as Christianity.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it teaches violence,” he said.

I’ve come across such statements time and again as I take to the streets to report the stories I am assigned while pursuing a journalism degree at Columbia University. Each time the conversation has driven me to tears as I try to rationalize the venom that exists against Islam in America. I wonder if I would have been subjected to all this if I looked more like a Muslim.

(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)

What bothers me the most is that when I tell non-Muslims I’m a Muslim, I am often put in the same category as Islamic militants. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism scares me the same way it scares Americans. I worry about extremists harming my sister and mother just like they worry about their relatives.

While Americans are familiar with Islamic fundamentalists, liberal Muslims remain strangers to them. This is why the most common question put to me is:


“So what kind of a Muslim are you?”

I’m still trying to figure this one out for myself.

MO/PH RNS END

(Ayesha J. Akram is a student at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism. She has been published in BBC Online, The Daily News, Himal South Asia, Reader’s Digest and various dailies and weeklies in Pakistan.)

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