Shortly after college, I was chatting with colleagues before our weekly meeting. “It’s Ramadan, right?” my colleague asked. “Are you fasting?”
I became ashamed. I shook my head no. I became aware of the weird silence that followed – she said nothing. I made a joke out of it, “Yeah, I’m the worst Muslim ever.” I joked that I break all the rules, I do not cover my hair, I drink alcohol, my partner is a woman, and I even break the one rule all my culturally Muslim friends follow – I eat pork. She laughed, and I was relieved – I was aware that people have assumptions about Muslim people and were often comparing you to them.
Later that night, I called my best friend to tell her about this interaction, knowing that something about it felt off to me. I told her that I wished I had not joked in that way. It felt like I was trying to explain why I was not doing what I was “supposed” to. I ranted to her and said there are so many ways that we relate to the faith of our community and family – and it does not always look like “traditional” acts of piety.
“Islam is the compass in which I orient my spirituality,” she says. “I don’t think it’s literally like we learned in mosque Sunday school, but I will say my prayers if I am scared or nervous since they are the only words I have for the divine. I don’t think I really believe in ‘God,’ though.”
Her words rang in my head for years after that.
My best friend’s statement of her relationship to her heritage as a Muslim woman changed mine forever. Up until that point, I felt that I could not really identify as Muslim since I was “the worst Muslim ever” and had taken off the hijab I wore out of familiarity. I realized I was relating to my heritage in terms of what my community internally used to judge women for or in terms of what people of other backgrounds assumed Muslims were like. I realized that when I was not being judged, specifically in relationship with my best friend, I was comfortable and happy to call myself Muslim – it represented the foods, holidays, clothing, scents, and superstitions of my family. I enjoyed reading Islamic history from a place of loving history, I enjoyed reading critiques of religious texts, and the different ways people tried to grapple with contradictions or the dissonance between a spiritual ideal and reality.
My friend’s words gave me the language to explain my relationship to my heritage as a Muslim woman. My Muslim heritage is a part of me, and I am not defined by stereotypes that others outside me hold. I am a Muslim woman because I say it is. Like my best friend, it is the compass I am familiar with to navigate things bigger than us. I enjoy fasting from negative behaviors during Ramadan – I do not drink, I abstain from negativity, and donate more because of this compass. I do not know whether I believe or not, but I know that I believe in supporting others, self-improvement, and service to community. I am able to connect these values to my Muslim heritage.
This year, 2022, a new colleague at my job asked me if I was fasting. This time I was not ashamed – I told her I was not. She asked why not – I shared that my connection to my faith is mostly cultural and that I had not fasted in years. For the first time, I felt no shame.
