Aanisah
A Day in the Life
I have morning classes, which is not fun. I do not like waking up early. But every day I have to wake up to pray whatever time sunrise is that time of the year. At this time, it's a little before seven so I wake up at 6:45, go wash up, and pray. I usually go back to sleep and then wake up right before my next class, trying to get every minute in I can of sleep. I do have to take breaks to make sure I am going to pray at times between classes. Every Friday I try to make it to the mosque to go down to Friday prayer, which includes a sermon. We pray and there's usually socializing afterwards. So that's basically my life now. The way that Islam in general is set up is everything that you do every intention that you have you can have the right intention for it. So Islam is a way of life. It's not just something that I do five times a day or something that I do in a certain month. It's something I do from the way that I shower from what I wear and what I eat and how I eat. There are very specific things so that Islam permeates into everything I do. 
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My name is Aanisah and I am a junior at Purdue studying psychology. It’s always been so interesting to me that I can study what drives action or thought or emotions, whether there’s a neurological basis to that or just the mechanical ways in which the mind works.
I want to work in an area of low socioeconomic status because there are huge deficiencies in communities that really can't afford therapy and can't, or won't, or are shamed of getting help for mental health issues. So I want to research the stigma of seeking help for mental health and then also provide mental health services for people who do not normally get it. The rest of my family is in the Chicagoland area. My mother and my brothers are Muslim, but my grandparents, aunts and cousins are not. My father converted when he got out of the military, before I was born. Then met my mother and introduced her to Islam. I think that my background as a Muslim in America has been unique from a lot of the experiences of people native to West Lafayette, because I went to an Islamic elementary school and high school. I had a Quran class, an Arabic class, and Islamic Studies class. It helped me come to Purdue and be in a setting where I'm not surrounded by Muslims all the time. There’s not a strong peer pressure to conduct myself in an Islamically inappropriate manner, such as by partying or drinking, and I think my Islamic education plays a big role in that. All of my classmates and peers growing up were Muslim, so I didn't really have any alienation growing up as a Muslim. The area that my high school was in was called Little Palestine and most of the people who live there are Arab. Everyone they know is Arab. Their parents are, everyone at school, everyone they interact with is and they have these ideas and concepts that have always been acceptable. For example, it's kind of common for people who are Arab to refer to Black people as abeed, which means slave in Arabic. The first time I heard that, I was baffled because they were referring to a specific person. It was something that was completely foreign to me. And my classmates were like, “Yeah, what about it?” They weren’t trying to be derogatory, but it was something that was normalized so they didn't really see anything wrong with it. There were maybe four or five other Black kids in the entire school and at any given point one of them was my brother. Most of the kids in my class never really interacted with a person who looks like me before, and they would ask things like, “So how are you Muslim if you don't speak Arabic? Why are you so brown?” It was really difficult knowing I am Black but at the same time all of my peers are not. There were differences and I would just kind of swallow when someone would say something that wasn't the most appropriate or the most respectful. I thought maybe I’m overreacting because no one else is having a problem with this. So I would dissociate from it. It was a big realization when I got to Purdue that I didn't have to put up with those comments. The biggest challenge coming to Purdue was college in general: moving out of my house, being away from my friends and family, and getting used to living in a dorm. My first semester I roomed with someone who is Muslim. We had a mutual friend, so we roomed together and that was nice for a while. We did end up having our differences, normal roommate stuff, and so my second year, I roomed with a person randomly. We got along pretty well, but we did have a lot of differences. She is from a small town that does not really have much diversity and so I think she was really only used to being around other White people. There were just a lot of things that she really didn't know about or wasn't familiar with so it was just kind of frustrating for me. And for her. It was never anything blatantly hateful or malicious or disrespectful or anything like that. One thing that really stuck with me was soon after the death of Mike Brown and the country was kind of going crazy, maybe I was on the phone or I mentioned something casually about it and she was like, "Who's Mike Brown?" I was about half an hour early that day to work, because I just had to leave; I wasn't about to have that conversation with her. So it was just being in a position of privilege where she doesn't have to know who Mike Brown is. She doesn’t have to think about that ever in her life if she doesn't want to. And she chooses not to. But, she was also religious so she was very respectful about prayer, and it went both ways. She had times to pray, so that aspect of our relationship was nice. Now I have another roommate who is a friend, and we have similar friend groups, and we're actually working out really well. I work at the preschool, Ben and Maxine Miller Child Development Laboratory School. My family actually owns a daycare in Chicago, so I'm used to being around kids and taking care of kids. I’m also in Haraka Writers in the Black Cultural Center. We write and perform spoken word. I was involved with the Muslim Student Association last year, but now not as much. I really haven't had time to participate in the events and be an active member. I help with the youth group called ICAN, where we do activities, art projects, things of that nature, and have a short talk every meeting about an Islamic moral or principle or something they can apply to their lives. |
"Where Are You From?”
We're in a place where a lot of people are from a lot of different places in the country and in the world so I don't think that is inherently disrespectful or that it is a problem. But it is a problem if I told you my answer and you're still not satisfied because sometimes “Where are you from?” is not really asking where you are from. It means why are you different. Why are you here? Why are you not White? So when constant persistence comes, then it's like, “I just told you I don't know why you are not satisfied with your answer so you could just make something up to make me more ‘exotic’.” So I think it's just where the person is coming from when they ask that. If you are just genuinely trying to get to know someone, then there's nothing wrong with that. But you have to check your intentions and why you are asking.
We're in a place where a lot of people are from a lot of different places in the country and in the world so I don't think that is inherently disrespectful or that it is a problem. But it is a problem if I told you my answer and you're still not satisfied because sometimes “Where are you from?” is not really asking where you are from. It means why are you different. Why are you here? Why are you not White? So when constant persistence comes, then it's like, “I just told you I don't know why you are not satisfied with your answer so you could just make something up to make me more ‘exotic’.” So I think it's just where the person is coming from when they ask that. If you are just genuinely trying to get to know someone, then there's nothing wrong with that. But you have to check your intentions and why you are asking.
When I Speak Out
A couple weeks ago, the Purdue Students for Life group printed out fliers that said, "Hands up, don't abort" with a silhouette of a Black woman who was pregnant, relating police brutality and four hundred years of oppression to someone deciding not to complete a pregnancy. They also chalked the sidewalk outside the Black Cultural Center with “The most dangerous place is the womb,” stats about how many Black women get abortions, and “All lives matter” without starting any dialogue about the Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously all lives matter, but if you know anything about Black Lives Matter, you would not write that on the ground in front of the Black Cultural Center without talking to anyone about it. That to me was the biggest display of ignorance regarding anything about the climate in our country and it was really hurtful to see. So I removed the poster from the board and I put a status on Facebook about what happened. Several people from local newspapers contacted me and I went and answered their questions. I have so many other things to be doing than spending time thinking about this hateful group that's doing these things; I have exams to be taking and poems to be writing.
When I do speak out about abortion rights, it seems like people do not expect that to come from me. They kind of assume that I would be more conservative, whatever that means, or adhere to certain values that they associate with conservativeness because I wear a headscarf and because I am a Muslim. But I just want people to know that it doesn't negate my faith. That's the beauty of Islam; it addresses everything. It addresses politics. It addresses economics. It addresses human rights. It addresses everything. You can run an entire society explicitly on Islam. The majority of Islamic scholars is of the opinion that abortion is permissible up until four months. Secularly speaking, I don't understand why anyone would think that they have the right to tell anyone else to do with their body. You can't speak for these people. You can’t speak to their situations. You don’t know what they've been through, or what they are going to go through. You don't know why they chose to do this, and at the end of the day, it does not matter. Are you going to raise their baby? Are you going to give birth to their baby? I feel that if you do have a problem with abortion, consider a realistic goal, like reducing the number of abortions. You could actually do things that are shown to reduce the number of abortions, like advocating for sex education that is factually based and medically accurate and also having available contraceptives to people. At the end of the day, the pro-life agenda is just trying to police women, women's sexuality, and women's bodies, and there's no realistic goal to that.
I go back to how Islam is flexible enough to apply to anyone of any race, any class, any social status, from any culture or part of the world. Whether you are poor or rich or Black or White, you can practice Islam properly. There is a way. It's flexible and broad enough to apply to every single human who exists in this world. There are things that people do, like drinking, that is a part of their culture, that you can’t do. But at the end of the day, you are not going to be forced to compromise or downplay your identity for one or the other as far as Islam goes. And that's beautiful to me because there are Muslims on every continent and in every context. So I can practice my life as a person who is
pro-Black and a person who does advocate for social justice in every context while completely adhering to Islam, so there's really no difference.
A couple weeks ago, the Purdue Students for Life group printed out fliers that said, "Hands up, don't abort" with a silhouette of a Black woman who was pregnant, relating police brutality and four hundred years of oppression to someone deciding not to complete a pregnancy. They also chalked the sidewalk outside the Black Cultural Center with “The most dangerous place is the womb,” stats about how many Black women get abortions, and “All lives matter” without starting any dialogue about the Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously all lives matter, but if you know anything about Black Lives Matter, you would not write that on the ground in front of the Black Cultural Center without talking to anyone about it. That to me was the biggest display of ignorance regarding anything about the climate in our country and it was really hurtful to see. So I removed the poster from the board and I put a status on Facebook about what happened. Several people from local newspapers contacted me and I went and answered their questions. I have so many other things to be doing than spending time thinking about this hateful group that's doing these things; I have exams to be taking and poems to be writing.
When I do speak out about abortion rights, it seems like people do not expect that to come from me. They kind of assume that I would be more conservative, whatever that means, or adhere to certain values that they associate with conservativeness because I wear a headscarf and because I am a Muslim. But I just want people to know that it doesn't negate my faith. That's the beauty of Islam; it addresses everything. It addresses politics. It addresses economics. It addresses human rights. It addresses everything. You can run an entire society explicitly on Islam. The majority of Islamic scholars is of the opinion that abortion is permissible up until four months. Secularly speaking, I don't understand why anyone would think that they have the right to tell anyone else to do with their body. You can't speak for these people. You can’t speak to their situations. You don’t know what they've been through, or what they are going to go through. You don't know why they chose to do this, and at the end of the day, it does not matter. Are you going to raise their baby? Are you going to give birth to their baby? I feel that if you do have a problem with abortion, consider a realistic goal, like reducing the number of abortions. You could actually do things that are shown to reduce the number of abortions, like advocating for sex education that is factually based and medically accurate and also having available contraceptives to people. At the end of the day, the pro-life agenda is just trying to police women, women's sexuality, and women's bodies, and there's no realistic goal to that.
I go back to how Islam is flexible enough to apply to anyone of any race, any class, any social status, from any culture or part of the world. Whether you are poor or rich or Black or White, you can practice Islam properly. There is a way. It's flexible and broad enough to apply to every single human who exists in this world. There are things that people do, like drinking, that is a part of their culture, that you can’t do. But at the end of the day, you are not going to be forced to compromise or downplay your identity for one or the other as far as Islam goes. And that's beautiful to me because there are Muslims on every continent and in every context. So I can practice my life as a person who is
pro-Black and a person who does advocate for social justice in every context while completely adhering to Islam, so there's really no difference.
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Spoken Word Poem
To those of you confounded by my simultaneously Blackness and Muslimness rest assured I am both one hundred percent Black and one hundred percent Muslim. So when you ask me where I’m from and I tell you the south side of Chicago please don't repeat the question emphasizing the word from as if I was mistaken or further clarify by revising your inquiry to, "No, where are your people from?" "Um, America," I respond a bit bewildered But you keep persisting. But I have no idea prior to the slave ship an unspecified region of West Africa I suppose. But understand that every part of me from the follicles of my hair to the soles of my feet to my quest for knowledge of self and my journey to decolonize my mind is undeniable and irrevocably Black. And the scarf on my head and declaration of La il laha il Allah does nothing to negate that. Likewise every part of me from my agreement to rendez vous with my lord five times a day to the way my heart swells when I read his word and my devotion to following the footsteps of his messenger is undeniably and irrevocably Muslim. So there is no confound. No error. No trade off. I am a Black Muslim and a Muslim Black. Hopefully I have eliminated any confusion about that. |
