Nadia
A Day in the Life
My days start not too early. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I try to wake up and work out. I love breakfast, so I always eat and go over what I need that day. Arabic is my first class of the day. After Arabic, I have about an hour or two before my management and statistics class. I don't walk back to the residential campus for lunch. Then usually I'll have meetings for my clubs: Purdue 360, Krannert Ambassadors, Society of Minority Managers. I go to Study Tables, so I’m done around 8:00 pm. I'll come back, eat dinner, and avoid my room, I’ll get stuff done. Tuesdays are about the same. There might be some meetings and I'll go to work till 5 PM. I work at the Krannert Professional Development Center. If you ask my friends, they'll say I'm very busy, but I always make time for dinner. I do try to make time for my friends. My circle is pretty small, but they are very important to me, so I always try to keep up with them. If they don't see me, at least I'm talking to them. I try to call my parents every so often, and my brother at school, and my sisters. It's hard, because I'll make a list of what I need to do, and I'll forget if I don't add it to my list. Balancing sleep, school, and social life. I try my best to pray. Me and prayer is a struggle. I will have those days where I'm up, and "Okay, I'm up, I have the energy, I'm not going back to sleep, so I'm going to go pray." Sometimes I'll pray the afternoon and evening prayer times, or I'll do a voluntary fast and pray at that time, but I can't remember the last time where I had a consistent three weeks of praying every day consistently. It's something I'm definitely trying to improve and make time for. Next semester, I made sure my classes are scheduled so that I can go to Jumu'ah prayer every Friday. I knew I wanted to have a time where at least I know I'm praying and seeing all the people that I like to see. Praying and reading the Qur’an grounds me I have the Muslim app on my phone, and it'll tell me the times to pray. I get a verse a day. I try to play those in the morning, instead of putting on my music. So far, it's hard, but I try my best |
My name is Nadia. I'm 20 years old, from Merrillville, Indiana originally. I'm a sophomore here at Purdue in the Krannert School of Management, studying Strategy and Organizational Management, with a concentration in analytical consulting and finance. I'm mostly interested in human resources, and, within that, human capital consulting. I see myself, down the line, doing a lot of consulting or human resources work in regards to diversity in the workplace. Something I could see myself doing is opening a staffing firm that would put
underrepresented minorities into these bigger corporate firms, like a feeder, or somebody that could help underrepresented minorities be prepared for the corporate world, or something like that. Growing up, I never really knew what I wanted to do. I love psychology, the way people think. I always saw myself leading something. During my junior year, I was telling people I was going to major in engineering, but after sitting through some science classes, I realized that engineering was definitely not for me. I really could not do science, and calculus was horrible for me, but what I was really good at was liberal arts and analyzing texts. Those subjects were things I enjoyed more. I was reading a fashion magazine, and they had a little spread about the top ten careers for women: pharmacist, engineer, CEO, and then number six was human resource manager. I was like, "What is that?" I Googled it, saw the description, and it seemed to me like a little mix of sociology and psychology, with business knowledge, and bringing that all together to run a company. I'm finding out now that organizational behavior and human resources studies pull in anthropology, psychology, sociology. I'm like, "I love all those subjects!" Business, for me, I never really thought about it, but I was like, "I think I could be a business major." That was my thing. It was more my ability to be able to do a career where I knew for a fact I would have a job after graduating, but also combine in aspects that I actually enjoyed a lot. I never even considered accounting. I was like, "Nope." Finance, I'm looking at it just because of some technical knowledge that I could use to my advantage, but other than that, it's just me doing a liberal arts business major. I really want to travel the world, and human resource managers get to deal with people from all different types of countries. Especially consulting, they travel all the time. I knew that after graduating, that would just be the dream job, for at least a couple of years, until I get my MBA and do something else. That was the main thing. It's funny because my parents were like, "We always thought you were just going to major in creative writing or psychology or something. We didn't expect you to go that route." I was like, "You know, me either, but so far it's going well." I had an internship after my freshman year, with GE Aviation, which was a pretty big company for a freshman to get. This summer I'll be interning with Accenture Consulting in Chicago. My parents love that because when I was in GE, I was in Cincinnati, and they hated the distance. This time I just have to go get on a train, commute for like an hour, and then I'll be in Chicago. I love Chicago. I'm really excited for the summer, and to learn more. Who knows what the future will hold? 
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Family
I identify as Black, but within that, I identify as African-American and Jamaican. My father is African-American. He grew up in Indianapolis and lived in Hammond, Indiana after his mother remarried. Hammond is where he finished his formative years. He really loves Indiana. My mom is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants that immigrated to England in the sixties or fifties. She was the last of seven kids that my grandma had, and so she has this weird conundrum where she identifies as Jamaican, but she grew up very much English. It's always funny when I tell people that I have a British mother, they assume that my mother is white, and I'm biracial, but no.
My parents met in Saudi Arabia. My dad was in the Air Force. He was going to be an electrical engineer, but he didn't finish college. He went into the Air Force, so he was able to work on planes. He got a job working on planes in Saudi Arabia. My mother was a nurse. In England, I'm pretty sure schooling ends when you're sixteen, and you can decide to continue or do a trade. My mom left the house when she was sixteen to do nursing school. From there she was this independent woman. She grew up pretty poor, in a big family of six, and they were immigrants, so it was hard for them. She has a lot of stories about hand-me-downs and issues with food and things like that, but she knew that, in England, they pay for you to go to nursing school, so she was able to do that and travel. So she went to Saudi Arabia. My parents both lived in Riyadh, the capital, on a Western base and met through mutual friends. They both grew up Christian, and after they met and started dating, they converted to Islam together and lived in Saudi Arabia for a while. I was born in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, and then went back to Hammond, because my father wanted me to grow up around his mother. It the first time to America for both my mother and me.
Growing up, I didn’t really have any issues. If I told teachers, "I'm Muslim. I don't celebrate Christmas. Instead, my family likes to celebrate Kwanzaa. Why isn't that on the calendar?" Then, they'd put it on the calendar. In seventh grade, we had discussions about Islam in class. My teacher would look at me and ask me, "Can you confirm? Does that sound right?" I'd be like, "Yeah, yes we do that." Since I grew up with a different perspective of Islam, I would also say, "Other people also believe this as well," or, "Not everything is as cut and dry as that." Everybody was really interested, and asked me a lot more questions. I think I was able to help people understand it better, and they see me and that I'm always open, always doing stuff. I wasn't meek or oppressed, or anything like that, so they got to see what we were talking about, humanizing that aspect. My teachers thought I was a big help, and I'm always like happy to be a help to people.
I identify as Black, but within that, I identify as African-American and Jamaican. My father is African-American. He grew up in Indianapolis and lived in Hammond, Indiana after his mother remarried. Hammond is where he finished his formative years. He really loves Indiana. My mom is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants that immigrated to England in the sixties or fifties. She was the last of seven kids that my grandma had, and so she has this weird conundrum where she identifies as Jamaican, but she grew up very much English. It's always funny when I tell people that I have a British mother, they assume that my mother is white, and I'm biracial, but no.
My parents met in Saudi Arabia. My dad was in the Air Force. He was going to be an electrical engineer, but he didn't finish college. He went into the Air Force, so he was able to work on planes. He got a job working on planes in Saudi Arabia. My mother was a nurse. In England, I'm pretty sure schooling ends when you're sixteen, and you can decide to continue or do a trade. My mom left the house when she was sixteen to do nursing school. From there she was this independent woman. She grew up pretty poor, in a big family of six, and they were immigrants, so it was hard for them. She has a lot of stories about hand-me-downs and issues with food and things like that, but she knew that, in England, they pay for you to go to nursing school, so she was able to do that and travel. So she went to Saudi Arabia. My parents both lived in Riyadh, the capital, on a Western base and met through mutual friends. They both grew up Christian, and after they met and started dating, they converted to Islam together and lived in Saudi Arabia for a while. I was born in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, and then went back to Hammond, because my father wanted me to grow up around his mother. It the first time to America for both my mother and me.
Growing up, I didn’t really have any issues. If I told teachers, "I'm Muslim. I don't celebrate Christmas. Instead, my family likes to celebrate Kwanzaa. Why isn't that on the calendar?" Then, they'd put it on the calendar. In seventh grade, we had discussions about Islam in class. My teacher would look at me and ask me, "Can you confirm? Does that sound right?" I'd be like, "Yeah, yes we do that." Since I grew up with a different perspective of Islam, I would also say, "Other people also believe this as well," or, "Not everything is as cut and dry as that." Everybody was really interested, and asked me a lot more questions. I think I was able to help people understand it better, and they see me and that I'm always open, always doing stuff. I wasn't meek or oppressed, or anything like that, so they got to see what we were talking about, humanizing that aspect. My teachers thought I was a big help, and I'm always like happy to be a help to people.
Being Muslim
I was raised in the Nation of Islam. The mosques of the Nation of Islam are similar in style to a church, but teaching you something totally different. Lots of the Black people that are in there are converting from Christianity, so I think the setup is comfortable. You still see those things that you're used to in the Black church, but it is a totally different religion. In the Nation of Islam, they do call on some parts of the Bible, in addition to the Qur'an, to make their lectures, which I always thought was interesting. It focuses on using Islam to teach Black people that there is more to this experience and you're not descendants of slaves. We talk about how all our ancestors were slaves, but slavery was a condition. It wasn't our identity, and there was so much more to that, even before then. There were Africans that had been in America before Columbus was there. That's why he had some African translators with him on the ships, because they knew how to speak to the Native Americans that were there. It's a rich history. Most of the Africans to first come were Muslim, like the Moors, or whatever. There's more to it than that. For example, in Islam, there should be no racism. There is no distinction between races. It's all about what's inside your heart, and how you do your actions, and this is what the Nation of Islam teaches. It addresses any ills that may be affecting the community: how Black men see Black women, how those interactions are, how the family is structured, how we interact with each other as a community, and how we support our community economically. Those are some of the things they teach about, in addition to Islam. Nowadays, they are teaching us more about praying in Arabic and things like that. Those were things they didn't really teach so much, which got a lot of flak from other Muslims, I think. I don't know what it is, but every time I bring up the Nation of Islam to Sunni Muslims or Shiite Muslims here, even here, in general, I get like a "Huh" or an "Oh, really?" I don't think it's seen as a legitimate expression of Islam, just because of its structure. That is something that more Black Muslims are talking about. You hardly see our expression of Islam as legitimate, and that's probably why you don't see that many Black people going to your masjids. Personally, for me, I'm not one to say, "Oh, I follow the Nation of Islam, oh, I'm a Sunni," or things like that. I don't define being Muslim that way. There are things I was taught in the Nation of Islam that I definitely agree with, and that I stay true to. But, there are things that I definitely don’t agree with. Later in life, I don't know if I see myself going regularly and volunteering. Maybe I do. I don't know at this point. I don't identify, "I'm in the Nation of Islam, it's totally different from you." I'm Muslim, first and foremost. First and only. I don't try to put those extra labels. Those labels just divide people within Islam, and we're already divided as it is, and so there's no need to further that. My parents are okay with me saying that, obviously, because they know my intentions. They know me. They know I'm not saying that out of embarrassment, or anything. It's just me not wanting to fully identify with one aspect. It's taught me a lot about my experiences as a Black person, in a way that I don't think I'll hear if I go to the Northwest Indiana Islamic Center, just because there is more of a focus on South Asian or Arab issues than African or African-American issues. Obviously, I want to go learn about Palestine or Syria, but I wish they would more encompass the entire Muslim experience. I go to different things to get what I need out of my life. October was the twentieth anniversary of the Million Man March. My parents and I went. We took a bus to D.C. together over a weekend, over fall break, which was perfect. We went to hear Louis Farrakhan speak. The discussion was focused on African-Americans pulling their resources together for a more stable economic system by buying more Black-owned things and opening our own restaurants, stores, schools, things like that. Those are the things I'm interested in. I’m pretty grateful to my parents for giving me that experience. I see myself, if I do well in the corporate world, I opening my own company in the future, just because I know me helping would not come from me working for somebody for the rest of my life. It would have to be me owning something, using my own resources. I understand that it'll be up to me to use my resources in the future, if I have resources, hopefully I do, to give back, and make sure I can open the door a bit wider for somebody else to come in. That's what the Nation of Islam taught me. I never see anything wrong about my experience. I think more people should take the Nation of Islam seriously, as a legitimate expression of Islam, because it is. We say we are Muslims, so we are Muslims. We believe in Allah, and all the prophets, and those are the requirements set forth in the Qur'an. I wish people would see it as more legitimate. I feel like diversity in Islam is the point. There should be people that see things differently than you. It's how you grow, from learning and discussing. The Golden Age of Islam happened because people disagreed with people, and they would have debates, and they would come together with forums. That's how discoveries were made, and things were created and invented. That's so important. I think it's important to let these expressions, as long as they're not hurting anybody, of course, be welcomed into the fold. I don't tell a lot of people that I am in the Nation of Islam. If I do, I bring it up at the Saturday Fajr meetings, if I'm talking about representation in Islam or something. In the greater group of MSA, I didn't know how that would be taken, so I didn't tell people that. Something I do bring up is that my roommate and one of my best friends both also grew up in the Nation of Islam. I've told my other Muslim friends that I see at my other clubs that my roommate is Muslim and I have another friend who's Muslim, and they're like, "Oh, we never see them." It's because my friends say they don't feel comfortable in those spaces. It's not through any interaction they've had with those people. It's just because they know how Nation of Islam is seen, so they don't want to put themselves in a situation where they might have to explain themselves. I'm pretty sure there is a big population of Black Muslims on this campus that probably don't ever go near the MSA or the Islamic Center here, just because of those reasons. I brought that up at a Fajr function here, and they were just like, "We never really thought about that. It's good that you're here talking about it." They told me to bring my friends over to meet them, and I have brought it up to them, but there is still a reluctance there. Hopefully one day we can do something with that. We should be a part of how Islam is shaped, because many of the first Muslims that came to America came on slave ships. That was just how it was. African-American Muslims should make sure that they have a voice in the way that Islam is trying to move forward in America, because we were here. It was a big struggle, and some of them may have lost their religion and languages, but I think we should definitely have a bigger stake in it, just because we were here first. Not like, "We were here first," but we WERE here first! Womanism
Knowing that many feminists attribute the meek and oppressive stereotype to Muslim women definitely turned me off of feminism for a while. Then I discovered womanism, which was another term for feminism but more geared toward Black women or women of color. Nowadays, there are more pieces calling out feminists for only looking at one type of women. Feminism's also the way I look at things. In Islam, it's not really a thing for women to change their last name after they get married. In some tribes, it was like you're giving up your father's tribe. So it was kind of like, "You're giving up your name? It's your name!" I've always told people, "I'm not changing my last name." If anybody asks, I'll be like, "It's Islamic. It's something we don't do." This has been a bit of contention between me and my mother. She changed her last name. I've told her I'm not going to change it, and she's just like, "Oh, make sure you're not coming off too strong with the things you want." She thinks I'm going to scare somebody away. Those things I've always tried to find, because I think Islam wasn't revolutionary as a religion. Monotheism wasn't new at that time. What was new was the social rights given to women, or not owning slaves. It was more of a social shift, cultural shift, that Islam was bringing to that area that was totally different. It changed how people saw people. That's what I tell people all the time. We have an obligation to change things that we see as wrong, because that's what the prophet Muhammad did. That's what pretty much the prophets did, through all time, whether it was Jesus, Abraham, or Moses. That's definitely something that's always influenced me, because I know, if I'm doing these things, it's because I'm obligated, because I'm at this position, so I should be able to be the person who tries to shift the way people think, or help people that are less fortunate, or are oppressed in some way. When Muslims do things, they'll do water drives for Flint, or rallies or protests and things like that. I love that. Whenever I do these things, I get really passionate about it. I feel closer to God that way, too, because I know that as long as I'm fighting for people that get put down, I think at some point, hopefully, God will be pleased with me in that way. That does drive a lot of what I do. I always try to tell people, "Islam is the religion of people that are peaceful, but also change things." We should be more changers. |
Hair and Hijab
One thing that my parents and I don't see head-to-head on is my hair. Towards the end of freshman year, I started wearing my hair curly, or natural as it's called. Whenever I'd go home, my mom would make appointments for me to get it straightened. Every time I came home, my parents were just like, "What are you going to do with your hair when you try to get these internships? What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" Over the summer in Cincinnati, I cut it even more and then dyed it. They didn't like it, but they grew to like it after they noticed that I know what I'm doing with hair. I told them, "We're not going to talk about my hair anymore." They try to bring it up, but I don't let that conversation happen. They realize I'm getting annoyed about it, and they stop. But my dad always still asks if I'm going to a big meeting. Over spring break when I went to Chicago to meet some people that I might be working with over the summer, my dad was very worried about my hair, and how it looked, and was it dry. "Are you going to braid it? Are you going to put it down? What are you going to do?" I realize this is them making sure that there's nothing holding me back. Nowadays you see more Black women with natural hair on TV, but there's still a stigma in corporate America that natural hair, curly hair, is not professional enough for that setting. I hear it a lot. I always hear about young girls in schools that are getting sent home for having their hair up in natural poofs, or whatever. It's really weird. It's a concern. Even though I do get annoyed that my parents are trying to have so much control over this aspect of my appearance, it is them showing their concern for me. It is them making sure that nobody looks at me and sees a Black girl with an afro, and instead sees somebody who can be a great addition to their company. When I started wearing the hijab in the eleventh grade of high school, it was my dad that suggested that I stop wearing it, at first. I was going to a One Direction concert with my friend. We were going to go to Chicago, and I had a cute outfit paired up with my hijab. My dad was really worried about my safety, in terms of being there with a hijab. I was like, "Dad, it's fine. It's just me. I'm wearing my hijab. It's between me and Allah. It's me." I went back, and he was just like, "Okay." Then, over the summer before my senior year, I was sitting with him eating breakfast, and I had been thinking of taking it off, so I asked him, “What do you think of me wearing hijab lately?” He was like, "Maybe you should, not wear it anymore." I was surprised that he told me that straight up. I was going through a lot of thoughts still, too, about my hijab, and why was I wearing it. He was like, "I'm definitely not against it, obviously, but you're going out in the world, people are going to be looking at you, and I hate to see it, but there are stigmas attached to it." His was mostly a safety concern, even though he knows that I live quite modestly throughout my life, in terms of the way I dress and the way I carry myself in public. He was like, "For me, the safety's a big issue, and if you're worried about modesty, you're already a pretty good girl on that term. Maybe you should just take it off and think about it when you're older and more established in what you're doing in your life." It was a very gentle way that he told it to me. On top of that, my doesn't wear hijab. She was like, "You see the way I dress. You see the way I act in public. I carry myself modestly." When we go out, she's always wearing a cardigan. She's always kept it pretty modest. That was her justification. She's like, "I already live a very modest life, myself. I would never expect you to be forced to do it." That was on top of my father’s concern for my safety. I was thinking about that too, because I was looking at people having different interactions that they wouldn't have had, because I was wearing it. I still don't know the answers to those questions myself. I was like, "Maybe I should just not wear it anymore." I took it off. I only started wearing it at the beginning of eleventh grade, so I did wear it for a year, and then senior year I just didn't wear it anymore. People asked some questions about it, but I really tried not to go into those conversations. I'm very anxious about how I seem in public, and how people see me. Wearing hijab definitely took a lot of strength for me, to have more confidence and less social anxiety over it. It was hard. I got a lot of questions about things that I normally wouldn't get asked, just because I was wearing it. People would either tell me things about things they've observed about Islam and Muslims that they would never really tell me, and I'm just like, "I don't know why I'm your representative of Islam at this school." That grated on me too. I really just want to blend in. I've never not been thinking about how people are seeing me. Hopefully, in the future, how people see me won't matter as much to me anymore, and if I want to wear a scarf out, I'll just wear it. I think if I would wear it, maybe I would wear it one day and I wouldn't wear it the next day, and it'd be something I just put on. I've been thinking about it. Right now, I take my parents' advice to heart. It definitely doesn't come from a place of strength, which is a bit disappointing, but there's a lot to think about. Nowadays I do hear stories about women that are like, "You're not going to see me take off my hijab just because all these things are happening." I find those women to be very strong. But me? I just can't. When I wore hijab, I wasn't worried about showing my hair, or about straightening it, or putting a weave in it. That gave me a bit of relief, and I really enjoyed that aspect. It was funny, because it was kind of damned if I do, damned if I don't. I liked the fact that I would do my hair, and put it up, and put a scarf over it. I didn't have to worry about my edges (because in the Black community they worry about edges. Are the edges of my hair looking nice? Were they gelled down?) Do I look good to other people? It took that away, which I liked, but still added on another aspect. My parents were worried about my hair, and how people would see it, but I've never heard anyone tell me that my hair is unprofessional. When I wear it curly, people really like it. I personally haven't had anybody ask me questions about my hair. I think nowadays, people are trying to keep that topic as PC as possible in the office, so they might not bring it up. I give thanks to the visibility, and this is why media's so important. I'm noticing a lot more Black women with curly hair in commercials. It's not really Black women with really thick afros. It's more like biracial women with a bit more manageable curly hair, but it's still natural hair, and it's attached to a Black person. Now the natural hair care industry is just getting bigger, like they're trying to accommodate. I think there is a bit of a shift, on the forefront, to accept it, but there's still those stories of girls in schools getting kicked out of the class. I just haven't personally experienced anyone saying anything. Going back to not wearing the hijab, some people see me as a regular Black American student on campus. The Muslim part doesn't come out too much. If I ever have experiences that's a microaggression, nine times out of ten it's because I'm Black, not because I'm Muslim. I try to hang out with a bit more Muslim students day-to-day, or people that wouldn't put me in situations where I'd have to do something that I know isn't right. Personally, for me, drinking and drugs is definitely not allowed. If I'm with friends, I want to make sure they're the type of friends where they're not going to make me go somewhere where that'll be something that someone's going to try to force me to do. That affects how I interact with people. I'm always looking at their actions as well. On top of that, the clothes I wear are definitely affected by my religion. I make sure I'm always covered. Sometimes I'll wear a skirt. I don't wear short skirts or shorts or anything. Most of the time if I'm wearing a dress, I usually wear tights. I'm trying to do this thing where I'm not cursing as much in public, for the modesty aspect. I'm trying to clean my mouth. Being kind to strangers, or always being somebody that will hold the door open for somebody, and will help somebody out if I feel that somebody that I’m walking past needs help. Holding myself to a certain degree in terms of respect and kindness. That definitely comes out of the fact that in the Qur'an, Muslims are supposed to be the people that are always nice, always spreading peace, saying peace to people, and things like that. It's always weird for me, saying "Al salaam alaikum" to a woman wearing a hijab, because I don't know if they think I'm saying it as a Muslim, or as somebody that learned the word and just wanted to try it out, you know what I mean? It's something that a lot of other non-hijabis talk about, too, in terms of people not maybe knowing that they're Muslim unless you're in a setting where everybody else is. So sometimes I do hold back from saying it, just because I don't know if they think I'm saying it as a Muslim or just as somebody just saying it. I might not get salaams back, is usually what happens, so I'm like, "Maybe I should just stop saying it." I think I might try to say that more. That's pretty much it. More so than being Muslim American, Black American affects my day-to-day a bit more, and I think that's because I'm not physically Muslim. The intersections of gender, religion, and race definitely come into play a lot in my life, and some more than others have an effect on me, I would say. Most of my day-to-day decisions do come from Islam, definitely, but it's me being conscious of my race on campus. 
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Grandma
My grandma passed away in 2013, but she was basically the only grandparent I grew close to. My mother's parents died pretty soon after I was born. My grandfather and my grandmother were divorced. My grandmother remarried, and my grandfather lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If we ever went there, it was a set weekend just because of how long it took to come there and back. Even to this day, I still don't have that many conversations with him, and I really want to change that, before I'm grandparent-less.
She was somebody that was very supportive of everything I did. She was probably the proudest person of all the things I was doing and accomplishing. She was so happy to see that there was something that I was doing. She was really worried, in terms of people going up and reaching their full potential, because some of her kids had kids young, or maybe they didn't finish college. I think she saw the potential in me to go off and really do something big.
Growing up, my grandma didn't know too much about the impoverished experience. Her parents worked for this white family that were pretty nice to them. She would tell me the story about how she would get the woman's daughter's coats after the daughter grew out of them, and these were pretty expensive coats, like fur coats. She was the youngest. She had two older brothers. That was her experience.
My grandma was really into genealogy, so she would always try to track her side of the family. Her side of the family's actually pretty interesting. I was going through some picture books, and it looks like they're pretty affluent, Black people who had degrees or diplomas. They might have been doctors, or something like that. I was always really interested. I was like, "Who are these people?" That's the experience she comes from. She really wanted us to be able to support ourselves, so she was always supportive of me going to school, picking the business major. It was really sad for me, because she passed away before I graduated, and I really wanted to share that experience with her.
Before my parents got our house in Merrillville, we lived in Hammond, in my grandma's basement, for a couple years, even past the birth of my brother. It was 1999 when we finally moved in to Merrillville, so I was four. My mom will say my dad is a mama's boy, but he really loves his mom. So, he wanted to be closer to her, because everyone else was out of the house and she was in the house by herself. Her husband had passed away shortly after my parents got married, so it was just her, and he wanted to be closer to her to take care of her. So, whenever my parents would go to work, I would be with my grandma. If it was a weekend, on Sundays, we'd go to church with her.
Probably the first half of my life, I was growing up in the churches, more so than the mosque. We did go to the mosque on Sundays as well. We'd go to these churches with a lot of music and at the end, the children could get out the tambourines. Then, we would go eat and sit around. I was always going to church with my grandma.
The way my mom tells the story, when my mom and dad were first talking, or dating, or whatever, my dad would tell her about Islam as a way of impressing her about his intellect. So she thought, "Oh, this man was so smart, always talking about Islam." Most of my dad's Islamic opinions come from the Nation of Islam. He was really into Louis Farrakhan and Malcom X, so that was what he was telling my mom, about knowing how Nation of Islam comes from experience and teaching Black people about who they were before slavery, about how this country was formed. He was telling her, "Do you know yourself? Do you know this, this, and this?"
She was very impressed. I guess in England that division between races wasn't something that came up. She claims that she didn't really know the full extent of racism until she came to America. She didn't really experience having a Black identity. It was a Jamaican identity, which was more so a nationality and not, "We're Black Jamaicans and we're in this white country." She never really thought about that too much, so my dad telling her these things really opened her eyes. She read more about it, and they read more about it together, and they made the decision together to convert. So they converted the week before they were married.
My immediate family, they're all really open. They even listen to some of the lectures that my dad will show them, because they do see some of the truth in it. Knowing my grandma, there might have been some pushback when they first converted, but she definitely came around after we were born. My dad’s older sister also converted, so my grandma had two Muslim kids.
One thing that came up was pork. My grandma loves pork, and my dad obviously doesn't eat it, so they would get in little arguments about it, like "Oh, it's not good for you." She would argue, "My family has lived forever. We've gotten to pretty old age by eating all this pork." I've heard them argue stuff like that, but it was little things.
My dad didn’t change much after he converted. He talked about the African-American community more, but he didn't start wearing robes or anything like that. He still looked like a Black American person. Now he just had a different religion and prayed differently. He didn't change his name to an Arabic name. It was still comfortable for her, and the way that the Nation of Islam is structured, it's on a Sunday. Like, "Oh my goodness, it's kind of similar to the way I go to church.” So she was probably like, "Yeah, you're still going to hear the word of God in some way." I think that helped a lot because it was still Black-American-centered.
I never really had a crisis of identity or anything in terms of, "Am I a Christian or am I a Muslim? Should I pick this or that?" It wasn't like me choosing between church and mosque. It was me choosing between, "Do I still follow Islam, or do I follow no religion at all?" In the seventh grade, I had a thing where I was thinking about identifying as agnostic, and not as anything at all. I think I was getting more into social justice and more into feminism, in certain aspects, and there are some things in Islam that, in my head, I saw as totally incompatible with what I wanted to do and what I was reading. I was like, "I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion." I don't know if I had this moment where I didn't want to be associated with having the word "Muslim" attached to me, or what.
When I was thirteen, my parents moved back to Saudi Arabia for two years. In Saudi, obviously, there are Islamic documents everywhere about Islam, and women in Islam, the history of Islam. I began reading more. It was definitely a time of reflection, of me thinking, "Okay, what do I want out of this?" I think reading it for yourself, instead of having people dictate to you what Islam is, definitely helps you a lot more in strengthening your faith. I think I needed that time away from being attached to what my parents wanted me to do, and just going and learning for myself, and making the decision for myself.
I was pretty grateful that I had that experience. I went to Saudi Arabia and learned more. I met more Muslim girls. Because my experience is so mixed in with the Black American experience, I knew nothing about the Arab Muslim or South Asian Muslim experience. I saw that the feminism that I had been reading was mostly about women always saying that Muslim women are oppressed and need to be saved from their religion or their men.
I was like, "Why are the Arabs so oppressed? I never went through that, but I don't want that to be attached to me." That was my thinking, but then I read more. In Saudi I met women from Lebanon, to Egypt, one from Papua New Guinea, which was interesting, and South Asian countries, and African countries, and I was just like, "Islam is totally not the way that people are trying to make me think it is." I felt really stupid that I let those outside opinions infiltrate my head and try to take away my faith. I think definitely learning it on my own, and talking to my parents, definitely helped. I was just like, "Okay. I'm going to be Muslim now."
That's also when I made the decision to not identify as Nation of Islam, or Sunni, or Shi’a; I wasn't going to make that decision. I was just going to be Muslim. That was the one time I had that little crisis. I see my sisters going through it a little bit too. Not so much with not calling themselves Muslims, but in terms of them doing the prayers or the fasting and things like that. I don't know if they find too much interest in doing it. I think when they get older, they will. I'll just make sure to be an example of them seeing me do it, and my parents being like, "Hey, look at what your sister's doing."
My grandma passed away in 2013, but she was basically the only grandparent I grew close to. My mother's parents died pretty soon after I was born. My grandfather and my grandmother were divorced. My grandmother remarried, and my grandfather lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If we ever went there, it was a set weekend just because of how long it took to come there and back. Even to this day, I still don't have that many conversations with him, and I really want to change that, before I'm grandparent-less.
She was somebody that was very supportive of everything I did. She was probably the proudest person of all the things I was doing and accomplishing. She was so happy to see that there was something that I was doing. She was really worried, in terms of people going up and reaching their full potential, because some of her kids had kids young, or maybe they didn't finish college. I think she saw the potential in me to go off and really do something big.
Growing up, my grandma didn't know too much about the impoverished experience. Her parents worked for this white family that were pretty nice to them. She would tell me the story about how she would get the woman's daughter's coats after the daughter grew out of them, and these were pretty expensive coats, like fur coats. She was the youngest. She had two older brothers. That was her experience.
My grandma was really into genealogy, so she would always try to track her side of the family. Her side of the family's actually pretty interesting. I was going through some picture books, and it looks like they're pretty affluent, Black people who had degrees or diplomas. They might have been doctors, or something like that. I was always really interested. I was like, "Who are these people?" That's the experience she comes from. She really wanted us to be able to support ourselves, so she was always supportive of me going to school, picking the business major. It was really sad for me, because she passed away before I graduated, and I really wanted to share that experience with her.
Before my parents got our house in Merrillville, we lived in Hammond, in my grandma's basement, for a couple years, even past the birth of my brother. It was 1999 when we finally moved in to Merrillville, so I was four. My mom will say my dad is a mama's boy, but he really loves his mom. So, he wanted to be closer to her, because everyone else was out of the house and she was in the house by herself. Her husband had passed away shortly after my parents got married, so it was just her, and he wanted to be closer to her to take care of her. So, whenever my parents would go to work, I would be with my grandma. If it was a weekend, on Sundays, we'd go to church with her.
Probably the first half of my life, I was growing up in the churches, more so than the mosque. We did go to the mosque on Sundays as well. We'd go to these churches with a lot of music and at the end, the children could get out the tambourines. Then, we would go eat and sit around. I was always going to church with my grandma.
The way my mom tells the story, when my mom and dad were first talking, or dating, or whatever, my dad would tell her about Islam as a way of impressing her about his intellect. So she thought, "Oh, this man was so smart, always talking about Islam." Most of my dad's Islamic opinions come from the Nation of Islam. He was really into Louis Farrakhan and Malcom X, so that was what he was telling my mom, about knowing how Nation of Islam comes from experience and teaching Black people about who they were before slavery, about how this country was formed. He was telling her, "Do you know yourself? Do you know this, this, and this?"
She was very impressed. I guess in England that division between races wasn't something that came up. She claims that she didn't really know the full extent of racism until she came to America. She didn't really experience having a Black identity. It was a Jamaican identity, which was more so a nationality and not, "We're Black Jamaicans and we're in this white country." She never really thought about that too much, so my dad telling her these things really opened her eyes. She read more about it, and they read more about it together, and they made the decision together to convert. So they converted the week before they were married.
My immediate family, they're all really open. They even listen to some of the lectures that my dad will show them, because they do see some of the truth in it. Knowing my grandma, there might have been some pushback when they first converted, but she definitely came around after we were born. My dad’s older sister also converted, so my grandma had two Muslim kids.
One thing that came up was pork. My grandma loves pork, and my dad obviously doesn't eat it, so they would get in little arguments about it, like "Oh, it's not good for you." She would argue, "My family has lived forever. We've gotten to pretty old age by eating all this pork." I've heard them argue stuff like that, but it was little things.
My dad didn’t change much after he converted. He talked about the African-American community more, but he didn't start wearing robes or anything like that. He still looked like a Black American person. Now he just had a different religion and prayed differently. He didn't change his name to an Arabic name. It was still comfortable for her, and the way that the Nation of Islam is structured, it's on a Sunday. Like, "Oh my goodness, it's kind of similar to the way I go to church.” So she was probably like, "Yeah, you're still going to hear the word of God in some way." I think that helped a lot because it was still Black-American-centered.
I never really had a crisis of identity or anything in terms of, "Am I a Christian or am I a Muslim? Should I pick this or that?" It wasn't like me choosing between church and mosque. It was me choosing between, "Do I still follow Islam, or do I follow no religion at all?" In the seventh grade, I had a thing where I was thinking about identifying as agnostic, and not as anything at all. I think I was getting more into social justice and more into feminism, in certain aspects, and there are some things in Islam that, in my head, I saw as totally incompatible with what I wanted to do and what I was reading. I was like, "I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion." I don't know if I had this moment where I didn't want to be associated with having the word "Muslim" attached to me, or what.
When I was thirteen, my parents moved back to Saudi Arabia for two years. In Saudi, obviously, there are Islamic documents everywhere about Islam, and women in Islam, the history of Islam. I began reading more. It was definitely a time of reflection, of me thinking, "Okay, what do I want out of this?" I think reading it for yourself, instead of having people dictate to you what Islam is, definitely helps you a lot more in strengthening your faith. I think I needed that time away from being attached to what my parents wanted me to do, and just going and learning for myself, and making the decision for myself.
I was pretty grateful that I had that experience. I went to Saudi Arabia and learned more. I met more Muslim girls. Because my experience is so mixed in with the Black American experience, I knew nothing about the Arab Muslim or South Asian Muslim experience. I saw that the feminism that I had been reading was mostly about women always saying that Muslim women are oppressed and need to be saved from their religion or their men.
I was like, "Why are the Arabs so oppressed? I never went through that, but I don't want that to be attached to me." That was my thinking, but then I read more. In Saudi I met women from Lebanon, to Egypt, one from Papua New Guinea, which was interesting, and South Asian countries, and African countries, and I was just like, "Islam is totally not the way that people are trying to make me think it is." I felt really stupid that I let those outside opinions infiltrate my head and try to take away my faith. I think definitely learning it on my own, and talking to my parents, definitely helped. I was just like, "Okay. I'm going to be Muslim now."
That's also when I made the decision to not identify as Nation of Islam, or Sunni, or Shi’a; I wasn't going to make that decision. I was just going to be Muslim. That was the one time I had that little crisis. I see my sisters going through it a little bit too. Not so much with not calling themselves Muslims, but in terms of them doing the prayers or the fasting and things like that. I don't know if they find too much interest in doing it. I think when they get older, they will. I'll just make sure to be an example of them seeing me do it, and my parents being like, "Hey, look at what your sister's doing."
