Today was one of those days that are so exquisitely beautiful, you can not stay inside for even one second.  I usually go to the Botanical Gardens here a few times a year…thought today was an ideal day to go.

 wishing this was my backyard.

 Two readheads=too much trouble.

 I wanted to pluck this rose and stick it in my hijab sooo badly!

 old statues….can’t get enough…..

 just noticed a birds nest.

 I love the rainbow rays that showed up in this photo…very mystical.

 hiding in the hedgerows.

I read a lot of blogs.  I would say that 3/4ths of the blogs that I read are by sisters.  I don’t know if  it’s just because it’s summertime and the sisters are getting hot and cranky, but ladies…..can we please lay off the man-bashing for a while?  It’s starting to get annoying.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the brothers deserve it…they can be jerks, they can be misogynistic, etc; but it seems as though some sisters have taken to man-bashing as if it’s a right of passage or a sport.  Frankly, I have the some of the same complaints about some of the brothers as these sisters do.  The difference is I guess that I don’t have the same shocked reactions to it.  Is it more of a convert issue?  I am not sure, but it is particularly common to hear these rants from convert Muslimahs.  Did they come into Islam expecting that somehow Muslim men would drop their natural, red-bloodedness because they claim Islam as their faith?  Ha, ha, ha, ha.  It is astounding to me that they are shocked.  Especially if you take a step back and analyze Islams’ pre-existing attitudes towards men, (you know, that men have the final say in the household, they can have 4 wives, etc…etc…)  Did Islam sound like a religious community full of feminist leaning, hormone-less, whimpy, shy, girlish men when you were a newbie, sitting there reading your Islamic dawah pamphlets?  C’mon ladies.  Boys will be boys.  I repeat: BOYS WILL BE BOYS.  So there, get over it already.  Stop talking about.  Stop complaining about it.  Maybe instead we could pick on ourselves.  You know, a little feminine self-criticism?  Just because you run into a lot of “crazy brothers”, doesn’t mean there are not an equal amount of crazy female counter-parts out there.  I have been Muslim for close to 13 years (lucky number, eh?) and have learned something about Muslim women: they can put on a damn good show.  While brothers may act overtly crazy, watch out, because Muslim women can be silent but deadly.  I am serious.  I have heard of Muslim women with plenty of excuses for becoming Muslim other than for the Deen itself.  They can sit back, not work, gossip, have tea parties and do whatever they please while their men are out their busting their humps to care for them and their kids.  They can be gold-diggers, thiefs, covert lesbians, adulterers, professional gossipers and plain “up to no good”-ers.  Especially if their men are too busy at work to keep tabs.  Their Deen was nothing but an excuse to land a man, land a house, land a nice car so they can live a life in a gilded cage and do nothing but take, take, take. 

Let’s start making posts about what is wrong with the Muslimah population.  After all, fair is fair.

Just because we can dress like angels, doesn’t mean we always act like ones.  Let’s have some honesty for once.

I came across a post on Izzy Mo’s blog today and it got me thinking more about Masjid’s in America.

I already did a post here about the direction I think Muslim architects should take in any future Masjid design in America.  I am aware that my opinion is probably in the minority on this, but I feel it still deserves serious debate at this point.  I know that a former teacher of mine and a man I greatly respect, Dr. Umar Farooq Abd-Allah, would wholeheartedly agree with me on this.  We have to stop transplanting our Masjids from overseas.  We are now a unique, distinct, diverse and evolved community.  It is time to start thinking outside the box.  And for the love of Allah, if the Minaret does not perform a function other than to sit there and look like a gigantic phallic symbol (sorry, the feminist segment of my mind is working OT today) ….LEAVE IT OUT OF THE BLUEPRINTS!  Surely we can be creative, can’t we?

Now that that rant is done…onto another…..

Sing it with me in your best Tina Turner voice ”We Don’t Need Another Hero MASJID”.  Okay, maybe we do need another one or two, I don’t know.  I am sure that our fertile community is growing by the day, I will acknowledge that much.  For heaven’s sake though, is the ONLY component for a viable Muslim community a MASJID?!  If given the choice, I would pray in a warehouse if that would afford me the funds to develop a COMMUNITY FITNESS CENTER!!!

Let me put it this way.  Muslims need to pray, that is a must….but for God sakes, we are the most gender segregated people on the planet….WE NEED OUR OWN FITNESS FACILITIES.  I understand that the concept of fitness has a long way to go when it comes to reaching the American Muslim masses, but why do we think that only our souls need fine tuning and not our bodies.  Nothing makes me sadder to know that the Muslim women are still having to wrap up to go to a non-Muslim facility to workout.  It is so abysmally sad.  Can someone tell me of any community anywhere in the States that has a Muslim fitness and community center…..better yet, how about one with a pool.  You know, a swimming pool, people?  The place that most hijabis only dream about on a hot summer day?  Why in the world hasn’t anyone gotten up the courage to say…no more Masjids until we have a some place for Muslims to take pre-emptive care of their health, yes, a fitness center.  The Jewish community here not only has a pool, they have one of the only non-chlorinated, state of the art pools (something to do with ozone filtration) in the tri-state area.  They know where to put their money, and when they build it, they build it better than anyone else.  Why can’t we do that?  We have money like they do, we have the brains like they do…what the heck is lacking? 

It’s getting late….it’s getting hot….I’m getting crabby (and have no pool to jump into), so I’ll stop here.

 

  Don’t trust that face.

  ‘Cuz the next thing you know, she’ll be jumping barricades…..she sure is Mommy’s little girl (at least she gets it honest )

  I think I mentioned this before….but I just love Yiddish.  You should have seen the look on the face of this Jewish lady at the mall today.  We had her her scratchin’ her head.  She came up to me and said (with a huge, open mouth smile on her face) “does that shirt say ‘PUNIM’?!” 

“Yep, you betcha.  And just wait ’til you see the back.”

“Oh, TUSH!”  she practically screamed, “where did you get that shirt?!”

“I wish I could tell you…but it was a family hand-me-down, not sure where it’s from, sorry.”

She continued to stare at our little Muslim family entourage and our punim/tush t-shirt, as we walked around the store, with the biggest, quizzical smile on her face.

I bet she still hasn’t figured us out……

 

Heh, heh, heh………

Do the hotels attached to ISNA seriously charge $99-$110 per night? 

How do people afford it (and don’t say becuz they’re all rich Desi’s)?

Looks like another case of ”Priceline, here I come!”.

This is a stretch, but does anyone know anything about Columbus, Ohio?  I don’t want to end up in a hotel in some crappy neighborhood.  What is a “safe” area of town?  Bueller….Bueller…..???

Maybe I should just rent an RV and stay in the parking lot.

LOL. 

Wouldn’t that be fun?!

Extraordinary talent or average talent with a heavy dose of gimmick?

My hubby is a huge reggae fan.  If given a choice of what to listen to, he will always reach for roots reggae and ska.  His faves have always been people like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Desmond Dekker, etc.  So imagine his delight when he found a Jewish man who was an artist in this genre of music.  He was over the moon!  I think he is pretty good, but nothing above average in the talent department.  Of course, his lyrics are God-focused so they are spiritually, very inspirational.  However, I am not sure how this guy balances his spiritual energy after rapping about the beauty of Hashem to dazed college crowds who are in smokey bars and places like Summerfest (yep, he’s gonna be in my  town next week).  I just think that his words are probably flying over the heads of his liquored up, drug induced crowd….but maybe I’m wrong. 

So back to my question: if he was just “Matthew, the Reggae Guy” would he have been such a hit? 

My opinion is that is music is good, but nothing to get too excited about.  People are more so drawn to him because it is rare to see a devout practitioner of a faith (who wears their religious garments) just plain “getting down” in front of a live audience.  If he were a Tibetan monk in nothing but a saffron robe doing what he does, I bet people would be equally as bedazzled.

Anyways, I have to give him an A+ for effort and an A+ for the message, even if I think his music isn’t all too extraordinary.

As everyone who reads this blog knows, my husband is from a Ashkenazi Jewish family.  Many of his family members on both sides were killed in the Holocaust.  His father barely escaped from the Nazi’s himself.  When I say barely, I mean BARELY.  I mean all that stood between his father and the Nazi’s at one point was a wooden door; a door that wasn’t kicked down due to a miracle.  If that door had been kicked down, my father in law wouldn’t exist right now, my husband wouldn’t either, nor my kids.  I think about that fact a lot.  I am especially reminded when I hear tirades by Muslims who claim that it never happened, or that the number of Holocaust dead is erroneous, or that Jews are just plain whining too much about the Holocaust all together.  To me it is a silly precedent to get into.  If you want to criticize Zionism, go ahead, kvetch away….but what the hell does trying to debate the details of the Holocaust do (other than make you look like a fool and an idiot)?  Don’t get me wrong, I get just as pissed off when I hear Zionists claiming that Palestinians are making up their suffering, or their numbers of dead are wrong, or that soldiers only kill militants and on and on.  Negation of the “others” history, in my opinion, does not lessen a peoples’ resolve to persevere.  Quite the opposite: it only strengthens that peoples’ resolve and further stokes the passion to have their voices be heard and their stories be told. 

Everyone knows that the Nazi’s were some evil, pushy bastards.  Not only did they conquer land and round up the Jews for the slaughter, but in some cases they preemptively sought to imprison certain groups of people from lands they had not even conquered yet.  One prime example of that happened in Denmark.  My husbands father, who was a cantor, and his family were originally from Czechoslovakia.  My husbands grandfather sensed the rising anti-semitism in that country early on and decided to seek a new position somewhere else in Europe, away from the hostility.  Luckily, he landed a in Denmark as the head cantor of the main synagogue of Copenhagen.  Not long after the move, the Germans started to make their moves on Denmark.  The Danes by their nature were ultra-tolerant people and were not interested in the ideas that the Germans had, especially when it came to the Nazi’s obsession with the destruction of the Jews.  The Germans eventually issued an ultimatum to the Danish government to round up “saboteurs”.  My husbands grandfather was on the list, as he was a prominent member of the Jewish community.  The Danish government refused to capitulate, as did the Danish people as a whole.  Because of they refused to do what Germany told them, the struggle was on.  The Danish government and military, due to their small size quickly became a shadow of itself and the Nazi’s took over.  Despite the Danish government loosing their power struggle with the Nazi’s, the King Christian X and the people of Denmark never stopped helping the Jews.

An example of this came when the Nazi’s came to arrest my husbands’ father.  They finally came knocking at their door one night.  The incessant knocking woke up the family, but they did not open the door.  Just as the door was about to be busted open, their Christian neighbor upstairs yelled at the guards telling them that the family they were looking for was gone on summer vacation.  That was the only reason the guards stopped.  The entire family was able to escape in the morning.  After a few more terrifying adventures in Denmark, they decided that escaping to Sweden was the only viable option left.

It was only through the help of good Christian people, that they were able to get the necessary funds to plan and finance their escape.  When my husbands’ father was only 3, the whole family escaped to Sweden.  The story is quite dramatic.  They had to wait in bushes along the coast and wade 100 feet out, in the freezing cold night and icy waters, to an awaiting fishing boat.  My husbands father was still very little and they had to give him a sleeping pill before the escape to make him quiet.  When they got to the boat they were made to lay down under smelly fishing tarps to avoid detection from any passing ships.  They made it safely to Sweden.  After the war, they returned to Denmark and continued as before, to live peacefully with their neighbors.  Their apartment and possessions had remained untouched.

Out of the 8,000 Jews in Denmark, more than 7,200 were helped by the Danes to be transported to Sweden.  Not a small feat.  Thank God my husbands’ family was among them.

On his mothers side, let’s just put it this way, they were not so lucky.  Pretty much, any family members that didn’t make it to America before the war perished.  All of them.  They were from the Ukraine.  Sadly, no one survived to give the details on how they all died.  But one doesn’t have to sit and imagine……history is there to put the pieces together.  They were killed by the Nazi’s.  They didn’t fake their deaths.  They were humans who lived, and unfortunately died to soon.  They had names, and children, and livelihoods, and homes.   They were my own Muslim childrens’ blood relatives….and they were all slaughtered by Hitler and his evil army. 

So please, do not sit and tell this Muslim that the Holocaust never happened.

The Holocaust is an ultra sensitive issue in our house.  We are not about to lend an ear to any discussions anywhere  when it comes to Holocaust denial.  Just because we are Muslim does not mean that we ever stopped, or ever will stop, recognizing the Jewish history and heritage that our family is comprised of.  Many people expected my husband to turn into a raging anti-semite when he became Muslim.  Over the years, most people in the community have realized that they were sorely mistaken.  I firmly believe that my husband is more of a valuable asset to the community because he HASN’T capitulated to the anti-semitic fervor that pervades many of the Muslim circles.  He’s an example of how you can take on another religion with out losing your ability for rationality and reason and the ability to remember and HONOR the good from your past.  People may not agree with a lot of his ideas and ways of thinking, but they will have to deal with it.  My husband, the kids and I are now part of the Islamic fabric that makes up Islam in America.  We are a patch in the quilt of American Islam.  Some may see us as a piece of patchwork that does not fit.  We see ourselves as a piece of patchwork that perhaps introduces a new color scheme, or a peice that, at first glance, doesn’t quite seem to fit; but when you step back and look at the whole picture, you realize the beauty and wisdom for its being there.  We hope that bringing our history to the table, rather than ignoring or denying it, will help in some way to make the Muslim community better, stronger, and more open to new ideas and concepts.  We hope it will take out the sting of fear that many Muslims have towards Jews, and vice-versa.  Insha’Allah.

 

I knew it was only a matter of time before they would come.

They meaning: the dreaded “fruit fly”.

We eat a ton of fruits and veggies and usually, come June, my kitchen will catch a good case of the fruit flies.  The’re obnoxious, gross and extremely hard to get rid of.

I did hear of a natural cure recently.  However, I am wondering if it is haraam.

You are supposed to put a glass of wine on your kitchen counter.  The fruit flies will crawl in for a drink, get tipsy, fall into the wine and die.

What a way to go…..

I know where to get a glass of wine (MIL’s overstocked with the stuff).  I just want to make sure that if any Muslims come over to my house, the fruit fly excuse won’t sound like a load of BS.

 

I was reading the local news last night and saw that there was a fire in my old apartment building last week.  It made me glad that I was no longer living there.  I didn’t used to just live there, I used to work there.  I was the building caretaker for 7 years.

I took the job for a couple reasons: 1) FREE RENT AND HEAT and 2) FREE RENT AND HEAT.  No but seriously, my husband and I had to get creative when it came to figuring out how he was going to go through college while we had a baby to take care of.  From the beginning, I said that I would never put my kid in a daycare…no way in hell.  I didn’t care how “broke” it made us, I was going to be there every single day of my daughters life, as long as I could help it.  I wasn’t opposed to working, but it had to be on the terms that our daughter would not be raised by anyone else except the two of us.  That is when we found the position for Apartment Managers.

I want to say, if there are any younger couples looking for a way to whip there finances into shape, apartment managing is the way to go.  We didn’t get paid on the side, just free rent and free utilities.  That came out to a savings of about $1,300 dollars per month for us, for 7 years straight.  Hubby would do college and work by day, come home, and I would take off for my shift on the property.  I cleaned the buildings hallways, lobbies, parking garage, vacant apartments, etc.  The owner had a whole other crew to deal with the renting, paperwork, books, etc.  I was strictly manual labor.  I liked it that way.  I would just go out in the wee hours and spruce up the place and clean vacant apartments.  In the winter we would do the snow removal around our property too.  Usually that was the biggest headache….at least until the property got new owners. 

With new ownership came lots of changes, and none of which were for the good.  I knew we were in trouble when they removed the original sign for the apartment and replaced it with, what can only be described as the tackiest, brassiest, most obnoxious, worthy of a 24 hour Greek restaurant sign.  The new owner was Greek and he made sure to leave a huge mark of his heritage on the front lawn in the form of a brillant, beaming blue and white sign with Parthenon-like pillars painted on it.  It was topped off by his obnoxiously long Greek name screaming across the top in bright white, shining letters.  Our apartment building was shades of beige, brown, camel and cream, his sign was Mediterranean blue and bright white…..from an acstectic perspective alone, it was a travesty. 

The new owner accepted “rent assistance” from the new tenants, which meant one thing to the ears of a building caretaker…….WATCH THE HELL OUT.  It wasn’t long after that we had all sorts of crap happening all over the property.  Fire alarms were pulled at all hours of the night, beer cans left in the lobby, vomit in the elevators, you name it.  One time I came across a young girl in the pool area by herself, she must have been 8.  I told her that she needed to have her Mommy with her to be in the pool.  She said she couldn’t get her Mommy, because Mommy was “at the bar with her boyfriend” and didn’t know when she was coming back.  Then there was the onsite  hooker massage therapist who was running clients through her apartment at all hours of the day and night.  Thank God that apartment wasn’t in mybuilding, another caretaker had to clean that apartment when she was booted out and she had the delight of happening upon the endless bottles of KY and douche, under the bathroom sink.  Then there were the “self-employed” 20 somethings.  One of these entrepreneurs ran a “daycare shuttle service”, or at least that was the official story.  On more than on occasion I would spot him and his buddy pushing shopping carts full of cans of “baby formula” from his apartment to his van.  That was fun to witness.  NOT.  Still can’t imagine what was really in those cans!  Then there was the self-described, demon- possessed homosexual, a Southern “Holy Roller” who had always said “Jesus bless you” to me, at every encounter (and who hallucinated that white snakes were coming out of her walls and personally asked me to KILL the squirrels on her porch…I could keep going).  There was an old man who had emphysema and diabetes and only wore a bathrobe and smoked cigars all day until he died (he did have a kick a## album collection that he left behind, much to the delight of my husband).  And on and on and on and on……….pregnant teens, domestic violence, filthy standards of living.  It is funny, the more I write, the more is coming back into my memory.  These types did not compromise the whole demographic, but they were just the most memorable. 

I observed so much that I think it aged me 15 years.  I am glad that I did it, no regrets.  I saved money, learned valuable skills about maintenance (I am better at home repair than my husband), learned how to clean everything on the face of the earth to perfection but most importantly; learned that nobody is perfect, everyone has their demons and that the world is full of some very, very lonely and isolated people. 

I also learned never to immediately judge people, as cliche as that may sound.  Like the “Building Drunk”.  He would sit in his pick-up truck night after night, drinking and listening to the blues in the parking garage.  He was one of those friendly drunks and I actually didn’t mind him being down there because he was good for security.  One day as I was coming back from shopping with Miss A, I passed his truck as he was getting out.  We had  our normal chit chat, I said something about Miss A starting school and he looked at me and said “I had a child once.”

“No, I didn’t know that…”

“He was an amazing basketball player, and smart as a whip too.  19 years old.  He was in basketball practice one day.  I was in the stands.  He went out for a lay-up and and he lifted his arm to make a basket……collapsed right down on the floor.”

“Oh my God”

“He died instantly; an undetected heart condition….no one knew about it.  Yeah, man, it was hard, it still IS hard.  Don’t think you ever really get over that.”  Then he looked at me closer, right in the eyes and said.  “Just remember to hold on to your kid and love her…every day, every day.”  And then he turned and walked away.  I’ll never forget his words or the look in his eyes. 

I never thought a drunk would teach me an important lesson that I remind myself of everyday. 

Hope it wasn’t HIS apartment that caught fire.

UPDATE: Put this in the “Ironies to Beat All Other Ironies” catergory, but a tenant from our old apartment building (the one I just ripped on, above) left a message on our answering machine tonight.  They were asking us to come and fix their air conditioning.  Do they not realize we moved out 2 years ago?  Huh?

ROFL!