Muslim Parenting

“Because We Are Beautiful” is a short documentary about young Muslimahs at the University of Kansas. The young women come from diverse ethnic backgrounds and have various approaches to Islam. Several of the young sisters are hijabis, others are not. In the film they talk about their growing up experiences, the challenges of university (including those created by an often not-so-halal environment), parental expectations, etc.

A really interesting look at Muslim young people.

The following is a talk given at Masjid Omar al-Farouk in Orange County, California (USA). The speaker is Br. Shareef el-Arbi, a community youth leader. Br. Shareef speaks about his experiences growing up in the US, as well as what he has come to know from the youth he works with. The talk is fairly frank about the issues Muslim teens face and mash’Allah is also filled with guidelines for parents (with examples from the sunnah and Qur’an). Good, inspiring and cautionary video for Muslims raising children in the West.

**1/2 out of ****

I was excited when I first came across this magazine. Finally, a magazine geared towards Muslim girls - insha’Allah a publication with which they could identify and through which they could be inspired.

I applaud the effort, but so far, I don’t think that Muslim Girl lives up to its promise. I keep hoping and praying (insha’Allah) that it will - as unlike a book, it is possible for a magazine to reinvent itself in every issue - because our girls could really benefit from a good magazine just for them.

Good things

Here’s what I think Muslim Girl magazine gets right:

• Makes an effort to find exemplars/role models for girls from the Muslim community. Sisters who have interesting and meaningful careers, are involved in philanthropic work, have been blessed with artistic or literary talents.
• Profiles Muslim girls who are doing interesting things - as individuals or as groups.
• Follows a familiar magazine format

What I didn’t like

• The majority of the sisters featured in the magazine are non-hijabis. While I know that most Muslim women, especially in the US don’t cover, I would like to see the magazine make more of an effort to seek out those who do so that

1. - It could normalize hijab-wearing for Muslims and non-Muslims. Seeing a glossy American magazine full of positive profiles and images of hijabis would help do that for many people. Mind you, I think covering is an individual choice and like to see non-hijabi sisters acknowledged as well.
2. - It is really young muhajabas who need the support of seeing themselves in media outside of negative news coverage on the Middle East

Instead it’s a bit as if Muslim Girl’s staff thinks of hijab as a cultural marker or fashion statement rather than a choice of faith. Something we’ve moved past.

• The clothing in the fashion section tends toward the immodest. Think, sister in headscarf but skin-tight pants and shirt. I would like to see more tunics, long skirts, fluid pants and dresses and even jelbabs and abayas here.

Okay, I’ll pause here to say that looking through it, I am not sure about the magazine’s message or its target audience. And I wonder about who is behind the magazine. Are Muslims at the helm, or is the publication an attempt by non-Muslims or non-religious Muslims to tap into a so far untapped market?

• I would like to see more Muslim-produced/marketed products, both in terms of the magazine’s advertising and in terms of the products it chooses to profile and feature in its beauty and fashion sections. Where is Shukr Clothing, Muslim Gear, Crescent Moon Boutique and so many others?

• The magazine treats “Muslim” like a superficial ethnic designation and not as a living faith. So, it will profile, for exmaple, Asma Rasheed because she has an Arabic name and comes from a Muslim family, but never really ask her about her faith or how it influences her life. It’s good enough that she would check off “Muslim” on a form that asked about her religion. In similar vein, there is little about Muslimahs whose central focus in life is Islam and whose vocations and community work were chosen to fit their lives in Islam.

• It’s great that Muslim Girl shows our girls women who are succeeding in difficult or unusual fields - but then I expect the magazine to go further and have them talk about how their faith informs their work, if there are any day to day challenges to being Muslim and holding that job (for example, finding time to pray), etc.

• Too much space given to conventional, pop culture that 1) Muslim girls can get from any other magazine and that 2) many of us parents are trying to keep out of the home. I have zero interest in having my girls read about “Gilmore Girls,” “24,”"Harry Potter” (many Muslim parents would especially cringe at that one) or other such pop culture drivel.

• I’d rather the magazine talked to nasheed artists, featured good books (more than television or movies), maybe even covering halal things that teens outside North America are doing for fun. Instead we get the Disney, Warner, view of things.
• Muslim Girl - be brave enough to set trends instead of being a follower. Perhaps you did some polling of young Muslim girls and found that most of them are into the same things that their non-Muslim peers are. Well and good, but then make it part of your mandate to introduce them to some new things and encourage them to think a little bit more.
• Oprah’s booklist had an amazing impact on the publishing industry and on American women’s reading habits. These major changes could never have happened if Oprah had simply said, “You know, my audience just reads mysteries and romance novels, they won’t be interested in anything else.” In fact, she got women who weren’t used to difficult reading to challenge themselves with books like “Beloved.”
• If our girls are only interested in the mall, iTunes and makeup then I want a Muslim girls’ magazines that will challenge that and present alternatives.

In writing this review, I looked around for Christian girls and women’s magazines and found several that seem to be doing a better job of creating reading imbued with faith than Muslim Girl is so far doing.

I ask the publishers of Muslim Girl to look at Azizah , al-Jumuah and Emel magazines for inspiration.

At this point, I would not let my daughter read Muslim Girl without reading the issue first and then may still have to set it aside. We do so much in our home to try to encourage good values and focus on meaningfulness (not to mention keep out conventional consumerist influences) that we would be stupid to serve up fluff (like the current Muslim Girl) to our daughters.

Insha’Allah, Muslim Girl will improve. I will keep watching.

The Boston area is filled with colleges and universities. This video focuses on the activities of the Muslim American Society Boston geared for university students and young professionals. The video looks at the experiences of two youths (one female and one male) who took advantage of these programs. Their journeys are ones I hope my children can take, insha’Allah as well.

MAS Boston also has programs (scouting, sports, game nights, etc.) for children and teenagers. The chapter even trains youth workers. There seems to be a lot going on at this chapter. I won’t be able to describe it all. You can find out more on their website or by contacting them.

Muslim American Society Boston

10 Garfield Avenue
Somerville MA 02145
Phone:(617) 623-3004
E-mail: info@masboston.org

The Muslim American Society Youth Center in Raleigh, North Carolina lists its priorities for its work with Muslim youth as follows:

1- Islamic Education (Comprehensive, practical and authentic)

2- Spiritual Development (Uplifting, sunnah based, and life changing)

3- Outreach / Dawah (Engaging, Integrating, and Implementing Islam)

To those ends, they host regular youth group activities, such as sports and field trips, youth halaqahs and itikafs and provide many other forms of youth outreach.

Click here to view photos of their activities.

You can contact the center, insha’Allah, through its website.

The following is a promo video for The Muslim American Society’s programs in Tampa, Florida. The video highlights their youth programs and youth center.

Click here for photos of the youth program in action.

Muslim American Society Tampa

12226 56th Street
Tampa, FL 33617
Phone: 813-899-2267

This video profiles two initiatives for Muslim youth in Brooklyn, New York. Very inspirational, mashAllah. Those of us who don’t live in Brooklyn can use this video to see what can be done. Focusing on the young people is so important.

For more information:

Muslim Youth Center
1933 Bath Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11214
Phone: 718.232.5905 Fax: 718.232.5103
Email: info@mas-myc.org

alternately you can contact their parent organization The Muslim American Society at (703) 998-6525

Council of Peoples Organization (COPO)

Note that COPO is not an exclusively Muslim organization; instead its focus is on South Asians.

1081 Coney Island Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11230
Phone:718-434-3266

I’m forgoing my usual star rating system on this one because while it was good as fluffy Hollywood movies go, that’s not saying much.

I wouldn’t recommend that you buy “13 Going on 30″ (though I think that Hollywood will need incentive to make cleaner movies) or encourage your children to sit through it. This review is more for if your family somehow “happens upon” this movie - it comes on TV, you get the DVD as a gift, your child’s friend invites her to watch it, etc.

I myself, watched it on cable - I would say that I was experiencing a period of weakness and fatigue, “13 Going on 30″ came on after something else that I’d chosen to watch and then I was too tired/unmotivated to get off the couch and turn the set off.

Plot Summary

In “13 Going on 30,” Jenna Rink, an unpopular adolescent girl in a fit of despondency, after only two people show up for her 13th birthday party wishes that she could press fast forward on her life and become 30. She gets her wish.

Girl child Jenna is launched into the body of 30-year old Jenna. Unfortunately, the grass always seems greener on the other side and Jenna quickly realizes that the grown-up her has lost touch with herself and with important values (such as family togetherness, honesty, steadfast friendship, etc.). We never actually meet the 30-year old Jenna whose body child Jenna now inhabits. We only learn what she’s like through her possessions, schedule and the reactions of those with whom she works.

Adult Jenna is an extremely superficial woman. She has a high-status, high-paying job as a senior magazine editor, lives in a huge apartment in a fashionable part of Manhattan, vacations in celebrity hotspots, has a professional sportsman boyfriend who is little more than an accessory, spends her afternoons shopping and evenings in nightclubs and has a “best friend” with whom her most significant interactions are when they are battling for place at the magazine where they both work. Child Jenna recoils from all of this, so when given the opportunity to remake the fashion magazine where Jenna works (and hopefully save it from being pushed out of business by a competing magazine) she throws herself into the effort.

Jenna’s life changes significantly as girl Jenna leads it. The new Jenna doesn’t drink alcohol, favors slumber parties with the teen girls in her apartment building over going out to clubs, treats the clerical staff at the magazine with respect rather than as underlings, ignores and effectively dumps the trophy boyfriend and generally inspires hope in all of the weary, jaded adults around her.

Since being thrust into the role of such a hollow 30-year-old has been destabilizing, child Jenna reaches out for the familiar for support. After finding out that her parents are out of the country on vacation, her female childhood friend (mentioned above) is more interested in partying than with spending time together she looks up the boy, Matt, who was her best friend when she was thirteen (and one of the only people to show up at her birthday party then).

Conveniently, Matt is now a photographer, who Jenna cajoles into helping her remake the magazine. His life has turned out quite differently from adult Jenna’s. He lives in a tiny, grungy apartment and ekes out a living as an art photographer - seems he does some commercial work but nothing very lucrative. He is very distant with Jenna at first, since for him she is girl he no longer knows who lives in a very different (more expensive) world than the one in which he lives. Matt also displays the world-weariness of someone who is struggling and resigned to always be struggling.

If he has any interest in the adult Jenna it is tempered by thoughts of how out of his league she (at least on the surface) is. You do get the sense though that underneath the ennui he is still the nice person who girl Jenna remembers as a friend and he proves himself reliable/supportive in a few situations.

In superficial terms, the one thing Matt has going well for him is his relationship with his girlfriend. From the outside looking in she is attractive, has a decent job, etc. The viewer soon realizes though that she is more interested in Matt 1) because she wants to get married and he seems an unobjectionable enough guy and 2) because she thinks she can mold him. Matt on the other hand, thinks that he should like her, and is comfortable enough with their long-distance relationship, but becomes nervous and realizes that he doesn’t much like her when she forces the issue of marriage.

Meanwhile Jenna and Matt are spending more and more time together working on Jenna’s assignment. Jenna realizes that she likes Matt and Matt realizes that he is more comfortable with Jenna and finds her more substantive than his now fiancee.

Jenna’s confession to Matt of her feelings for him comes too late - as he heads out to marry his fiancee. Although he does not feel very strongly for his bride-to-be, the Matt character is responsible/reliable and reasons that he has already committed to the marriage.

At this point, devastated, Jenna wishes herself back to being thirteen again.

The movie ends with Matt and Jenna marrying, then moving into their marital home. Photos Jenna puts up in the house show Matt and Jenna together in some way from thirteen to marriage. So in other words, given a second chance Jenna has managed to avoid the pitfalls in the first Jenna’s life.

Note that the subtext is that unlike the first adult Jenna and Matt who both had partners, that the second “real” couple were exclusive and waited until marriage to become intimate.

Plusses

• Matt (played by Mark Ruffalo) is not portrayed as a handsome, rich Prince Charming - just a fairly average, but responsive, responsible, respectful guy. Too often teenage girls are fixated on the idea that the person they marry should be handsome, rich, etc. In “13 Going on 30″ the conventionally handsome professional hockey player who is adult Jenna’s beau leaves girl Jenna cold. Plus the cute boy she liked in high school, and was homecoming queen to his king, seventeen years on is shown as a pathetic character.
• The person Jenna marries is someone she has known for most of her life and who is probably known to her family - this is one good foundation for a marriage (there are others of course - please, no flames - LOL).
• The movie does critique Jenna’s superficiality and lack of connectedness with others. She doesn’t save the day as far as the magazine is concerned - it folds and she loses her job - but she doesn’t care. Her concern is first for the other employees at her job and then her relationship with Matt. At movie’s end we don’t even know whether she still works - wedded bliss is the focus.
• The movie is pro-marriage. It is clear from the beginning of the movie that girl Jenna imagined herself married (perhaps with children) in her thirties not clubbing with a boyfriend on her arm. Adult Jenna’s boyfriend is never shown as an option, and she is repulsed by the implication that adult Jenna has had relations with him. When she comes to like Matt, we know that it is not as a boyfriend, but as someone she wants to marry.
• There are no sex scenes in the movie and I don’t even remember any kissing apart from Jenna and Matt kissing when they marry. There are a couple of hints of sex. When Jenna wakes in adult Jenna’s body, she comes face to face with adult Jenna’s boyfriend in a towel - it’s clear that he’s spent the night and that she’s seen him nude before. Matt’s girlfriend answers his apartment door in a bathrobe, as if she too has slept there. Jenna is appropriately disturbed, repulsed, embarrassed by these incidents.

Possible Issues For Parents

• The movie glorifies romantic love and makes marriage an end-point rather than a beginning. True, it’s just a movie but I think too often, especially Muslim youth have unrealistic expectations about how a marriage partner and married life should be. The movie could end with “and they lived happily ever after,” something that doesn’t happen in real life
• The good values Jenna and Matt display (such as honesty, reliability, kindness) have no spiritual underpinning. Jenna is good because she is drawn that way, not because she is drawing from a moral or spiritual tradition. But then, if she could turn to God during difficult times then the conceit of the movie (wishing oneself elsewhere) couldn’t stand.
• Marriage is important but girls can also be encouraged to use their God-given gifts (as long as it does not preclude family life). The issue of meaningful work (I don’t think fashion magazine work counts) is never really resolved in the film. Jenna just swaps her hollow, competitive aspirations at the magazine for marriage.
• There is a big dance number in the middle of the film.
• Jenna is dressed immodestly. For most of the film she wears flimsy, strapped dresses - she even goes to work in a negligee style short nightie and jacket because she hasn’t learned where adult Jenna keeps her clothes. The result isn’t as bad as it could have been if Jennifer Garner were built like Pamela Anderson or if Jenna weren’t played as such a wide-eyed innocent (after all, she is a thirteen year old in an adult body - and the idea is that she isn’t even used to having a woman’s body yet). However, there is still a lot of flesh (legs and arms mostly) and form on display. It’s interesting, after she marries that Jenna is dressed down in jeans and shirt.
• Jenna’s boss at the fashion magazine is a rather flamboyant gay man. I don’t think he is shown in a relationship. The issue comes up because Jenna doesn’t realize that he is gay (obvious to everyone but Jenna) and he reveals his orientation to her. She is non-plussed by this revelation.
• Jenna and Matt are not chaperoned. Though the few times they are together in private are awkward and don’t last long. The rest of their time spent together is in public and in the company of others working on Jenna’s assignment.

Anyway, there’s my two hundred cents on “13 Going On 30.”

The following is a lecture that Sheikh Hamza Yusuf gave at the 2000 ISNA conference on the influences of non-Muslim (”Western”) culture on Muslim children and youth and ways in which parents and youth themselves can encourage good Islamic character.

Sheikh Hamza touches on consumerism, advertising’s influence on children, television-viewing and guarding eyes and ears from the haram.

Here is what I took away from the talk:

• Don’t allow children to watch television. Sheikh Hamza feels very strongly that it is a negative both in terms of form and content. He also criticizes movies and actors - though I know from reading materials on Sheikh Hamza’s Zaytuna website that he is okay with allowing older children to watch carefully chosen (informative) videos.
• Educate children about advertising and consumerism so that insha’Allah they can be better armed against them.
• Encourage children to use their (limited) time to study Islam and also to develop other useful skills and talents.
• Encourage children to be active in community and family life rather than waste their time with video games, TV and movies.

My husband and I ended up talking a lot about the suggestion presented by Soundvision that parents should encourage their teens to marry in order to safeguard them and their faith.

Again, it may be our cultural bias, but we are having trouble thinking positively about this suggestion.

The divorce rates among Muslims in the West are already very high.

It seems that there can be so much difference even between someone at 16 and that same person at 25. How does early marriage accomodate these changes? How does it inhibit or facilitate growth and maturity?

I think that the article writers may not be suggesting that 16 year olds set up house together. Instead maybe the vision is of married teens living with their respective parents, continuing their studies and benefitting from parental guidance and support.

But then, I thought, are these teens really growing as a married couple, or just continuing to live as children with few responsibilities of their own?

What happens if children come into the picture? Will they become Mummy and Daddy’s responsibility as well?

Also, what happens if the person our daughter liked or who we thought well-suited to her at age 16 is a very different person; one who is less compatible with her at age 26? I know that I don’t want a “starter marriage” for my daughter.

While no one wants their children to sin, is early marriage the only way to prevent pre-marital relations?

These are all questions we asked and for which we have no definitive answers.

I was thinking, however, that one important element in all of this is preparing children adequately to wait, if wait they must.

Making sure that sex and romance are at once explained and in a sense demystified. That they know what Muslim parents expect of them and why. And also importantly know what can happen when the straight path isn’t followed. Having some sort of timeline may also help. It is easier to wait for something when you know when the waiting will end.