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.

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.”

Mash’Allah! Today my 9-month old did sajda. She’d done it yesterday as well, but I thought I was seeing things. Today it was confirmed.

She crawls around nearby as I pray salat and I usually say it audibly so that she can benefit. Today I noticed that as I went down for sajda, so did she (though with her whole head, arms and torso touching the floor). And when I said allahuakbar for ruku she also did sajda.

Pretty funny to see a small baby, who does not even walk or talk yet, imitating me in prayer. Made me realize how important it is to stay steadfast in prayer and let my children see this.

There have been a number of well-publicized cases in Quebec, Canada recently involving Muslim hijabi girls who had been denied the right to participate in their chosen sports because they wanted to do so while wearing their headscarves.

Alhamdullilah, most hijabis won’t face such overt prejudice and blocks to taking part in sports. But the lack of role models in this area may be just as disheartening.

With that in mind, I was blown away when I came across this Iranian Women’s Sports Federation video. While I could have done without the heavy nationalism, it was wonderful to see women competing fully in modest dress.  I for, one had never seen so many hijabis competing before and in in what form!

To be fair, it’s obvious that some sports are more suited to hijabis than others. I felt rather sorry for the female runners, for example and saw no swimmers or divers (though I do know that Iran sponsors an all-women’s games that may feature these sports).  On the plus side, martial arts stands out, as a hijabi sport and Iran is well known for its female archers. At any rate, the video is remarkable for showing that the muhajaba sisters can at least compete in most sports.

Insha’Allah, an inspirational clip for our daughters who cover.