Moving

Hello, friends and enemies (said in my Cary Grant voice),

Future posts will be published at https://hijabimommyblog.wordpress.com. There will also be an archive of my favorite posts from this blog there as well.

Thanks for reading,

K

I am tired.

I am tired...of coming to this blog so many times in just the past year after a violent act has shaken the world.

I am tired...of writing about only a handful of these events because there are so many, so many, I can't address them all for the sake of my emotional well-being.

I am tired...of the mass media's coverage of these events, from the fear-mongering to the sensationalism to the obvious and poisonous prejudices.

I am tired...of seeing rumors and unverified stories spread like wildfire across social media and when they're found to be false, no one saying a word.

I am tired...of people sharing articles they don't both to fully read, consider the source, or put into context just to get attention.

I am tired...of an inactive legislation doing nothing, nothing different in the face of these attacks.

I am tired...of people's indifference to other's suffering.

I am tired...of people being blissfully ignorant of history, what the second amendment's true purpose and intent was, what the confederate flag means (nope, not "Southern pride"), etc.

I am tired...of people not bothering to learn about Islam before they slander it.

I am tired...of insane, dangerous bigots like Donald Trump having any kind of audience at all, of being allowed to spew hatred while so few, so few people really protest.

I am tired...of wondering, when I'm in a public place shopping with my baby or walking alone in my neighborhood if someone will take the vulnerable moment to push me down, yell obscenities, or otherwise harass me because I have a hijab on.

I am tired...of holding my daughter and imagining her going out into this world and being killed violently at the hands of a gunman in her elementary school, at a movie theater, at a doctor's office, or on the street.

I am tired...of feeling completely helpless.

I am just so tired.

Another blog neglected: Reflections from the fourth trimester

For someone who enjoys blogging as much as I do, and is an avid consumer of blogs, I have a horrible habit of neglecting my own. Thoughts pile on to thoughts for months at a time so that when I do finally sit down at the keyboard, it's incredibly daunting to start typing for fear they'll come flooding out and what results will make no sense at all.

So as another attempt to get the writing flowing, I will write about the biggest thing going on right now: on October 8, I became a mom.

Our beloved daughter entered the world quite dramatically, a day before her scheduled caesarean (due to a stubbornly breech position) giving me the gift of still getting a "This is what happened when Mommy went into labor!" story but also the experience of a caesarean. I was fortunate, alhamdulilah, that everything went smoothly for myself and Babes, and that my recovery was not the bear it could have been.

The past seven weeks have been the best of my life. Not the easiest, by far, though as I said I was blessed in many ways. But definitely the best. I was one of those women who, as long as I can remember, wanted to be a mother. Even when I was unsure about so many things in my life, one goal that stayed consistent and dear to my heart was to have a child. And throughout my pregnancy, and even the last several weeks, I still have moments where the weight of realizing one of my most cherished dreams hits me and I will whisper, "Thank you, God," into the darkness of my bedroom or the steering wheel of my car or into my daughter's ear.

It's a magic like no other, and I pray that every woman who wants to be a mother and man who wants to be a father gets to experience it in their lifetime. So often, especially in the beginning, the focus is on the mother and the child, and fathers fall a bit to wayside, but I must say, seeing my husband's transition to fatherhood has been just as magical as watching my daughter grow each day in our arms.

The depth of feeling from this entire experience cannot be described. I don't think I'll be able to now after almost two months of living it or even in twenty, forty years when my daughter is a woman and (iA) a mother herself.

One gift this time (and paid maternity leave) has given me is a lot to reflect on and the time to do it (when you're awake at 4 am, alone except for the baby dosing as she nurses, watching the sunrise and the birds stirring outside the bedroom window, it's exhausting but also so, so inspiring). One major thing I have been reflecting on these past weeks is how much more I respect all of the mothers that I know (and even those I don't know), and moreso, how extremely, indescribably grateful I am for my own mother.

I have a wonderful relationship with my mother. I always have, even during the darker, tumultuous times of my life (like the entirety of my teenage years into, honestly, my early 20s). I can honestly say we have never had a fight. That sounds ridiculous, but I've thought about it long and hard and though she may not have always agreed with my choices, she was never judgmental, punishing, or held a grudge. We have never been "not speaking to each other," or even upset with each other for more than a few minutes. She definitely always let her opinion be known (and always will even as I am mother myself now) but whatever my decision was, she supported me, and whether it worked out as I intended or not, she was there with unquestioning, unconditional love. I know a lot of people say this, but I truly could not have a more wonderful mother.

My first thought when I found out that I was having a daughter was, "I hope I am to her what my mother is to me." That is, essentially, my everything. The one who taught me what true love is by living it every day. Who taught me the importance of family. Of kindness. Of acceptance. I pray that I can be that for Babes. Her love and support has enabled me to be strong, to take risks, to think for myself. I would not be the happy, confident woman I am today without her.

And that is not even touching on the millions of sacrifices, small and large, that she made and continues to make for me, for my husband who she loves as her own son, and now, for my daughter who has her eyes. Some I won't even ever know about, and none of which she ever did expecting anything in return. I do everything in my power to repay her, knowing I never can, and even when she tells me not to, that I don't owe her anything. And I have promised myself to do the same for my daughter, because she deserves it. I was so, so blessed to have all of that and more, and I owe it to not only my daughter but to my mother as well to make her proud and keep the tradition of her love alive.

Because in a world like ours, which can seem overrun with darkness, hate, and sadness, any light (which is what love is, after all) should be protected, nourished, and fought for. And it won't always be easy. But it's what we owe to each other, in this dunya, and I believe it is what Allah (swt) wants us to leave behind when our time here is over and our bodies return to the earth.

Until next time, which I hope is sooner than later.

This was not what I was going to write.

I had a whole different post in mind for the first night of Ramadan.

I don't know exactly what I was going to say, but it was going to be a happy post. 

I've married to the person I love the most in this world. Alhamdulilah. We've learned that we're going to be parents to a daughter come October of this year, insh'Allah. Alhamdulilah. We've been blessed  with jobs that, even when they cause us stress, allow us to live a comfortable lifestyle, above and beyond our basic needs of food and shelter. Alhamdulilah. Our families are whole, healthy, and happy. Alhamdulilah. I have never felt closer to God in my entire life. Alhamdulilah.

I enter this Ramadan extremely, extremely blessed and I know it. And even though I won't be fasting due to my pregnancy, I plan to make the most of what I can do to show my gratitude and love for God.

The post would have gone something like that.

But it won't.

I only heard the news this morning after I got to work, sat down with my morning - decaf - coffee and absent-mindedly scrolled through Facebook while my computer logged on.

I saw one, two, three posts before I knew something had happened, so I quickly closed Facebook and went to the news. Wall Street Journal, then NPR.

A shooting in a church.

My stomach lurched. Please, don't let him be Muslim.

It was my first thought. It has been lately when there is bad news, especially so publicized. My heartbreaks to admit it.

Not again. Not another slander to God, to our Prophet. Not during Ramadan.

But I didn't feel any better when I learned, hours later, that the murderer was not Muslim. In fact, I felt worse.

I became angry.

So angry in fact, as the reports came spilling in, as the water cooler talk at work grew in intensity, I was shaking. 

It's Ramadan, and what you're thinking right now is neither peaceful nor forgiving.

So I prayed. I shot an e-mail to a coworker that I was going to be late to our 1:15 meeting and I prayed Zuhur in a conference room with the blinds pulled, no prayer rug, in a business suit.

I quieted my blood, my brain, everything. I had to, or I felt like I would explode. 

In anger. In frustration. In despair.

At the end of the prayer I cupped my hands to make Dua. I started by listing everyone I could think of, everyone I usually pray for in these types of situations.

Please God, be with the victims and guide them to Heaven.

Please God, be with the families as they grieve, and keep hatred from their hearts.

Please God, be with the perpetrator, and guide his lost soul from the darkness.

I paused. It was more than that.

Please God, be with the people of this country, and make the truth shine through the lies and propaganda that the media will tell them.

Please God, be with the government of this country, and make them turn from their greed and make decisions that will protect the people.

Please God, be with all of the lost souls out there who hate without understanding, without knowing, and act violently without care.

Please God, be with people who want to worship you safely, who want to live their lives without fear, but cannot.

Please God. Be with us all.

You know the world is in a dark place when you have to make Dua for everyone or else you'll be sitting there all day.

We are infected with violence in this country, and refuse to admit it. We refuse to admit there is a festering infection of hate, of disregard for human life, and of violence, and that we created it. We created it. From Timothy McVeigh to Dylann Roof and the many that came between, and the many that will come after today. We created them. We cultivated them. The blood of so many is on our hands.

But we will make excuses for them. We will excuse them.

We will capture them peacefully, without a shot fired or a bruise inflicted. We will escort them un-handcuffed in a bulletproof vest to and from court.

We will say they were mentally ill, thus nailing the stigma to an entire community of people who suffer from mental illness and are in no way violent or hateful.

We will not say that they were radicals, because that term is saved for murderers who are Muslim.

We will not say that they were thugs, because white boys (especially from nice families/who serve in the military/who are Christian) can't really be thugs.

We will interview their families, allow them a platform to talk about how sweet these men once were, until someone corrupted their pristine little minds or some terrible tragedy befell them. They will not be discredited or stigmatized, as the families of Eric Garner, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Michael Brown were.

We will personify them. We will use their names. We will show pictures of them as small children.

We will forget them as time goes on. Their memories will fade like an old polaroid because they will purposely not be captured on anything more permanent.

And we will not say that 9 people died last night because they were black in America.

And that is the bottom line. Don't. Say. Another. Word.

9 people died last night because they were black in America.

Full stop.

That should repulse you to your very core.

Please, God, be with us all.

Photo Credit

10 [More] Things People Will Say to You When You Wear a Hijab

This blog post - and the ten others I have mentally noted "You should write that" but never got around to writing - is long overdue. But planning a wedding on top of normal life stress essentially stole my winter, so I emerge only now, along with pollen and cherry blossoms, this spring.

Something that also made it difficult to write the past few months - it's been a dark few months for the world at large, and especially for the ummah. The tragedies struck across the world, from Chapel Hill, Paris, Nigeria, Somalia, and other corners of the earth that don't have the publicity of CNN or BBC's cameras. To call it a dark time is to possibly over simplify it.

And perhaps, despite how hard this at times made it to write, I probably should have, even more so because of how hard and sad it was. I am going to make a concerted effort to do that in the future. It's easy for voices of reason, voices of normalcy, even voices of truth to be drowned out by the clamor, and it's imperative that they aren't.

But I'm keeping this one light so I can slowly transition into writing again (and because, in the face of pain and turmoil, I use humor as the ultimate defense mechanism and deflection).

I meant to write this back on February 18th, which would mark one year of me wearing the hijab, in sort of an anniversary celebration. But since that day is long past, we'll have to settle for a fifteen-month-anniversary celebration:

10 [More] Things People Will Say to You When You Wear a Hijab
The O.G. article I wrote last year is here

1. "Did your husband make you do this?" and/or "Did you do this so you could get married?"

This one is probably the most common of all on the list and probably the most irking, honestly, to me personally. I can only think it is connected to the fact that I'm "white" and my husband is "not white" (He's Afghan, specifically, but the people who ask this that don't often know that - they just know he isn't "white" as it is constructed to be in our society, i.e. pale, Christian, with a name like Chad). People automatically assume, therefore, I suppose, that the hijab was a stipulation of his marrying me. Like he would not accept me for the person I am, but would require me to change a huge part of who I am (problem number one) and that I would be willing to do this (problem number two).

As for problem number one: I am not naive to pretend that there are not men out there who would have such a stipulation - and that is 100% between them and their wives and is often born of cultural norms, not religious norms. Let me repeat that: cultural, not religious norms. My husband is not one of those men - in fact, none of the women in his immediate or even extended family wear hijab except to pray or to go to the masjid. And he was incredibly supportive when I came to him last year and told him my decision to begin wearing it.

I'll repeat that, too: my decision. That's the second part of this problem. It was my decision. And funnily, a lot of the people who assume I would only do this because I was being forced or pressured or blackmailed into it by a man are playing into the exact stereotype they are latently criticizing: that women don't have any agency over their lives or appearances. They assume a woman would only do it to please a man, not because she has her own convictions. It's an irony I've gotten really sick of and it's hard not to audibly sigh when someone says this.


2. *anything and everything about my hair*


This one is funnier than anything, and usually comes from people I know pretty well but who have not known me before I started wearing the hijab, who are in the end just curious. It ranges from How long is your hair? to How often do you wash your hair? to What color is your hair? and goes on. I've found the best way to counter this is jokingly ask equally odd personal questions like Do you have back hair? (to men) and How often do you shave your legs? (to women).


3. "So what do you think of ISIS?"


I mean...what does any sane person, Muslim or not, think of ISIS? I laid out my thoughts as completely as I could here, but in short: I think they are evil. What probably separates me from some of the people asking this question is I know they are not Muslims. To quote my brother in Islam Lupe Fiasco, "murder is not Islam/and you are not observant/and you are not a Muslim." Take 'em to church - er, the masjid - Lupe.


4. "If you have a daughter, will you [or your husband] make her wear a hijab?"


To be fair, I have considered this question myself, and my husband and I have discussed it. Fortunately, it was a fairly easy conversation because we have the same opinion on the matter (I stress, opinion: not all Muslims feel this way, and we can only speak for how we feel and how we plan to raise our children when they arrive, iA).

Firstly, we both feel that the hijab is not something meant for children. Some Muslims disagree, but I look at it like this - the hijab is to help make a woman modest, to protect her sexuality, essentially. To put a hijab on a child, in my opinion, is to sexualize that child (similar to, oddly enough, putting make up on a child: it makes them appear older and implies they have reached sexual maturity). Right or wrong, we both feel this way, so our future daughter will not be permitted to wear a hijab as a child (unless in the masjid or while praying).

Secondly, even when she does reach puberty, or her late teens, if she comes to us and wants to start wearing the hijab, we will not give an immediate yes. Unfortunately for our future children, my husband and I are very good at playing the devil's advocate, and we're not easily swayed. She will have to have compelling reasons beyond the fact that I wear a hijab, or her friends do, or she loves the way it looks. It has to come from an informed, sincere place in her heart because it is not something to be taken lightly.

But all of this is hypothetical: the bottom line is, I can't tell the future. I don't know what my future daughter, if I am so blessed, will feel and if she will even want to wear a hijab or if she won't (I know there's a lot of things my mother did that I did the opposite of just for that reason). But if she does wear the hijab, it will be an informed decision she made on her own.


5. "What are you trying to prove?"


This is in the a more ignorant vein, and usually comes from an opponent of the hijab (or Islam generally). As if I am trying to get attention, or make some kind of statement beyond the fact that I love my religion, love my prophet, love my God, and want to live the best life possible. I guess if that's "something to prove," then I do have a lot to prove. You win, bigots.


6. "Wow, you are making such a sacrifice!"


The worst part about this is it's usually meant to be supportive or complimentary, but it kind of sounds a lot like number one on this list to me and really grinds my gears. To me, nothing about this is a sacrifice. I love wearing a hijab. I can honor my God and show the love I have for my faith every day, and the physical act of putting on and wearing a hijab reminds me to be my best self - and in this world, that is a huge help and blessing. Not to mention, this again implies subtly that I wear the hijab for anyone else besides myself and my beliefs. Nah, son.


7. "Seeing you wear a hijab makes me sick."


Unfortunately, this was said to me by more than one person. And it hurts, not because I feel self conscious but because by saying this, this person has so completely shut themselves off to anything I have to say, my most earnest explanations that this is actually liberating, not oppressive, and that I am happy. So, so happy. But at the end of the day, that becomes their choice. Just like the hijab is my choice. So to these people I simply say: I'mma do me.


8. "So is it true Muslims worship pigs/don't let women drive/hate Christians/don't believe in Jesus/etc?"

As bizarre as some of these questions have been (I've gotten all of the above and more), I don't mind it so much. I look at it as an opportunity to educate someone who has a misconception about Islam. Even if it is equivalent to using a teaspoon to measure the ocean, I usually make a concerted effort to correct or explain any question I can about Islam, so that at least one more person might see the reasonable, human side of it, even as FOX news blares in the background painting all Muslims to be savages. And honestly, I think people appreciate it. I had a coworker once say in a meeting that he felt his life was richer for having the chance to work with myself and another Muslim colleague because he got exposure to a culture and religion he knew nothing about previously. Hopefully I can do more than just contextualize how inaccurate Homeland is for the people I encounter in my life,  but even if I can't, that's enough.


9. "Do you really think God cares about what you wear on your head?"


I mean...yeah. That's...kind of the whole point? Maybe He doesn't care if I go with solid or plaid or stripes or polka dots, but just like every other person who is religious, I do believe God appreciates our good deeds and it does matter. Whether it's wearing a hijab, abstaining from pork and alcohol for Muslims, or for Catholics attending mass and taking communion, God does care. Believe it or not, I think he cares even about people who don't care about him - maybe even more.


10. *acknowledgement from women of other faiths who are also covered*


This is one of my favorite things. My heart still swells when fellow hijabis acknowledge me, and recently, after moving to an area with a large Amish and Mennonite population, I have noticed a phenomenon where those women (who are also called in their religion to wear a head covering) will also give me a knowing nod and smile. Because real recognize real, yo.

No, but truly - when so much of the world and especially this country is so myopic and intolerant, it makes me so, so happy to see someone accept and appreciate something different than what they already know. That is the only way there will ever be any kind of peace, and every time it happens my cold, cold heart melts a little and I can feel the warmth of hope.

On being Muslim and being or supporting LGBT

And among His signs is this that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts); verily in that are signs for those who reflect.

Surat Ar-Rum [30:21] The Holy Qu'ran

I always hope, because it is my intention, that anything I post here is treated by anyone who happens to read it as purely, unequivocally, my opinion. If I post about issues I feel as a woman, I am in no way trying to speak for all women. If I post about issues I face as a Muslim, I am in no way trying to speak for all Muslims, or any other one beside myself. I would hope it doesn't have to be said, but in case it does, there you go.

The topic of this post is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, but I struggle with speaking about topics which have no correlation to my existence, if that makes sense. While the Qur'an does call for advocating for the oppressed, and assisting them in any way, there are times when as a white, upper-middle-class, college-educated, cis, straight American woman who has never faced adversity related to the issue, I feel like I shouldn't be the one doing the talking. I should be silently supportive and loving. 

That said, I'll finally get to the point. I am an ardent supporter of the LGBT community. Generally speaking, that is not something normally associated with being part of the Muslim community, at least in my experience. A lot of Muslims, for many reasons, have difficulty reconciling this with their faith. The same could be accurately said for my Christian upbringing. Despite churches opening their minds and doors to LGBT worshippers, I do not think we're even able to say it's something generally accepted. Not yet. And in both cases, to me, it's a shame.

My opinion on this has never changed. My religion has, but my opinion hasn't. 

And in words I would never be able to so beautifully craft because I've never faced this situation, I want to direct you to an amazing post on Autostraddle that says everything I could ever say on the subject and much, much more. I was in tears by the final response to this post.

Attraction to Women and Feelings Like a "Bad Muslim" | Autostraddle


As for any Muslims who may be searching for more resources, I hope something here can help you (they are mentioned within the article and comments but I think worth pulling out separately):

Websites: IAmNotHaraam.Tumblr.com | http://www.moralcourage.org/mentoring/
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbp94Mntcb2IV9n4BtHXpUg
Hashtags: #qfaith,  #queermuslims or #lgbtqmuslims 

Fi Amaan Allah, to each and every person reading this. Full stop.

"One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know."

In college, I was an English major. I love reading almost any kind of book from any era (with the exception of Victorian literature, sorry, Ms. Austen and Misses Bronte), but I concentrated that study around early 20th-century literature (think Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Italo Svevo, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, who is my least favorite of them all but pretty much required reading in any English curriculum). I loved it. I barely looked at my literature classes as class at all, I loved reading and I loved discussing the books with people who were equally interested. It's probably the thing I miss the most about college, honestly (besides being able to live off pizza and Starbucks and weigh easily 20 pounds less).

In college, I also suffered from depression of varying severities. Sometimes, it was a low hum, deep, deep down that didn't interrupt my ability to function but was nonetheless there, and letting me know it could rise up at any time and bring my normal life to a screeching halt. It was during those times, those other times, that life came to a standstill and simple acts like taking a shower or going to class or talking to my friends required intense, focused effort that left me exhausted.

It was during a particularly prolonged period of "those other times" when I knew I had to do something to break the hold it had on me before something awful happened, so I told my mother about how bad things had gotten, which she was mostly unaware of because I was living two hours away at school.

I remember the day I told her, I had come into her room one Saturday morning while she was still in bed and laid at the foot of the bed and just let it all spill out unevenly with no real narrative or timeline, because if I tried to plan what I was going to say or thought too much about it, I was going to chicken out. Admitting you're depressed, and admitting that you can't "just deal with it," can feel like a failure of sorts (even though it's very much not) and I've never been good with my own failure.

After I said my piece, she asked a few questions. After I gave my answers, she said (as any Math major might), "I don't want you reading all those depressing books for a while."

I remember laughing and saying, "If I don't read anything written by a depressed person I won't be able to graduate."

I then  explained to her that by reading those books which featured characters of shall we say "fragile" mental states, I felt less alone. Like I wasn't the only one who feels this way, like it wasn't just something wrong with me, it was something that happened to a lot of people. And that in the cases where those characters (think Septimus in Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway") do take their own lives, it was not glorified. It was simply tragic, and pathetic, and nothing was better in the aftermath. Possibly the most disturbed character in literature, in my opinion, is Mersault from Albert Camus's "The Stranger," which is coincidentally one of my favorite books. Mersault's complete numbness and apathy for others and life in general is in stark contrast to the world around him; if anything, it highlighted for me the complete deviance of his way of thinking and how different I was from him. I felt things, I loved things, life was worth living. I actually read that book, at times, as comfort; I did the same with "Mrs. Dalloway."

But I never forgot that exchange with my mom, and I've struggled with that thought ever since.

There have always been calls to ban books for encouraging or "glorifying" this vice or that maligned way of thinking, but I can never in good conscious support banning a book. The very thought of it is sinister to me, and gives me that icky, sliding feeling in my stomach. Even books that do offend my value system...I just cannot justify it. Censorship has never led to anything good in the history of the world thus far. It does and always will have a nefarious association to me.

But then you see the news. You see kids killing themselves in numbers I really don't think you saw before, even 10-15 years ago when I was in school. And you see kids killing other kids, too. So often that we barely blink when there's a school shooting.

And amidst these tragedies, you hear those voices. It's the video games, it's the movies, it's the books, it's the rap music, etc.

At first it sounds ridiculous. All of those things existed 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years ago, as far back as when my father was in high school, and these things weren't happening. A teen killing his or herself in 1983 when my dad graduated was a monumentous shock; by the time I graduated in 2006, I had known three people who killed themselves and would come to know three more before I graduated college.

My fiancee argues that media hasn't changed, it's people that have. That parents don't emphasize the difference between real and fantasy: they just shove an iPad at their kid and let it do the teaching from the time they're toddlers. I agree, to an extent, that contributes. Few things give me the heebie jeebies more than a kid under 2 who can work an iPad and I see it all the time. We've also gone back and forth discussing secularism's role in desensitizing people to the consequences of suicide (time was in the Catholic church, it was the only sin that could not be forgiven; in Islam, despite the pronouncements of various extremist groups, it is also one of the most wretched sins one can commit). I also agree that has a role, as well, I'm sure.

However, he doesn't believe the argument regarding what's in the media. Again, he points out that during the 1990s when he was coming of age, he listened to some rather grimy rappers (Nas, pre-"Empire State of Mind" Jay-Z, Biggie, Tupac, NWA, Wu-Tang Clan, etc) who encouraged violence against police and women, drug use, and casual sex. He played video games with guns and watched movies like "The Terminator." Valid points, as none of these encouraged him to turn around and renact these behaviors in real life. For the most part, I also agree with this. Like I said, if anything, the books I read regarding characters suffering from depression or committing suicide never glorified it for me, they gave me the strength to perservere.

But recently, my feelings on this particular argument are starting to shift. And I don't know how to feel about it.

It started with "The Fault in Our Stars." Before you pounce: yes, I read the book. Yes, I have great respect for John Green. But no, I didn't think it was that good. And I felt...unsettled by the topic, considering it is actually a "young adult" book geared for, shall we agree, people from the age of 11-16 or thereabouts. I get it; young adult literature has gotten more brazen, less young and more adult in the past years (think "Gossip Girl"). It's not "The Giver" and "The Babysitters Club," or even "Harry Potter" anymore. Which is a whole other problem regarding the over-sexualization of children you see now that you didn't back then--but that's another post. This post is about death.
And I didn't like how it was portrayed in "The Fault in Our Stars." I just didn't. Yes, it was sad. People cried their eyes out. But it was also romantic as hell, up to and even after the climactic events. It tied back to earthly existence, which is exactly what death is not. Death is unbound by earthly existence, earthly desires (the dunya, in Islam). To tie it to these things is to make it common, tangible, less sacred.

But, believe it or not, at the time I didn't think much of it. Whatever, I'm entitled not to like a book. Maybe it was just my reaction to everyone else positively losing their minds about it. I brushed it aside after a few days and pretty much forgot those feelings as it moved to the bottom of my eBooks library.

Then, a month ago, my mother was visiting, and we were all watching television when a trailer came on for a movie called "If I stay."

I'll tell you, when the trailer was over, I flipped out a little. I think I said to my mom something to the effect, "This is why kids think death is just so cool."

I will preface this by saying I have not seen this movie, I do not know the exact plot. But that almost fuels my argument. Because in the < 3 minutes of the trailer, what I saw was a complete glorification of death, again, featuring a teenage cast. And I didn't even have to pay $12 to do it.

This is the trailer.

Feel free to tell me "You don't get the whole story," "That's not the point," etc. Good, I hope that's the case. I hope I'm wrong. But that doesn't change the fact that that is what this movie is using to draw it's mostly teenage audience in with. And amongst that audience is going to be kids who are more fragile, lonely, isolated for all the reasons I mentioned above and more. Who are going to see this and think, This will give my life more meaning.

You might think I'm oversimplifying the teenage mind. And I am, to a degree. Few teenagers will literally think "Yes, I need to get into a terrible car accident so Bobby will love me," though some will and that's disturbing. But I do think it, if nothing else, softens and romanticizes death, or "near" death. This, paired with "The Fault in Our Stars," really turned my stomach.

Maybe I'm overreacting. But I don't think, if I had a 11-16 year old daughter, I would want her watching this movie, or any other that deals with teenagers and death in this way, without having a serious conversation. Hopefully she'd already be equipped with the ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy, and recognize that movies imitate real life but are not in fact real life. But with that line getting blurrier and blurrier as time goes on, will I have that guarantee?

And then I feel like a close-minded, controlling, untrusting censor, which some people would argue is the role of the parent, but is something I don't have a whole lot of reference for because my parents were never much in the way of censors. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I watched "Seinfeld" as a kid. I was reading Dean Koontz and Stephen King in the fourth grade. I watched "The Wall" with my dad for the first time when I was 7, and knew all the words to "Comfortably Numb" and "Hotel California" by the time I was 9. I saw "Cruel Intentions" at 11, listened to Eminem at 12, and read "A Clockwork Orange" at 14. And a lot of people would argue that my parents should have restricted me more, but I don't think so. For the good and the bad, those shows, books, movies, and music that I was exposed to from an early age made me who I am. They gave me a love for art that comforted me, made me laugh, made me feel less alone in my darkest hours.

But I didn't commit suicide. I didn't kill anyone. If I had, these things would have all been looked on in a very, very different light.

So what do you do. Do you take the chance that everything will be fine, that your kid will be ok, they will know where to draw the line?

I know people much older, much more experienced, who have children of their own still grapple with this. So I don't expect a revelation to come now, or even when I do have kids, inshallah, or even when those kids are teenagers. But it still troubles me in an existential way and a practical way.
Am I getting old, stodgy? Am I getting to the point where being a teenager is foreign to me, and I don't understand that most of them are just fine?

Whenever I think that, I think of the increasing number of suicides, school shootings. I think of some things I see on Facebook and Twitter from teen relatives that make me shake my head, that if nothing ever happens will just be some stupid stuff they said on Twitter when they were 18 (we've all been there) but if something does happen will be see as glaring, underlined, bolded cries for help.

So if that's the case, will I stop my own kids from seeing, reading, or listening to things I would have been allowed to listen to by my own parents? Just in case?

I don't know. I might.

There are some people who will probably look at this as "Another religious person wants to ban creative expression." That's the farthest from the truth. If I do censor what my children read, listen to, or watch, I don't think I will ever feel 100% good about it.

Especially books. As someone who loves books, loves reading, who was comforted by these stories, whose life was changed by the books I read...I will never feel right about stopping my child from reading a book.

I don't want to have to. But the more I see what's being put out there, the more the truth becomes distorted, I am disgusted, and afraid.

So in the meantime, I pray that with time will come wisdom, and when the time comes, I will be able to have conversations with my children so that I can trust they will make the right decisions and that ultimately they will make the right decisions.

I want them to see life for what it is: beautiful, precious, a gift from God. I also want them to see death for what it is, and what it isn't: a sacred, permanent state that is beyond comprehension, not a solution or answer to an earthly problem.