huda kazi in the big city

A raindrop in Atlanta means catastrophe on the roads. The interstates grind to a halt, and all the lovely maps on Georgia Navigator turn a blistering red, which means soon afterwards the surface streets are clogged with frenzied motorists who foolishly believe avoiding the major highways will actually get them home faster. Because of the rain, I went straight to Al-Farooq masjid after work. I’d rather sit reading in a mosque than fuming in gridlocked traffic, and Al-Farooq would feed me if I chose to eat (I never do, but the option is nice), and it was all more efficent that way.

So I went, and I read, and I pretty much didn’t pay attention to anything else that was going on, except for the iftaar and maghrib. I’m trying to make as much headway in the Quran as early as I can because I know that I’ll fall behind later in the month, and I want to build up a buffer.

But when the adhaan for isha started… I haven’t seen Mansoor since he stayed behind at the Boston airport on Labor Day. I haven’t talked to him for more than ten minutes since then either… but I know his adhaan. I knew it in the tents in Mina, and I knew it tonight, even when I thought he was out of town. Hearing it made me a little teary because Ramadan is a time for friends and family, and I know it’s only the first day, but I hate doing even a day of it alone, and Mansoor does a beautiful adhaan. You hear his adhaan, no matter what else you’re doing or thinking. It absolutely stops you in your tracks.

Tonight was an auspicious beginning to Ramadan, and insha’Allah, the rest of the month will continue the same way.

Ramadan. It keeps me busy. I feel like I’m doing less than I did last year, despite all my lofty intentions going into the month, and I’m a little disappointed in myself. There are still about ten days to go, though, so insha’Allah, I’ll be make use of them so fully that next year I can say, if only I can do as much as last year! Insha’Allah.

One of my Ramadan goals this year was to stop listening to music for the full thirty days. I make this goal every year and rarely do I keep it even through the second week, so I guess one of the positive things this year is that I’ve done it so far. I like background noise, so giving up music is hard; I have it on in the car, all day at work, and often when I come home, too, so I don’t freak myself out by hearing imaginary things in the walls. This year I’m substituting the Quran, Hamza Yusuf’s Purification of the Heart series (not the greatest audio, sadly), and various nasheeds, particularly Native Deen because their stuff is handy and sometimes I get lazy.

But anyway, I’m off track. Apparently fasting and not sleeping much make me long-winded.

One of the Native Deen songs that sticks in my head (is that defeating the purpose of not listening to music, if their songs repeat themselves in my head?) is about the small deeds you do, and how they can make more of a difference than all the grand gestures in the world. And then Reza Aslan echoes that sentiment in No god but God when he says, “benevolence and care for the poor were the first and most endearing virtues preached by Muhammad” and then follows up that line by quoting verse 177 from Surah Baqarah, the verse that says that piety lies in such things as fulfilling our contracts, being generous and charitable, and having patience.

Patience.

It’s something I never seem to have enough of, either because I’m always finding myself in situations that require a lot of it, or because I don’t really have enough to start with in the first place. I’m trying to be more patient, but sometimes I think I’m doomed for Crotchety Old Lady-ville, if I’m not already an honorary resident.

(I’m sorry, but letting your children careen recklessly around somebody else’s house, screaming like banshees, while you chat blithely to your friends as though nothing were wrong? IS RUDE. And if that makes me a crotchety old lady, let me just grab my knitting needles so you can point me in the right direction of town.)

Ken says I am a hot-spot for drama. I think he only says that because the drama-filled stories are the most interesting, so they’re the ones he remembers, and also because he considers my leaky roof to be dramatic. I have had a lot of drama lately (or at least been adjacent to a lot of it), beginning with when I paged Miss Manners (so okay, it wasn’t quite so hypothetical as all that) in August. I thought I resolved that situation like a mature adult. Next came some wedding-related drama for a friend, and then some friend-related drama for a friend, and I found myself repeating over and over, that “the retribution for an injury is an equal injury, but those who forgive the injury and make reconciliation will be rewarded by God.” (42:40) It’s hard to do, though.

Now I’m back with Miss Manners again, trying to take the advice I’ve dispensed out to others. Be patient. Forgive it, let it go. It’s not so bad as all that. Maybe that does make me a pushover, to let myself once again be the object of rudeness, especially after I’ve already tried to talk the situation out once. Maybe I should have more pride and self-respect than to do this yet again.

I can do with a little less pride, though, and someone else’s rudeness doesn’t hurt my self-respect. I could also do with more patience, and perhaps this is the way I get some. God does say that He tests us in the ways that are hardest for us.

Right, so that was long and rambly and preachy, and I apologize, but Ramadan is in my head, so I can’t do light and fluffy, like how I cute I think Ugly Betty is or whether I should cave and buy the new Star Wars releases, because the words, they won’t come. My head is somewhere else. The real question, as Shabina asks, is what will happen in November, after Ramadan ends, where my head will go, and whether I’ll still think about things like patience and how I can get more.

Also (final postscript, I promise!) Rashaad has a good piece that relates to the Miss Manners question too.

Maimunah and I had plans for dinner at Cafe Lily in Decatur tonight. She had things she needed to do first, so we planned on meeting around 7:30ish. Since I was coming from work, I figured I’d stop by Masjid Al-Farooq* to pray ‘asr rather than doing it at work because why pray in a “quiet room” when you can pray in a musallah?

When I got to Al-Farooq, there were cars everywhere, which was odd because normally people don’t come to the masjid in between jamaats unless there’s something going on, and as far as I knew, nothing was going on. I didn’t see any women, but that’s not too unusual at Al-Farooq. The men were all staring at me as I drove in, but then, that’s not too unusual at Al-Farooq either. I didn’t really care because I was going to be there for all of ten minutes; I’d slip into the women’s section, pray my ‘asr, and slip right out.

Except they wouldn’t let me in. The first man wouldn’t let me park, and then as I was trying to understand exactly what was going on, another man told me there was “no space” for women. They were having an ijtimah, and women were not invited. I said all I wanted to do was pray, and if I didn’t do it here, I’d miss it, and he said there was no room. I’d switched into Urdu at this point because this man was more fluent in that language than in English; I don’t know what a non-Urdu speaking woman would have done in the same situation. I asked how they could not let me in for five minutes to pray, and he seemed to falter, but then he said they’d taken down all the curtains, so there was nowhere for me to pray.

At that point, I gave up, half in tears, and drove away. Situations like this usually make me angry instead of weepy, but there’s something very hopeless about being locked out of your own place of worship simply because of your gender.

The Islamic Society of Augusta isn’t fancy, but at least it’s welcoming.

I know many of the Atlanta Muslim community leaders scoff at the masjid in Augusta for being “too modern” or “too liberal” or too whatever, but I also know that something like this would never have happened in Augusta. The women would have been invited to the ijtimah in the first place, and even if none had shown up, the men would have let me in and let me pray because that’s the kind of masjid we have in Augusta: one where the actual Islam of it all comes first.

In February, I was wondering how the Prophet (S) would have reacted to the Dutch cartoons. Today I am wondering how he would have reacted if I had come to his masjid in Medina for prayer, and the men had some kind of session going on. I think I know, and I think it would not at all be like the men at Al-Farooq tonight.

Mansoor tells a story about a man who wanted to convert to Islam, but he didn’t want to do wudu. The shaykh he asked told him okay, convert, and don’t do wudu. So the man accepts Islam, and one day he goes to the masjid for prayer, but he doesn’t do wudu. Another man in the masjid is horrified and says that he must do wudu, that he cannot pray without wudu. The first man gets upset and leaves, saying if he has to do wudu, he’s not going to be Muslim. The second man then goes to the shaykh and asks him how he could possibly tell the first man that he didn’t have to do wudu because it’s not true as wudu is an important part of the religion. The shaykh said, “At least I got him to step towards Islam. You just drove him away.”

Tonight, Al-Farooq drove me away. If I had any other options for a downtown masjid, I would never go back, but Al-Farooq is the only one on my way home from work right now, and I refuse to stop going to the masjid simply because some people think it’s okay to kick the women out on certain days. If their Web site were working (and yes, I know I linked to it above, but that’s mostly for the future when it IS working, and while I’m on that note, why, exactly does a regime change on the board entail downtime for the Web site? Couldn’t they have just left the old one up while they did the new one?), I’d have looked up the President’s name and email address by now, but since it’s not, I’m going to have to work a little harder to find it. This kind of thing is NOT okay. It’s not. And while I hesitate to ever channel Asra Nomani, I can’t just let it go.

Update Sunday, June 4: I asked Mansoor yesterday, and he said it was Tabliqi Jammat who was there Friday afternoon, so at least it makes sense now… but it’s still not okay. It does, however, make me even more glad I didn’t marry that guy from the Tabliqi family way back when.

(The last part doesn’t apply, of course, but it’s a much funnier line when you include it.)

Yesterday marked my return to exercise. It’s been quite a drought, but I think I’m finally committed again. (I think this because of the panic attack I had when I regained my pre-parasite weight relatively quickly; I’m not actually sure I’ve gained back only my pre-parasite weight, either.)

And of course there’s always the thing that even slender couch potatoes will have future health problems since it’s the couch potato thing more than the slender thing that matters.

So yesterday morning, I woke up, drove to the nearby middle school, and ran around the track for an hour. It left me a little sore (muscles that have grown complacent and lazy will whine when you make them work), but nothing too bad. Then this morning, I woke up and hiked to the top of Kennesaw Mountain with Maimunah. (The long-timers among y’all will recognize that as number 24 on my 101 in 1001, and the astute among y’all will recognize that I need to update that page.)

They have a LOT of cannons at Kennesaw Mountain.

We did the easy hike, the one mile to the top of the mountain. It seemed prudent, especially for our first time out and given our time constraints.

The crowd wasn’t too bad when we got there (just in time for a cannon demonstration in front of the visitor’s center, and let me just say right now that even cannons lacking cannon balls are LOUD), although more and more people arrived as the morning progressed. It’s a very dog- and kid-friendly park. We’d often see kids running up part of the trail and then later see the same kids being hauled up the rest of the trail by their parents. The easy hike is only a mile, but it is uphill.

The view from halfway up. The pictures don’t really do it justice.

I definitely want to go back and try out some of the other trails, eventually working my way up to some of the longer ones too. Also, the Web site claims there’s horseback riding at Kennesaw Mountain as well (number 84 on my 101 in 1001), and I’d love to try that as well. I haven’t ridden a horse since we got caught in a monsoon as we were going up a mountain in India when I was twelve, and the adults got horses for the kids to ride on so we could hurry and not catch pneumonia or typhoid. We didn’t get either of those, but I did get food poisoning from the masala dosa I ate in the ramshackle restaurant on the side of the mountain, and now I will never eat a masala dosa again. That’s neither here nor there, though.

I know Kennesaw Mountain is the site of a Civil War battle, so I wasn’t surprised by all the references to the War Between the States. The plaques in honor of the Confederate generals did take me a little by surprise, as I expect that kind of thing more over at Stone Mountain on the other side of the city. Also, considering just a few years ago they changed the name of downtown’s Bedford Dr. to Central Park Dr. and changed the corresponding park from Bedford Park to Central Park (because General Nathaniel Bedford was in the Confederate Army and a slave owner), I was under the impression the city was trying to limit the number of Confederate ties it trumpeted.

But anyway. It took me nine years, but I did finally make it to the top of Kennesaw Mountain. The endorphins that cropped up along the way were just a side benefit so I don’t kill my (non-existent) husband.

In the last book of Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quartet, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles Wallace takes a trip through time to right a series of Might-Have-Beens in the hope of preventing a nuclear holocaust in his present. As I finished In Cold Blood this afternoon, the end of which dabbles in the murderers’ childhoods, I kept saying to myself, oh, if only child-Perry had had someone to take care of him and love him and give him attention, what Might Have Been.

I suppose that makes me a bleeding-heart liberal, focusing on the murderers like that, ostensibly to the disregard of the victims. Except that I don’t forget the victims. They were the Clutter family, Herb, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon, and they were each shot in the head for pretty much no reason at all. Nancy and Kenyon were children. The death penalty was exactly the right punishment for both Perry and Dick; their crime was heinous, premeditated, and, if you’ll forgive me, in cold blood. They deserved to hang, but that doesn’t mean I don’t read certain paragraphs and think, if only.

In high school, I read a short story about a woman who thought about what she would do if she were attacked by a rapist, how she would talk to him and get to know him because then he wouldn’t rape her because they would be friends. Of course that’s not true. The majority of rapes in this country are date rapes, perpetrated entirely by people who know and claim friendship with the victim, because rape is not about familiarity so much as control. I don’t remember the exercise behind reading the story, but I do clearly recall my teacher discussing the narrator’s naivete and lack of understanding.

And now, here I am, talking about kindness and familiarty, moments and might-have-beens, and how they affect crime… I wonder if that makes me naive. Is that what we bleeding-hearts are, naive? Do I not understand the way things truly are, am I over-simplifying the problem? Perhaps I am, but that doesn’t mean that I’m entirely wrong, either.

And serve Allah. Ascribe no thing as partner unto Him. (Show) kindness unto parents, and unto near kindred, and orphans, and the needy, and unto the neighbour who is of kin (unto you) and the neighbour who is not of kin, and the fellow-traveller and the wayfarer and whom your right hands possess. Lo! Allah loveth not such as are proud and boastful; [4.36]

Unto the neighbor who is of your kin and unto the neighbor who is not of your kin, show kindness. Unto everyone, show kindness. It is a command from God Himself.

I think Dick would have ended up executed or in prison for life regardless of his childhood, especially since Dick’s childhood was decent. Not great, but decent. He certainly had everything Perry lacked and wanted. It’s funny how he didn’t actually kill any of the Clutters but I still didn’t care one bit about his thieving, lying, animal-abusing, pedophilic ass ending up in The Corner. With Perry, I am glad he was caught, glad he was sentenced, glad that justice was served, and at the same time just a little sad that somebody couldn’t have saved him as a child.

And you see, the thing is, I have to be a bleeding-heart liberal. I can’t be anything else. I can’t relegate the poor to poverty, the starving to famine, the uneducated to illteracy. I can’t. I have to believe that for the most part, people aren’t born wanting to hurt others, that they didn’t just come that way, that kindness and attention can make real differences. I have to believe in the good ripples. It’s simply the way I’m built.

Somebody, I can’t remember who, once told me that anger was about control, or more specifically, about losing control. If somebody makes you angry, you’re ceding control to them because they are causing you to be angry. I don’t think the theory necessarily applies all the way across the board, and even if it does, I think there are some things that are worth being angry about. Genocide. Human rights violations. Famine. Racism. The destruction of our environment. So many things merit passion and activisim and standing your ground because you just can’t take one more minute of it. Too many to list, really.

But insults towards Allah (SWT)? Somehow, I think Allah can handle Himself, and the strongest insult man can offer is not even as noticeable as a mosquito bite.

Last year, The Sane One did a post partially about extremism in religion where she said everyone is talking about extremism, but nobody is actually defining what’s “extreme”. And then she said, “Extremism is going beyond [or below] the Prophet (S).” So following allowing that line of logic, and borrowing from an over-marketed Christian slogan (I think the Christians would agree with me here), in this situation, what would the Prophet do?

I don’t even have to wonder about this, actually, because I know what he would do. When people threw trash at him, he did nothing. When they hurled insults in his face, he did nothing. When they threw rocks at him, when they ran him out of town, when they tried to starve him, he did nothing. Even when Allah, through the angel Gabriel, asked the Prophet if he would like the people who treated him so cruelly to be destroyed, he refused.

The Prophet was about kindness and gentleness. I do not think he would have approved of the kidnapping threats or the death threats.

And there’s always the basic truth that if we had not allowed the cartoons to make us so angry, if we had not ceded that control, millions of people would never have never seen them in the first place. We did their work for them. They waved the red flag, and we charged. I don’t disagree that it’s hurtful, but not to this extent, not to the point of threatening and committing violence. Marches and rallies, sure. Boycott the newspaper in question, by all means. Let’s get ‘em where it hurts most: in the pocketbook. Protest as much as you want, but don’t wave a gun while you’re doing it. The only way we can defuse the cartoons’ claim that Islam is all about violence is to react firmly, strongly, and peacefully.

On another note, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf mentioned a hadith that says if somebody has wronged you, then you have the right to revenge… but if you choose to forgive instead, Allah will forgive one of your sins for you. These cartoons, they are hurtful and cruel, and they were meant to be so, but we should try to forgive and let Allah decide the fate of those who drew them. He is, after all the, best of judges.

Over 300 people died in the second day of stoning at this year’s hajj. The second day is typically the most dangerous because many pilgrims are trying to leave Mina, which they have to do before the sun sets and can’t do without completing the stoning ritual. Add in the extra wrinkle that most pilgrims don’t believe they can begin stoning until after the zuhr (afternoon) prayer and the short winter days, and you have a mix that’s just waiting for a stampede. Our group last year decided to stay in Mina one extra day, meaning we didn’t have a particular rush to do the stoning. It rained heavily that afternoon, clearing out the Jamarat area; our camp was immediately across from the Jamarat, so as soon as the rain stopped, our group ran across and did the ritual, which takes all of five minutes when there’s minimal crowd. Last year was also the first time the Saudis had replaced the tiny pillars with large walls, an innovation so ingenious I still can’t figure out why nobody thought to do it earlier. The wall gives you a larger surface area to hit; theoretically, that should reduce the amount of shoving and pushing to get to the front. I thought it worked well enough.

	The old style of the Jamarat pillars. This is the upper level. One year, the shoving was so intense the people at the front were actually pushed over the protective wall.

It seems everybody is pointing fingers about who’s at fault, with the hajjis blaming the Saudis for not providing enough security, and the Saudis claiming the hajjis didn’t follow the rules set for their safety. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know, but from the safety of my couch, I’m inclined to agree with the Saudis. This year’s stampede was caused by people tripping over dropped luggage. You’re not supposed to bring luggage to the Jamarat (too much of a crowd… the luggage gets in the way), but people did it anyway. And they’ll keep doing it anyway, even though all it takes to start a stampede is one person messing up or not following the rules. It seems like there’s no foolproof way to lower the risks, and all we can do is pray for the people who died, that insha’Allah their hajj will be accepted. At the same time, I don’t know that I’ll ever understand why almost everyone at the hajj, the pilgrimage for God, feels it’s okay to push and shove and elbow and trample. Sometimes you can’t help it because there’s so many people pushing from behind you that you’re not strong enough to keep the force from pushing you forward onto somebody else, but someone has to start the wave off, right?

*****

On my previous trip to India in 2002, I brought back stowaways in the form of lice (first time in my life ever that I had lice, so it took me almost three weeks to figure it out (I could not for the life of me understand why my head kept itching, and the physician’s assistant I saw in lieu of the busy doctor prescribed dandruff shampoo because apparently she was either blind or incredibly ill-informed) until Uzmaa suggested the possibility; then I had a massive, panicky freak-out, went to Kroger, even though it was midnight, for lice-killing shampoo, and sat up all night washing everything I’d ever owned in hot water). On this trip, I seem to have kept up my new tradition of allowing other organisms to hitch a ride to the States, although these are (I think) microscopic and living in my digestive tract. I’m showing all the symptoms for dysentery, a lovely third-world ailment that I know best from playing Oregon Trail as a child.

I haven’t really eaten anything that tastes good since Eid — haven’t really eaten much other than Gatorade and Jello, actually — so I cannot explain how much I am craving something rich and saucy at the moment. Obviously so much I’m blogging about it. I had planned on attempting a can of Campbell’s Chunky this evening until Dan pointed out that one can I’d chosen (chunky vegetables) had beef broth, and the other (mushroom ravioli with vegetables) had chicken broth… so it was back to plain old condensed tomato for me. If I had my druthers, it would have been a slice of Savage Pizza or some kabobs or zesty tilapia with mushrooms (if you’re following the link, watch the lime juice because two limes is one lime too many, in my opinion) with roasted potatoes. Food worsens the abdominal cramping, though, so I’m sticking to Gatorade and soup until the doctor’s office opens on Monday (or Tuesday… not sure if my doctor observes MLK day or not) and I can start a regimen of shiny happy drugs. I can’t remember the last time I looked so forward to antibiotics.

The lack of solid food means not only have I not gained back any of the weight I lost in India, I’ve lost more, putting me somewhere in the range of a whopping 102 pounds. That’s disturbing because I’m not actually twelve years old anymore. My American clothes are starting to be noticeably baggy. I’m worried that my Indian clothes are only a little large, as that means if/when I gain the weight back, they may be more fitted than I’d like.

*****

There is an art, I know, to conversation, but lately it seems that I’m encountering more and more people who haven’t even mastered the fingerpainting stage yet. And by “people”, I mean “men” since I can honestly I’ve yet to find a woman with the talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the right moment. It confuses me to no end as to what the problem is; how hard can it be to avoid saying something inappropriate or rude?

huda: Oh, and I love skiing.

conversation partner: I think skiing is the biggest waste of time there is, other than playing Chinese checkers.

or

huda: I have a nose ring.

conversation partner: Nose rings are so ugly.

Seriously. How? Why? How?

A woman would have said, “I’m not fond of skiing myself, but I know people who love it. What do you like best about it?” Or she would have said, “I could never imagine getting my nose pierced! What prompted you to do it?” Or something else, anything else that didn’t smack so much of buffoonery. I’d be grateful if somebody could explain the how, or the why, or the what in the hell.

*****

I’ve been watching my beloved Bend It Like Beckham while writing this, partly because I adore it, partly because I crave the background noise, and partly to wash the violent Reaver images from Serenity out of my head so I don’t have bad dreams tonight. John Rhys-Meyers is in the new Woody Allen pic (also starring Scarlett Johansson), but for some reason I’m having a hard time seeing him as anything but soccer coach Joe. I didn’t have that problem with Parminder Nagra or Keira Knightley. It may just be that I haven’t seen Rhys-Meyers in anything but BILB, not even that made-for-TV Elvis biopic he did a while back.

Serenity is a good movie, just in a different way. Tonight was my first time watching the movie since Alicia and I went to the preview showing this summer. We were at the third preview, at which point I think most of the edits were done, since the film I watched tonight very closely mirrored the one I saw then. I’ve spent a good deal of my sick time watching the Firefly DVDs Mandi was sweet enough to send me for Christmas, so tonight Dan and AM suggested re-watching Serenity in lieu of going out when I might I have to make a break for the bathroom three times in an hour.

It’s been quite a movie night for me, but BILB is almost done, and so is this post, I think.

One year ago today, I was in Arafat. It seems like so long ago, but at the same time I cannot believe an entire year has passed, or that I am not there again this year.

I figured I would be a little envious of anyone who went for hajj this year. Turns out I don’t actually know anyone who went, but the pictures of the pilgrims in their ihrams is enough to make me wish I were there.

I’ve been devouring the media coverage of the hajj this year (seems like there’s more than usual, but that’s fine by me), from the hotel collapse to the “on the scene” coverage, in a hope of recapturing the feeling of being there, in Makkah and in Mina, doing hajj. It isn’t the same of course, but it’s better than nothing. They pan around a street, and I think maybe I recognize it; they come upon a restaurant, and that I do recognize, flashing back to the burgers we had at two in the morning after our tawaf’ul hajj, when we were so exhausted that even walking to get food seemed like an unnecessarily long chore.

So many people, all of them doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

Tomorrow is Eid. Last year, with no real calendar, a bizarre sleep schedule, and the absence of the usual hungama — I did not have to slice almonds or pistachios for the traditional Eid dishes, nor did I worry about what I would wear or whether I’d remembered to take the day off from work — I almost forgot that it was Eid. Being in Mina was enough. Getting to shower and change out of my ihram was enough. I didn’t need the fancy clothes or elaborate meals. I had been to Arafat and spent the night (at least partly) in Muzdalifah.

Over two million people at the hajj right now, praying, doing tawaf. Last year, Alhumdulillah, I was lucky enough to be one of them. This year, as I celebrate Eid from the comfort of my parents’ home, my thoughts will be in Makkah, remembering what I’m missing.

We are from Allah, and unto Him we return.

Or, in Biblical terms, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

For our Augusta boys that we lost tonight: Inna lillahi wa inna illahi raji’oon. May Allah (SWT) forgive you and have mercy upon you.

I don’t know what else to say that doesn’t sound callow or self-righteous about these boys, who were a part of our extended family, who were over at our house all the time.

Allahum-maghfir lihayyina wa mayyitina, wa shaahidina, wa ghaa’ibina, wa sagheerina wa kabeerina, wa dhakarina wa onthana. Allahuma man ahyaitahu minna fa ahyihi alal Islami, wa man tawaf-fitahu minna fatawaffahu’alal imani. Allahuma la tahrimna ajrahu wa la tudillana ba’dahu.

My heart goes out to your families.

There will never be any real progress in ending this terror war, until we realize that we have all become collateral damage, unacceptable collateral damage. That being the case, there is no they or we in this affair. We are they and they are we. When a child in New York never sees his mother again because she was crushed in a collapsed tower at the World Trade Center, we all have suffered an irreplaceable loss. When an impoverished family in Afghanistan is bombed from the face of the Earth by a misguided missile, something of our collective humanity is destroyed by the blast. When a child in Iraq is born with gross birth defects due to his mother’s exposure to depleted uranium, we have all been deformed. When London commuters fear ever again entering the underground, because of the ill-advised actions of a handful of desperate fanatics, their insecurity touches us all.

For the whole of Imam Zaid Shakir’s statement, follow the link.