When a Christian and Muslim met in Paris

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/07/christian-muslim-women-voices-faith

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It's the season when nearly a third of the global population is preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I am a Christian and I love this time of year, but not necessarily because of the focus on the Christ child. Don't get me wrong, I am awed by the doctrine of the Incarnation, but to be honest, I get much more excited about Easter, the resurrection and the idea of a God that can redeem even death.

Rather, what I love about the current season is the spotlight, however brief, it shines on a poor, courageous young girl named Mary. Maybe it's because I love any excuse to give a platform to any woman typically regulated to the margins of socio-political, ethno-cultural and religious narratives. We gloss over the significance that for at least a few chapters of the traditional Judeo-Christian narrative Mary, a second-class citizen as a woman in her historical period, is given a voice. And her voice is one that not only converses with the divine, but sings of God's remembrance and provision for the marginalized.

Whether we choose to admit it or not, the reality is that women are still marginalized in religious traditions centuries later. Women of the Abrahamic faiths are still working, not only to speak aloud, but to have their voices heard and recognized as valuable and necessary. I wonder what it would look like if women across faith traditions began talking together about this shared challenge.

In my own recent personal experience, a young woman walked up to me while I was greeting folks during the church coffee hour after a discussion in Paris about women of faith telling their difficult stories.

I stared for a second too long at the dichotomy, she, a Muslim woman in her 20s wearing a turquoise colored hijab holding my book titled, Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank About Faith. I asked her name and signed the book. Then I asked if she was a member of this church. I knew the answer but didn't want to make any assumptions. I am too familiar with being on the receiving end of rash judgments.

"No, I'm just visiting. I'm Muslim." She said pointing to her hijab.

"Of course." I replied. "Are you from Paris?"

"I just got here a month ago. I'm getting my Masters," she said.

"That's great. Where were you before Paris?" I had too many questions but had to start light.

"Yemen. I'm from Yemen."

As we talk, I am continually caught off guard by how beautiful she is. Her small face is perfectly framed by the hijab and I find myself admiring her brown eyes and her perfect eyeliner. I've been trying for months to get that cat eye she created.

"So I have to ask you, as a Muslim woman, why are you interested in this book?"

She laughs at me and replies:

Well, I'm Muslim, but a lady is a lady right? I'm curious if I will find overlaps with what we Muslim women find hard to talk about in our own faith tradition.

The more we talked, the more we realized how much we had in common in our active and attentive work on locating and securing our voices amidst a cacophony of competing cultural and religious narratives. She asked me what it was like as a black Christian woman living in America, if I found it difficult to speak about certain things. I fumbled for an answer, caught off guard by the insightfulness of her question. Where could I begin to tell her of the multiple worlds I had learned to maneuver as black, as Christian, as woman?

"It's definitely interesting. I'm actually Nigerian-American. I was born in America but raised in a few other countries." She looked at me waiting for more of an answer.

"I didn't really get what it meant to be black until I went back to live in America for college. And I guess it's taken me years to negotiate identity within a place like America. You know, where there is such painful racial history and continual tensions."

She said thoughtfully:

Isn't it something how people make all sorts of judgments based on what you look like?

"Yes, yes! Without even knowing your story." I was thrilled because I knew on some level in her own way she got it, the big and small ways we find ourselves marginalized by both individuals and cultural traditions that want us to believe we are the sum of our physical appearances.

I had to ask her. "Widad, if you could write your own essay about a taboo topic, what would you want to write about?"

She looked pensively at the ceiling and said:

I would want to write about how much I hate people asking me about my hijab. You have no idea how much people judge me based on this thing alone you know. They ask me what I'm trying to prove by wearing this. Those who know Islamic traditions ask me if I really am a virgin to be wearing it. Some people even just ignore me or make comments about terrorists.

"So, you will probably get mad at me for asking…but, what <em>does</em> the hijab mean to you?" Her entire demeanor shifts and when she answers it truly it's as though she is speaking of a loved one.

She points to it:

This means everything to me. It reminds me of how I want to live my life in preparation for the afterlife. It reminds me of my values you know. I always think back to my mother talking to me and my sisters about hijab. You know, she says, if you have two pieces of chocolate on the table and one piece has a bite taken from it and the other piece is whole and wrapped, which one would you want to take? Of course, my sisters and me, we say we want the wrapped one. My mother, she says, that piece of wrapped chocolate, that is what a woman with hijab is like.

As I listened to Widad, I couldn't help but wonder if this conversation could have happened in the US. I could not think of ever encountering a Muslim woman visiting any Christian churches I had ever stepped into in America. I could not imagine how she might have been received, the stares, the comments, the silences even. But here we were, both countries away from our homes, talking candidly and almost giddy about being women of faith trying to live and speak in ways that honored our spirits, our minds and our bodies.

Later, I think of how I struggle sometimes with being a identified as a Christian, with being part of a religious history that has kept women invisible, that has enslaved black people, that has preached prosperity in the face of global poverty.

But then, I think also about being bound and claimed by a narrative in which the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob graciously makes room for all at the proverbial table. The God I have come to know through the biblical scriptures, was always inviting those that others wanted to cast to the margins: women, the poor, ethnic and religious minorities (of which Christ was a part).

I think back to the Hebrew story of Hagar, the Egyptian woman cast out from Sarai and Abram's home. She and her illegitimate son, Ishmael, are left to die in the wilderness. But God will not let that happen. God sees her, saves her and promises that her son will birth his own nation. Ishmael becomes the father of the Ishmaelites of which the religious tradition of Islam is derived.

I think of how as a Muslim, Widad could trace her faith back to this story of God seeing Hagar, a woman at the margins. I think of how I can trace my faith back to the story of God also seeing another woman at the margins: Mary, the poor, teenage mother of Jesus.

I see us now, Widad and me, wondering aloud about the things our faith traditions try to keep us from saying. And I imagine God saying to Widad, to me, "No, you too must be heard." Maybe it is the season after all.

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