Love in the Time of Islamophobia
Posted: December 2, 2015 Filed under: Love InshAllah writers, Radical Love, Your voices | Tags: art, dating, grief, Islamophobia, loss, love, Love InshAllah, Muslim dating, Muslim love, Muslim love stories, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, radical love, relationships, Salaam Love, sex, social justice, Tanzila Ahmed 4 CommentsEds. Note: Big love to our Love InshAllah community for four wonderful years! Our site is going on hiatus but we hope to be back with more stories soon. In the meantime, keep telling yours.
Tanzila Ahmed
I’ve always been a sucker for a good story – and a happy ending.
Ever enamored by the RomCom, I always pictured myself as the clumsy, awkward but affable protagonist of my own 90 minute, wittily narrated romance. In my story, taking fake boyfriends to Desi weddings, having a hot doctor that stars in telenovelas, and having a back-up baby-daddy for my geriatric uterus were a part of my off-color but meaningful RomCom story. It’s why I loved being a part of the book Love Inshallah, so much – for the first time I saw my narrative side-by-side with 24 other Muslimah’s love stories. It gave me hope that maybe there was a love story for me as well.
I always imagined that the end of the Radical Love column would come when I had fallen in love with the perfect man. In my mind, I thought that after two years of writing about the intersections of grief, love, faith and social justice that I would be able to make someone fall in love with me through my words alone and that closing out my column with a “happily ever after” ending story would make my readers (and myself) content. Finding love was never the point of writing this column – redefining love as a 30-something single Brown Muslimah-American with social justice values was. But I harbored this little romantic hope that with words love could manifest.
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The brilliant, awful truth of existence
Posted: November 18, 2015 Filed under: Love InshAllah writers, Things I Wish I'd Known, Your voices | Tags: American love stories, dating, family, growing older, growing up, Huda al Marashi, love, Love InshAllah, love stories, marriage, Muslim dating, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, relationships, Salaam Love, Things I Wish I'd Known, time 1 Comment
Huda Al-Marashi
I went to my 20th high school reunion on the same day I went to a high school open house for my oldest child.
At the reunion, our name tags had our pictures from our freshman year in high school. There I was with my bangs nearly flopping over my eyes, my entire future unscripted and unknown. I pressed my name tag onto my blouse and thought about my oldest son, with his hair flopping down across his forehead, how he’d be turning the same age as I was in that picture in just a matter of months. In some odd way, I felt as if he was becoming a peer.
I don’t feel all that different from the girl I was in that picture. I remember everything she liked and wanted for herself. I remember all her hopes and dreams and fears. I’ve certainly changed, my priorities and values have shifted, but that young girl is still with me. All I have done for that last twenty years is sleep and wake up, and life has happened around me. I got married, earned degrees, moved, had children, moved some more, and then finally returned to my hometown. Through it all, the years just passed without any sort of fanfare. I wish we had to crank the gears on some giant clock or push time forward in any sort of physical way, because this sunrise-sunset business crept up on me. Wrinkles just showed up on my face; grey hair appeared out of nowhere; and my waistline decided it had enough. After three children, it was done shrinking back to its pre-pregnancy size.
Can I Get a Witness?
Posted: November 4, 2015 Filed under: Love InshAllah writers, Radical Love, Your voices | Tags: American love stories, connection, dating, fear of being alone, fear of dying alone, love, Love InshAllah, love stories, mortality, Muslim dating, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, radical love, relationships, Salaam Love, Tanzila Ahmed, witness 3 CommentsTanzila Ahmed
I wake up during the deadly summer night heat to incredible pain in my upper back, and a commotion outside my apartment complex. I can feel the tight muscles all up and down my spine. It’s 2 a.m. I’m on day three of a ten-day detox diet – no caffeine, sugar, dairy, processed food, carbs, legumes, or hydrogenated oils. I am sustaining myself on grass fed meats, organic veggies, and lots of raw nuts. I know that my pains are related to the diet change and am frustrated that my body is unable to handle an all natural diet without pain.
I go to the kitchen for a painkiller. I wonder if ibuprofen is included in a detox diet. As I lean my head against the front door, I hear the sound of the police walkie talkie outside. I saw them in my hall earlier when I came home at 11pm. I wonder why they are still here, three hours later. I wonder why they have face masks hanging around their necks. I wonder who they are here for and if I should be worried.
The next morning, there is a big, bright blue sticker across my neighbor’s doorjamb. It’s labeled: “Warning – Coroner’s Seal”. I later learn that the cops were there for the elderly black man who lived by himself a few doors down from me. His family hadn’t heard from him in a week and had been trying to get a hold of him. When the cops looked through the back window of his apartment they saw that he had died leaning up against the front door. He was 71-years-old and had died of natural causes. He had been dead about a week. In the heat, his body did not keep.
I thought of all the times I had walked by his door this past week on the way to the garage. How every time I had walked by, his body must have been there, leaning up against the door. I wonder if he had known that he was dying and if he was trying to get out of his apartment to get help. I hadn’t known how close mortality had been to me all that time.
Marriage Eyes
Posted: October 29, 2015 Filed under: Love InshAllah writers, My Infidel Husband, Your voices | Tags: American love stories, children, commitment, courtship, dating, fear of commitment, gender roles, love, Love InshAllah, love stories, marriage, Muslim dating, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, My Infidel Husband, relationships, Salaam Love, Zahra Noorbakhsh Comments Off on Marriage Eyes
Zahra Noorbakhsh
Dylan and I sat in the well-worn cushions of the black pleather love seat in our counselor’s office, the three of us wondering how I’d respond to Dylan’s marriage proposal.
“Well?” Dylan asked, his gray-green eyes locked on my face.
“Yes! Oh my god, yes,” I said, but my up intonations gave away my uncertainty. “Of course! It’s what we’ve been talking about! Of course I want to get ma-mar—engaged!”
I winced at the shrill sound of my own voice. The pleather groaned as I shifted and sunk into my seat.
The rest of the session I was Woody Allen in “Annie Hall.”
You Are More Than What You Do
Posted: October 21, 2015 Filed under: Love InshAllah writers, Things I Wish I'd Known, Your voices | Tags: American love stories, dating, family, Huda al Marashi, life balance, love, Love InshAllah, love stories, marriage, memoir, Muslim dating, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, relationships, Salaam Love, Things I Wish I'd Known, work-life balance, writing, writing and motherhood 5 CommentsHuda Al-Marashi
Whenever I accompany my husband to a work dinner, someone invariably asks me, “And what do you do? Are you also a physician?”
Like many writers, I struggle with claiming that title, so I rarely mention it. I almost always quip that I’m employed by our three kids, or simply state that I’m a stay-at-home mom.
The reply is often, “That’s the most important job in the world,” or “Sounds like you have your hands full,” as if I’ve just confessed something that begs for affirmation. I’ve often wondered what it is about mothering that calls out the inner cheerleader in people. I’ve never once regarded one of my husband’s colleagues with wide eyes and said, “I bet that keeps you busy!”
Love, InshAllah 
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