[Background: A friend asked me a while back to write up a few sentences summarizing why I choose to be Muslim, so she could then publish it in the Muslim campus paper, along with several other students’ responses. I kept assuring her that I would submit something, but was frustrated at my inability to articulate […]

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He’s a graduating senior. He’s very articulate, and passionate about diversity issues on our university campus. His family fled Iran when he was a child, soon after the revolution (Which revolution? cracked my father, when I came home and recounted my day to him. Iran goes through a revolution every few years.) He doesn’t consider […]

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postscript
Due to popular demand, and because I really want to update but can’t since I have highly annoying papers to write, I’m instead posting my article that was published in the South Asian magazine on campus. Long-time readers may be interested to know it’s an edited and slightly more formalized version of this post from […]

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join the club
Two flyers I noticed the other day while taking a psychology midterm I most likely failed but that’s okay:
“MAKE BEARDS NOT BOMBS”
- and -
“All the COOL guys have beards.
WHY DON’T YOU?”
In a seeming reference to the Campus Crusade for Christ (a student organization on our university campus), the bottom of each flyer […]

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and words can never really help you say/what you want them to anyway
I had an idea for a Women of Color Conference workshop that involves a film, followed by discussion. The film is entitled The Way Home, and I saw it over a year ago, so the details are somewhat fuzzy, but I think it […]

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Muslim Film Festival
Saturday, March 13, 2004
UC Berkeley
2050 Valley Life Sciences Building
Go go go.

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forget the village, it takes a halaqa
I’ve figured out a great way to form lasting friendships: Go ice skating. This is especially successful if you don’t know how to ice skate in the first place. After all, it’s practically impossible to remain dignified or reserved if you have little or no skating experience. After the […]

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fake post III - what i did yesterday, blah blah blah (the standard is really decreasing, or what?)
I’ve finally figured out that I am certifiably insane. (No kidding?) Yesterday, I used one of my breaks from class to stop by a little market and buy some fruits and vegetables for home. I love the place. […]

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multiple choice
Felt like updating, but I’m majorly exhausted, as evidenced by the fact that I made it to Taraweeh at the masjid for the first time in a week, and then kept dozing off while standing in prayer. Terrible, isn’t it?
I need lots of sleep, and you all could use some constructive breaks from […]

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For all my joking that my mental age is in the single digits (and, hey, it is, okay), all I really want is to be fourteen again.
I was still two weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday the year I traveled to Pakistan, in the midst of Ramadan, for what would ultimately become an eighteen-month stay. […]

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I am sitting in the café’s patio, alone, surrounded by mosaic tiles and empty wrought-iron furniture, late afternoon sunlight slanting across my table, classical music streaming from the speakers.
Just this morning, exasperated at running out of lined paper during my lecture and having misplaced my favorite pen, I walked over to the campus bookstore […]

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[Acknowledgement for this post must go to Somayya, without whose generosity and understanding I would not have made it to yesterday’s program, who has successfully put me on several guilt trips over the past week and who has, yes, been quite justified in doing so, but who (I hope) understood why I had to be […]

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jazak’Allah khayr for the memories…
- of my primary email account, which must have broken any and all existing records in going over the maximum limit dozens of times over the past few months, and my cell phone bill, which should make me cringe when it arrives any day now.
- of a mother who may not […]

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I know you probably have a “Surah Ya-Seen day” once in a while, too. You may call it something else, but I bet it’s still comparable to mine. Perhaps yours is known as “The Day from Hell” instead. I’ve always called mine “Surah Ya-Seen days” simply because it makes me feel less pissed off that […]

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beautiful day
Last Friday morning, while the Bay Area weather was still cool and breezy and traffic was negligible, my (and Shereen’s :)) halaqa group drove up to meet at my house. We packed our picnic lunches and endless snacks, made sure to grab plenty of water bottles, waved fi aman’Allah to my ummy, and set […]

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