The weekend began, unintentionally but rather appropriately, on 4/20.  First stop: Taos Pueblo, the world’s oldest living pueblo, home to the only Native American tribe to successfully (after a 6 decade fight) have land returned to them by the US government.  The pueblo is lovely.  There is no water or electricity inside the pueblo walls, so all but about 20 tribe members opting to live elsewhere (though still on pueblo land).

Taos Pueblo

We then headed to the beautiful Manby hot springs in the Rio Grande gorge—the same hot springs shown in the film Easy Rider.  A crazy Englishman named Manby once built a bathhouse over the springs, now in ruins, and a road for stagecoaches, but apparently his cruel and ruthless business tactics made him a lot of enemies, and he was found dead in his house with his head cut off.  They say his headless ghost haunts the springs on moonless nights.

We didn’t see any ghosts, but we did see a common fixture at New Mexico hot springs—old naked hippie man.  This is actually a very good person to run into on 4/20, and I have nothing against old naked hippie men, as long as they don’t tell long-winded story after long-winded story.  There are a lot of people here who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens (New Mexico is home to Roswell, with its famed UFO museum). From an anthropological point of view, the alien abduction narrative is really about not fitting in to normative society, and, as New Mexico 1) attracts a lot of people who don’t fit in to normative society and 2) has air forces bases that perform lots of aerial exercises, there are a lot of people here who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens (a friend who works at the local library says she heard 6 in one weekend), which makes for an interesting social landscape, but oh, old naked hippie man, must you go on about how the aliens are still communicating with your brain via a black hole when all I want to do is chillax in the 100 degree water and revel in the beauty of the gorge?

The weekend brought a lot of music, as well.  Fave local musician Boris McCutcheon performed at the Blue Heron Brewery (whose charming bartender canoes home from work every day), and we hung out in a man made cave made by a local artist who carves stunning custom caves out sandstone, including ones designed for living.  This one was built for music/gatherings and had amazing acoustics and an enchanting vibe.

Concert Cave

Residential Cave - View from Bedroom

Finally, we saw Seun Kuti, Fela Kuti’s son, and his band Egypt 80 play at the KTAOS Solar Center.  KTAO is a kickass solar-powered radio station that broadcasts from inside a bar/concert venue.  Seun Kuti is a stylish, super charismatic performer and man, can he dance, as can his two female back-up singers.  Of course, this being Taos, when he sang a song about marijuana called “The Good Leaf,” heartfelt appreciation rose from the audience, and clouds of smoke, which would have been fine, except we were told Seun couldn’t come out for an encore because he was “having trouble breathing.”  Whoops.

Seun Kuti performing at the KTAOS Solar Center

There were also horseback rides on the mesa, a hike into the Embudo Box, and one last meal at Taos Pizza Outback (best pizza crust ever).

But honestly, you don’t even have to go anywhere to appreciate the wonders of New Mexico.  All you have to do is step outside your house and look up, because, to quote Boris McCutcheon’s song Pilgrim, “There’s no sky like the New Mexican sky.”  Ain’t that the damn truth.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that there are major issues facing women in Pakistan, where 3 out of 4 girls are illiterate, a sad state for any country.  But telling six sordid tales of female woe reeks of sensationalism to me (again, just look at the title).  Pakistan has also had a female prime minister, and a female foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, who created quite the media frenzy when she visited India last year (much of which was not about her diplomatic efforts but rather her Cavalli sunglasses and $9,000 Birkin bag).  (And here’s a sordid tale for you — Ms. Khar is also related to the ‘Family to Keep Your Daughters Way the Hell Away From’ — her uncle, Mustafa Khar, is the abusive tyrant husband featured in the memoir My Feudal Lord, and her first cousin (and abusive tyrant’s son) is Bilal Khar, who had his wife, Fakhra Younus, attacked with acid in 2000 after she left him.  The acid fused her lips, melted her breasts and destroyed one of her eyes.  Ms. Younus recently committed suicide in Rome.  Mr. Khar has never been punished.)

So yes, there’s a lot to write about when it comes to female empowerment and equality in Pakistan.  But the Atlantic article just smacks of bad taste and non-journalism.  Hey Atlantic,  next time how about stories of 6 women fighting to change the system?  There are plenty of those in Pakistan, too.

Interview with a Noida policeman reveals their “18th century” attitude toward women who’ve been raped (don’t wear tight clothing and don’t go out alone, otherwise “unfortunate” incidents could occur).   And further shocking (though, sadly, not entirely surprising) revelations in a Tehelka expose about how cops really feel about rape victims (to sum it up: it’s the victim’s fault).

The Tehelka article also relays the harrowing story of one Delhi rape survivor’s experience seeking justice against her attacker — “After a few moments, the compounder [at AIIMS hospital] looked up at the waiting room and shouted, ‘kiska rape hua hai? Andar chalo.’ Who’s been raped?  Go inside.

For women who are raped in Delhi (and South Asia in general), the trauma caused by the crime committed against them is made worse by the very institutions meant to protect them and prosecute the criminals, the police and the courts.  And the media often doesn’t help.

During the school visits, I talked about my novel, and also about was it was like to grow up Pakistani and Muslim in America.  Skunk Girl was set when I was a teenager, in the early 90s, and I recently wrote a short story for a young adult anthology about bullying called Cornered (coming out by Perseus Books in July 2012—I just read the advance copy and it’s excellent).  I decided that I wanted a Pakistani-American protagonist for my story, but, unlike Skunk Girl, I would set it in the contemporary, post 9-11 world.  This got me thinking about the difference between growing South Asian/Pakistani/Muslim in the 80s and 90s versus now.  I discussed a few of these differences in my school visits, but being back inside actual schools (5 middle schools and 1 high school), triggered forgotten memories of my own school years, and made me think further about this topic…

From Woodshop to Whitney to Vitriol: Pakistani/Muslim and American: My Perspective

Woodshop
I went to a small, public middle school in upstate New York.  There were some wonderful teachers, and kids, but it wasn’t the most academically rigorous of programs.  A lot of the students were poor, and it was expected, though not, of course, desired, that a few would become pregnant and drop out in high school, and that many would not go to college.  But I was a child of immigrant desi parents to whom academic success was, well, almost everything, all social and extra-curricular activities superfluous.  There was no notion of exploring and finding yourself—there’s a course in middle school where you learn about different potential careers, surgeon and attorney but also careers like police officer and chef.  To my parents, this made little sense. Police officer and chef were not career options.  Nor was journalist, or bus driver, or politician.   There were really only two options: doctor or engineer (although desi parents have since expanded their horizon, and now currently lauded professions now include law, finance, computers, especially if you become a dot.com millionaire, and even academia).

In spite, or perhaps because of, my parents’ emphasis on academics, my proudest moment in school had nothing to do with getting honors awards or A’s on my report card.  It was making something in woodshop class.  Woodshop was where you wore protective goggles and headphones and used table saws and could potentially injure yourself.   In woodshop, we each made a giant clothespin out of wood.  Mine was one of the worst in the class.  Its two prongs were uneven, as was the stain, but I’d cut the wood myself, shaped it and sanded it and stained it, used vices and sandpaper and saws, and I was proud.  I kept it for years, as a reminder that I, who rarely got to make things, or spend time with nature, who was so clumsy with her hands, had once created something from a block of wood.

Whitney

I did a school visit at a middle school in Silicon Valley that was not a charter school but felt like it, with a small student body and very nice facilities.   I got there early enough to witness the students recite their pledge as someone read it over the loudspeaker.  The gist of their daily pledge was responsibility to others and self-affirmation.  I believe in myself, they recited in unison.  I will never give up.

When I was in middle school, every morning we recited the Pledge of Allegiance.  Our version of self-affirmation came through music.  We memorized and belted out “We are the World,” and, at least for the duration of the song, it felt like we were the future, and together we really could end something like starvation in Africa.  And then there was our penultimate affirmation song, “The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston.  I loved singing this one and did so off-key, but with a lot of gusto and fervor, perhaps because it was a personal anthem against the immigrant parent idea that you had been born into this world to be made in their mold.  I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadows, if I fail, if I succeed, at least I’ll live as I believe.

Vitriol

I also meant it when I said the Pledge of Allegiance.  One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  In the two decades post-middle school, the God part has strengthened and the rest has started to crumble.   I grew up avidly American.  I was a bit of a misfit in America, the one brown Muslim girl in my whole middle school, but this was a country full of misfits, all kinds of immigrant kids, Native Americans kids who grew up on places I read about called reservations, black kids who’d been American for generations but still faced discrimination.  This country had had hippies who’d once gotten naked and danced and copulated in fields and gay people who were out and churches and synagogues and mosques and cults. This sort of diversity would never happen in Pakistan.  No, I belonged to America, and it belonged to me, and hence the Pledge meant something, an affirmation that America was my home.

But, in the past few years, I’ve begun to question this.  There’s a hatred in this country that I’ve never seen before, delivered daily by the media, uttered openly and fearlessly by politicians, like Representative Peter King, who has held a widely criticized Congressional hearing on the supposed radicalization of American Muslims. It’s a totally open, no qualms hatred, and it’s directed, nearly all of the time, at Muslims.

At the Santa Clara public library, I was on a panel with three Muslim teenagers, all of whom wore hijab.  One girl described that one way life was different for her as compared to Nina Khan, the protagonist of Skunk Girl, was that she wore a headscarf, which meant that everyone could instantly identify her as Muslim.  She described how people often came up to her and asked her questions about 9/11 (why did it happen, how could they allow it to happen?) and she often felt like she was expected to apologize for it, as if it was her fault.  “I’m very sorry it happened,” she told the audience, “but I’m not going to say I’m sorry for it because I didn’t do it.”

And therein lies the problem of today’s American Muslim.  We all feel sorry for 9/11, but we’re also suffering for something we didn’t do.  Terrorists are the bane of our existence.  When a crazy French guy of Algerian origin shoots Muslims and Jews in France, it will not help the cause of the Palestinians or avenge his so-called enemies or accomplish any of his declared goals, but it will almost certainly make the lives of regular, hard-working, doctor/comedian/teacher/aspiring actress/lawyer/Sufi/7-11 owner/club kid/student/taxi driver/geneticist/homemaker/stoner/professor/drummer/investment banker/erotic writer/computer programmer and yes, police officer and chef Muslims, who make countless contributions to this great county, a hell of a lot harder.

On top of this, a lot of people in America refuse to believe we exist, or might accept our existence on an individual, exceptional level, but not as a community.  You could argue they don’t even want us to exist.  They prefer to believe, as, apparently does the FBI, that mainstream Muslims are violent and radical.  One man in Florida was so angry that a reality TV show dare insinuate that Muslims are ordinary people with boring problems like everyone else that he called for the program to be banned and Lowe’s actually pulled their ads.

One of the main selections for the Silicon Valley Reads program this year was The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali.  The book’s purpose is to educate people about Islam in an informative yet engaging way, written by a woman who, like me, grew up in America and had almost no other Muslims in her school.  One of the messages of the book is that Muslims are regular people too.  As it states in the introduction, Muslims “struggle with the same daily conflicts and challenges as our non-Muslim neighbors.”  See, everyone?  Two hands, two eyes, two ears.

The fact that this message is even necessary frightens me, and we hear it constantly refuted on media outlets like Fox News, who devotes a lot of its programming to talking heads yelling abut Muslims.  And now these talking heads and politicians are directing their anger and vitriol toward women as well, and, as a Muslim woman, I’ll be damned that the country I so wholeheartedly swore allegiance to growing up is now rife with virulent attacks on the two things about myself I can’t even help—the gender I was born and the religion I was born into.

And it just keeps getting worse.  Women are being called sluts for wanting coverage for birth control and the NYPD has secretly made entire maps of Muslim neighborhoods and Muslim-owned businesses in Newark, and if you thought that you were pretty safe, well, you aren’t, because it’s officially official — your government will not think twice about spying on you just because you’re Muslim.  You could be the epitome of a law abiding citizen, a surgeon who’s saved lives, a teacher who’s inspired students, you could be a drama major at Yale, but none of it matters, because you’re Muslim.  You got that?  You’re Muslim (or maybe you just study them), so you better watch out.

I don’t practice, but I am Muslim for many intents and purposes.  I will always be of a Muslim family.  I will always be moved by Sufi qawwali music and unthinkingly say “bismillah” when a car stops too quickly on the road.   I see sense in atheism, but I still talk to Allah every day.  Will the government spy on me?  Are they already?  Should I look over my shoulder on my next whitewater rafting trip?  What would once have sounded paranoid does not seem so anymore.

And so now, I ponder questions once unimaginable.  What ever happened to the America to which I so fully belonged?  But where do I belong, if not here?

Tuesday, March 20th, 3:30 pm
Vineland Branch Library, San Jose

Tuesday, March 20th, 7 pm
Morgan Hill Library, Morgan Hill

Wednesday, March 21st, 4 pm
Edenvale Library, San Jose

Wednesday, March 21st, 6 pm
Cambrian Branch Library, San Jose

Thursday, March 22nd, 4 pm
Santa Clara Central Park Library, Santa Clara
(this library also made a video trailer for my book)

Thursday, March 22nd, 7:30 pm
Book signing at Barnes and Noble Pruneyard, Campbell

My Backyard - Georgia O'Keefe

In the writing process, revision is usually a crucial element.   In blogging, however, you’re supposed to write something quickly and then post it for anyone in the world to read.  Anyone in the world.  Not just your facebook friends, which is already 674 people too many.  And then there’s the issue of what to write about.  The efficiency with which you’re supposed to write, combined with limitless subject possibilities, makes me want to forget the whole thing and see what’s new on Netflix instant.

This gave me an inspiration.  My friends often ask me, what do you do out there in that tiny New Mexican town?  Well, there’s sky gazing, and stargazing, and the occasional live Scottish music performance, and walks to pick up local grown spinach and dark chocolate at the co-op or to check mail at the rural post office whose existence is threatened by budget cuts and writing, of course.  And every week offers something new, which brings me to:

Last Week’s Highlights: The Dixon Edition

1) Today’s Special, or ‘The Nine Words Every Desi Son Longs to Hear’

We all know the Daily Show is God’s gift to America, and Aasif Mandvi has been making us desis proud for years.   I’ve been wanting to see his movie, Today’s Special, for a while, and there it was on Netflix instant, calling my name.   It received great ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (the definitive movie guide for the discerning viewer), though many critics called the movie ‘predicatable.’  Yes, the plot is predictable, but that doesn’t detract from its charm, and in other ways the movie is surprisingly subtle, moving and laugh-out-loud funny.

One of things the movie addresses, in a touching fashion, is the all-too-common desi father-son relationship, in which the son has been longing his whole life for his emotionally repressed father to hug him and say, ‘Beta, I’m so proud of you. I love you.’ And when it finally happens in the film, it gives you that feel-good movie glow, the kind that makes you want to turn and hug your neighbor.

Also, Naseeruddin Shah, that rock star whose name is so 13^th century, stars in the film, and man, that guy has an impressive physique.  So watch it, if just for his biceps.  You can also watch it with your parents.  It’s DPA, desi parent approved (no excessive dirty language, or nudity, or other oh-god-I-can’t-look-at-the-tv-but-it-might-make-it-more-awkward-if-I-look-away moments).

It may or may not inspire a breakthough in your own relationship with your parents, but it will make you want to eat Indian food immediately (though when you’re living where I am, 45 miles away from the closest chicken tikka, this aspect of the film is a painful one).

2) Losing my virginity at the Georgia O’Keefe Musuem

All right, folks, full disclosure here.  My knowledge of art history leaves much to be desired.  If I was a clue writer for Jeopardy, the only ones I’d be able to offer for Ms. O’Keefe is ‘She was a seminal female American artist, she painted flowers that resembled vaginas and she tried to paint the same door over and over.’  And I only know the last clue because I saw it on Breaking Bad.

The Georgia O’Keefe museum is located in Santa Fe’s adorably adobe downtown, where every other store is an expensive art gallery.  After having a hearty, spicy and insanely good meal at The Shed (worth a trip just for the frozen chocolate mousse cake) we spent two hours at this small but lovely museum, and I can now add another clue to Georgia O’Keefe Jeopardy — ‘She was a badass genius.’

To sum it up, I had my first official artgasm at the musuem.  (And, speaking of ‘gasm, Ms. O’K was apparently so distraught when the critics insisted on interpreting her work through an erotic lens, that, according to the introductory film shown at the museum, she stopped painting flowers for a while in favor of still life fruits.)

The colors!  Oh, the colors!  They call this area of New Mexico Georgia O’Keefe country, and once you see her stunning landscapes you understand why. If you’re a loner with an affinity for stark natural landscapes, then New Mexico is your jannat, and Ms. O’K paints it with all her visual soul (and it’s not just New Mexico, check out how she painted New York).

I look at a lot of Islamic art these days, which often tends to either compress the world, exquisitely detailed miniatures, small figures on bowls or vases, a pattern of a thousand of interlocking flowers, or is meant to impress from afar, tiles decorating the ceiling of a tomb, scrolling calligraphic carvings along pillars and walls, etc., so getting lost inside Ms. O’K’s scene scape of a single lily was a seriously intense pleasure. You forget that a flower can be a whole world.  But of course it can.  It’s how the bee sees his beloved lotus.

Like most road trips, my recent six day drive from New York to New Mexico offered discoveries both expected and surprising.  New Jersey goes by quickly.  Pennsylvania does not.  Virginia is fond of the giant crosses, often set on hills overlooking the highway and lit up at night.  The coffee options at Wawa and Pilot span several continents.  The first two motels we stayed at, in Virginia and then Tennessee, were run by Gujaratis.  There is no desi discount.  Walk down Broadway in Nashville on a Tuesday afternoon and you will hear live bands playing in nearly every bar along the strip, mostly to empty houses, but there’s something special about a city where you can hear live music nearly anytime of day and instrument cases are common accessories.

There is great Guatemalan food in Oklahoma City, and a burger place called South Park in western Arkansas that makes the best heart-attack-now onion rings.  Driving down the actual Route 66 while singing along to the Depeche Mode version of “Route 66” might be dorky but is also infinitely rewarding.

Off of highway 40, in a beautiful, desolate part of New Mexico, there is a truck stop with a random Punjabi dhaba, where you can have an Indian lunch buffet and buy enough Haldiram snack mixes to last you until California.

Somewhere in the Texas panhandle, we started listening to the cd version of Henry James’s “The Portrait of a Lady” (read by Elizabeth McGovern, best known right now for her role as Cora on my latest television obsession, Downton Abbey).  I had read the book a long time ago, and had forgotten the cliffhanger ending – will Isabel Archer take charge of her own destiny?  The general consensus among lit critics is that she does not, but, driving in New Mexico, awed by the endless blue stretch of sky, broken only by distant, snow-capped mountains, the answer was obvious.  She does.  She does.

photos by AVT.

My story, “Love Like That,” is the title story of a new love-themed young adult anthology by Penguin India, an anthology of “1o stories to warm the heart.”  My story features the work of famed Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and an unlikely bond in a New Jersey parking lot (oh, those New Jersey parking lots).  The anthology also features well-known Indian authors Jerry Pinto, Rupa Gulab, Ira Trivedi and Milan Vohra, among others.  The perfect gift for your angst-ridden Valentine!

Buy it here.

You can read the section which cites my book here.

Okay, just kidding about the last one.  These email forwards from Haroon range from interesting to benign to cheesy to preachy to annoying to inaccurate.  But I recently received one that horrified me.  Now here is something that can definitely make you sick.

Subject heading (verbatim): Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) Hadees and and also What he saw when he went on Me’raj This is very important!

“Let us see the fate of that wife who does not sleep with her husband. The Messenger of Islam (SAW) is reported to have said, “Any woman who sleeps at a distance from her husband (i.e. is not next to him during the night) is cursed by the angels till morning sets in.” [Nahjul Fasaahah, Pg. 36].

The Incident of Me’raj

The chief of the faithfuls Ali ibne Abi Talib (AS) says, “One day I and Fatima paid a visit to Holy Prophet (AS) who began crying. I asked, “O Messenger of God (AS) may my father and mother be sacrificed for you, what is the reason for your crying?”

He (SAW) replied, “O Ali the night on which I went to Me’raj (ascension) I saw some women of my ummat facing severe chastisement and I am crying for them.

One was being hung by her hair and her head was boiling.

The second one was eating the flesh of her own body and fire was burning beneath her.

The third was being hung with her chest clenched.

The fourth women’s legs were tied with her hands and snakes and pythons were making a feast out of her.

The fifth one was deaf, dumb and blind and she was laid in a fire-case. Her brains were burning and melting through her nose and her body was being torn apart by leprosy and other similar diseases.

 Another women had her legs burned by the hellfire.

The seventh one I saw had her flesh being cut into pieces with scissors of fire.

The eighth one’s face and hands were being burnt and she was eating her own burnt skin.

Yet another women had her face like a pig and her body like a donkey and she was subjected to thousands of different chastisements.

The tenth one had her face like a bitch. Fire was being inducted from her rectum and extracted from her mouth and angels were constantly beating her on her head and face with sticks of fire.”

Janabe Fatema Zahra (SA) enquired , “O beloved father please inform us about the misdeeds or sins of these women for which they were subjected to such severe chastisement by the Almighty? 

The Holy Prophet (SAW) answered, “O Fatema, the woman who was being hung by her hair was the one who did not veil herself from the Na- Mehram men (men who are to mahram)

The one who was being hung by her tongue was rude to her husband and tortured him by her talks.  

The one who was being hung by her chest was depriving her husband of his sexual rights and pleasures. 

The one who was being hung by her legs was stepping out of her house without her husband’s permission.

The one who was eating her own flesh made her self up for other men. one whose hands and legs were tied together never purified her body and clothes. She never took the spiritual bath after her menstruation cycles or sexual intercourse and considered namaz (prayers) to be insignificant.

The one who was deaf, dumb and blind produced children out of adultery and claimed them to be of her husband.

The one whose flesh was being cut with scissors of fire use to come before men in such a way that they be attracted towards her.  

The one whose face and body were being burnt and who was eating her burnt flesh was the source of meeting of Na-Mehram boys and girls.

 The one whose face was like a pig and body like a donkey always lied and talked ill about others. [Biharul Anwar, Vol. 18, Pg. 45.]”

Needless to say, I was horrified.   This was so violently misogynistic that I shuddered to think who had typed up the email and labeled it as “very important.”   What I also could not understand is why, upon receiving this, Haroon, whose wife is an  independent woman with a successful career and who would never agree with a woman being hung by chest because she’d refused her husband’s “sexual rights,” did not hit delete immediately but chose instead to forward it on.

I had to assume, then, that Haroon didn’t actually read the email, that he simply saw the words “hadees” and “this is very important” in the subject line, took them at face value, and decided to forward it on (which is foolish on a different level, but anyway).

And then there were the supposed hadith themselves—there are definitely some misogynistic hadith out there, but these were beyond the pale.  Growing up, I’d heard the story about Prophet Muhammad visiting other prophets on his night journey to the heavens and taking their advice on lowering the number of required prayers, but never this one about him a woman being feasted on by snakes and pythons for thinking that namaaz was insignificant (whatever happened to ‘there is no compulsion in religion?’).   So, I did a little internet research.  All I could find about the first source, Nahjul Fasaahah (“The Peak of Rhetoric”), was that it’s a “magnificent book of 3200 hadith” written by Abu al-Qasim Payande, and I couldn’t find out anything about Mr. Payande.  Seems neither he nor the book are significant or important in  the history of Islamic theology.

In contrast, there was a lot more about the source of the second hadith, Biharul Anwar, as I explained to Haroon in my reply to him:

Dear Haroon,

I don’t know if you read though all of the forwards you send, but this one is particularly misogynistic and vitriolic. If people choose to believe in an Allah who will hang a woman by her legs for stepping out of the house without her husband’s permission, than god help us, and the future of Islam.  Everything we know of the prophet’s night journey is from hadith, which, given the “he said that he said that he said” chain of transmission, are not the most reliable, and the transmitters as well as the compilers are usually men who have their own (conscious and subconscious) personal biases.

Furthermore, the main hadith you forwarded is from Biharul Anwar, compiled by the Shi’i scholar Mulla Muhammad Baqir, known as ‘Allama Majlisi, 1000 years after the Prophet’s death.  It “has 110 volumes. Majlisi wrote it to gather all the wisdom he could find, in order to preserve that knowledge for following generations. His goal was to collect every single narration available, not to sift through and find the reliable ones, so only a trained scholar can determine which ones are authentic.”

It is hadith like these that give Islam a bad name and are used as excuses for subjugating women and forwarding this email only contributes to this.  So I ask that you consider carefully the intent and authenticity of the emails you forward.  I don’t mind getting positive messages, but negative and terrible ones like these make for a bad start to the day…

Sincerely,
Sheba

Haroon never wrote back.

There is a rigorous method of following the chain of narration to verify the authenticity of a hadith, but this still relies upon the assumption that none of the companions of the Prophet, or others in the chain, had an imperfect memory, or ever told a lie, or placed a different emphasis on a word or words based on the current cultural context, or wanted to use a saying of the Prophet to justify/support something they themselves were doing or wanted to do, etc.  Unlike the Prophet, who had an all-knowing, almighty Allah to guide and correct him if he made a mistake, these narrators were ordinary men.   They were, perhaps, very good, even exceptional, men, but men just the same, with human fault and self-interest and misjudgment.  This doesn’t mean that some of the hadith can’t be verbatim what the Prophet said, but some may not be, and, ultimately, hadith, which are so often used to legitimize or prohibit behavior, are unproven hearsay.

Whatever you believe about hadith, it’s safe to say that the hadith in Haroon’s forward were not the Prophet’s words, but that someone at some point made it up.  So I was thinking I’d make up my own, and I bet if I put it in an email with the words “hadith” and “very important” in the subject line, some people would forward it without even reading (though I do hope Haroon knows better now).

Subject:  Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) Hadith – What he saw when he went on Me’raj – This is very important!

Ayesha stated, “One day the Prophet was crying.  When I asked him why, he replied, ‘The night on which I went to Me’raj I saw my beloved wife Khadija. She said to me, ‘O Prophet of Islam!  Do not let your followers forget that your first wife was your only wife for twenty-five years, and that she was your source of strength, love and financial support, for I fear the ways of men’s hearts.  And I fear that they will forgo allegory and context and interpret the Quran strictly, to the detriment of women, and that they will put false words in your mouth to justify their mistreatment.’

‘But why do you cry?’ Ayesha then asked the Prophet.

‘Because,’ the Prophet said, ‘I fear she is right.’”