{"id":195,"date":"2009-01-21T11:23:32","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T11:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/willow-on-american-islam.html"},"modified":"2009-01-21T11:23:32","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T11:23:32","slug":"willow-on-american-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/willow-on-american-islam.html","title":{"rendered":"Willow on American Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend (and accomplished writer) G. Willow Wilson<\/a> spent several years living in Cairo after converting to Islam. In her Journal at Talk Islam she relates her observations<\/a> about the differences in how Islam is lived in breathed in Cairo versus in the convert community in Seattle where she presently resides. It’s a great piece about identity, which is pretty much the central tension in any muslim-American’s life. Here’s a teaser excerpt:<\/p>\n

In Egypt Islam is like a natural extension of the body. It permeates
\nand is permeated by everyday life. People may be dishonest, angry,
\nugly, crude, vicious, but all these things are artificial, like the
\nindustrial waste spewed into the Nile and the sky until it warps babies
\nin the womb. They are all the result of a society squeezed until it
\nbroke and bled. When God enters a conversation, the ugliness vanishes,
\nand the disgusting sinner who leers at girls on the subway becomes a
\npoet. The absurdity of that-the horror of it; the wonder of it; the
\ncapacity of the divine to wheedle Its way into the grotesque-shaped my
\nrelationship with God. For good or ill. I never lost sight of the fact
\nthat when I prayed, it was not only to Al Rahman, but to Al Khafid. The
\nDebaser. I could look at His terrible Names without flinching or
\nrationalizing. He created beauty and filth side by side, like a hammer
\nand an anvil, and it is for us to break or bend.<\/p>\n

That was Cairo.<\/p>\n

When I came back to my own country, I had a naive idea that I could
\ngo on being an American and a Muslim, and avoid learning to be an
\nAmerican Muslim. That lasted about six months. What miserable and
\nlaughable months. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You simply have to read the whole thing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Related – my review of Mullahs on the Mainframe<\/a>, an ethnography about my own community and how we have adapted the demands of tradition with the realities of modernity. Again, it boils down to identity, and reconciliation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend (and accomplished writer) G. Willow Wilson spent several years living in Cairo after converting to Islam. In her Journal at Talk Islam she relates her observations about the differences in how Islam is lived in breathed in Cairo versus in the convert community in Seattle where she presently resides. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}