I found God twice, at six & eighteen.

A personal essay/reflection of my journey with faith, suggestions for those who follow it blindly, a warning for fear mongers, and a poem at the end.

I was born on the 10th of November, 2004. The second daughter to my parents, who got married a little later than most South Asian parents in life, “30 is as good as 20.” They decided stability was more important than expectations. People would die along with their judgments, but their lineage would carry the consequences of giving in to them.

Good, faithful people, my parents are good and faithful people. Our home is often filled to the brim with people who come for advice and help. It is given freely and in abundance. God and his blessings should be reachable to all, and if we can pitch in anywhere, we should. No money is taken to the grave, and no good deed is taken out of it. Mama and Baba’s money is hard-earned, and never hoarded in a dragon’s den. Philanthropy is vital to my family. By the will of Allah, it’s always returned tenfold.

Therefore, I learnt faith through kindness and humility.

I learnt to assume the best of people.

I knew to greet everyone with respect in our home.

I understood that the plate I ate off of was no different from those who made the food.

My faith was not reduced to fasting and prayer. Purpose was instilled in me. The purpose of the sky, the purpose of me, the purpose of God- purpose, purpose, purpose.

Nevertheless, children understand logic very little- so, like many of us, I grew up thinking the Earth revolved based on the movement of my feet. When I was four years old, I learnt that was not true when my father told me to stand still and feel it move, anyway. I cried when I realised that the world moved along its path, with or without my will. My father’s friend had told him he should have entertained my girlhood fantasy a little longer, but Baba insisted the earlier I learnt, the better.

That day, I learnt what disappointment was, and did not wish for it to linger. Writing this, I wish the lesson had.

I also learnt that tears are welcomed by the Earth’s soil, but there is no use in waiting around for the ground to give back so quickly. That comfort existed in my father’s big arms full of flesh and patience, but the world around it was nothing like the trees and flowers told me it would be. Their purpose stretched beyond the desires of my fantasies. It was not their greed that made them ignore me, but rather their limitation.

Baba has always been like that. You must make do with what you have. Having no sons was never shameful to him, he’d make sure his daughters were of equal worth. Naturally, I always had to learn the reality of the world before it taught me.

I learnt about the ‘Earth rotating’ incident when I was fifteen. I had angrily shoved myself into my dad’s car on the way back from a debating competition because of a remark made by a boy. “You’re a girl, so anything I say further could get me into trouble.” I spent the entire car ride home vigorously expressing wanting to chuck a chair at this kid, and my parents listened.

The anger consumed me so much that I forgot I had an award in my hand.

“Zoha, the world kept spinning amongst your rage, and you let it consume you so much that you forgot what it left you on its path ahead. Remember to be grateful.” My mother never did understand anger the way I felt it, but she encouraged tending to it anyway. My father sometimes feared what it could foster into, but deep down inside I think he’s always felt relief that I’d fight my way out of any situation and that in this world I might need to at some- if not many points in life.

The truth is, my family is not like most in the Muslim community at large, though not rare, definitely not common as a trope. My mother was a business tycoon before she even met my father; she paved her path to success in the previously taboo beauty industry of Pakistan. From my mother, I learnt that going off the rails was a necessity at times. She is five feet and two inches of pure resilience. Naturally, dreams beyond the walls of a man’s house are of no fruition to a world that does not like women, so my mother was not very liked at the beginning of her career. Her freedom started where the fallacy of religious preachers’ resentment did too.

My father was, for the longest, a psychiatrist. He’s seen the most powerful crumble into the allure of their mind. Literature has always been his solace, and history was a passion he never had the privilege to pursue. He had a military education instead, and yet decided against it anyway. From him, I learnt that pride is sometimes best when unspoken.

Religion is also taught differently in my household. It is dinner table conversation, discussions run from when the sun shies away till it regains its confidence. As a child, I would question everything and anything, because I knew God better than most- all children do. I knew he found joy in my curiosity. I hoped he felt pride in my vigour to learn. Surah Al Baqarah states God’s omnipotence, so I knew I’d find him anywhere I looked, and I believed I did.

What is the point of a believer if he does not know why he believes? What is the point in cowering so much to fear you forget the forgiveness and fairness of your creator? What is the point of all those ninety-nine names if they are not used as much as possible? There is so much of our creator’s kindness to go around that the world has yet to run out of it. The worst of deeds is a sin, and even then there’s a way to come into my Lord’s light and wash it away, so what is the purpose of being so afraid you do not even acknowledge your maker’s kindness?

The formula for our family dinners and my parents’ spontaneous life lessons was notoriously plagiarised in my parents’ social circles. It was: story/ religious verse/ historical event/ + moral of it + reasoning of it = purpose of why it’s important/ why not.

Though in the same social circles, many were shocked to know my parents never wanted a son. This topic was often brought up by their friends, and it always angered my father. One day his friend told him a son carries the family name, and my father reminded that friend- the one with the beard and penchant for mystery water in metal cases who carried a tasbeeh in his hands, but the beads never seemed to move- that taqwa does not lie in the few letters of a surname. I remember being nine that day and learning the world did not like women for the first time. It finally clicked why my mother was always called “A strong independent woman”, but my father never was. Silly me, thinking it was as simple as the difference between a noun and not as complex as an adjective.

At some point in my life, I learnt that the big squares full of paper, racking all the way up the ceiling of my dad’s expansive office, were called books. My father believed that since his liberation in childhood was through the Sunday book bazaar, ours should be through the joy of reading too. Educating was never an expectation of reputation in my household, but rather treated as a necessity to maintain freedom. They never said it, but Mama and Baba feared the day we’d learn how greedily the world festers when there is a gluttonous feast regarding a woman’s freedom.

Books are crucial for my family. My sister would get her books confiscated in class, and I’d often happily do book reports for other kids. I was always a loud kid, and while people around me often told me to be quiet, my mother was the one to tell me to stand atop a stool and speak my heart out. Reading eventually taught me to listen. I trusted books. I knew a book would not scowl, point or punish my wonder. It was forced to teach just as I was forced to listen.

I dreamt of holding a sword like Safiyyah bint Abdul-Muttalib, and learning about how animals look at the world like the horses in ‘Black beauty’. I giggled at the dramatics of Dorian Grey and huffed at his superficiality. I screamed when Dumbledore died, I cried when I thought the ghost of Canterville was sad.

At that age, I only faintly knew what love was; I felt it hug me when my sister helped me spell my name on my first-ever class presentation. I heard it beckon to me while I stared in awe at my mother standing in a room full of men, the most decorated of them all in praise and status. I knew it lingered when my dad would grab my leg while I stuck my head out of the sunroof, so that my freedom to enjoy things didn’t have to suffocate under the guise of being protected. I knew it embodied every room I walked into through my Lord’s might. I knew it lived on in my grandfather’s residual parts left through stories and photos.

So, as I felt love so profoundly around me, I never dreamt of escaping into it in other ways. I did not crave the mentality of a child bride waiting to be married off, my identity did not end where a man’s began. Pre-Islam, they physically buried little girls alive in shame. Post the prophet, sometimes I think they still do it metaphorically.

When I was nine, my best friend’s mother taught me about Nafsin Wahidah- that my hands and feet worked the same as anyone else’s, I supposed my brain and vocal cords did so too.

So while I sat in my own defeat in the middle of a dark car park- angry at myself for letting a person I did not know get the best of me, mama recalled the first ‘Islamic’ book I ever read and how it helped me rise from defeat. Her voice echoed from the front seat as I tried to remember the tale.

I was six and had an aunt whom I vehemently despised. One day, while I was playing outside, she told me to lower my voice, sit down and pray. Not in gratitude or love, but in fear of God’s wrath for being ‘unfeminine’. How could God be angry at a child? You are not worth enough to understand him, and the best you can do is just shiver in terror.

She said I should fear God more than love him. Ironically, her two sons, still in the yard, were wreaking havoc across my home as they always did. They broke off the heads of my Barbies, drew mean faces across my books and tore open my stuffed animals. That day, I thought only little girls had sins to repent for, and boys were iron-clad in greatness. Compliantly, I sat on the prayer mat, which did not even ask for me to come at that age, and repented for sins I did not have. I repented for my joy, I repented for my laughter, and I repented for my girlhood.

When my mother heard, she made her sister leave. Flesh and blood do not excuse cruelty. My father, on the other hand, who often brought back short stories & children’s books from his travels, gave me an open space to learn. I had just begun understanding who God was, and my only questions were often silenced by all-knowing adults in my family who mistook a child’s curiosity for blasphemy. I’d make it worse by asking them how they learnt the faith was for them if they didn’t question it. That, too, was silenced, much to my mother’s amusement.

As of that day, I thought I must identify my God as harsh. The palpability of paradoxes lay in his servants telling me “God is so complex he can never be understood, he is so vast there are ninety-nine names he goes by,” followed by “The only ones you’re worth understanding are the ones that make you fear him too much to love.”

This fact does not sit well with many people, but children do not have sins. I was too young to know that this experience was an explanation as to why the Almighty is not defined as either man or woman.

“The goodnight stories from the life of the prophet Muhammad” Was a children’s storybook my dad had brought back that night. I woke up to it by my bedside and finished it within the night. At six, I knew the prophet was called Muhammad, that we said his name often in something called prayer, and that the only name I knew besides his by heart was the handful of one's God went by according to the towering humans around me.

Patience and open-mindedness were key to the prophet’s life- I had decided that, and it blew my mind away. He welcomed every question? Why did my aunt silence me? He dined with Jews? Why does my uncle despise them? His first wife was richer than him? Why do people not teach us this? His aunt was a skilled swordsman? So why am I never invited to play football in the park?

As I got to the end of the storybook, I learnt my rights were no less than a man’s. My rights held so much importance that they were uttered as the last words of my beloved prophet’s speech. So why do all the people around me feel so entitled to a right of mine? I huffed at that thought silently. What a revelation! This was a pivotal moment in my childhood when I learnt not to bow to mere flesh in blind obedience.

That night, I learnt what it meant to be fueled by rage. I flew through all the pages within an hour. Questions plagued me, and I kept thinking that if I shut my eyes, they might somehow escape. I had accusations to administer, family to criticise, anger to express, hands to flail- but eventually sleep overtook me.

I woke up satisfied to know the rage had not escaped my grip. I divulged my discovery of everything over breakfast, and my parents eagerly agreed with all of it. My love for faith was rebuilt once again over French toast and milk soaked with pistachios.

A few years went by, and I forgot about the experience. As my knowledge of Islam grew, I ran with the assumption that all women would know not to bend to and grasp at the ankles of mere men on Earth who are neither a sliver of the great man who perfected our religion nor the God that gifted it. Respect and, if granted, love- was all that needed to exist, nothing more, nothing less, between the two sexes. Sure, I obeyed my father, of course I listened to my male teachers, but it was not because they were men. My father trusted my mother blindly, and my mother confided in him in ways that made her seem years younger each time she was done.

Today, this truth frustrates many. We are an extension of our environment and are all to blame. Many people’s religion begins at the top of a woman’s head and ends on her feet. They worship their self-preservation more than their God, and they take up blessings without being able to honour them.

Fear subdues love, resentment suffocates joy, and as I began to learn, ignorance corrupts faith.

Time flew by, and so did middle school. Oddly, my understanding of faith seemed to get more and more complicated. At home, my faith was unshakable; outside of it, it was under constant siege. When the boys in my class screamed to not make me, a girl, class president because it was a boy's job, I was six years old again, and instead of the prayer mat, I shook in fear during homeroom as my world began to crash. I was eleven and trembled at the man-made injustice of my Lord. I never became class president despite all the votes and the assurance that I would.

Looking back at my life so far in present day, I was never the perfect Muslim; I’ve sinned more than I've let out sighs of relief. Repentance exists for a reason, but the reduction of my identity to being based on my sex was enough to stir me more away from faith than anything else. I was always the girl the boys hated and the girls resented. I was the loud, outspoken girl who made people roll their eyes.

Why was I built up to want great things in life if later on I’d have to hang my dreams up on a coat rack?

The almighty chose a woman to comfort his messenger and to finance his message. The female companions debated in public loudly and proudly. Why did the boys not want a female class president?

The command to think, reflect, use reason, observe, and question appears well over one hundred times in the Qur’an. Why is being obliging to those commandments frowned upon?

My lord is Al Hakam- does he guide my teachers to send me out of the class while my male peers are applauded for the same? My lord is Al Hakim- I wonder if he knows the vulgar words that taint his male followers’ mouths while I walk past them?

Why does my English teacher cover her hair but not her snark? Why does my Islamic teacher do nothing but read off the book when faith is found within? Why does my global politics tutor roll his eyes when I stand up to present? Even if I am the only woman in class, I utter the same words as the men, do I not?

By sixteen, I silently resented my faith. I’d pray without meaning the words I uttered. My Salah was stiff, I often questioned why I had to be grateful when consuming food & my tongue uttered more repentance than I wished to acknowledge. I knew God was real, I knew my faith was true. Yet I did not think either cared for me much.

When I graduated from high school, I had not prayed with contentment in over four years. The last conversations I had with many of my peers were something of this sort;

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
“Married to a rich man!” “Successful with a nice, obedient, pure wife just like my mother.”

“And what are you going to do after the ceremony?”
“Probably work on my application for med school, my parents need me to look for scholarships.” “Smoke a bunch of pot with the boys!”

The last classmate I said farewell to was the six-foot-tall son of a religious military general. When I entered high school and met him for the first time, he was a kindred spirit and a Hafiz. When I bid him goodbye at graduation, he was suicidal and an atheist. I never asked why his faith shook off him like snake-skin, but the bruises on his face every other morning gave me a hint.

As luck would have it, I ended up taking a gap year before law school. I spent my days at home, the residual memories of my childhood rotting alongside me.

It took a lot to rebuild my devotion in a way that was not a constant chore and burden. At eighteen, I was a blank page. Not newly moulded paper, rather washed over after years of tidal waves that ink did not stand a chance against. In the end, it was books that nearly saved my almost disintegrated faith. Once more, they had nothing else to do but teach, and I had nothing left to do but listen.

I nearly ran my allowance dry, aching to learn each word from every perspective. On the first night of Ramadan during my gap year, I had cried before Fajr for two hours as I sank my teeth into a pillow in pain, pain that I wished someone would explain to me. When my eyes ran dry, I prayed Fajr for the first time in a year.

At that point, nineteen was only a few months away. Many people describe the rekindling of faith as something almost fantastical. Something profound.

For me, it was nothing of the sort. It was a cold Monday, darkness cloaking the room, family fighting downstairs during Suhr, and somehow I managed to cry my resentment away and empty out the deadweight grudges.

There was no touch of an angel,

The prophet did not visit me in my dreams,

I did not feel a miracle occur.

I had simply taken that year to relearn my faith, and the only thing I begged for in that Fajr prayer was for it never to shake with such magnitude again. The first semester of law school, I began to regularly pray Tahajjud. Something I had never thought was possible for me. I always thought it was left best for saints and sinless beings.

I am now nearing twenty-one. My worship is once again not limited to prayer and fasting. I still irritate men in my disobedience to the false belief of their own divinity, and I still sin. Truthfully, there is an abundance of stories I have left out in this post. Heavier ones, darker ones, but my vulnerability is my own. It took a lot to even get this far in transparency, but if this essay does anything for anyone, it will be worthwhile.

I read the news. Every day, men torture women for the rights our prophet had commanded to ensure. I know women discard degrees, goals and careers that their Lord never wished to deprive them of. I hear the cries in madrasas where faith is taught with a stick and an unforgiving hand to trembling children.

“Breaking news! Man kills wife after she demanded divorce due to his unfaithfulness.” ”This just in: Twelve-year-old married off to a fifty-seven-year-old man.” ”Reporting live: ”Hindu set on fire in rural Sindh.” ”Pakistani student bullied by Arabs over supposed superiority in faith. “Madrassa shut down due to child molester, found out to be the head teacher.”

I do not see tolerance, I do not see humility, I do not see regret. All I am is two decades of experience, which does not amount to much for people. It certainly doesn’t feel enough for me. Though I do feel God around me, like I did at the age of six. Surely I’ve done something worthwhile to achieve it again.

I also lose my faith in this Ummah a lot, and sometimes I feel I am closer to God when I do. The founding principles of community that once spread this religion were also the ones that nearly drove me away from it. I hope people look for God in the same crevices I did at six and the same mirror of reason at eighteen.

At one minute before midnight, I am struggling to conclude this essay. I have decided on one last story to leave you all with: when the realisation that the acknowledgement of the divine was not a faraway fantasy hit me, and that divinity did not exist in the snark and lingering judgments of the world, I wrote a poem. It was the first and only one I have ever written on faith. I was nineteen when I did so;

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There is one true God, and we are not an extension of him. God exists in the crevices of the Earth and beyond or below.

Alongside the shepherd in the mountains, far from civilisation,

Next to the orphan in the streets of a bustling city,

Deep within the waters we have yet to be able to reach,

Dwelling in the cosmos that we will never be able to,

Like the ever-expanding universe around me, he dwells where mankind has never thought to explore, yet everywhere mankind needs him to be. How can mere mortal flesh ever compete?

For me, he exists in the perseverance of my mother’s resilience,

In the laughter of my dad’s pride,

In the warmth of my sister’s embrace,

In the tales of my grandmother’s life,

In the memory of the grandfather I never got to meet,

In Sujood, where I wordlessly declare my obedience lies only to him, in the corner of the bed I stare into when feeling at loss and in the roll of my tongue’s remembrance of him.

To me, God does not exist in the sinful corruption and greed of his creations. He exists everywhere but.

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End of Essay (Glossary at the bottom)
Note from the author:
I apologize deeply for how long this essay is, but I did not want to cut anything out. Religion has always been a very sensitive topic to me, but with the current micro trends in the Islamic community built to aestheticise everything and shame everyone, I wanted to write this essay.

Please note that the early thoughts of my childhood part might rub people the wrong way, but it is essential that we not forget the importance of tolerance and frankly, sanity, in the Muslim community; the lack of it drives people away from the faith a lot more than you think. You do not have to defend your faith from a kid. You need to defend it from those around you whom you willingly turn a blind eye to, and know it.

There is not much I want to write in this author’s note; it took me a week to write this essay, and admittedly, I’ve irritated many people for proofreading this too, so clearly I am not a vulnerable writer :)

I thought of taking a photo of the poem in my journal, but I’ve lost it. In all honesty, my handwriting is horrible, so maybe it is for the best.

I hope a discussion is created from this post, I am not the kind of writer who works tirelessly on her writing and does not expect even a sliver of attention in return. I worked on this for a week, I am not letting it bear no fruit lol.

This post goes out to no one but the gummy smiled, happy & fiery little girl I was at six. It took a lot to get back to her, and I’m proud of her.

(On a lighter note, as the photo below will provide evidence; my sister nicknamed me Golum- the LOTR one- for the longest)

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I’ve also realised some context I should have added in this & I therefore am later; From ages 10-16, I lived in Dubai so the boys and teachers I talk about are not limited to Muslims, and there’s many kind people in our religion. We’re the fastest growing religion in the world, there’s a clear reason for it. I also believe we’re wrongly framed and persecuted very often, this piece is not for islamaphobes to point fingers at Muslims, Pakistanis or Arabs. All religions have bad apples, Zionists, KKK, hinduvta, taliban- all cultures have bad people. The reason I used certain experiences was for my people to reflect, it’s not a reason for us to be hated on. There’s various reasons why the Muslim world has turned out the way it has in some aspects, a lot of that is colonisation forcing instability and poverty- or western greed in general (That is still reigning with a destructive fist over false narratives of western humanitarianism)

Pakistani’s are very progressive too, we’re loving, hearty and beautiful people- I know this piece reads as if everyone I met was a shit person, but I’ve pin pointed experiences, it’s not the entire picture. My mother started her business in the late 90’s, it was a drastically different time back then. The beauty industry is booming in Pakistan now, my mother was a pioneer. Pakistan also falls victim often to western greed, we lost 70,000 ordinary citizens during America’s so called war on terror against an extremist group they created, and we’re still bearing the brunt of being kind people. America has had numerous ‘security failures’, Bin Laden was one of those for the Pakistani government, additionally we did not even vote for that government.

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Glossary:

• Reference for Allah Swt’s omnipotence in the Qur’an: Surah Al-Baqarah, Verse 255 (Ayat al-Kursi)

• Tasbeeh: A beaded chain that is often used to count dhikr (small optional prayers, like Allhamdullillah; All praise to god). Many use the lines on their fingers inwards of the hands, other opt for a tasbeeh, there are also modern digital versions of them.

• Saffiyah Bint Abdul-Muttalib: The aunt of The prophet Muhammad, who was a skilled swordsman, and had played a critical role during the battle of Uhud and the trenches.

• Nafsin Wahidah: According to Surah An-Nisa (4:1), all of mankind was created from a single soul in the beginning, emphasizing the importance of unity and equality.

• The reference for “…the prayer mat which did not ask for me to come at that age”: In Islam, prayer becomes mandatory (excluding certain pardons/understandings due to disability etc occasionally) from when one reaches puberty, to when one essentially looses sight of sanity in old age. At 6 I had not reached puberty.

• The repeating phrase of ‘99 names of Allah’: Allah (God) goes by 99 names other than Allah, each emcompassing an aspect of his essence. Al Hakam means ‘The impartial judge” and Al Hakim means “The All wise”. There are others too which encompass forgiveness, kindness etc as well.

• The last speech of the messenger (The prophet): ‘Khutbat al-Wada’, also known as ‘the farewell sermon’ was the last speech the Prophet PBUH stated to his people before his passing, it emphasized morals and virtues to uphold, including the rights of women, minorities, equality within the ummah, and the importance of faith.

• Taqwa: Essentially an Arabic term for the moral compass of one’s piety, morality, actions, and invidiual accountability, not limited nor excluded for any being. It is emphasized strongly as vital to the Islamic faith

• Ref’s for Hazrat Khadija: Khadija RA was the first wife of the Prophet PBUH and they had been married prior to his prophethood being known to him. She was older than him and was the one to ask for his hand. She was also a wealthy businesswoman and prior to his marriage the messenger of Allah swt had done work for her (trade etc), furthermore she was the first (besides the prophet) to accept Islam, and financed many of his sermons and campaigns to spread the message.

• Salah: Preformed prayer, either optional ones or mandatory ones.

• Hafiz: (Hafiza for women) A person who has memorized the Quran.

• Ramadan: A holy month of fasting, repentance, prayer, charity and exercise of patience in Islam.

• Suhr: The period before Fajr prayer and before sunrise in Ramadan where Muslims eat a meal before taking up the day’s fast.

• Fajr: The first mandatory prayer of the day, done before sunrise.

• Tahajjud: A voluntary late night prayer. It increases devotion, closeness, discipline and patience. It is meant to be prayed before Isha (the last Salah of the day) and before Fajr, but it is recommended to pray it a little later.

• Madrassa: An Islamic school essentially, although unfortunately nowadays the core purpose of them has become incredibly corrupted due to lack of regulations/exploitation of religious beliefs. It was meant to initially not just teach Islamic principals but worldly too, and was an open place for all to come and learn in, with patience and open mindedness.

• Sujood: The act of prostrating during Salah

• Ummah: The muslim community
  
  -Zoha