Posted on 06/04/2017 10:40:27 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
WE HAVE TO TALK. I recently became a Muslim, which seems to be testing the faith that my friends and neighbors have placed in me as the all-around good human I have always tried to be.
It seems that now, during the holy month of Ramadan, is as good a time as any for us to have what I’m calling “The Muslim Talk.”
I confess: I have spent the years since 9/11 feeling threatened and wary when walking past a mosque. I got married on Sept. 11, 1988. I’m a native New Yorker. The terror attacks in 2001 were a direct hit on my hometown, on our 13th wedding anniversary. Until recently, I was one of those people who give the mosque and women in hijab the side-eye.
However, seeing how virulent and unreasonable the perceptions and hate of Muslims became after the November election and the ensuing travel ban on Muslims, I found myself defending Muslims. But people kept telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about because I’d never set foot inside a mosque.
I went to the mosque to learn. In doing so, my anger, hate and frustrations evaporated. I found my peace with God where I was called to find it.
Therefore, I recognize the hostility in others who currently take my choice as a personal attack on them, their religion and their way of life.
But it still knocks the wind out of me every time I tell someone I’m now Muslim and they literally take a step back from me.
I get it. They’re seeing me through a new filter — a grimy, dirty filter that has been spattered by the hateful acts of people who claim to be Muslims, even though they rarely attended the mosque. Madmen capitalized on them by claiming my religion in name only.
People I’ve known for decades are suddenly comfortable saying cruel things to me. They justify this by saying that my religious belief is tantamount to approving of the disgusting, despicable acts by mentally ill people who traded on the name of my religion.
I ask them to imagine: What if every murder and atrocity committed by a non-Muslim were prefaced in the headlines with “Christian extremist stabs people on bus,” or “Christian extremist charged in attack.”
To answer the most frequently asked questions: I’m not enslaved, hypnotized, brainwashed, programmed, ignorant, a traitor to my gender or anti-American. I changed religions, not cultures or personalities.
I pray five times a day (for about 5-10 minutes) starting at 4 a.m. and ending at around 10 p.m., year-round.
No, I don’t wear a burqa. The only times I wear a hijab (scarf) — one less severe than the one worn by First Lady Melania Trump on her visit to the Vatican — are to the mosque and for prayer. I do dress more modestly.
A worried friend insisted, “These mosques are full of people plotting the downfall of America and the enslavement of women.”
In reality, mosques in Norfolk and Virginia Beach are currently full of fasting, exhausted, repentant, do-gooders observing the holy month of Ramadan. The month of Ramadan is when, Muslims believe, the angel Gabriel spoke the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Muslim fasting is a triple whammy of hunger, thirst and sleep deprivation for Ramadan.
Throughout Ramadan, we rise at around 3 a.m. for the suhoor (Arabic for “of the dawn”) meal, the only food and water that will sustain us. We must stop all food and drink (including water) from the moment the call to prayer sounds at around 4 a.m. until after dusk. In Virginia, iftar (the evening prayer at which the fast is broken) comes around 8:15 p.m.
That means no food or water from 4 a.m. until after 8 p.m.
Each evening, just before iftar, the mosque where I worship fills with hundreds of people from India, Pakistan and the Middle East. Tables are set with water bottles, cups of juice, and bowls of dates and watermelon. The moment the imam begins his chant we give thanks and partake.
Then we pray the evening prayer and everyone sits down to a communal meal of Middle Eastern or Indian cuisine.
A riot of color from Pakistani shalwar kameez (tunics), hijabs and kaftans ebbs and flows around me as I try not to wolf my food. Children play as we laugh about how hard the fasting was that day in the Virginia heat as neighbors barbecued.
After eating, around 10 p.m., many of us stand for taraweeh prayers as a learned man who has memorized the entire Quran chants it by heart for two hours, until around midnight. We stand while he recites and leads us in intermittent prayers.
We are too exhausted and brain-fogged by hunger to plot the overthrow of anything other than poverty, homelessness and evildoing. Anybody doing bad things during Ramadan and calling themselves “Muslims” are the outliers. We all pray they will stop.
********
Lisa Suhay is the founder of the Norfolk Initiative for Chess Excellence and the author of a series of Norfolk mermaid books for children.
Imbecile. Life is hard enough. It’s much harder when you’re this stupid.
Not to stereotype, but, very frequently, aren’t the newest adherents to the Religion of Peace the most dangerous?
Muslims kill to promote islam and to invoke sharia law in the name of mad mo...
See the differnce?
It is a invasion, not a religion.
Ramalamadingdong is not a month. It’s some period of time that moves around on a solar calendar that is denoted by a buncha Lunatics.
Yep. She’ll be donning a suicide vest in no time.
Her Jewish father can’t be pleased.
Sorry Lisa but you ARE brainwashed.
She enjoys what she percieves as her intimidation of others.
She thinks she’s special and superiour. Now She is just special retarded with Satan as her God now.
Look at meeeeee!
Stockholm Syndrome.
blah blah blah.... go join the Taliban so you can experience “pure” Islam, lady!!!!
Poor baby. In some parts of the world, if you tell someone you're a Christian, you get your head chopped off.
Yeah, yeah. I know. Six of one, half dozen of another.
Just out of curiosity. Are you a Sunni mooselim or a Shi'a mooselimb or some other sect of mooselimb? And how are you treated when you tell a mooselimb of another sect what sect you are from?
Islam is a “religion” for those too lazy to grow their spirit, so instead they give up their soul.
We do not give a slimy Dorkbama about your so-called religion.
Take it to a third world country and believe it there.
I wonder, as I often do when reading these type of stories, did her imam “suggest” she write it?
You are a self avowed enemy of all people who don’t put their asses in the air for a dead pedophile and an avatar of Satan.
You chose poorly.
Our starry-eyed liberal friends went to Syria for a year ‘to teach and find out about another culture.’ This was about 20 years ago; they went as ‘tent makers’ (missionaries but working in a regular job). Boy, were their eyes opened. They were absolutely disgusted by that culture. She said Ramadan was the worst - fast all day, party and debauchery all night.
They are still liberal (!) but perhaps because it is safer to be one here in the US. Were they in Syria, they’d either be locked up or head-lopped by now.
Once you get romantically involved with a moslem male you had better be looking over your shoulder...24/7/366.
And that goes double for Ramadan (or is it ram-a-lama ding dong?).
Fine. We can make a deal. Every time a non-muslim kills someone and yells out "Jesus Christ and the One God Are Great!" as they shoot innocent people, slit their throats, run over them with cars, saw their heads off, of set off bombs, I am all for it.
Let's do that, you ignorant, dimwitted piece of dhimmi crap.
Liberalism is a mental illness.
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