Anu Dwarumpudi and Sierra Cowan interviewed Saadia Faruqi, an Ahmadiyya Muslim, author, speaker, and interfaith activist originally from Karachi, Pakistan. You can read the full transcript of their conversation here. How does your culture and family members influence your religious practices and understanding of Islam? My whole family isn’t practicing and everyone in the family has different levels. Like my mom would call herself practicing. She is good in somethings and not in others. She doesn’t wear a hijab for example. One of my sisters doesn’t even consider herself Muslim. It is very much across a wide spectrum. I think definitely this is a struggle that most Muslims have, including myself. Culture and religion become so closely connected or intertwined with each other and a lot of times we aren’t able to really distinguish it. What are the biggest influencers of your decision to cover? I don't know. The story that I have written in the book Mirror on the Veil and I tell this story a lot. I was here and I was working somewhere and one day my boss asked me this. Why don't you wear a hijab like other muslim women i see on TV? I couldn't answer her. Thats a good question. Why don't i do this? I was already practicing my faith in other ways and then i thought about it and it was a moment that I had to stop and say I don't know the answer. Why I am not doing something that I feel I should be doing? The answer I gave her was that my faith isn't strong enough. It takes a long of courage especially if you are living in a society where most people don't wear certain things. And it was a kind of a moment where I decided...The hijab is not just a dress, it is the whole attitude of how you interact with other people. I take some offense to how some people use it. If you are wearing a hijab but then you are going out for drinks at a bar with guys giggling and laughing. That’s not really hijab. What does it matter whether your hair is showing or not. It is the whole way that you interact with people especially if you are a women with men. So being in a workplace was something that was holding me back because I knew that people were already judging me because she is from another country, and now she is also dressing differently. It took a lot of steps. I left my job. I started working from home, started my own business. I felt a lot more comfortable because I wasn't out all the time. I could choose who I interacted with much more. Have you experienced discrimination based on your choice to cover? Could you describe such discrimination? I am very lucky that I live in Houston. Houston is so open. The worst i ever had was one time I was at the beach and this guy was walking by and he calls out "Aren't you feeling hot in there?" Well, it's none of your business. I don't know you. You can ignore things like that. Does seeing hate crimes against women who cover had any impact on your decision? Recently since the election, I have been really thinking about it. I don't think that I would ever actually take it off. There are times though... For example, hearing things in the news about how women are treated and recently there have been a lot of hate crimes. It kind of worries me. We went to Europe with my family in the summer. A lot of the European airports do a lot of security and here too. For a long time, I thought to myself maybe I won't wear my scarf. But then I couldn't do it. You know, I have worn it for so long and I felt like if you do it for people then just take it off right now anyways. What does it matter? If you are doing it for God, then God is going to be there with you in that airport too. It’s a choice. How do you view Muslim women who don’t cover? I have grown in that respect... If you are born into anything, you become so rigid you know. You are thinking everyone else is going to hell. That is whole point of the hijab and of covering. That you are not attracting attention to your physical self. And then your personality and your intellect can be the only thing that attracts people and not something that you are wearing... I would have been wearing buttons. I had a time in my life when I did judge very harshly women who not only did cover but also didn't cover correctly according to my standards and thankfully I am so over that judgmental phase. I have kind of mellowed. I think that's a journey that everyone goes in their faith when you are just very strong in your own and you are very rigid and that's the way that you can sustain it. I think that especially since nobody in my family covers so I kind of have to give them the flexibility that this is how you practice your faith. It has been a interesting journey on how i let go of those judgements but i feel that a lot of muslim women who don't cover have this complaint where they feel very harshly judged by women who do cover. it is considered as if you are not following islam properly if you are not covering yourself. I don't know. Obviously if I am covering it is because I feel that this is something that I should be doing. So how do you deal with people who think that this is not something we should be doing not just hijab but anything. If you are christian, how do you deal with people who don't accept Christ? I was just curious. How has living in Pakistan influenced your view of Islam especially now that you are living in America since the cultures are so different? Yeah the cultures are different. I mean...it's totally different. It's... And being Ahmadi Muslim in Pakistan was very difficult because we had to hide our identity. It's actually a crime over there. It's in the Constitution that an Ahmadi person cannot call themselves Muslim. And so you had to pretend to be something else. I mean I never ever told anybody what sect I belong to until I came to America. The amount of freedom that I have to practice my faith here is just tremendous. It's something that I never had over there. It is not just for Ahmadi Muslims. Anybody who is not the right kind of Muslim is just bad. It's a very harsh environment for a lot of people. I was not happy there which is why I moved so... It is definitely very positive. It has opened up my mind to see how different people live and I was not able to see that among the Muslims over there. It is a bit difficult to actually practice the day-to-day things of your faith there. That is a struggle. Even though you have the freedom like if you have to pray 5 times a day then where do you pray and how do you pray and where do you go. Those are the things that I never even had to think about because if it is praying time then everyone is praying. You are not weird or unusual. You don't have to tell people that you have to take a break. Here, you have to make a conscious effort to practice your own faith which i ultimately feel is a good thing. You have to know that these are the things that are important to you so you have to make time for them even if nobody else around you is doing that. How do you feel when you hear people say that covering is a sign of oppression? I think I laugh a lot of the times. Do I look oppressed to you? It is so funny. Where does that even come from? For example, most Muslim countries in the world have had over the last hundred years more than one female president or prime minister. In the U.S, we still have yet to elect a woman as a president. I am from Pakistan. When I was in high school, we elected Benazir Bhutto who was the first woman head of state in the entire Muslim world and she was elected twice. Bangladesh has had a female Muslim president and prime minister for most of its history. Iran has. Many African countries have. Indonesia has. So how can women be oppressed when women are leading Muslim countries? I feel like women are more oppressed here than in many Muslim countries. We have cultures not religion....People who say that women are oppressed they are not bothering to get information. They are not talking to Muslim women. Muslim women have been Nobel Prize Winners and they are doing everything. They are in sports, medicine and technology. We just don't hear about it because our media does not cover it. I guess the only thing that I can do is share some of those examples. Do you feel the need to defend Islam when mainstream media attacks it? If so, how? I don't know why I feel the need. I know many people who are just able to walk away from it. I am not. The way i do it.... I am always writing about it. If I see something on the news, I will immediately write an article and send it to Huffington Post or somebody else and get it published. I feel that it is my duty as a Muslim. If somebody is attacking my faith, I have to stand up for it. Why would you believe in something if you couldn't even stand up and fight for it. I do feel strongly. I do feel that need. I try to have constructive ways of doing it. I have community colleges where I teach classes every semester. Many people suggest a Muslim and American identity are not always compatible. What is your opinion on that issue? How do you define that? How do you define American? That is a question that my kids have actually. They are growing up as first generation American but their parents are not what they consider American. Everything they say "well you are not really American". I say "but no really I am really American". I was not born here but I am just as American as you. What does that even mean. The other day my daughter... we were going somewhere and she took her scarf out but she didn't put it on her head. She wore it around her neck and down. She said" today I am going to wear my scarf like an American". I just looked at her and said "Honey what do you mean? I am American but I don't wear it like that." She got a bit shocked. She said" You know what i mean" I said," no please explain to me what you meant by that." I knew what she was saying. She was probably trying to say maybe a white person, Christian. What she was trying to say is 'not Muslim' but then she used the word American which is so not correct. I think it is just so many people equate wrongly American with Christian. When you do that, when you think those two words are the same then yeah you will say that Islam is not compatible because it is a different religion. But if you take American to mean freedom and equality, then Islam also stands for freedom and equality just like every other faith.
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