Interview with sister Jeannie Ohira

Asalaam Alaikum!

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem. Adhu billahi mina shayta nirajeem.

Q) What first captured your attention towards Islam?

It took me several years to come to accepting Islam. I grew up in a very religious household to Christian parents. As I grew older & gained more life experience I began to question certain beliefs & took a long road studying many different religions and philosophies. I took courses in Sanskrit, yoga philosophy, Greek mythology, African & Native American religions and Christianity at the university. I attended Hindu pujas, Zen meditation sessions, church services and classes of more than a dozen different sects. I read and watched documentaries and went to hear teachers …whatever I could find on anything that had to do with spirituality, religion, or philosophy. I prayed often for guidance. I went through periods of profound doubt and questioning. Unlike some of my atheist and agnostic friends, I always felt that there was something more than our physical and material existence, that life had some meaning, even after death. I had enough spiritual experiences since I was a child that I could not accept the purely material worldview. After many years I went back and reread the Gospel as an adult.  It was like reading an entirely different book than the one I remembered and I had a profound shift in my thinking. I began to see that Jesus (pbuh) taught some very profound truths that have been largely clouded by most of the modern (often well-meaning) Christian community. I’d like to say at this point, that I am deeply grateful to both my parents for their efforts in bringing up my siblings and myself to love God and also to value education. I gained a sense of moral reasoning and a foundation of faith from my parents’ careful guidance and persistent and profound love. I think without the upbringing of my parents, thanks to Allah, I might have had a completely closed heart regarding spiritual understanding.

All along this journey I avoided learning much of anything about Islam. I remember saying that of all the religions I had studied, Islam was the only one I really did not like or understand. I had unconsciously absorbed the stereotypical caricatures about Islam that are so prevalent in the United States so deeply that I actually felt repelled enough to not even want to begin to study Islam. It seemed politically-charged and nationalistic, oppressive to women and full of confusing rules. I could not see the spiritual guidance or the light of Islam from this perspective and therefore it seemed totally uninviting and somewhat confusing and two-dimensional to me. I did not know anyone Muslim personally and my only ideas of what a Muslim might be like came from news bits about Ayatollah Khomeini and later from reports about the Taliban in Afghanistan on the local news channels.

Growing up there were many students at my high school from families who were members of the Nation of Islam. This only confused me more as some of these students rallied to segregate the lunch rooms to have white & black students separated from each other. I didn’t really understand the movement and felt confused and hurt why some of the kids didn’t want some others of us to sit with them at lunch or why some of my friends all of a sudden were nervous to even walk down the hall together because of the escalation of harassment. Later in life I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and other books and could understand more, but at the time I was young and naïve about racism in our city and society and I took it all very personally. At the time I did not understand the differences between Nation of Islam and Orthodox Islam or know that the Quran speaks against all racism. Of course, many people have come to Islam through the Nation of Islam and I think that this has had a profound healing affect on parts of our society. For me personally, these experiences made me much more aware and concerned about the effects of covert institutionalized racism and bigotry in America.

On the morning of 9/11 I woke up from a vivid dream because of the phone ringing. My mom was calling to tell me the news about the attack. Allah knows best, and maybe it was just a coincidence, but my dream was about planes flying into skyscrapers and I saw a lot of fire and felt a profound sorrow. In my dream I was given an explanation that the attackers were men who held tremendous emotional pain that was redirected as anger in their hearts. My dream led to Afghanistan and there was a part I still do not understand, something about that the pain had to do with an underlying loss concerning their mothers, daughters, and wives, not physical loss, but somehow a loss that they were not really consciously aware of and that had been happening on a larger scale for some time, so they projected their pain as anger and deep frustration and this was to get collective attention. In my dream it was a deterioration of the vital connection between men and women that Allah intended for us that was connected to a loss of values worldwide that had spread like a sickness and marginalized women and estranged men. Somehow, it was clear, those of us in the West not only did not acknowledge this, even though as a community we played a major role in this loss, we also did not see that Allah had created us in a way that there is no real “us and them” in these matters because pain and oppression for one affects the other. As a community of people on the Earth, we share responsibility towards one another and bear the consequences of not acting from love and justice towards one another. Again, maybe this dream was merely nonsense, and a coincidence, but it was a turning point for me as in my dream it was as if this was an opportunity for us to wake up and leave behind our collective apathy and seek the compassion of Allah to heal our communities.

You would think this would be enough to get me interested in learning about Islam, but no, I was still stubbornly ignorant. I continued to pray for guidance. Soon I began to meet real-life Muslims in what seemed like random ways.  The first I remember were two women who came into the shop where I worked dressed beautifully in hijab. I was so struck that, although normally very shy, I told them how beautiful they looked. Then through a series of events my husband and I moved to Los Angeles. The day we arrived our entire bank account with all our savings was stripped bare without any warning. We had no other money, so we had no place to live and no money even for food. Thanks to Allah we were both able to find jobs. My husband worked as a manager of a limousine company and the owner and several of his coworkers were Muslim. We would have been homeless if it were not for the generosity of his boss and one of his coworkers who helped us get on our feet. It was very difficult and humiliating to go from having a lot to having nothing, but it taught us both a lot of valuable lessons and to appreciate what is most important in life.

I met other Muslims who became some of my most treasured favorite people while I was living in Russia and then two of my friends married Muslim men and converted.  It was through their generosity in answering my questions about Islam that I finally sought out a Quran. On the cover of this particular English-language version was written, “Oh Rabb (Lord), open for me my heart!” I remember opening the box that the Quran came in and first noticing that prayer and repeating it with what felt like an open wound in my heart. When I picked up the Quran I felt an unmistakable rush, like an electric current, go through my body with a profound feeling of peace. I know that might sound crazy, but I am not exaggerating, this was where my life really began to change. By the time I took my Shahadah a few months later, after reading and asking many questions, I felt like I couldn’t wait even one more day to become Muslim. I drove to my friends’ apartment and they helped me recite the Shahada. It was one of the happiest days in my life.

My husband was not yet Muslim. For the most part he said he did not believe in God, while sometimes he veered towards being agnostic. He did not understand my interest in Islam and disliked it to the point of considering divorce. He was struggling with other issues in his life, too, at that time that affected our relationship and I often felt numb with sadness that our marriage, that had started so happily based on a close friendship, was falling apart. I decided I was not going to pressure him about religion and even did my best to avoid talking about the subject. This was no small feat because I was so excited about my new-found happiness in Islam. Then I went to the advice of a scholar I trusted, Khaled Abu El Fadl, and found out about the waiting period for a Muslim woman married to a non-Muslim man. All of this was very difficult emotionally for me. I often cried at the most inopportune times, but I continued to pray for an answer and for the strength to let it go and trust Allah. I still loved my husband very much, in spite of the ever-growing chasm in our lifestyle choices and beliefs. Time passed and all my friends and even most of my family and even some of his family began to hint that divorce might be inevitable. I began to think that divorce might be inevitable. The day-to-day pain and loneliness was indescribable. The waiting period was coming to a close. Then, one day I came home from work and there was my husband sitting at the kitchen table reading a Quran. I was shocked but said nothing. Later that week, out of nowhere, he said he wanted to become Muslim. I countered that I didn’t want him to become Muslim merely to satisfy me, and he responded that he was offended that I would even think he might want to become Muslim just to please me. It ended up that he had gone to a local halal grocery and the young men who worked there were kind to him. Somehow, this small normal interaction (they did not talk about religion) affected my husband enough that he decided to read the Quran and give Islam a chance. I still am baffled by my husband at times when it comes to his adherence to Islam. I continue to do my best to focus on my own relationship with Allah, being supportive to my husband, but allowing him to learn about Islam at his own pace in his own way. I can’t think of anyone more anti-religious than my husband, so to me it could be nothing less than a miracle from Allah. He is supportive of me, even of my wearing hijab, and of raising our daughter Muslim. Truly only Allah can open our hearts.

Q) What were some big changes in your life after becoming a Muslim?

The first changes I made were that I started dressing more modestly and learned to pray. A kind sister patiently taught me how to pray. For a long time I prayed using note cards until I had memorized all the parts. I was very awkward with learning wudu and the prayers at first. I would come out of doing wudu looking like I had tried to put out a house on fire. Gradually it became easier and I began to really appreciate the daily prayers. Changing my manner of dress was a major change for me and is still a work in progress. I think this is a practical difficulty that women in some non-Muslim countries run into since the market does not particularly cater to modest dress. Finding clothes that were practical to wear where I work, that I felt comfortable in and that also were modest was a task while working with a limited budget. If you do not work outside the home it is easier, perhaps. I found it difficult to find affordable shirts that were long enough since generally such shirts could only be bought around here through specialty Islamic shops online that cost a lot. Soon I discovered that I could wear knee-length dresses as longer shirts. Finding summer and spring tops with long sleeves was another difficulty, so I instead started to wear long sleeved t-shirts under shorter sleeve shirts.

I stopped drinking alcohol and eating pork. I never liked pork anyway, so that was easy, but giving up alcohol was more difficult because it is such a large part of the local social culture where I live and is offered at almost every family gathering on my side of the family. Before becoming Muslim I was very active in the underground music and art scenes and often these events are held at bars or house parties where alcohol is served. It meant leaving a lot of my old life behind and finding new ways to spend time with my friends.

Eventually I started wearing hijab. The process was more gradual for me so that those close to me were already used to seeing me dressed in long sleeves in the summertime and having my hair covered in some way. I prayed about it many times because this was one of the hardest changes for me to make. I noticed that after I started praying about it whenever I didn’t wear hijab (and I did almost all of the time) I would inevitably run into a hijabi sister. Where I live there are not very many Muslim sisters, I have been about town for weeks without seeing a sister in hijab, so although at first I brushed it off as coincidence, after awhile it just got weird. The last time I didn’t wear hijab I had to be at an early morning doctor’s appointment. I rationalized to myself that I was too tired to figure out something to wear and there would probably just be women there. Soon after my husband and I sat down one of my friends who wears hijab showed up and sat down next to me. My husband smiled because I had already told him about how this “coincidence” kept happening to me. This time it really mirrored back to me with some clarity how I felt about myself not wearing hijab and how I was defying what was in my heart out of fear of how others might judge me.  I was able to tell my friend what was on my mind and thanks to her and many of the other loving sisters in our community I was given a lot of support to start wearing hijab fulltime.

All of these things weren’t the biggest changes, though. Since I became Muslim the most difficult and most rewarding changes have all been internal. The more I learn about Islam the more I am challenged to be compassionate, kind, well-mannered, patient, well-intentioned, humble… Being a Muslima is hard work (!) really, but all praise to Allah who guides us and eases our difficulties. Overcoming my fear of wearing hijab is nothing compared to the difficulty of watching my tongue or trusting Allah instead of becoming anxious, for example.

Q) What are some beautiful aspects that you like about Islam that you cannot find in other religions?

The five times daily prayer is, of course, a wonderful part of Islam. I still also pray throughout the day in a non-formal manner as I have since childhood, but the ritual prayers have several unique positive attributes that I did not attain from non-formal prayers. One thing is that it forces me to stop whatever I am doing and redirect my attention to Allah. Non-formal prayers I would do when it was convenient for me, but since becoming Muslim I have become more aware that life isn’t centered on me and my ego’s desires, that life is instead centered on Allah. Doing wudu makes me slow down and get into another state of mind. It helps me remember what my highest priority should be and helps pull me out of the constant harried existence that is typical of American culture. It is a consistent reminder of life’s real purpose and helps me be more mindful throughout my day. The prayers help me reflect, repent, and through asking for Allah’s mercy, remind me that my duty to others is compassion and kindness.

Another aspect of Islam that I love is the sense of sisterhood among women. I love praying alongside my sisters in Islam and sharing with them. This aspect met a deep internal need that was missing in my life that I didn’t even realize existed until after I became Muslim. I know that some women prefer men and women always sharing space and to some this aspect of Islam may seem prejudicial, but for me personally, having women-only space has been very healing and empowering.

Another aspect of Islam that I love is the cultural and ethnic diversity. My experience in places of worship of other religions has been that generally there is an unofficial segregation along ethnic and cultural lines. In the USA often mosques are filled with brothers and sisters from every background you can imagine treating each other with respect and equanimity. This is an important aspect of Islam that I hope we will guard and protect. I know it is not always upheld as it should be and that racism and classism does exist amongst Muslims, but I hope that we will cling to the positive examples in our Umma and strive towards loving and respecting one another.

There are any other things I love that are unique to Islam. I love hijab. I love the diversity of the mahdabs. I love Ramadan. But most of all, I love the beauty of the Holy Quran and the direct relationship we have to Allah without any intermediaries.

Q) What is it like to be an American Muslim?

Of course, I have nothing to compare my experience to since I have always been American, but at the same time I know that my experience as an American does affect my experience as a Muslim. The majority of the surrounding culture is Christian and secular and after 9/11 there has been an increasing mistrust and fear of Islam and Muslims that has been reflected in numerous polls that is grounded, I think, in ignorance about Islam in most public discourse and a woefully biased media. So, there is, of course, some negativity and ignorance you have to deal with, but overall there is a great deal of freedom to learn about and practice Islam.

Sometimes it is a hardship having so few other Muslims in our city, but also it is positive because our community is very diverse and people have an opportunity to know one another well. When you have such a small community and you all share the same mosque because it is simply impractical to have all the divisions you can have in a larger community, there are some benefits. Therefore it is not uncommon for Muslims from different schools of thought who may not have the opportunity to know one another elsewhere to pray alongside of one another here. Granted it is not like this in all American communities and sometimes there are arguments and strife, but Alhamdulillah, my experience so far has been very positive. We pray together, we eat together, our children play together. We also have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with people of many other faiths. In the city where I live there are Muslims, Jews and Christians working together to build a library and community center. There are two major groups who share interfaith dialogue through community service, events and public discussions. I find that those who most despise Muslims and Islam here are people who are in more isolated homogenous communities who have never even met or talked to a Muslim and therefore believe whatever nonsense they read or hear. Unfortunately, I find the same kind of attitude is common amongst some Muslims I have met who have equally distorted beliefs about Christians and Jews. Most of the racism I have personally witnessed in the Muslim community is either towards those of Jewish or those of black African descent. Allah please protect our Ummah from racism and hate!  A close friend of mine once made a comment about Shia Muslims that was very malicious to my ears. All the Muslims who took care of my husband and me in Los Angeles when we were so low were Shia. We would have been destitute living on the street if it weren’t for their charity. I couldn’t help but think that if my friend was born in Iran instead that he would probably be Shia, not Sunni. Allah knows best what is in our hearts. Hearing about Sunni versus Shia violence is very hard to comprehend and understand for many American-born Muslims, I think. I pray that Allah will guide as all as an Ummah away from hatred and disunity and towards compassion for one another.

There are many aspects of Islam that one must be really aware to keep on track, such as not missing a prayer time since there is no Adhan to hear from any nearby mosque. We installed software on our computer that gives the Adhan at home. At work and when we are out we simply must remember the times. Many parents make Ramadan and the Eid celebrations special for their children by decorating their homes and putting up lights and giving gifts of charity, etc. There is so much hype around the Christmas holiday that our children can easily feel left out unless some extra effort is really put into education and making our holidays memorable for them. In general this is an issue. I think it is really important for American Muslims to have a lot of contact with their local Muslim community to get needed support and encouragement. In our community there are Friday Khutbahs, but also a weekly women’s halaqua, community halaquas and other family events. By far the majority of converts to Islam in America are women. Our community, our families and neighbors and coworkers, etc, are for the most part usually non-muslim. Women who are isolated from the greater Muslim community are less likely to get the support and education they need to live an Islamic lifestyle and to raise their children Muslim. There is an enormous need for ways for women, children and young adults to be involved with the greater Muslim community. It makes me very sad when I hear about women and children being turned away from mosques and Islamic Centers. This is a problem some places in the US and a large problem in some other places, like Britain. Assuming that all Muslim women have Muslim family or a Muslim husband at home to turn to for guidance and support, especially in a non-Muslim country, is a great disservice to the health of the community. When I first became Muslim I had absolutely no Muslim family members and my husband was atheist. Alhamdulillah, I was able to go to our local mosque and ask for guidance. I was connected to sisters who helped me learn how to pray and gave me advice on a great number of issues. If I had not had access to the community I probably never would have been able to really learn how to pray correctly, how to wear hijab, how to fast in Ramadan, just simple things, my husband probably would never have become Muslim and my daughter probably would not have any other Muslim children to play with and befriend.

Q) What is it like to be a good Muslim wife and thoughtful mother?

I pray Allah will help me to be both of those things. Marriage, of course, is a very vital part of religion, being half our deen. Marriage is an enormous opportunity to become aware of and correct ourselves where we have strayed. It requires patience, humility, empathy, compassion and many more qualities that the Prophet (s.a.w.) taught us are important through his actions and words. The Quran, of course, also teaches us how the nature of marriage should be like a shelter to each partner. Marriage is such an intimate abode, over time you get to see the best and the worst qualities of your spouse and they in you. You cannot change your partner, but you can change yourself with the help of Allah Most Gracious. There are many tests and hardships in life and even in a very happy, peaceful marriage there are inevitably periods of difficulty. To my understanding, becoming Muslim meant following the advice of the Quran and Sunna, which means things like making an effort when I catch myself enumerating my husband’s shortcomings to stop myself and reflect on my own shortcomings, to try to see things from his viewpoint and to reflect on the things I appreciate about him and to give thanks to Allah for my marriage. When things have been extremely difficult and I did not feel I had the strength or fortitude or even the wisdom to find a solution or make it through I have found that making dua to Allah and trusting Allah brings about miracles. I try to remember that Allah is the source of all patience, love and comfort and it is to Allah I need to remember to turn to in times of difficulty.

Being a mother is truly a blessing. Again following the Quran and Sunna means being gentle, patient (and again patient) and striving to be an ideal role model for your children. Children learn more from watching what you do than what you say. Like marriage, a relationship that is healthy with your children revolves around building trust between each other. Discipline is based on trust. If your child trusts you they will want to please you, but if they simply fear you they are more likely to rebel or obey but not respect you. To me it is very important to treat my child with utmost kindness and patience and in return I expect respect and good behavior. Children learn empathy and compassion or a lack thereof from their parents and caregivers. So how parents raise their children affects all of society. It is vitally important to understand the stages of development of your child. Too often well-meaning parents are harsh and unfair to their children instilling a sense of injustice simply because they expect their child to understand and behave in ways that are not possible at their stage of development. A person’s sense of empathy and consequences is not even fully developed in the brain till the average age of twenty-one years, so to expect this from a child under seven is unjust, and Islam teaches us this, too. Islam has so much good advice for us as parents. Nursing your child till the age of two, for example, has also been scientifically proven to be the most advantageous. Speaking gently to your children when giving them guidance, being patient with them and not using corporal punishment at all when they are still a child (and then when at the age they are responsible for prayers, it is only admissible as a light spanking) are more examples of how Islam teaches us to deal with our children justly. This was another major change for me in perspective after I became Muslim. In America using corporal punishment with children is extremely common and there is an idea that children will grow to be disobedient and unruly without it. A lot of this comes from interpretation of certain Biblical passages. Actual scientific studies support the Islamic perspective that yelling at children or spanking them not only increasesthe likelihood that they will develop behavioral problems, but it also affects the development of the brain of a young child. Children who come from homes where yelling and corporal punishment are used as a form of discipline generally have lower intelligence scores later in life and are more likely to use violence and harbor internal anger and depression than children whose parents use other forms of discipline (such as time out).

The more I learn about the Prophet (s.a.w.) and reflect on the Quran the more I learn that it is our duty to be compassionate to others and how this starts with reflecting on our duties to our family. This is something I have to work on everyday and is one of the greatest challenges and joys in my life.

Q) In your opinion, how can Islam be better presented?

I was recently in a class for new Muslims. The instructors were very good and explained things well. The books we used were overall very good, but some of the content kept some of the people from coming back. One woman who never returned later told me she was offended because one of the books said that according to the law of Islam any Muslim who does not pray should be put to death as an apostate.  There was no further explanation in the book, nothing about any other opinions by other scholars on the issue, nothing to really relate any kind of rational understanding. Even if intended to merely shed light on the importance of prayer, it came across sounding very frightening and totalitarian to some of the students. We had a teacher who explained things in even more detail, but by then this woman, along with a few other students, were already gone. A non-Muslim man in our class voiced his concern that this seemed to go against the passage in the Quran that says there should be no compulsion in religion. This is just one example, but in the West where most people, unfortunately, only hear about Islam in context of news about acts of terrorism and honor killings people are often wary and defensive when first learning about Islam. There is a massive amount of negative propaganda about Islam. Many non-Muslims here assume that all Muslims believe that non-Muslims must be converted to Islam, oppressed or killed (that is how they understand the Dar-al-Islam/ Dar-al-Harb concept). Shariah law is equated in the minds of many Americans with violent threatening images. Just saying that Islam is peace and that most Muslims do not support terrorism is not enough. There are not enough thoughtful websites, in my opinion, to answer tough questions with detailed explanations for English-speaking Muslims and non-Muslims. Most public discourse from Muslims heard here relates to hijab rights, secondly, though not as much in mainstream media, is the Israeli-Palestine conflict (most Americans have little or no idea about the situation because of lack of balanced press coverage). Actual Muslim scholars get very little airtime compared to statements put out by extremist groups in conjunction with terrorist acts and commentary made by so-called ex-Muslims and pseudo-scholars who dish out lots of misinformation. I often hear complaints from non-Muslims that there is no public outcry from Muslims themselves about injustice unless it is perpetrated against Muslims. They feel that Muslims are too quiet when it comes to injustice perpetrated by Muslims against non-Muslims. There is a general feeling that Islam has become more about intolerant nationalism than anything to do with religion from most of what I personally hear from skeptical non-Muslims. People don’t seem to know about the mercy of Islam or the social justice. They also largely seem to be in need of recognizing Muslims as real people, not just some frightening caricature revolving around issues of race and nationalism.

Q) What aspects of Islam do you think are poorly understood and not well practiced by Muslims?

I am not a scholar, but it seems to me that there are too many websites and such quoting hadith as evidence for this or that opinion in a way that insists there is only one right answer without any real in-depth knowledge about fiqh. I’ve heard Muslims say, “I don’t follow any school.” But, as I understand it, if you attempt to follow no school and throw out about 1400 years worth of scholarship and discourse as irrelevant to understanding the source, you are essentially projecting interpretation onto the earliest evidence, so in essence following no school is following a school. I’ve seen a similar development here in the US in some Christian circles. Some take the Bible and self-interpret saying that scholarship on the sources is irrelevant and contains too much innovation, but usually this means coming up with a more literal interpretation than was originally intended, and throwing the source into a context other than its original intent because of cultural bias. I think there also is the danger of becoming arrogant if we disregard all other opinions, especially where there is more than one opinion. Self-righteousness can creep up on us as a community very insidiously. It can destroy our Ummah from within by creating unnecessary divisions amongst Muslims and hate and intolerance towards one another simply because we do not all agree.

Another aspect of Islam that seems to be ill-followed, at least here in the US, is how we discipline our children. I have heard Muslims who are prominent in the public-eye, authors in autobiographical accounts, popular comedians, and others speak lightly about hitting their children. Most Americans, because of teachings integrated into our culture from the traditional Christian understanding of several Bible passages, have been raised with physical punishment from very early childhood. They speak about how this is how they were raised and how it is necessary to use physical punishment to be an effective parent. There is a fear that not hitting your child will result in an undisciplined and spoiled adult. These are generally devout and well-meaning parents doing as they were taught. One of my close friends was given a very unfavorable understanding of Islam as a child after seeing one of her playmates stripped and spanked in front of several classmates for her poor grades by her devout Muslim grandfather. This little girl did not grow up to a favorable end, to put it mildly, which is a true tragedy in my eyes. Islam teaches us, of course, that children less than seven years of age do not even have the full capability of understanding right from wrong yet. Even after that age there are better ways of reaching a child’s mind and heart. What we are taught by Islam is backed up by modern scientific research. Children who are disciplined in non-physical ways have less behavioral problems later in life, harbor less internal anger and develop better cognitively. Especially the sorts of things many children are physically punished for according to studies is very disturbing, like bed-wetting, which is caused by an underdevelopment in the brain that the child has no control over, or scholastic difficulties, which of course, many children suffer from undiagnosed learning disabilities, or crying, which for a young mind is often a way of communicating hunger or need for sleep. We need to come from a place of compassion when disciplining our children because this affects our whole community. It affects whether our children grow up to be angry and mistrusting and more likely to hit their own children or spouse or whether they grow up to be compassionate individuals with an inner sense of justness.

Q) What are some aspects of Islam which you still find difficult to grasp?

Following a particular mahdab is challenging here because the community is so diverse and gaining understanding about matters of fiqh is particularly difficult, at least for me. I try to focus on the Quran and the five pillars primarily and seek advice from scholars and fellow Muslims whom I respect. Also, learning Arabic, this has certainly been a challenge for me. I hope someday, Insha’Allah, to read the Quran in Arabic and understand what I am reading.

Q) What’s your advice for Muslim youth?

Pray, give charity generously, read the Quran and smile. The Prophet (s.a.w.) taught us that prayer is extremely important and that it should be done with intention, not rushed or with an absent mind. There are proven health benefits to prayer, if it is done mindfully and regularly it transforms the brain. As mentioned in the Quran (96: 15-16) the frontal lobe, when exercised through regular prayer, activates the anterior cingulated cortex. Put simply, if we abandon our prayers or do not do them regularly and mindfully our ability to feel compassion and empathy for others, know right from wrong and recognize truth, can become impaired.  When we pray regularly and practice charity and focus our attention on trusting Allah the part of our brain that produces the fear, anger, and anxiety, that clouds our judgment and distorts our memory is redirected in a more positive direction. Remember how the Prophet (s.a.w.) so often and in so many ways reminded us how arrogance and anger can destroy our religion? This is so important! Negative speech has a stronger effect than positive speech in our brains. Expressing or listening to angry thoughts can actually damage the brain over time and damage our health, but it also upsets our thinking processes and creates fear and aggression without the added benefit of thinking clearly with empathy. These may seem like small things that the Prophet (s.a.w.) so often mentioned, to learn to control and rid ourselves of anger, to smile as an act of charity, but these things are contagious in a society and facing that inner jihad with strength and fortitude is so important to our religion and our community. I think a powerful tool Shaytan can use against us is the temptation to become angry, arrogant, and negative when we are met with hardships and humiliation. But we must trust Allah and not give in to negative thinking. We must keep praying to Allah and keep charitable words, thoughts and deeds, and keep smiling with our trust in Allah, not the cynicism of Shaytan.

Q) What are some of the books you recommend for us?

Khaled Abou El Fadl’s Speaking In God’s Name is a thoughtful book. About marriage and family, I liked The Muslim Marriage Guide by Ruqayyah Waris Maqsood and The Child in Islam by Norma Tarazi. Concerning converts in the West I liked Jeffrey Lang’s books and highly recommend his two talks available on DVD, “Winning Our Children Back to Islam,” and, “The Purpose of Life.” I liked Hamza Yusuf’s book Purification of the Heart and was very influenced by his talks, “Heedlessness” and, “How to Talk to People” amongst others, all available on YouTube on the Discover Islam channel.  For fun I enjoy Linda Ilham Barto’s books, like Ramadan Rhapsody. I enjoy hearing Abdullah Hakim Quick speak (available at MeccaCentric.com). Other writers I enjoy are: Sumbul Ali-Karamali, Ahmed Akbar, and Carl W. Ernst among others.

Asalaam Alaikum!