Please note how Ms Nomani uses the narrative about her rather pathetic inner demons to generalise about Islam, in the process also conflating Islam and the expression of a local culture in matters relating to gender, marriage etc.
Asra Nomani is a tragic figure. My heart goes out to her.
Just in case someone objects to my classification of Ms Nomani as a tragic figure in the classical sense, let me say that today’s world cannot afford tragedy in the Aeschylean, Sophoclean, Euripidean or even Shakespearean sense. Tragedy in this post-modern world is all about our common pathetic selves.
But let me introduce Ms Nomani briefly.
She was born in a Muslim family in Hyderabad (India), moved to the United States when she was four, studied there, got into journalism, did well professionally, thought “deep and hard” about Islam and the place of women in it, has used the post-9/11 focus on Islam to good advantage, written a couple of books, revolted against the mosque in her hometown of Morgantown in West Virginia, and is generally known in Pakistan to be the woman who was friends with Daniel Pearl.
This is of course a very brief CV; for more details on Ms Nomani’s exciting life and inner struggles, please go to
http://www.asranomani.com/Biography.aspx
Why Ms Nomani? Recently, she wrote an article, “My Big Fat Muslim Wedding”, which had me in tears. That’s what tragedy is supposed to do. But since we are in no sense in the classical mode, I shall laundry-list Ms Nomani’s tragic life for you.
* She was born in a Muslim family [tragic enough] and born a woman [even more tragic].
* As she says: “There’s a photo of me as a toddler, my sullen face peeking out from layers of bridal finery — part of a tradition that sets Muslim girls on the path to marriage”. [By this benchmark, most families in Pakistan violate the tradition. That includes mine.]
* “To me, abiding by the dictates of my culture and religion meant finding a love that would be halal...according to Islamic law”. [How tragic. Muslim scholars should begin to bless non-halal weddings and relationships. And why not. If rabbis can bless wine to make it kosher, surely we can adopt this practice too.]
* “I never dated, and I never went to the junior high school dances. My senior year at Morgantown High, standing by my red locker, I politely refused the class president when he invited me to the prom. ‘I can’t,’ was all I could say. And I couldn’t. It would be haram — unlawful”. [Jeez! I can almost visualise the tragedy as it unfolded in front of that red locker on that fateful day.]
* “Eventually,” she says, “I crossed the sacred boundaries [actually she wants to say crossed over into high civilisation] by falling in love with a student at West Virginia University... The day we consummated our relationship, I cried, having surrendered my virginity before my wedding night.” [Ms Nomani continued to go out for four years with this gent which, if you ask me, is quite a lot after the initial act of crying at the time of “surrendering her virginity”.]
* “Then, during graduate school in Washington, D.C., I dated a blond surfer from California and celebrated Christmas with his family.” [Surfers are just what you need for surfing and the more blond the better.]
* “A year later, I found myself in Chicago, smitten with a Lutheran from Iowa [am I surprised!]. One spring Saturday afternoon, I sat on a bench in Lincoln Park with him after almost three years together. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you.’ He should have been Mr Right. I loved him deeply. But I looked away.” [Gosh! This is too much tragedy. But please also note here the problem with “love” which in Ms Nomani’s case, more than rhyming with the heavens above, looks like something made in Hong Kong.]
* “Not long afterward, I received a call from a guy I’d known at grad school. He was Pakistani and Muslim, but living in America, fully assimilated into the culture. My heart leapt. We talked and flirted deep into the night.” [But of course!]
* “On Valentine’s Day in 1992, we met for dinner. An employee of the World Bank, he was a former cross-country runner, just like me, with two cats — again, just like me. A week later, we got engaged.” [Yay!]
* Wedding bells toll for Ms Nomani, who as you might have noticed, went through many post-modern tragic circumstances, torn asunder by forces of cosmic proportions. But happiness was still elusive for our heroine.
* “As my wedding flowed into my honey-moon in Paris and the first few weeks of marriage, some issues I’d ignored throughout our brief romance started to haunt me... We would have rather passionless, perfunctory sex, and then he’d roll over, turn his back to me, and fall asleep. [These Muslim men; don’t they know they are supposed to hug the woman for two hours after sex. And if they can’t, they better opt for a good dump instead. At least no one is expected to hug that for two hours after being done.]
* “When I would try to gently talk with him about it, he’d cut me off. He had been raised in a family where it’s just not the sort of thing you discuss.” [Excuse me? I thought this guy was “fully assimilated into the culture”. But no, He couldn’t be. After all he was a Muslim, an irreversible tragedy.]
* The marriage didn’t last. Says Ms Nomani: “Later at my office, I got a piece of mail, which my husband had signed with the three words ‘Talaq, talaq, talaq,’... According to traditional interpretation, a Muslim man has to simply utter this word three times to divorce his wife.” [Ms Nomani’s knowledge of Islamic tradition is impressive indeed!]
* “This year... I had met a wonderful man in Washington, D.C...One night, he played me “When Love Is New” by Dolly Parton and Emmy Rossum. The bluegrass music hit a chord with the West Virginia girl in me. [Tears of happiness are rolling down my eyes.]
* “On Valentine’s Day, we climbed over the boulders leading to Sky Rock... Then he knelt down in front of me and, gazing up into my eyes, said, ‘I love you. Will you be one with me?’ I smiled and spoke from my heart: ‘Yes.’ And snowflakes fell like confetti from the sky.” [Lollywood, please match the mushiness of this.]
Dear reader, if you haven’t worked out Ms Nomani’s tragic life, let me explain.
<SNIP>.
Considering that she had moved in with him before the marriage, and given her own account of various other encounters, and of course the fact that he was a cross-country runner, just like her, and had two cats, just like her, it is a tad difficult for me to believe that she consummated the relationship only after the formal vows had taken place. In which case, I don’t think I am wrong in concluding that the perfunctory sex and rolling over by hubby dear had to do with boredom than a Big Fat Muslim Wedding! He was like Ms Nomani!
But what it adds up to is sinister, and deliberately so.
Please note how Ms Nomani uses the narrative about her rather pathetic inner demons to generalise about Islam, in the process also conflating Islam and the expression of a local culture in matters relating to gender, marriage etc. It would have been perfectly fine if she had written this as an expression of herself: about how she has a tendency of flirting, falling in love every three years, getting bored and moving on. I have nothing against that. She can opt for polyandry for all I care. The perfidy lies in the fact that she has noticed how any narrative that can be cleverly selected and twisted to denigrate Islam and Muslim societies sells in the post-9/11 world and uses that to her full advantage.
That is pathetic.
I never thought such a day would come. Before gloating about how big a jihadi his fellow men are, Mr Haider should have seen a decade back that he along with his country men were up the sh1t creek without a paddle (his own words). Karma is a b1atch Mr Haider.
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