Sufi Feminist Immigrant Mothering

Abstract

Sufi Feminist Immigrant Mothering Shabana Mir (bio) Keywords Qur'an, feminism, motherhood, immigration, culture an aching void The Qur'an tells us that when Moses was born, he, along with other male Israelite infants, was in imminent danger of being killed by Pharaonic forces. God inspired Moses' mother to place him in a basket and cast it on the river. Understandably, sending him away from certain death to an unknown fate on the river was little comfort to a mother, letting her new infant go on so fragile a vessel into a dangerous world. Her heart was sorely distressed: "On the morrow, however, an aching void grew up in the heart of the mother of Moses, and she would indeed have disclosed all about him had We not endowed her heart with enough strength to keep alive her faith [in Our promise]" (28:10).1 The heart of Moses' mother became fārigha—an Arabic word translated variously as a blank, empty, desolate, impatient, and agitated. Engulfed by a consuming anxiety, her heart was full of an encompassing unease, a total lack of solidity, like air, so empty as to be almost immaterial. This verse haunts me when I watch over my child's distress. Every agonizing parenting moment—when she burned her hand at eight months, dropping her off at daycare as a terrified two-year-old, the near-drowning she experienced at 4, and even now, whenever she feels friendless and alone—my heart has a yawning ache that nothing can soothe. I become a being of disquiet. Even when I watch over her joy, I am consumed by its evanescence, by a greedy desire for her happiness to last forever, uninterrupted. In every situation, I adopt whatever role I need to embody. I will do whatever is necessary to protect her in body, mind, and soul. Though deeply averse to conflict, I become that parent, the Mama Bear that no school staff will welcome. Prepared with the necessary evidence, I have [End Page 250] Click for larger view View full resolution Asiya finds Moses. By Rashid al-Din - Jami' al-tawarikh. Image in Public Domain. that showdown at the Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting, only to collapse into tears afterward. When a textbook is racist and Islamophobic, I will write that email and that follow-up. When a camp leader anglicizes her Arabic name, I am ready for the conversation about cultural assimilation. I am there to address any boy who pushes her around. I am there to assure her that she has no need to respect male religious authority. I am also there to remind her that my own authority is temporary, flawed, and subject to critique. It is a lot to do. hagar's immortal anxiety God created one hundred units of mercy on the Day He created the heavens and the earth. Each one of them can contain all that is between the heaven and the earth. Of them, he put one on earth, through which a mother has compassion for her children and animals and birds have compassion for one another.2 Pre-Islamic Arabs were familiar with Abraham and they revered the Holy Mosque that he and Ishmael built at Mecca. Muhammad's task was to renew the original religion of Abraham, the true nature of humanity, devotion to One God, the Truth. Muslims today visit the same Mosque for the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to renew one's covenant with God, [End Page 251] chanting, "I am here, my God, I am here." But the passion story of the pilgrimage is not only about Abraham. Muslim scholars have read the rites of pilgrimage as seeking and seeing One in multiplicity, offering total devotion and obedience to God, and seeing past the Attributes to the Essence of God. The eighth-century saint Rabi'a of Basra said, "I do not seek the Ka'ba but its Owner." Another reading of Hajj emphasizes the sanctity of places and objects that have witnessed the presence and passion of God's Friends. One of the rites of Hajj is Sa'ee (literally, to walk, run, or strive) between the hills of Safa and Marwa. Sa...