Blogging has become a passion of mine, a thrill that I only discovered after I tried it. How wonderful it is to share your ideas with people you don’t know but still build connections with. Now to blog is one thing, and to be identified as a blogger was another thing given my short blogging life. The moment I received an invitation to join a panel on “Female Muslim bloggers”, I accepted it on the spot amazed by the new title and happy with it!
“Female Muslim Bloggers” panel was organized by Bloomsbury Qatar and was hosted in Carnegie Mellon campus on the 9th of March. The other two panelists were the lovely author of Love in a Headscarf, Shelina JanMoamed, and Shabina Khatri, a Muslim American journalist freelancing from Qatar. I’ve been blogging for around 10 months, which meant that my blog is still in its infancy compared to the blogs of my fellow panelists.
Each of us spoke for five minutes about our reasons behind establishing our blogs, leaving the audience enough time to ask and comment. The hall in which we held the panel was packed, and we were approached by people whom complemented our writings, which is always nice.
To be frank, I won’t be able to recall all questions but here are the ones I remember.
About my reasons behind blogging, I said: Academia can be a lonely place, especially when teaching and research takes up all of my time. I have published several academic papers and my book will be out by the end of this year. Still, I longed for a language that is more real and reflective of whom I am—a creative language. Also I wanted to reach out to a bigger audience than my students and my colleagues. As I have already experienced the joy of writing in the past, I wanted to relive this joy yet this time writing for an audience who is seeking me out, not just reading me because I am a “text book” or a column in a magazine that happened to be in front of them. I challenged myself into writing in a language that is accessible to my audience—far from the language found in expert journals. Unlike in academic writing, I loved taking agency over my words, reclaiming my own voice by using and sometimes over-using the first person singular “I”.
Responding to a question about how we deal with negative comments, I explained that I have established my blog to have a fruitful discussion with readers, and I do consider my blog as my living room. Therefore, I don’t welcome anyone who will be disrespectful to me or any one of my visitors. I love people disagreeing with me and I would publish any comment except for the ones that contain personal attacks.
A young man asked about our goals and if we had regretted publishing any of our pieces. I answered that my goals are to encourage people to think outside the box and to teach others how to be tolerant and respectful of other opinions. And I emphasized that I don’t regret posting any of my post, because each one of them was the creation of certain incidents, feelings and thoughts, and denying them now means denying what I have felt or gone through at any point of my life.
In answering a question about modeling ourselves as “female Muslim bloggers” I said that being a Muslim is one main component of my identity and that is something I’m definitely proud of, still there is more to me. I am multi-layered and there are other components that distinguish me in different settings, being Qatari in certain settings marks me as a minority, being a woman connects me to third-world as well as Arab and Muslim women, let alone being western educated, a professor, etc. I would like to model myself as the amalgam I am; a Muslim woman, who is educated, modern, hybrid and bilingual.
The event was covered by both Arabic and English media. I had another bad experience with our local media; I hope this doesn’t turn into a pattern. A reporter from the Peninsula who had asked three of us several questions without even writing our answers down but pretending to memorize them, has done the same apparently all through the event- recall the whole thing from her memory when she wrote about it. I was misquoted the second day saying “Hijab is a traditional custom, not a religious one’!! What I had said when asked about the “abayya” post is that my argument was that abayya is a traditional custom, unlike the Hijab which is a religious one! Now they have apologized and promised to publish an official apology, whether they did or not I don’t know and don’t care anymore.
It is hard to report on an event, in which I spoke. So if you attended the event, I hope you would fill the others in.
I would like to thank all of my faithful readers who attended, and I welcome all of the new readers.
Alice
Assalam alaikum It's wonderful you decided to write in "creative" less formal and academic language :) If language is to effectively convey information to readers then it should be "alive", easy to understand for simple people with average IQ. Some learned people don't understand this and continue to write their boring academic books that nobody reads nor understands. I had several professors like that- so dry and formal, rigid- unable to be simple. I'm sorry you got misquoted by a newspaper on such as sensitive issue as hijab. That's one of the things I'm looking for when blogging myself. Blogging presents a priceless opportunity to exchange opinions with other people and learn new things. Blogging definitely helps me to become more tolerant and respectful... because I know myself- I tend to feel "stuck up" and too categorical, maximalistic. The other important reason for me is just being out there in the Internet. Often when I google something about Muslim women I run into bloggers who write hateful or mocking posts about Islam, abaya etc I don't want them to be the only ones talking about Islam and Muslim women. Normal different happy Muslim women have to be present in the Internet too- blog- write and share, explain. We have to represent ourselves otherwise others (negative and misunderstanding people) will do it. Even though I'm myself not the best representative for Muslim or Russian women, I feel I have to do it it because I have a chance (Internet access, free time, knowledge of English, ideas for posts, good intentions). Often it's the drama stories that are blogged about or shared on the Internet forums. Negative and piquant stories gather more audience, people love to share shocking stories- it's exciting :) But how many happy Muslim women are writing about their happy meaningful lives? Not many- because they are busy with their families, hobbies, work or studying. And it's wonderful, but because they are busy and silent people don't know about them. Also when people have happy life they don't like to brag about it. So nobody hears about happy Muslim women again. But when there's some heartbreaking story involving Muslim men or women, Arabs and the Middle East- it's such a joy to share and discuss! That's why I believe that even Muslim housewives should blog about their wonderful "boring" happy lives :)April 5th, 2010 @ 2:46 pm
Designerbyfitrah
Subhanallah you never now when your going to read something that hits home. After reading the last few posts I decided to start a new blog. I am a young muslimah living in the U.S on my own little quest to make it through design school with my eman in tact and head held high. At times it seems like our day to day life is simply dull but we never know who it may influence. Thank you for the post sisters :) May Allah make all of our goals within reachOctober 28th, 2010 @ 12:31 am
UmMahdi
Khadija: The First Lady of Islam is an new novel of historical fiction ---- This novel begins as ..... The girl born that evening fared much better than the one born earlier in the day. The body of the less fortunate girl was still warm, covered beneath the sands on the edge of town, when the girl later known as Khadija entered this world. Abu Jassim, the father of the girl born that morning, had spent the entire night scurrying about offering gifts to as many of the 360 gods as he could. He would have liked to simplify this, but he believed that many of these gods, one for each day of the year, were vengeful so he couldn’t make an offering only to the chief god of the gods, Hubal, without reprisals from the others. Abu Jassim stared up in desperation at Hubal who had the largest idol positioned high atop the Ka’ba, the holy cube shaped structure in the center of town. Distressed, he gazed up at the statue of the almighty Hubal which now seemed to be frowning at him. Made of red agate and shaped like a human except that its right hand was broken off and replaced with a hand of gold, it offered no consolation to Abu Jassim. Those who practiced polytheism had to worship not only Hubal, but also a myriad of other gods, goddesses, demons, jinn, and monsters or fear that any one of them would feel insulted for not receiving equal worship. “Help me, Hubal,” Abu Jassim pleaded. Available for viewing and download at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/112696December 18th, 2011 @ 12:43 pm