Last night I had this dream.

I was praying four raka'as and on the second or third one, when I went down to prostrate myself on the floor and say Allahu Akbar, my hands were taken in someone else's hands as soon as they touched the floor. It was an old friend of mine from high school, and she was kneeling in front of me, holding my hands in hers and facing toward me. Then after I had touched my forehead to the ground, she bent down and touched her forehead to the back of mine. I could feel her hair on my neck.

I have been mildly disconcerted by the dream. I don't know how to read its mixture of religious ritual and sensual, though not sexual, embrace. I worry it's somewhat blasphemous. But my instinct tells me it's not. There was just so much love, and safety, and warmth in that strange embrace, a sense of contact both human and divine.

Maybe I should consider that the richest worship of God also happens when we have each other to hold and to love.

Dear God,

Thank You for making me Muslim. I feel like... it gives me a chance to be a voice for Islam and Muslims to a lot of my non-Muslim friends. I don't know if I'm a very accurate voice for Islam, not because I think anything I believe is bid'a or whatever, but just because... I don't know if there's such a thing as an 'accurate' voice for Islam. At least not the way we (humans) have manifested Islam as a specific, direct and daily manifestation of faith, doctrine, textual interpretation and historical narrative, etc. But I think I'm an honest voice, at least I hope so, and I tell people that really this is all I can offer them: not accuracy but honesty; not definitive answering, but balanced conjecturing and questioning and a modest core of inshaallah unflagging belief.

:) Thanks.

The whole speaking kind words thing is very difficult when so many of my non-Muslim friends and I have developed such deep friendships over the years that truly the only appropriate way to express our affection for each other is by calling each other terrible, sometimes profane names.

isn't that odd?

Looking at the daily Muslim prayer schedule, one gets the impression that Islam as a religion would tend to create people of particular punctuality and time-management skills. Anyone who knows actual Muslim people also knows that this is not the case.

I am prone to occasionally writing e-mails to old friends and dear friends, essentially saying things like ‘I love you’ and ‘I miss you’ and ‘Do you remember that time when…’ and ‘I thought of you today when…’

I don’t do it that often, because although it’s been almost a decade and a half since I first began to overcome my instinctual barriers to expressing emotions of this sort, I still feel a little abashed about it, and I often think perhaps I am saying too much, perhaps this is going too far.

I think this strange over-capacity for love and affection is one thing that propelled me into Islam. With my friends I am grateful for their friendship, their support and the memories they’ve given me. With God I am grateful for giving me my friends and everything else that I have. Plus I get to e-mail God five times a day without feeling any reserve about the matter.

You know what? I love Islam, and I would give my life to maintain my faith because I don’t know how I would live without it. BUT Islam does NOT define the entirety of who I am. I will not apologize even in the guiltiest depths of my soul for saying or thinking things that touch upon deeper metaphysical questions but are not in any way drawn from or inspired by the materials of the Islamic canon.

sorry, that's been bothering me for some time now. Probably from the very beginning.

People ask my why i converted, they ask me sometimes searching for answers of their own, reasons to continue the struggle to hold to faith.

I converted for many reasons, but ultimately I converted without reason. Truthfully when I decided to convert, if I did consciously decide at all, it was on the basis of a handful of unempirical truths, things which do not have their genesis in the mind of a person and cannot be effectively transmitted to other persons because they are first and foremost rooted in the heart, in the soul, in the inexplicable regions of who we are, and as such they supersede the reason of secular skepticism and become, in their own way, unassailable sanctuaries in which we find abode.

He came to be in a strange place among strange people, so he searched out secluded alcoves or empty rooms in which to pray, and though his devotions were touched by the fear of discovery and intrusion, they also seemed sweeter and more precious for their fragility.

Muslims in public restrooms crack me up.
This one is sticking his bare feet into the sink
That one is going into the bathroom stall with a well-used water bottle
Another one is cleaning his ears between wet fingertips
And sometimes they bow their heads in embarrassment
When they sense (or imagine) the shocked eyes of silent passers-through
But other times they see each other and they share a quiet, secretive smile that says:
“I know you. I know what you’re about.”

ugh

i think i'm paying something like 2,000 dollars extra in tuition at this community college because I feel uncomfortable lying on a form about my in-state resident status

STUPID religion

I'm living with my grandparents for a semester.

I miss being able to pray openly :-(

Dear God,

Please Bless the people who come up to me when i'm in the middle of praying in public and ask me if I am 'ok'. I appreciate their good intentions.