Why We Chose This Way

By Turiya S.A. Raheem

This time, she takes us inside the diverse lives of African-American Muslim women. We get a glimpse of how these women grew up, how and why they chose Al-Islam as their way of life, their personal journeys and finally, why they still choose to be Muslim despite the many negative portrayals of the religion and its women in todays world.
Raheem says, My mother once asked me why I would choose a triple whammy. She said, Youre already Black and a woman in America. Now, Muslim? Maybe this book will answer that question. Thanks, Mom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514439432

Turiya S.A. Raheem

Author Turiya S.A. Raheem loves sharing the history and stories of little known communities. In her first book, Growing Up in the Other Atlantic City: Wash’s and the Northside --- which garnered Raheem appearances on 2 HBO documentaries and a play --- she used her family’s restaurant business to provide us with an insightful history of the African-American community in the world- famous resort, Atlantic City, New Jersey.

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Copyright © 2016 by Turiya S.A. Raheem.

Credits to Mikal A. Hasan for the Sketch Art

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016900152

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-3948-7

                Softcover         978-1-5144-3946-3

                 eBook             978-1-5144-3943-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/08/2016

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Contents

A Note To My Readers And Acknowledgments

My Name Is Ayesha With A Y

Worlds Away From Home

Catholic In Southern Baptist Nashville

The Perfect Pious People

Home Girls

From The Nation Back To Nature

From Chocolate City To The Motherland

Generations Deep In The Deen

Call Me Unique, Not Nikki

Finding Solace

A Note to My Readers and Acknowledgments

F irst of all, I thank Allah for inspiring me to write this book and for giving me everything I needed to complete it. I remain a grateful servant and ask forgiveness for any errors. For the most part, this is a book of creative nonfiction . I have only added, changed or combined certain details to protect the identities of the women I interviewed or to enhance your reading experience. All of these women have been Muslim for at least 30 years, some approaching 40 or 50 years.

Secondly, Sisters – I can never thank you enough for allowing me into the details of your lives. Naturally, I could not have created this project without your help. May Allah continue to bless you with the joy and satisfaction of submission. You know who you are.

Thirdly, my non-Muslim readers – Please understand that Muslims consider Allah to be gender-less. Things like gender, time, space, location, birth and death are creations of Allah for our human experience. I only use the word He for Allah because of the limitations of human language. I also use Allah, literally The God in the Arabic language, because Arabic is the language of the Qur’an and because it more accurately names the One, the Ever-Living, All-Sustaining Creator of all the worlds, known and unknown.

Lastly, thank you again, Hassan, for your patience, help and understanding while I completed another book. You know how much I appreciate your love and support. Thank you, daughters, for taking time out of your busy lives to be readers. Special thanks to Harriet and Michael Diamond for your excellent proofreading and editing skills, sincere questions and comments. I love each and every one of you dearly. Please keep me in your prayers and I will do the same.

My Name is Ayesha with a Y

I t’s hard to believe that Mama has taken her shahadah at 96 years old, but she has. Allah is the Best of Planners. For years, we’d been taking her to Eid celebrations and other Muslim programs with us. She always enjoyed herself sitting with the Muslim pioneers or just happy to be out with her family. She liked seeing all the people from different countries in their traditional clothes too. I guess I was always hopeful, but considering that she’d been a faithful Catholic for so many years and raised all of us that way, I hadn’t really considered that she would actually take her shahadah . I think it was all the controversy about pedophile priests that finally got to her. I remember her saying years ago that this priest or that one was funny, but as a child, I didn’t know what she meant.

Cruel nuns and effeminate priests are most of what I remember from attending Catholic schools as a little girl. Still, I pictured myself becoming a nun one day. I would show those others how a nun, a true woman of God, was truly supposed to act towards children. I would not spank their hands with rulers for the slightest infringement in class, like making a squiggly cursive letter. I would not pinch little boys’ ears until they looked like they would burst and have blood squirting all over our classroom. I would not yell at my students. I would smile a lot and kiss the tops of children’s heads when they entered my classroom every morning.

As I approached my teens and actually started liking boys, I thought many of the nuns at St. Katherine’s were sexually frustrated. I began thinking a life of celibacy must be totally unnatural. I was determined to find an order that would allow me to get married and still serve the poor, the homeless and the hungry. Outside of marriage to a man, how was I supposed to satisfy my sexual urges? A whole slew of sex toys, books and movies would never make up for the loving arms of a husband. Mama had taught all of her daughters that at home, away from the scrutinizing eyes of the nuns and Father Mike. She and Daddy were very affectionate in front of us.

Gil was my first, and he’s been my only husband for more than 45 years now. Mama should have never allowed us to go to the carry-out alone that night before he left for the Army. She and Daddy knew we were sneaking around so once they knew Gil was probably headed to Vietnam, they started letting him come to our house pretty regularly. As time passed, they got to know him a lot better. They never exactly said, We approve of Gil if you want to marry him after graduation, but I knew my parents.

Mama was pregnant again, number seven, and she had a taste for some chicken wings with mumbo sauce. I think you can only get mumbo sauce in D.C. or Prince George’s County, Maryland. It was almost midnight, but Eddie’s stayed open until 1or 2 in the morning on weekends. Gil and I jumped into his 1967 Mustang and figured out on our way that if we took our time, Eddie’s would be closed. Then, we could have more time together by telling Mama that we were driving around town trying to find her some late-night chicken wings somewhere else. We parked in the empty K-Mart lot on Rhode Island Avenue and the rest is history. Cheri was born nine months later.

Mama and Daddy weren’t upset about the baby at all; she was too adorable. Plus, Gil and I had married at the Justice of the Peace before he left for basic training, not quite a shotgun wedding. We felt we loved each other almost from the first time we’d met. It was everyone else who doubted us. Anyway, they made dinner and a 5-layer cake, and we all celebrated at the house.

I stayed with Mama and Daddy for the first year of Cheri’s life, but I was determined to find my own apartment as soon as I could. I had graduated from Roosevelt High School and was applying for clerical positions in the government after passing the civil service test. I finally landed a position at the Department of Labor where one of my big sisters worked. I saved up my money and moved into a one-bedroom apartment. Gil sent us money every month too and that was enough as long as he was away. Mama and Daddy gave me all kinds of mismatched pieces of furniture from around the house and I started a credit line by purchasing a bedroom set and highchair from Family Furniture. It was the ugliest yellow and white checkered vinyl when I think back on it, but at the time, I was so happy to be living on my own as a grown-up wife and mother. The biggest problem was, I was lonely after growing up in a house full of people. All I did was drop Cheri off with Mama five days a week, go to work, return to Mama’s for Cheri in the evenings, go home, eat dinner, bathe Cheri and put her to bed. Then, I usually passed out across my own bed and started the whole routine over again the next morning. On weekends, I’d spend all Saturday cleaning up the apartment and doing laundry over at Mama’s, and on Sundays, I’d cook one chicken or meatloaf that would last us all week. It wasn’t long before I finally accepted my brother’s offer to attend the mosque with him.

Darryl, my oldest brother, was headed for the priesthood when he learned about the World Community of Al-Islam in the West (WCIW). That was the name chosen by the former Nation of Islam members who went with Elijah Muhammad’s son instead of Minister Louis Farrakhan. They had called their place Mosque Number Four before the change and Darryl would always see those brothers coming and going from Number Four looking real clean-cut and disciplined in their suits and bowties. I knew he liked that sort of thing having been a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout and an Eagle Scout. I guess the priesthood would’ve been another brotherhood for him, but one of those Muslim brothers got hold of him on his way to work one day and he never looked back.

The first time I went to the mosque with Darryl, everybody was very nice to me, but I didn’t like a woman patting me down before I could take my seat. They were funny that way and you dare not say anything about it. Though the women were nice enough, I could tell they didn’t take any stuff off of anybody, including the men. They were very serious.

Darryl had explained to me that I should wear loose-fitting clothes so I was prepared for that. I had on some wide-leg jeans and a long, dashiki-type top, and I wrapped a long scarf around my head. I actually liked the way I looked, but when we got to the mosque, most of the women were in all white or navy blue, some sort of uniform, which really made all of us who were guests stand out from the members.

The talk was much too long for me, and they weren’t saying much that I didn’t already know: righteousness was good, truth was the way to go, taking care of our own was important, Blacks were the original people. I thought they were going to talk about the blue-eyed devil thing, what everyone said was their description of white people, but they didn’t, which gave me something to think about and to talk to Darryl about on our way over to Mama’s.