Issue No. 3: Quiet Evenings and A Chat About Healing My Brown & Muslim Identity
Welcome to the December edition.
It’s early evening and tonight’s dinner is simmering on the stove, as Nabeel and I hang out in the kitchen catching up over our day. It’s lightly raining outside, the gentle steam from the pan has fogged up the windows. We’re safe at home, with food on our plates, it’s an ordinary day. But the past few weeks have made us see the aching reality that even ordinary days are not promised to everyone.
It’s been everywhere in my conversations. With Nabeel, as we huddle together on the couch in the evening, with the buzz of the news in the background. On phone calls and voice notes with friends, as we share our feelings about it again and again. And again. We hope and pray and donate and protest and do whatever makes sense for a Free Palestine one day.
I took a break of about two months from here because I really didn’t find most things appropriate to say. I didn’t want to write a generic piece about how to “cope with” what’s happening because as a non-Palestinian that feels like a very entitled thing to even talk about on a global platform. Also, I feel like it’s meant to be an emotionally heavy time, and I think it’s actually necessary for a lot of us to not feel okay. We act when we feel. I also didn’t want to detract from real Palestinian voices, I just wanted my voice to elevate theirs. Now after having watched so many unjust situations unfold in front of us, I feel I can say something that will hopefully empower me at least, to do this better. I hope it’s helpful for you too.
I did wonder if A Slow Afternoon was the right place for this piece. But you know, I’ve talked about this a lot of times ever since we started here and nothing rings more true than this today. A conscious, intentional life is not about coffee breaks and lazy days (although those are a welcome, tiny part of it). It’s about living your most authentic life and making choices grounded in integrity. It’s not just about you and me, it’s about our family systems and it’s about the community. And today nothing feels more intentional to me than to have this conversation with all of us here.
I was on a phone call with one of my best friends some weekends ago and between discussing all the soul-crushing things that we’ve been witnessing, we’d keep circling around one very harsh truth. Something that a lot of people of color, and those from the Muslim faith, have had to come to terms with is that no matter how much we believed in the ideas of inclusivity and equality that were pitched to us as the new, modern, changing world, our lives are absolutely seen as cheaper when compared to others.
Honestly, this wasn’t something that we were completely oblivious to or something that was shocking us out of some deep stupor. We do experience and live with micro and macroaggressions on a daily basis, particularly if you physically live in regions where you’re a minority, so we do know how it is. But in parallel as the world kept becoming more blended, more diverse, we also tried to believe in this fantasy that a lower value of life based on skincolor was not true for everybody. And in these times, if it ever came to the point of a group asking for collective fairness or where governments or institutions holding significant power could correct mass injustices, that everybody would essentially be equal. But the painful reality…is that that is not the reality.
And what that made me realise was that despite whatever we may have posed to superficially believe, we always still remember certain things at our core. The thing about our instincts and our gut is that at the centre of it, deep down, we continue to dormantly carry our realities. And I think subconsciously, to protect ourselves from actually coming to terms with such bitter truths, we end up making several adjustments that even we’re not fully awake to.
I think a lot of people of color, we make our lives small so that we can live within these “perfect” boxes. We're careful with how we dress, that our food doesn’t smell “too much”, that we’re not “too traditional”. We don’t want to be seen as “uncool” or as the “troublemakers” that so many from our communities are seen to be. In fact, the system almost thrives and profits off of a competition within our own group, in a way that I have to be the best brown person in the room, and that I don’t resonate with those who don’t fit those boxes. We silently begin to dislike our own if they step out of line, we’ll even participate in jokes at their expense, because we feel, that one person speaks for all of us and we don’t want to be seen as anything like them, because it cheapens our own personal equity.
And now as we witness, that despite having reshaped the contours of our identity to live as shadows of who we really are, we’ve been compelled to understand that the value of our life is not an asset that appreciates with these superficial investments that we’ve been laboriously making into ourselves. The cost of my life is cheaper, and it’s not something I can earn by dissociating from who I am, from who we are.
And while this fact is terribly confronting and can shake your entire idea of self-worth, I know one thing right now. I refuse to let all of this make me shrink into a corner. I don’t want to take this information that’s been thrust into my face, these facades that have been uncovered, I don’t want to take all of this and shrink into a corner. I want to show up harder, with more confidence, with more grit.
I want to intentionally take up space. I want to relook at my place in this world, how to position myself as me and not a sanitized, white-approved version of me. To reclaim my identity, to reclaim my space. I am a citizen of this world, “why don’t you go back to where you came from” these are socially constructed ideas. And I want to reclaim that space that I persistently get being told is not mine.
A South Asian friend of mine, who lives in the “first world”, once told me that she thinks twice before stepping out in lazy, worn-out clothing, to shop for anything, because the only way she commands some attention is if she dresses well for the day. Now this is a very small example of subtle prejudice, but one that lies along the same spectrum of discrimination and oppression extending towards macroaggressions. So many of us are not comfortable in our own skin, feel subconsciously intimidated in spaces where we’re a minority, and there are valid reasons for why that is. But I want all of us from any marginalized cultural and racial groups to be fearless and take up space. You working in your office, your child going to school, you going to get groceries at your local store; we need to believe at our core that we’re not less than. We have to take up space with confidence, to be large in the rooms we sit in, to be clear on who we are. In our actions, in our body language, in our speech. Because when you start to believe it, is when you start to live it.
And all of this not because now we feel we’re superior. But because we’re equal.
And then there’s the other thing that has been a constant in chats with my friends. While what’s unfolded over the past few weeks isn’t purely a Muslim issue, we know that the shocking tolerance that we’ve seen for the uninhibited violence towards Palestinians, is also because they’re largely seen as the barbaric, savage beings we’ve come to believe all Muslims are. And much like that “different from others” brown person, the “different from others” Muslim is also an identity borne out of that trope.
I feel like for years, we’ve silently accepted a persistent demonetization of Muslims in film, TV shows, news reports, general pop culture.
We quietly watch Muslim men as they show up as terrorists in award-winning movies, Muslim women as the oppressed characters who only the white man will save. The “moderate” Muslim has to either refuse ritual and tradition or practice it in socially digestible amounts to truly fit in. And much like how it’s manifested within people-of-color groups, you also see a gradual dislike for each other being nurtured within the Muslim community, because only if you’re different from your own, can you be cool enough to fit in white spaces. Also, implying that there is something inherently wrong with being truly Muslim.
And all of this has happened to our communities because we never fully registered that information as we know it wasn’t world events being communicated in unbiased truth, but the manufactured outcome of a billion-dollar industry that thrives on propaganda and islamophobia. Thereby, creating the perfect ecosystem for us to internalize all that shame and guilt for the “bad” Muslims and conditioning us for emotions that are not ours to own. The white community never has to answer for the gun-loving white supremacist, but the brown Muslim spends their entire life trying to justify why they are not like the violent Muslim man. “White clothes” don’t get stereotyped as terrorist gear, even though all your child-murdering school shooters have been dressed in the like. But the burqa, the turban, the hijab, they all get equated with violence.
And it’s in the face of this reductive narrative, that I want to be even more confident in my Muslimness. A fresh, bright and assured Muslim identity that celebrates my faith through a lens of dignity and pride. I do not want to answer questions that revolve around our cultural gaslighting; “Do I support terrorism?”, “Are you a moderate Muslim?”. Our identity cannot be designed around these minimizing conversations anymore. I refuse to answer and dignify them.
I also want to harmonise with my faith in a way that I don’t just honor it in closed Muslim circles. There is intense value in our spirituality, our practices, our way of being. As an example, we see Buddhist quotes as part of slow living pages or inspirational talks, but never Islamic ones. It’s because there is shame and fear associated with acknowledging your Muslimness to a non-Muslim group. And I want to reassert this part of who I am, cleansing it off this subconscious hesitation that it silently carries.
The thing about the identity is that it’s within your core. You feel it in your bones, it breathes within your cells. And no matter who you are, there is nothing more dehumanising than denying what is at the core of your very being.
Have we ever fully lived as we truly are?
But here’s the thing. Healing from all this colonial trauma as a brown person, psychological trauma as a Muslim person, this is not as simple as declaring an identity shift. Identity shifts are grounded in actual behavioral changes and one of the most substantial steps that we can take as a community is to break out of the shackles of being captivated by western culture.
In fact, one of the major reasons why a lot of Muslims or brown folks are experiencing this intense sense of betrayal with the response of the western community towards Palestine, is because our role models and fan clubs are disproportionately grounded in the western world.
We have been raised on a diet of western entertainment and it’s no surprise that most of us are enamored by Western culture, their celebrities, their success stories, their heroes, their prominent figures. We live our lives with reference to Western culture.
The west is supposed to be cool, we aspire for their education, we want to speak their language, in their accents. We want their songs, their movies, their version of feminist movements, their ideologies.
I don’t know if you’ve chanced upon this book called “Imagined Communities” by Benedict Anderson. But it mainly talks about the idea of social engineering, how the media creates imagined communities to shape an individual’s social psyche. What are we in right now if not an imagined community that is so distant from the DNA of our soul.
How many Muslim role models do you have? How many brown ones? For most of us, the lists of our favorite actors, musicians, artists, will disproportionately have western personalities with a few brown and Muslim folks added in here and there. We don’t celebrate them the same way, we don’t fawn over them the same way, we don’t know them the same way.
Let me just say one thing here at this point: It's absolutely not about denying Western art and culture and talent because there is a lot of it that’s beautiful, but it’s definitely about breaking the myth that what’s western is always better. The American dream, the white savior, the barbaric Arabs, the oppressed women; these are terms that come carefully sandwiched within content that we’ve consumed for years and that lie resident within our consciousness. And it’s about cleansing our consciousness and creating value for what we authentically own.
Because if you look at the design of the current cultural landscape, it’s a lot of our product that we only start to aspire for, once it’s sold to us through the white lens. When I don’t aspire for or value what is mine, it can be easily commoditized by others and sold back to me. The idea of intermittent fasting, Ayurveda practices, South Asian rituals like hair oiling.
So, what we have today is organizations that profit off of our ideas, packaged through Western celebrity culture, while our own artistic intelligence sits within the shadows.
Why this also becomes important at this point is because we also need to assert our importance within the world’s economic landscape. So many actors, musicians, political personalities, even spiritual healers and those who preach conscious living, who we’ve celebrated for years, they chose silence or offered vague, problematic stances because for them, the brown or the Muslim consumer is considered disposable. We substantially contribute to their revenues, but we’re not seen as such.
Which is why we see so many of the entertainment personalities & influencers that we loved, being humanitarian subject to their convenience and not because of personal integrity. How many celebrity UN ambassadors championed for the rights of children and spoke against military violence just last year but couldn’t repeat the same scripts now?
Because they believe holding silence sustains their position within the world’s power matrix, and because they believe the brown or Muslim consumer doesn’t hold enough to weaken their financial standing. We have to assert financial relevance and put our money where it receives dignity.
This is the time to celebrate and uplift young brown people, Muslims, who are excelling within cinema, literature, music, science, all of it. It’s also the time to dilute sectarian and ethnic differences at home that divide our own communities, robbing us of exposure to our own talent. And it’s time to reclaim the power of our community and initiate our collective healing.
It's 8 pm on the clock as I write this, I just switched rooms and am now settled in on my bed, and I think we can now shift this conversation to another thought: how reclaiming one’s identity can often be confused with erasing another’s. The thing is, righteous anger is not the same as indiscriminate outrage. Because the ambition of the former is to soften our world, and the ambition of the latter is to harden.
Dismantling white supremacy is not the same as dismantling white culture. When we see so many people of color, so many Arab leaders, who are in positions of power yet use their influence at a detriment to their own community, it’s because white supremacy is not rooted within race but within power. And so choices that harm their community are what help them align with whiteness and uphold their corrosive power structures.
So when we have these conversations, it’s very important to remember that it’s not about erasing someone’s else culture. It’s about erasing the toxic power dynamic.
And in parallel, about creating equal space for what’s yours and what’s mine.
And so particularly, as we reject corrupt governments and hypocritical institutions, the real test is for us to not reject entire races and communities and groups. At this point, if we walk over to the opposite end of the spectrum, they still win. Because division, fascism, that is what they thrive and breed new, destructive ecosystems on.
You don’t want to become what you hate.
So here is what I want to keep. I want to retain the soft power of my being. From the rich heritage and traditional values of the brown community, from the deeply spiritual and soulful mindset of the Muslim community, I want to empower an approach to life that taps into the compassionate strength that rests within our core. To become like the aggressor, to emulate their traits, I don't want that for me. Assertion over aggression always.
While we’ve seen too much these past few weeks and it’s something that we will never forget, should never forget, but the anger and the pain cannot be carried into action as its felt. It has to be transformed into something that compresses what’s wrong and expands what’s right. That doesn’t let the bitterness multiply into darkness but dissolve it into light.
Last week, one of my friends reminded me of the beautiful concept of “people of faith” in the Quran vs “people of islam”, when it addresses the reader.
And it felt like that gently powerful line that carried many answers. Because it’s not about singularly elevating one race, one ethnicity, one religion over another. It’s about creating that community of people of faith – faith in humanity, faith in love, faith in equality.
At the end of the day, man is a tribal animal. We’ve always lived in communities. But the ambition of modern power structures is to break down the spirit of the tribe to keep capitalism and imperialism breathing. And as we’ve swerved more and more towards individualism within communities, even within families, we’ve developed a self-serving detached sickness of sorts where we focus only on our own financial and social well-being. Even though we’re shocked at the state of the world right now, it’s true that it has been fueled by our pursuit of everything. And if we don’t alter the way we exist in this world, we will continue to participate in repeating these patterns, upholding these cancerous structures that profit off our division. The political is very much personal and we need to examine everything in our communities through the lens of history and love.
It's springtime here in Australia and a lot of my plants are sprouting new leaves.
Bright, green growth and fresh buds make you feel like this season is what brings good news. But I was reading this somewhere, and I’m sorry I’ve lost the reference, but that much of what we see in spring is quietly set for in autumn. As the days go shorter and you start waking up to a nip in the air, the tree silently keeps preparing, for the day it can once again see its first bloom of spring.
Winter can be brutal, but spring will always come through.
I will see you next month ☼
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Music Credit: The music in my voiceover background is ‘Milky’ by Ninn Tendo.
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