Threading My Prayer Rug

Title: Threading My Prayer Rug – One Woman’s Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim

Author: Sabeeha Rehman

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9781628726633

Pages: 322

America is the greatest melting pot of the world’s cultures, races, religions and societal mores. People leave their homeland owing to oppression or for better prospects and get washed up on America’s shores. The life and career they develop out of the opportunities that await them in their new home make the later life of refugees one of affluence and plenty. The price they have to pay in return for this is the assimilation of the all-inclusive American spirit filled with tolerance and mutual respect. This has been going on for centuries until large scale migration from Islamic countries in the latter half of the twentieth century landed the US in big trouble – the infamous 9/11 incident. Muslims could not be absorbed into American society, as they always carried with them illusions of superiority over other religions, a supposed destiny to rule over the world and subjugation of other cultures under Sharia, the Islamic law. They were expected to achieve this by defeating others in a holy war called jihad. This book narrates the frequent adjustments a Muslim woman had to undertake after her transplantation to cosmopolitan US from the ultraconservative Pakistan. Utilizing all available means of communication, she reaches out to the American people to dispel such false notions that all Muslims are terrorists and in fact spreads the message that there some very good moral examples that can be discerned in Islam. As the author says, she threads the yarn of her prayer rug to bring out the flowery beauty of an American Islam. Sabeeha Rehman arrived in the US as a young Pakistani bride in 1971. She began her career as a hospital administrator and was the director of interfaith programs at the American Society for Muslim Advancement and COO of the Cordoba Initiative.

The purpose of this book is to present the religion of Islam in as favourable a light as possible in the present world of jihadi suicide bombers and terrorists who ram a truck into a crowd of innocent holidaymakers full of women and children. The religion which drives these extremists is behind the wanton cruelty perpetrated by the Islamic State, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Hamas, Hizb ul-Mujahideen and other such agencies. Rehman carefully acclimatizes the western readers to Islam by harping on the similarities it shares with Christianity. During her pregnancy, the author’s mother asked to recite the Koran, especially the chapter on Mary, mother of Jesus and recite the chapter on Joseph for the baby to be beautiful. ‘Wow, do Mary and Joseph finds a mention in the Koran?” is the question the author wants to evoke in Western readers! Not only this, the listing of prophets in common with Christianity and Judaism such as Adam, Abraham and Moses is repeated at many places in the book. The weekly prayer gatherings – yes, of Muslim families in New York – are portrayed as jolly social gatherings resembling a picnic. How much truth is really in this is anybody’s guess. Whenever the author can’t reconcile a stubborn Islamic requirement with modernity, she seeks to rationalize it on the social conditions prevailing in Arabia in the seventh century. But, Koran is believed to be the revelation God had made to the Prophet, and how can you argue that it was applicable only to seventh century Arabia? Rehman’s selective rationalism trivializes the injunction against performing Hajj while under debt with a sweeping lifesaver by declaring that home mortgage is not debt. But no such leniency is shown in strictly following some other equally incoherent teachings like breaking the Ramadan fast at the exact instant of the sun going down in the horizon no matter what you were doing then or exempting women from fasting during their monthly periods. It is really hard to believe the author’s claim that restaurants in Pakistan remain open during Ramadan with a notice that it will serve non-Muslims only! Pakistan is an Islamic state which is continually seeking to exterminate its non-Muslim minority by conversion, exile or outright murder. It may be pertinent here to remember that the percentage of minorities in the population of that country came down from 23% to 10% in the last seventy years as a result of these measures.

The tightening of religious formalism over the decades is clearly visible in the book. The author and her husband was not very religious when they first landed in the US, but soon they changed track to orthodoxy, with the author even stopping singing and refusing to apply makeup in public, while perfectly willing to don it at home for the eyes of her husband alone. Though living in the US, the author’s family never setup a Christmas tree at home and as they started to indulge in more and more Islam, there were ‘no more drives to huddle with friends, no more Sunday matinees, no more walks in the park’, but more and more prayers and Islamic Sunday schools! Isn’t this a classic example of self-imposed seclusion and auto-radicalization of the so-called moderate Muslims? Once Rehman starts her discourse on religion, nothing else is described. One wonders that if she and her family was so obsessed with Islam and to preserve its values, why then did they leave Muslim Pakistan for the US? Obscure traditions and ceremonies are re-invented among American Muslims, like Ameen, Bismillah and Isra Meeraj, which are not generally practiced in Pakistan. There, belief came on to one by osmosis from one’s peers. Denied such a group of friends and elders in the US, Muslims get such ideas from religious books which they devour eagerly to follow ‘divine’ instructions stricter and stricter. If you learnt to drive a car from a trainer, you drive it without bothering much about the technicalities. But if you had learned to drive by reading a rule book, you are so aware of the restrictions that it becomes impossible to drive.

Rehman’s priorities stun the secular, but please the religious very much. She taught her two children religion, but not their mother tongue. Her family took many pains to build a mosque in New York City, but when it came to elect a governing body for it, she was most unkindly voted out by orthodoxy who didn’t want a woman a part of the decision-making. Historical errors abound in the book which claims that Muslims introduced the concept of zero in mathematics. This is simply ridiculous, as that idea originated in India and was in use centuries before the Prophet was even born! Muslim traders introduced it into Europe. Their major role was to serve as intermediaries who preserved the learning of Greece, China and India during the Dark Ages, rather than contributing any original ideas themselves. The author’s further assertion that Ibn Firnas invented a flying machine in the ninth century is pure fantasy.

The author dwells at length on upgrading Islam in the twenty-first century by jettisoning some old-fashioned inconsistencies. What is targeted are customs like moon sighting to fix the date of festivals, unnecessary slaughter of lambs during Bakrid and women’s place in mosques. Have no doubts regarding this – these cosmetic changes won’t upgrade the religion in any way. What is needed is to evolve a mechanism to make Islam compatible for coexistence in a pluralistic society. The pitfall lies in believing that Islam alone is true and there are no more prophets to come. If it can be believed that God had made mankind who can do evil at any time, voices of correction, like that of a prophet, should echo out of the wilderness for as long as man is living in this world. Believing that the last word on religion was uttered 1400 years ago would only make you bigoted and the laughing stock of right thinkers. Unfortunately, this is a basic creed of Islam which is not amenable to interpretation or revision. Violence can be used to silence the critics, but when they keep mum out of fear, who is losing out in the final reckoning?

The book is nicely written with a humorous and anecdotal template at the back. It gives us a glowing picture of how a wedding takes place in conservative Pakistan. The social undertones of the matchmaking and rituals are shared with that of India. A set of colour photographs add intimacy to the narrative. A group photo of the author’s all-girls class in the 1970s in which none of them had sported a hijab is a striking reminder to the hardening of religious orthodoxy over the years. The readers expected to get an honest answer to the question often posed to moderate Muslims on why they keep quiet when their religion is maligned by a terrorist act. However, the answer is clearly tangential in asserting that they are indeed speaking up. Surely, this wouldn’t satisfy an impartial observer.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star