A Letter

Dear Nasrin,

You don’t know me–you live in the US, and I live in Canada–but we have a mutual friend. During a conversation today she mentioned that, since the attacks in Paris this past weekend, you have stopped wearing hijab. You are afraid of what people will think of you, afraid of what they might say, perhaps afraid of what they might do if you are visibly Muslim. Your husband is away, you are on your own with your children, and you are afraid, so you have set aside a custom that has, I am sure, both religious and personal significance to you, to try to fit in and be anonymous.

I am so sorry.

I am sorry that you have become anonymous. I know my faith is not incidental to who I am. How could I feel fully, freely myself if I felt I had to hide it? What use is an imagination, as Anne Shirley said in the book I read to my son tonight, if we cannot use it to peek into the heads of our friends? So I can imagine something of how painful that decision must have been for you.

I am sorry for your fear, for the actions and attitudes that have given you reason for fear. And I am sorry you have lost, temporarily I hope, this small piece of yourself.

I am sorry that the actions of fanatic coreligionists halfway across the world have resulted in the loss of your sense of belonging within your own community, your own state, your own nation. I’ve been told, by writers and thinkers who should know, that this is what Daesh hope for when they incite attacks in Western nations. I’ve been told that they hope to use that division to force moderate Muslims to take sides, to leave them no home in the civilised world so that they will begin to see themselves–so that you will begin to see yourself as having more in common with them than with non-Muslim westerners like myself. They want to split the world into Muslim and non-Muslim, with themselves as the voice and arbiter of Islam. And they want to do this, I am told, in the hope of inciting an insane, apocalyptic war.

I don’t want to see that. I don’t think you do either. I think if you and I said what we really think of that idea, we’d probably both use a lot of the sort of language that we try not to let our children overhear.

I won’t tell you to observe hijab in defiance of your fear. Do whatever you think best for you and your family at this time. But I want you to know that I hope for a future in which you are able to discern your religious observances with a peace-filled heart, assured of the tolerance of those around you.

I’m Catholic. I understand to some extent what it is to have an ancient faith with a complicated and sometimes embarrassing history, and rich, complex layers of teaching and tradition that baffle outsiders. I spent some time today reading blogs and essays written by American and Canadian Muslims, which felt surprisingly familiar to me from my time spent in my own religious blog circles. I spent more time reading the comments on those blogs–challenging, insulting, contemptuous, sometimes threatening comments from non-Muslims. And I was ashamed, because I have felt misunderstood for my faith many times, but I have never faced quite that level of hostile crap.

These Muslim bloggers seemed to me like thoughtful, decent people who are wrestling with the intersection of their faith and their lives, questions of context and interpretation of their sacred texts, complicated matters of history and tradition, just like all the believers of various stripes I’ve ever encountered. But I’ve rarely, if ever, witnessed so many people determined to tell believers what they “really” believe, so determined to push them all into being either terrorists or apostates because somehow these commenters are uncomfortable allowing American and Canadian Muslims to self-define, to find their own ways of modernizing and adapting and understanding themselves and their faith.

So, I am sorry. I’m sorry that we have all made it so easy for Daesh to recruit in your communities and to represent the West as incompatible with the practice of your faith. I’m sorry it took me this long to make the effort to listen to Muslim voices instead of non-Muslim or extremist’s versions of who you are and what you believe. I’m sorry that I’ve been content for so long to coexist at a distance and not see beyond the “otherness” of hijab and custom. I’m sorry I didn’t listen and I didn’t see.

I hope that some day soon we will be able to set aside this atmosphere of fear and get down to the much more important business of comparing our children’s accomplishments and foibles, worrying over family finances, dreaming over our ambitions and goals, and creating lives filled with beauty and meaning. I hope we can show the fearful and the hateful that they don’t get to say who you are or who I am. I hope we can be neighbours in spirit, if not in location.

I hope we can live at peace.

Kate