I recently visited India to speak at a conference called “Future to the Responsibility”.
When I landed in Mumbai, a driver called Arun was fortunately waiting for me at the airport, armed with an umbrella for the rains which really taught me what a Monsoon is!
We had quite a long drive to the hotel and although I know it’s a cliché for journalists to quote drivers during their blink-and-you’ll-miss-them visits to cities around the world, Arun and I exchanged quite a few gems.

I’d told him I’d arrived from the U.S. but that I was Egyptian. He still chose America as my country – e.g. how much do drivers make in “my country”, does “my country” have roads like the highway which starts shortly after Bombay International airport, etc.

“That’s an Indian church,” Arun said. “Do you have churches in your country?”

“Yes,” I replied.

Then a few minutes later, we passed a temple to Ganesha, the Hindu god of wealth and wisdom – a rare combination at the best of times!

“Do you know Ganesha?” Arun asked.

“Yes. He’s an Indian god, right?”

“Yes!” Arun said. “What is the American god called?”

Good question!

I was too exhausted for irony so I gave it to him straight – there are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Seikhs and Buddhists in America, all worshiping their own god. And then I told him I was a Muslim and asked him how relations were between Hindus and Muslims.

“Like brother and brother,” he said. “How are relations in your country?”

“Sometimes like brother and brother,” I replied. “Sometimes difficult.”

“Yes!” Arun said. “The same here.”

During my stay in India I got to see both “brother and brother” and “sometimes difficult”.

As a Muslim, I wanted to visit shrines to Muslim saints that I was told draw both Muslims and Hindus. So I went to Haji Ali in Mumbai, a shrine of a Muslim holy man who was believed to have died on his way to Haj (pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest site Mecca in what is today Saudi Arabia) and whose body is said to have been carried back home by the waters of the Arabian Sea.

Along the way to Haji Ali’s shrine were stalls where garlands were prepared to be given as tokens to the holy man, reminiscent of the offerings made at Hindu temples. And once inside the shrine – at the “ladies section” – I saw Muslim women wearing hijab and others reciting from the Quran alongside Hindu women with bindis on their forehead, all standing inside the mausoleum, saying prayers and awaiting blessing.

As the women exited Haji Ali’s shrine, the Hindus among them would bend to touch the doorstep of the ladies section in a move reminiscent of touching the feet of elders or parents as a sign of reverence by Hindus.

And so I was eager to see that cross-religious spirituality at Ajmer, home of one of India’s most important Muslim pilgrimage sites – the shrine of Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chishti, a Sufi saint and founder of the Chishti order, the main Sufi order in India to this day.

In case I was under any illusion that Muslims and Hindus were always like “brother and brother” my visit to Ajmer was cancelled exactly because brotherly love at times eludes Hindus and Muslims in India. Inter-communal riots and bombings in 1992/3 killed hundreds and left Hindus and Muslims still suspicious of each other.

Just as I was about to head to Ajmer, the driver taking me found out that because of a nationwide strike called by a Hindu nationalist party, tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Ajmer were high and that he wouldn’t be able to take me into the town nor would any other Hindu driver.

Instead of Ajmer, I visited Amber Fort, which was the ancient capital of Jaipur. Work on the fort – very representative of the architecture in Rajasthan State – began in 1592. The artwork in some parts of the palace was a mix of Hindu and Muslim art. For example, the screen from behind which the queens could look out onto the public area of the palace was made of panels which were alternately comprised of lotus flowers - representative of Hindu art - and stars - symbolizing Muslims art.

It was a beautiful expression of responsibility to the future that we can still learn from.

The second real Muslim was elected to Congress last month.

I say “real” because Andre Carson, a Democrat who won a special election in Indiana to replace his grandmother who represented the state in Congress for 11 years until her death in December 2007, is not a closet or “stealth” Muslim as right wing commentators and opponents of Barak Obama have tried to make him.

Obama, who continues to lead Hillary Clinton in the race to become the Democratic candidate in presidential elections later this year, has said countless times he is Christian. His Kenyan father was born to a Muslim family but was an atheist. Obama’s opponents have ignored all that and have “accused” him of being a Muslim, as if it were a crime. Such rumor-mongering is a sad indictment of the fear and ignorance of Muslims that sadly exists among too many in the U.S.

Which is where Carson, 33, and the Keith Ellison (D-Minn), 44, the first Muslim congressman, come in.

Both men African-American converts to Islam. Comfortable as both Muslims and Americans, they are proof that not all Muslims in the U.S. are immigrants or newcomers who don’t understand American values.

When he took the oath standing next to his wife and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Carson said he was a “proud Muslim, a proud American and a proud Hoosier”.

Their comfort with both their American and Muslim identities makes them great role models and examples of why more Muslims in the U.S. should enter politics. They show young American Muslims that it is possible to be elected, despite the hateful comments of the right wing. And they are hopefully deterrents to the hateful comments of some of their fellow elected officials, some of whom have urged the bombing of Muslim holy sites while others have tried to paint all Muslims as terrorists.

Despite the fear-mongering surrounding Obama, it was a relief to hear that Carson’s faith was not an issue during his campaign.

A reporter at the ceremonial swearing-in asked Carson if he took the oath on the same Quran that Ellison used when he became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress in 2005.

Carson held up the book he took the oath on and replied “It’s the U.S. Constitution” and smiled broadly.

It was a brilliant move because it so beautifully connected his election to the democratic principles that the U.S. Constitution defines.

Carson’s move was as wise as Ellison’s move to use for his ceremonial oath a Quran that used to belong to Thomas Jefferson.

After Ellison was elected, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warned in a letter to a constituent “if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran”.

When I interviewed Ellison last year, he told me that one of his supporters had found out that Jefferson owned a copy of the Quran that was kept at the Library of Congress and suggested he use it for his ceremonial oath as a way of connecting himself to American history that would deflate the accusations of his opponents, like Goode.

“Thomas Jefferson felt there was something he had to learn from the Quran and it was really a joy just looking through the two volumes set,” Ellison told me.  “It was a fascinating experience (to look through it). I don’t think most Americans knew that Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran, I didn’t know and so now people know it and know that at the very founding of this society religious tolerance was an important value. So this religious intolerance that we see prevalent today is new and doesn’t go to the roots of the country.”

Carson has just 10 months in Congress as he fills out the remainder of his grandmother’s term. To remain in Congress, he must contest a pre-election in Indiana which will determine who runs in November for the next full two-year term.

Let’s hope he wins so that the two real Muslims remain in the House. Their role is of immense value.

When I first moved from Egypt to the US in the summer of 2000, my then-husband – an American from whom I am now divorced – offered to drive me to the neighborhood mosque. He had looked it up so that he could take me there when I arrived in Seattle.

As we approached the mosque, I saw a man coming out who looked as if he’d been lifted from Saudi Arabia, where I lived for many years as a young adult. He was wearing a turban and a white robe and had a huge beard. He represented the most conservative elements of my religion and I wanted nothing to do with him or the mosque. I told my husband to keep driving.

I vowed there and then that I would not join any Muslim community in the US but would find my own way as a Muslim in my new home. I maintained that vow during my time in Seattle.

After I signed my divorce papers, I was offered a job in New York City. I’d been to NYC several times before and always loved it – its energy, the crowds, the non-stop pace, and even the noise. I’m from Cairo, Egypt, one of the largest and most crowded cities in the world and for me, NYC is Cairo right here in the US!

I didn’t want to get on a plane and start a new life six hours later so I decided to drive from Seattle to NYC. I took 18 days to drive across the country, stopping at places I wanted to visit and in cities where I had arranged to meet an old friend and two new ones. My road trip began on Nov. 1, 2002, just over a year after the terrible attacks on Sept. 1, 2001.

It was a time of increasing suspicion of Muslims and all things Islamic. Getting into my car and driving alone through the US was my way of introducing my fear of those suspicions to the paranoia that Americans.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my road trip was also taking me to a community I had been determined not to find in Seattle.

They say it’s not about the journey but the destination but it was about both for me. While the journey was indeed my quest to find my own way in my new home country, the destination was of utmost importance not just because NYC is still my home city but because it also turned out to be the home of a community of Muslims I never thought I’d find.

Looking back, I see a pattern I never noticed before. I see now that my arrival at each of the cities I’ve lived in during my life has heralded a new stage in my faith.

I became a feminist in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia when I realized that the Islam we practiced at home was so different from the Islam outside of my home and which so often discriminated against women and denied them their rights. I became a liberal Muslim in Jerusalem where I lived in 1998 and where my ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbors reminded me of the ultra-conservative Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Seeing the impact that such orthodoxy has on religion, again particularly on women, I was able to start a journey towards liberal Islam that my road trip to NYC completed.

Soon after I arrived in NYC on Nov. 18, 2002, I came across the liberal Muslim website www.MuslimWakeUp.com and made friends with the founder of the site, Ahmed Nassef, and Patricia Dunn, the site’s current managing editor.

Through them and the website, I discovered a community of like-minded liberal and progressive Muslims which I happily joined. For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable sharing my ideas and values as a liberal Muslim.

I’m so glad I drove past that mosque in Seattle and all the way to NYC.

CAIRO – I wore a headscarf for 9 years. I was 16 when I chose to start wearing hijab – a form of clothing that covers up the body with the exception of the face and hands. At the time I believed it was a requirement from God of all Muslim women.

Because it was a decision I’d made myself, I never thought of the hijab as something men forced women to do. In fact, I became a feminist three years after I began wearing hijab and I never felt that being a headscarved feminist was a contradiction in terms. The way I saw it was that I chose which parts of my body to reveal and which parts to conceal. Just as a woman could choose to wear a mini skirt and still call herself a feminist, I could wear a headscarf and still be one.

But as I grew older, I felt more uncomfortable wearing a headscarf. The best way to describe that discomfort was a growing distance between the internal me and the external me. It troubled me greatly that I felt that way about the hijab but the harder I tried to fight the realization that I wanted to take my headscarf off, the harder the compulsion to remove it.

I found salvation in the writings of Muslim women scholars whose work helped me to realize that I could remain a good Muslim woman without a headscarf. Writers like Fatima Mernissi, the Moroccan sociologist, and the Egyptian-American Leila Ahmed, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School, were like a window thrown open to allow in the breeze of grace and mercy that I needed to gather up the courage to take off my headscarf.

I eventually did in 1993 at the age of 25.

I stopped wearing hijab at the time when many women in Egypt began to wear it. The reasons behind the increasing numbers of headscarves in Egypt are as varied and as diverse as the women on whose heads they sit. Some women wear it out of religious conviction – just as I used to. They include my mother, a physician with a Ph.D in medicine and my sister, who just graduated with a degree in English and comparative Literature. And believe me, they don’t come more feminist than those two fabulous women!

For others though, social and peer pressure are the reasons they took up the hijab.

Despite my difficult experience with the hijab, I’ve always defended a woman’s right to choose to wear it. What’s the point of feminism if it’s the kind that supports only the choice I would make?

But as social and peer pressure have increased in Egypt due to a growing conservatism in the country, it distresses me to think of all the young women who feel they have no choice but to cover their hair just so that they can be left alone and free of disapproving looks or conservative preachers who reject the plurality of views on the hijab. Many scholars believe it is a requirement, others leave it up to the individual woman or say it isn’t an obligation.

You notice things only when you’ve been away for a while and so it took my move from Egypt to the U.S. in 2000 to make me realize how widespread hijab had become. I’ve been returning to Egypt two or three times a year and this last trip brought me back for two weeks to train journalists and to give lectures.

Every morning and evening as I rode the Cairo metro to the American University in Cairo – my alma mater and the host of my training and lectures – it was clear that up to 80 percent of Muslim Egyptian women wore hijab. During the past few years of return, the increasing numbers of women donning the hijab would distress me because I knew of the strong social and peer pressure they’d faced.

But during this trip, my thinking switched. It happened one day as I was riding the metro and my eyes bounced from one brightly-colored headscarf to the next. Young women were wearing headscarves and clothes of every conceivable color and design. These weren’t the austere blacks of Iranian chadors or Saudi Arabian cloaks known as abayas that all women must wear in public there.

As I admired the meticulous care that each young woman had put into her outfit I thanked God for the human drive for self-expression and beauty. These young women might’ve felt pressured to cover their hair and bodies but nothing was going to quash their individuality.

They inspired me to remember that people always find a way to fight back.

I’m from Cairo, a city that during the day is home to an estimated 18 million people. Driving through the city – I should say megapolis – is the nightmare you would imagine and crossing the streets requires a strong heart, some would say a death wish.

Which is why what happens every evening during the month of Ramadan is nothing short of a miracle. To say the city turns into a ghost town wouldn’t even begin to describe the transformation.

Ramadan is the month when Muslims fast from sunrise till sunset, which these days is around 6:15 pm. It is customary to break the fast with your family or with a group of friends because Muslims are taught that you gain extra blessings for feeding a fasting person and so invitations crisscross as relatives tug at you to join them for the iftaar – the meal that breaks the fast.

So about an hour or so before iftaar – if you are lucky enough to get away from work that early – you could easily get caught in a nasty traffic jam that feels as if someone had thrown you into the middle of those 18 million people who fill the city during the day.

But as sunset approaches, it is as if someone has taken an eraser and wiped clear the huge city squares of their people. The streets seem to get wider as they empty of cars and pedestrians and the cacophony of horns and conversations conducted at three times their normal volume level just so that you can be heard, all of it dissipates. It is as if every building in the city sends out a collective hush in eager anticipation of one sound: the call to prayer, or adhan, announcing the evening prayer and the go ahead to break the fast.

The stillness, the silence and the emptiness of those sunset moments during Ramadan in Cairo are incredibly moving. Hungry and thirsty at the end of the day-long fast, you feel you could hear the angels whispering and the slightest act of kindness encapsulates for me the lessons of Ramadan: self-control and generosity.

Sometimes, in a mad rush to get home in time to eat with my family, I’d jump into a cab that was miraculously available and whose driver was eager to push the speed limit to get home quickly as well. We didn’t always make it in time and as we sped through the empty streets of Cairo we’d hear a dozen adhans – Cairo is after all the City of a Thousand Minarets. The driver would reach into a bag of dates he’d brought with him just in case he was out driving when it was time to break his fast and he would turn around and offer me the first one. It was hard to fight the tears of gratitude and connection as I gladly accepted one.

Looking around the city, I could see bus drivers whose vehicles were long ago empty of their loads, parking their buses and getting out to eat at the Tables of the Merciful, tables full of food that wealthy families in each neighborhood provided for the poor and those who needed to break their fast while still out.

I live in New York City now, another crowded, cacophonous metropolis. And as the setting sun turns the sky into a palette of lilac and rosy pink, I look out the window and remember those sunset moments of kindness and generosity from half a world away.

This is a story about neighbors.

Marduk is my neighbor. We share a fence in the suburbs of Maryland near Washington, DC. “In my country” or “in my village” is how Marduk begins many sentences, having lived in Iran until seven years ago when he moved to Maryland with his wife and two children. He moved next door two years ago. When his wife’s mother became too riddled with Alzheimer’s disease to live alone, she moved in with them. Occasionally she would leave the house, as is common for Alzheimer’s without very close supervision, and wander aimlessly. Now she lives in a more secure environment.

Marduk drives a bus. He leaves for work at 4 AM. He speaks like many others who have learned English on their own. For instance, subject and verb occasionally disagree and words are sometimes left out. “I like, I like!” is one of his favorite phrases. When I asked how he learned English he explained that after the revolution English was no longer taught in any schools and rarely spoken. (The revolution is code for the fall of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent reign of Iranian fundamentalists and political allies.)  When I first met him he was quick to share that he is not a practicing Muslim. “We like Christmas!”  I laughed at his candor and noted how much he wanted to assure me of his background.  Was he afraid I would treat him with suspicion if he were devout? I wonder. Our other neighbors who are modern practicing Muslims have no such worries. But that is after many conversations.  Marduk’s wife sells perfume at the local Mall and she speaks in English all day. “Every day she is learning more and more words. Me? I don’t have to have English. People get on the bus and tell me where they want off.  That’s all. But I am trying.  That’s why I like to talk to you!”

I listen with curiosity. The other day I asked him about his home in the south of Iran. “In my village it is always hot, very hot. Makes Florida seems frigid in summer. We never went out of the house before eight at night. Still hot.” His comment came at the end of a very hot day and the joyous completion of a project I didn’t think was possible.

Early in the summer I began negotiations with a contractor to rebuild the twenty-year old sagging wood fence that we share. The price came in much too high. Marduk said, “let’s do it together! We can. We can.” I hemmed and hawed, unsure of this budding construction partnership. But my wife agreed, “That’s a great idea. You can do it.” When she said that I sighed, knowing I was defeated, bracing for the heat and humidity, and knowing how “easy projects” are rarely easy.

Marduk (the name is the same as the ancient Babylonian god) suggested we go to Lowe’s and pick up the fence posts. I had some spare fence rails that we had salvaged from another project but we still needed several posts.  It is quite a helpful learning experience, culturally and personally, to shop at Lowe’s with an Iranian immigrant who speaks English with his own distinct grammar. But we did it and to my growing surprise I began to relish this opportunity to work together. But not always. I didn’t on the day that I discovered my tools locked in Marduk’s garage when I wanted to put in some work alone of the project. I bounded over to his house. “Why are my tools locked up?” I asked impatiently. He smiled impishly. “We will work together! Not alone. I like us to work together.” What could I say to this neighbor taking such happiness in working together?  “Okay.” So there we were men, both Americans one from South of Atlanta, the other from the South of Tehran, sweating and grunting in the hot sun. It took us several days and several conversations, but we did it. Now Marduk stands on this deck and I on mine admiring our work. “I like, I like,” he says, “we do it together!”

Jesus once said love your neighbor as yourself.  This is a story about two men, from vastly different backgrounds, becoming neighbors, and building a neighborhood once fence at a time.

I was well into my two-eggs-sunny-side-up brunch last Saturday morning at the local café when I found a copy of that day’s New York Times opened at the opinion section. I browsed it as I munched on my toast and then turned to the front page of the paper where a picture I saw stopped me dead in my tracks – and in my eating.

It was of lawyers in Pakistan celebrating the reinstatement of a chief justice who has been suspended by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in March. Joyous abandonment was the only phrase that came to mind when I saw those men, some with their heads thrown back as they punched the air in victory.

I could not take my eyes off those happy men. I scoured their faces, one by one, vicariously celebrating with them their breathtaking joy. And then it hit me why the sight of these men was moving me to tears.

Here were happy Muslim men. How often do we see happy Muslim men?

It’s quite convenient that they were Pakistani because I’ve developed a theory about the Muslims we see on our television screens and whose images usually take up the front pages and they are usually from Pakistan.

Here’s how it goes:

Angry Bearded Muslim Man is the most favored of all. Whenever the Muslim world is supposed to be upset or offended, invariably that story is illustrated by images of Angry Bearded Muslim man marching – usually in Pakistan – shouting, fists raised in the air in righteous anger never joy, and burning something: an American flag, an Israeli flag, an effigy of President Bush. Preferably all three!

Angry Bearded Muslim Man’s female equivalent is Covered in Black Muslim Woman. She’s seen, never heard. Visible only in her invisibility under that black chador, burqa, face veil, etc.

So there you have it – in those images you have conveyed all you want to say about Muslims: the men are angry, dangerous and want to hurt us; the women are just covered in black.

While there are indeed some Muslim men and women who fit both such descriptions they are by no means the majority and they are utterly insufficient in describing the diversity of views, appearances and attitudes among Muslims. But they make for sexy TV and front page photos. And they are my biggest competitors when I give lectures or appear on television.

My first U.S. TV appearance was on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor”. Talk about trial by fire! After the usual back-and-forth yelling, some viewers sent me email asking “Are you sure you’re a Muslim? Where’s the headgear?” Others wanted to know why I spoke English so well. Clearly, I did not deliver on the Covered in Black Muslim Woman that central casting usually offers to viewers. I was confusing them.

Which brings me back to the happy Pakistani lawyers on the front page of the New York Times.

I am a huge fan of confusion. I am the last person to deny the danger of radicals in the Muslim world. Much of my time and effort goes into denouncing violence in the name of religion. But just as importantly I wave the flag for those of us who call ourselves liberal, secular Muslims. In other words, I live to confuse you by subverting the stereotype of Muslims that you always see and hear from. By breaking the false equation between conservatism and authenticity we end the monopoly over religious thought by radicals and their supporters.

When we stop equating conservative with authentic, we recognize our diversity and refuse to allow one voice to speak for us all. Only then can we be recognized as human beings, in all our differences.

For Muslims, that will become possible when you see more Happy Muslim Men and Women Who Confuse You.