Islamic World

author: Saraji Umm Zaid

From the day Khadija asked Muhammad (sallalahu aleyhi wa salaam)

To marry her,

To the night she convinced

her husband that the revelation was more

than mere hallucination,

till the second she and Barakah became

the first believers,

I have been more than you imagined.

From the time A’isha stood firm against slander,

from the moment she held her dying husband,

till the time when she was sought after for her knowledge,

I have been more than you imagined.

From the flight to Medina to now,

from the triumph at Mecca to

the triumph of more than a billion,

in fourteen hundred and twenty years,

I have always been more than that.

I have never been so easy for you to figure out.

I am the Bosnian woman,

raped and beaten by

Serbian soldiers as

my husband is forced to look on,

and the world turns away.

The blood that runs from the bodies of

Algerian women

runs from me,

and stains the ground for all the world to see.

I am the woman on a Baghdad street corner,

begging journalists for a can of milk

so that I can feed my starving child.

I am the mother in Palestine,

mourning her eight year old son,

shot in the head by a soldier’s rubber bullet.

I am the Egyptian daughter

struggling to survive in a Cairo slum,

as the government lines its pockets with foreign aid money,

and the desert dust rises to choke the young.

I am the Indonesian woman

who makes $2 a daysewing basketball sneakers for the NBA,

while restlessness burns the country around me.

I am the Iranian student,

sporting jeans and Mickey Mouse tee shirts

under my black chador, laughing and loving,

still recovering from an eight year war that cost the lives of many men.

I am the sister, wife, daughter, and mother to 500 million men.

I am all of my 500 million sisters,

and they are me.

I have always been more

than a threat

or a symbol of hatred and oppression.

I have always been more than

a terrorist’s helpmate.

I have always been more than

a veil or a scarf.

I have always been more than

one wife of many.

I have always been more than

a green card special.

In all of these myths,

I have always been voiceless,

when the truth is so much

louder.

I have never been that easy for you to pin down,

yet I have never been the mystery that

you have created for me.

I am the warrior daughter of Khadija, A’isha, Maryam, and Sara.

I am the mother of prophets,the wife of khalifas,

the sister of shaheed.

I am the woman who wakes at dawn to face

Mecca in prayer,

bowing in submission only to The All Knowing.

I am Mujahida,

fighting daily to maintain

iman and identity,

to open the shut eyes of the world.

I am the woman who raises her voice

among men to shout:Takbeer!Allahu Akbar!Takbeer!Allahu Akbar!Takbeer!Allahu Akbar!