If you remember, I wrote about a friend of mine named Amy. Even though Amy left Islam after leaving the tariq and divorcing her husband, I am still in touch with her. So she wrote to me after the last post and said that a friend of hers, Fazia, wanted to write her "testimonial" on the blog. She sent it to Amy and Amy sent it to me. She allowed Amy to tell me her real name, and I do remember this person as someone who lived in Kharabsheh. Fazia is not her real name. Anyway, here is her story, and I have to warn you it's a little long. I was going to post it in part 1, part 2, etc but I decided against that. I only edited it for spelling, to make it uniform with my American spellings, and for punctuation and my trademark, "once upon a time." (Because these are our stories.) Just because I am including it here doesn't mean that I agree with everything she says. I am saying that her story should be heard, especially from those of you who least want to hear it - the ones in Kharabsheh. Don't turn away now.
Fazia's Story
Once upon a time --
I came to Jordan to study Arabic, and planned to be there for about 9 months or a few months longer if I could get the money to stay for a year. I lived in a flat with other unmarried women who were in Jordan for Qasid or to study with the shaykh. Like everyone else, I felt it was such a big baraka to be in Jordan and be around these great people of himmah.
The first problems for me began after a few months. I would attend all of the dars of the shaykh in English, as well as the hadras. When I was able to, I would attend the lessons of Um Khayr and Um Sahl, and the hizbul-bahr in the afternoons. I was very much a part of the zawiya life, it was the center of my life, more than Qasid I would say.
In the beginning I didn't have much of a problem wearing the niqab. I had a little bit of a harder time with the color rules, but I got over it soon enough. One murid used to say that the nour on the face of the murids after a hadra or session with the shaykh was so bright that if the women weren't covered, the brothers would find themselves powerfully attracted to us. As strange as that sounds now, it made some sense at that time, because like most murids who were from the UK or America, I didn't question the niqab rule before I got there. To say that we were developing nour and that was the reason why seemed to be in line with what we were to expect from our time in Jordan.
We initially had a flatmate who wasn't a murid, and she had a very hard time with it all. She didn't like Um Sahl and that created friction with some of us because we thought, "What's not to like, then?" Shaykh had said that Um Sahl was the authority of the women and anything she said to you was as a word from him, so for her not to like Um Sahl felt like she was against the shaykh. She also did not wear the niqab unless she was going to the hadra. At that time, it wasn't an iron clad rule for the Qasid students to wear it unless they were murids, but it was "encouraged" for them to do so. Many people hoped / expected that the other Qasid students would naturally become murids. She mostly kept her opinions to herself, and she did attend the hadras in the beginning of her stay. After a short time, the situation between her and the two ladies was too tense and she stopped coming to the hadra. Our flatmates also had some tension with her.
When she decided it was time to go home, I helped her pack. She was under some pressure, and she told me all of her opinions on the tariq. I didn't say much, I just let her vent. I didn't feel the defensiveness and anger that I had felt when she first got into it with Um Sahl.
After she left, things felt peaceful and "back to normal" for us. But then I started to notice things. Like how the niqab wasn't about our "nour" but about us being walking sex objects. The rules, at that time, became much stricter about clothes. Even to have your pants peek from the bottom of your abaya was frowned on. I didn't think a normal man could get turned on by this. I started to feel like I was being controlled and suffocated and that as a woman it was what I should expect and what I deserved in the name of Allah.
This blog has already covered some of the rules about women, and I'm not going to do that.
I realized, I would not wear the niqab on my own. I did not feel that it was a necessary thing. In all of my life, even being in Muslim countries where one can generally wear the niqab without a lot of stares or harassment, I didn't wear it and to that date (or even to today) a man has never lost control of himself sexually at the sight of me. I hated the way that the Jordanians made jokes about us in Khawaja's and Mo'aidh's or in the street. I hated the way that the taxi drivers would say "Oh more Kharabsheh" and curse Kharabsheh people for being cheap and snobby. Even in the malls in West Amman, people would know who we were and make jokes or say things about us, even in English.
I began to see that the people in Jordan did not like us, did not welcome us. I actually did have a conversation with a nice young woman who spoke English in the mall near Qasid and I asked her, "Why does it seem like people in Amman don't like us?" She said, "Well there are many complaints about you. That you are unfair to the taxi drivers and don't tip them. Many Jordanians don't give big tips either, but we usually do give a little something, especially for the taxi driver. They feel like you think you are better than us. Also, some of the women come into the malls or in the stores and expect people to speak English to them, rather than trying to speak Arabic. You come to our country you should learn our language." She seemed embarassed to have to tell me these things but as the conversation continued, she also seemed a little angry. She told us that the locals called us "the Nuh people", "the American sufis" and that they all called Kharabsheh "hay al ajanib," or the foriegner's neighborhood -but in a sarcastic way.
She lived in Sports City and told me that there have been stories between the Arabs about men and women from Kharabsheh meeting outside the neighborhood, kissing in alleyways and things like that. Even if you are married in Jordan, you don't kiss or do these things outside of your home. She told me a story that happened shortly before I came about a woman dressed like a murid who had taken a taxi with a man that might have been her husband. When he dropped her off - only one block from the zawiya - she leaned over and kissed the man and not in a brother-sister sort of way. The man did not get out of the car, and the taxi drove away. There were Jordanian people who saw this and they were very upset and this lady told me that the story was all over Medina Riyadiya as an example of "the Nuh people" coming in and doing whatever they liked in Jordan with no regard to the feelings of the people who live there.
Even though I did not do these things and I never saw anyone do those sort of things, I was very embarassed because many of the murids did not have good feelings towards the Jordanians. They believed that they were bad Muslims, that they were not as good as us in Islam, they were less intelligent, that they were all money hungry and there for our service. But yet we were the guests in their country.
So I started to see the murids from a different view, not as exemplars of the prophetic character, but as stuck up snobs or some of us as stuck up snobs.
Um Khayr stopped giving her lessons, and while I was at first disappointed, after a while I noticed that I felt lighter in my heart when I thought about it. And as I thought on it, I realized that I did not like the things she was teaching about women and men and marriage, but I did not think that I had the right or place to dislike it, spiritually, even in my own head. So I was pushing my own opinions down and silencing them, even though I felt, to my core, that some of what she was teaching was really, really wrong. And I didn't like the way some of the wives there were treated, or how they glorified staying at home and not visiting with friends. These women were almost totally isolated and cut off, even from other super religious women in their own tariqa. So first, non-Muslims weren't okay to have as friends, then non-murids, and soon it was visiting with anyone was as if it was a waste of time and an offense to Allah. A lot of the women, physically, looked very tired.
About that time I made friends with two Qasid students who were not murids. They had just arrived. A lot of people left, and new people came in all the time. Not just Qasid, but murids as well. We went to the Friday market one day, and one of them said something making fun of the tariqa and the other one laughed. I was very hurt and offended, and turned away from them. I didn't talk to them very much for the rest of the outing. I guess they sensed this, because that day or the next day, the one who made the joke came to see me.
She apologized for hurting my feelings, but she said that she felt that there were problems with the tariqa or things she disagreed with and she wasn't going to pretend otherwise just to keep from offending people. Especially because she felt that they had no fear of offending and hurting people who were not murids and saying things about the West. So I asked her, "Well what problems do you think the tariqa has," because at the time I was still thinking she was just not really understanding the depth of the tariqa. That is what they say, when people say things against them or say that they don't like something, the response is "They don't understand how complicated and intricate this is" or some teaching is hidden from them by Allah and so on.
She told me some of the same things that are already on [the] blog, such as the spying and tattle taling. I was skeptical and I told her I would have to think about these things. She also passionately gave me her argument about the way women are treated in Kharabsheh and I did not disagree with her completely. "Well maybe you should talk to this person," and that was a person I knew from the tariqa.
After a few weeks of these things gnawing away at me, I went to see the other person. That person repeated the same things she told me and more, like about people who lost their jobs, that a man was blackballed personally and professionally because his "ego is too big", and about a family that had lost their inheritance. I said, "Why are you still here then if you don't like it?" and the person told me that their own finances were deeply tied to the shaykh and Um Sahl and they were unable to leave yet.
I was just a simple student, I'm not even married. I don't have inheritance sor savings for much of anything, so the financial complaints were very new to me. Actually I was puzzled that they were so involved in the money of their murids, and yes it bothered me. I felt that if they are saying how they are here for our akhira, and spiritual guidance, then why the big interest in everyone's money?
[The blog writer] mentioned a party at which a woman suddenly began to talk about her husband sexually abusing her. I was at that party. Everyone looked away. It was like she was shouting it, it got so quiet in the room, yet she was speaking at a normal tone. I was sitting against a corner diagonal from her. I remember her voice got really quiet when she said, "And everyone thinks I'm so lucky." Then people began to talk about other things like nothing had happened. I think that was the moment when it struck me that this is not something that can be called excellent or with taqwa or tawfeeq. Because even if the shaykh didn't know about it - and according to what's on the writings now, he did - no one in the room felt moved to help her or comfort her. I saw these woman and how many of them looked run down, beaten down, and I didn't want to be like that. I didn't want to be a woman who was following all of Um Khayr's advice and was run down by her tariqa husband to the point where she had nothing to offer a woman who was crying out for help. I saw women who were empty of anything to offer except their khidmat to their husbands and the tariqa. I didn't see Islam in that room that day, no matter what prayers we prayed together or singing the burda.
I underwent a serious spiritual journey at that time. I would say that I was full of turmoil, on top of preparing for my Qasid finals. I had decided to go home 3 months early, as I missed my family and my home. I also felt no desire to be around the tariqa anymore. I was attending the hadras on and off, but it all began to feel like a pointless form of aerobic exercise. Where I had told myself previously that the shaykh's voice was the essence of calm and thoughtfulness, he now sounded clumsy and unsure of himself with his mumbling low tones. I noticed some of the women would fall asleep when he talked, and some even had little poses for their heads and hands to make it look like they were in deep thought. That is how practised they were at this.
After I arrived home, my spiritual journey continued. I did not go to the majlis of the murids at all. I was very busy with my family and other things. I made myself busy. I decided to take a course at sunnipath.com but I had problems with it, in that I no longer felt like I wanted to hear what they had to say. I would think, "And are they teaching us something that makes us more open to handing over our money" and things like that. I didn't tell anyone back home about my experiences and what I had learned.
My distrust of the website led me to wonder how accurate they were in general. It seems like most of the things about women are meant to promote shaykh Nuh's version of women - in the kitchen, silent and unheard, even by themselves. I did question their motivation and no longer looked to the site as a source for my Islamic knowledge, and that finally led me to wonder why I was using Reliance and a few of those other books as my end all definitive guides. My parents are not particularly religious so it was the murids who really introduced me to this way of understanding Islam. I had no tradition of my own to draw from and compare it to in that sense. I could only compare it to the Salafi version of Islam that was popular for some time, and in the end I felt that there wasn't much of a difference, because the way Islam is taught or lived in Jordan is the way that they (shaykh, two ladies) feel it should be lived at all times: women in veils in black, men in charge, obedience to the shaykh or the leader, making many mubah things into haram, staying away from and hating those who don't follow your way, etc.
Anyway, Amy, who I was friends with Kharabsheh, got in touch with me after she left Jordan. I was very, very surprised when she told me that she divorced her husband and wasn't Muslim anymore. We began to talk about what led her to that point. She was - is - the only person I am in regular contact with who left the tariqa, so I poured out to her all of my struggles with it, all of the terrible things I learned, my anger. She had many of the same issues. We did not lead each other, but just provided a listening ear for the other one. Understanding and support. She never pushed me to do anything, but after some more of my own researching and soul searching, I also decided to leave Islam.
So that is the reason that I am writing my story for you, so that people can hear first hand from someone who was brought from certainty in the deen outside of it by the shaykh and his women. I don't have the time to go into everything and it sounds spurious from the outside. "Oh she saw a woman who had a problem and quit Islam" and things like that.
Nuh Keller, his wife, and Um Khayr and their friends at the website had offered me a foundation in Islam that I thought was built on solid ground. Then, with the tariq, they give you a vision of Islam that is intoxicating - all of society's problems could be solved if we just followed the tariqa and the tariqa's interpretations of Shariah. But what did they call to? People investing their money in their pet projects? How is that going to change the world? If we want something better for women, then why are they ignoring abuse in the neighborhood, and pushing teachings on their website that are often unfair to women and very callous? Even before I went to Jordan I felt that way and many of my friends would privately complain about the teachings on their website about women.
You are made to feel that if you disagree with them, then you are no better than a shaytan or a kafir who follows his own desires. Your intelligence - that they say Allah gave you - is useless. You do not know, inherently, what is right or fair. If you disagree, they will ruin you.
I don't blame Nuh Keller for me leaving Islam. In a way I thank him, because to blame him would be to say that I am unhappy with where I am and I'm definitely not. I know you are still Muslim and from what you are saying, most of the former murids you are in touch with are as well. I have no problem or complaint with that. But I thank him and Um Sahl and Um Khayr because their behavior to people, the behavior of the murids, especially the women you wrote about as "the ablahs", all of that tied in as an example and a pointing of the way. At every step I was sincere and fervent in my duas. I wanted him to be revealed to me as a wali, but he most definitely was not. If not for that, I may not have had the strength of mind and will to address things within the religion that struck a deep part of me.
I won't blame you if you don't print these last few paragraphs because I understand it is hard for you, but I hope you do. Unlike you and the other married women, I did not have the same sort of access, and I did not see many of the terrible things in people's lives that you did. So I know that my story as far as expeirences in Kharabsheh is not as bad as some peoples, but it is still one that I think the readers will benefit from, even if -- especially if -- they disagree with my choice to leave Islam.
I want you to know that I feel more at peace with myself and the world around me now than I did in those first few months in Jordan when I thouht everything was wonderful.
Thank you for your time and for letting me share my story.
