Islam – submission to the will of Allah
By Shazia Hobbs
Author of The Gori's Daughter. Published by Ringwood Publishing.
‘I am a Muslim, just not practising.’ I still prayed no times a day, I smoked and drank alcohol, I had relationships of my own choosing and none of these ‘haram’ activities bothered me in the slightest. I knew many other Muslims who also behaved like me without the fear of hell fire.
The only thing, and still to this day that I struggle to do without fear is eating the meat from a pig. I do occasionally have a bacon roll and when I do, I have to fight the inner voice telling me I will be sent to the fires of hell, the inner voice telling me how dirty and disgusting the pig is, even though the taste of bacon is heaven. I eat no other meat from the pig, just the bacon. Silly I know, when I do more ‘haram’ things than eat bacon. Sex before marriage is up there with the top three sins you can commit in Islam yet that never worried me, or millions of other Muslims. I was raised to avoid the pig at all costs whereas I think my parents took for granted that alcohol, drugs and sex would not feature in my life. Ha! The pig indoctrination runs deeper than the other forbidden things.
Other silly things, like an upturned shoe continue to have a powerful, irrational effect on me: I have to turn it back over. I remember as a child being told it is a sin to leave a shoe like that as the dirty sole is facing Allah and is an insult to him. All these years and still I need to turn the shoe over. Crazy what stays with us and continues to influence us. What bothers me may not bother other Muslims and vice versa.
Islam is the number one talked about topic nowadays. Muslims argue with other Muslims for not being the ‘true’ Muslim, non-Muslims argue with Muslims over whether Islam is the religion of peace. Muslims are killing each other yet we still argue over how peaceful the religion is. I remember asking my father what sect of Muslims we belonged to and his reply was ‘We are Muslims.’ He believed we were just all one, which I suppose is a better approach than what is going
I was raised in a Muslim home although home life was more about the Pakistani cultures and traditions of my father than the specific teachings of Islam. Nevertheless I was sent to mosque every day after school to read the Quran and to learn namaz – prayers. I never prayed five times a day I never even prayed once a day. I did think it strange having to read and pray in Arabic, a language I could not speak or understand, and which therefore meant I had no idea what I was reading. But I was not allowed to question this, or anything to do with Islam. I went to mosque until I was about 14 years old and not once do I recall being taught any hatred towards the West, or a distrust or dislike of ‘kaffirs.’ I, like many other, Pakistani Muslims, went to mosque simply to read the Quran.
Like so many other Muslims, my family was not a religious family. We were not forced to wear hijab and music was not forbidden. Family gatherings were not segregated (well, unless my father had white friends visiting, in which case the men would sit separately from the women). A hatred of Jews was also not passed onto us.
However, in other aspects my family was backwards in their ways. For example, they saw nothing wrong with forced marriage, and integrating with the Scottish community was not allowed. Even though my father welcomed Scottish neighbours and his Scottish friends into our home, we were discouraged from visiting white friends, or any other friends unless they were Muslim.
I was forced into a marriage with a much older man when I was eighteen years old. Three years of misery was more than enough and I walked out on my so called ‘marriage.’ For that my family and the Pakistani community disowned me.
I still described myself as Muslim, when people asked what religion I was, as people generally do, thanks to my Muslim name. My reply was