Going public.

Typically, I never share my work with people. And friends who I've shared writings with always give me a hard time for not doing so. I still hesitate to project a self-image that is capable of moving others deeply, and yet somewhere the process, diminish my own sense of awareness and sincerity. Doesn't make sense? Well, it probably won't either. Anyhoo - here are some of the very few articles I agreed on writing for all eyes to see, ah and for them to further pierce through my very soull... over the past year or two. Gone are the high school days of incessant publishing for the A-Blast. Alas! How time flies.

Fasting in Faith
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=24556&pid=1343

Oh no you're fasting! I'm so sorry," is a common remark that greets me upon initial encounters with my well-wishing non-Muslim friends as the month of Ramadan begins. I am the object of pity and sympathy. A miserable soul who actually gives up food and drink for no fathomable reason. I can understand why giving up food and drink for 12 hours each day for 30 days may appear to be a sort of sadistic, self-induced torture, especially amidst our society's megalomania with constantly gratifying our taste buds. Yet it's a torture I embrace with eagerness. Ramadan is the month that I wouldn't hesitate to say I and most Muslims I know look forward to in honest eagerness. Once again Ramadan has proven to be the one time of year I get together each morning and each evening with a whole bunch of Muslims. Together we indulge in and even enhance a shared sense of spirituality.
After waking up -- though I admit laziness overcomes us all occasionally -- an hour or so before sunrise, fasting Muslims typically have suhoor (breakfast before sunrise) together. Next, praying in congregation following the adhaan, or call to prayer, weaves a uniquely close bond with other University Muslims that I haven't typically found through other outlets around Grounds.
The best part, or at least perhaps a personal romanticized favorite, is the idea of being invited each morning to witness the sunrise on the horizon to initiate the day. It's actually pretty surprising to find that a lot of Muslims feel even more energized throughout the day while fasting as opposed to any other day. With eyelids growing heavier unexpectedly early on in the evening, there's a willingness to end the day soon after the breaking of the fast.
So what exactly is fasting? It isn't just about depriving one's sense of taste, for denying oneself the material gratification of food isn't as hard as is imagined. The idea goes far beyond that. To me, it offers a means of striving to go by each day realizing and embracing one's own heightened sense of existence and being. And in turn, to be grateful to be living and breathing in the world as we do. By "heightened," I mean that when one deprives oneself of any of the five senses (taste in this case), other senses are automatically heightened and one treads the earth a little more cautiously aware of being human -- a little more humbly.
It's almost like a daily epiphany revealing that, while I might love to unwittingly go by each day believing that I "rule" my own life, my incapacity to properly function without food and drink seems to suggest otherwise. All sense of such alleged sovereignty over my body becomes questionable.
This "outer purification," if you will, goes hand in hand though with an inner one, as one tries not only to fight the desire to eat but also attempts to exert as much of a positive and dignified character as human beings really are capable of exercising. Patience becomes one's best friend as restlessness and anger are consciously tamed.
All of this adds a refreshing addition to the typical college routine, with its whole new dimension of deeper appreciation and sensitivity to one's self and others. It all comes together after a full day of classes, work and meetings, when I make my way toward the Charlottesville Mosque, which is located right off the Corner, to break my fast, together with a sizable number of other college students.
Each year, the Charlottesville Muslim community graciously offers to provide students with either home-cooked or catered Middle Eastern or South Asian cuisine at the Mosque, healing up that unhappy scar that dining hall meals have seemed to forever engrave on one's stomach. As sunset kicks in and I bite into that date, I realize just how utterly juicy and delectable dates are. Actually, they taste better than any meal I've had in a long time. Sure enough, everyone seems to be sharing in this indulgence.
It's true I think, as a member of the community remarked just this past Friday, Ramadan really is like having Thanksgiving every day for 30 days. You come together with food, share it and give thanks to God for providing for you. The 12 hours of misery become welcome windows for gratitude and reflection.

Pakistan Earthquake Relief
(cannot find the article's link - it was published in Common Ground)

As you kick back and indulge in your Grande Caramel Latte, warming your insides from the increasingly cold weather outside, thoughts of the four million plus homeless Pakistanis sleeping on broken pieces of brick and wood—a place once called home—in below freezing weather is the last thing on your mind. And why shouldn’t this be so, after all, who’s even heard of the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit Pakistan on October 8th, killing over 79,000 people in Pakistan and over 1400 in Indian Kashmir, thereby pretty much obliterating the humble infrastructure that had once been lain in these regions? Has this disaster even received half as much publicity from the media and aid from the government as compared to other natural disasters that are still fresh in our minds?
With the dawn of Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami and a stream of alarming natural disasters, one would imagine that our sense of humanity might be heightened. And that working in solidarity to respond to disasters would be an unprovoked voluntary act. But let’s face it. Even though the U.N. has officially said that the relief situation in Pakistan is worse than after last December’s Tsunami. Even though 92 countries had helped nations hit by last year's Tsunami, only some 20 countries have responded to the quake, according to UN emergency relief Chief, Jan Egeland. And even though the death toll will allegedly double as more people die of hunger, cold and injuries unless rich countries meet the now doubled UN proposal for aid (from $272 million initially, to $550 million now) – let’s be “realistic” here.
You like your Caramel Latte and I like my warm sweatshirt. The mysterious “South Asians” suffering in some weird part of the planet earth just does not directly affect the developed governments of the West and neither does it affect most of its inhabitants. The U.S., for example, gave an initial $100,000 in aid to earthquake victims in Pakistan—the same amount of aid Afghanistan, a developing country, sent to the U.S. after Katrina. Sure, after internationally being looked on as a not-so-humanitarian-number, U.S. aid for rescue and reconstruction has been pushed up to $50 million. Even this, however, fails to grasp the point. People have grossly underestimated the scale of utter destruction that has taken its toll on the like of Pakistan. This indifference is to the extent that, according to Aid Agency Oxfam, seven rich countries—Belgium, France, Austria, Finland, Greece, Portugal and Spain—have given nothing directly to the U.N. appeal. Kofi Annan's own chief aid co-ordinator in Islamabad, Andrew MacLeod, put it bluntly, but he put it well: "If the second wave of deaths hit, it's the major donors that are going to have to look at themselves in the mirror and ask why."
What’s worse is that this attitude of nonchalance isn’t just rampant in the higher levels of government. While working on the earthquake relief effort launched by the Pakistan Student’s League (PSL), a few members have been approached by people who outright deny that the earthquake did as much damage as it did. One was even given the suggestion to drop out of school and help with the effort if she cared so much. What’s more, the University itself denied the PSL access to tabling and concession stands at its home game against Florida State University (which happened exactly one week after the earthquake hit Pakistan), although permission to do so had been given in a prior game to Hurricane Katrina relief. If one’s own community isn’t giving priority to an international disaster, which happens to effect members of the local community who have families in the effected region, then who will?
Even with the aid that is slowly increasing as the days go by and the death toll mounts, relief workers are currently 150,000 short with hundreds of thousands of people still stranded in mountains, where temperatures are already below freezing and are expected to rise. Basically, people are expected to freeze till their last breath with no one warm to their call for help.
Why do we embrace opportunities to numb ourselves, distance ourselves from the suffering of anyone else? Why do we see it as the suffering of an alien “other” to whom we cannot relate and therefore to whom we owe absolutely nothing? For some reason, imagining the very building I’m sitting in, suddenly sinking in on refuses to leave my mind. The survivors in Pakistan need my help, your help, our collective help today as much as they need it tomorrow and it’s anything but too late to help. Help will be needed in the months, even years to come as these people attempt to reclaim the lives that we so often take for granted.
In the end, it doesn’t even come down to give and take. It’s about stepping up and helping NOW because you can and should.

Hijab
http://cavalierdaily.student.virginia.edu/letters.asp?pid=1522

I walked around Grounds bareheaded for two years before I chose to wear the excruciatingly painful head cloth that apparently offends some allegedly free-spirited fellow Americans any given day (Stephen Parsley, "Shrouding sexism behind multi-culturalism," Nov. 29). No woman in my immediate or extended family covers her hair. In fact, I willingly dove into the realm of that oppressive and evil cloth, joyously wrapped it around my head and couldn't help but reflect on how good it made me look. Red, blue, orange, green.
My head scarves, or hjiabs, are endless in color and form, as are the personal choices offered to me by my faith. I have the choice to love and accept -- and to grow. Yet I'm amazed at how others are still caged in their own suffocated vision of how my life should be lived. I thought the "white man's burden" died after colonization. Since when has intellectual imperialism laid siege over my right to exist? But that's the way the world works -- isn't it? We always hate what we don't understand and fear what we can never penetrate because we never allow ourselves to.
But I must admit, I'm deeply touched by the concern my fellow Cavalier has expressed for my liberation and equality. And what a compelling case he has made indeed, for to him, my hijab is "closer to the yellow stars that Nazis forced the Jews to wear" and renders me altogether dehumanized.
I wonder why it is then, that every single student who covers her hair at this University has made the conscious decision to do so -- on her own.
Why do I wear it? I happen to be an individual, capable of articulating and carrying out my own decisions. I wear it to be conscious of my Creator at all times. The hijab serves as the perfect reminder of this. I am at once at one with this realm and above it. I am a creation of God and yet His vice-regent on this earth. Theway I dress gives me the capacity to consciously demand and command respect.