The Next 10 Years — Women Can Solve Immigrant Identity Crises

Published by Turkish Philanthropy Funds [http://tpfund.blogspot.com/]

I am a Turkish journalist. I am also Dutch and a Texan. I am a woman, a feminist, a mother, a lecturer, a soloist and a world traveller. I am also Muslim. Yet, since 9/11, my Muslim identity counted more than any other characteristic that has contributed to who I am today. Far worse is the western media’s attributes of the actions of very few Islamists to an otherwise peaceful faith with millions of followers. There is the common people’s religion and then there are the Islamists, the extremists who follow a violent ideology. In other words, not all Muslims are Islamists. My identity is far more complex to be defined by faith alone. I grew up in Europe with a strict secular upbringing and I find such homogenous branding of Muslims frustrating. Prejudices are for the lazy and for the intellectually weak. Why can’t Muslims experience religion as individuals?

Now that the media frenzy about the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks is over, what will the next 10 year bring? Will it be more of the same? How can positive change come about? Let me suggest one source of solutions as we begin a new decade—women.

The Muslim Smorgasbord

A few years back, as part of an international visitor’s program, I met with a fellow journalist in the United States. We ended up talking about motherhood, journalism, relationships and family ties, but nothing on religion. We had more in common than what separated us. The fact that she was a Christian and I was a Muslim had nothing to do with what we shared with one another. The same principle applies to the American identity. Americans are like a smorgasbord, the Swedish buffet which offers endless variety. They are liberals, they are conservatives, they are rich and they are poor. Not all of them are as conservative as Sarah Palin, or as liberal as Rachel Maddow, certainly not all are racists as the Klu Klux Klan. Neither are Muslims.

I am an optimist. Changes in Islam will come from Muslim women as they are endlessly being questioned about their religion. That’s why we have the urge to know more about our faith than most counterparts from other faiths. Such questioning is good for the entire community. What does one truly know about her religious and cultural identity? Does a Muslim woman have a religion of faith or has she adopted the family and national traditions as her own? Does she cling to the old ways and fight off any changes to customs as an infringement of her heritage? Does she find her new cultural surroundings uncomfortable or even irritating?

Women have been on the forefront of the protests in the Arab uprisings. They stood up for their rights; they ran equality campaigns, advocated multiculturalism and fought the extremists. Women have been the first victims of extremism, and that’s why they are desperate to make changes. It needs not to be the western way, but our way, and of our own making.

Women, Sex and Stereotypes

Due to easy access to information on Internet, Muslim women know they have rights. They are more educated and more women are literate. They do not accept inequality anymore, which is why they talk, discuss and write about delicate issues. I wrote about women and sex in my first book The Wax Club, as did many other Muslim authors.

The North African author Nedjma proved in her erotica novel Wild Fig that Muslim women can write about sex. When asked why she has chosen that topic, she said: It all happened after 9/11. I wanted to break down the negative image of Arabic women by writing about love and erotica. By showing that not all Arabic women are veiled and by explaining that the Western perspective is too much one-sided. And I wanted to shock the Arab man with a story about female sexuality. In the Maghreb sex is a taboo; you don’t talk about it, let alone write about it. Wild Fig is my protest against both parties.

My hope is that more Muslim women and the next generation of Muslim women will see their faith as means to a new way of life, one that is ready to tackle the difficulties of the twenty first century. As the famous scholar Akbar S. Ahmed said: “We should not approach Islam as an exotic and different world. It shouldn’t be the Islam versus the West, it should be Islam in the West.”

Slipping through my fingers

There it was. Hakan's first school day at the middle school.
Today another new era begins. Don't know what happened; I still clearly remember his first day at the Kindergarden, then the elementary school, Oh My God, it all went so fast.

Like I said, don't know how 8 years went by.. but the following song exactly tells how I feel today (with a little changes that I made because it's a boy). One tip for moms with middle schoolers: Get tissues, because I don't think you'll end reading this without crying):

Schoolbag in hand, he leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch him go with a surge of that well known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I'm losing him forever
And without really entering his world
I'm glad whenever I can share his laughter
That funny little boy

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in his mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
He keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes
Him and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake
I let precious time go by
Then when he's gone
There's that odd melancholyc feeling
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
and save it from the funny tricks of time

Schoolbag in hand
He leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile

(Bjorn Ulvaeus/Benny Andersson)

Alliance Francaise

My son and I are getting ready for our big move to Texas. While cleaning the house and packing some closets with books and old magazines, I found an interesting piece in an old newspaper that I obviously have kept for some decades. It dates May 1986. And it's an article about me winning a prize for the best French essay, organized by the prestigious institute Alliance Francaise. I never intended to participate to the Contest but my French teacher, Mrs. Staal, insisted, and I won! More than 1400 students from Holland participated and thousands of others from all over Europe. I remember some details about the essay but I definitely have to make sure that I find it...It should be somewhere..
This winning essay shows my passion and probably can be seen as the start of my writing career! But there is another thing which is so much more important here. What happened back then also says something about a good teacher. Actually my teacher, Mrs. Staal believed in me and discovered my talent. She persuaded and signed me in when I had not enough self esteem to put up my finger when she asked the class who wanted to face the challenge of writing an essay in French. She looked at me right away and was surprised that I kept quiet. Yes, I loved studying and talking French, but never thought I could write essays. Then she said: "Well, Senay, I think you can do this easily so I am signing you in."
I was one of her best students (in French) but Mrs. Staal saw also another talent in me. She pushed me in the right direction and ever since, when I write, I think about her. For me, Mrs. Staal has become more than a teacher in French language. She is one of the people who gave direction to the life I'm living now.
Great teachers who recognize talent in students are priceless!

Vyjanthi and the princess of Oman

Yesterday, the whole world celebrated International Women's Day. It sounds rather ridiculous to celebrate a day especially for women but as long as it's necessary we will do that. According to a survey of the Virginia Commonwealth University it will take 580 years before there is gender equality in top managerial positions. Yes, we have a long way to go... Not in executive and leading positions but in almost every level.

Yesterday, I watched a very sad documentary 'No country for young girls?' about a young Indian woman who has to choose - stay with a husband who doesn't want female children, or make it on her own?

Twenty-seven year old Vyjanthi, already mother to one 3-year old girl, was forced by her husband and in-laws to have a scan to determine the sex of the foetus, when she became pregnant again. Told she was carrying a girl, they tried to pressure her to have an abortion, and after a major argument she fled to her parents' home. But she felt bad, went back to her husband, got pregnant again, and the same thing happened all over again.

Now she's living with her parents, with two young daughters - and undecided whether she can make it on her own, or will have to go back to her husband again. Sex-selective abortion is illegal in India, but so widespread that there are many more boys than girls, especially in India's more prosperous states. Vyjanthi wants to know if things are really as bad for girls in the rest of India as in her own neighborhood. Isn't India now one of the world's booming economies, thanks to its embrace of globalization?

Life takes Vyjanthi on a journey through India, and films as she makes a disturbing discovery. Just because a country's becoming richer, doesn't actually mean life's going to be better for most people. In fact the status of women in India is falling behind that of women in many other countries, even in South Asia, and the newly prosperous middle class are particularly likely to abort female foetuses.

Will Vyjanthi decide that India can offer her and her daughters a fair and prosperous future on their own? Or will she decide that India is no country for young girls, and go back to her husband?

Heartbreaking documentary, but very inspiring to see that women are 'searching' for what they want for themselves. Vyjanti was my hero.

Vyjanthi's journey ended in Bangalore, the place where I have met another, of a very different level, woman a couple of years ago, the Omani princess Susan al Said. She is an empowering woman who fights for women's rights in Oman. American by birth, Omanese and muslim by marriage, she also owns a galery in Muscat. We had a nice and long chat after her speech at this woman's conference in Bangalore. She was very curious about my magazine and took with her three copies of SEN, folded in a veil, because it contented 'obscene' images (according to Omanese Arab standards). She said it could take decades before something like SEN could be possible in her country; if ever possible.

Vyjanthi and princess Susan, both so different women with a totally different background, and yet so close to each other, both trying to balance out stereotypes. That's so inspiring! I wish everybody a happy International Women's Day!

Literature and Islamophobia

I have been invited to speak at the LSE ‘Space for Thought’ Literary Festival on Literature and Islamophobia.

The event will be held at LSE (London School of Economics) today (19th Feb from 630pm to 8pm). The panel will also feature one Dutch Muslim writer Naema Tahir and a British Muslim writer Shelina Zahra Janmohamed. We will all comment on the subject - Literature and Islamophobia - from our perspectives of multicultural origin based in writers.

This was the blurb about the event:

There are few places in Europe in which the voices of multiculturalism and Islamophobia have clashed more forcefully than in the Netherlands, often in the most dramatic ways. To name just a few, Pim Fortuyn, Theo Van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and most recently Geert Wilders have been very much in the international press over the last decade. In the UK we are now 14 years on from the publication of the influential Runnymede Trust report Islamophobia: a Challenge for us All which sets out an agenda for overcoming social exclusion of British Muslims. Fiction writers from Muslim backgrounds have played an important role in the debate about multiculturalism and Islamophobia. We will explore how they see their art as a tool to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue and political discourse about integration.

Our panel consists of Şenay Özdemir and Naema Tahir, two women Muslim writers from the Netherlands, and Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, a woman Muslim writer from North London, who will talk about what motivates their art as women Muslim writers in respectively the Netherlands and the UK.

I am looking forward to it, as I really don't know how this topic is being discussed in Great Britain. I don't know what to expect; on one hand I think the debate must be the same (as British PM Cameron functioning as a parrot to what Angela Merkel and Geert Wilders have said about 'the multicultural society' having failed), on the other hand I expect that the British muslim society reacts on islamophobia very differently as they have been in Britain for a longer time and are higher
educated (on average) than Dutch muslims.

We'll see..I'm definitely going to listen what Naema and Shelina have to say, and of course looking forward to the questions of the audience. Because that tells so much more than anything.. What do people want to know? What are they looking for? And who are they? I'll hopefully let you know soon...Now, I have to get ready and do some homework before calling a London taxi! Ciao!

10 Tips To Becoming Fearless In Love, Work & Life

I had bought her book at BookPeople just after I had had my first class at the School for Journalism. I had asked my students to give a list of the Top 5 news Web Sites they visited every day. One of them was The Huffington Post. Until then, I had never heard of this site (I'm still ashamed of that, but please understand that Huffpost is still not very popular in Europe). But after my students stories about Huffington, I became so curious about this woman that I went to the bookstore to get her books. I bought On Becoming Fearless..In Love, Work and Life.

It's a wonderful, empowering and very well written book that every ambitious woman should read.
I want to share Arianna Huffington’s Top 10 Tips to becoming fearless:

1. Be true to yourself. Constantly looking over your shoulder for approval means you’ll never find it. What’s more, you greatly increase your chances of walking into a wall or falling into a ditch – not to mention losing yourself in the process.

2. Turn down the volume of your inner critic. Everyone has one: the obnoxious roommate in your head, always there with the critical, selfdoubting comment. But that doesn’t mean you have to listen. When the negative judgments start to blare, hit the off switch or drown them out with your iPod.

3. Look past the glass ceiling to endless opportunity. Preoccupation with impediments allows us to climb only so high. Keep your mind open to new adventures and you’ll surpass every expectation.

4. Use the mirror to make sure your lipstick isn’t smudged, not to judge your value as a person.

5. Stop comparing yourself to others – it’s a no-win game. And especially comparing yourself to supermodels, who don’t even look like the perfectly lit and airbrushed supermodels we usually see in magazines.

6. Get enough sleep. It’s next to impossible to be fearless – or to be your best self – if you are sleep deprived. A good pillow is a vital addition to any beauty regime.

7. Slip to an air of self-assurance. Fearlessness is sexy. So is confidence.

8. Run, swim, bike, hike, do yoga, or hit the gym. And fill your lungs with fresh air. Never forget – you can go weeks without food, days without water, but only mere minutes without breathing.

9. Be assertive in love. Know what you want out of a relationship and have the courage to express yourself to get it. And if you don’t get it – and if the other person can’t even handle the mere expression of your needs – be strong enough to walk away.

10. Always remember: True fearlessness comes from a deep and complete acceptance of ourselves – not from what we wear, or how we look or what we do, or what we accomplish.

I am working on points 1, 2, 4, 5 and sometimes 9. I wish myself and all of you who want to become fearless good luck!

Arianna Huffington

I realized how encouraged I was the moment I heard the news about AOL merging with the Huffington Post. If there is one woman who inspires me at this moment, then it’s Huffpost’s founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington.

She is a fascinating woman. As the author of the book ‘On Becoming Fearless ... in Love, Work and Life.’ she already has illustrated multiple times to be fearless. The first time was when she left Athens, Greece, where she was born, to go to England in order to study at the Cambridge University. Many people want to study internationally, but let’s face it, there are still far too few women who take up that challenge.

The second time she was fearless was when she left her then-boyfriend, the famous Times-journalist, Bernard Levin. She broke off the relationship and moved to the United States, because of Levin's refusal to get married. I feel pretty certain that Arianna NOW thinks it was probably the best thing she did back then by leaving him, but we women know how difficult it is to end a relationship, and certainly with someone you say was the love of your life.

The third time she showed her fearless power- no, that was not the time when she married a millionaire- was when she found Huffington Post and made it the most successful blogging-site in the world, and became a millionaire herself. Maybe the men in her life partially contributed to her success, - of course everything and everybody in her life probably influenced her decisions on some levels - but it always makes me happy when women rise up, and show leadership by really changing the concept of the news industry. My fascination is more as I also created a different model in the media: a magazine for Mediterranean women.

As Forbes ranked Arianna one of the 12th most influential women in the media, she is a role model for we women journalists, and for women in general, to be fearless and really go for our dreams. She has defined how she can be a leader, and not be let a man or a past career move keep her from reaching her goals. It is inspiring to read stories about women who not only SAY what they want to do, but to act and actually DO those dreams.

I remember her saying in one of the interviews about her book - on how you become your own leader - by looking in the mirror, and you should stop searching for the knight on the white horse who is going to “save” you; And she is right, that only results in your being disappointed again and again.

Her life is the best example for the power of a woman. She divorced from a wealthy man (after he made it clear that he was more attracted to his own sex), she became an influential and wealthy woman in her own right. Her looks and name may mislead you, with her sexy business suits, blond hair and “enhanced” face; she looks like a typical American businesswoman. But then you discover she is not American at all, but conquered America, she becomes a role model for every one of us in the world.

I hope the story of Arianna will inspire more women to pursue their goals, and to become their own leaders.