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I would like to talk about, or write about, love and being a Muslim woman in 2020 (soon 2021) and what that means. I think it's important to think about this in storytelling terms because stories make you feel less alone or strange or not 'normal'.
I've been trying to articulate this for a few days so let's hope this/I make sense.
Growing up everyone that I knew in my South Asian Muslim world that was married had done so through an arranged marriage process. You were single and then you weren't. This was the norm.
Growing up everyone that I knew in my South Asian Muslim world that was married had done so through an arranged marriage process. You were single and then you weren't. This was the norm.
Nobody spoke about the process of how you went from single to married. Nobody spoke about the emotional journey, nobody spoke about the differences in my generation's choices and those that the generations before had (or didn't have). So I understood romantic love from stories.
Yes I saw my parents who have been together for 37 years but that wasn't what I was reading in books or seeing in films. The idea of arranged marriage was terrifying and, I came to realise, not at all for me. I know people who it's worked for, my sister for one.
I just couldn't get my head round it & believe me I tried but every fibre of my being said no. My parents were like 'okay, fine, do your thing' and I think they pray I just meet someone myself (so do I parents, so do I). But when you don't do the traditional thing then what?
That's where stories come in. I remember reading @loveinheadscarf's book about her own experiences and it was the first time I felt seen. It's the first time I thought that maybe I wasn't alone and I craved more of these stories in the hope I'd find a map of my own.
Now I know the whole world is on apps these days but my fellow single Muslim women will tell you that the apps are not a walk in the park. They're incredibly disheartening at times. Actually the one interesting guy I was speaking to last year was frightened away by my career.
This guy, a neurosurgeon with insane hours, suddenly disappeared when I described the life of a writer/director. Go figure, eh?
The arrangement may have moved online, but it feels like the cultural expectation on women to sacrifice everything is still ever present.
The arrangement may have moved online, but it feels like the cultural expectation on women to sacrifice everything is still ever present.
This post by @Life_0f_Fai earlier today made me think of all this even more because nothing is more depressing than being on dating apps in the midst of a pandemic. You just have to make a game out of reading between the lines on most of the profiles. https://twitter.com/Life_0f_Fai/status/1336977169193590786?s=20
There's a lot of complexity here - there's stuff around hijab, family expectations, race, culture, changing gender roles, the crisis of masculinity in South Asian men now that women are no longer dependent on them for money and removal of culture from religion (for the better).
I'm not going to go into all that on twitter, we'd be here forever.
I'm going to go back to story. We don't have many stories of love when it comes to Muslim communities on screen. It's getting better in publishing thanks to the YA sector, but on screen it's dire.
I'm going to go back to story. We don't have many stories of love when it comes to Muslim communities on screen. It's getting better in publishing thanks to the YA sector, but on screen it's dire.
I wish more people within the Muslim community were empowered to share their love stories. I wish they spoke openly about finding love in ways that weren't the culturally traditional ways of doing so. I wish we saw the emotional journey, the worries, the fears, the choices.
I wish we saw these stories on screen. I think it's important. It's needed, for everyone, to see how normal it is. Especially in this season of romcoms all over your telly - I want to see the details, the complexities, the nuances, the layers, the beauty of those stories.
The foundation of my storytelling is that our feelings are universal - that's the language we all speak. So why are we lacking so many of these stories?
I'm a romantic, I'll always be thinking about love. I love a happy ending and a romcom, just give me my romcoms with amazing Muslim women finding love and living exciting inspiring lives. I know so many of these women in real life, give me them on screen as well.
Did any of this make sense? Apologies if it didn't, my face still hurts from this sinus thing and this all may be a drug induced ramble.
