Monday, August 25, 2008

Licensed to Wed!

Well I had the afternoon off on Friday to get estimates on our hail problem with our little dimpled beauty. All around bad news there. Mack called up a friend who is looking to find a car and they were happy to take the car off our hands. We are working out the details now. Mack is such a good man. I can really depend on him. It wasn’t always so, but now that he is committed, he is COMMITTED. J Whereas some men profess commitment and aren’t really, Mack means what he says. And any girl will tell you how zexy that is.

 

So anyway, on Friday afternoon, Mack calls me around 4pm and asks me to pick him up from work. My first thought, ‘Uhoh, I think he got fired.’ Followed immediately by oh shut up. Lol. Off I go.

 

I arrive at his work and pick him up. He goes, ‘Hey, let’s go get the License.’

 

Ummm…wow, this is getting REAL. He is NOT KIDDING. I guess…neither am I!

 

So we got the marriage license. I asked Mack if it was heavy. He asked me what I was talking about. “Your new ball and chain, honey!”

 

He said that in his culture, when you start a process like this, it’s tradition to get eat something sweet. Awwww!!! We were so happy and excited on Friday!

 

Now there is the question of the ring. I don’t have one yet. Mack is not good at romance…he is more practical. That’s ok. I have told him what I want and we went and looked at it on Sunday. It’s kinda expensive, but it’s also a once in a lifetime thing. Well…twice for us. We went to this place called Nebraska Diamond and they were awesome. We’ll see what he comes up with. I told him this would be my last visit to a jewelry store and after this, the outcome is all up to him.

 

I ordered myself a nice Alexandrite ring from eBay to wear for the moment. Alexandrite is his birthstone.

 

I feel sooooo giddy!!!!

 

But you would not believe the flack one can get from people who are ignorant.

 

One person said I should be careful because those Middle Eastern men sometimes view women as property. Ummmm, I think I’d be smart enough to avoid that. Another person said that she’s waiting five years with her beau and we ought to do the same. But she is done having children so that is a different story from ours. And I am confident in my decisions…I don’t need five years in order to know. We’ve been through all of our warts. He’s seen Dee’s pecadillos up close and personal and he stayed with me. He’s seen me not doing so hot too and he’s still there. I’ve been through months of unemployment with him and I found that we could work through it, treating eachother fairly and honestly.

 

You know, I had my doubts for a while. But once Mack committed, he really committed. I think he had to find his way, and I probably needed to learn some things too. After all, I’m no relationship star. I’m still finding out how my parents’ dysfunctional relationship affected how I view relationships. I have many fears about that…my dad never supported my mom or us…she had to do it all herself. He spent his paycheck on the road while my mom hocked her wedding ring and sold her  blood in order to feed us. She sold off her Depression glass, many of her possessions, even once taking back her Christmas gifts in order to feed us when my dad was off having a good time on the road. I don’t want to ever end up like that and I have a great fear of it. It is just amazing what you find out when you’re no longer high on food or anything else and you’re seriously looking at something big like marriage.

 

I’m not sure what else I really need to know about Mack, or what else he needs to know about me. We have the skills, connection, and emotion. I think we’re good.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

flyinfox...question for you?

Is it really true that divorce laws are unfair to men or is that a victimhood mentality?

 

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Understanding Islam

Here’s a great article from MSNBC.com

 

Understanding Islam

A best-selling religion writer explains why the West needs Muslims to maintain a strong and vital faith

Karen Armstrong: 'Islam does not preach violence'

           

By Karen Fragala

Newsweek Web Exclusive

updated 8:06 a.m. CT, Mon., Oct. 29, 2001

 

Oct. 29 - With 1.2 billion followers, Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion—but also its most misunderstood. Karen Armstrong, a scholar and former nun, tries to correct some of the stereotypes in her latest book, “Islam: A Short History.” One of her key arguments: that because fear feeds extremists, any sustained attack on terrorism must include Western efforts to cultivate a more accurate appreciation of Islam.

 

ARMSTRONG IS CURRENTLY a visiting scholar at Harvard and the author of nine books on religion. “Islam: A Short History” was originally released in 2000 but became a best seller in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. NEWSWEEK’s Karen Fragala spoke with the writer about the true meaning of jihad, the myth of the suicide bomber’s heavenly reward, and the prospects for democracy in the Middle East.

 

NEWSWEEK: Your book has been described as an attempt to lay to rest the picture of Islam as a violent, backward and insular tradition. What are the greatest misconceptions about the religion?

 

Karen Armstrong: Sadly, the events of Sept. 11 are going to confirm for many people a vision of Islam that is unjust. Islam does not preach violence, it does not preach vicious holy war, it certainly does not condone terror, suicide bombing or anything of that sort. Like all of the great world religions, it preaches compassion and justice, and that is why it has been a success.

 

The term “jihad” originally referred to the struggle required to be a devoted Muslim, but today it is more commonly used to denote a holy war waged for Allah. Why the shift?

 

The first major Muslim thinker to make jihad—meaning holy war—a central tenet of the faith was [a] Pakistani thinker, Mawdudi [in the late1800’s] and now Osama bin Laden has put jihad at the center of his campaign. That is a very new development in the Muslim world, to focus narrowly on jihad as holy war, and the media also reinforced this. Jihad is the struggle or effort that is pursued on all fronts—intellectual, spiritual, social, moral as well as political.

 

Do most Muslims today regard jihad, in the sense of holy war, as a central tenet of Islam.

 

No.

 

Have militant groups hijacked mainstream Islam?

 

That depends on a lot of factors. Only a small portion of the Muslim world are what we would call fundamentalists and only a tiny proportion take part in acts of terror.

 

The vast majority of Muslims loathe what happened on Sept. 11—it offends every tenet of their faith, but unfortunately, they still don’t like American foreign policy in that region. Muslims have got to make a huge effort now to enunciate more clearly than ever before the peaceful, pluralistic elements of their faith. Everybody’s got work to do now to make sure that those hijackers don’t hijack the religion.

 

Osama bin Laden has cast the U.S. attack against Afghanistan as a battle between the West and Islam. Are the two civilizations set on an inevitable collision course?

 

Islam does not preach violence, it does not preach vicious holy war, it certainly does not condone terror, suicide bombing or anything of that sort.

 

Well, no. Osama bin Laden talks about the Islamic world being divided into two camps, and all Muslims must choose which side they’re going to be on. Are they going to join him and his battle against the godless world, or are they going to join up with the evil forces in their own countries as well as in the West? His real quarrel with the West is that it supports a great deal of illegitimate regimes. He began his jihad against Saudi Arabia’s royal family, and he is also campaigning hard against Egypt’s secular rule, as well as Jordan and Iran. All extreme fundamentalism begins with an attack against your own people and your own co-religionists.

 

Should Muslim leaders be doing more to convince their followers that suicide and acts of terror are contrary to Islamic beliefs?

 

Yes. There are a few fundamentalist leaders who have supported suicide bombing in Israel, and that’s a real moral flaw, and they should all come out against that...What was remarkable immediately after the atrocity was the number of political leaders as well as religious leaders who did come out against it. Even states that we normally regard as terrorist, like Syria, Libya, Iran, all came out in horror, so what more can you say? It was a precious moment, and we must try not to antagonize this unlooked-for goodwill, which will happen if Afghan civilians die.

 

The democratic principles of social justice, compassion and egalitarianism are among the most basic doctrines of the Qu’ran. Yet most Islamic countries are anything but democratic. Why?

 

Democracy is part of the modernization process, but in the Islamic world, modernization is still at a fairly early stage and the majority of the population has not had the necessary education to understand modern political institutions. Looking back to the beginning of the 20th century, Muslim intellectuals were calling upon their own governments for democracy. In Iran, the progressive clergy joined with the more advanced secularists in a revolution that demanded the Shahs give them a constitution along modern lines with a parliament. Iran got its democratic institutions in 1906, but they were never allowed to function freely. The British kept rigging the elections. But [now] Iran is coming to democracy on its own terms, developing a Shiite democracy. They don’t want secular democracy, like the West, but they want their own democracy which comes in that familiar religious package that makes it more intelligible to the vast bulk of the population.

 

All Muslims, regardless of faction, oppose Israel and cite American support of the country as one of Washington’s fundamental affronts against Arab interests. Why has this issue in particular united Muslims across the barriers of state and doctrine?

 

In the Arab world, Israel has acquired this nimbus of symbolic value, an image of absolute Muslim impotence [against] the united powers of the West. It’s not that they had anything against the Jews when this happened—there is no tradition of anti-Semitism in the Arab world—they’ve had to borrow European anti-Semitic tracts to enunciate their new hatred. So you see the Arab Palestinians losing their homes, and 50 years of a world completely indifferent to the Palestinian issue. This has acquired the same kind of symbolic focus as evolution and abortion in the United States.

 

We’ve all heard that suicide bombers believe they will go straight to heaven and enjoy a paradise of milk and honey, with 72 beautiful virgins for every martyr. Is there any religious basis for this?

 

It is completely illegitimate. The Qu’ran and Islamic law forbid suicide in the strongest terms. You may not wage a war against a country where Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely. You may not kill children or women in any war. It’s a cheapened version of it to imagine these martyrs as thinking that they’re buying a first-class ticket to heaven where they’ll enjoy all of these virgins. Martyrdom is something done to you and you must never take anyone else with you. But what annoys me somewhat [is that] none of these questions were asked in 1995 after 8,000 Muslims were killed by Christian Serbs. We knew enough about Christianity that [we knew] to say that Christianity condoned the massacre was illegitimate. The trouble is that most Western people just don’t know enough about Islam to make that correct judgment.

 

Every major religion has its militant strains. But is there anything unique to Islam that would explain any aggression toward the West?

 

No...What those terrorists did shocked Muslims to the core and there is nothing in the Qu’ran that could justify this any more than you can say that Jesus would have wanted anybody to go and kill doctors and nurses who have worked in abortion clinics.

 

Many Muslims say that religion is more important than nationality. What are the chances of an insurrection by Muslim citizens of countries such as the U.S. and the U.K.?

 

I’ll tell you a story. The BBC rang me up a few years ago and asked me if I’d like to help them with a program about a guy who wanted to do this, and about the support he had among British Muslims, for setting up a separate Muslim parliament and a separate Muslim community not subscribing to the nation. They went off to do the research in Bradford, which is a center for the more extreme Muslims, and they came back in dismay, with their program in ruins because they had only been able to find one supporter [of the plan]. One or two people in Britain were similarly in the news saying they prefer Islam to the nation state, and of course, they got far more attention than they deserved. In America, I have been impressed by communities I have visited, in which they’re bringing up their children to be good Muslims and good Americans and want to create a bridge between the home countries and the West and say, look, it is possible.

 

One of the stereotypes of Islam is that it oppresses women. Is there precedent in the Muslim tradition for the way in which Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers require women to wear a head-to-toe burqa and forbid them from holding jobs or attending school?

 

No. [But] none of the great world religions have been good for women. And I’d include Christianity in that. These are male-dominated religions. But Muslim feminists are now speaking against this. The prophet Mohammed was very keen on the emancipation of women—and there is nothing in the Qu’ran to insist that all women must be veiled or secluded. The Muslim women in the first community often fought beside men in battle and in the early Muslim community, the prophet’s wives had immense political power.

 

Islamic history suggests a legacy of religious tolerance and Jerusalem experienced five centuries of relative peace under Muslim rule from 638 to 1099. What are the prospects for such religious harmony in the future, particularly in problematic areas such as Israel and Kashmir?

 

Rather bleak, I’m afraid. But not for religious reasons. The Qu’ran as well as the Jewish scriptures speak of honoring the stranger in your land and treating him as one of your own people. The Muslims had a system of coexistence in Jerusalem that would be unthinkable today. It was the Muslims who brought the Jews back to Jerusalem. They had never been allowed to take up permanent residence in Jerusalem under the Christians. Similarly, the importance of human rights, and the respect of all peoples is firmly in the Qu’ran, but it is politics that manipulate religion, and at the moment, the leadership in these places is not looking great on either side.

Update

Well, things are going well.

 

Mack brought me a car from Texas and it’s pretty nice. I would say it’s just about as nice as my old car, but it’s got some hail damage. It looks a lot like my old Honda. Many of the same features are present. But the best part – it gets over 32mpg. Bingo!

 

We continue to move toward the altar. I have to go and get my measurements done so he can order me an outfit to get married in from Pakistan. He loves the idea of me dressing like a Pakistani bride at our wedding, and I’m down with that. Basically I will just wear a salwar kameez. That is an outfit that basically is a long shirt going down to the knees or calves with side slits. It has long sleeves and hopefully a lot of embroidery. J It comes with matching pants. I might do mendi as well. Sometimes though, I long for a white cotton eyelet dress and the little veil thingy. Maybe one that looks like a ‘New Look’ dress by Dior, tea length. Those are strangely slimming, even if the skirt is huge and voluminous. J I know I said I wanted a small wedding, but now I’m kinda changing my mind!!! We better get married before it gets worse.

 

So I say to him, when do you want to do this? And he’s like, ‘Next week.’ And I’m like, ummm, ‘Next week?’ He must be joking…Right?

 

Next up is the ring. We’re kinda on a budget right now so we may wait on that. It sucks but it’s reality.

 

Dee is doing great, I think. Her latest personality quirk is stealing here and there. Crayons, money, necklaces. We’re working on it. I’m not sure quite what to do, as the traditional stuff doesn’t work for Dee.

 

I’m still in OA and have a new sponsoree, she’s great.

 

And in other news, I’m considering converting to Islam. I haven’t learned all I need to know yet, but it fits better with my conception of my relationship with a higher power -  a direct connection, and no weird beliefs that I can’t relate to like in Catholicism. It’s simple.

 

It is constantly amazing to me, however, how men, and I don’t mean humankind, will twist a religion. There is no reference in the Qur’an to women being veiled or secluded. God only states that both men and women need to cover their bodies and don’t be immodest. Certainly I have no right to criticize women who wish to cover themselves to that extent, good for them, but I don’t plan to. Of course I would respect the dress codes in a mosque, as I am not so arrogant as to need to make my own rules all the time, but in my daily life…nope.

 

The whole idea that women can control the minds of men with how they dress is ludicrous. Men are responsible for their own thoughts. While we should dress appropriately, it’s not my fault if a man can’t control his mind. Honestly, this idea paints men as stupid and unable to control themselves if a woman is present with ¾ or ½ sleeves, or hair showing! God forbid! That’s just stupid.

 

Anyway, I’m still thinking about it (conversion, that is, not covering myself like a corpse ready for burial). Mack of course would like that but he says I should do it for me, not him. He will still love me and marry me.

 

It also never fails to surprise me how deeply ingrained people’s attitudes toward people from other cultures are. Here’s a clue that might help someone, should I ever de-privatize my blog. If you’re dating someone from a patriarchal society, and the tribal areas of that nation are still backward as h*ll and frequently reported on by the press while ignoring mainstream citizens, don’t *ever* complain about issues in your relationship. The first thing anyone will hearken to is how your partner’s not looking for an equal relationship, how they obviously are misogynistic…but he’s still a great guy, they will say. He just has ‘mixed up ideas’. And this is from very educated people.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Today I am Grateful for...

1.     WD-40. Makes me feel proud as a woman that I can now adjust the height of the lawnmower without man-help.

2.     mowing the lawn last night. I love seeing that green patch of weeds that are chopped down to a lower height so they take on the appearance of grass from far away.

 

In other news, Mack brought a car back from Dallas for me. My Honda Accord has left and gone away, and it took with it its high interest car loan, car payments, and inflated insurance payments as well. This car may be cheap, it might be small, but it is mine and it comes with no interest, no car payments. Come tax season, I can get rid of it if I want. I may not want to though. The quilted look of the hail damage on it is not something I like but the engine is great. A little improper idling won’t kill me. Or the car. What can I expect? It’s eight years old. We’re lucky it has fairly low mileage for a car its age. It’s right on the average of 12K per year. Mack did good.