My Journey from Small Town Girl to Niqabi

Assalamu Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu.

This is kind of hard for me to write, only because I’m not sure how to start. Well, here goes… Forgive me if it seems a little all over the place.

I’ve been tossing the idea of blogging my story and experiences for some time but I was finally convinced to actually do it by a good friend and fellow Sister (thanks, Aisha).

I’m a 32 year old wife and mother of two, a student at the University of Oklahoma and an assistant manager of a convenient store in town. I’m an American, born and raised in small town Oklahoma by my white and Native American parents. I’m also Muslim, which a lot of my friends and family know. I ‘reverted’ as we call it on May 14, 2012 after a dear friend of mine passed away (more on that later).

Here’s some back story on where I came from. Growing up, my hometown was the biggest in the county, about 15 minutes south of Kansas, of around 30,000 residents. It’s probably slightly less than that now. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else, and racial/ethnic and religious diversity was pretty much at a minimum. The remnants of what had been established during segregation were still visible and tolerance for anyone NOT white and some kind of Christian only lasted as long as the person in question was in front of you, and that was in the mid-late 90s. Small town closed-mindedness at its finest. Sure, not everyone was so shut off from one group or the other but it was definitely evident. The kids knew we didn’t go *here* after dark and we didn’t go *here* EVER.

The racial break down was white, Native American, African American, and then the random and sporadic Asian or Indian family. I only ever saw three middle eastern people in town in my whole 28 years of living there; one was the local pediatrician and his family, and two were kids with parents in the oil and gas industry that had been moved to town for their work (they didn’t stay more than a couple of years into high school. I assume that it was the job that caused them to move but I also suspect it might have had a little to do with the lack of religious options in town as well).

Luckily for me, my parents taught us about respecting others, learning about a person before passing judgements and tolerance to the fact that not everyone is going to be, act, look or do the same as we were and to accept their differences as that. We aren’t the same and if we were, life would be really boring (thanks mom and daddy).

We just accepted that even though my family wasn’t particularly religious, we knew others were and we accepted that Saturday night sleep overs meant church on Sunday mornings and that was fine with us.

So how was it that I came to accept Islaam? Well, over the years of sleep overs and trips to this church or that church, somehow I managed to either never stay with any friends who were Jewish, or the Jewish synagogue was only there for show, but that’s the only religious establishment I have only ever driven past in my home town. I went to Sunday school after Sunday school followed immediately by “big church” where my friends and I were probably too young to really understand the message of the day but I never felt like any of them were where I belonged.

Islaam wasn’t ever spoken of, I had never seen a sister with in a hijab and I much like the majority of small town, mostly rural white America, you only know what you see or read on the news (the internet wasn’t that big yet) so past what was shown of Operation Desert Storm, you can imagine the knowledge base that many in the community had on the subject. I tried to follow my mom and sisters’ into Wicca and paganism but it never felt right either. I wanted a place to belong, but my options there had been used up to no avail. It took moving to a metro area, enrolling at a major university and working down the street from campus to see that there was actually something else that I could try.

To be continued..