Oct 22, 2004
Jihad.
It's been a week. Results mixed at best.
Being a female (particularly a female raised in the U.S., though that part's not as crucial as it used to be), I'm discovering how hard it is for me to think of food in terms of moderation. I've never had an eating disorder, though I've been told I "eat disorderly" — never cooking, forgetting lunch, then suddenly realizing I'm ravenously hungry come late afternoon and need to skip class in order to find a taco before I die. But my relationship with food, as well as all the other things I'm supposed to be avoiding during daylight hours, is pretty black and white: something is either Good For Me or it's a shameful indulgence. Thinking of salad and broccoli at noon as "bad," while potato chips are okay as long as I wait until it's dark outside, is all sorts of mixed-up and backwards for me. (Yes, I know, ideally this should be a time when I lose the chips as well. But I need an illustrative example, so work with me here.)
I really do like this aspect of Islam, though, and the way that attitude permeated Middle Eastern culture was one of my favorite parts of living there. "There is nothing shameful about appetite and desire, so long as they can be channeled productively. Control over our instincts is what separates us from the animals." That kind of thing.
Then why is it so hard for me to put it into practice? That much eludes me. Well, except for all of the obvious reasons. Like the fact that I'm weak.
I remember being at my dad's a couple years ago and watching his dog run around, tongue hanging out, knocking over flowerpots and tramping through the garden, then suddenly stop, in the middle of the yard, to enthusiastically lick his nuts. "Whatever Islam is," I remember thinking, "it's the opposite of that."
I think one of the reasons I loath the folks who argue so strenuously about following the most obscure hadiths right down to the letter is that they seem like the opposite of the same nut-licking coin. It's not so much that I take issue with their conclusions, but that ultimately I see their zealotry as coarse, undignified.
But I'm not one to talk. The freedom to worry about the use of the right hand verses the left or how many times one knocks on a door before entering or if the pan that cooks your lamb at a restaurant was once used to make bacon are things you don't start thinking about until you've got your five pillars covered, and I am so not there yet.
