I have always been at home during this month and my mom and I were always together during Sehri and Iftar time. About 3 years ago, I finally told my parents I was agnostic and didn’t believe in Islam. During that same period, my dad announced he didn’t believe in God and that left my mom being the only practicing Muslim in our house. When Ramadan came she would have to do everything alone and in order for my mom to feel supported, I used to wake up with her at Sehri time and also was with her during Iftar. We talked, ate and just enjoyed this bonding time together.

This is the first Ramadan we are spending apart, I am in New York City and she is in Karachi, Pakistan, and it is an emotional moment for the both of us. Given the time we live in, I can still be a part of my mom’s fasting routine by joining her for Sehri and Iftar through the screen. The time difference between Karachi and NYC is 9 hours. Sehri time in Pakistan starts around 4am which is 7 p.m. in NYC and Iftar time is at 7pm there and that’s 10 a.m. here.  I have tried to document her observing Ramadan while I support her and eat my normal food with her through Zoom video call.

Her usual Sehri is really healthy. So she starts her day with copious amounts of coffee, she alternates between cereal or peanut butter sandwiches. This is a shift from usual Sehri foods being parathas and eggs. She likes having a light healthy Sehri to keep her active throughout the day.

For Iftar, she usually loves fruits and dahi baray but also sometimes makes samosas and pakoray, which are really common during Iftar back home.

I, on the other hand, am between places and all of my cookware is packed. So, most of my meals are takeaways and deliveries or just snacks.

A few days ago she told me “I was feeling sad when I thought about Ramadan but my fasts have been so easy and pleasant because of you”. Hearing her say that made my day.

April 24, 2020 – First Sehri of the month. Mom: Cereal and peanut butter sandwich, Me: Rice Krispies Treats and a Nutella sandwich. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 25, 2020 – First Iftar of the month. Mom: Samosas, Me: Cream Cheese Bagel. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 25, 2020 – Second Sehri of the month. Mom: offers Tarawih. Me: channa masala and rice with Pepsi. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 25, 2020 – Second Sehri of the month. Mom: Coffee in her favourite Starbucks mug, Me: channa masala and rice with pepsi. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 26, 2020 – Second Iftar of the month. Mom: Dates, fruits and pakoray. Me: Bagel with egg and cheese. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 26, 2020 – Second Iftar of the month. Mom: Pours Sprite. Me: Bagel with egg and cheese. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 26, 2020 – Third Sehri of the month. Mom: Cereal, coffee and butter. Me: chicken tikka and rice. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 27, 2020 – Fourth Sehri of the month. Mom: offers Tarawih. Me: Mcdonald’s egg Mcmuffin. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 27, 2020 – Fourth Sehri of the month. Mom: Coffee. Me: Mcdonald’s egg Mcmuffin. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

April 28, 2020 – Fourth Iftar of the month. Mom: Dates, fruits, dahi baray and cat food for my cat. Me: Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked. Photo by Maznah Shehzad

This is a project of  Lori Grinker’s  NYU graduate photojournalism class.

The post Miss you, mom: Spending Ramadan together through a screen appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

K had to make an impossible decision. Be gay or be Muslim.

But to be out and Muslim is dangerous, both for K and  her family back home in Saudi Arabia. When she returns home a in a few years, being out of the closet could land her in jail or cost her life.

K is a Sunni Muslim and her family follows Sharia Law, which puts adultery and homosexuality in the same category with the same punishment –  death.

“I’m usually terrified about that,” said K. “If I’m outside of the country, like I am right now, I’m untouchable. So technically if anything goes wrong they can’t do anything until I’m back in the

borders.”

K can not be identified in this story because it could harm her family back home or she could be harmed if or when she returns home.

She keeps up a facade of intimacy with her family because she knows that they will not accept her sexuality.

“They’ll blame America,” K said. “They’ll blame themselves. They’ll blame me. They won’t believe it. They will deny, deny, deny.”

For gay Muslims like K, America is a chance for them to be their true selves.

U.S. Muslims are more supportive of homosexuality. A Pew Research poll found that 52 percent say homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Organizations like Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) supports gay muslims so they do not have to choose between their sexuality and their religion.

“Our work is basically to create an environment where we challenge the Muslim majority population to think critically and to do that within the context of Islam,”  said Ani Zonneveld, the founder of MPV.

Their vision is not solely for the LGBT Muslim community in the United States, but they are strong advocates for inclusivity, human rights and social justice in Muslim-majority countries.

“In those countries, we don’t do LGBT work necessarily,” Zonneveld said. “We do more on women and girls work and also on freedom of religion and belief and on inclusiveness. And so when we promote the idea of inclusivity, that means being compassionate and loving to everyone, it includes everyone which includes LGBT people.”

According to a 2017 Pew Research study the majority of the U.S. Muslim community is still conservative in their approach to LGBT relationships. But the same study says six in 10 Muslim millennials support homosexuality. Despite this, Zondeveld said coming out in a Muslim family could “work against your freedom” as gay Muslims  can be forced into marriage, receive death threats or suffer physical violence.

K goes to college in New York City, which has one of the largest LGBT populations in the world. There she is an out lesbian studying pre-med. She smokes cigarettes. She doesn’t attend any religious institution. She does not share her religious upbringing with her peers openly. She’s outspoken and opinionated, but not headstrong. She chooses to not wear a hijab. She has a unique style, modest but a cross between vintage and punk.

K knew from a young age that she was attracted to women. She first heard of homosexuality in fourth grade and from there began to understand her attractions and the upward battle she would face dealing with society’s disapproval.

“We were raised to think it was wrong,” K said. “So, it was just a matter of how much I wanted to admit it to myself. How much did I want to admit that I was risking a lot, you know?”

Ani Zonneveld, the director of Muslims for Progressive Values.

Zonneveld believes it is the responsibility of Muslims to be critical of religious leaders and to read passages critically and to offer counter narratives. One such example of critically reading the Qur’an is with the story of Sodom which is also in the Bible.

Sodom was an ancient town known for its violence and, most notably, for the attempted gang rape of visitors as found in the story of Lot. As the men of the town came to Lot’s door to gang rape his guests, God rescued Lot; fire rained down and destroyed the city. According to K, this story helps define the conservative Islamic belief of homosexuality.

“It goes back to it and saying those people all burned,” K said. “And this is what’s going to happen to you guys. It’s illegal. It’s wrong. You get killed for it.”

Zonneveld and MPV believe this story has been misinterpreted.

“The city folk were not adhering to the prophet’s teachings of welcoming strangers,” said Zonneveld. “It was about sexual violence because their sexual violence was on women as well as men and children. So, it’s very convenient to demonize LGBT people from that story just because of a particular forced sexual violence against men by men. But that’s not the case. So, it is a twisted interpretation of the story.”

MPV also disagrees with the notion that K would need to choose between being gay and being Muslim. Zonneveld called it “bastardization of the interpretation of Islam.”

“And unfortunately, this is the norm,” Zonneveld said. “This is moderated by Saudi Arabia.”

MPV has a vision to bring more religious leaders to their side of the argument.

“The intention is for us to be able to get mosque and religious leaders to do away with the homophobic teaching,” said Zonneveld. “If we could do that where we are, we would do good for the future, for the next generation of LGBT Muslims.”

For K, the future is less hopeful. She said she will not come out to her family.

“The question is if I ever fall in love with a girl here,” K said. “But I ruin my life and marry her because I could. I technically could marry someone here and then it obviously will not be approved back home.”

K also worries about her family in Saudi Arabia if she were publicly out, she suspects the government would begin looking for legally punishable faults or sins in her family.

“The entire family would be under (investigation),” said K. “Like the government would keep a special eye on all of us.”

K also had a strong aversion to groups like MPV. Her opinion underscores her fear of Saudi Arabia’s governmental reach.

“I wouldn’t go,” K said. “Because I am literally built to assume that that is a death statement. That is a place of no return. You’re gonna go there? It’s actually a trap and the government.”

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A crowd of hundreds gathered in Midtown with floats, rhythmic chanting, and the flags of over a dozen countries to celebrate the 33rd annual Muslim Day Parade this afternoon.  

Muslims say this yearly tradition is a way for them to come together and speak with one voice, to assert themselves in an often inhospitable political climate, and to relay their message to a wider audience.

For Mohammad Malik of Staten Island, this year’s march was his first, and he welcomed the opportunity to stand in solidarity with his community.

“The parade shows the unity of all Muslim ummah [community] in the United States and all over the country, and all over the world,” Malik said. “That we are united, that we convey the message of our prophet Muhammad,the message is peace.”

Malik, a 38-year resident of the United States, extolled his “awesome” experiences in this country, as well as his belief that the world belongs to every human being equally.

Before the procession began in earnest, there was a prayer session. The participants clustered on a long stretch of blue tarp to pay their respects. After that, the assemblage proceeded south down Madison Avenue from 38th Street.

The long tradition of the parade in the city has shaped the upbringing of many of New York’s younger residents. Farwah Tahir, a young woman from Long Island, has participated in the marches for a decade, ever since her childhood. For her, the parade is a fixture that brings New York Muslims together to enjoy themselves.

“It’s a way to unify,” Tahir said. “You meet new people from the community. Different ethnicities and different races, we all just come together.”

For the organizers of the Muslim Day Parade, the event forms one part of a larger strategy to enhance their community’s political engagement. A survey from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 255,000 Muslims live in New York, around 3 percent of the city’s total population.

Properly mobilized, this constituency could prove effective in the political arena, they said. The organization website credits this kind of participation for the 2015 decision to recognize two Muslim holidays in public schools. To build on such successes, the organizers also touted the parade as an opportunity to help attendees register to vote and to learn more about civic responsibility.

The mood at this year’s parade was resolute and optimistic. Tahir Mian of Long Island has attended every year going back to 1985, and to him, there is no question that the community’s message is steadily winning through. He admitted that the parade “has its ups and downs,” but he expected a strong turnout this year.  

Mian stressed the point that as much as the parade offers an opportunity for New York Muslims to meet and engage with each other, it also provides them greater exposure in the city as a whole. More than anything, the progress on this front made him hopeful for the future.

“Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of local Christians, Jews, other people come to the parade,” Mian said. “People are getting more interested in it. People just want to see what it is. What’s the difference? We’re all children of Adam, we follow the religion of Abraham. This is the whole purpose of this parade.”

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In New York’s Foley Square, Muslims, Jews, Christians and people not affiliated with any religion, came together tonight to rally for “No Muslim Ban Ever.” But behind their prayers and lamp-lit banners was so much more than just a policy protest.

“There’s that sickness of bigotry of thinking that you can keep somebody out,” said Rabbi Marisa Elena James at the Lower Manhattan protest. “Nobody is immune to being drawn into a hateful ideology.”

It’s three days before the latest Muslim Ban is expected to take effect.  The executive order prohibits travel to the US from six Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Chad, North Korea and Venezuela were added to the list, while Sudan was removed.

Muslims living in the US are fighting a double battle, nationally, to secure their life and protect it from islamophobia, and internationally, in their country of origin, which is, in many cases, shaken by violence, conflict and terrorism by extremists of their very own religion.

The pattern the protestors see of prejudice towards Muslims is destruction on many levels.

“It’s counterproductive, because it alienates the only people who, if one really wanted to fight terrorism, you could turn to,” said Priscilla Read of the Westchester Coalition Against Islamophobia.

Today, Somalia was hit by one of the most lethal terrorist attacks of its history when a truck bomb in the country’s capital, Mogadisciu, caused more than 500 casualties.

Fadumo Osman, 21, student and President of the College Democrats at NYU holding up a banner at the No Muslim Ban rally in Foley Square. Photo by Stella Levantesi

Fadumo Osman, 21, the President of the College Democrats at NYU, is the daughter of Somali refugees who came to the US with nothing.

“I grew up in a post 9/11 world where I was viewed differently just because I wore a hijab in high school,” said Osman. “Now, my people are getting killed on their own land by those terrorists that a lot of people in this country are accusing them to be.”

For some, the ban is a reflection of the tendency to attach Muslims to the stigma of terrorism.

For others, national security prevails over human rights.

“This isn’t even a ban, it’s so people can be vetted properly, it’s not targeting Muslims,” said Karen Braun, a Trump supporter from New York. “There are two non-Muslim countries involved. This is the objective, to stop terrorists from coming in.”

A Trump supporter in the background is being covered by a “No Muslim Ban Ever” activist at the No Muslim Ban rally in Foley Square, New York today. Photo by Stella Levantesi

For the activists of the mobilization however, the presence of two non-Muslim countries in the ban doesn’t invalidate its intrinsic anti-Muslim motive.

“This is a Muslim ban, regardless of other non-Muslim countries involved,” said Osman. “Beyond that, there’s a very deep, rooted issue when it comes to white supremacy, when it comes to what it means to make America great again.”

But today’s mobilization wasn’t only about a national conversation.

The crowd holding up their banners at the No Muslim Ban rally in Foley Square, New York today. Photo by Stella Levantesi

In Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims are being inhumanely tortured by the country’s military; villages are ravaged and burnt, children are set on fire, women are raped, gang-raped. The mass persecution has forced an exodus from their homeland to Bangladesh, a predominantly Islamic country.

“It’s ethnic cleansing,” said Begum Hosheara, a Bangladeshi woman who moved to the US 21 years ago.  “They’re killing people, piling them up in open pits, covering them with petrol and burning them. They’re cutting people’s limbs, women’s breasts and letting them die.”

Amnesty International has accused Myanmar of crimes against humanity, but critics wonder if international law terminology makes a difference.

“I can’t sleep at night,” Hosheara said. “My nephew is in Bangladesh and sent me a video of a desperate man shouting ‘If they want to kill us, just send us a bomb and kill us all together’.”

Since August 25^th, more than 400,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar and are now refugees living in barbaric conditions with nothing, often gravely injured and mourning the atrocious deaths in their families.

“These people are powerless, they have no voice, they are getting killed only because of their ethnicity, only because they’re Muslim,” said Begum. “We need to forget about religion, we need to be human again.”

Protestors said in the US, Trump’s policies have created a vicious cycle.

“The terroristic acts that are committed by Islamic extremists are being instrumentalized,” said Read. “For example, 9/11 fit perfectly into a neo-conservative framework and now we’ve got people absolutely terrified all the time.”

According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, 75 percent of respondents said, Muslims face a lot of discrimination in the US. Only 3 percent said it is easier.

A small peace sign being held up at the No Muslim Ban rally in Foley Square, New York today. Photo by Stella Levantesi

The fear of being vulnerable to verbal or physical assaults is so high, some Muslims said they avoid reporting acts of hate towards them.

“One day I saw two girls push an old Muslim lady into the street, she risked being run over by a car,” said Begum. “‘She can’t wear this dress [the hijab] here’, the girls said. “Before, when anything happened we could call the police and report, but now we’re scared of being found and attacked again.”

But Osman said the twilight-lit crowd reminded people of hope.

“The thing that has kept me going is solidarity, in the form of showing up physically,” she said. “Just seeing you guys out here, reminds me that I shouldn’t give up.”

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In the wake of the election, hate crimes against numerous religious, racial and gender groups have surged — with Muslim-Americans often facing the biggest brunt of the rise.

“Hate crimes have been steadily increasing as the political rhetoric has turned to divisive speech in the election,” said Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group which monitors hate against Muslims.

In the first 10 days following the election, nearly 900 incidents of hate were reported to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit.

In November, the FBI released its annual hate crimes report — the most thorough and widespread compilation of hate crimes nationwide — which noted a 6 percent increase in hate crimes in 2015.

While attacks on Jews made up the largest number of crimes based on religion, attacks on Muslims surged 67 percent, the largest increase over the one-year period.

The report gives context, but provides an incomplete picture as local agencies are not always reporting their hate crimes to the FBI, said Madihha Ahussain, a staff attorney at Oakland-based Muslim Advocates, which assists victims of anti-Muslim acts in understanding their legal rights.

“Law enforcement at the local level are actually not mandated to report — it’s all volunteer reporting,” Ahussain said. “And there’s a number of cities that choose not to report, or they will report zero. It’s hard to believe that as many cities that report zero actually had zero hate crimes.”

New York City may be a multicultural melting pot with residents coming from all corners of the world, but it hasn’t been immune from attacks on Muslims.

One day after the election, New York University had the Muslim prayer room in the engineering building vandalized with the words “Trump.”

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn resident Zainab Ismail believes her appearance as a hijab-wearing Muslim resulted in harassment on the part of NYPD officers in her neighborhood on Nov. 11.

Ismail claims she was parked in her car when she got out to walk to the gym and noticed that two police cars were double-parked two spaces behind her car.

“Then I saw a police officer, talking into his walkie talkie, stare right at me,” Ismail said. Two officers approached Ismail and asked if they could speak with her.

Ismail was informed that someone had called 911 and reported her as a “suspicious person” getting in-and-out of her car. Ismail was incredulous — she had gotten out of her car just once to make sure her vehicle wasn’t blocking a driveway, she told them.

Over the following several minutes, Ismail said she was asked to provide multiple forms of identification, asked for old utility bills to prove she lived where she said she lived and was informed by the officers that they had doubts about parts of her story before they let her go.

After reaching out to Council on American-Islamic Relations-NY, Ismail chose to file a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is tasked with investigating complaints about the New York City police.

“I did not record audio or video of my incident, so it’s really going to come down to my word against theirs’,” Ismail said. “However, with a full investigation, it will still leave a statistic.”

Though national data on hate crimes indicates an upward trend in recent months, Nasher believes the statistics represent only a small fraction of what actually occurs.

“When I go to do educational workshops,” she said, “almost always, I’ll will have a line of people who will talk to me after the workshop is done. And one-by-one, I’ll start hearing stories: ‘Do you know what happened to me? Do you know what happened to my kid?’

“And every single time, I’ll ask, ‘Did you report it?” Nasher said. “And the answer is, probably, 80 percent ‘no.’

“It’s really a two-way battle,” Nasher said. “There’s this severe underreporting within the community, which is something we are pushing to change; and then, there’s also the other side of it, and that is, in order to be categorized as a hate crime, it has to meet a certain criteria.”

Because of the high legal bar to clear for a successful prosecution under the federal hate crime law, Ahussain said the most typical successful prosecution generally involves vandalism, for instance, anti-semitic graffiti on a synagogue.

Muslim-Americans will have to be proactive in trying to break stereotypes about their community, Nasher said.

“I think it’s time for Muslim parents to wake up and understand what is going on around them and how it affects an entire generation of young people who were born after 9/11,”she said. “For a long time, African-American parents always had discussions — especially with their young, black, male youth — about walking down the wrong street while being black. I don’t want to make a parallel, because the African-American experience and what shaped it, is very unique.”

Nashar has a message for all children, be careful and be proud.

“Don’t let outside belittle you in a way that’s going to make you less observant in your faith, less true to who you are,” she said.”

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Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, which was led by Islamic terrorists, the city’s Muslim community continues to deal with discrimination and hatred.

“I’ve been “jokingly” called a terrorist,” Tahseen Rabbi, a video producer from Briarwood, Queens said.

With nearly one million Muslims, New York is reportedly among the states with the highest Muslim population. Despite the city’s high Muslim population, Rabbi, a lively and bubbly Bangladeshi woman who describes herself as a “very liberal Muslim”, and many others have failed to escape the shadow of the 9/11 attacks.

“Ever since 9/11, there has been a stigma attached to the religion,” Shadman Ahmed, 21, a senior at Saint John’s University in Fresh Meadows, Queens said. “Muslims are now automatically associated with a lot of negativity.”

The presidential election has only bought more scorn towards the community. Republican candidate Donald Trump has been openly critical of Muslim immigration.

Rafat Ashraf Khalaf, a junior at New York University, whose family immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island in 1912, recently faced discrimination by a cyber-bully online.

“When you analyze this election and the rhetoric that is thrown around, the situation continues to exacerbate,” Khalaf said. “I have personally received a bunch of hateful messages, mostly through the Internet. A guy … messaged me on Facebook and said, “F. OFF and go back to your country. Leave.”

In the days following the attacks, many leaders encouraged Americans not to blame the Muslim community for attacks. But lately the media is filled with threats of deportation. The recurrent attacks in France, the shootings in California and Florida and the rise of the terrorist organization ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) have again made local Muslim targets of American anger.

“A lot of people really don’t know anything about Islam, only what they see on the news,” Khalaf said. “So when the only thing they hear about is a bombing by someone who claims to be Muslim, that is going to only negatively impact their perception of Muslims as a whole.”

These negative labels have confusioned some Muslims like, Afraz Khan, 21, a student at New York University.

“I am at a point now that if I see someone who has a large beard, rather than seeing that as a mark of their faith or seeing it as someone I can trust or someone who is part of my community, I am more in a doubt that proud,” Khan said.

The negative press has led Afraz Khan,21 an NYU student to be fearful of his community. Photo by Lisa Seyton

Despite the negativity surrounding his religion, Khan believes better days are ahead.

“I think people are becoming more willing to learn about and understand one another,” Khan said.

Sakim Alam, a Bangladeshi pharmacist at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, Queens, was in fourth grade when the 9/11 attacks occurred. While he feared the repercussion of the attacks on Muslims, today Alam sees it as a good opportunity to educate people.

“Instead of feeling offended, we, Muslims should educate the public on the proper/peaceful teachings of Islam through words and examples,” said Alam. “Yes, there is racism and prejudice everywhere, but all of that will change when we show the world that we are the same as everyone else.”

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