when I was 17 I was hanging out at a
skate park with my friends one day my
big brother was into bmxing at the time
and said we’d like hang around to flare
with his cute friends don’t judge me
everyone had a skater boy phase so I’m
at the skate park and I was sitting
perched up on a bench like tight jeans
on cue lil top hair flowing in the wind
I was I was feeling pretty good about
the situation but the skatepark also
happened to be next to our local mosque
and on this particular Friday
my dad had decided to stop by and say
hello after prayers you know what’s up
and as he walked into the skate park and
his head started to turn in my direction
by some miracle I’d spotted him first
and I took two huge leaps and I moved
faster than I have ever moved to date
and I jumped off the bench and douve
headfirst into the bush and as I was
lying in this bush and I was trembling
trying to catch my breath praying to God
that my dad hadn’t seen me because I
didn’t have my headscarf on the
headscarf that both my parents believed
I wore but more often than not I would
take off and hide in my bag the minute I
got around the corner of my house and I
was lying in this bush you know with
twigs in my face and mud in my mouth and
it occurred to me at that moment that
thousands of other girls and boys were
in the exact same situation as me not
necessarily hiding in a bush because
it’s ridiculous behavior but hiding
something or some part of their lives
from their parents and their muslim
communities and as we grew the things we
had changed
it went from hiding head scars in your
handbag to hiding boyfriend’s under the
bed
to creeping out to go clubbing or trying
to creep in drunk without ever letting
anyone know you were drunk we hid
miniskirts and revealing outfits in the
back of our wardrobes and tattoos and
parts of our bodies we hoped our parents
would never see sometimes we even hit
our own religion as bombs started
ricocheting around the world and Taliban
and Isis became synonymous with Islam
and Muslim and the hiding things isn’t
the problem
we all hide things from parents and
peers and colleagues I’ve never met a
single person who didn’t hide something
from their parents growing up admittedly
it might not have been a boyfriend under
the bed but they did hide things the
problem is why we feel compelled to hide
these things in the first place the
problem is we’ve created a world full of
types and binary individuals and we
expect everyone to exist solely within
the narrow confines of that type and if
they don’t they don’t have a place they
don’t belong and all any of us want is
to belong now types are all well and
good when you want to discover what type
of cake you like to eat or what type of
exercise you like to do but the minute
we apply types to people there’s no room
to breathe it’s the very same thing as
shoving them in a dark confined narrow
basement and expecting them to live out
their days it’s not healthy and it’s not
helpful the world we live in today has
given Muslims a type the aggressive type
the fanatically religious type the
terrorist type always a classic the
oppressed their women type and is
damning and terrible as that seems
what’s even worse is the type that we as
Muslims have enforced on ourselves the
religious type the good hijab’ type the
rebellious type the lost their religion
type we’re adding to an already
suffocating stereotype we’re shoving
ourselves in that dark narrow confined
basement we’re stunting our own growth
because
what happens when all those types begin
to mix what happens when the devout
hijab’ likes to go out and get drunk
every weekend or when the non veiled
woman goes to the rave sober what
happens when the man who prays in the
mosque every Friday goes out and sleeps
with multiple women in a week or when a
woman spends her day on the beach in a
bikini and comes home in a burqa what
happens then I can tell you from
experience that the result is the
biggest identity crisis you’ll ever face
in your life that’s what happens because
living in these arbitrary binary Xand
these one-dimensional characters isn’t
good for the soul by the way and as I’ve
been told many times mainly by my
therapist is you can’t exist in these
extreme highs and these devastating lows
there has to be a middle ground an
alternative story if you will now
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks about
this when she talks about the power of a
single story and she says show her
people as one thing over and over again
and that is what they become Muslims
have grown up with a foot in so many
different world yet they’ve only ever
been fed one story from both the outside
world and from within our own
communities and that’s dangerous single
stories are dangerous because no one is
immune from them and eventually you
start believing in them and because you
believe in them and buy into them you
start doing stupid things
for example many years ago I fell in
love with a white Yorkshire atheist boy
I mean she also knows she knows what’s
up his reality and experiences couldn’t
have been more different from my own and
yet we fell madly and hopelessly in love
with one another and three years of a
beautiful relationship ensued like a
real gorgeous trusting never for did
nothing but bloom with him type of
relationship the only cloud that hung
over our happily ever after was that I
was Muslim and he wasn’t which
incidentally is a pretty big cloud
somewhere in our consciousness permeated
the idea that we could never be together
I’d never heard of Muslim women marrying
non-muslim men I’d only ever known one
story to marry a Muslim a story that was
enforced by everyone that I knew the
auntie’s at the local mosque would say
marry who you want as long as he’s
Muslim my parents would be like bring
home everyone as long as he’s Muslim and
so in my desperate desire to meet the
crushing expectations of the Muslim
community and their single story I broke
my own heart
and his by diving straight into the arms
of a British Egyptian Muslim man I had
met he was just like me both Egyptian
both British both Muslim and over an
intense summer we fell in love and I I
began dreaming about our wedding both of
our Muslim families coming together and
how finally the struggle between the two
worlds was over there was no more
explaining why I had to go and pray or
explaining what my religion meant and
above all there was no more hiding here
was a boy that I could bring home to
meet my parents I was done I was a whole
entire I was complete
except as we all know any story in which
a woman says she’s complete on account
of a man is never going to end well
and naturally mine was no exception as
our relationship progressed over the
years it turned out he was exceptionally
abusive both physically and mentally
I remember him screaming at me one night
that I was a whore because I had been
with a man before him that he didn’t
know how he could had a woman like me be
the mother of his children and I so
desperate to fulfill this story and be
with a Muslim man I turned myself inside
and out for him I stopped talking to
some of my male friends I stopped
talking to my best friend
I replaced the kisses at the end of text
messages with a platonic smiley face
instead I drifted away from anything
that might irritate him I stayed up late
at night sewing up the middle of my
clothes because they showed too much
cleavage
to this day I have a real problem
showing any cleavage at all because it
has so long been associated with anger
it got worse as these things do and I
still still didn’t leave him still
desperate to fulfill this single story
still trapped by the hole that it had on
me eventually he left me he left me and
4 months later he was married married to
a Muslim woman who wore a headscarf
fulfilling his own stereotype on what he
thought Muslim men and women should be
and the problem with all of this is that
the single story I had been fed became
my reality and it forced me to turn
myself into someone I didn’t like or
recognize in an attempt to become what I
thought I was supposed to be and we have
to stop doing that because we have to be
able to look outside of those single
stories because
truth is muslims are all over the globe
and they are and always have been
multifaceted and layered and complex and
contradictory but now we have a new
generation of muslims who are refusing
to work in those limited extremes which
is not to say that we have a new
generation of Muslims that are not
religious there’s a big difference when
telling stories like my own people often
blame religion for getting centuries of
cultural implications and traditions
that have become tangled with theology
I’m often asked the question are you
religious mainly by men I’m on dates
with as they try to gauge just how far
their charm will get them that night or
if I’m out in a revealing dress baring
my flesh for the world to see they’ll
say you’re not like religious are you
as if religious is the right worst thing
to do okay I promise you there’s worse
afflictions and I always give it a
minute before responding may need to try
and pray for some kind of patience and I
think what do you mean and then they say
well you know you don’t pray or go to
church or whatever your version is cute
more praying for patience
divine intervention whichever one comes
first and I tell them well like I I do
pray every night and I go to mosque and
I fast once a year for a month and yeah
I’m pretty religious and then they tell
me well you don’t look like a Muslim
again more praying for patience and even
I realized that irony of praying for
patience while someone is trying to
determine just how religious you are and
I tell them well I used to wear a
headscarf because there was a period of
time when I wasn’t shoving it in my back
and I loved wearing it for six years
actually I told them that my mum wears
the headscarf and she doesn’t look
anything like me in the way that she
dresses and we’re both pretty religious
honestly I could I could write a book on
all the things I’ve been asked over the
years every time I present myself as
Muslim everything from whether I knew
Osama bin Laden to whether I know what
Isis are gonna do next
because naturally I’m involved in their
weekly strategy meetings or if I’m being
forced to have an arranged marriage and
you might laugh and think some people
are so stupid and you’re right except
this isn’t some people and they’re not
that stupid
they’ve merely been given access to one
type of Muslim and that’s all they know
and we’ve all had a hand in constructing
those types we’re all to blame because
the narrative are typically oppressed
Muslim appeals to the educated elite in
the Western world it keeps us all in
these manageable boxes and that
discourse in turn limits us in what we
can do on the other hand the saint or
sinner dichotomy is appealing to Muslims
because it means you don’t have to
navigate modernity and God because
actually figuring out how you take God
on your journey in a modern world is
hard and so we’ve avoided it altogether
and stayed in our own self-contained
boxes but the boxes have got to go
because multiple stories do exist and I
know this for I live them and I live
them with my peers it’s just we’re not
giving a voice to them so I’m asking you
to think again about what it means to be
Muslim today because the truth is we’re
all over the globe and we’re in hundreds
and thousands of stories
we’re the ones who partied every damn
night who got drunk and went to Moscow
hungover
we’re the ones who went on pilgrimage
and were drenched in worship
we’re the ones who hopped from bed to
bed and spoke to God about it the whole
time we’re the ones who wore head
scarves and veils and held on to our
virginity until the wedding night we’re
the ones who had abortions and babies
out of wedlock with the Muslim girls who
fell in love with girls and the Muslim
boys who fell in love with boys were the
ones who didn’t understand Isis either
with the ones who prayed with our
congregation and felt tears drip down
our faith as our souls soared on
spiritual journeys we could never quite
explain where all of them and we won’t
be your Saint your sinner or your
scapegoat we’ll just be us and we’ll
live in all of our stories whether the
world the media or the Muslim community
like it or not
we’ll be forever Muslim and that will
forever mean many many different things
and actually what a wonderful thing that
is thank you very much
[Applause]
skate park with my friends one day my
big brother was into bmxing at the time
and said we’d like hang around to flare
with his cute friends don’t judge me
everyone had a skater boy phase so I’m
at the skate park and I was sitting
perched up on a bench like tight jeans
on cue lil top hair flowing in the wind
I was I was feeling pretty good about
the situation but the skatepark also
happened to be next to our local mosque
and on this particular Friday
my dad had decided to stop by and say
hello after prayers you know what’s up
and as he walked into the skate park and
his head started to turn in my direction
by some miracle I’d spotted him first
and I took two huge leaps and I moved
faster than I have ever moved to date
and I jumped off the bench and douve
headfirst into the bush and as I was
lying in this bush and I was trembling
trying to catch my breath praying to God
that my dad hadn’t seen me because I
didn’t have my headscarf on the
headscarf that both my parents believed
I wore but more often than not I would
take off and hide in my bag the minute I
got around the corner of my house and I
was lying in this bush you know with
twigs in my face and mud in my mouth and
it occurred to me at that moment that
thousands of other girls and boys were
in the exact same situation as me not
necessarily hiding in a bush because
it’s ridiculous behavior but hiding
something or some part of their lives
from their parents and their muslim
communities and as we grew the things we
had changed
it went from hiding head scars in your
handbag to hiding boyfriend’s under the
bed
to creeping out to go clubbing or trying
to creep in drunk without ever letting
anyone know you were drunk we hid
miniskirts and revealing outfits in the
back of our wardrobes and tattoos and
parts of our bodies we hoped our parents
would never see sometimes we even hit
our own religion as bombs started
ricocheting around the world and Taliban
and Isis became synonymous with Islam
and Muslim and the hiding things isn’t
the problem
we all hide things from parents and
peers and colleagues I’ve never met a
single person who didn’t hide something
from their parents growing up admittedly
it might not have been a boyfriend under
the bed but they did hide things the
problem is why we feel compelled to hide
these things in the first place the
problem is we’ve created a world full of
types and binary individuals and we
expect everyone to exist solely within
the narrow confines of that type and if
they don’t they don’t have a place they
don’t belong and all any of us want is
to belong now types are all well and
good when you want to discover what type
of cake you like to eat or what type of
exercise you like to do but the minute
we apply types to people there’s no room
to breathe it’s the very same thing as
shoving them in a dark confined narrow
basement and expecting them to live out
their days it’s not healthy and it’s not
helpful the world we live in today has
given Muslims a type the aggressive type
the fanatically religious type the
terrorist type always a classic the
oppressed their women type and is
damning and terrible as that seems
what’s even worse is the type that we as
Muslims have enforced on ourselves the
religious type the good hijab’ type the
rebellious type the lost their religion
type we’re adding to an already
suffocating stereotype we’re shoving
ourselves in that dark narrow confined
basement we’re stunting our own growth
because
what happens when all those types begin
to mix what happens when the devout
hijab’ likes to go out and get drunk
every weekend or when the non veiled
woman goes to the rave sober what
happens when the man who prays in the
mosque every Friday goes out and sleeps
with multiple women in a week or when a
woman spends her day on the beach in a
bikini and comes home in a burqa what
happens then I can tell you from
experience that the result is the
biggest identity crisis you’ll ever face
in your life that’s what happens because
living in these arbitrary binary Xand
these one-dimensional characters isn’t
good for the soul by the way and as I’ve
been told many times mainly by my
therapist is you can’t exist in these
extreme highs and these devastating lows
there has to be a middle ground an
alternative story if you will now
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks about
this when she talks about the power of a
single story and she says show her
people as one thing over and over again
and that is what they become Muslims
have grown up with a foot in so many
different world yet they’ve only ever
been fed one story from both the outside
world and from within our own
communities and that’s dangerous single
stories are dangerous because no one is
immune from them and eventually you
start believing in them and because you
believe in them and buy into them you
start doing stupid things
for example many years ago I fell in
love with a white Yorkshire atheist boy
I mean she also knows she knows what’s
up his reality and experiences couldn’t
have been more different from my own and
yet we fell madly and hopelessly in love
with one another and three years of a
beautiful relationship ensued like a
real gorgeous trusting never for did
nothing but bloom with him type of
relationship the only cloud that hung
over our happily ever after was that I
was Muslim and he wasn’t which
incidentally is a pretty big cloud
somewhere in our consciousness permeated
the idea that we could never be together
I’d never heard of Muslim women marrying
non-muslim men I’d only ever known one
story to marry a Muslim a story that was
enforced by everyone that I knew the
auntie’s at the local mosque would say
marry who you want as long as he’s
Muslim my parents would be like bring
home everyone as long as he’s Muslim and
so in my desperate desire to meet the
crushing expectations of the Muslim
community and their single story I broke
my own heart
and his by diving straight into the arms
of a British Egyptian Muslim man I had
met he was just like me both Egyptian
both British both Muslim and over an
intense summer we fell in love and I I
began dreaming about our wedding both of
our Muslim families coming together and
how finally the struggle between the two
worlds was over there was no more
explaining why I had to go and pray or
explaining what my religion meant and
above all there was no more hiding here
was a boy that I could bring home to
meet my parents I was done I was a whole
entire I was complete
except as we all know any story in which
a woman says she’s complete on account
of a man is never going to end well
and naturally mine was no exception as
our relationship progressed over the
years it turned out he was exceptionally
abusive both physically and mentally
I remember him screaming at me one night
that I was a whore because I had been
with a man before him that he didn’t
know how he could had a woman like me be
the mother of his children and I so
desperate to fulfill this story and be
with a Muslim man I turned myself inside
and out for him I stopped talking to
some of my male friends I stopped
talking to my best friend
I replaced the kisses at the end of text
messages with a platonic smiley face
instead I drifted away from anything
that might irritate him I stayed up late
at night sewing up the middle of my
clothes because they showed too much
cleavage
to this day I have a real problem
showing any cleavage at all because it
has so long been associated with anger
it got worse as these things do and I
still still didn’t leave him still
desperate to fulfill this single story
still trapped by the hole that it had on
me eventually he left me he left me and
4 months later he was married married to
a Muslim woman who wore a headscarf
fulfilling his own stereotype on what he
thought Muslim men and women should be
and the problem with all of this is that
the single story I had been fed became
my reality and it forced me to turn
myself into someone I didn’t like or
recognize in an attempt to become what I
thought I was supposed to be and we have
to stop doing that because we have to be
able to look outside of those single
stories because
truth is muslims are all over the globe
and they are and always have been
multifaceted and layered and complex and
contradictory but now we have a new
generation of muslims who are refusing
to work in those limited extremes which
is not to say that we have a new
generation of Muslims that are not
religious there’s a big difference when
telling stories like my own people often
blame religion for getting centuries of
cultural implications and traditions
that have become tangled with theology
I’m often asked the question are you
religious mainly by men I’m on dates
with as they try to gauge just how far
their charm will get them that night or
if I’m out in a revealing dress baring
my flesh for the world to see they’ll
say you’re not like religious are you
as if religious is the right worst thing
to do okay I promise you there’s worse
afflictions and I always give it a
minute before responding may need to try
and pray for some kind of patience and I
think what do you mean and then they say
well you know you don’t pray or go to
church or whatever your version is cute
more praying for patience
divine intervention whichever one comes
first and I tell them well like I I do
pray every night and I go to mosque and
I fast once a year for a month and yeah
I’m pretty religious and then they tell
me well you don’t look like a Muslim
again more praying for patience and even
I realized that irony of praying for
patience while someone is trying to
determine just how religious you are and
I tell them well I used to wear a
headscarf because there was a period of
time when I wasn’t shoving it in my back
and I loved wearing it for six years
actually I told them that my mum wears
the headscarf and she doesn’t look
anything like me in the way that she
dresses and we’re both pretty religious
honestly I could I could write a book on
all the things I’ve been asked over the
years every time I present myself as
Muslim everything from whether I knew
Osama bin Laden to whether I know what
Isis are gonna do next
because naturally I’m involved in their
weekly strategy meetings or if I’m being
forced to have an arranged marriage and
you might laugh and think some people
are so stupid and you’re right except
this isn’t some people and they’re not
that stupid
they’ve merely been given access to one
type of Muslim and that’s all they know
and we’ve all had a hand in constructing
those types we’re all to blame because
the narrative are typically oppressed
Muslim appeals to the educated elite in
the Western world it keeps us all in
these manageable boxes and that
discourse in turn limits us in what we
can do on the other hand the saint or
sinner dichotomy is appealing to Muslims
because it means you don’t have to
navigate modernity and God because
actually figuring out how you take God
on your journey in a modern world is
hard and so we’ve avoided it altogether
and stayed in our own self-contained
boxes but the boxes have got to go
because multiple stories do exist and I
know this for I live them and I live
them with my peers it’s just we’re not
giving a voice to them so I’m asking you
to think again about what it means to be
Muslim today because the truth is we’re
all over the globe and we’re in hundreds
and thousands of stories
we’re the ones who partied every damn
night who got drunk and went to Moscow
hungover
we’re the ones who went on pilgrimage
and were drenched in worship
we’re the ones who hopped from bed to
bed and spoke to God about it the whole
time we’re the ones who wore head
scarves and veils and held on to our
virginity until the wedding night we’re
the ones who had abortions and babies
out of wedlock with the Muslim girls who
fell in love with girls and the Muslim
boys who fell in love with boys were the
ones who didn’t understand Isis either
with the ones who prayed with our
congregation and felt tears drip down
our faith as our souls soared on
spiritual journeys we could never quite
explain where all of them and we won’t
be your Saint your sinner or your
scapegoat we’ll just be us and we’ll
live in all of our stories whether the
world the media or the Muslim community
like it or not
we’ll be forever Muslim and that will
forever mean many many different things
and actually what a wonderful thing that
is thank you very much
[Applause]
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