Ginny’s Thoughts & Things

Assalamu alaikum, reading this Post fromt he SunniSister blog got me to thinking. I’ve often thought that some aspects of my experience of being blind in a predominantly sighted world did much to prepare me for life as a Muslim woman.

Before becoming a Muslim, I had to deal with being “different” and having that difference instantly noticeable the minute I walked into a room, or the moment anyone saw me. Even if I didn’t have a cane with me, the fact that my eyes didn’t focus properly, or because I had to hold onto someone’s arm when I went into an unfamiliar place, made me instantly recognizable as blind and thus “different”. I was not much bothered by this, though I know some of my sighted friends would be upset if people stared or gawked at me, or if they saw people whispering and pointing to me as they passed me by.

It was never so much these sorts of things that bothered me, but it was the more, how shall we say it, “in your face” or overt displays of ignorance that I faced as a blind person that bothered me. The talking to me as if I was a child when I am quite an adult, the making of me, and other blind people, into some sort of “super humans”, gifted at music, super-sonic hearing, and other “sixth senses” that make us blind people “not like the rest of us”.

That kind of stuff really bothers me, because then, I feel, it makes me unapproachable, for most people, and I’ve experienced this more times than I can count. I’m a pretty outgoing person, and in situations where things are fairly equal, i.e., at the school for the blind where I graduated high school, or where I first went to college, where there was a sizable population of blind and other disabled students, I made friends easily, some of whom I still keep in touch with and visit to this day.

However, when I’m in the “sighted world” I have found my interactions with the vast majority of people to be quite different! I say “vast majority” because in some few instances I’ve been able to make friends with sighted/non-disabled people, my husband a quite obvious and notable example. However, I think most people who encounter me just don’t know quite what to make of me.

Should I be treated as “exceptionally gifted” or a “perpetual child”, that is the dilemma that I seem to sense when I encounter people. Whenever I’m out by myself, aside from the inquiries of “can I pet your dog?” or the exclammations of “oh what a pretty dog” or “oh what a smart dog” or “oh my there’s a dog”, etc., I also get the “oh it’s wonderful you can travel by yourself”, or “how do you cross streets without getting hurt”?, or if they know I have a husband I get “why doesn’t your husband come with you?” Here again, you have the amazement of “wow she can do that”, or the “oh but there’s no way you can do that”. Again, either the “perpetual child” or the “super-intelligent human”.

Very rarely do I come across people who will treat me as just a “normal” person, because they clearly can’t see me as being normal. Being blind is foremost in their thoughts of me, and manifests itself in how I’m treated. This, along with the echoes in my mind of well-meaning teachers, houseparents, family members, and others’ axioms of “you’ve got to be twice as good as everyone else”, how “messing up” is not an option, how “you’d wish you were back here at the blind school once you get out in to the real world”, all have made me a very vigilant, probably not-so-trustful, bordering on bitter person in my dealings with and views of sighted/nondisabled people.

This distrust and bitterness, along with issues of self-esteem, is something that I’ve struggled long and hard with. Because I don’t want to develop anger against and prejudice of people, just because of what others of their ilk have done. But I have to confess and say that that is a very hard thing to do. When you’ve been discriminated against, and very bluntly, in employment, when you get asked hundreds of times, over the course of your life, if you’re good at music like Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles (because ya know, blind people, just by virtue of their blindness and their resultant “super-hearing” make them good at music ya know), if you get talked to like a 5-year-old on numerous occasions, if some of your own family members tell you you can’t have children because you’re blind and thus don’t have the ability to take care of them, if you read stories of custody battles over children or child protective cases where the authorities were called in, ostensibly because a “well-meaning” neighbor or someone else just decided that you could not be capable of raising children, among many other things, to me, the bitterness and anger and distrust is understandable. When many blind and visually impaired people have tirelessly worked to make things better for the rest of us, when legislation has been enacted to guarantee our rights to a normal life with dignity just like everyone else, when many efforts have been made to educate people and to let them know that blind and disabled people can live full and productive lives and are pretty much just like everyone else, except they are blind or disabled. When all of this effort has been exhausted, and yet, you still get the discrimination, you still get the looks and exclammations of astonishment when you show and state that yes, you can actually travel, and live, and work independently, when all of this happens, it really makes me wonder how far, indeed, we’ve come, and makes me realize that we still have a long way to go.

And yes, this does tie into being a Muslim, and more particularly a Muslim woman. Because as a Muslim woman, you have the same sorts of ignorance, the same sorts of stereotypes, the same sorts of pity. For a convert, you have the astonishment from non-Muslims that you’d actively choose this “lifestyle”, because “how would anyone want to subjugate themselves like that”. You have the pity because of the stereotype of the “oppressed Muslim woman”.

Just as it is with being a blind person, a Muslim woman, in many cases, can’t be viewed as a “normal person”, and I’m speaking within the American context here. the Muslim woman who wears hijab or niqab is, for the most part and in my experience, viewed with pity, or contempt, or suspicion, or reverence for some people. But she’s almost never viewed as “normal”. Not a “normal” person, or a “normal” woman, or a “normal” mother, no, she’s first and foremost a “Muslim” woman, just as a blind person is always, first and foremost, a “blind” person.

And just as a blind person is going to get stares when they walk into a room, or as they walk down the street, so will a Muslim woman in hijab or niqab. people will either stare, whisper and / or snicker amongst themselves, behind her back, or they’ll come up to her and ask questions, or unfortunately in the case of some women, experience outright hostility.

For me, I think that my experiences as a blind person prepared me for my experiences as a Muslim woman, and in fact, many of the experiences are parallel, they are the same sorts of experiences. Adding to this, though, is the added treatment of Muslims toward me. For example, I wonder sometimes if my treatment as a perpetual “just said shahadah 5 minutes ago” convert is because I’m blind, or does this happen to all convert Muslims? Would my prospects for marriage have been better if I was sighted? Would I still be treated as the “pure” Muslim, the “have never done anything wrong” Muslim, the “special” Muslim who’s “going to get so much reward” and who’s “going to be granted Jannah (Inshalah)” because of my blindness and the “challenge” that poses to me in this world? Or, if I were sighted, would people be looking for details about my past life, or zeroing in on my current struggles as a Muslim, in attempts to lower me in the eyes of others, and talk about me behind my back, or to thus dub me as “not real enough” or “not a good Muslim”, etc.?

No matter where I go, I’ve often thought to myself that I can never be treated as “normal” ,whatever that means, and admittedly, that used to bother me. However, it does not anymore. First and foremost, “normal” is a relative concept, and obviously, what is “normal” for some people is “weird” or “abnormal” for others. Not only this, it really isn’t what people think now that’s going to matter but what God is thinking of me and will think of me on the Day of Judgment.

Perhaps the fact that I’ve not always been the most popular person, or I’ve not found that “perfect community” of Muslims, or that I’ve always felt like an outsider is actually a blessing in disguise! I’ve really been trying to live my life the best that I can, to please God, and to not try to worry about what other people think of me. And though I think I’ve come a long way in this, it is still a struggle for me.

I still have my moments of anger, bitterness, resentment, etc., especially when I come across another story of discrimination against a blind person seeking a job,a Muslim being pulled off a plane because they were “different”, a detainee being tortured, etc. However, I take solace, or try to anyway, in the knowledge and trust that Allah never sleeps, and one day, peole will be held accountable for their actions, that this world is transitory. And instead of harboring anger and bitterness, I try to educate and enlighten people, not so much by words, but by me just being me.

Because by me just going out and doing things, my coworkers and others I come into contact with can see that this blind Muslim woman is not oppressed, not stupid, not incapable, but is intelligent, is pretty much just like them. Sometimes I have bad days, I can be cranky, tired, aggravated. I like basketball, I like to laugh, I like food (mmmm, cake), I look forward to weekends. I’m pretty much just like them, except that I’m blind and a Muslim. Not so different really.

I’ve always thought that we as humans are more the same than we are different. And I take the verses in the Qur’an that talk of “creating the nations and tribes so that you may know one another” to heart. And my hope is that by me being me, I might help others to learn from me, and to perhaps break down some of the stereotypes that they might have of blind people and Muslims. Because the one instance of “oh I used to think such-and such but you’ve showed me different”, wipes away at least some of the bitterness, helps me to forget the ignornace of so many others, and gives me hope that most people, if given the facts and the knowledge, will cease to be “ignorant”.