Temptation comes to test the faith of the true believer, the noble Quran teaches this. I sighed as I entered the women's section of the Masjid, I spotted my friend Alimah already at prayer. She knelt, then bent all the way down, kissing the emerald carpeted floor. Don't look at her big butt, I silently told myself. Oops, too late. Why must temptation always come my way? I'm trying very hard to be a good Muslim sister and I wish those lesbian thoughts that keep intruding on my consciousness would go away. I have prayed and prayed, but I keep staring at women's butts and breasts, and I feel a flush of heat down below every time a pretty woman looks at me. Help!
My name is Sulafah Wafeeq and I'm a young woman of Saudi Arabian descent living in the City of Ottawa, province of Ontario. I attend Carleton University, where I major in civil engineering. There aren't a lot of women from my background in the program, but that's okay. I see it as a challenge. When my parents, Wahid and Samirah Wafeeq moved to Ontario, Canada, from our hometown of Yanbu Al-Bahr in the Al-Madinah province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we knew we would face a brand new world.
Canada is about as different from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as can be. Still, we adapted. Well, my mother and I adapted. My father didn't fare so well in this land of secular government, liberated women, sexual diversity and religious freedom. It took him a long time to adjust to the way of things in North America. As for me, I embraced my new country and new life wholeheartedly. The Confederation of Canada granted me so many things which I would only dream of when I lived in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In this brave new world, women can drive! I saw a female police officer in the airport, she was giving orders to men and they obeyed her. A lot of Muslim women who come to Canada turn their noses up at the ways of Canadian women but not me. I cannot thank these brave women enough for helping build a nation where a woman can be anything she wants to be. Where I come from, I could not leave the house without a male guardian, I could not drive, and I was essentially a prisoner of my father's wishes. Not anymore. In Canada, I can finally say that I am a free woman.
It is one of life's supreme ironies that in Canada, when my father went to take the test to get his driver's licence, he failed repeatedly at both the written portions and the exam itself. When I went to driving school, I passed with flying colors. I am now the proud owner of a G-1 Ontario provincial driver's licence. These days, I'm the one who drives my family around because my father failed the driver's exam so many times that he just quit, and as for my mother, she never bothered learning to drive, considering it haram. Every time I try to encourage her to go out and explore, she insists on staying home, watching television or playing around on the computer. My dad spends his days in the basement, drinking and lamenting the conditions that drove him to leave Saudi Arabia for the supposedly godless nation of Canada.
My father is a drunkard and a notorious womanizer, and I am almost completely indifferent. It's my mother's plight that worries me. Even though we're in Canada now, she insists on living as she would back home. She doesn't go anywhere without my father, and he rarely leaves the house, except to go grocery shopping or gambling. I love my mother the way a daughter should, but she is a very foolish woman. She should stop being an obedient dog and try to live her life! I believe that Allah puts all of us on a chosen path and that we should welcome the opportunities that come our way. I was meant for more than what Saudi Arabia allows women to be. In Canada, I have the chance to be more. Like the American commercial for military recruitment says, I will be all that I can be.
I embraced my new life in Canada. I sometimes see Arab female Muslims and even some white female converts wearing the burka. What a bunch of fools. In Saudi Arabia, every woman wears the burka in public because we've got no choice. Islamic law is what it is. Me? I stopped wearing a burka the day I set foot in the Confederation of Canada. I wear a lot of western clothes, like T-shirts and jeans, and long skirts. I wear my hijab as a symbol of my faith. The burka isn't a symbol of Islam. In fact, according to historians, women in the Arabian Peninsula were wearing the burka centuries before the advent of the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam. The burka is a cultural artifact, not a religious one. It has no place in Islam. It's only men's insecurities around female beauty which caused the burka to be implemented as a mandatory practice in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. See? I'm far from the dull, submissive and foolish Muslim woman that so many westerners assume I am when they look at me. I have a mind of my own. I make my own decisions. I've got big dreams and ambition to spare, and I won't stop until I've accomplished all that I set out to do.
