I keep hearing that Muslim male submissive types in the world of BDSM are hard to find, and I laugh at the kinds of people who say these things. Yes, there are Muslim women in the world of BDSM, and I'm proud to say that I am one of them. My name is Sulafah Faeed, and I'm a young woman living in the City of Toronto, in provincial Ontario. I'm mixed race, born to a Punjab Indian Muslim father and Mexican mother. My parents emigrated from the Republic of India and Mexico, respectively, to the beautiful nation that is Canada.
These days, my parents live in the City of Hamilton, Ontario, enjoying a peaceful retirement. I'm at the University of Toronto, getting my bachelor's degree in accounting while having the kind of fun that most people can only dream about. I discovered the world of fetish and domination four years ago and I can honestly say that it's part of me. It's not a lifestyle, it's my life! A lot of you reading this might scratch your head and wonder what a Muslim woman is doing in the world of BDSM. First of all, there are all kinds of Muslim women. Not all of us are the quiet and repressed burka-wearers that cause you to shudder when you see them on the bus or train station. And I don't wear a hijab either.
Just in case you're wondering, yes, it's always been my choice. I don't come from a traditional Muslim household, whatever that means. To understand why I am the way I am, you need to understand where I come from. My father, Balkar Faeed moved to Canada from his homeland of India in 1980 at the age of eighteen. He embraced the Canadian way of life entirely. My dad was in an indie rock band while attending the University of Toronto, all those years ago, if you can believe that! As for my mother, Joanna Santiago, she was born in a Catholic family but had become an atheist by the time she met my father, two years after she moved to Ontario, Canada, from Mexico on a scholarship at Ryerson University.
My folks fell in love, got married and had little old me. Their respective families did not approve of their union. My mother's very religious Mexican Catholic family didn't approve of her marrying a Muslim guy from India, albeit one who smoked weed, didn't go to mosque and owned a Doberman. As for my father's family, they basically disowned him for marrying a non-Indian and non-Muslim woman. Indians be very racist towards other races, I think it's a leftover from their days as a colony of Britain because they seem to love white people. Oh, well. Nevertheless, I grew up feeling much love for both Mexican and Indian culture, and I always identified as Latino-Indian when asked about my ethnicity. My parents weren't very religious. My dad never took me to mosque or made me wear the hijab or anything along those lines. He was basically shunned by the Indian Muslim community, and since they didn't want anything to do with him, he didn't want his family to have anything to do with them either.
Later, as I grew up, I became interested in the faiths of my parents. I learned about Christianity, a faith that I respect, and about Islam, my father's faith, which I came to cherish but only to a certain extent. Allah is love, peace and forgiveness, and I believe there is no God but Him. I follow the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, but find most Muslim men to be dull, boring and predictable. Is it weird of me to say that I love Islam but absolutely cannot stand most of those who call themselves Muslims? Seriously, the actions of brutal, slow-witted and intolerant Muslim men and the silence and passivity of dull, meek and submissive Muslim women give Islam a bad name.