The male of the human species is the strangest creature on the planet, but I wouldn't have it any other way because I absolutely love the one in my life. My name is Shadia Al-Faiz and I'm a young woman of Saudi Arabian and Berber descent living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. My friends call me Shay. I'm a third-year student at Carleton University, studying Criminology. Man, have I got a story to share with you, dear readers! Being a Muslim woman who is single, sexually adventurous and unashamed of it, I experience a lot of things that the Ummah, the Muslim community, refuses to even acknowledge.
I was born in the environs of Tabuk, northwestern Saudi Arabia, to a Saudi father, Ibrahim Al-Faiz, and a Berber mother, Amina Benzema. Talk about an unlikely couple, eh? You seldom hear of Saudi men marrying outside of their race and community because it's so taboo in the Kingdom. What people don't get is that there are Berbers all over the motherland of Africa and the Middle East. You'll find them in places like Algeria, Morocco, and even parts of Sudan and South Africa. The fact that Berbers marry into African and Arab communities should definitely surprise no one.
Historically speaking, both Saudis and Berbers are among the most nomadic people in the world. My mother's family, often confused for Arabs due to their looks, moved around a lot. While in Saudi Arabia, Mom met my future father, fell in love with him and got married. The two of them moved to Ontario, Canada, in the summer of 1991. Three years after I was born. I grew up in the City of Ottawa, and consider myself as Canadian as anyone.
A lot of people say that one cannot be truly Canadian and Muslim at the same time. To such people I say a resounding fuck you, with both middle fingers uplifted sky high. Islam is the most misunderstood religion in the world. The Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, envisioned a world where people of all colors and backgrounds, united under the belief in the one true God, ( whom we Muslims call Allah ) would see each other as sisters and brothers. All human beings are creations of God. People forget that at the end of the day.
As much as I love being Muslim, I sometimes get tired of my fellow Muslims sometimes. The shit they do irks me, man. Take those fools who call themselves ISIS in the Middle East. They've managed to unite minority Christians and Jews along with Sunni Muslims against them, and yet they claim to be practicing true Islam. Any fool who can take ordinary Muslims and the Jews and Christians and somehow get them working against himself has got to be the biggest idiot on the planet. ISIS needs to be destroyed, as do those bozos from Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda. They're not fighting for Islam. Hell, half the time, their victims are Muslims, not Westerners or Zionists. I pray to see the day when these three organizations that defile my faith with their radicalism no longer exist.
The fact that these creeps are now turning their eyes toward the West worries me because, well, that's where I live. Those racist pundits on Fox News and CNN who clearly hate Muslims seem to believe that Muslim citizens of Western countries wouldn't mind dying at the hands of radicals who are targeting Western society, simply because we share the same faith. What the fuck are they smoking at Fox News? Pardon my French but it must be some new and improved crack. For real.
I was born on November 9, 1988. I am twenty six years old. I hope to live to see at least sixty or seventy. I have no desire to die just because a radical nutcase wants to blow himself or herself up supposedly in the name of religion. You might notice that these radicals sometimes target those Muslims they feel are too cozy with people of other faiths or too "Westernized". Well, that's me. They hate me more than they hate you, no doubt. Why is that? Oh, my. So many reasons.
