Introduction

Bismillah hir Rahman nir Rahim

I already have dozens (seems like it!) of blogs floating around out there somewhere. The most active one is on MySpace. I decided to start this specifically to talk about my daily life as a Muslim woman in Houston, Texas. That, I just think this place is a bit more "mature."

I think a lot of people have formed their opinion of Muslim women based on what they see on the news. Most have never met a Muslim woman. In a city the size of Houston, people may have seen Muslim woman and not even know she was a Muslim becaue she was not wearing the recognizable scarf or robe. Or they may have seen a scarved, robed woman at the grocery store and thought her to be an unapproachable oddity.

A brief introduction, my name is Reem. Not my birth name, of course, as I was born in southwest Arkansas and raised in a Missionary Baptist church. I was very much the "church girl." There was even a time I considered entering the mission fields. I always befriended the exchange students at my high school, I am still in contact with a few of them 15 years later. I think my ultimate desire was to travel and see the world outside tiny Bodcaw. I loved anything foreign, languages, cultures, geography was my favorite subject. My interests eventually were narrowed down to the Arabic language. This led to Arab culture and finally, the Arab religion, Islam.

In 1995, this young Arkansan Baptist reverted to Islam. A belief in Islam is that every person and everything is born in submission to God. Submission to God is the definition of of the word islam, so in essence everyone is born as a Muslim (a submitter to God.) So instead of saying convert--or changing from the original to something new--we say revert, returning back to the original.

But I don't want to get into all that. (Besides, I personally use both terms, though some people get picky about it. From this point on I will use the word revert.) This blog is not about my reversion. This blog is going to be about my life now, 13 years after taking the shahadah.

I read a lot of reversion stories where the new Muslim talks about finding peace, everything is so wonderful now. Alhumdulillah, if they have found that coveted inner peace and strength. May Allah keep them strong. I, on the other hand, have not always been in high iman, or at peace. A lot of the time I stubble from what I know to be the Right Path, and feel that I am the worst Muslim in the world. Many times when I do find myself heading in the right direction religiously, I tend to get judgemental, even bitter, when I hear or see other Muslims who seem to have little regard to Islam, or the fact that they are setting bad examples, spreading incorrect information, going to extremes in either direction (from laziness to fananticism.)

I want this blog to be honest. I want this blog to change me for the better. I am preparing for Ramadan and I see this as a time for new beginnings. the idea for creating this blog came to me just a few minutes ago and I need to hurry this along before my baby wakes up.

Oh, I should mention I am married to a Pakistani (after I reverted) and we have an 11 month year old son, Imad, alhumdulillah. I'll be talking about him a lot probably.