Al Bayyan
Fall 2019 Issue 2
Making a Statement Since 2013
What’s the Tea, Sis? Cover Photo by Khanan Chaudhry
Thoughts of a child Children are innocent They hesitate When hurting a spider That has planted itself In their home Patiently they would wait Until it departs on its own Just destroy its web We would say The spider will know That this place that he is planted Is not his abode Is this not How people lose their homes And now they are called Refugees These are the thoughts Of a child‌
Sufyaan Kalota
Iqra Ahmad
wrinkles in my pages coffee stains in the corners ink smudges on my fingertips as i scribble furiously in my leather bound planner. chit chatter all around me as i wait for Jummah. about who went viral about who was seen with who about who said what about this don’t you get tired don’t you get tired
don’t you get tired carrying all this baggage it’s like a griefcase
don’t you get tired don’t you get tired
talking about people like you know them don’t you get tired tarnishing their names and reputadon’t you get tired tions when they’re pushing out the same names from someone’s daughter your lips someone’s son about things you heard someone’s someone. things you want to believe so they can fit your perception of don’t you get tired them don’t you get tired will you even remember it all
why don’t we ever talk about what moves our hearts talking about the same old will you even care at all what inspires us as people every single week in a few years what makes us get up in the morneating the flesh off your own Umwill you turn into the aunties and ing mah uncles what we come back to carrying resentment in your hearts who sit around and gossip five times a day giving people more doubts than about the only Being we should benefits about families as you do to your worry about impressing friends i’m tired. don’t you get tired Anonymous
Sabaa Ali
of ling w o e h r th in He a t he t r a e r d ay s m sum e time e s the r th On g fo rday n i g ld Lon f yeste wou I o t g tha larin ing g p t o s o H a gh see
Nur int
om ye B ye u sh in t in awa s f ro ed s m y in tead far th a e g rab old bi en t su n
It f le d at t he s ound of t he me chanic a l hum I ste pp e d on as it f le d into t he suns et But I c ou ldn’t forget Felt a fe eling li ke no ot her L i ke I was clos e, but not enoug h Broke n Inside
d rie t I gh a no u t ho re te ht n o an e g Ev o m re f i t h c t u N mo e tr righ s th re ly hing he c ens n O et t to t eav s rn h t u f the nigh t I r o the o t a and
S sile it her nce e in but spi te
As t he sun tur ns to d ark ness I cont inue on my nig ht j our ne y to s e e t he lig ht
Anonymous
in not
Esraa Elkossei
When I was l ittle, I told was “Be wh atever you w be” ant to A teac he cop, a r, an astron doctor aut, a We’re an sive fa open and e xpresmily
Poem by Farisa Khan
When I got o lder, I asked was “Why do you that?” want t o be Earn a ‘ and g high’ title, ‘ r reat m oney espect’ Why w o career uldn’t you w provid ing th ant a at?
When I became unsure, I was told “Why can’t you be what you decided to be?” Just do what you said you’d do I mean how hard can it really be? When I had enough, I finally said “It was you who decided, not me” What you had chosen was easy for you But it wasn’t meant for me.
Art by Iqra Ahmad
Farisa Khan’s Artist Statement: This poem is a reflection of what many first generation students in America go through in the course of their educational career. Whether Asian, Arab, Hispanic or any other ethnicity, every family has different expectations of what they want their child to become. Some careers are enforced, given praises such as a “high” title or “respectful”, while other careers are banned or looked down upon. Passions are wasted or remain as hobbies and careers become chores as students start feeling boxed in an enclosure with limiting career options. Too many high school and college students are currently pursuing educational tracks that they don’t want to pursue. Take a stand for what you want to do, and remember that it is YOUR career, the rest of YOUR life. Fight for your passions, overcome the stigmas, and prove them otherwise.
Saba Ali
“When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only
companion we will have from birth to death— ourselves.” Mehreen Ali
The Lawn green grass grows all around me the blades droop they brush against my ankles no one can tell me they have it better. us two. We just have it different and the different makes us act different different is why you are insecure I hear it in the way you talk down others how you only chase those make you look golden. Your patch of grass is not dry but its growing into split ends. Anonymous
you say its okay its okay jaan youll be okay even if its not okay it will be okay what does okay even mean google defines okay as acceptance but another definition is satisfactory but not exceptional why would i want to be less happy than i was how will it be okay to see the person you love no longer breathe how will it be okay to see the one you love love someone else how will it be okay to see people get the blessings you pray about day and night as they pass you by is it okay if i’m not okay with being just okay is it okay to feel every emotion is it okay to let go of my emotions to let go of the feelings is it okay to not be anything anymore until i can be okay. because one day it will be more than okay
Anonymous
Anonymous
The truth hurts, but it’s better than the alternative
And that’s the tea, sis
Khanan Chaudhry
Failed “Islamic” Parenting The biggest disease desi parents are witnessing is a case of failed parenting. This is not because of desi traditionalists versus American modernists. This is a case of unnecessary cultural and egotistical norms versus the Sunnah and the Qur’an when it comes to parenting. Let me be clear before I move on: there is no room for pride, ego, and undue cultural mandates in Islam. Let me tell you why families are ruined. I am a first generation child of Pakistani immigrants. So yes, I know exactly what I am talking about. Yes, your children feel the same way as I do and they are as American as I am. So do not think your child is some angel from heaven that agrees 100% with you. Do not tell me “Hamara bacha nahi karta” because I know they do. It’s because you are either lying due to your own ego being hurt or you are very oblivious; both cases are due to arrogance. Arrogance is what brought Iblis to be banned from paradise and then to be known as Shaytaan. When I witness desi culture superimposing on Islam, not only does it make me furious, but it deeply disheartens me. When I observe desi parents’ egos and prides consume them, it seriously makes me wonder about their arrogance. The term “gharoor” in Urdu means overbearing arrogance and undue haughtiness. I know very well that parents know exactly what that word entails. However, parents do not believe that this is exactly what they show to their children. Before you start thinking I am some sort of rebellious child and “nafarman aulaad”, I understand parenting is not easy. I also understand no type of parenting is perfect. Even my own parents have their faults that I have recognized. But it is time to resolve some of the common problems parents are having when facing their children. Let us start. The desi community has decided that culture is bigger than Islam. They also have decided that their egos and pride is much more important than the Qur’an and the Sunnah. They have made cultural norms mandatory and the Quran and Sunnah obsolete. To make matters worse, they even have blurred their cultural standards into Islam as if they were the ways of the Prophet Muhammad (S)! The biggest problem within the desi community is marriages. Oh man... If a child has a problem coming to you in regards to marriage, that itself is a big problem. Marriages in Islam are mandated to be easy, but because of the pride and ego of the older desi community, they have made marriages impossible. Marriages are recommended to be done while the person is young and able to marry. However, Desi parents think that the guy needs to be wealthy, good looking, and done with professional school. They state the girl needs to be slim, fair skinned, and marry whomever the parents choose. Parents avoiding marriages for their sons is opening the door for fitnah and Zina. Parents forcing marriage on their daughters is also unjust and a form of oppresssion. Unfortunately, brown Islam exists for some odd reason. They claim atrocious statements like interracial marriages are against Islam! They claim to love the Prophet Muhammad (S), Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq (AS), Umar ibn Al Khattab (AS), Uthman ibn Affan (AS), and Ali ibn Talib (AS) who were Arab. But South Asians forbid marriages between South Asians and Arabs. You teach that Hadrat Bilal (AS) in Sunday
schools and how much you love him but when a black Muslim brother wants to marry your Desi daughter, you disregard him as a subhuman. You even disregard marriages between Pakistani and Indian despite both being culturally identical! Shame on you! Your ego and pride gets in the way of parenting Islamically. Your ego and pride is unnecessary. Why do you not have mercy on your children? Why do you think you own your child? Allah has blessed you with children and it is not enough just to clothe and feed them. You are obligated to support them emotionally and give them their rights. Yes, your children have rights over you. It was narrated by Ibn Umar that the Prophet (S) said “God has called them the dutiful because they are dutiful to their parents and children. Just as you have a duty which you owe your parent, so you have a duty which you owe your child” (Sahih Muslim). It seems like the parents have disregarded the second part of that Hadith. Desi parents have unknowingly brainwashed their children that children need to be obedient to their parents at all costs no matter what. Parents have made their child believe that they own them. NO. You do not own that child. Allah owns that child. He gave you that child as a blessing and you are obligated to take care of that child and give them their due rights. You force them into choosing a specific career, a specific spouse, and dictate them how to live their life and expect them to love you unconditionally? I promise you this is the reason why girls elope, sons resent their parents and cut relations, and families are ruined. You are creating fitnah and you are responsible of the condition of new Ummah that’s being created. Shame on you! Yes, I know parents are not perfect and that I am not a parent. But that does not mean that the style of parenting is consistent with the Sunnah and Qur’an. As a 23 year old male, I am not oblivious to my surroundings of children being emotionally neglected by their own parents. Desi parents think this is a drama series where emotional blackmailing and passive aggressiveness is a tool to parent. You are creating injustice and oppression upon your child. Shame on you! Parents are reverend at the highest pedestal. Mothers are three levels higher than the father. The Du’a of a father is accepted immediately. Parents can never be replaced. So why do you act like an enemy with your children? Be there for them emotionally and mentally. Support them when they come to you about things like marriages. Give your opinion and thoughts, but do not dictate them. Parents do not know best every time. That is the hard truth. In conclusion, we need to act now. It has been late already because so many children have already cut relations with their parents and vice versa. Listen to your children because contrary to popular belief, they actually might know better than you and are correct. Open the doors of communication between your child. Do not reprimand them when they come to you for something like marriage and loving a boy or girl for marriage. Stop with blackmailing and overpowering your children as if they are your property. Leave your arrogance, pride, ego, and cultural obligations behind. Do not commit arrogance and “zulm” against your children. They have no room in Islam and the Sunnah. Art by Ayesha Farhat
And Allah knows best. Essay by Arsalan Kamran
The Unwritten Rules of Texting Here’s the thing - I’ve done cringy stuff before. My siblings have years of evidence of me being cringe for anyone that would ask them. When you want to get to know a potential husband/wife, you try your very best to hide as much of your cringy self and abide by the unwritten rules of texting. You see, ladies and gentlemen, in order for you to basically sell yourself for marriage, you avoid these cringy things I’ve seen that people do when texting. 1. Don’t text a paragraph of emojis So this is kind of a no brainer, right? You used to text paragraphs of emojis when you were a kid when you just got your new cell phone. Believe or not, people like this, who are full grown adults, can text like this. Listen, this is a huge turnoff, let me tell you. It basically shows me that you can be an annoying texter that doesn’t know how to calm themselves down when texting. You. are. a. college. student. Please act and be a little more sophisticated and respectful when you’re texting a potential soulmate. Try to mirror the way they text so that you don’t look like a 6 year-old texting for the first time. Please use a limited amount of emojis; there are better ways to capture your emotions through words or just 1-3 emojis. 2. Don’t text more than 3-4 messages consecutively Now, I usually break this rule when there’s an emergency or if I need to settle a problem with someone. But texting 10-15 messages all at once or all throughout the day without the other person responding at all says something. It again shows how annoying you can be, and it brings the assumption that you don’t have anything better to do throughout your day. If you honestly need to set up an actual schedule for your consecutive texting, you need to fix the way you text. Again, limit yourself because you can and will appear too clingy with your potential partner. It also shows how you can possibly be disrespectful of your potential person’s time of day; if he/she is way too busy to text back, and you text 10 messages throughout the day, put your phone down. Do something more productive. Text when it’s the time and mood to do so, but don’t cut them out for too long. 3. Don’t call them out for being active online and not texting back I literally have no idea why people are that petty to do this. I’ve had experience of people calling me out on the fact that I’m active on Facebook and/or Instagram and that I’m not replying to their messages. It’s very annoying. Don’t just assume that I’m not replying because I’m purposefully ignoring you. I could have just checked your message and went into lab or something. This is why I turn off any sign of me being active online or any hint that I’ve seen a person’s text. ‘Cause man, people can be real petty about that. Listen, I notice when people are online, and they don’t reply to my texts too. Yeah it sucks, but be patient; they will reply soon enough. They will talk to you later, don’t worry. Starting off a text with, “Haha I can see you’re online so you should text back now,” or “I know you’re not busy because you’re active now, so reply to my texts,” makes me want to not text you even more now. It’s like you’re trying to start YouTube drama or something; what are you going to win for calling me out like that? It’s not an attractive trait when you’re impatient like that with other people, especially with a potential spouse. 4. Don’t screenshot their texts and save photos of them I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but potential husbands or wives aren’t necessarily going to be your actual husbands or wives. You are allowed to do this if you are married or engaged and you for sure know that you’re marrying this person. So, when someone brings up a past photo of you, from the depths of your past Facebook and Instagram photos, don’t save them to your photo gallery and don’t tell them that you’re saving the photo. If they texted something hilarious to you, don’t screenshot their texts and don’t tell them that you saved your screenshot. I’m pretty sure this is something you know you’re not supposed to do with a potential person. First of all, no one likes someone bringing up old cringy photos
of you because they think it’s cute. It’s most definitely not cute at all. Second of all, if you both know that you’re not official yet, what makes them think that they have your permission to do this. These pictures are already out in the public, why do they need to save them for themselves? That’s really creepy if you think about it. Listen, don’t ever do this, but if you’re weird and you decide to do this, at least give them the decency of telling them that you did so they can tell you if it’s ok or not (it’s really not ok though). 5. Don’t text cringy memes or gifs If you have been on this planet long enough, you know which memes are really funny and which means are cringe memes 12 years old make on the internet. I know it’s stupid to make this a rule, but think about it. If you both have the same humor in memes, then that means that this is a way to get along with this person and share the same weird humor with each other. If you get texts of very old memes or memes that died with its own hype, for some reason, that makes me cringe. This goes out for sending gifs as well. Overall, if you text me something unfunny, it will make me cringe to the core. So, yeah, text dank memes or don’t text memes at all. 6. Don’t text baby words Don’t text words such as “mommy” or “twinzie” to anyone. Absolutely anyone. If I can tell that they’re joking, then I can tell that they’re joking. But if they text this more than once in random conversations, you better leave while you still can. Do you remember the episode from iCarly when Carly finds out that her boyfriend has a beanie baby obsession? Imagine that through text. If you have never watched the episode, find a clip somewhere for educational purposes. 7. Don’t give out too much of your information or history This is a common mistake that most of us do, and I sadly make this mistake too. If you tell this person your deep dark secrets and your personal history and he/she doesn’t turn out to be your husband/wife, oh boy. I think I limited myself from doing this and just stuck with basic facts about me that any of my friends would know. I would stay very clear from scripting your life story to someone that quick. That goes for them too. Of course there’s no harm with telling little stories about yourself, but if you told them things that not even your parents know about yourself, you have to be sure that they will not tell anyone this. You have to hope that after things don’t work out that they don’t exploit you and your stories to anyone at all. If you ended on bad terms with each, please be aware of this and try to settle on good terms together. People do this mistake without texting too, so once you hear the beginning of “I’ve never told anyone this, but,” please tell them to not tell them anything. I’m not sure if that’s the best advice, but just avoid yourself from giving too much of yourself to someone. So yeah, that’s all of my unwritten rules of texting your potential person. Personally, after experience, I would much rather meet someone face-to-face and not first meet someone through text. We do live in the digital age now, and although these rules might be really stupid to point out, many people have done these mistakes. Personally, I don’t really think that ending something with a potential husband/wife is bad when they break all these rules. Not only are they off on their texting game, but they just seem so different from the way they are off the phone, and that kind of disturbs me. Most people act the same they do on or offline, so it comes off weird when you act normal face-to-face but act very cringe through text. I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem very adult-like, you know? Obviously, we can’t text as cold adults, but we can’t also text like little kids. Be yourself, but know a person’s limits. I might be stretching this too much, but if you can’t respect what bothers most people through text, how do you expect to be treated in an actual marriage without the screens? How do you think you can control yourself and your thoughts when you can’t seem to do that through something as simple as texting? Just write me a letter in cursive and mail it to within the span of 1-2 business days instead Esraa Elkossei
President: Nabeeha Bakhrani Vice President: Farisa Khan Treasurer: Arooj Imran Technology Director: Khanan Chaudhry Social Media Chair: Unzila Manzoor Creative Director: Hibah Hassan Outreach Chair: Hafsa Arif
Al-Bayyan has served the UIC Muslim community for over 10 years by giving Muslim students a platform to express themselves. The publication, along with Al-Bayyan’s annual live showcase, has allowed a means for Muslim students to be honest, authentic, and true to themselves. From this effort has submerged an incredibly beautiful and diverse amount of artwork. Students have shared their passion through poetry, reflections, singing, storytelling, spoken word, comedy acts and more. In whatever way it may be, Al-Bayyan is an invitation for all forms of self-expression.
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