The Time I Battled Snide Comments about Islam

This morning I also dreamt that I was reading a newspaper article. It was a long article somewhere in the middle of the A section: "Indian Muslims Hold Services in Hindi". It included a large picture of smiling Indians wearing salwar kameez. Only some of the women covered their heads. The article also contained some Devanagari script, which changed every time I looked at it because I'm not familiar enough with written Hindi for it to stay the same. I think the script was supposed to be a symbol for Allah/God in Hindi, but again, I don't think it was accurate. Anyway, this whole dream would have made a lot more sense if the article was about Pakistani Muslims holding services in Urdu or something, but whatever.

I was in a large white room with folding chairs, and my mom was there too. I showed her the article. "Good for them," she said. Then she looked at my face and said, "What do you think about it?"

I shrugged. "Well, I'm not sure if I should have an opinion because people can do whatever they want in their own religion. I guess it's cool that they can understand the prayers and the Qur'an now because they're not in Arabic anymore. It's good that people know their religion."

"I'm glad that they're breaking away from their relationship with Arab Muslims," my mom said. "It shows that they are rejecting the terrorists in the Arab world."

I groaned and rolled my eyes at her, then I read more of the article: "When I asked the local imam about Islam, he continually quoted from the Hebrew Bible rather than the Qur'an, as if to prove his religion through mine," the reporter wrote.

"I'm not sure I like the tone of this article," I told my mom. Then my mom suggested that we invite an imam to talk to us about Islam for family home evening.

Suddenly it was family home evening. The imam looked an awful lot like the man who represented the Muslim Student Association at the Freethinkers' Society panel discussion: mid-thirties, clean-shaven, wearing a shirt, tie, and slacks. One of the walls of the room was now painted with that chalkboard paint. My dad was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded and his face ready to disagree with whatever the imam said.
The imam just started telling stories from the Qur'an that are also in the Bible to build common ground and also show us what the Qur'an can add to our understanding of the Bible: Joseph and Zulaikha, for example. During each story, one of the family would draw stick-figure interpretations of the story on the chalkwall with chalk.

My brother's turn to illustrate came, the imam told the story of Saul and Chemish. (No real story like that exists in the Bible or Qur'an, but that's not important.) My brother thought the imam had said "Sean", so he wrote "Sean" on the board and then asked, "Do you want me to spell Sean s-e-a-n?" I went up to him and said, "No, it's Saul, not Sean," but he was already off on his spelling obsession.

"I want you to spell Sean s-h-a-u-n!" he barked, writing "Shaun" on the board. "How do you spell Sean?" he asked me.

"Right now we're talking about Saul and Chemish," I said. "Could you write Saul on the board? It's s-a-u-l."

"How do you spell Michael? I want you to spell Michael m-i-k-u-l!" he yelled, blinking hard and writing "Mikul" on the board. "Oh, I wish it was spelled m-i-k-u-l!"

"How do you think you spell Chemish?" I asked.

He wrote a crazy bunch of letters on the board and muttered, "m-i-k-u-l."

I rolled my eyes, and then I woke up.