The Depths of My Ignorance

May-20, 2012, Yangjiang, China

The girl could not have been more than two. Her feet, uncalloused and pudgy in the way children’s feet are, dangled loosely, one pressing slightly on her father’s belly, seemingly in an attempt to step up to gain a better, higher, view. Her fingers, also dimpled and pudgy, were intertwined in her father’s hair, one wrapped around each side of his neck.  She had curly hair which reminded me in color and texture of my son’s before his first substantial hair cut when his splendid curls disappeared, never to return.  The little girl wore a pink sundress over pink stretchy pants. What is it about a toddler’s feet that just make you want to reach out for a tickle and an easy giggle? This little girl in her manner and movement brought me deliciously back to that time when my own children were that age.

The father wasn’t particularly noticeable in any extraordinary way, except for the black beard which appeared neither trimmed nor untrimmed. The beard seemed to grow on its own in an even way which covered his lower face with precision. Even in my 50’s, I still often wish I could get mine to grow like that. Vanity never sleeps, I guess. The father was hustling his family, his wife, daughter and himself, through O’Hare, a lovely family really, just getting from here to there in the crush of thousands of others all moving with luggage and purpose in every possible direction.

The mother followed closely behind the father and child, exchanging some conversation with the father. They stopped for a moment not far where I waited in line to get my boarding pass, mother, father, and child, extraordinary in no special way, except they were Muslim, and the woman wore an abaya and niqāb which covered her head except for small slits for her eyes as well as her medium frame all the way down so that only a short glimpse of red pant leg and tips of tan shoes was visible when she was walking.

Muslims believe that Mohammed was a messenger of God and that he was the last law bearer in a series of prophets and through him God’s truths were revealed.  There are several passages in the Muslim holy book, which is believed by the devout to be the word of God delivered through the messenger, which refer to the required coverage of the female form to protect from raising sexual desire in men.

What is most often called a burqa is a specific sort of covering, but there are different types of clothing that a devout Muslim woman would wear. The burqa is the covering seen in the most conservative societies, and is full coverage head to toe, where both the eyes and often even the hands are kept from public view.  A different type of clothing, the abaya, often referred to incorrectly as a burqa, also provides full body covering. This is then combined with a niqāb, which is the veil which covers all but the eyes.  By choice, some Muslim women were a hijab head covering which exposes the face but covers the hair, the ears, and usually in combination with other clothing the neck. The hijab extends to what most often are loose fitting clothes designed to shroud any female features.  Women who wear this combination sort of appear to be wearing lose fitting pajamas with a tightly drawn head scarf. I saw several women wearing the hijab, walking with their families in the Hong Kong Airport, laughing and talking with their kids and spouses. Dour these people were not and the thought passed through me that I really don’t know much about the lives of Muslims.

The commitment to this attire certainly attests to the devout nature of the women wearing it. I think the same when I see Hasidic women in my community dressed in long skirts, industrial strength hose, and hair covered in a wig, which is then often covered over with a hat.  Orthodox Jews also believe that the female form is a dangerous preoccupation of men. As do fundamentalist Christians. Pat Robertson, the 700 Club TV preacher, who in his reading of the bible is such an easy mark it almost seems unfair to bring it up, has a history of saying outrageous things about the subservient posture of women. 

But I do not write this to bash any religion or practice, all of which rise from deep wells of faith and form a foundation of morality for the believers. The last time I touched the subject of religion I was stunned by the vitriol of those that do not believe and it occurred to me that non-believing is in a lot of cases a dogma on its own merits. Often times there is little tolerance or acceptance of believers. I thought at the time how their narrow-mindedness was not all that different from the believers they so fervently despise for what they believe is their narrow-mindedness.

For me the larger challenge to religious faith is more scientific than theological.  As a child I always loved the visits to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. There we would be told of the millions, perhaps billions, of galaxies of which our little planet is part of just one. I think it may have been there where they explained the size and scope of just our universe that seeds of doubt may have been placed.   I was a good little catholic boy then, but the fact that the vastness of all creation exists, for me at least raised doubts as I got older about the dogma of my youth.

Years later I remember sitting in the Hayden Planetarium in New York watching a Christmas show with my kids, all the time thinking about what to me at least is the absurdity of the idea that the world’s three great religions all rose from an area covering thousands of square miles in the portion of the Earth referred to as the Middle East, vast in terms of the space on earth, but microscopic in the space of our planet and our universe let alone the known and unknown galaxies. We are led to believe that In God’s infinite wisdom the prophets and ancestors of these three theologies were all plopped down in almost the same place, nose to nose so they could argue with and pester each other till the end of time. If only the Buddha was born in Oman, instead of India the origins would be complete.

So, even though prayer in some odd but compelling way still informs my daily life, I am not a believer per se. Even my attachment to prayer as a spiritual support is sometimes shaken when I see baseball players and other athletes give all praise to God for the win or the great play. I know it is modesty-- all praise to and all that—but it just aggravates me. God in his or her wisdom allowed you or helped you to win that important game, while he or she allowed the plane to go down in Indonesia. Really? The extent of human narcissism is limitless.

The vast nature of the cosmos is just one limitation to my faith, and as I remarked to a friend a couple of weeks ago, of the big three religions Judaism seems to me at least the most logical. Jews at least are still waiting for their Messiah. It just cannot be that the savior arrived 2,000 years ago, and the messenger followed a few hundred years later, and this is what we have gleaned from their time on earth: A world filled with too much hunger, too much war, and too much hatred, mostly and especially between those of varying and hard scarred religious belief. While I recognize the doctrine of free will that places the responsibility for man’s failure at humanity’s feet, largely absolving God,  it still seems to me that we have done precious little with the admonition to love your brother as yourself and turn the other cheek. 

This is especially so when one comes to understand that though neither considers him the messiah, both Jews and Muslims acknowledge the existence of Jesus. Beyond the total lack of commitment to the most humane portions of religious dogma, analysis of what God chooses to engage in (A baseball  game?) or leave alone (Genocide in Congo?) is problematic to put it mildly to any rational belief I might have in an almighty power active in our lives. And yet out of my own uncertainty, the comfort it provides, and the lessons of my youth, and despite my rational and what I think are well-reasoned reservations, I still pray all the time. Odd…

So, back to our family at O’hare. There they were. We see Muslims in our communities more often these days, but just as I am isolated from the Hassidim which form a major part of the town in which I live I am even more lacking in interaction with the Muslims in our midst. Though I’ve never seen a woman wearing abaya and niqāb working in a retail store, I have been struck by the numbers I see popping up in the rather large shopping complex which abuts our community wearing the hijab.  Immigration from South and Central America, as well as from across Asia and Africa with their large populations of Hindus and Muslims, is where America now draws its fresh blood and vibrancy.

What got me to thinking though is how that little girl could ever be comfortable in that tiny box of containment, the clothes of her family’s orthodoxy. In conservative societies girls are expected to wear the abaya before they reach puberty, but I wondered how this family would handle that, especially since they were already somewhat liberal in permitting their daughter to appear barefoot which in some societies would not be permitted.  I wondered how the parents and their devout faith would influence that girl to hide her light, not only to cover her body as though its mere existence was somehow vile and unclean, but also to accept the subservient role to men’s needs and desires that the wearing of the garments implies.

The three great religions, all patriarchal, are built on the premise that woman are impure temptations to men. The entire point of view is from that of the men in the church. Male Catholic leaders decide what role women will have in the church, and at least for now they may be lay leaders, but not spiritual leaders. It all seems so archaic to me. But then again the immodesty of many secular youth does not appeal to me either. Maybe I’m just too old and cranky to figure any of this out. But with all of that how will they do it?  How will the parents of that little girl pull it off? I remember reading some time ago, a novel by the wonderful mystery writer Faye Kellerman who often writes about orthodox Jewish characters. In this particular novel she wrote of a young boy who wanted to escape the confines of his orthodox community.  Hasidic and Orthodox Jews are often organized into tight knit communities and the children do not attend public school, but Muslims with few exceptions are assimilated in our communities.  It would seem logical to me at least, that just as Kellerman’s character almost every child might face that desire.  With the strings of community and faith many will not act on it. I wondered what this little girl who reminded of nothing so much as my own kids at that age, I wondered what road she would take. I said a prayer for her and went to board my plane.