Growing up, I was often asked if I was a ‘half Muslim’
Being from a multifaith family can sound idyllic from the outside, but it wasn’t always a fairytale of tolerance and inclusion
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From as young as I can remember, people asked me if I was “a half Muslim”, as if a religion is something you can only half opt into. I grew up with a Muslim, Libyan father and a non-Muslim, English mother. Being from a multifaith family can sound idyllic from the outside — and sometimes it was. My earliest memories are peppered with instances of tolerance and inclusion that came naturally to us as the mismatched household we were. Take the year Ramadan and Christmas coincided, so we all (including my traditional English grandparents) waited until sunset to have our roast dinner for iftar. Or the countless times my mum (even though she didn’t partake in these acts herself) would wake up to make us a big suhoor in Ramadan or tear us away from the TV when it was time to pray.
But it wasn’t all a fairytale of cohesion. Cultural differences between parents can be hard enough to navigate as a child, but religion is an anchor that families tether their collective identities to, and without a distinct understanding of who I was and where I fitted in with my parents’ own beliefs, I felt marooned and adrift. I was too Muslim for my semi-agnostic, culturally Christian(ish) side, and I was too white, too English, too areligious for my Muslim side. This still affects me today as I create a childhood for my own children.
My upbringing was devoid of the hallmarks of a Muslim childhood. I didn’t go to Qur’an school or learn how to pray; we didn’t have massive, festive Eids or communal iftars in Ramadan; I wasn’t told the stories of the prophets as I drifted off to sleep, and I didn’t spend formative years running around the mosque, soaking in the experiences and references that other Muslim children do.
All I really knew about being a Muslim was that we weren’t allowed ham sandwiches and that my dad didn’t eat during daylight hours for one month a year. I’d go to school on Eid, whereas our Christmases were lavish and proud. When we’d visit our Libyan family each summer, I was embarrassed that I didn’t know the things I should. I’d lock myself in the toilet at prayer times so I didn’t have to reveal that I didn’t know the movements, and I’d stumble over the words when an elder tested me on the most basic verses from the Qur’an.
At the same time, some of my own English family members taunted my brother and me, asking whether we wanted to try pork without our Muslim father knowing. My friends thought it was weird that my overprotective dad wouldn’t let me sleep over at their houses or hang out with boys. Wherever I went, even my vaguely foreign name had people asking where I was really from. Ultimately, even my peripheral Muslimness didn’t protect me from the Islamophobia that is entrenched in Britain at every level. Living between two religious identities as a child didn’t liberate me — it did the opposite.
But it later pushed me to search for something that would make me feel whole, and I found myself drawn to being Muslim in more than just name. As a teenager, I learned how to pray and started to wear the hijab, desperately trying to make up for the gaps in my early knowledge.
While I was healing on the inside, on the outside things weren’t as tranquil. My non-Muslim family were alarmed — offended, even — by my new overly Muslim appearance, ignoring me at family events and making underhand comments about my “radical” look. It seemed I had broken an unspoken rule and chosen a side — and for my English relatives, it wasn’t the right one.
A decade and a half has passed since then, and I’ve come to a place where my Muslim identity is finally something that I embrace unapologetically, even if those closest to me don’t always approve. But every now and again at the great pressure points of life, such as births and deaths, I am reminded how challenging and divisive things within a multifaith family can be — from the vulnerability of being the only hijabi at the funeral of my grandfather, who was like a second father to me, to choosing a name for my son that some relatives can barely pronounce.
There’s nothing like becoming a parent yourself to make you reflect on your own childhood.
And as I look back on the first three years of my son’s life and get ready to mother a new baby again, I realise that I haven’t always been confident inhabiting the category of a Muslim mother, because I never had one of my own. I know how to do all the nurturing that my mother wrapped me in from birth, but when it comes to introducing my child to Islam in a way that is realistic for a toddler, I second-guess myself.
But then there are other times, when I see my son running around the mosque in his thobe with other little children, playing tag to the melody of the Qur’an, when I think maybe I’m not doing too badly after all. Perhaps it’s because of my own multifaith upbringing that I hope to give my children the Muslim childhood I yearned for.
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