The Muslim Mother – Islamic Guide to Motherhood, Parenting & Raising Righteous Children

A comprehensive Islamic guide that highlights the virtues, responsibilities, and spiritual impact of motherhood in Islam, based on the Qur’an and Sunnah.

From Author:

The Muslim mum is the most fertile political symbol of our times – heralded as both the solution and cause to many of the issues that erroneously come to define Muslim communities in our now globalised world. Muslim mums who are continuously spoken down to, at, or for, and very rarely conversed with in a language that sees and understands us beneath the suffocating extraneous layers of media sensationalism and political discourse.

In the first of its kind, The Muslim (M)other looks at the blessed and fraught experience of mothering when Muslim in contemporary political times. Amidst the textures of an accelerating digital age, ubiquitous Islamophobia and an increasingly commercialised cultural climate that impacts us in ways obvious and untold.

Kube Publishing

• Mariya bint rehan

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MARIYA BINT REHAN
THE MUSLIM MOTHER
Social and Political
Commentary On Contemporary Muslim
Motherhood
Pg:02
YIRAM
ntary
CHT
Ltd
UM
Preface
CONTENTS
1. The Personal: Motherhood and The Self
Mothering in the self
The 'B' word
Beauty and the Muslim
Breaking whose stereotype?

as the author of with the Copy- in-Publication
The paradox of motherhood and rediscovering yourself 34 Realigning
39
Truth and beauty
45
Crossing and consolidating the ultimate borders of self 48
2. The Digital: Mothering in the Socials
55
The Global Village
61
Studio) n, Page 149 50X (twitter) Instragram
Socially Not-working
Mirror, mirror, on the wall...
Memeification and a new social refrain
Motherhood as the opposite of our social-media world 101

Mothering in the
many
and everyday
95
New frontiers
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3. The Political: The Muslim (M)Other
Once upon a time...
115
The Muslim as Monster
118
Human Rights, Muslims Wrong
124
The visual standard of being Muslim
137
The paradox of punishing Muslims for agency
141
152
How the Muslim Mother is framed
157
How we perceive ourselves as Muslim Mothers
176
How we parent as Muslim Other
185
Living beyond binaries
1000)
202
4. The Cultural: PropaGender and
Culturing the Muslim Mother
211
Not MINC-ing words
221
Our own internal algorithm
232
Girl power?
240
Old misogyny in Muslim Cultures
246
Out of the Matrix...
256
...Into the fire
261
Introducing...the TradWife
264
Opposing one thing does not mean
268
endorsing its opposite
272
Meet the Muslimah Boss
275
An end to duality
282
A possible solution?
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Endnotes

PREFACE
Those staid, heavy-aired and stiflingly long Sunday's when you're left to occupy the chil- dren outside of the reassuring predictability of weekday routine. The frequent, darting glances at the clock, prompting silent, internal machina- tions; a maternal algebra of: effort time (over quality x practicality). The passive structuring of that drawn out yawn of the day which sits uncer- emoniously at the final curtain between now and tomorrow. I absent mindedly nudge a discarded toy against the fibre of the multicoloured play rug with the corner of my foot, the juddering motion it creates is strangely satisfying. From the peripheries of my wandering vision, I see those all too familiar eyes, peeping out from under a
heavy fringe, as my daughter stops in front of her bedroom mirror to glance at the reflection peering back at her with equal wonder.
I realise there and then, with lightening inten- sity, as I watch her curiosity unfold in the mirror,
Pg:04
Socially Not-working
creates
It is also worth pointing out here the inher- ent contradictions of social media. A network designed to bring us closer together, but which a strange and voyeuristic proximity, sometimes entirely devoid of what makes human interactions meaningful. As individuals plugging our being, lives and feelings into a system which, by the inevitable consequence of its design, denaturalises our social interactions, this can impact how we treat both ourselves and others Social media creates a physical barrier between our intimate thoughts and emotions and their very public expression, in the shape of the send button, forcing the critical of self-surveillance onto all of our actions. The very public and sive nature of these platforms means the kind of self-consciousness of a surveyor is forced upon and internalised by most users of social media, consequently, shrouding all of our online inter- actions in the clinical light of self-awareness, and creating a kind of social mime, a pretension, and a forced persona. In this way it is the antithesis of motherhood, which comes with all its realness, physicality and sobering qualities.
eye
expres-
Social media will have you carefully orchestrating a candid, spontaneous moment of your children
in beige to juxtapose the blue, seemingly off-the- cuff moment in your feed, three squares down. Typing a deliberately worded, multiply edited caption that's intended to appear nonchalant and aloof. Creating multiple snapshots to add to the carefully curated and heavily edited image you are constructing of your real, everyday life. Emitted out into the chaos and pollution of a social network of over a billion users, under the guise of wanting to create intimate, human connections. All to paint a picture of a fulfilling and whole life which exists outside of the 1080 x 1080 pixel restrictions, and which has you refreshing your feed every five minutes to monitor engagements in 138 x 67 millimeter screens. The dopamine hit that will only ever have us chasing the next high of social approval by likes, retweets, comments and emojis, altering our sense of value and inex- orably consuming everyday life.
The aim of many of these platforms - includ- ing Instagram and Facebook - is to exploit a vulnerability in human psychology through this 'social-validation feedback loop' as insiders in the tech industry candidly admit. The prestige that we are hardwired to seek as humans can now be quantified through the immediacy of clicks. This exploitation of what's vulnerable in us reverber- ates through the entire ecosystem of the online
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The Muslim mother is the most fertile political symbol of our times - heralded as both the solution and cause to many of the issues that erroneously come to define Muslim communities in our now globalised world. Muslim mothers who are continuously spoken down to, at or for, and very rarely conversed with in a language that sees and understands us beneath the suffocating extraneous layers of media sensationalism and political discourse.
In the first of its kind, The Muslim (M)other looks at the blessed and fraught experience of mothering when Muslim in contemporary politi- cal times. Amidst the textures of an accelerating digital age, ubiqui- tous Islamophobia and an increasingly commercialised cultural climate that impacts us in ways obvious and untold. An eclectic collection of essays containing social, cultural and political commen- tary on the breadth of issues that impress upon Muslim mothers, this book unpacks the polluted landscape through which we live and parent as Muslim women. It tackles the multiple dimensions of Muslim motherhood, the personal - how does being a mother change our metrics of value? - the social - what does the digital tribe bring to us as Muslim mums? - the political - who is the Muslim (M)other? - and cultural - how has the infosphere shaped our impressions of ourself?
At its heart, it is an exploration of the unique waters in which we mother, tenderly addressed to all of those Muslim mothers that may be weathering it; past, present and future.
Mariya bint Rehan is a writer, illustrator and mother to three young girls aged ten and under. With a background in policy, research, and international development, Mariya has been writing on issues pertain- ing to Muslim identity, politics and motherhood for over seven years. A unique voice touching upon contemporary issues, Mariya has provided insightful commentary on politics, art and culture centred on Muslims. She offers a refreshing and much needed perspective.