Girlfriends, Always - Friendship on the Road of Life

I have had the same four best friends since I was two years old. We have worked together, played together, learned together and grown together. As we strive to become successful and balanced Muslim American women, we look to one another for strength, companionship and advice.

    In navigating my way through the complexities of life as a Muslim American woman, I have found my four best friends, Amina Rubin, Aliya Gifford and sisters Hana and Maryam Brown, to be the support, inspiration and examples that I need in my journey to stay on the straight path. I have learned that life can be full of joy and fun, as well as service, duty and responsibility, and that it is a proper balance, based on a foundation of love and faith in God, that brings us success and gets us through the hard times.

    Any young person will tell you that growing up is not easy. But growing up as a good Muslim, in America today is a great challenge. Popular culture is filled with ideas and values about beauty, relationships, personal goals and responsibility that are not consistent with many Muslim values. In addition, politics and current events have put Muslims and Islam in the spotlight, placing us in the daily position of defending and explaining who we are. These challenges can wear away at our faith and make us question who we are and why we are here. Some people choose to blend, to be “just like everyone else” and others choose to react, rejecting Western culture in all its forms. But many Muslim Americans today choose a third way, a way of adding to the fabric of American culture and society without losing our selves. This is the way my girlfriends and I chose.

     We grew up together in the beautiful foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia in a community founded by Shaykh Ahmed Abdur Rashid. We five were so close that if you told one of us something you could be sure it would reach the other four in no time at all. Attending school at the World Community Education Center, we were constantly together, in class and out of class, from preschool to high school. Aliya, who had no siblings while growing up, recalls, “I have never felt like an only child for the simple fact that I was always with my four best friends from the time I was a baby until now.” 

   As young children, we had loosely defined roles in the group; Maryam, for example, took the leadership position as the oldest, while Amina often played the role of mediator–smoothing out rough edges. We were always grateful to Aliya for her steady, balanced approach to things and Hana often was the one who dared to venture into new waters. Now that we have matured we are more fluid in our interactions and roles, fulfilling needs interchangeably, each one of us able to play the role appropriate to time and place.

    Hana thoughtfully describes our friendship with words that echoes my feelings: “Our friendship is very deep. It is unique because it derives its strength from something more than friendship; it is based on time, on trust in each other’s integrity and on a deep love and affection that grows from walking the same path in life.” 

     That path that we walk together gives us all a shared sense of responsibility for the world, the community we grew up in and our role in the world as Muslim American women. That feeling of mutual responsibility, as well as a nurturing environment, opened many opportunities for us.  

    In 2000, with the help of mentors and friends, we founded ALIMY (A Leadership Institute for Muslim Youth) a two-week residential summer program for Muslim girls and boys ages 13 to 17. It was our intention that through ALIMY students would gain a respect for the needs of others, as well as gain a chance to intimately know the value of teamwork and cooperation. ALIMY is helping young people find balance and direction in their lives as they develop a greater sense of understanding, ownership and pride in the Muslim American identity.

    Together we developed and ran this program, which included everything from campfires and canoe trips to classes on civic involvement and a fieldtrip to our nation’s capital for appointments with the staff of several senators. We wanted to share with the younger generation both the responsibilities and the joys that come with being a Muslim in this country. With four years of youth programs and over 40 alumni to our credit, we are beginning to accomplish that, insha’Allah.

   Our college experiences opened more doors for us. We graduated from high school at different times but all chose to go on to college at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. There, Maryam, the oldest and first college student of the girlfriends, began the tradition of hard work and high standards that we all inherited as we arrived at the college. This tradition manifested itself in the creation of UMMAH, the United Muslimahs of the Muslim student’s club on campus. She worked for several years creating the constitution of our club and getting student government approval, which came through shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11^th; the first week of my college career.