Okay so I am a really emotional person. Like really really really emotional person. I am not in my feelings all the times like loverboy Drake but when shit hits the fan it really does gut me and yesterday shit hit the fan. I got into a fight last night with someone who is really important to me, which ended with both of us in tears at four in the morning so as you can imagine it wasn’t pretty.
We both cried out our feelings and are fine now. I love them deeply and always will. However, the altercation left me rather frustrated and I know I am not the only one considering I am a young Asian Muslim woman whose life choices somehow everybody feels entitled to dishing out opinions on. I have been brought up by parents who have always supported me in whatever I wanted to do. My parents were never authoritarian so I don’t gel well with people who are. I don’t believing in exerting physical or emotional power to control people’s behaviour.
That to me is a sign of TDS (tiny dick syndrome) which is applicable to the guys, the gals and the non-binary pals. It is not a term I use to (exclusively) bash men before any man with TDS tries to pick a fight with me. TDS is the opposite of BDE, and for me represent people who are so insecure that they need to exert their power in obnoxious ways without any concern of the impact it has on the people surrounding them. Kind of like how confidence is silent but insecurities scream like a banshee.
Often times those who suffer with TDS will use religion as a weapon and that is something I am unable to tolerate. I grew up going to a school surrounded my extremist Muslims who had a superiority complex about being better than everyone else because they didn’t “celebrate birthdays” or “watch tv” when I did, because my parents weren’t assholes and actually let their kid be exactly that, a kid. But even if I held my head up high and was honest with everybody around me about living life on my terms from age 5 until 13 when I was at Lakehead Grammar, on the inside I carried immense guilt about not being “a proper muslim” because I didn’t wear the hijab or would listen to music when my peers didn’t. It wasn’t something I did consciously, bit in hindsight all of my actions were determined by it. I was deemed as the spoilt one because I never took shit from anyone, whether it was a classmate who chewed off the end of my pencil after borrowing it (ew) or my teachers if they wanted to get on my case for simply not liking me. There was this one particular Bangla teacher in Class 5 who absolutely hated everyone, after a parents evening my mum told me this teacher was miserable because none of my other teachers have ever had a problem with me, apart from being little miss chatty patty and distracting everyone around me once I was done with my work.
I was openly modern and I think I was made to be felt bad about it but the kids didn’t do it on purpose, just the sheer environment I was in which made me feel like I wasn’t good enough to be a muslim. At age 13 I moved to the UK and now was surrounded by South Asian Muslims who appeared to be even more judgemental and conservative. It wasn’t an environment I wanted to be a part of if I didn’t have to so most my friends in school ended up beings non-muslims, specifically Hindus. I grew up on Bollywood movies, I understood their culture and they seemed really welcoming to my young naive mind, I felt safe sans judgement and that is all I craved. So inevitably I drifted apart from Islam. All through my secondary and higher education I told everyone I wasn’t religious because I didn’t think I deserved to be a Muslim.
I moved out for university, not something a lot of Muslims are allowed to do in the UK, especially girls. So once again I was surrounded by people who weren’t so when you are around people who only consider going clubbing as their idea of fun at university, even if you willingly participate in that, you are bound to feel guilty about not being Muslim enough for those who are a part of the Islamic Society at your university. ISOC in Nottingham is also a bit toxic (something I found out later) so can’t say I am not relieved that I dodged a bullet on that one. When I say toxic I mean the kind where you would be nice to someone’s face, then turn around and gossip about their personal life, including those you call friends. So not sure I would have had a good time there anyways. It was also segregated by gender, boys and girls weren’t allowed to mix, if you identified as any other gender you weren’t invited at all sigh, again something I found rather weird. This was also the case back in Lakehead where the boys and girls weren’t allowed to interact so perhaps you can chalk up to PTSD. Although I don’t particularly care for or respect a majority of the ISOC crowd at university, and don’t think they represent Islam like they claim to do, once again I didn’t belong in the so called Muslim crowd. The crowd that is supposed be where I seek comfort and find like minded people.
Whilst I was over exposed to my religion in my early childhood and pre-teens, there was an immediate reversal as I entered my teen and early adulthood years where I was grossly deprived of it. It wasn’t until I met friends who were good people, they were kind people, they were people with opinions and they weren’t afraid to share it, that I finally felt comfortable with my beliefs. For the first time in forever I felt like I had a safe space to be myself, that I wasn’t being judged for not being “Muslim enough”, I was just Nashrah and that was okay. I was allowed to be myself. I still didn’t want to call myself Muslim despite always saying I had a lot of respect for Islam. Which I did, and I still do, because at its core it’s a religion about spreading kindness. Despite what it may have sounded like earlier on in this essay, I do have a lot of gratitude for my time at Lakehead because it has shaped me up to be a person with kindness and integrity. I can also confidently say I wouldn’t have known or truly understood my religion if it weren’t for my Islam, Arabic and Hafeez lessons at Lakehead. I don’t remember everything but I knew enough at a time when I was lost to still be able to speak about Islam with pride. I always have and I always will because I truly do love it dearly.
I have spoken a lot about last year and transformative it was for me as a human being and a part of that was accepting my faith. It wasn’t until a friend helped me realise that I get to decide whether I consider myself religious or not when it kicked in. No one else gets to tell me about my relationships with anyone else in my life so why should I let them dictate the one I have with my creator? The one who has always had my back and the one who I have always believed in? I always say that Allah has never done me dirty and that I am Allah’s favourite child, both of which are phrases I live by because they are truly true. I have never been denied of something I truly wanted but if I was it was a blessing in disguise, I was actually better off without it. I have finally after years of struggling with my religious identity, can call myself Muslim without feeling guilty for not being a “proper muslim”. Me not wearing a hijab or not dressing like a nun doesn’t make me a bad Muslim.
Which was sort of what sparked that fight I had last night. Whilst my parents are modern human beings, I still have a lot of strictly conservative extended family who judge women on their clothes. If you aren’t covering yourself from head to toe you’re will likely be talked about in the Muslim South Asian community. Not everybody, but most people do it. And it infuriates the fuck out of me. Like why would you let your sons wear shorts but not your daughters? First of all why are you policing someone else’s clothes, like if you can’t lower your gaze the problem is with you. Wearing a crop top and shorts on a boiling hot day doesn’t make someone a slut or a pick me, they are simply just hot and uncomfortable. It is astounding to me how people feel entitled to judge another person using Islam as a shield to conceal their chauvinism.
Islam asks its believers to seek safety in it. So how can someone use it to cause pain and hurt is beyond me. I have been fortunate enough that my parents have allowed me to forge my own path but there are parents who beat their children to be better Muslim. How does that make sense? To use Islam to paint someone’s choices in a way that vilifies them feels like a gross weaponisation of it. And that what I struggle to ignore in people. I deeply disrespect it. Their actions, at least to me, reek of everything that Islam stands against. So it is hard for me to care for and cater to their opinions about I should choose to live my life and what I should or shouldn’t do. Like the more we feed into these TDS individuals and let them get away with having their way the more miserable our mothers, aunts, sisters and daughters are going to be. And call it controversial I am okay with coming off as the “disrespectful one” or the “spoilt one” within my extended family if it means my cousins will have a safer upbringing. One where they aren’t picked at for watching half an hour more of TV than other kids or wearing clothes that might not traditionally acceptable.
Your clothes say nothing about you other than your taste in clothes. That is the only thing people are allowed to judge you based on your clothes. Anything beyond that, is on them not you. I sound like a broken record at this point but middle aged brown uncles need to take their opinions about their teenage nieces’ outfits and shove it down their throats, stop poking their noses where it doesn’t belong and mind their own fucking business. Respectfully. It never goes well and always reflects poorly upon them, and considering their ostentatious sense of pride you’d think they would have learnt it by now. Perhaps I don’t understand because never has my dad, for all his faults, ever tried to tell me what I can or can’t do to exercise his power. I have never even heard him raise his voice. My mother has always raised me to an independent individual who is capable of making her own decisions. So I don’t understand the whole controlling parent routine. I am not going to apologies for it. And neither should you.
Cinderella said, “Have courage and be kind.”
I am telling you fuck kindness when it comes to people with TDS. It doesn’t make you selfish or a bitch. It makes you someone with self respect. Here’s to hoping and wishing we taught more of our kids to mind their own business instead of trying police what their wear, watch or befriend.
Special shout out to my parents, especially my dad for doing the bare minimum being semi-normal of a father. And to the brother I absolutely do not deserve, who would literally move heaven and earths for me if I asked, for wiping my tears and snot all night last night and loving me the most anyone ever could.
If you made it this far, thank you, that was VERY therapeutic. I am exhausted and will now post and go to bed immediately so if you see any typos PLEASE flag them. I love you!! Goodnight xo
Love yourself,
Nashrah xo
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