focus on islam strives to open up lines of communication in dialogue with all people and all religions of the world now let us join our host as we focus on the sound in the name of god the beneficent the merciful peace be with you and welcome to focus on this program focus on it is designed to promote a better understanding of islam and muslims and god willing i hope we are  filling our commitment to you the viewer i hope you please help welcome my guest to my immediate right sister rafia to her right sister catherine england and to her immediate right sister diane actually my first contact with muslims was when i was a teenager through the nation of islam moment through the lives of mohammed and all of the controversy that sent it around them however there were some positive aspect is living a healthy life eating healthily that interest me but it wasn't until i went off to college and met other muslims that i would they want to ask questions and feel more comfortable so there was something very university study and i had been a churchgoer and i still went to church up to almost to the time i converted to islam but i had stopped believing in some of the tenets like trinity things like that sure and that the more i studied  islam the more i realized that this is what i believed in and finally i came to the point where i decided if it's something i truly believed in then i had to make that commitment and adopt islam as my life and as my religion excellent did that not too long after i graduate from college and we started being friends you know i would meet with their mother out in the playground our kids would play together and now and i really didn't know anything about a slab and i thought women were  subservient you know i just had to wait on their husbands hand and foot and i soon learned that that was not the case that women had their own minds and that you know had nothing do with religion at all so we started learning about the religion  started reading a lot we'd go to the mosque with our friends that and we just started realizing that this is what we had always believed we just never knew there was a name for it yes and that is a slow yeah well let me continue on this personal nature and ask you what compelled you to become a muslim what i know you start right back with you sister well after learning about it and realizing that i did not ever believe that jesus was god sure i really did believe there was only one god and that we should just worship him i just felt that i should really i should become muscle i should be the religion that i believe rather than just trying to change christianity around to to my standards so i decided to become a good an excellent sister catherine it's basically the same for me i believe very strongly and in the concept of one god in monotheism and i believed in the prophets and i always believed in and respected jesus as a great teacher but i didn't accept the fact that he could be god i didn't see a reason for that and a great messenger pointed out i was a practicing christian child yes but they have reached a point where i started having question and a lot of these questions were not being answered or the answer that i was given were not very satisfactory and i do remember believing or thinking that god should always have an answer because he created all of this and he wouldn't put us in a situation where there was no way out or no understanding so that began my real quest to find where do the answers lie and as i searched and asked questions and talked to of the people i found that in this law even if the muslims i was talking to didn't have the answers themselves it was just the way they presented islam to me that made me feel this religion is more in unison with what god had created and made humanity for and i just believed and i still believe that there is no unanswered questions because god is almighty and the religion of islam for me shows me that the answer is that  there we just have to keep looking and looking and islam does promote that muslims ask questions that is a very basic part of our religion is to question so that god a law can prove to us in a way that he is as great as we think he is also with that knowing that questions are encouraged and they can be answered that really took me over that line well in the initial but what should be very inviting muslim women or women in general to become muslims sister catherine well for me one of the most inviting aspects of islam and perhaps it's not specifically religious aspect is the communal aspect so sense of sisterhood there's a sense of unity among the women muslim women that i know there's a sense of truly sisterhood that i didn't find anywhere and it's also it's a very clean lifestyle it's a very organized lifestyle and again i guess i guess i have to go back to the sisterhood i mean that is a very important aspect for for women there's a true sense of community and maybe take that beyond sisterhood there's a sense of community there's a sense of family there's a respect for the individual but again we have the binding the come comfort of the community and of each other so if you  too is that at that point when i did embrace islam as a young adult there were a lot of frustration from my life a lot of i had said questions and what i think that islam has to offer every human being is a focus is the goal we all go through trials that are tribulations i mean being muslim doesn't mean i live in a bubble where my life is just perfect every day but what islam does give me is a grounding it makes me feel that there's hope it makes me feel that i will get through this and it's a comfort to me and i think that's a big thing that islam offers any during the day we're all worshipping god that sense of unity yeah very much so yes i mean i think it gives you a much broader scope to your life and a broader perspective on things and the the tiny little things that happen every day we are we're a world religion and every day all muslims are saying their prayers at the same time and doing the same thing that i'm doing and whether they're in malaysia or wherever we're all in unity and if you could reflect also and talk about maybe the sense of genuine concern for the well being of another and it's part of islam to want for your brother or your sister what you want for yourself and i find that even with people that i don't know with muslims that i don't know very well the said genuine concern that i'm ok that i have the basic things that i need that i'm not hungry that i have a place to stay even emotionally i find that muslim women will always make themselves available to listen to what you have to talk about to invite you for a cup of tea or coffee or chocolate or whatever may be your indulgence just to make you feel that there's someone that's going through what you're going through and i think we spend a lot of time doing that i think once you see someone on the street and you know they're muslim you can identify you say so i think that is that immediate and do you know what i'm talking about things in the same for our children our children can get together and play and and there's just things we don't have to worry about we don't worry about bad words we don't worry about our children during inappropriate things they did just doesn't happen yes and they they have the common bond of islam which they probably don't have in public school yes but they they just they have a special last with each other they know that they're special excellent very good well let me talk about your group the goal of our group is to provide social services for women in particular because women are basically the caretakers of the children and by taking care of women we are taking care of our future which is  data and also giving a lot of support to have been found fathers as well but we'd like to be available for women when they come to town and they are looking for different resources for pleased our national goal is to to be a resource base there's a lot of talent available in the muslim community and there's also a lot of public services that were eligible for but sometimes it's hard to find those and we're pretty capable women and we want to be able to help others find the services that they need to fulfill their needs that's our immediate goal and in the future we hope to expand to overwrite of things  interest in the food bank making sure that nobody's homeless everybody has enough food education is something we want to concentrate on too because if you are saying that the children are our future we need to provide for the  bad when we sat around and talked about what we all wanted this organization to do we had big dreams to even own property to have a building as such where families could come women in particular because that nasa scientists well two things it's very male dominated and with a lot of the social challenges that are presented in the american society everything is becoming very integrated and integration is fine within itself but i believe i believe islam also promotes that women need an opportunity to be with themselves and to feel comfortable and this is what we want to provide so some of our really that to have for our community center with our indoor swimming pool limited tennis court and i think if we keep these big goals that we will work and we will achieve them and you can have us back again and will tell you all about you know i want to drill just for a moment you talked about mothers and taking care of your children is there you see there's another misconception that you women are confined to the house that you women are only housewives and that there is some some sort of inequality in islam and maybe individual you can clarify for me some of these factors are women equal in islam do you choose to stay at home or are you forced to stay at home so please let me tackle one thing you said i'll be equal in this law ok women are absolutely equal and islam when we embrace islam and when a man embrace islam his duties his responsibilities are exactly the thing good we all have to pray you all fast we all pay ours a cot as a matter of fact women in islam do not lose their property as much as many christian women do and as many women have in the past what a woman brings to her marriage remains hers even her name we all well most of us have kept our name from our fathers not taken our husband's name but we bring our own property which means we have to pay the cost on that sure and the pilgrimage to mecca is also incumbent upon us as it is to the man so that's always one thing i like to get out in the very beginning women are absolutely equal we all will be asked to stand right in front of god on our own we don't we won't have our husband to say i made her i made her do this or you know we have to to  they're responsible for our own actions absolutely you know the the idea of doubt in islam comes to mind and i don't know if you would like to talk about this at all but i know that it's often a misconception that women have to pay an enormous dowry and i think this is a cultural rather than a religious in fact i think it's just the opposite in islam is it not well the men of the one thing pay the dower exactly and  my understanding which is not very great on this particular topic but it was my understanding that the dowry in this long is if you look at the american society there's a lot of insurance that husbands take out on themselves if something happens in case of their demise so their inability to care for their families for so the dowry and as long as the little that i understand about it is more or less not that the husband is buying his wife or anything like that turning her into a piece of property but it's a kind of insurance that he puts in the beginning to help the family in the case of something that may happen to him that his wife is able to start life and to continue on it's a wonderful safeguard i don't like the insurance industry very much let's talk about education and and i know in future programs we will have some qualified people to really talk about it but is it a genuine concern on your women's part and what can be done about it or what is being done about it there's a lot being done about it ok definitely a concern of every muslim every woman every muslim mother that our children grow up to be leaders that they grow up with a sense of pride in being muslims and the sense of dignity dignity and security and their lifestyle is very very progressive and it's a very a just the ball to the life that they're living so here in seattle as well as many other places across the country especially where there's been groups of muslims who decide to build the community we have started schools we have a school here that's been started in one nine hundred eighty think it's eighty we started the school it has grown since that time and it's been a constant struggle there is lots of obstacles in our way from outside as well as on the end five but the education of muslim children has always been at the foremost of all of our minds and whether we agree on how to do what are not i think there's not a person that lives here that would not say they're willing to do what they can to promote the education of the muslim children sister go through perhaps i think my child is still young so we haven't yet tackled school but when i think of education islam it's that education in the search for knowledge is incumbent on all muslims male or female young or old and education in the search for knowledge is a lifelong quest for i know most almost all of the muslims i know seeking knowledge reading researching topics is a continual activity for them we read the koran in the month of ramadan which is coming up we read the entire career and throughout that month and that is a continual every time you read it you learn something new and for me education is a lifelong quest it starts with our children but it continues throughout our life so please well i have three children two of them are in public school there are problems that are unique i think to being  the only muslim children in the school absolutely there are there are a lot of parties and things you know that i would rather my children didn't have to participate in christmas parties or parties things like this  they it seems like they celebrate everything for every other culture every other religion everything but they forget about islam and they don't mention anything about our religion  or anything to do about it which is sad i think that children end up getting a lot of their information from television news which is usually negative they don't see the positive aspects of it and i think that with with my situation my son is going to be junior high school age next year my daughter will be sixth grade  both feet i want to comment you asked about the role of muslim women and whether they're forced to stay in the house or what their role is and i think that not enough can be said about the position and role of motherhood when we look at our society today and we find children who are homeless we find children who know things that i still don't know about first hand it's a little scary and very unnerving as to who is going to be the leaders of our future and what qualities of a going to bring to that leadership position so i believe that if the viewers think of muslim women as primarily mothers that that is one of the greatest visions they could have  me because mothers shape the future they shape the children and they instill the morals and the values and the integrity and try literally in the educational role for their so the women being viewed as mothers and that's all i think as a mother we all know that a mother has many many different roles and in terms of education i have children that in the public school also and i am very visible in that public school just for the reasons decimate diane had brought up that you want your children to feel identifiable and we want our children to feel secure that that even though they're different they are still participating in the bigger picture so i find that a lot of muslim women who are focusing their time one the education and raising of their children they very very busy and active in that in the schools and extra curricular activities for their children but a muslim woman is not forced to stay at home but if she is it is a very versatile role that she plays there in the home but there are many women that are out in professional careers teachers doctors lawyers as katherine said that's one of the goals the fifth is to bring these women to the light of other muslims to serve them and also to encourage them to excel and be as much as we can possibly be you know i really have to commend you and as a personal insight you all know my mother sister irene i was myself and my sister  brothers and sisters we're all fortunate enough to have our mother volunteering in the school and she was very visible and an american like yourself it was very helpful to us to see our mother visible to give a better understanding of what we were about and who we are to give people a good understanding of us and i must and i think that's excellent and i would encourage all mothers to do that i think that's very important  was in a way a very nice time to meet people because we're so intent on being closer to our goals then maybe other times because we are fasting and our thoughts are more crisp but we had  the dinner together and by the end of the evening she had given myself and my friend one of the a piece of jewelry that she had she had three pieces of jewelry she kept one she gave my friend one and she gave me one so that whenever we found this bracelet we would think of each other i have never seen that sister again but it is true that whenever i see this bracelet touch and i think of her and the kind words that we shared and the good times that we had together and you know as we final up the program the last five minutes all of you women are wearing scarves and this is typically misunderstood by a lot of american people and maybe you can tell me some of the positive things about wearing your scarf what identifies me as a muslim i see another sister in the grocery store she has a scarf on immediately there's a bond for the office off color jokes are not told there's a lot more respect courtesy given and that's i think it sets a tone for the entire office not just for me and for me that's one of those aspects of a work being a working woman and a you who i would agree with kathy that's a big thing because i am out in the public a lot too and i think for all of us having experienced times of our adult life where we did not carr and compared to the times that we do we find that we command a lot more respect and our parents just by our parents before we say a word sure that i walked into a room where people may be saying you know some sex is kind of joke from what have you and they'll see me and it's almost all the level of a christian nun people think and feel as someone that should be protected yes i find that members of very very courteous much more willing to speak properly and to carry themselves and to look beyond us as women are i think beings but i think maybe there is something that she's thinking about and we have a much better opportunity to be listened to on serious issues  used to work in a beauty salon and i know the trauma that women go through sure to keep their hair preventable sure that we don't go through the scarf trauma from time should make sure our scarf is appropriate but it's nothing important like why spend a half hour every morning doing that so it's time i think the term in effect to her was the word command respect rather than demand respect right and i think that's very important please join us next week when we