For 53 years Frances Mary Fischer wore the wrong shoe in her feet. That’s what she refers to as being a man for almost five decades. It was like living in agony.
“When you wear the wrong shoe, you get blisters. It pains. It has been like that for me. Every morning I would look in the mirror and it would make me want to cry. You don’t like the skin you are in, you hate the image that you see,” she said. “Nobody understands.”
For Fischer, a transgender woman, taking a decision to transition was tough. She waited for her two children to grow up. “I waited till my kids were out. Now is the time for me to blossom,” she said. “The pain of remaining in the bud is more than the pain of blossoming. I feel better now. I don’t hate what I see in the mirror.”
For years Fischer had her own wardrobe, hidden away. She would dress as a woman once in a while and go out. But except for those stolen moments, she lived in the disguise of a father, a husband and a man.
But expression came at a cost. Fischer started her official transition from male to female in August, 2001, when she applied for a name change at the Supreme Court for the County of Onondaga, according to the affidavit filed by her in June, 2003. It took her two-and-a-half years to change her name from Frank Mark Fischer to Frances Mary Fischer. When the judge refused, she approached Lambda Legal for help and then sued New York State. She finally won the case but the victory is just a beginning of many battles, legal and otherwise that she has to wage every moment in her life. She lost her job at Alliance Relocation Services in Oct. 2004. She blames it on discrimination against transgender people. She cleaned tables, ate onion soup for days but did not give up. Nor did she ever lose her faith.
“It is good that I have not shot myself in the head. May be this is because of my background as a priest. It is so difficult. It just pushes you to the extreme,” she said when I met her last year. At the time she had no job and no money to pay her rent.
Born into a Catholic family in Iowa Falls in 1952, Fischer was the fourth child of Esther Mae Polles. Polles had seven children. Fischer was right in the middle, the fourth child. And so was his sex. It lied somewhere between the male and the female. “I always had a nurturing instinct. It was like having a maternal instinct,” she said.
Even as a child, then known as Francis Mark Fischer, she loved to play with dolls and once traded her bicycle for a neighbor’s doll. But her family never suspected anything except for perhaps her mother, who she said, pushed her toward priesthood because she thought it was the best way out.
“Maybe my mother knew. Maybe she pushed me toward priesthood because she knew I did not feel like a man,” she said. “My birth was fraught with little miracles. The umbilical chord was around my neck. I could have died. At 3 I had been run over by a car. It literally crushed my mid-section. It made me a eunuch. My mother considered it a sign,” she said.
By 1955 she had been indoctrinated that she was chosen to be a priest. Fischer and her younger brother Jerry both became altar boys when they were young. Their father, a military personnel, imposed religion on the family. All children were to attend services at the church, volunteer for any help that the church needed and religiously pray.
As a young child Francis was deeply attracted to religion. As an altar boy, he loved wearing cassocks. She said it was because it resembled woman’s clothing. “I did not identify with the soldier, the football player and wrestler…not with the man in charge,” she said.
Little Francis did not know what being transgender meant. But he wondered why he did not have a vagina or why he was not like his sisters. “I was desperately seeking why I am not like my sisters. I wanted to play with the girls,” she said. After the accident, young Fischer asked the doctor why he did not have a vagina. “I was questioning my very nature since I first came into my being,” she said.
At home, he was tormented. The siblings used to sing ‘Franky’s going crazy…’. Franky, as they called him, stomped, kicked and cried but they would not stop.
Franky did get crazy after all, as her brother Jerry Fischer called it. She became the woman she had always wanted to be. Years after Fischer’s family came to know about her being transgender, her brother is still struggling with the idea of his big brother becoming a woman. Jerry still falters between ‘he’ and ‘she’, while referring to his brother, who is now a woman. He has to remind himself that the brother who was an altar boy like him and who gave him his first condom is no longer a man. He instantly corrects himself if he calls Frances a he. But he does it again.
“To me it is very strange. I did not see Frank as being transgender,” he said. “He was a brother, a wrestler, the guy who had helmets and grenades…”
When Jerry met Fischer at his father’s funeral last year, he said he did not feel any difference. But the change in the physical appearance was difficult to take in.
“I am trying to figure out what the heck. She is my brother. I just ask why,” he said.
In 1993 Fischer’s mother died. At her funeral, he did not give any indication. But later on everyone started noticing things about Fischer. At family reunions relatives noticed Fischer had painted nails or no hair on her arms. Some even suspected she wore a bra inside her shirt. But no one ever thought Fischer would transition so completely.
Her brother finally realized he had one more sister when Fischer’s ex-wife Diane Fischer sent the newspaper cutting of an article that was published in Syracuse Post-Standard about Fischer’s struggle as a transgender woman.
“He used to have a big Afro in those days. But everyone had. My big question is why,” said Jerry, who lives in Iowa Falls. “Probably he hung around with the wrong crowd. We don’t have anything that flaming here.”
All the rejection and the shock in people’s eyes have only strengthened Fischer’s faith in god. A Born Again Christian, Fischer gave up her brotherhood vows when she thought the Roman Catholic Church was exclusive in its vision.
“I have had a communication early on in life. I was born again early,” she said.
Doubts about the Roman Catholic Church began to disturb Fischer just before she became a priest. She read the scriptures, generic parchments and compared the teachings of the Church and God. At the time she had been following the church’s teachings blindly, she said.
“Christ is the high priest between men and God, not the priests,” she said. “At the point when I realized this I said I can no longer be a Roman Catholic priest because this is not what God said,” she said.
Fischer became disenchanted. With a doctorate in religion, Fischer’s questioning of the Roman Catholic belief also made her write her thesis on fallacies of the Catholic Church. “Here people put a checklist. If I go to the church once a week, I will be a good person,” she said. “The dichotomy was there. A man with man was banned. Deuteronomy 23 of the Bible says a man should not put on what pertains to a woman.”
She went to the archbishop of Dubuque and asked him what to do. “I didn’t know what I wanted,” she said. That’s the time Fischer met Diane. She used to sing in the choir. She proposed and they got married. When their first child David died, both moved to Syracuse to be with Diane’s family. They got divorced in 2001 and now Fischer lives with Franky, a cross-dresser.
The cross hung from a gold chain in her neck. It was difficult to miss. Except for her voice that is still deep and sounds like that of a male’s voice, Fischer looked like a woman. Dressed in a light pink shirt and beige pants she did not attract much attention at the Onondaga Library compared to the time last fall when I met her at the Carousel Center. People stared at her confused by her voice and her persona.
Fischer’s eyes had a dreamy look when she spoke about religion. The voice was distant. But the cross remained intact in her hands. She kept touching it as if in reassurance, while she talked about herself. “I believe I am the product of Satanic influence. God would not want to put somebody in this torment,” she said. “God allowed Satan to mess with me. But that made me strong. I would not have become the person I am. All the evil is in the world. It is allowed by God. My adapting my body from male to female to match my identity is my change. I am evil.”
She attends Believers’ Chapel in Cicero that welcomes members of LGBT community but not without condition. Frank Porter, assistant pastor, said these people are welcome only if they are willing to give up their lifestyle. He did not know Fischer personally but said that Christ did not approve of LGBT lifestyles.
But Fischer is unshaken. Fischer considers herself asexual. Her transition has nothing to do with sex or the desire for it. “It has to do with identification. Christ healed- that’s my nature too. It is an awkward feeling to not fit. Even after 1,000 surgeries, I will still not fit in. God is pro-choice. He wants you to live.”
Her faith is also what strikes her friends. Faye Brooks, Fischer’s friend, met Fischer at the Expressing Our Nature, a support group’s meeting. He has known her for around 3 years. “She is very religious…now more than ever. Her state is more of an amplifier for her,” he said.
He said her faith also makes her trust people easily. “She is very honest. A giving and caring person…almost to the point of putting herself at risk.”
Brooks related how once when Fischer had gone overseas, she had let one of the tenants live in her house. The tenant had been having some problem with finances and nowhere to live. “She stole her things and even damaged the house,” he said.
Friends have kept her company and have provided her with shelter when she needed it. Her boyfriend Franky took over the lease of her apartment at 110 2nd North St. in April because Fischer was not in a position to pay her rent. Also, Franky underwent an operation and had difficulty in climbing the stairs to his third floor apartment. Franky is on permanent disability security and gets around $7,000 a year from the government. The money is not enough for both but they manage. Sometimes they get food from Rescue Mission or Peace Corps, at other times friends bring over food to share.
The one-bedroom apartment had boxes and clothes lying everywhere. The small kitchen table had been pushed against the wall to make space for Franky’s stuff. He recently moved all his things here. Both had been cooking a dinner of split pea soup and patties when I arrived.
Fischer and Franky met last year at EON’s meeting. “We have a strong relationship. Our faith in the lord is a big thing.”
Fischer had been waiting for a bus when Franky first talked to her. “I asked her if she could teach me computers,” he said. It was around August last year that Franky brought her computer over to Fischer’s house and stayed on.
“She did not know if I stayed for the computer or her,” she said. “We just stuck together after we met. It developed over the months.”
Franky underwent surgeries for back and neck and these rendered him helpless. This is when Fischer took over. She nursed him. “After Thanksgiving he literally became a cripple. He had trouble,” she said.
“She has been a tremendous help in getting my body back together. I think the lord brought together to take care of each other. It is not a legal connection but a familiar connection,” he said. He called Fischer to ask what she thought their relationship was. Words like co-dependence, couple and friendship were thrown in.
“We just have fun. If we both had jobs, we would do more stuff,” he said.
In a denim skirt and a powder blue top, Fischer looked the woman she aspired all her life to be. Franky’s lip stretched into a smile when he described Fischer. “I think she is pretty. I don’t think of her as any other way than a woman. I give her that respect,” he said. “I don’t know what to do without her. If I had stayed there I would have been dead.”
Besides Franky, Julia Dunn is a friend Fischer knows understands her. Dunn and Fischer grew up together in Iowa Falls, where Dunn still lives. Fischer had been preparing for priesthood and Dunn saw nothing that indicated Fischer felt like a woman.
“She wrestled in high school. She was no macho guy, just a regular guy. She would have made a good priest,” she said.
For 34 years they had not met. But when Dunn received a voice mail from her brother that Fischer was coming for her father’s funeral, she decided to go. She had been looking for her childhood friend.
“We were buddies. I could say anything to her. Franky was a real good person,” she said.
When Dunn saw her, she said found the same friend I could laugh with. “The only thing that had changed was her sex,” she said. “I found my friend.” When Fischer went to Iowa Falls last year, she stayed with Dunn. And then the conversations flowed and the obvious questions followed.
“I asked her why she did it,” she said. “I have no problem with it. I wish people could give these people a break. Franky is a beautiful woman. I love my Franky.”
Such people have made life a little easier for Fischer, who is still trying to get a job. She has sent out at least 1,100 applications so far, she said.
“My voice gives me away. They don’t want me to use the same restroom,” she said talking about the difficulties in getting a job.
For now both Franky and Fischer are surviving on food stamps and security money. They pray together before every meal.
“We would get where we want to. The lord will carry us through this,” said Franky, while Fischer put another tray of patties in the oven.
through my world window...these posts reflect some of my work, some of my thoughts and the entire me
Monday, August 28, 2006
Islamic funerals - on the difficulty of burying their dead...
On a frigid Saturday afternoon when the winds were downright piercing, 11 men and women braved the cold to attend a seminar on how to wash and shroud a dead body the Islamic way.
“The prophet directed us to do this. It is an obligation for us. If the relatives can’t do it, the community has to do it,” said Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed, director of the Islamic Society of Central New York, to the volunteers. “If nobody does it, the whole community is sinful.”
Three women and eight men sat attentively, listening to Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed, who explained why washing and shrouding was a community affair in Islam and more so in a country like the United States where most of the Muslim population consists of converts and first-generation immigrants, who do not know how to conduct the burial rituals in the Sunnah way. The Sunnah is a religious literary source based on Prophet Mohamed’s way of life and his teachings on how to live in a manner befitting a follower of Islam.
Since mortuaries and cemeteries are not familiar with Muslim practices, it is left to such organizations to create awareness of their customs in non-Muslim communities in secular societies. Thus, burials are part of a mosque’s community service program here. These help out with arranging and attending the funerals and conducting essential rituals required by the religion that are unique to the minority community.
Dr. Sayyid Sayeed, secretary general of Islamic Society of North America said most mosques in the United States offered such services. There is a need for such services here and it is also an Islamic requirement, he said.
“The families are split here. Some of them are overseas. We are not in a traditional society where these are familiar,” he said. In the Middle East and other South Asian countries, these burials are essentially a family affair.
Also, it is easy on the family that has experienced a death, said Juan E. Campo, associate professor of religious studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
“They might not want to do it themselves as they are aggrieved. It helps to have someone do it,” he said.
According to Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University, the prospect of reward also makes people volunteer to perform the rituals in the Muslim community, he said.
“Those who take part will get a reward. It is something very positive to be involved in a funeral process. We are not an individualistic community. If people do not have the community at such times, they are pitied,” he said referring to burials in Lebanon and other such countries.
Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed said Allah rewards those who come forward to render their services in such times.
“We do not know what the reward or sabab is. But there is something definitely,” he said.
Osameh Alwahaidy, who has been with the mosque since 1986 and volunteers to do washing and shrouding, said he does it because Allah will reward him. “Everyone tries to be righteous. We will get to jannat (heaven),” he said. The Islamic Society of Central New York, 925 Comstock Ave., has been helping the community with burials for 15 years.
There are five parts of an Islamic burial. The first part is physically cleansing the body, which is also part of Shari’ah. Around four volunteers are needed to do this. The next step is to shroud the body in kafan, plain white cloth, so that the private parts are not visible. The process is called takfeen. The third part consists in conducting the funeral prayer, which is led by the Imam. The next part is the burial itself. And lastly, the community members gather to pray for the forgiveness of the deceased. Muslims do not embalm the body. They wash it and then wrap it in clean white sheets called the kafan. Usually, three sheets are required to cover a man’s body and five are needed for a woman. The mosque keeps these sheets so that they are readily available.
The mosque keeps a list of volunteers to contact in case of a death, who then go to the funeral home to conduct the washing and shrouding rituals. Though six women had signed up for the seminar, only three were present. But more women joined them later. This was the first time the mosque was holding a seminar to train and educate volunteers about the funeral rituals. Earlier, volunteers would train others who wished to offer their services.
While Ahmed demonstrated the procedure, the others took notes. The volunteers have to be gentle and modest and handle the body with respect and keep it covered at all times, Ahmed said.
“It is needed here because we have so many converts, whose families do not know what procedure to follow in case of death,” said Ahmed.
However, the very fact that a large part of the Muslim population here is composed of converts brings many issues in its wake. Alwahaidy said sometimes the family that has not accepted Islam may have objections with the type of burial.
“Around 15 years ago we had a case. The son wanted the mother’s body to be cremated instead of an Islamic burial. The mother was a convert. We could not do anything,” he said.
Now the mosque has an Islamic will that converts can sign. The Islamic burial is part of the will, said Mir Hussainni, secretary of the Islamic Society. However, the will is not mandatory.
Danya Wellman, who converted to Islam 14 years ago, said that in Muslim countries the ritual was performed culturally, while here it is done Islamically. Only Muslims can wash and shroud a Muslim’s body and that’s why volunteers were needed. She said the thought that no stranger will handle her body when she died was good.
“I know my Muslim sisters will treat my body with respect. My own daughter will not do it. She won’t be able to,” she said.
Wellman volunteers to do washing and shrouding and has trained several other women. Women can only wash women’s bodies except in the case of the spouse. The family can participate but the rituals must be performed with great care as this is something that Allah has asked us to do and we can’t be wrong, she said.
“We wash and shroud the same way the Jews do it,” she said explaining the procedure.
Since the law here is different from that in South Asia or the Middle East, where the family takes care of the procedures, local mosques also assume the role of a facilitator.
The dead body in the United States is collected by the funeral homes and they contact the local mosque, which then sends volunteers to perform the washing and shrouding of the body. The body is then brought to the mosque where the janazah or the funeral prayer is said by the Imam and it is then taken to the cemetery to be buried. The mosques often have their own cemeteries or have a separate space marked for the Muslims in a cemetery. The body is put in a casket and lowered in the grave. Islam does not allow caskets but the law in New York and most states here requires the use of a casket for safety purposes. This also makes it expensive. A casket costs between $700 and $20,000 depending upon the quality and decoration.
“We have been directed by scholars and the prophet to follow the law of the country that we reside in. So, we use the caskets, though it is not right,” Ahmed said. “Many states with large Muslim population have successfully asked the state government to let them bury the body without a casket or coffin, but in New York we are not allowed.”
“The Muslim community here has decided to submit to the civil laws and the safety and sanitary laws,” said Campo, associate professor of religious studies.
States such as California do not require caskets, said Dr. Ayoub. However, in states where it is required by law, the caskets should be the most unassuming and the cheapest available because Islam prohibits any ostentation, he said.
A typical burial may cost anything between $2,000 to 3,000. The Islamic Society has already bought land in the local cemetery and people pay around $600 to the mosque for the grave, which goes to the graveyard fund. The mosque is planning on buying another plot as the one at Comstock Avenue does not have much space left, said Ahmed. It helps people who can’t afford to pay for the burials.
“We helped some of the refugees from Bosnia and Somalia with the burial as also some Muslim families here who could not bear the expenses,” said Hussainni of the Islamic Society. The mosque also helps non-Muslims if they approach them for burials.
Fudil Selmoune, the assistant Imam of the Islamic Society said it was a costly affair to bury people here.
“The cost it too much compared to our country where there are no expenses for digging. It is almost free. We just have to buy the cloth, which does not cost more than a dollar or two in my country” said Selmoune, who is from Algeria and joined the mosque in 2003. That makes the mosque’s role more important.
Various mosques in United States have licenses to bury the dead. So, the burying can take place the same day as preferred by Muslims. But in smaller cities, where the mosques have arrangements with the funeral homes, it may take days to bury the body.
Alwahaidy said it was particularly difficult if a person died on Friday and they had to wait till Monday when the funeral homes opened in order to bury the body.
“Sometimes, we have to wait for the death certificate. That delays the process. We have arrangements with the funeral homes that call the mosque when someone dies but sometimes things get delayed,” he said. “In Jordan things are simple. We don’t have to go to the hospitals. There are no funeral homes.”
“The prophet directed us to do this. It is an obligation for us. If the relatives can’t do it, the community has to do it,” said Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed, director of the Islamic Society of Central New York, to the volunteers. “If nobody does it, the whole community is sinful.”
Three women and eight men sat attentively, listening to Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed, who explained why washing and shrouding was a community affair in Islam and more so in a country like the United States where most of the Muslim population consists of converts and first-generation immigrants, who do not know how to conduct the burial rituals in the Sunnah way. The Sunnah is a religious literary source based on Prophet Mohamed’s way of life and his teachings on how to live in a manner befitting a follower of Islam.
Since mortuaries and cemeteries are not familiar with Muslim practices, it is left to such organizations to create awareness of their customs in non-Muslim communities in secular societies. Thus, burials are part of a mosque’s community service program here. These help out with arranging and attending the funerals and conducting essential rituals required by the religion that are unique to the minority community.
Dr. Sayyid Sayeed, secretary general of Islamic Society of North America said most mosques in the United States offered such services. There is a need for such services here and it is also an Islamic requirement, he said.
“The families are split here. Some of them are overseas. We are not in a traditional society where these are familiar,” he said. In the Middle East and other South Asian countries, these burials are essentially a family affair.
Also, it is easy on the family that has experienced a death, said Juan E. Campo, associate professor of religious studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
“They might not want to do it themselves as they are aggrieved. It helps to have someone do it,” he said.
According to Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University, the prospect of reward also makes people volunteer to perform the rituals in the Muslim community, he said.
“Those who take part will get a reward. It is something very positive to be involved in a funeral process. We are not an individualistic community. If people do not have the community at such times, they are pitied,” he said referring to burials in Lebanon and other such countries.
Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed said Allah rewards those who come forward to render their services in such times.
“We do not know what the reward or sabab is. But there is something definitely,” he said.
Osameh Alwahaidy, who has been with the mosque since 1986 and volunteers to do washing and shrouding, said he does it because Allah will reward him. “Everyone tries to be righteous. We will get to jannat (heaven),” he said. The Islamic Society of Central New York, 925 Comstock Ave., has been helping the community with burials for 15 years.
There are five parts of an Islamic burial. The first part is physically cleansing the body, which is also part of Shari’ah. Around four volunteers are needed to do this. The next step is to shroud the body in kafan, plain white cloth, so that the private parts are not visible. The process is called takfeen. The third part consists in conducting the funeral prayer, which is led by the Imam. The next part is the burial itself. And lastly, the community members gather to pray for the forgiveness of the deceased. Muslims do not embalm the body. They wash it and then wrap it in clean white sheets called the kafan. Usually, three sheets are required to cover a man’s body and five are needed for a woman. The mosque keeps these sheets so that they are readily available.
The mosque keeps a list of volunteers to contact in case of a death, who then go to the funeral home to conduct the washing and shrouding rituals. Though six women had signed up for the seminar, only three were present. But more women joined them later. This was the first time the mosque was holding a seminar to train and educate volunteers about the funeral rituals. Earlier, volunteers would train others who wished to offer their services.
While Ahmed demonstrated the procedure, the others took notes. The volunteers have to be gentle and modest and handle the body with respect and keep it covered at all times, Ahmed said.
“It is needed here because we have so many converts, whose families do not know what procedure to follow in case of death,” said Ahmed.
However, the very fact that a large part of the Muslim population here is composed of converts brings many issues in its wake. Alwahaidy said sometimes the family that has not accepted Islam may have objections with the type of burial.
“Around 15 years ago we had a case. The son wanted the mother’s body to be cremated instead of an Islamic burial. The mother was a convert. We could not do anything,” he said.
Now the mosque has an Islamic will that converts can sign. The Islamic burial is part of the will, said Mir Hussainni, secretary of the Islamic Society. However, the will is not mandatory.
Danya Wellman, who converted to Islam 14 years ago, said that in Muslim countries the ritual was performed culturally, while here it is done Islamically. Only Muslims can wash and shroud a Muslim’s body and that’s why volunteers were needed. She said the thought that no stranger will handle her body when she died was good.
“I know my Muslim sisters will treat my body with respect. My own daughter will not do it. She won’t be able to,” she said.
Wellman volunteers to do washing and shrouding and has trained several other women. Women can only wash women’s bodies except in the case of the spouse. The family can participate but the rituals must be performed with great care as this is something that Allah has asked us to do and we can’t be wrong, she said.
“We wash and shroud the same way the Jews do it,” she said explaining the procedure.
Since the law here is different from that in South Asia or the Middle East, where the family takes care of the procedures, local mosques also assume the role of a facilitator.
The dead body in the United States is collected by the funeral homes and they contact the local mosque, which then sends volunteers to perform the washing and shrouding of the body. The body is then brought to the mosque where the janazah or the funeral prayer is said by the Imam and it is then taken to the cemetery to be buried. The mosques often have their own cemeteries or have a separate space marked for the Muslims in a cemetery. The body is put in a casket and lowered in the grave. Islam does not allow caskets but the law in New York and most states here requires the use of a casket for safety purposes. This also makes it expensive. A casket costs between $700 and $20,000 depending upon the quality and decoration.
“We have been directed by scholars and the prophet to follow the law of the country that we reside in. So, we use the caskets, though it is not right,” Ahmed said. “Many states with large Muslim population have successfully asked the state government to let them bury the body without a casket or coffin, but in New York we are not allowed.”
“The Muslim community here has decided to submit to the civil laws and the safety and sanitary laws,” said Campo, associate professor of religious studies.
States such as California do not require caskets, said Dr. Ayoub. However, in states where it is required by law, the caskets should be the most unassuming and the cheapest available because Islam prohibits any ostentation, he said.
A typical burial may cost anything between $2,000 to 3,000. The Islamic Society has already bought land in the local cemetery and people pay around $600 to the mosque for the grave, which goes to the graveyard fund. The mosque is planning on buying another plot as the one at Comstock Avenue does not have much space left, said Ahmed. It helps people who can’t afford to pay for the burials.
“We helped some of the refugees from Bosnia and Somalia with the burial as also some Muslim families here who could not bear the expenses,” said Hussainni of the Islamic Society. The mosque also helps non-Muslims if they approach them for burials.
Fudil Selmoune, the assistant Imam of the Islamic Society said it was a costly affair to bury people here.
“The cost it too much compared to our country where there are no expenses for digging. It is almost free. We just have to buy the cloth, which does not cost more than a dollar or two in my country” said Selmoune, who is from Algeria and joined the mosque in 2003. That makes the mosque’s role more important.
Various mosques in United States have licenses to bury the dead. So, the burying can take place the same day as preferred by Muslims. But in smaller cities, where the mosques have arrangements with the funeral homes, it may take days to bury the body.
Alwahaidy said it was particularly difficult if a person died on Friday and they had to wait till Monday when the funeral homes opened in order to bury the body.
“Sometimes, we have to wait for the death certificate. That delays the process. We have arrangements with the funeral homes that call the mosque when someone dies but sometimes things get delayed,” he said. “In Jordan things are simple. We don’t have to go to the hospitals. There are no funeral homes.”
how media distorts images and perceptions....gay is not effiminate
Roger Batson, black and openly gay, shops at T.J. Maxx, Wal-Mart and Marshall's and looks for good deals on almost everything. Calvin Klein and Armani are not what he can afford. He drives an old car that he bought on e-Bay for $1,250 and not a Jaguar. And he is not flamboyant or effeminate, does not cross his legs and sits primly or flutters his eyelids when he sees an attractive guy.
But Batson and his lifestyle are not what the media represents about the LGBT community. Most often gay people are portrayed by the media as white, affluent and flamboyant, while lesbians are either sexy women or masculine women commonly referred to as butch lesbians.
"Stereotypes exist in real life, so stereotypes also exist in the media because they are easy reference points when writers need to immediately make the audience understand that this is a gay character," said Damon Romine, entertainment media director, GLAAD. "Of course, stereotypes perpetuate more stereotypes, and the danger is that there is a risk that some people may come to believe that stereotypes represent all reality,"
Media stereotypes concern gay rights activists and LGBT people who think it results in prejudice and further isolate a community that is still struggling to get into the public forum.
"Stereotypes are there to oppress people. Gangsters, flaming gay guys, slutty women are common stereotypes. Designers use suggestive gay and lesbian images to sell their products. We are the second-largest spenders after the black community with a purchasing power of $600 billion a year and that's what makes us attractive targets," said Amit Taneja, assistant director of the Syracuse University LGBT Resource Center at 750 Ostrom Ave.
Some people say the real problem is that these images of gay people with lots of disposable income and a sense of style are far removed from reality. And though Batson said that some gay people are effeminate or rich, that's not only what they are all about.
The under-representation of LGBT people of color on television or in advertisements is another issue that bothers Batson and Taneja, an Indian who migrated to Canada around 15 years ago.
"We have no role models and this is frustrating. People of color who are also part of the LGBT community don't see themselves in the media. They have no positive images when they come out. Gay youth is very impressionable and this makes it difficult for them to come out and not see people like us out there," said Batson, 28, who is also a graduate journalism student at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Romine said stereotypes worried him too when he was a kid.
"When I was growing up in the '70s, there was a show on television called "Soap." This show starred Billy Crystal as a gay man who sometimes dressed as a woman and considered having sex reassignment surgery," he said. "The character was played as pretty campy and often as the butt of the joke. He was also the only gay character on television. The only one. So if you're a kid who realizes he's different and sees this as the only gay representation on television, you're going to worry that this is what you have to look forward to as an adult."
Some examples of common media stereotypes today are Jack on Will & Grace who is sassy and flamboyant, Adam, the quirky Filipino American on Half & Half, acid-tongued Neil in Twins, and the best friend Josh who is black on Emily's Reasons Why Not.?
Adrea Jaehnig, director of LGBT Resource Center, thinks mainstream media simplifies the lives of LGBT people for a joke. It is problematic because it does not reflect the reality, she said.
"Either our lives are funny or they are tragic. It is an incredibly narrow perspective on LGBT people. The humanity is often overlooked and it is very scary because these can have psychological effect on people and lead to violence," she said.
Andrew Augeri, coordinator of the LGBT center, feels that these negative and unrealistic portrayals are leading to people living a closeted life.
"This white image does not permit images of people of color, people of varying
abilities, body types, etc. to have airtime. And that invisibility of
people can prohibit or prolong the coming out process for someone who
doesn't see themselves represented in media outlets," he said.
GLAAD estimates that LGBT people represent only around 2 percent of the characters on television. The 2005 report finds that faces on network scripted shows continue to be predominantly white at 76%. African Americans make up 14% of the characterizations, Latina/os 6%, Asian Pacific Islanders represent 3%, with less than 1% making up other ethnicities.
Besides, another issue that is a product of the media portrayal is the near invisibility of bisexual and transgender people on television or in advertisements, said Augeri.
"I think this affluent, white male easily taints the view of who queer people are, to the extent that the bisexual and transgender communities rarely get spotlights into the issues and voices important to their lives," he said.
"One of the most interesting ironies of the LGBT media (because it does this as quickly as the mainstream media) is The Advocate. Its tagline is "the national
gay and lesbian magazine" meaning bisexual and transgender people are
not part of its reach despite countless articles on this segment of the
community. There is a lot of progressive work to do to really
understand who audiences are and what is "interesting" to people," he added.
But Jaehnig is hopeful and sees limited visibility as a good sign that will lead to discussions in the public space and thus lead to awareness.
"Today you see LGBT people on television, there are articles regularly written on them. It is an interesting development. We have seen the effect of silence, we now have to see what effect dialogue has," she said.
Brian Stout, president of OutRage, a campus-wide organization for LGBT people at Syracuse University, said it is just not the medium that contributes to stereotyping.
"It is one thing to put the image out there and another to buy into those images. I think that straight people need to recognize that all LGBT people are not what the media portrays. They need to rethink. Our lives are unfortunately not that glamorous. Everyone has multiple extensions to them," he said.
Another image that most often affect relationships between straight men and gay people is that the latter are promiscuous and do not believe in committed relationships.
Anand K. Jain, a graduate student at Maxwell School, Syracuse University, said after he met Batson, he felt he had misjudged gay people.
"I would hang out with you Roger. I mean it," he said to Batson at a common friend's house.
Jain always thought that gay people were all about sex and he dreaded going to gay bars in case he got hit on by people there.
Joe Carpenter, editor of All For One, a LGBT newsletter, and former editor of The Pink Paper, said it is difficult to propose a solution to the issue of stereotyping.
"When I was younger, it (stereotyping) angered me. Now I have become immune to it," he said. "But people should challenge these images when they see them. And gay people should go out and live their lives. This will show them as real people to others."
Romine feels that things are changing for the better and there are shows where LGBT characters are shown as leading normal lives. And this is especially true of the cable television, he said.
"Cable and reality television continue to present more diverse and realistic portrayals of the LGBT community, as well as gay and lesbian people of color. These characters face real-life issues concerning our community, such as marriage, parenting, workplace discrimination and religion," he said. "This leads to richer, more diverse representations - the kinds of images that help Americans understand and embrace their LGBT family members, friends and neighbors in a more meaningful way."
But Batson and his lifestyle are not what the media represents about the LGBT community. Most often gay people are portrayed by the media as white, affluent and flamboyant, while lesbians are either sexy women or masculine women commonly referred to as butch lesbians.
"Stereotypes exist in real life, so stereotypes also exist in the media because they are easy reference points when writers need to immediately make the audience understand that this is a gay character," said Damon Romine, entertainment media director, GLAAD. "Of course, stereotypes perpetuate more stereotypes, and the danger is that there is a risk that some people may come to believe that stereotypes represent all reality,"
Media stereotypes concern gay rights activists and LGBT people who think it results in prejudice and further isolate a community that is still struggling to get into the public forum.
"Stereotypes are there to oppress people. Gangsters, flaming gay guys, slutty women are common stereotypes. Designers use suggestive gay and lesbian images to sell their products. We are the second-largest spenders after the black community with a purchasing power of $600 billion a year and that's what makes us attractive targets," said Amit Taneja, assistant director of the Syracuse University LGBT Resource Center at 750 Ostrom Ave.
Some people say the real problem is that these images of gay people with lots of disposable income and a sense of style are far removed from reality. And though Batson said that some gay people are effeminate or rich, that's not only what they are all about.
The under-representation of LGBT people of color on television or in advertisements is another issue that bothers Batson and Taneja, an Indian who migrated to Canada around 15 years ago.
"We have no role models and this is frustrating. People of color who are also part of the LGBT community don't see themselves in the media. They have no positive images when they come out. Gay youth is very impressionable and this makes it difficult for them to come out and not see people like us out there," said Batson, 28, who is also a graduate journalism student at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Romine said stereotypes worried him too when he was a kid.
"When I was growing up in the '70s, there was a show on television called "Soap." This show starred Billy Crystal as a gay man who sometimes dressed as a woman and considered having sex reassignment surgery," he said. "The character was played as pretty campy and often as the butt of the joke. He was also the only gay character on television. The only one. So if you're a kid who realizes he's different and sees this as the only gay representation on television, you're going to worry that this is what you have to look forward to as an adult."
Some examples of common media stereotypes today are Jack on Will & Grace who is sassy and flamboyant, Adam, the quirky Filipino American on Half & Half, acid-tongued Neil in Twins, and the best friend Josh who is black on Emily's Reasons Why Not.?
Adrea Jaehnig, director of LGBT Resource Center, thinks mainstream media simplifies the lives of LGBT people for a joke. It is problematic because it does not reflect the reality, she said.
"Either our lives are funny or they are tragic. It is an incredibly narrow perspective on LGBT people. The humanity is often overlooked and it is very scary because these can have psychological effect on people and lead to violence," she said.
Andrew Augeri, coordinator of the LGBT center, feels that these negative and unrealistic portrayals are leading to people living a closeted life.
"This white image does not permit images of people of color, people of varying
abilities, body types, etc. to have airtime. And that invisibility of
people can prohibit or prolong the coming out process for someone who
doesn't see themselves represented in media outlets," he said.
GLAAD estimates that LGBT people represent only around 2 percent of the characters on television. The 2005 report finds that faces on network scripted shows continue to be predominantly white at 76%. African Americans make up 14% of the characterizations, Latina/os 6%, Asian Pacific Islanders represent 3%, with less than 1% making up other ethnicities.
Besides, another issue that is a product of the media portrayal is the near invisibility of bisexual and transgender people on television or in advertisements, said Augeri.
"I think this affluent, white male easily taints the view of who queer people are, to the extent that the bisexual and transgender communities rarely get spotlights into the issues and voices important to their lives," he said.
"One of the most interesting ironies of the LGBT media (because it does this as quickly as the mainstream media) is The Advocate. Its tagline is "the national
gay and lesbian magazine" meaning bisexual and transgender people are
not part of its reach despite countless articles on this segment of the
community. There is a lot of progressive work to do to really
understand who audiences are and what is "interesting" to people," he added.
But Jaehnig is hopeful and sees limited visibility as a good sign that will lead to discussions in the public space and thus lead to awareness.
"Today you see LGBT people on television, there are articles regularly written on them. It is an interesting development. We have seen the effect of silence, we now have to see what effect dialogue has," she said.
Brian Stout, president of OutRage, a campus-wide organization for LGBT people at Syracuse University, said it is just not the medium that contributes to stereotyping.
"It is one thing to put the image out there and another to buy into those images. I think that straight people need to recognize that all LGBT people are not what the media portrays. They need to rethink. Our lives are unfortunately not that glamorous. Everyone has multiple extensions to them," he said.
Another image that most often affect relationships between straight men and gay people is that the latter are promiscuous and do not believe in committed relationships.
Anand K. Jain, a graduate student at Maxwell School, Syracuse University, said after he met Batson, he felt he had misjudged gay people.
"I would hang out with you Roger. I mean it," he said to Batson at a common friend's house.
Jain always thought that gay people were all about sex and he dreaded going to gay bars in case he got hit on by people there.
Joe Carpenter, editor of All For One, a LGBT newsletter, and former editor of The Pink Paper, said it is difficult to propose a solution to the issue of stereotyping.
"When I was younger, it (stereotyping) angered me. Now I have become immune to it," he said. "But people should challenge these images when they see them. And gay people should go out and live their lives. This will show them as real people to others."
Romine feels that things are changing for the better and there are shows where LGBT characters are shown as leading normal lives. And this is especially true of the cable television, he said.
"Cable and reality television continue to present more diverse and realistic portrayals of the LGBT community, as well as gay and lesbian people of color. These characters face real-life issues concerning our community, such as marriage, parenting, workplace discrimination and religion," he said. "This leads to richer, more diverse representations - the kinds of images that help Americans understand and embrace their LGBT family members, friends and neighbors in a more meaningful way."
the struggles, the hopes - when i met mike, a gay activist and hair stylist
It is that time again for Michael DeSalvo of Friends of Dorothy. A time to say final goodbye to his guest of one year who is suffering from HIV/AIDS and will not live beyond a few weeks according to doctors at University Hospital.
DeSalvo and Nick Orth, his partner of 16 years, have been taking in hospice patients as their guests for over 14 years, caring for them and making them part of their family. Those who come to their house at 212 Wayne St. are often fatally ill. Some have no where to go. A few are unloved and unwanted.
But they are always welcome at Friends of Dorothy - A Catholic Worker House.
“We provide a home for them, cook for them. Our guests are part of our family,” said DeSalvo. “Some move on, others pass away.”
In these 14 years, the couple has seen at least 30 of their guests die.
“It is an intense time. We become attached. When you wipe their ass, hold their head when they are puking, dress them, it is so intimate. Sometimes, I feel we know them more than their families do. And when they die, it is upsetting,” said DeSalvo who is a hairstylist and owns Hairnaoir, a beauty salon, at the intersection of Green and Catherine streets. When the condition of the guest becomes bad, DeSalvo cancels his appointments to be with him.
So while DeSalvo works at the salon, Orth stays at home to take care of the guest and run errands.
“He is our house husband,” said DeSalvo, 47, who met Orth at a demonstration at Syracuse in1989.
“It was love at first sight. He walked by and I said ‘who’s that?’,” he said.
At the time DeSalvo was in the process of getting a divorce from his wife of 13 years and Orth was living in Washington D.C.
DeSalvo, openly gay, said he always knew he was attracted to men but he was confused.
“I did not fit in the gay community. And I liked women too. May be I felt like that because of the pressures of the culture. But I am more gay than straight,” said DeSalvo who is now divorced. He has two step children.
For Orth too it was love at first sight. He had been in relationships before but they did not last. But with DeSalvo it was different. Orth moved to Syracuse in 1992 and together they started their home. He never felt like a marriage wrecker, said Orth, 42.
“I did not feel bad about his divorce. Never felt that because of me he lost something good. His marriage was bad and it was not working,” said Orth who is an artist and a carpenter.
Though DeSalvo and his partner have been together for a long time, they have not married.
“I am committed to him (Orth). I don’t believe in marriages,” he said adding that this is his way of showing to the world that being gay is not only about sex, it is about relationships too.
They do not have any children and Orth said DeSalvo jokes with his god-children that he expected them to take care of him when he grew old.
DeSalvo, an Italian, was born and brought up in Syracuse. He went to Henninger High School and after finishing high school went on to do courses in interior designing and beauty. He did the interiors of his salon, which he bought around two years ago. It has ochre yellow walls and maroon and dark brown furniture and little angels hanging from the ceilings.
“They look cool. One of my professors presented them to me,” he said.
The earnings from the salon pay for the house expenses. DeSalvo works with the University Hospital that refers patients to them. The couple does not have to worry about medical bills, which are usually taken care of by Medicaid. DeSalvo was taught how to take care of patients by nurses.
“We choose people who have the least amount of support. We keep one or two guests at a time so that we can give them proper care,” he said.
Things are not always easy for the couple. They have had bad times. Money has always been a problem.
“It is hard. When we first started, we had even less. We have always lived on a shoestring budget. I still don’t have health insurance because it costs money and we can’t afford it,” said Orth who does not work because someone is needed at home to take care of the guest.
But they have been working toward fund-raising by organizing and hosting dinners on Sundays and every first Wednesday of the month.
“Our friends have been generous with donations,” said DeSalvo who does not get any funding from the government nor does he want any.
“I like our autonomous status. I don’t have to worry about filling beds,” he said.
They have also been publishing a newsletter called Friends of Dorothy since 2003 to inform their donors and supporters about their work. Both DeSalvo and Orth write for the letter , which they design and publish themselves.
The Catholic Worker Movement started in the 1930s by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin inspired the duo to provide hospitality to the needy.
“This is our way of observing our religion. When everything collapses, someone needs to be working to pick up the pieces and this is what we do,” DeSalvo said.
Hope, who has been a guest at Friends of Dorothy, and now helps DeSalvo and Orth in their work, said if it were not for them, she would have died in a nursing home.
“I had AIDS and I stayed with them for seven months. They are my adopted parents. They cared for me better than my father. I consider them as angels that God put in my path. I feel blessed. They are now the constant in my life,” she said.
Hope came to stay at DeSalvo’s home around eight years ago and said she was very ill at the time. The doctors said she just had two more weeks left. And she owes her survival to the two men.
His customers love him. Kelly Donahue who came to get her hair cut, said she just loved DeSalvo for what he did for the community.
“He is very special for what he does outside his work. He is my Michael,” she said.
Donahue has been coming to Hairanoir for nine years.
Tom Burbank, who works at the salon, said he loved working with DeSalvo and appreciates his community work .
“I respect him immensely. There is a huge need for this kind of work,” he said.
DeSalvo has been involved with community service for a long time. He used to be a visitor at jails and an HIV positive prisoner inspired him to work with HIV/AIDS patients, he said.
The home is not part of the Catholic Church. And though he does not agree with many of beliefs of the church, DeSalvo still keeps his faith and attends mass at times.
“I call my work ‘peace politics’. Communion to me is having dinner with my guests. I don’t agree with the church but I am not going to let them drive me out. It is sad when people give up their faith because of institutions,” he said.
The Catholic Church recently barred gay people from becoming priests according to a New York Times report that was published in September.
“It is a disservice to us. They are using power and privilege to control sexuality. They are recreating what Christ changed for example, the way they treat women,” he said.
DeSalvo said though he is gay himself, he does not like the exclusionist approach of the gay movement.
“I have kept myself away from such groups. Groups scare me. I feel angry at the gay community for excluding transgender people,” he said. “I work with the marginalized people. I work to support transgender people. They need our compassion.”
The neighborhood in which they live is gay-friendly and most houses have the rainbow-colored flag hanging from their parapets or windows to show support for gays and lesbians.
“I don’t like this. LGBT issues should become non-issues. This is boxing ourselves,” he said.
DeSalvo is comfortable with his life and identity. But sometimes he wants to escape from his world. He wants to travel.
“I want to go to Italy, Europe. I want to go to a beach. Maybe I can do that sometime. I could never do it because I never had money,” he said.
The couple took a year off around three years ago but stayed at home. Orth was sick at the time.
“We could not stay away from work for a long time. We do think about going on vacations sometimes. Our work and home are inseparable,” said Orth.
A judge at Utica once told DeSalvo after he was arrested for protesting in a civil disobedience march in the 1990s that he was meant to do community service. He could not have been more correct.
DeSalvo and Nick Orth, his partner of 16 years, have been taking in hospice patients as their guests for over 14 years, caring for them and making them part of their family. Those who come to their house at 212 Wayne St. are often fatally ill. Some have no where to go. A few are unloved and unwanted.
But they are always welcome at Friends of Dorothy - A Catholic Worker House.
“We provide a home for them, cook for them. Our guests are part of our family,” said DeSalvo. “Some move on, others pass away.”
In these 14 years, the couple has seen at least 30 of their guests die.
“It is an intense time. We become attached. When you wipe their ass, hold their head when they are puking, dress them, it is so intimate. Sometimes, I feel we know them more than their families do. And when they die, it is upsetting,” said DeSalvo who is a hairstylist and owns Hairnaoir, a beauty salon, at the intersection of Green and Catherine streets. When the condition of the guest becomes bad, DeSalvo cancels his appointments to be with him.
So while DeSalvo works at the salon, Orth stays at home to take care of the guest and run errands.
“He is our house husband,” said DeSalvo, 47, who met Orth at a demonstration at Syracuse in1989.
“It was love at first sight. He walked by and I said ‘who’s that?’,” he said.
At the time DeSalvo was in the process of getting a divorce from his wife of 13 years and Orth was living in Washington D.C.
DeSalvo, openly gay, said he always knew he was attracted to men but he was confused.
“I did not fit in the gay community. And I liked women too. May be I felt like that because of the pressures of the culture. But I am more gay than straight,” said DeSalvo who is now divorced. He has two step children.
For Orth too it was love at first sight. He had been in relationships before but they did not last. But with DeSalvo it was different. Orth moved to Syracuse in 1992 and together they started their home. He never felt like a marriage wrecker, said Orth, 42.
“I did not feel bad about his divorce. Never felt that because of me he lost something good. His marriage was bad and it was not working,” said Orth who is an artist and a carpenter.
Though DeSalvo and his partner have been together for a long time, they have not married.
“I am committed to him (Orth). I don’t believe in marriages,” he said adding that this is his way of showing to the world that being gay is not only about sex, it is about relationships too.
They do not have any children and Orth said DeSalvo jokes with his god-children that he expected them to take care of him when he grew old.
DeSalvo, an Italian, was born and brought up in Syracuse. He went to Henninger High School and after finishing high school went on to do courses in interior designing and beauty. He did the interiors of his salon, which he bought around two years ago. It has ochre yellow walls and maroon and dark brown furniture and little angels hanging from the ceilings.
“They look cool. One of my professors presented them to me,” he said.
The earnings from the salon pay for the house expenses. DeSalvo works with the University Hospital that refers patients to them. The couple does not have to worry about medical bills, which are usually taken care of by Medicaid. DeSalvo was taught how to take care of patients by nurses.
“We choose people who have the least amount of support. We keep one or two guests at a time so that we can give them proper care,” he said.
Things are not always easy for the couple. They have had bad times. Money has always been a problem.
“It is hard. When we first started, we had even less. We have always lived on a shoestring budget. I still don’t have health insurance because it costs money and we can’t afford it,” said Orth who does not work because someone is needed at home to take care of the guest.
But they have been working toward fund-raising by organizing and hosting dinners on Sundays and every first Wednesday of the month.
“Our friends have been generous with donations,” said DeSalvo who does not get any funding from the government nor does he want any.
“I like our autonomous status. I don’t have to worry about filling beds,” he said.
They have also been publishing a newsletter called Friends of Dorothy since 2003 to inform their donors and supporters about their work. Both DeSalvo and Orth write for the letter , which they design and publish themselves.
The Catholic Worker Movement started in the 1930s by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin inspired the duo to provide hospitality to the needy.
“This is our way of observing our religion. When everything collapses, someone needs to be working to pick up the pieces and this is what we do,” DeSalvo said.
Hope, who has been a guest at Friends of Dorothy, and now helps DeSalvo and Orth in their work, said if it were not for them, she would have died in a nursing home.
“I had AIDS and I stayed with them for seven months. They are my adopted parents. They cared for me better than my father. I consider them as angels that God put in my path. I feel blessed. They are now the constant in my life,” she said.
Hope came to stay at DeSalvo’s home around eight years ago and said she was very ill at the time. The doctors said she just had two more weeks left. And she owes her survival to the two men.
His customers love him. Kelly Donahue who came to get her hair cut, said she just loved DeSalvo for what he did for the community.
“He is very special for what he does outside his work. He is my Michael,” she said.
Donahue has been coming to Hairanoir for nine years.
Tom Burbank, who works at the salon, said he loved working with DeSalvo and appreciates his community work .
“I respect him immensely. There is a huge need for this kind of work,” he said.
DeSalvo has been involved with community service for a long time. He used to be a visitor at jails and an HIV positive prisoner inspired him to work with HIV/AIDS patients, he said.
The home is not part of the Catholic Church. And though he does not agree with many of beliefs of the church, DeSalvo still keeps his faith and attends mass at times.
“I call my work ‘peace politics’. Communion to me is having dinner with my guests. I don’t agree with the church but I am not going to let them drive me out. It is sad when people give up their faith because of institutions,” he said.
The Catholic Church recently barred gay people from becoming priests according to a New York Times report that was published in September.
“It is a disservice to us. They are using power and privilege to control sexuality. They are recreating what Christ changed for example, the way they treat women,” he said.
DeSalvo said though he is gay himself, he does not like the exclusionist approach of the gay movement.
“I have kept myself away from such groups. Groups scare me. I feel angry at the gay community for excluding transgender people,” he said. “I work with the marginalized people. I work to support transgender people. They need our compassion.”
The neighborhood in which they live is gay-friendly and most houses have the rainbow-colored flag hanging from their parapets or windows to show support for gays and lesbians.
“I don’t like this. LGBT issues should become non-issues. This is boxing ourselves,” he said.
DeSalvo is comfortable with his life and identity. But sometimes he wants to escape from his world. He wants to travel.
“I want to go to Italy, Europe. I want to go to a beach. Maybe I can do that sometime. I could never do it because I never had money,” he said.
The couple took a year off around three years ago but stayed at home. Orth was sick at the time.
“We could not stay away from work for a long time. We do think about going on vacations sometimes. Our work and home are inseparable,” said Orth.
A judge at Utica once told DeSalvo after he was arrested for protesting in a civil disobedience march in the 1990s that he was meant to do community service. He could not have been more correct.
in search of self - my meeting with a transgender woman
It took Frances Mary Fischer 53 years to express herself and it cost her job, family and money. And it is still not complete. A transgender woman, Fischer now does odd jobs and lives on public assistance. But she has not lost hope.
“It has always been a struggle. It is a continuing fight,” she said as she opened the letter from New York State Human Rights Commission. And even as she sliced the envelope open, she said she knew it was not in her favor.
Fischer lost her job at Alliance Relocation Services in Oct. 2004. She complained to the HRC against the company for discriminating against her on the basis of her gender identity.
The letter, dated Oct. 26 and signed by Julia Day, Interim Regional Director, state division of human rights, dismissed her complaint and closed the case as they found no evidence against the respondent that it discriminated against her. According to the letter, Fischer has 60 days to appeal against the decision to the New York State Supreme Court, but in case of an adverse decision there, the complainant may lose his right to proceed subsequently in a federal court.
“They have cited Kremer vs. Chemical Construction Co. (1982). I am going to appeal against it,” she said. “It is good that I have not shot myself in the head. May be this is because of my background as a priest. Many transgender people do that. It is so difficult. It just pushes you to the extreme.”
Fischer’s parents prepared her for the church when they suspected he was not like other boys. But she gave up priesthood when she started questioning the Catholic beliefs.
She said he always felt like a woman, even as a child.
“I was scolded for playing with dolls. Once I traded my bicycle for a neighbor’s Barbie doll,” said Fischer, adding that in those days it was difficult to express one’s gender identity because the society was not very receptive.
“Gender identity refers to a person’s internal, deeply felt sense of being either male or female. Because it is internal and personally defined, it is not visible to others,” wrote Jaminson Green in Introduction to Transgender Issues in Gay Pride directory of 2005-2006.
Fischer was born in Iowa Falls, Iowa in 1952. She said she always felt she should express herself as a woman and wanted to wear a dress to her high school prom but ended up wearing a female tuxedo. She said she has been undergoing counseling since 1983 and has been on feminizing hormones since then.
“When I was 3 years old I had an accident and I asked my doctor why I did not have a vagina,” she said.
But coming out has not been easy for her. She has faced discrimination.
“The work environment became hostile when I started my transition. People would call me Fran and FM,” she said. Most people associate transgender people with drag queens, gays, lesbians and cross dressers.
“They think we are prostitutes and have diseases,” she said.
Besides discrimination, it also costs money to look like a woman. Surgeries are not covered by insurance and Fischer has already spent $18,000 on various treatments including augmentation mammaplasty. She said she went to Bangkok to get her surgery because it is cheaper there.
“It costs so much here,” she said. Fischer is transitioning in stages. “It is coming out well. I am excited. I would like to get a tummy tuck and other small things like that. I will keep doing them. It will take years,” she said pointing to her teeth that have just been shaped.
“They are working on the lower set. And when I can afford it, I would like to go for electrolysis. There is stubble,” she said feeling her chin with her hands that appear well-groomed with neutral polish to make her nails shine.
“My gynecologist said I could have boyfriends now,” she said. “It gets so lonely at times. It is depressing. Sometimes, I want to cuddle with someone on the couch and just watch television.”
Fischer’s voice is deep and she still sounds like a male. “It got messed up. But I will get it right,” she said.
Dressed in a powder blue turtle neck sweater and black pants, Fischer said she loves the woman’s body and regrets that she did not transition before. “It was for my children. My wife and I decided to keep it under cover till our children had grown up,” she said.
For Fischer it was like wearing the wrong shoe in the feet all these years. “When you wear the wrong shoe, you get blisters. It pains. It has been like that for me. Every morning I would look in the mirror and it would make me want to cry. You don’t like the skin you are in, you hate the image that you see,” she said. “Nobody understands.”
Fischer who has a son and a daughter, both married, is divorced now. She said she is very fond of her grand children but seldom gets to meet them. A picture showed her holding both her grandchildren in her arms.
“It felt so good. I always wanted to be a mother,” she said. “But it is difficult to explain how they have two grandmothers.”
Fischer was employed at Alliance Relocation Services in 2000. She said she was the MIS director at the company and in charge of billing and drafting job descriptions. Fischer started her official transition from male to female in August, 2001, when she applied for a name change at the Supreme Court for the County of Onondaga, according to the affidavit filed by her in June, 2003. It took her two-and-a-half years to change her name from Frank Mark Fischer to Frances Mary Fischer. When the judge refused, she approached Lambda Legal for help and then sued New York State. She finally won the case but the victory is just a beginning of many battles, legal and otherwise that she has to wage every moment in her life.
The latest in her trials is the loss of her job.
Erin Keenan, an employee in the accounts and the billing section in her company, said Fischer is very capable but the company did not have work for him.
“He was removed because there was lack of job. He never had a formal title and we have also removed the position that he had,” said Keenan.
She said the employees are very friendly and respected Fischer but when she got graphic about her transition, it became uncomfortable for people in the office. She said there were no bathroom issues at all. And everybody is shocked to see that Fischer decided to complain against the company.
“He started explaining the process. We were not very comfortable with it. His removal had nothing to do with his sex-change. People here are very open,” she said.
An article on Fischer in the Post-Standard on March 25, 2004, quoted her employer, Jim Walsh, saying that Fischer is a star employee, that she “carried the company single-handedly”. He also said he would not forget what Fischer has done for the company.
Under Title VII, it is forbidden to discriminate against an employee for failure to conform to gender stereotypes. (www.transgenderlaw.org)
The New York law provides a cause of action for gender identity-motivated discrimination, although there is no explicit mention of gender identity under the New York human rights law. (Maffei v. Kolaeton, 626 N.Y.S.2d 391 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. 1995) and Rentos v. OCE-Office Systems, 1996 U.S. Dist.)
Professor Janice McDonald, College of Law, Syracuse University, said, “She has a better chance in a federal court.” Fischer has already appealed in the state court and can’t go to federal court (Kremer V. Chemical Construction Co.).
Fischer said she told her employer about her transition and though he allowed earrings and rings, he did not allow dresses.
“He said what I was I trying to do. Win a beauty contest? And I said I was trying to be myself,” she said.
Now Fischer is without a job. She said she has sent around 1,100 applications for various jobs but has failed to get one.
The New York State Human Rights Law under Section 291 says right to “obtain employment without discrimination based on age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, military status, sex or marital status is hereby recognized as and declared to be a civil right.”
“A couple of interviewers said though I was qualified, other employees might have problems like bathroom issues or religious beliefs and so I could not get the job. I can’t get a job because I am transgender and I am open about it,” said Fischer who has two doctorates and has been an adjunct professor at Onondaga Community College.
“Your qualifications go away in snap. They would not even give me a job of greeting people or cleaning tables. It is a hard life,” she said.
Fischer said she was suffering from gender dysphoria, and transition and use of drugs have led to anxiety and insomnia and therefore she is disabled, in her complaint to the HRC. She is blind in her left eye and wears lens in the right eye, she said.
The New York State Human Rights law says any diagnosable condition or impairment demonstrable by medically accepted techniques, is a disability. But Fischer’s claim to medical coverage has been denied by Social Security Administration.
She gets $170 every two weeks toward her expenses and food stamps in lieu of community service for 18 hours a week in addition to six hours that she has to devote to job-hunting. But that’s far from enough, she said.
Her rent is $400 for a small two-bedroom apartment on North Street.
“I have to look for a job everyday to pay my rent. I clean other people’s homes, and jobs like those,” she said.
“It has not got to the stage where I have to sell my body for money,” she said.
Green in his article on transgender issues said that often transgender people are driven to do things that are not socially acceptable.
“Antitrans discrimination forces many trans people into a deadly cycle of poverty and unemployment. It…often forces them into illegal activities in order to survive,” he said.
Fischer has around $4,000 in hospital bills from St’ Joseph’s Hospital Health Care Centre for food poisoning this August which her Medicaid has refused to cover. It is many battles on many fronts for Fischer, but she said she would continue.
“I may have to go to a shelter next year when I can’t pay my rent anymore or government may throw me in prison for unpaid bills and taxes. I have no money. But I will continue to fight”
“It has always been a struggle. It is a continuing fight,” she said as she opened the letter from New York State Human Rights Commission. And even as she sliced the envelope open, she said she knew it was not in her favor.
Fischer lost her job at Alliance Relocation Services in Oct. 2004. She complained to the HRC against the company for discriminating against her on the basis of her gender identity.
The letter, dated Oct. 26 and signed by Julia Day, Interim Regional Director, state division of human rights, dismissed her complaint and closed the case as they found no evidence against the respondent that it discriminated against her. According to the letter, Fischer has 60 days to appeal against the decision to the New York State Supreme Court, but in case of an adverse decision there, the complainant may lose his right to proceed subsequently in a federal court.
“They have cited Kremer vs. Chemical Construction Co. (1982). I am going to appeal against it,” she said. “It is good that I have not shot myself in the head. May be this is because of my background as a priest. Many transgender people do that. It is so difficult. It just pushes you to the extreme.”
Fischer’s parents prepared her for the church when they suspected he was not like other boys. But she gave up priesthood when she started questioning the Catholic beliefs.
She said he always felt like a woman, even as a child.
“I was scolded for playing with dolls. Once I traded my bicycle for a neighbor’s Barbie doll,” said Fischer, adding that in those days it was difficult to express one’s gender identity because the society was not very receptive.
“Gender identity refers to a person’s internal, deeply felt sense of being either male or female. Because it is internal and personally defined, it is not visible to others,” wrote Jaminson Green in Introduction to Transgender Issues in Gay Pride directory of 2005-2006.
Fischer was born in Iowa Falls, Iowa in 1952. She said she always felt she should express herself as a woman and wanted to wear a dress to her high school prom but ended up wearing a female tuxedo. She said she has been undergoing counseling since 1983 and has been on feminizing hormones since then.
“When I was 3 years old I had an accident and I asked my doctor why I did not have a vagina,” she said.
But coming out has not been easy for her. She has faced discrimination.
“The work environment became hostile when I started my transition. People would call me Fran and FM,” she said. Most people associate transgender people with drag queens, gays, lesbians and cross dressers.
“They think we are prostitutes and have diseases,” she said.
Besides discrimination, it also costs money to look like a woman. Surgeries are not covered by insurance and Fischer has already spent $18,000 on various treatments including augmentation mammaplasty. She said she went to Bangkok to get her surgery because it is cheaper there.
“It costs so much here,” she said. Fischer is transitioning in stages. “It is coming out well. I am excited. I would like to get a tummy tuck and other small things like that. I will keep doing them. It will take years,” she said pointing to her teeth that have just been shaped.
“They are working on the lower set. And when I can afford it, I would like to go for electrolysis. There is stubble,” she said feeling her chin with her hands that appear well-groomed with neutral polish to make her nails shine.
“My gynecologist said I could have boyfriends now,” she said. “It gets so lonely at times. It is depressing. Sometimes, I want to cuddle with someone on the couch and just watch television.”
Fischer’s voice is deep and she still sounds like a male. “It got messed up. But I will get it right,” she said.
Dressed in a powder blue turtle neck sweater and black pants, Fischer said she loves the woman’s body and regrets that she did not transition before. “It was for my children. My wife and I decided to keep it under cover till our children had grown up,” she said.
For Fischer it was like wearing the wrong shoe in the feet all these years. “When you wear the wrong shoe, you get blisters. It pains. It has been like that for me. Every morning I would look in the mirror and it would make me want to cry. You don’t like the skin you are in, you hate the image that you see,” she said. “Nobody understands.”
Fischer who has a son and a daughter, both married, is divorced now. She said she is very fond of her grand children but seldom gets to meet them. A picture showed her holding both her grandchildren in her arms.
“It felt so good. I always wanted to be a mother,” she said. “But it is difficult to explain how they have two grandmothers.”
Fischer was employed at Alliance Relocation Services in 2000. She said she was the MIS director at the company and in charge of billing and drafting job descriptions. Fischer started her official transition from male to female in August, 2001, when she applied for a name change at the Supreme Court for the County of Onondaga, according to the affidavit filed by her in June, 2003. It took her two-and-a-half years to change her name from Frank Mark Fischer to Frances Mary Fischer. When the judge refused, she approached Lambda Legal for help and then sued New York State. She finally won the case but the victory is just a beginning of many battles, legal and otherwise that she has to wage every moment in her life.
The latest in her trials is the loss of her job.
Erin Keenan, an employee in the accounts and the billing section in her company, said Fischer is very capable but the company did not have work for him.
“He was removed because there was lack of job. He never had a formal title and we have also removed the position that he had,” said Keenan.
She said the employees are very friendly and respected Fischer but when she got graphic about her transition, it became uncomfortable for people in the office. She said there were no bathroom issues at all. And everybody is shocked to see that Fischer decided to complain against the company.
“He started explaining the process. We were not very comfortable with it. His removal had nothing to do with his sex-change. People here are very open,” she said.
An article on Fischer in the Post-Standard on March 25, 2004, quoted her employer, Jim Walsh, saying that Fischer is a star employee, that she “carried the company single-handedly”. He also said he would not forget what Fischer has done for the company.
Under Title VII, it is forbidden to discriminate against an employee for failure to conform to gender stereotypes. (www.transgenderlaw.org)
The New York law provides a cause of action for gender identity-motivated discrimination, although there is no explicit mention of gender identity under the New York human rights law. (Maffei v. Kolaeton, 626 N.Y.S.2d 391 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. 1995) and Rentos v. OCE-Office Systems, 1996 U.S. Dist.)
Professor Janice McDonald, College of Law, Syracuse University, said, “She has a better chance in a federal court.” Fischer has already appealed in the state court and can’t go to federal court (Kremer V. Chemical Construction Co.).
Fischer said she told her employer about her transition and though he allowed earrings and rings, he did not allow dresses.
“He said what I was I trying to do. Win a beauty contest? And I said I was trying to be myself,” she said.
Now Fischer is without a job. She said she has sent around 1,100 applications for various jobs but has failed to get one.
The New York State Human Rights Law under Section 291 says right to “obtain employment without discrimination based on age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, military status, sex or marital status is hereby recognized as and declared to be a civil right.”
“A couple of interviewers said though I was qualified, other employees might have problems like bathroom issues or religious beliefs and so I could not get the job. I can’t get a job because I am transgender and I am open about it,” said Fischer who has two doctorates and has been an adjunct professor at Onondaga Community College.
“Your qualifications go away in snap. They would not even give me a job of greeting people or cleaning tables. It is a hard life,” she said.
Fischer said she was suffering from gender dysphoria, and transition and use of drugs have led to anxiety and insomnia and therefore she is disabled, in her complaint to the HRC. She is blind in her left eye and wears lens in the right eye, she said.
The New York State Human Rights law says any diagnosable condition or impairment demonstrable by medically accepted techniques, is a disability. But Fischer’s claim to medical coverage has been denied by Social Security Administration.
She gets $170 every two weeks toward her expenses and food stamps in lieu of community service for 18 hours a week in addition to six hours that she has to devote to job-hunting. But that’s far from enough, she said.
Her rent is $400 for a small two-bedroom apartment on North Street.
“I have to look for a job everyday to pay my rent. I clean other people’s homes, and jobs like those,” she said.
“It has not got to the stage where I have to sell my body for money,” she said.
Green in his article on transgender issues said that often transgender people are driven to do things that are not socially acceptable.
“Antitrans discrimination forces many trans people into a deadly cycle of poverty and unemployment. It…often forces them into illegal activities in order to survive,” he said.
Fischer has around $4,000 in hospital bills from St’ Joseph’s Hospital Health Care Centre for food poisoning this August which her Medicaid has refused to cover. It is many battles on many fronts for Fischer, but she said she would continue.
“I may have to go to a shelter next year when I can’t pay my rent anymore or government may throw me in prison for unpaid bills and taxes. I have no money. But I will continue to fight”
Ridvan - the recreation of the holy garden
Twelve years ago Anne Gordon Perry took religion to the stage on the occasion of Ridvan. She recreated the garden of Najibiyyih in Baghdad where Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i faith, declared his station. She put up a tent, played the recordings of the sounds of birds, planted bouquets of red roses, painted a backdrop of Baghdad, dressed in period costumes and even had a cardboard horse to represent Baha’u’llah’s red roan stallion.
“We created a tent inside the Dallas Baha’i Center and had to take out the air conditioning vent to accommodate the height of the tent pole,” said Perry, an artist and professor of literature at the University of Texas at Arlington.
For Perry, Ridvan is the most important of all Baha’i festivals. “It is most profound Festival, celebrating the holiest being that ever lived--Baha'u'llah. His name means ‘The Glory of God’,” she said.
The 12-day Baha’i festival starts April 20 at sunset. Baha’is all over the world will commemorate Baha’u’llah’s declaration of his mission to the world in 1863. There are no set rules. Each does what he feels is the best way to remember their prophet.
Perry, who converted to the Baha’i faith when she was 19, said as an artist she chose to serve the faith through drama and other art forms. “The Baha’i writings state, ‘All art is a gift of the holy spirit,’ and ‘The stage will be the pulpit of the future.’ Hence I was inspired to use my gifts to uplift the community through holy day programs--Ridvan especially,” she said.
The scale of Perry’s pageants has varied from being held at someone’s garden for just a few people to being organized at Dallas Nature Center in 1998 where 700 people attended. This year Perry, a former liberal Presbyterian, is organizing a large scale program on April 29, the 9th day of Ridvan in addition to two programs on April 21.
The first drama took weeks to prepare. Around 80 people attended Perry’s first performance. “The Baha’is weren’t used to such elaborate holy days. But they were overcome with emotion when hearing the music and experiencing the sacred writings being read dramatically. Many people wept,” she said in an email.
Ridvan means paradise in Persian. Perry Productions’ Ridvan pageant has Perry and her husband Tim working together to turn their favorite festival into a passion play. Perry plays with symbols, fragrance and sounds to transport her audience to the garden in Baghdad where Baha’u’llah stayed for 12 days before leaving Iraq for Istanbul where he had been banished to.
The first, ninth and the twelfth days are most important and all Baha’is are directed to take off from work on these days to pray, get together and remember their prophet. On the first day, Baha’u’llah declared he was the chosen one to his family. On the ninth day, he announced his mission to his friends and the world and on the 12th day, he left Iraq because the authorities feared his growing influence.
Roses are of special significance as the prophet distributed them to the people who came to him to pass them to the Arabs and Muslims in the nearby villages. The gardeners used to pile the roses in front of Baha’u’llah’s tent in the morning, poet Nabil said in his account of the 12 days at the garden.
Perry uses rose-water scent to recreate the moments. “I embellish the holy day to the highest artistic expression possible. I want to spiritually intoxicate the people…to transport them to the time and place so that they feel it,” she said. “Art uses metaphor, symbolism, and tangible things such as color, light, props, and costumes. It enhances the spiritual experience.”
The story of the roses and the nightingale is the most important. The historian Nabil said Baha’u’llah walked in the garden and said how great was the love of the nightingales for the roses that the birds kept awake all night to commune with the object of their admiration. Both are symbols of majesty and of god, said Perry.
Ellen Price, assistant director at the office of communications, The Baha’i National Center, Evanston, IL, said she would decorate her house with roses. “This is a happy time for us. It is the time to get together with the community,” she said. Since the Baha’i House of Worship is located at Wilmette, IL, the community members will go to the temple and pray. “We don’t have any rituals. Each comes up with his own,” she said.
Ridvan is also a time for reflection for many. For Mano Timajchy, an Iranian who lives in Syracuse, Ridvan is a time to remember the Baha’is, who were and are persecuted in Iran for following the Baha’I faith. “I don’t anything special. I will think about them. They (Baha’is) are being persecuted. Baha’i youth can’t attend universities. They don’t know…they have no resources,” he said.
The faith, an offshoot of the Shia sect of Islam, sprang from the Babi movement in Persia that began in 1844 when Mirza Ali Mohammed, the Bab, proclaimed that a new prophet would soon appear to supersede Prophet Mohamed. The Bab was executed in 1850. Shiite Muslims, Iran’s dominant sect, have always denounced the Baha’i faith as a heresy. In 1863, a disciple of Bab, named Mirza Husayn Ali announced himself as the expected prophet and took the name Baha’u’llah. His followers became known as Bahai’s.
Ron Cher Hort-Fortin said the Baha’is are considered as apostate Muslims in Iran and have been persecuted for following Baha’u’llah. Many followers moved to India, United States and other countries to escape persecution.
Many Baha’is came as refugees to Syracuse and Central New York sponsored by the Catholic Church’s Refugee Resettlement Program. After Iran became an Islamic state, many Baha’is were persecuted and their shrines demolished. Many went to India, some came to United States. The largest population of Baha’is in United States is in Atlanta.
This is also a time when Baha’is elect their local assembly representatives. There is no clergy and followers are entrusted with responsibilities such as organizing meetings and celebrating festivals together so that everyone comes together. Where the community is small, members meet at someone’s house. It usually depends on the host to choose the prayers or the readings from the history.
In Syracuse, Marcia Owen will host a dinner for the community members on the first day of Ridvan. “We will spend the evening in devotion and reading from the faith,” she said. Owen will also distribute roses to the guests. “It is a joyous festival, a celebratory one,” she said.
If there are more than nine Baha’is in a city, they have a local assembly. Members volunteer to host Ridvan dinners and inform each other through emails. Ron Cher Hort-Fortin is one of them.
Hort-Fortin is excited. At 8 a.m., after a 12-hour shift at the Crouse Hospital, where he is a nurse, he is planning for the ninth day of Ridvan when he will host a meeting at his house. He marks out important dates and notes down little reminders in his red notebook.
He wants to make it a unique experience and like Anne Perry he wants to recreate moments from history. He will direct a small skit where nine children will chant, pray and enact certain scenes such as the crossing of the river by the prophet, which are important to the followers.
Blue sheets will become the river that the Baha’i prophet crossed in order to get to the Najibiyyih garden, a bouquet of roses the garden that he lived in for 12 days before leaving the country, and a fez, with a turban around it, will symbolize Baha’u’llah. The followers are prohibited to portray their prophet so they do it through symbols like the fez.
“The older children will do a reading accompanied by a spot light on the taj (the fez). Baha’u’llah began to wear the taj as a mark of his charge,” he said.
Hort-Fortin, who converted to the faith around 30 years ago, said he was attracted by the sense of security in the faith.
“Never at any time has the creator left the creation without any prophet,” he said.
Hort-Fortin, who lived in Atlanta before moving to Syracuse five years ago, said he missed the scale of the Baha’i community in Atlanta but liked the intimacy here. There are around 45 Baha’is in Syracuse and neighboring areas.
Hort-Fortin said at least 30 people will turn up at his house. He will make Baklavas, a dessert made of walnuts and honey or rose syrup, and some rice dish.
“I may do a lunch since it is a Saturday,” he said.
“We created a tent inside the Dallas Baha’i Center and had to take out the air conditioning vent to accommodate the height of the tent pole,” said Perry, an artist and professor of literature at the University of Texas at Arlington.
For Perry, Ridvan is the most important of all Baha’i festivals. “It is most profound Festival, celebrating the holiest being that ever lived--Baha'u'llah. His name means ‘The Glory of God’,” she said.
The 12-day Baha’i festival starts April 20 at sunset. Baha’is all over the world will commemorate Baha’u’llah’s declaration of his mission to the world in 1863. There are no set rules. Each does what he feels is the best way to remember their prophet.
Perry, who converted to the Baha’i faith when she was 19, said as an artist she chose to serve the faith through drama and other art forms. “The Baha’i writings state, ‘All art is a gift of the holy spirit,’ and ‘The stage will be the pulpit of the future.’ Hence I was inspired to use my gifts to uplift the community through holy day programs--Ridvan especially,” she said.
The scale of Perry’s pageants has varied from being held at someone’s garden for just a few people to being organized at Dallas Nature Center in 1998 where 700 people attended. This year Perry, a former liberal Presbyterian, is organizing a large scale program on April 29, the 9th day of Ridvan in addition to two programs on April 21.
The first drama took weeks to prepare. Around 80 people attended Perry’s first performance. “The Baha’is weren’t used to such elaborate holy days. But they were overcome with emotion when hearing the music and experiencing the sacred writings being read dramatically. Many people wept,” she said in an email.
Ridvan means paradise in Persian. Perry Productions’ Ridvan pageant has Perry and her husband Tim working together to turn their favorite festival into a passion play. Perry plays with symbols, fragrance and sounds to transport her audience to the garden in Baghdad where Baha’u’llah stayed for 12 days before leaving Iraq for Istanbul where he had been banished to.
The first, ninth and the twelfth days are most important and all Baha’is are directed to take off from work on these days to pray, get together and remember their prophet. On the first day, Baha’u’llah declared he was the chosen one to his family. On the ninth day, he announced his mission to his friends and the world and on the 12th day, he left Iraq because the authorities feared his growing influence.
Roses are of special significance as the prophet distributed them to the people who came to him to pass them to the Arabs and Muslims in the nearby villages. The gardeners used to pile the roses in front of Baha’u’llah’s tent in the morning, poet Nabil said in his account of the 12 days at the garden.
Perry uses rose-water scent to recreate the moments. “I embellish the holy day to the highest artistic expression possible. I want to spiritually intoxicate the people…to transport them to the time and place so that they feel it,” she said. “Art uses metaphor, symbolism, and tangible things such as color, light, props, and costumes. It enhances the spiritual experience.”
The story of the roses and the nightingale is the most important. The historian Nabil said Baha’u’llah walked in the garden and said how great was the love of the nightingales for the roses that the birds kept awake all night to commune with the object of their admiration. Both are symbols of majesty and of god, said Perry.
Ellen Price, assistant director at the office of communications, The Baha’i National Center, Evanston, IL, said she would decorate her house with roses. “This is a happy time for us. It is the time to get together with the community,” she said. Since the Baha’i House of Worship is located at Wilmette, IL, the community members will go to the temple and pray. “We don’t have any rituals. Each comes up with his own,” she said.
Ridvan is also a time for reflection for many. For Mano Timajchy, an Iranian who lives in Syracuse, Ridvan is a time to remember the Baha’is, who were and are persecuted in Iran for following the Baha’I faith. “I don’t anything special. I will think about them. They (Baha’is) are being persecuted. Baha’i youth can’t attend universities. They don’t know…they have no resources,” he said.
The faith, an offshoot of the Shia sect of Islam, sprang from the Babi movement in Persia that began in 1844 when Mirza Ali Mohammed, the Bab, proclaimed that a new prophet would soon appear to supersede Prophet Mohamed. The Bab was executed in 1850. Shiite Muslims, Iran’s dominant sect, have always denounced the Baha’i faith as a heresy. In 1863, a disciple of Bab, named Mirza Husayn Ali announced himself as the expected prophet and took the name Baha’u’llah. His followers became known as Bahai’s.
Ron Cher Hort-Fortin said the Baha’is are considered as apostate Muslims in Iran and have been persecuted for following Baha’u’llah. Many followers moved to India, United States and other countries to escape persecution.
Many Baha’is came as refugees to Syracuse and Central New York sponsored by the Catholic Church’s Refugee Resettlement Program. After Iran became an Islamic state, many Baha’is were persecuted and their shrines demolished. Many went to India, some came to United States. The largest population of Baha’is in United States is in Atlanta.
This is also a time when Baha’is elect their local assembly representatives. There is no clergy and followers are entrusted with responsibilities such as organizing meetings and celebrating festivals together so that everyone comes together. Where the community is small, members meet at someone’s house. It usually depends on the host to choose the prayers or the readings from the history.
In Syracuse, Marcia Owen will host a dinner for the community members on the first day of Ridvan. “We will spend the evening in devotion and reading from the faith,” she said. Owen will also distribute roses to the guests. “It is a joyous festival, a celebratory one,” she said.
If there are more than nine Baha’is in a city, they have a local assembly. Members volunteer to host Ridvan dinners and inform each other through emails. Ron Cher Hort-Fortin is one of them.
Hort-Fortin is excited. At 8 a.m., after a 12-hour shift at the Crouse Hospital, where he is a nurse, he is planning for the ninth day of Ridvan when he will host a meeting at his house. He marks out important dates and notes down little reminders in his red notebook.
He wants to make it a unique experience and like Anne Perry he wants to recreate moments from history. He will direct a small skit where nine children will chant, pray and enact certain scenes such as the crossing of the river by the prophet, which are important to the followers.
Blue sheets will become the river that the Baha’i prophet crossed in order to get to the Najibiyyih garden, a bouquet of roses the garden that he lived in for 12 days before leaving the country, and a fez, with a turban around it, will symbolize Baha’u’llah. The followers are prohibited to portray their prophet so they do it through symbols like the fez.
“The older children will do a reading accompanied by a spot light on the taj (the fez). Baha’u’llah began to wear the taj as a mark of his charge,” he said.
Hort-Fortin, who converted to the faith around 30 years ago, said he was attracted by the sense of security in the faith.
“Never at any time has the creator left the creation without any prophet,” he said.
Hort-Fortin, who lived in Atlanta before moving to Syracuse five years ago, said he missed the scale of the Baha’i community in Atlanta but liked the intimacy here. There are around 45 Baha’is in Syracuse and neighboring areas.
Hort-Fortin said at least 30 people will turn up at his house. He will make Baklavas, a dessert made of walnuts and honey or rose syrup, and some rice dish.
“I may do a lunch since it is a Saturday,” he said.
Sunday school at a local mosque
Samina Masood is trying to teach a distracted group of 11 girls about the Five Pillars of Islam at the Sunday school. It is difficult to make the girls focus, who are busy chatting away.
“Do you know what the Five Pillars are?” asked Masood.
“Not exactly,” answered a girl.
So, for the third time this winter, Masood lists the pillars, the very essence of Islam, to a group that can seem less than attentive.
Masood repeats the five tenets - Sahadah or belief in the oneness of God, Salah or prayer, Sawm or fasting during Ramadan, Zakah or financial obligation of giving 2.5 percent of one’s savings to the needy, and Hajj or pilgrimage that a Muslim has to undertake to Mecca if his resources allow.
The girls continue to giggle. A few take notes. The teacher continues. “We should not worship anybody but Allah. We should believe in Prophet. Peace be upon him,” said Masood, who volunteers to teach the level 3 girls at the Sunday school held at Islamic Society of Central New York, 925 Comstock Ave. There are four levels at the school. Students start with memorizing Quranic verses and graduate to learning the Prophet’s teachings.
Fifteen teachers teach children various courses ranging from memorization of Quranic verses to Islamic studies where the students are taught about Prophet Mohamed’s life and teachings. The students pay $200 a year to attend the school and this covers the cost of books.
The girls are not convinced. Masood tells them Allah loves children and grants their wishes if they pray.
“Last year I wanted something real bad and I prayed. Allah did not give it to me,” said a student.
Masood explains to the students that her wish must not have been a good one.
“Allah cares for us. He will not give us something that is not good for us in the long-term,” she said.
Another student said her brother had been hit by a car and could not speak because the accident had rendered him mute. He was not at fault. Why did Allah do this to him?, she asked.
“Sometimes, He examines our faith,” Masood said, implying that one should not lode faith under any circumstance.
There are around 120 students at the school, 60 of which are girls. The school starts at 9:45 a.m. and ends at 12:30 with Duhr, the afternoon prayer, where the young girls and the boys pray separately under the supervision of their teachers.
The school started around 15 years ago in order to teach Muslim children the concepts of Islam in order to lead a life befitting a Muslim.
In this country, parents are busy. There is no time. So it is left to the mosques to teach the children about Islam, said Mir Hussaini, secretary of the Islamic Society.
“As a Muslim, they need to pray when they are seven or eight. If they need to pray, then they must know how to pray. The prayers are in Arabic and I read out the suras and they recite after me,” said Mohammed Azad, who teaches the level 2 students.
The English translation of the Arabic verses is available to the students, who are taught the Arabic letters and grammar over a period of time so that they can read the Quran, the holy book of the Muslims.
The Muslims pray in Arabic, the language of the Mohamed. The translations, which are available in various languages, are not considered sacred. Therefore, it is necessary for kids to learn a few suras in Arabic so that they can offer namaz, the prayer, said Taqiuddin Ahmed, the Imam and director of the Islamic Society.
“Not a single word in the Quran has changed over the centuries. The words are the words of Allah as spoken to Prophet. The memorization of the Quran is a way of preserving those words,” he said.
During the break at 11:15 a.m., the children run around, chase each other and eat their lunch, which they bring from home. The Masjid authorities distribute wafers, soft drinks and coffee. While the younger ones play, the slightly older ones like Anika Azad, 13, sit quietly on the stone steps and wait for the class to resume. Another bunch of girls chat way excitedly. A few older boys seem impatient. The Super Bowl XL is today and they would rather be at home watching TV than be here.
Ali Etman, 14, is one of them. A level 4 student, he has been coming here since he was seven. He said he knew most of the course already and enjoys if there is something new. The older girls and boys are not allowed to mix. However, the students in level 1 and 2 sit in the same class. This was introduced last week in order to accommodate all the students. Previously, the Sunday classes were held at T. Aaron Levy Middle School. But the Levy school was demanded too much money, more than what the mosque could afford. So, the mosque authorities decided to hold the classes in the mosque, said Ramla Shaikh, the co-principal of the school.
The mosque used to pay the Levy Middle School $200 a day for the use of its classrooms on Sundays. When the new school superintendent came, the school raised the fee to $1,600, she said.
“The books are expensive and all the money from the tuition is spent toward books,” said Shaikh, who introduced the idea of mixing the girls and the boys in the lower levels in order to make the best use of available space.
“I convinced them. The boys behave well when they are with girls and it is easier to control them. The religion allows it at this level. When they reach puberty at 12 or 13, we are not allowed to mix them,” she said.
Shaikh’s idea was not welcome by all. Runa Hasan, 18, who teaches the level 1 students at the school, said this was against the religion. The religion warns against attraction to women other than one’s spouse.
“The boys and the girls must know that they need to be separated,” she said.
But inside the mosque the boys hang out together and the girls keep to themselves. The girls, including the younger ones, wear the head scarf. However, most of them wear the hijab in the Sunday school only.
“It looks cool. I wore it to my regular school one day and everybody stared at me. I felt weird,” said Samila Alemic, a level 3 student.
Muslim women are to cover their heads while praying. The tradition of covering oneself comes from the old Arab tradition where women from wealthy families covered themselves with chador, a sheet. It was a mark of their status in the society and ensured respect and safety. Since Islam does not believe in class distinctions, all women were required to cover themselves in order to bridge class differences, explained Masood.
Most of the older girls are in jeans. The teachers are dressed in salwar-kameez and head scarves. A few wear the burqa or the long-flowing gowns.
“Normally, I wear pants and skirts. But on Sundays I wear our traditional dress,” said Masood, who is from Pakistan. She is a physics professor at Le Moyne College.
She does not think that Muslim girls should wear hijab outside. But they must not wear very tight clothes as they are provocative, she said.
At 12:30, it is time for the afternoon prayer and the girls gather together in the Musalla, an open space, on the first floor to pray. The boys assemble in the prayer room downstairs with their teachers. The room is plain with no idols or decorations of any sort. Islam prohibits idol-worship and worships a formless God.
A young boy leads the prayer with an older man. All of them face toward Mecca, the holy city that houses the Kaaba. Muslims believe that Kaaba, a stone cube, was erected by Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismail long ago in order to preach the idea of monotheism.
The girls stand in three straight lines. At the sound of Allah Hu Akbar or God is greatest, they bend down, prostrate themselves and stand in turns in submission to Allah’s supreme authority.
The prayer lasts for 15 minutes. The girls are in a hurry to get out.
“We have been here since 10,” said Samila Alemic.
Masood gets her bag and calls her daughter on the cell phone. Her daughter and son attend the school.
“It is difficult to get the girls interested in religious studies. In today’s age, it is impossible to preserve a religion in its pure form. We can only try,” she said.
“Do you know what the Five Pillars are?” asked Masood.
“Not exactly,” answered a girl.
So, for the third time this winter, Masood lists the pillars, the very essence of Islam, to a group that can seem less than attentive.
Masood repeats the five tenets - Sahadah or belief in the oneness of God, Salah or prayer, Sawm or fasting during Ramadan, Zakah or financial obligation of giving 2.5 percent of one’s savings to the needy, and Hajj or pilgrimage that a Muslim has to undertake to Mecca if his resources allow.
The girls continue to giggle. A few take notes. The teacher continues. “We should not worship anybody but Allah. We should believe in Prophet. Peace be upon him,” said Masood, who volunteers to teach the level 3 girls at the Sunday school held at Islamic Society of Central New York, 925 Comstock Ave. There are four levels at the school. Students start with memorizing Quranic verses and graduate to learning the Prophet’s teachings.
Fifteen teachers teach children various courses ranging from memorization of Quranic verses to Islamic studies where the students are taught about Prophet Mohamed’s life and teachings. The students pay $200 a year to attend the school and this covers the cost of books.
The girls are not convinced. Masood tells them Allah loves children and grants their wishes if they pray.
“Last year I wanted something real bad and I prayed. Allah did not give it to me,” said a student.
Masood explains to the students that her wish must not have been a good one.
“Allah cares for us. He will not give us something that is not good for us in the long-term,” she said.
Another student said her brother had been hit by a car and could not speak because the accident had rendered him mute. He was not at fault. Why did Allah do this to him?, she asked.
“Sometimes, He examines our faith,” Masood said, implying that one should not lode faith under any circumstance.
There are around 120 students at the school, 60 of which are girls. The school starts at 9:45 a.m. and ends at 12:30 with Duhr, the afternoon prayer, where the young girls and the boys pray separately under the supervision of their teachers.
The school started around 15 years ago in order to teach Muslim children the concepts of Islam in order to lead a life befitting a Muslim.
In this country, parents are busy. There is no time. So it is left to the mosques to teach the children about Islam, said Mir Hussaini, secretary of the Islamic Society.
“As a Muslim, they need to pray when they are seven or eight. If they need to pray, then they must know how to pray. The prayers are in Arabic and I read out the suras and they recite after me,” said Mohammed Azad, who teaches the level 2 students.
The English translation of the Arabic verses is available to the students, who are taught the Arabic letters and grammar over a period of time so that they can read the Quran, the holy book of the Muslims.
The Muslims pray in Arabic, the language of the Mohamed. The translations, which are available in various languages, are not considered sacred. Therefore, it is necessary for kids to learn a few suras in Arabic so that they can offer namaz, the prayer, said Taqiuddin Ahmed, the Imam and director of the Islamic Society.
“Not a single word in the Quran has changed over the centuries. The words are the words of Allah as spoken to Prophet. The memorization of the Quran is a way of preserving those words,” he said.
During the break at 11:15 a.m., the children run around, chase each other and eat their lunch, which they bring from home. The Masjid authorities distribute wafers, soft drinks and coffee. While the younger ones play, the slightly older ones like Anika Azad, 13, sit quietly on the stone steps and wait for the class to resume. Another bunch of girls chat way excitedly. A few older boys seem impatient. The Super Bowl XL is today and they would rather be at home watching TV than be here.
Ali Etman, 14, is one of them. A level 4 student, he has been coming here since he was seven. He said he knew most of the course already and enjoys if there is something new. The older girls and boys are not allowed to mix. However, the students in level 1 and 2 sit in the same class. This was introduced last week in order to accommodate all the students. Previously, the Sunday classes were held at T. Aaron Levy Middle School. But the Levy school was demanded too much money, more than what the mosque could afford. So, the mosque authorities decided to hold the classes in the mosque, said Ramla Shaikh, the co-principal of the school.
The mosque used to pay the Levy Middle School $200 a day for the use of its classrooms on Sundays. When the new school superintendent came, the school raised the fee to $1,600, she said.
“The books are expensive and all the money from the tuition is spent toward books,” said Shaikh, who introduced the idea of mixing the girls and the boys in the lower levels in order to make the best use of available space.
“I convinced them. The boys behave well when they are with girls and it is easier to control them. The religion allows it at this level. When they reach puberty at 12 or 13, we are not allowed to mix them,” she said.
Shaikh’s idea was not welcome by all. Runa Hasan, 18, who teaches the level 1 students at the school, said this was against the religion. The religion warns against attraction to women other than one’s spouse.
“The boys and the girls must know that they need to be separated,” she said.
But inside the mosque the boys hang out together and the girls keep to themselves. The girls, including the younger ones, wear the head scarf. However, most of them wear the hijab in the Sunday school only.
“It looks cool. I wore it to my regular school one day and everybody stared at me. I felt weird,” said Samila Alemic, a level 3 student.
Muslim women are to cover their heads while praying. The tradition of covering oneself comes from the old Arab tradition where women from wealthy families covered themselves with chador, a sheet. It was a mark of their status in the society and ensured respect and safety. Since Islam does not believe in class distinctions, all women were required to cover themselves in order to bridge class differences, explained Masood.
Most of the older girls are in jeans. The teachers are dressed in salwar-kameez and head scarves. A few wear the burqa or the long-flowing gowns.
“Normally, I wear pants and skirts. But on Sundays I wear our traditional dress,” said Masood, who is from Pakistan. She is a physics professor at Le Moyne College.
She does not think that Muslim girls should wear hijab outside. But they must not wear very tight clothes as they are provocative, she said.
At 12:30, it is time for the afternoon prayer and the girls gather together in the Musalla, an open space, on the first floor to pray. The boys assemble in the prayer room downstairs with their teachers. The room is plain with no idols or decorations of any sort. Islam prohibits idol-worship and worships a formless God.
A young boy leads the prayer with an older man. All of them face toward Mecca, the holy city that houses the Kaaba. Muslims believe that Kaaba, a stone cube, was erected by Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismail long ago in order to preach the idea of monotheism.
The girls stand in three straight lines. At the sound of Allah Hu Akbar or God is greatest, they bend down, prostrate themselves and stand in turns in submission to Allah’s supreme authority.
The prayer lasts for 15 minutes. The girls are in a hurry to get out.
“We have been here since 10,” said Samila Alemic.
Masood gets her bag and calls her daughter on the cell phone. Her daughter and son attend the school.
“It is difficult to get the girls interested in religious studies. In today’s age, it is impossible to preserve a religion in its pure form. We can only try,” she said.
Sunday school at a local mosque
Samina Masood is trying to teach a distracted group of 11 girls about the Five Pillars of Islam at the Sunday school. It is difficult to make the girls focus, who are busy chatting away.
“Do you know what the Five Pillars are?” asked Masood.
“Not exactly,” answered a girl.
So, for the third time this winter, Masood lists the pillars, the very essence of Islam, to a group that can seem less than attentive.
Masood repeats the five tenets - Sahadah or belief in the oneness of God, Salah or prayer, Sawm or fasting during Ramadan, Zakah or financial obligation of giving 2.5 percent of one’s savings to the needy, and Hajj or pilgrimage that a Muslim has to undertake to Mecca if his resources allow.
The girls continue to giggle. A few take notes. The teacher continues. “We should not worship anybody but Allah. We should believe in Prophet. Peace be upon him,” said Masood, who volunteers to teach the level 3 girls at the Sunday school held at Islamic Society of Central New York, 925 Comstock Ave. There are four levels at the school. Students start with memorizing Quranic verses and graduate to learning the Prophet’s teachings.
Fifteen teachers teach children various courses ranging from memorization of Quranic verses to Islamic studies where the students are taught about Prophet Mohamed’s life and teachings. The students pay $200 a year to attend the school and this covers the cost of books.
The girls are not convinced. Masood tells them Allah loves children and grants their wishes if they pray.
“Last year I wanted something real bad and I prayed. Allah did not give it to me,” said a student.
Masood explains to the students that her wish must not have been a good one.
“Allah cares for us. He will not give us something that is not good for us in the long-term,” she said.
Another student said her brother had been hit by a car and could not speak because the accident had rendered him mute. He was not at fault. Why did Allah do this to him?, she asked.
“Sometimes, He examines our faith,” Masood said, implying that one should not lode faith under any circumstance.
There are around 120 students at the school, 60 of which are girls. The school starts at 9:45 a.m. and ends at 12:30 with Duhr, the afternoon prayer, where the young girls and the boys pray separately under the supervision of their teachers.
The school started around 15 years ago in order to teach Muslim children the concepts of Islam in order to lead a life befitting a Muslim.
In this country, parents are busy. There is no time. So it is left to the mosques to teach the children about Islam, said Mir Hussaini, secretary of the Islamic Society.
“As a Muslim, they need to pray when they are seven or eight. If they need to pray, then they must know how to pray. The prayers are in Arabic and I read out the suras and they recite after me,” said Mohammed Azad, who teaches the level 2 students.
The English translation of the Arabic verses is available to the students, who are taught the Arabic letters and grammar over a period of time so that they can read the Quran, the holy book of the Muslims.
The Muslims pray in Arabic, the language of the Mohamed. The translations, which are available in various languages, are not considered sacred. Therefore, it is necessary for kids to learn a few suras in Arabic so that they can offer namaz, the prayer, said Taqiuddin Ahmed, the Imam and director of the Islamic Society.
“Not a single word in the Quran has changed over the centuries. The words are the words of Allah as spoken to Prophet. The memorization of the Quran is a way of preserving those words,” he said.
During the break at 11:15 a.m., the children run around, chase each other and eat their lunch, which they bring from home. The Masjid authorities distribute wafers, soft drinks and coffee. While the younger ones play, the slightly older ones like Anika Azad, 13, sit quietly on the stone steps and wait for the class to resume. Another bunch of girls chat way excitedly. A few older boys seem impatient. The Super Bowl XL is today and they would rather be at home watching TV than be here.
Ali Etman, 14, is one of them. A level 4 student, he has been coming here since he was seven. He said he knew most of the course already and enjoys if there is something new. The older girls and boys are not allowed to mix. However, the students in level 1 and 2 sit in the same class. This was introduced last week in order to accommodate all the students. Previously, the Sunday classes were held at T. Aaron Levy Middle School. But the Levy school was demanded too much money, more than what the mosque could afford. So, the mosque authorities decided to hold the classes in the mosque, said Ramla Shaikh, the co-principal of the school.
The mosque used to pay the Levy Middle School $200 a day for the use of its classrooms on Sundays. When the new school superintendent came, the school raised the fee to $1,600, she said.
“The books are expensive and all the money from the tuition is spent toward books,” said Shaikh, who introduced the idea of mixing the girls and the boys in the lower levels in order to make the best use of available space.
“I convinced them. The boys behave well when they are with girls and it is easier to control them. The religion allows it at this level. When they reach puberty at 12 or 13, we are not allowed to mix them,” she said.
Shaikh’s idea was not welcome by all. Runa Hasan, 18, who teaches the level 1 students at the school, said this was against the religion. The religion warns against attraction to women other than one’s spouse.
“The boys and the girls must know that they need to be separated,” she said.
But inside the mosque the boys hang out together and the girls keep to themselves. The girls, including the younger ones, wear the head scarf. However, most of them wear the hijab in the Sunday school only.
“It looks cool. I wore it to my regular school one day and everybody stared at me. I felt weird,” said Samila Alemic, a level 3 student.
Muslim women are to cover their heads while praying. The tradition of covering oneself comes from the old Arab tradition where women from wealthy families covered themselves with chador, a sheet. It was a mark of their status in the society and ensured respect and safety. Since Islam does not believe in class distinctions, all women were required to cover themselves in order to bridge class differences, explained Masood.
Most of the older girls are in jeans. The teachers are dressed in salwar-kameez and head scarves. A few wear the burqa or the long-flowing gowns.
“Normally, I wear pants and skirts. But on Sundays I wear our traditional dress,” said Masood, who is from Pakistan. She is a physics professor at Le Moyne College.
She does not think that Muslim girls should wear hijab outside. But they must not wear very tight clothes as they are provocative, she said.
At 12:30, it is time for the afternoon prayer and the girls gather together in the Musalla, an open space, on the first floor to pray. The boys assemble in the prayer room downstairs with their teachers. The room is plain with no idols or decorations of any sort. Islam prohibits idol-worship and worships a formless God.
A young boy leads the prayer with an older man. All of them face toward Mecca, the holy city that houses the Kaaba. Muslims believe that Kaaba, a stone cube, was erected by Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismail long ago in order to preach the idea of monotheism.
The girls stand in three straight lines. At the sound of Allah Hu Akbar or God is greatest, they bend down, prostrate themselves and stand in turns in submission to Allah’s supreme authority.
The prayer lasts for 15 minutes. The girls are in a hurry to get out.
“We have been here since 10,” said Samila Alemic.
Masood gets her bag and calls her daughter on the cell phone. Her daughter and son attend the school.
“It is difficult to get the girls interested in religious studies. In today’s age, it is impossible to preserve a religion in its pure form. We can only try,” she said.
“Do you know what the Five Pillars are?” asked Masood.
“Not exactly,” answered a girl.
So, for the third time this winter, Masood lists the pillars, the very essence of Islam, to a group that can seem less than attentive.
Masood repeats the five tenets - Sahadah or belief in the oneness of God, Salah or prayer, Sawm or fasting during Ramadan, Zakah or financial obligation of giving 2.5 percent of one’s savings to the needy, and Hajj or pilgrimage that a Muslim has to undertake to Mecca if his resources allow.
The girls continue to giggle. A few take notes. The teacher continues. “We should not worship anybody but Allah. We should believe in Prophet. Peace be upon him,” said Masood, who volunteers to teach the level 3 girls at the Sunday school held at Islamic Society of Central New York, 925 Comstock Ave. There are four levels at the school. Students start with memorizing Quranic verses and graduate to learning the Prophet’s teachings.
Fifteen teachers teach children various courses ranging from memorization of Quranic verses to Islamic studies where the students are taught about Prophet Mohamed’s life and teachings. The students pay $200 a year to attend the school and this covers the cost of books.
The girls are not convinced. Masood tells them Allah loves children and grants their wishes if they pray.
“Last year I wanted something real bad and I prayed. Allah did not give it to me,” said a student.
Masood explains to the students that her wish must not have been a good one.
“Allah cares for us. He will not give us something that is not good for us in the long-term,” she said.
Another student said her brother had been hit by a car and could not speak because the accident had rendered him mute. He was not at fault. Why did Allah do this to him?, she asked.
“Sometimes, He examines our faith,” Masood said, implying that one should not lode faith under any circumstance.
There are around 120 students at the school, 60 of which are girls. The school starts at 9:45 a.m. and ends at 12:30 with Duhr, the afternoon prayer, where the young girls and the boys pray separately under the supervision of their teachers.
The school started around 15 years ago in order to teach Muslim children the concepts of Islam in order to lead a life befitting a Muslim.
In this country, parents are busy. There is no time. So it is left to the mosques to teach the children about Islam, said Mir Hussaini, secretary of the Islamic Society.
“As a Muslim, they need to pray when they are seven or eight. If they need to pray, then they must know how to pray. The prayers are in Arabic and I read out the suras and they recite after me,” said Mohammed Azad, who teaches the level 2 students.
The English translation of the Arabic verses is available to the students, who are taught the Arabic letters and grammar over a period of time so that they can read the Quran, the holy book of the Muslims.
The Muslims pray in Arabic, the language of the Mohamed. The translations, which are available in various languages, are not considered sacred. Therefore, it is necessary for kids to learn a few suras in Arabic so that they can offer namaz, the prayer, said Taqiuddin Ahmed, the Imam and director of the Islamic Society.
“Not a single word in the Quran has changed over the centuries. The words are the words of Allah as spoken to Prophet. The memorization of the Quran is a way of preserving those words,” he said.
During the break at 11:15 a.m., the children run around, chase each other and eat their lunch, which they bring from home. The Masjid authorities distribute wafers, soft drinks and coffee. While the younger ones play, the slightly older ones like Anika Azad, 13, sit quietly on the stone steps and wait for the class to resume. Another bunch of girls chat way excitedly. A few older boys seem impatient. The Super Bowl XL is today and they would rather be at home watching TV than be here.
Ali Etman, 14, is one of them. A level 4 student, he has been coming here since he was seven. He said he knew most of the course already and enjoys if there is something new. The older girls and boys are not allowed to mix. However, the students in level 1 and 2 sit in the same class. This was introduced last week in order to accommodate all the students. Previously, the Sunday classes were held at T. Aaron Levy Middle School. But the Levy school was demanded too much money, more than what the mosque could afford. So, the mosque authorities decided to hold the classes in the mosque, said Ramla Shaikh, the co-principal of the school.
The mosque used to pay the Levy Middle School $200 a day for the use of its classrooms on Sundays. When the new school superintendent came, the school raised the fee to $1,600, she said.
“The books are expensive and all the money from the tuition is spent toward books,” said Shaikh, who introduced the idea of mixing the girls and the boys in the lower levels in order to make the best use of available space.
“I convinced them. The boys behave well when they are with girls and it is easier to control them. The religion allows it at this level. When they reach puberty at 12 or 13, we are not allowed to mix them,” she said.
Shaikh’s idea was not welcome by all. Runa Hasan, 18, who teaches the level 1 students at the school, said this was against the religion. The religion warns against attraction to women other than one’s spouse.
“The boys and the girls must know that they need to be separated,” she said.
But inside the mosque the boys hang out together and the girls keep to themselves. The girls, including the younger ones, wear the head scarf. However, most of them wear the hijab in the Sunday school only.
“It looks cool. I wore it to my regular school one day and everybody stared at me. I felt weird,” said Samila Alemic, a level 3 student.
Muslim women are to cover their heads while praying. The tradition of covering oneself comes from the old Arab tradition where women from wealthy families covered themselves with chador, a sheet. It was a mark of their status in the society and ensured respect and safety. Since Islam does not believe in class distinctions, all women were required to cover themselves in order to bridge class differences, explained Masood.
Most of the older girls are in jeans. The teachers are dressed in salwar-kameez and head scarves. A few wear the burqa or the long-flowing gowns.
“Normally, I wear pants and skirts. But on Sundays I wear our traditional dress,” said Masood, who is from Pakistan. She is a physics professor at Le Moyne College.
She does not think that Muslim girls should wear hijab outside. But they must not wear very tight clothes as they are provocative, she said.
At 12:30, it is time for the afternoon prayer and the girls gather together in the Musalla, an open space, on the first floor to pray. The boys assemble in the prayer room downstairs with their teachers. The room is plain with no idols or decorations of any sort. Islam prohibits idol-worship and worships a formless God.
A young boy leads the prayer with an older man. All of them face toward Mecca, the holy city that houses the Kaaba. Muslims believe that Kaaba, a stone cube, was erected by Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismail long ago in order to preach the idea of monotheism.
The girls stand in three straight lines. At the sound of Allah Hu Akbar or God is greatest, they bend down, prostrate themselves and stand in turns in submission to Allah’s supreme authority.
The prayer lasts for 15 minutes. The girls are in a hurry to get out.
“We have been here since 10,” said Samila Alemic.
Masood gets her bag and calls her daughter on the cell phone. Her daughter and son attend the school.
“It is difficult to get the girls interested in religious studies. In today’s age, it is impossible to preserve a religion in its pure form. We can only try,” she said.