Schizophrenia

Sometimes I wonder, and start to question myself… sometimes I get confused of who am I? not because I don’t know the answer but because I am in constant  monitoring of myself; for me I might sacrifice any part of my personality but I would die trying to keep three parts, my soul, my humanity and my moral sense.

Recently, I have been receiving a tremendous negative feed backs of the stand I am taking in this life, people I know very well being unsatisfied by my behaviors, funny enough people I don’t know or never met also sending me advises and criticizing the aspects of my life and the most importantly, people I love are finding difficult time to accept me as a person and human being away from all our intellectual/ behavioral differences; which I find might be very harmful in many aspects but lucky for me I was born with strong personality that these types of criticism don’t affect me; raised by an amazing father who supported me while I was growing up really shaped my character and made me more open to receive criticism without letting it affect me psychologically because I know and accept that difference is crucial part of this life and no matter what I do it will always make someone unhappy.  though I usually start with my own experience but usually it is not the main point, I try through my writings to highlight the obstacles women, and young people face in the Arab world, try to relate to these problems from my own experiences with enormous certainty that most of young generation had to face similar situations.

Coming from the Arab world set some rules for your life, whether you accept them or not; in most cases you have to live by them because breaking these rules may cause unrepairable damage but as well living by them make you live a double life; secret life “your own personal life that you chose for yourself” and the life that you will show to the family, friends and the society you come from, and living this way is not healthy choice … after a while you start to feel a little be schizophrenic and you get confused of who you really are; even in the best cases when you overcome this feeling then you have to be in regular monitoring for your life  because the hidden feel of guilt will always be there, sometimes it will be blurry for you to see clearly and other times you will be just cautious of being caught living your life. Of course I wouldn’t describe myself as schizophrenic but living under these rules for so long made my life schizophrenic somehow, which make me really think of how other young Arab people are living this life, as I said before I am pretty strong which make me able to face a lot and I am actually living my life the way I want; not hiding anything unless it may hurt people I really care about but this make me really question how these young people survive this hectic life, how they survive in day to day basis and how much they could enjoy the life under such prohibitions and pressure …. I spent hours trying to find a way to help those young girls and boys including my own self but I always reached the same result, that it is personal and every person should assess the damage that he/she can or want to manage and start from there because every person is  unique character and have different priorities. Sadly enough it is not something I can do an initiative for, or start a campaign to fight it, it is social structure need to be changed slowly to be more lenient to accept difference and giving the personal freedom to people so they can live their life healthier without any psychological damage and without hypocrisy, without having to think twice about who we are in public and who we are in private because it is emotionally and psychologically draining to be forced to be someone but the real you.

I know most of the times what I write is dark and negative but I really believe we have to admit the problems so we can fix them, we have to assess the damage to be able to measure the effort and know the tools we need to fix these problems, I certainly believe that admitting the problem is usually 30% of the solution because it allows your mind to take a neutral stand from the case and make your mind able to assess everything clearly. I might sometimes get so hard on the Arab society, and that’s because I do care about people more than anything else and I hate to see my friends, colleges and other people suffer because of social traditions and norms … I wish for my daughter, friends,  myself and other people a better society where we are accepted for who we really are, not what we chose to do or how we chose to live our lives, a society where we can feel safe enough to express our own beliefs and ideas without the fear of being expelled or treated differently just because we have different mentality or life style. To sum up, I really hope that every young Arab person stand for his/her life and live by their own rules, assess the situation and make the sacrifice they need to make, if they have to … to live their lives the fullest they can, we only live once so we should take the initiative to change the life to be more tolerant for our hopes and dreams, more liberal to our different choices and lifestyles because the society we create is the world we will live in.

Me .... as a liberal & Muslim Arab woman

I never complained or tried to strip from my roots as an Arab and Muslim woman, I never saw that as an obstacle because I looked at the full half of the glass and never gave much attention to the other empty half, that’s how I was and will always be. But with time passing and with all the events and moments I had to experience I felt the obligation to clarify the idea of me as a “liberal woman” in the Muslim Arab world.

There are a lot of stereotypes about the liberals in the Muslim world not only women; men as well, beside that we suffer a lot to practice or even express what we believe in, living in conservative society puts a lot of barriers in front of any person who would like to have ideas or live outside the social and religious norms, what gives the image of either oppressed or rebellious person; though that might not be completely true. sometimes it becomes really hard to explain who I am, because I don’t present the usual stereotype of a Muslim Arab woman, for a lot of non-Arabs I create a lot of confusion,  I have been asked A LOT if I am a Muslim and when I say yes then the flood of question overwhelm me, why you don’t wear hejab? Why you are here by yourself? Is your family ok with all of that? Is being a liberal means you don’t practice Islam? And even more questions that I have no space to present here .. but the point is, nobody really understand how liberalism can be combined with Islam because all the world knew about Islam is being an extreme religion, because that’s what most of the Muslims and international media present. For me Islam is part of my identity but it shouldn't define who I really am, I still stress every time that I am pretty much a Muslim, maybe not to conservative Muslims and absolutely not to Extremists, but I can say with confident that I am a liberal Muslim and a Liberal woman, I believe in a peaceful, flexible Islam where everybody should care more about morals and behaviors more than the empty practices, where you do the good to everybody “not only your religious group” because that is what our journey all about, I believe in Islam where the inner good and humanity is more important than praying 5 times a day, where you pay Zakat not because you are obligated but because you want to help others have a decent life. In short, I believe in liberal Islam where what you practice doesn't contradict with who you are as a person and human, Islam brings out the good in you and make you a better person, modest and humble.

For me coming from the Middle East, specially the Arab World, especially specially Yemen is a privilege, because I am the descendent of  one of the greatest and oldest civilization in this world, having the blood of Sheba in my veins make me walk taller, feel more proud of who I am. Though I have this positive attitude that doesn’t mean I didn’t suffer from traditions and social restrictions, usually when people see strong Arab woman they don’t imagine how much I have to go through to be just myself; not only me put a lot of other liberal women, we have to face our families, friends, society and the whole structure to just have our own freedom to choose what is suitable for us, we had to lose in the process a lot of things, things we should allow the society to take away from us but we had to compromise, to get where we are,  sometimes we had to lose the family love and support, sometime we had to lose our loved ones, sometimes we had to lose it all, but the most unfortunate when you have to lose yourself or part of it! Don’t be fooled by my smile or my steel external look because that what every single liberal women I know developed during her life in the Arab world, we had to create a shield to protect ourselves from the world we live in, we had to face traditions and people just to be humans. Though I believe we should carry our heritage with us and never forget our roots but I think of myself as a human first and last, a person who would like to leave a mark in this life and do good. Coming from a place like the middle east give me a sense of obligation to achieve what my ancestors achieved once, it never was enough to just brag about our history and tradition, because traditions come with responsibility; to keep them but  in the same time balance them so they don’t overwhelm our lives with unnecessarily complications, yes we should keep our traditions but without forcing them on everybody, without feeling superior to anyone else, having traditions and long history is not everything; we should keep up with the world and development and don’t allow ourselves to be trapped in the past.

To sum up, being a liberal and Muslim Arab, formed me as a person no different than any other liberal person from any other religious or cultural background, I just needed to do more work to get where other people started, without even they realize how privileged they were to be where they were ... being a liberal doesn’t necessary mean that I am always rebellious, because sometimes I will be but sometimes I won’t, as well doesn’t mean I am oppressed, yes I had to face difficulties and loses as everybody in this planet. I just want to create a balance between who I am as person, who I am as a part of social and religious