Does that mean that she became a Muslim by writing the shahada?
I don’t think so. I think she personally remained a Christian until the end of her life. However, in the 1960s Sufism became a huge phenomenon in the US. While I often talk about my annoyance with New Age prescriptions of Sufism, her being a teacher at the time got her curious about it and then she chose to learn more about Islam.
Also, she was really into genealogy and kept a running record, so whenever my my parents got married she became interested in our Moroccan ancestry and researched Islam more after meeting my Moroccan grandmother and really liking her.
I think its a product of that entire side of my family tending to favor educational professions where they taught things like history and religion. I guess her aunt also traveled in the Middle East and Central Asia in the 1920s and 30s, so strangely many things in my house that come from Syria, Iran, Turkey and Morocco were passed down through my American side - sometimes things containing engravings of Qur’an despite their being Christian.
So she remained a Christian, but she really loved studying about Islam and Muslim societies.
My family is hilariously synchretic when it comes to religion. My parents were always big advocates of religious tolerance due to their having a mixed-faith marriage and it seems as though after the initial tension that occurred whenever they were married, my extended family took on a similar approach.
It happened to the extent that my American grandmother wrote in things about the Prophet (yes, Muhammad (pbuh)) into her own final words despite being Christian and a Methodist minister got the awkward surprise of reading about Christian and Muslim themes at her funeral. He sort of stuttered so I doubt he read it much beforehand. Its certainly not “orthodox” but it takes a lot of guts and conviction to write that in whenever you know it will be read to a room full of elderly, Christian rural types.
I was about 11 or 12 at the time but I think I can even distinctly recall her including the shahada in English. It was actually done pretty tastefully considering. I should qualify that with the fact that this is a woman who was born on a farm in Western Pennsylvania in 1922.
That’s not particularly common.
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(Source: gypsymodel, via alchemiya)
PLATE VIII. A kufic inscription in the place appropriated to the performance of ablutions, in the mosque at Cordova.
Plate I. Plan of the Mosque of Cardova in its original state.
Mosque and Mausoleum of Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani, Fes, Morocco © Mike Prince
Door detail from Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani Mosque. © Mike Prince
Mosque and Mausoleum of Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani, Fes, Morocco
Mounted Hunter with Dog, 16th century; Safavid Iran. The tiny holes around the figure of this hunter chasing game birds indicate that this sketch was used as a pounce, to copy the image onto another work.