Are you praying?

1-20-2008 ARE YOU PRAYING?

I get a lot of questions about my religion—at least once a day or so. Ironically, never from people I actually know or work with. It’s always from complete strangers meeting me for the first time. Religion usually just gets thrown into introductory conversation before or after “What’s your name?” or “Where are you from?” Though it seems awkward and invasive, I honestly don’t think it’s meant to be an antagonizing question. I think people are honestly intrigued when they meet this white guy who speaks Arabic and isn’t shopping for oil lamps in Marrakech along with all the other white people. And just like any other religion, people LOVE meeting converts who were lost and discovered a deeper truth in their religion. I hear a lot of stories of “I met this other American, he spoke Arabic like you, but HE convert-ized to Islam.” (Insert inquiring look as to whether or not I have). And needless to say, Cat Stevens’s music is hard-core popular here.

I used to avoid the question altogether, pretending I didn’t understand the Arabic or something. I don’t really know why. I think I’m just conditioned to be afraid of that question, especially when I’m an obvious minority. But then, one day when I was working with another volunteer at her youth center, a bunch of kids ran up to her and were asking her the “standard questions.” When they asked her if she was Muslim, she simply said, “No, I’m a Christian. Is that OK?” And the kids were all like “Yeah! You are welcome here!” And went on to asking her if she had a husband yet...

I realized her simple answer, coupled with a little vulnerability, did miles more in the realm of intercultural dialogue than being hostile about it or straight up avoiding the question.

So after that, I just default to a new linguistically-playful answer: When someone asks me if I’m Muslim, it translates into “Are you Praying?” or “Do you pray?” So I say “Yes I pray, but I pray in a church instead of a mosque,” which I personally think is drop-dead witty, though others find it a bit confusing. Either way, it usually satisfies their question.

Generally, people are honestly very accepting of my “coming out.” Plus it’s not like it’s a surprise or anything. I AM a white foreign guy, which of course equates to me speaking French and being a Christian, and since they inherently get half of that equation wrong when it comes to me, it revives their faith in the cultural astuteness of stereotyping to get the other half right.

It usually follows a predictable pattern after that, whether I’m talking to a group of loud little boys, giggly teenage girls, or beefy dudes at the gym. For the sake of turning it into a literarily-interesting allegory, I’ll use the loud little boys as the model: I’m sitting around reading a book, and a bunch of little boys run up to me and whip out their best “What is your name” and all that good stuff, until they realize I can speak Arabic which is WAAAAAAY cool, so their questions will get deeper (and faster) until they throw out “Are you Muslim?” (with an implied “yet” at the end of the sentence). I’ll say, “No, I’m Christian, is that OK?” and they’ll all say “Ok!” and want to move on to my marital status or favorite Moroccan food, except for one kid. There’s always one little boy (or girl, or beefy gym guy) who makes a big show and with a frowny face makes sure I know it is NOT ok, that he sooooo does not approve of my non-Muslim-ness. The rest of his friends then start to hit him on the back of the head and tell him not to be a jerk face to the nice foreigner, or (if they happen to be quite learned 6 year olds) they’ll quote Koranic scriptures that the Jews and Christians are “people of the book” and Muslims are supposed to treat them with respect and kindness. The kid will relent, but continue to be all frowny and hostile while the others continue to get to know me.

But my favorite part—cus it always happens—is that every time I see the Mr. Frowny of the group after that, he is the first to shout out my name and run up to me with a huge smile to shake my hand and ask me how my day was.

My other favorite anecdote on this subject deals with my religion-question-avoidance days: It was always good to be walking around with one of my coworkers from the Youth Club, cus he could field the religion questions for me. I didn’t know Arabic that well yet, but I could hear the topic come up. A group would ask my “escort,” if I was a Muslim and he would say a few words and they’d drop the subject. I could recognize a few words (Christian, Muslim, God) so I figured he was telling them something like “No, he’s Christian. He’s not a Muslim yet, but God-willing, maybe someday.”

But a few weeks ago, we were walking around, ran into a gaggle of curious teenage girls (aren’t they always curious... and in gaggles for that matter?) and he got fielded the question again, and now that I know a few more verbs, I figured out he’d been saying all along, “He’s a Christian. We are Muslims. But there is only one God, and we all pray to the same God.”