:Gentleman’s Agreement:
This movie is apropos of a real life situation I’m facing.
“What did you do this weekend?” a friend and colleague asked me the Monday after Easter.
“I don’t celebrate Easter,” I said easily, and smoothly changed the subject by saying we’d gone to the park with a friend the day before to enjoy the beautiful weather.
A few minutes later another colleague joined us and he began talking about his daughter’s parochial school and his nuclear family’s complicated relationship with his extended family and their varied views on the family faith: Catholicism.
We chatted as a group, me asking questions and contributing to the conversation that way, until I finally felt my internal conflict boil to the surface. It wasn’t the first time, but I finally couldn’t take it anymore.
“I have something to say,” I announced. “I’m Muslim.”
I explained briefly that I converted to Islam when I was 16 and have never seen any reason to change my mind. It’s simply what I believe.
“I didn’t know that about you,” K said. The conversation moved on. Later K offered to loan me her food dehydrator to dry the herbs we’re planning to grow this year. It’s all good.
But the conversation is indicative of the mounting internal pressure I feel in the current political climate. The leading figures in the Republican party talk about “banning all Muslims” and “patrolling and securing Muslim neighborhoods.”
Hey, that’s ME they’re talking about. My faith. My friends. And I can’t in good conscience continue to be silent about that fact of my life with the people I interact with every day. I’m quiet about my faith, but I’m not casual about it. It matters deeply to me and I feel threatened. By the Republican Party and by its followers.
And it’s important for Americans who might think that Muslims are foreigners, or at least foreign, to know that regular everyday white girls convert to Islam too, and are quite happy with it.
Maybe that’s why Gentleman’s Agreement touched me so deeply. Because I’ve been hiding not a false declaration of a “strange” faith but a genuine declaration from most coworkers and acquaintances.
So congratulations to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. They’ve taken a quiet, introverted American convert and turned her into someone who from this day forward plans to be more observant about her Muslim faith because as someone publicly aligned with it she knows that she will once again be judged as an example of her religion by the people around her (I was very “out” for the first several years after my conversion). For that, at least, ironically, I thank them. I know I will feel more integrated and better about myself when I stand before God.
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