Caught between two worlds

11/02/09The first thing you notice about Ariana Hakim is her long dark hair. Curling gently, it tumbles down her back.

For most 21-year-old women, wearing their hair long and free is no big deal. But Ariana Hakim is a Muslim student, and if her parents knew she was being seen in public without her hijab, she could jeopardize her relationship with them.

Hakim's conflict with how she appears and what she wears in public is one of the many difficulties she faces as a young Muslim woman going to school in the heart of Boston. She takes great pride in her family's faith, but is often fearful to share it because of what she feels to be strong anti-Islamic tendencies in America.

She is an independent young woman who feels pressured by her family to follow the rules and expectations of their religion. As a daughter of an immigrant father from Indonesia and an American Muslim mother, she is stuck on the cusp of two very different cultures, and often is emotionally exhausted from her efforts to embrace both.

Hakim is a busy person, and in many ways lives out the ideal of the strong American woman. She is a Writing, Literature and Publishing major and an intern for the Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin. She works at Marshall's and is also as a resident assistant in Piano Row. She takes her job as a RA seriously and cares deeply for the students of her floor.

But Hakim does not like to wear her hijab when she is meeting students. She doesn't want to be pegged as the Muslim RA. She says she also is sensitive to the fact that many students first coming to Emerson may not have lived in diverse towns or cities and may never before have met a Muslim. She worries, she says, that her very religion could make them fear her because of the prejudice she believes many Americans hold toward Islam.

"I don't want to intimidate them or have them be afraid to come to me," she said.

Hakim does practice some aspects of the religion. She does wear her hijab on occasion, and her RA photo at the front desk shows her with a hijab on. She celebrates major Islamic holidays, such as Eid-Ul-Fitr (which marks the end of Ramadan) and Eid-Ul-Adha (the celebration of Ibrahim sacrificing his son as he was asked to by God). Her schedule does not allow her to go to mosque often, she said, but if she has the opportunity she does.

Rabbi Albert Axelrad, who teaches at Emerson and has served as the head of its Center for Spiritual Life, said he understands the contradictions of Hakim's world.

"They [young Muslims] just want to be accepted by Americans in their age bracket," he said. "They have to walk a line, very gingerly, between old and new, and often, it becomes stressful."

More than once since Sept. 11, 2001, Hakim said, she and her family have experienced prejudice.

Her eyes fill with tears when she tells the story of a day, this fall, during RA training when she called home to Springfield, Mass., to check on her family.

"My mother was stressed because the night before a co-worker of my father, who is discriminatory against other races, religions, sexual orientations, etc., found out my father was a Muslim and backed his car into my father's three times. He tried to claim it was an accident, but there were witnesses."

She insists, however, that it is not the prejudice of others that has caused her to steer away from Islam. Hakim considers herself to be "more spiritual."

"Islam has had many influences on my life, and I do believe in the values," she said. "But I don't agree with some of it. It's outdated, things are different now than they were, and we live in a modern society."

All of Hakim's non-Islamic beliefs and practices need to be hidden from her family, however. Her younger sister Kyla, 19, decided that she did not want to wear her hijab, and when she told her parents, her father did not speak to her for a month.

Abdullah Faaruuq, the Imam at the Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Boston, said in the end that young American Muslim women like Hakim and her sister need to make a choice.

"If a woman does not obey Allah, and walks around uncovered, for instance, she is not helping herself or anyone else of the faith. Muslim women have the choice to be Muslim or not, and if they choose to be, they need to follow the beliefs."

Hakim, however, has tried to live in two worlds, one at home, one at school. She dates, which also is forbidden. She said she was with a man for a long time, and wanted to bring him home to meet her family, but couldn't.

She said her parents expect her to find a man she is interested in, become engaged, get married, and then be his wife. Hakim is against this, and feels a lot of pressure from her father to get married. she said he sends her emails on a regular basis with men who are interested in her.

But marriage is something Hakim said she wants to take her time with, and she wants to get to know the man she is marrying.

Hakim loves her family and is proud of who they are and who she is, but she worries about the woman she is becoming, and whether someday she will have to choose between them.

"I think I'm almost ready to tell my family," she said, of how her beliefs have evolved. "I'm working on it. I just have to talk about it; the more I talk the easier it gets.