Gurgle Gurgle Puke

Another anguished striving Muslim:

Woman seeks equity for her Muslim kin

Convert to Islam strives for acceptance on 2 sides

Khedeja Al-Iman, a family advocate and outreach worker in the Muslim community, spent the day cooking and baking Friday.

It was her day off, but she volunteered to cook and bake for some of the clients she served as a caseworker for the Lutheran Community Services of Southern New England.

The food was prepared in her home on Douglas Street, where we met. When she arrived home the night before, she noticed that someone had dismantled a portion of her fence and strewn the parts in the street.

She talked briefly about vandalism and then wearily dismissed the topic, saying, “I know who it is.”

When she was young, she wanted to be a nun. She ran away from home, in fact, to be a nun, and when that didn’t work out, she came across a Muslim woman in a book she was reading, saw the way the woman was dressed and decided that she would convert to Islam.

What kind of equity does she seek?

Well, I guess she wants to be treated as an equal to her suitor's other wives:

Ms. Al-Iman said she is also concerned about the abuse of certain Islamic practices such as polygamy and temporary marriages. She spoke of a recent case in which a Jordanian, who has a wife in that country, married a converted woman in Maine as a means to get a green card.

When the wife in Maine filed for divorce, the man married a Worcester woman without disclosing that he had a wife in Jordan. Then as soon as he received a 10-year green card, the man left his Worcester wife, according to Ms. Al-Iman.

While acknowledging that the Quran allows a man to marry “two or three or four” wives, Ms. Al-Iman said “a prospective bride is entitled to know about any other wife, including any spouses back home,” she said.

Of course, it only fair for a potential husband to disclose the existence of other wives.