When my daughter was nine years old, she asked me which religion was the “right one.” The reason this was even on her mind is that my children are part of an interfaith family. Their father was raised Jewish and I was raised Muslim. When we married, we had a secular wedding and for a time chose not to raise our children in either of the traditions exclusively. We thought we could get away with raising them with no religious identity. However, this turned out not to be the case.
At the time we were living in New Jersey and my children’s best friends (also siblings) attended a conservative Christian congregation. I would let my kids attend programs with them mistakenly thinking it would be benign. This changed after my daughter returned home at age 5 declaring to her Jewish father, “Jesus is the light of the world.” To which he responded, “No he’s not, we’re Jewish.”
I realized at that moment that we weren’t being intentional in how we raised our children and they were clearly wanting to engage in some kind of religious community, even at their young age. It was age appropriate, wanting to belong.
I had already known about Unitarian Universalism and promptly looked up the closest UU congregation. Thankfully, there was one just two towns away, in Ridgewood. We attended together and the rest is history.
One year later, I was the religious education coordinator for a small congregation in Orange, NJ and from there I dove deeper into the world of faith leadership, eventually becoming credentialed in religious education leadership, a long and thorough process demonstrating competencies in leadership, faith development and the UU faith, among other things.
The reason we chose a Unitarian Universalist community is that it is pluralist. UUs do not claim to be superior to any other faiths and we affirm that there are many paths to what we understand to be spirituality, whether or not that includes belief in a deity.
This is a profound and sacred notion for the modern era. Especially because it seems that the world around us is doubling down on religious extremism. Religious dominance causes intolerance of those who are of a different faith, or choose no faith at all.
Truly embracing pluralism and the freedom to coexist in the same society while maintaining your own religious identity is a transformative idea. We are witnessing in real time the impact of religious extremism, whether it is anti-trans laws that purport to “protect children” or taking away the right to bodily autonomy, this kind of thinking is oppressive at its core.
The path to a liberated society includes embracing pluralism and not holding up any one religion over another.
As for my children, they continue to be on their own path. I will not share where they are, as this is their story to tell. I will share that their values and who they are is shaped by growing up as part of a Unitarian Universalist community.
Altars, places to honor our ancestors along with displays of that which we experience as sacred, were never part of my upbringing. I didn’t start having an altar until well into my adulthood. A central part of my home altar is my connection to the ancestors. My ancestors include family and friends who died and some becoming ancestors too soon on their life path.
Our connection to those who lived before us can be deep and profound if we invite their memories into our lives. Not only their memories, but what they worked for and how
they lived.
Those of us who hold identities that have been the target of oppression know that our ancestors faced hardships we may never fully understand intellectually, but we carry the memory in our bodies.
As a woman born in Egypt and raised a strict Muslim in the United States, I have had to face challenges that include anti-immigrant sentiments when I was a child from those here in the United States, and in Egypt I was faced with misogyny and strict rules of conduct because of my family’s interpretation of the faith. I often felt stifled as a child and teenager, rules imposed on me did not apply to my male cousins of the same age. I was angry at the unfairness of it and I finally left the faith in my early twenties.
I connect most closely with my female ancestors, especially my two grandmothers. I knew my maternal grandmother, Labiba (her first name) and I adored her. She was feisty, gregarious and honest to a fault. I am grateful that I remember my maternal grandparents. My grandfather Abdelgawed (his first name), was more of a quiet introvert, who was kind and generous. I have a picture of both my grandparents on my altar.
My paternal grandmother is my namesake, Aisha. By all accounts she was the life of the party, a vivacious, generous and welcoming soul. She died when I was young and I don’t have any memories of her. I was born in Egypt and spent my first year of life living with her in Alexandria.
There is a picture of me as an infant on her lap and it is the only picture I know of with the two of us together.
I will never know what my grandmothers had to endure as Muslim females who were mandated into behaving a certain way in order not to be ostracized. They made the best of their circumstances, that I do know given how generous of spirit they were and how I heard stories of their antics.
My grandmothers are the reason I am alive, they suggested to my parents that they marry each other. They were friends and loved to laugh with each other, host parties and socialize.
I think of them often with the knowledge that I am living the life they didn’t know was possible for a female. I am independent, a faith leader and working for liberation of all. I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.
Despite the theological diversity within Unitarian Universalism, there are many things that we agree on and hold sacred within our communities. The following list is of 10 things that are important to know about what Unitarian Universalists believe, and how we try to be in the world.
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The following is adapted from a sermon that Aisha gave in CLF online worship on Nov. 6, 2022.
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During my first year living in Seattle, I heard a news report of a woman being arrested for throwing a frozen chicken out her apartment in the middle of a crowd of runners in a 5K race. Read more →
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The November issue of Quest will be completed and mailed long before we know the outcome of the most important election of our lifetimes. Read more →
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Quest for Meaning is a program of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, the CLF creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act.