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Places Called Home: Folk Traditions among Muslim Immigrants in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
By Jocelyn Hazelwood Donlon
Home Matters
Community Practices
Making Pita Bread
Mosque Services & Shared Differences
COMMUNITY PRACTICES
All of the people interviewed remain committed to practicing Islam in Baton Rouge, which is a rather conservative, predominantly Christian city. They continue to celebrate the Eid holidays with family and friends, most of them fast during Ramadan, and many of them pray five times a day, at home, work, or at the mosque. Certainly faithful attendance at a mosque is one way to practice devotion to Islam. But it is, of course, not the only way. Local devout Muslims who do not attend the mosque cite different reasons for their choices.
One participant, Misbah Majeed, does not attend the local mosque because she and her family practice self-study of the Qur'an. Misbah and her husband, Tahir, who owns a shop that sells reproductions of antique furniture, were born in Pakistan. Misbah came to the United States in 1991; Tahir, in 1982. The family moved to Baton Rouge from Houston in 1997 because they like the green spaces and the slower pace of a smaller city. They and their two children call themselves "submitters" in English, noting that the word "Muslim" means "submitter." Within their home, they devote time to reading and studying the Qur'an, in Arabic, for themselves. Misbah says that she does not want to "feel guilty" about having depended on someone else's interpretation of the Qur'an when she stands "in front of God" after death.
Islamic Beauty And Henna Art
Based on her interpretation of the Qur'an's instructions, Misbah, who owns and operates "Salon Misbah" in Baton Rouge, restricts her business to women only, taking seriously the Qur'an's prohibitions against intimacy with unfamiliar men. She does not, however, wear the headscarf, noting that the Qur'an never explicitly mentions covering the hair. She says that the Qur'an instructs women to "lengthen your dress, cover your chest, and lower your eyes." She laughs and says, "My eleven-year-old daughter can tell you what a decent dress is," believing that modesty is common sense, but that head-covering is, quite literally, a "man"-made thing.
Misbah Majeed photo:Jon Donlon |
Thus, Misbah negotiates her private religious study, occurring in the domestic world of family, with her public business. Because she restricts her salon to women only, many Muslim women who do wear the headscarf seek her out. She says, "They find it a blessing that they can come here and it's just them and me. No men are going to come."
Drawing henna
photo:Jocelyn Donlon |
Henna-decorated hand
photo:Misbah Majeed |
Among her many services, Misbah creates henna art on women's bodies, primarily for weddings, trading in cultural traditions from Pakistan. Having learned from her mother and grandmother at home, she now serves a multi-national population at Salon Misbah in Baton Rouge, resulting in diverse cross-pollinations of culture. She serves "Arabs, African Americans, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistani, Americans," to name only some of the cultural groups that frequent her salon. She recounts how "an American family, whose daughter was getting engaged, wanted henna done to every guest." Some parents bring their teenage girls into the salon for temporary henna tattoos, in order to mollify their desire to get a permanent tattoo. She says that she has decorated the necks and wrists of "young girls and moms, too." She has decorated young girls from 3-14 years, and moms up to 60-70 years of age.
Women who want to be decorated for their wedding usually go to Salon Misbah the night before the wedding, or even two days prior. According to Misbah, "Henna takes two days to get the real color out." She advises her clients to put lemon and olive oil (or any kind of oil) mixed together and to keep rubbing it into the henna. Henna has metallic dyes in it, so the lemon and oil react to bring the color out. Henna is also very drying, so the oil hydrates the skin.
According to Misbah, a bride does not really consider her entire attire when choosing the henna design for her wedding. Henna is considered a "romantic thing" between a husband and wife. Also, according to tradition, a new bride does not have to do any work, after going to her in-laws after marriage, until her henna has completely faded. She is a "new bride." A Pakistani folk saying is that "the richer your color is, the more your husband loves you," sparing you the work. The more intricate, heavier the pattern is, the longer it will last. Misbah says that a current trend is to decorate arms and legs, as well as the hands. Nail coloring with henna, which is permanent, is also part of the design.
Henna is also used for religious celebrations. Sometimes, people go to Salon Misbah to decorate their skin for Eid. On the last day of Ramadan, some Muslims in Baton Rouge will have a "moon night," where women wear bangles and decorate with henna to celebrate. People also do this in Pakistan.
Misbah sees very little difference between Pakistani and Indian designs. She believes the Pakistani is more floral, less heavy, and very elegant. Indian designs are very intricate and heavier. She prefers a lighter, more delicate design because, when the henna is washed off, an intricate, heavy pattern is too hard to see clearly. She also believes that Arab designs are more geometrical, mixed with floral, and that Arab women do their arms, wrists, legs, and hands-covering more of the skin. According to Misbah, the designs can possibly have symbolic value, but not usually.
Misbah offers a full slate of services in her salon, though she, herself, creates a somewhat modest appearance with long, straight hair, conservative clothing, and natural make-up. While she will decorate her own and others' skin with henna, she will not use any on a woman's hair because it is too damaging, contrary to popular belief. The cosmetics that she markets in her salon are of a natural beeswax base and natural oils. Misbah, herself, doesn't use henna much because her skin really absorbs it, and she doesn't like to decorate her body too much. She doesn't wear jewelry or much makeup, preferring a natural look. Thus, Misbah has created a space where she can fashion for others a sense of beauty, grounded in non-western and western aesthetics, while practicing her own Islamic sense of modesty and moderation.
Palestinian Cross Stitching
Like Misbah, Inas Nazzal, a Palestinian living in Baton Rouge with her husband, Munir, and her two-year-old daughter, Sarah, has also taken her Islamic identity and aesthetics into the public workplace. Inas teaches fine arts at the Brighter Horizon Islamic School in Baton Rouge where she taught a small group of high school girls how to do Palestinian cross-stitching (the only male student in the class was working on a different art project, verifying that cross-stitching is designated as "female"). Inas learned her domestic-and now imported-folk craft from the women in her family back home, and she has brought her home traditions to a multi-cultural population in Baton Rouge: Inas' students are children of immigrants from throughout the Muslim world, as well as children of American-born Muslims.
Inas Nazzal wearing a thawb
photo:Jocelyn Donlon |
Detail of cross-stitching
photo:Jocelyn Donlon |
In addition to transmitting Palestinian cross-stitching to her multi-cultural students, Inas also notes that cultural distributions of the folk craft occur on a broader scale. Because of the Palestinian diaspora, and because neighboring countries share cultures, cross-stitching has been distributed throughout the Middle East. Inas talks about how the work is spreading across regions and cultures:
People are getting to know lots of other villages and cities, traditions, the drawings they have on their dresses, so things are mixing. It's not like before. The people of Jerusalem had [their designs], and the people of Bethlehem had [a different design]. Now, it's different.
While each village's cross-stitching can have its own character, drawing from its natural environment to represent different floral designs, Palestinian embroidery, according to Inas, can be found in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria because of the Palestinian cultural diaspora.
Inas recognizes the "preciousness" of cross-stitching among generations of Palestinian women, primarily because the embroidery is used to decorate the traditional and elaborate dress worn the night before the wedding at a henna party. The traditional Palestinian dress, called a thawb , is hand-made, and elaborately stitched with complicated designs. And it is elaborately decorated with accessories. As Inas says:
There are a lot of accessories that go with the thawb . Now you can find a shoe with cross-stitches on it; you can find the gold that matches with it. It's an old traditional gold, and it's 24-carat. It has to be yellow, really yellow-24 carats. There are also the coins [on the veil]. We call it lire . Those you can do on an 'ukud -a long necklace. You do the fabric and then you sew the gold coins on it. And most of the time, the bride gets lots of gifts of those on her wedding day.
Cross-stitching also decorates other domestic objects, such as wall hangings, tablecloths, pillows, and coasters. Indeed, in her home Inas has a traditional Palestinian wall-hanging, made by her mother, which Inas then decorated with Mardi Gras beads, reminding us of Hasan's miniature mosque, and of the cross-pollinations of culture found among immigrant folk traditions.
Inas did not bring many of her own cross-stitched fabrics to the United States from Palestine. The thawb that she models for her class belongs not to her but to a friend in Baton Rouge. She left her own wedding thawb in the care of her mother back home, and the crafts she shared were made by her mother. Her family and work keep her very busy, but when she does have time to cross stitch, she uses fabric, embroidery thread, and a needle with a big eye. The fabrics that she uses can vary. Some fabrics are dull, others are shiny. Some people, according to Inas, are "going to georgette," a soft fabric that doesn't need ironing. The expensive fabric called joaz has barely visible holes and is extremely difficult to work with. The itamine fabric is much easier with holes that are visible. When teaching her students, Inas uses itamine for its ease. Mukhmal is a shiny fabric used to make a thawb . The malak , a popular dress, which can be seen at the Baton Rouge mosque, is a black thawb made of mukhmal , with gold embroidery.
Inas' mother is currently making for her two embroidered scarves out of joaz . "You need really good eyes and good lighting," Inas says, "to work with joaz . You do it only for loved ones and precious people." She notes that cross-stitching and henna art do share some design elements, but she clarifies that "you can achieve more detail with the stitches than with the henna." Like Misbah, Inas says that popular henna designs are flowers. She also notes that many women "write the first letter of the groom's name on one hand, with the first letter of the bride's name on the other hand; coloring the fingernails."
Unlike Misbah, Inas attends the local mosque, though she chooses, at this time, not to cover her head when outside a religious setting. Her story demonstrates that being a Muslim in Baton Rouge is a continual negotiation of the sacred and the secular.
Next - Mosque Services & Shared Differences
Folklorist Jocelyn Hazelwood Donlon, PhD., and leisure studies researcher Jon Griffin Donlon, PhD., founded and co-direct the Center for Cultural Resources in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Jocelyn Donlon interviewed members of the Baton Rouge Muslim community for the New Populations Project. Jon Donlon provided photographs.
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