You call me lots of things. You have lots of coloured lenses, which you put on to look at me. You see me wearing my niqab, you call me weak, oppressed, ISIS; then you think of me and feel threatened, or get aggressive. You pass remarks and then you turn away.
But I am human and humane, I am strong, proud and upright. I wish you good, and no, I do not emulate Kim Kardashian. I despise her and her peers. I emulate my hero, Mary, and she was the mother of my beloved Prophet, Jesus, son of Mary. The true. The upright. He brought the message of God and was slave to no gold. His mum, Mary, wow, now that’s a woman we can all look up to.
She is the only woman mentioned by name in the Holy Quran, where God says:
“And Maryam, the daughter of Imran who guarded her chastity; and we breathed unto her through our Ruh [Angel Gabriel] and she testified to the truth of the words of her Lord and [believed in] his scriptures and she was of the qanitin [the obedient to God].”
So, on one hand we have culture with the famous Kim and her clan, cronies and peers.
On the other hand there is religion with and Maryam and her peers. And I want to be her lookalike. I want to be on her team.
Kim loves partying. Maryam loves to pray. Kim loves to show off. Her clothes are so tight, she might as well be without. Maryam loves to cover. She wears loose, dull coloured clothes, she covers her head with a long cloth, and her face is almost completely hidden. Her clothing really hides her beauty. Then again, her beauty is not in her face and body. It’s other than that.
Kim has lots and lots of money – and all the money in the world would not satisfy her wants. She craves more, she needs more. The next new bag, dress, shoes, beauty treatment, all of this and more, she needs. Maryam barely has enough to eat for the day, she frequently sleeps almost hungry. Yet she never sold her body for money, she never lost her decency for money, she never lost her honour: not for a penny nor for a pound. Moreover, she was always happy, content with what she had. She thanked God all the time.
Kim has men, lots of men. All sorts of them. One love story finishes, the next two are on the line. She buys ‘love’, she sells ‘love’, works for ‘love’, promotes ‘love’… if it’s love, Kim is in for it, whatever. Just call it ‘love’. Maryam, she loves truly. Her love is comparable to nothing. She loves her Lord and obeys him truly. She does not fear the people calling her names when she has a baby outside marriage: no she stands up to the people and tells them to look at the miracle of her Lord.
What will make me a foreigner to you? My niqab? My religion? You forget your religion is so similar to mine
She doesn’t follow the populist religion her people have carved out of the pure Judaism that God sent them. She loves her Lord too much to bend under their pressure.
She also loves her son, truly. She knows he is special, she sees him do miracles, even speaking to the people from the cradle. She saw him learn the Scriptures so well, at a young age he could show the rabbis their mistakes.
So, because her love was true, she followed him and learned from him all she could. She didn’t turn her nose up and tell him to obey her.
No, she loved him in truth and recognised that he was bringing the message of God to all, her included.
Kim must be Kim. She loves fame, she craves fame. She will do anything for fame. She even poses nude for fame: “What’s wrong with that?! All my friends do it!” She works a lot for fame.
It brings her followers and money. And money talks in Kim’s world. Money controls. For money, Kim is ready to walkthe walk.
Maryam, she is famous, very famous. Fame is so much a part of her story you can go to no part of the world without finding people singing her praises, calling their kids by her name, telling her story; people of all religious denominations praise her.
The two major world religions, Christianity and Islam, both honour her, for all the right reasons too.
Her honour, her decency, her love of God, her dedication to her son, her humanity and kindness to others, these characteristics make her world famous, loved the world over. Her name is in the most read, the most recited and most memorised book in the world, the Holy Quran.
Yes, it’s Maryam I dress like. I like praying like her. It gives me peace and strength.
I like her attitude, her values, her way of seeing things. Her attitude teaches me to be free to enjoy life without being a slave to it.
Like her, I value closeness to my Lord far more than acceptance by society. Being one of the sheep is not a priority for me.
I keep her as my role model, not Kim.
Kim would never help you with a penny, even if she’s a millionaire. But Maryam, she would give you the clothes off her back if she saw you in need.
I want to be rich in Maryam’s way, as my religion teaches me. So do not demonise me for my strange clothes.For all you women, my clothes safeguard your family.
Will you tell me I have to follow your culture, accept your culture to be truly Maltese? I say I have my own culture, one that Maryam, mother of Jesus, would recognise as her own.
I am truly Maltese, my parents are Maltese, my grandparents and great-grandparents traceable to their fields around the Maltese valleys.
What will make me a foreigner to you? My niqab? My religion? You forget your religion is so similar to mine?
I am just trying hard to please my Lord and live a life inspired by the model in my life, Mary.
Caroline Gatt is a Maltese Muslim and stay-at-home mum.