RELIGION

Asking a practicing Palestinian Muslim or Christian whether religion is important is like asking whether two eyes are better than one. “It’s how we’re born,” says Nadia, a 53 year-old widowed mother of nine children.  Reema, a college educated sixty-two-year-old mother of four, gives her interpretation:

People don’t understand religion. I practice Islam, which is very similar to Christianity. Religion taught us how to greet each other, respect each other, treat each other in marriage, et cetera, and the reason why Americans and the United States hold on to the things that aren’t true in Islam is because they can’t find someone following it properly to correctly explain it to them. If we [the Palestinians] aren’t living it right in our country, how do we expect Americans to respect us? They see that our customs are wrong and believe our religion is wrong, when it is the way we [Palestinians] treat each other as wrong, not the religion itself.

Not all Palestinians in this study agree. Nine out of the fifty-five women do not believe a person needs to be religious to have faith, including Samira. She is a slender nineteen-year-old woman with dark eyes and long black hair. She grew up covering her hair with a mandeela but decided to uncover her hair after she got married. Her husband has no opinion on the subject and loves her for who she is. Samira, like many young women, feels more comfortable wearing Western-style clothes: jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. She does not believe religion is the most important thing in life. Samira further explains:

It’s not about duty; it’s what calls you from within. Prayer can be a very personal thing without showing that you’re doing it in front of the world. But some people are afraid and publicly enforce hijab. If you are a good Muslim that believes in God, then there is no reason to fear people.