Comments on: Like Father, Like Daughter

By: Zaynab Ameen

Zaynab Ameen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:45:38 +0000

Salam,

I didn’t realise until now just how much my father has affected my personality, the way I interact with others, the way i protray myself and the decisions i make in life. You see, my father is what i would consider a ‘control freak’. He is overprotective of my mother, myself and my sisters. We comes from a middle-eastern ‘back-home’ mentalilty and he seems to always want to be in control. I hate to talk about it, but he has somewhat of a big ego. He finds it very difficult to communicate with us all and that’s why he tends to get very angry, shout and sometimes say abusive things to me. He was always the ‘man of the house’ and controlling everything we did and i feel that i was never able to build my ‘own identity’ and i have developed alot of his attributes.

- i find it difficult to communicate
- i find it difficult to express myself
- i find it difficult to make my own decisions

Unfortunately this has gone as far as to affect the relationship i am having with my husband at the moment. we are not communicating well and i think it is as a result of the negativity from my father; who was always reluctant to marry me to someone else outside our culture. i think this is a lifetime of nurturing that i and my husband must come to terms with and except. i do love my father, but in all honesty, i am happy my husband has none of those characteristics. He is very gentle and caring and always willing to listen and if it wasn’t for his patience, i don’t think he could cope with my (a mirror of my fathers’) personality!

By: Farhad

Farhad — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:47:19 +0000

Thank you for the article. We were thinking the same thing – check out MuslimFathers.com.

We also have an active facebook page.

Farhad

By: Shakura

Shakura — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:13:14 +0000

MashaAllah great article.

By: KhadijaK

KhadijaK — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:11:28 +0000

Iâ€™m 17 and have both parents in my life, Alhamdulilah, but its like my father is only there physically, I speak to him once in awhile like maybe for one day a week/month here and there a small conversation, and then it stops suddenly.

I haven’t spoken to him in weeks now, we dont even look at eachother. Sometimes I want to talk to him but something just holds me back so I just stay silent. He has 7 children,in total, four daughters but he doesnâ€™t talk to any of his daughters, my younger sisters (15, 13) canâ€™t even be in the same room as him, when he enters they leave. I wonder if he actually notices. Most times itâ€™s like we don’t exist to eachother.

By: Hala

Hala — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:40:31 +0000

salaamz
let me repeat what everyone said and say “this is an amazing post”, because it actually is mashallah and a great issue to highlight , i felt i could always talk to my father about everything you know besides the menses stuff, he didnt seem to even notice when i had it because we always pray together in the living room like a jamaat and whenever im not praying id be wondering round the house and hed be calling me wondering why i was suddenly interested in “praying upstairs”, the same for all my sisters too, but apart from that we could talk to him about everything, i wasnt scared of voicing my opinions on things and he was always the one who kinda spoiled everyone , i actually think my mum was more strict then my dad because she obviously had to tell us wrong from right whereas he saw everything we did as sweet or innocent etc, i think my father was a great dad and probably a great husband since my parents stayed together for all their lives so far, i never saw him yell or argue with my mother, he doesnt even shout at us, he does give advice though, if he saw something bad he would tell us about it and express why he wouldnt want us to do it, once my older sister said, “besides allah, i would abstain from doing bad things in order to never shame my fathers name”, because he truly did not deserve any shame or embarasement, he is respected by everyone who knows him and sometimes we gave him trouble thats what happens when you have a million kids and 5 of them are girls :O,he never allowed anyone to hurt us, never hit us (the girls) and never allowed our brothers to hit us . he normally just used to call everyone some nights turn off the television the computer the phones and talk about us about education about islam, i always apreciated him and we all agree wallah he is a role model for me, if i can be as great a mum/wife as he was a dad, and even as relgiious a muslim itd be mission acomplished but im doing alright as i aint even married yet
so yeah be nice to your daughters theyll always love you irregardless
xxx
hala

By: Hala

Hala — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:29:39 +0000

im proud and happy and grateful that such amazing fathers excist and wish people would talk about the good points of muslim men (i,e, how fathers like yours excist), rather than point out only the bad points
im sick and tired of muslim men being made out to be like nazi villians or something and this proves to me that they are most definetly not
allah grant your father jannah
ameen
salaamz
your sister
hala

By: Hala

Hala — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:27:46 +0000

huh? we are talking about improving father daughter relationshiops not fixing all the problems of the muslim community worldwide
if you think you cant say the word muslim community because of a lack of community
tell me if you can say christian community or hindu community or whatever without the marks
salaamz

By: matata

matata — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:33:12 +0000

As a woman I “can’t” change diapers either. I don’t want to change diapers. But that’s a part of life that you and i both have to get used to after becoming parents. It’s all in the package :) you CAN do it.

By: layla

layla — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:38:07 +0000

Interesting to some extent, but blandly superficial, and fails to ask more interesting questions about the roles of Muslim American women. What about only female Muslim children of immigrants? How do impossible expectations–or perhaps vaguely defined, or nonexistent ones–subtly shape a woman’s relationship to her community? I am one of the unfortunate few who, despite having had varying degrees of contact with other Muslims during childhood, as well as going to mandatory Sunday school, found that most contact with the Muslim “community” (scare quotes refer to my hesitancy to say this word for reasons I can’t go into here) for the most part reaffirmed my sense of isolation, ill-fittedness, and inability to develop a healthy Muslim identity without guilt or shame over internal conflicts that were for the most part taboo.

I think my point stems larger than this article, which cannot fill in all of the gaps or account for all of the blind spots inherent in “Muslim American” literature, and that perhaps my frustration points to something larger–that the prevalence of Islamaphobia makes a community less willing or able to address the intricacies of Muslim American youth that, at least in my case, happens to also be relevant to social and behavioral problems that contribute to eating disorders, substance abuse, codependent relationships, but–perhaps most importantly–a sense of bafflingly anxious, inferior sense of self in respect to the ability to connect with progressive Muslim potentiality. Not an entirely new topic, but one that I believe is still inchoate, and makes me wonder if I have the guts, or steadfastness, to explore such topics on my own.

By: karmarisa

karmarisa — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:22:02 +0000

i am glad that you know you are blessed to have a unique father-daughter relationship. i think that it is so cool that ur dad asks for your opinions, and share/talk about a lot of things. at 16, i still don’t know what having a father daughter relationship is like. i just realized the importance of a fathers love.
some day, soon hopefully, i would know what it feels like to have a father daughter reationship. i’m still working on it. wish me luck!!! :)