Mashallah, I met Ingrid Mattson at antoher sister's house when I was
in Chicago for Eid-ul-Adha, I think it was a couple years ago.  I
didn't even know who she was.  A group of us women were sitting at the
table eating Eid brunch, and we somehow got on the topic of women's
rights and domestic violence, and of course, that peaked my interest,
and I just started speaking my mind.  I remember hearing people
calling her "ingrid", and my first thought was "Is this Ingrid
Mattson?", but I didn't ask, until she started talking, after I'd
spoken up, and I'd made some comments about how the Muslim community
deals with domestic violence.  She seems to be a very knowledgebale
person, Mashallah, and a very nice woman.


     I like people who, despite having knowledge or positions of
leadership, etc., are still humble and maintain the air of just a
normal ordinary person.

Ginny



On 9/27/06, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> New York Times
> Putting a Different Face on Islam in America
> By NEIL  MacFARQUHAR
> Published: September 20, 2006
>
> In a class on Islamic history at the Hartford Seminary some years back, the
> students were discussing a saying ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad that
> translates roughly as, "Whenever God wants the destruction of a people, he
> makes  a
> woman their leader."
> Ingrid Mattson,  has been elected president of  the Islamic Society of North
> America.
> The professor, Ingrid Mattson,  suggested that the phrase should be analyzed
> in its historical context when  Islamic societies consisted largely of
> tribal
> raiding parties. A male Saudi  student contended that all such sayings were
> sacred and not to be challenged,  the argument growing so heated that he
> stormed
> out of the classroom. Professor  Mattson stood her ground, as was her style.
>
> Now she is challenging convention again. This month, Professor Mattson, a
> 43-year-old convert, was elected president of the Islamic Society of North
> America, the largest umbrella organization for Muslim groups in the United
> States
> and Canada, making her a prominent voice for a faith ever more under
> assault
> by critics who paint it as the main font of terrorism. She is both the
> first
> woman and, as a Canadian, the first nonimmigrant to hold the post.
> To  her supporters, Professor Mattson's selection comes as a significant
> breakthrough, a chance for North American Muslims to show that they are a
> diverse, enlightened community with real roots here — and not alien, sexist
> extremists bent on the destruction of Western civilization. Some naysayers
> grumble
> that a woman should not head any Muslim organization because the faith  bars
> women from leading men in congregational prayers, but they are a distinct
> minority.
>
> "The more Americans see Muslims who speak English with a North American
> accent, Muslims who were born and raised here, who understand this culture,
> the
> more it will cease to be a foreign phenomenon but something local and
> indigenous," said Mahan Mirza, a Yale doctoral candidate in Islamic studies
> who
> recalled the classroom scene above from the master's program at the Hartford
>
> Seminary in Connecticut.
> At the annual Islamic Society conference in Chicago  where her election was
> officially announced to the thousands of Muslims in  attendance, women
> rushed
> to have snapshots taken at her side.
>
> "When I see her, I just feel that there is this beam of light on her," said
> Reem Hassaballa, 30, of Chicago, a teacher and a mother of three. "She is a
> very  good role model. If it can happen in a little convention like this,
> hopefully it  could happen in the whole Muslim world. She could be the start
> of
> something  bigger." Ms. Mattson sees both pluses and minuses in the fact
> that her
> election  is being viewed as a watershed. The Islamic Society of North
> America is a  20,000-member group representing all manner of organizations,
> from
> student clubs  to professional associations for doctors and lawyers to
> mosque
> boards to  political activists. Her immediate predecessor was a religious
> scholar
> who often  wore the flowing white robes and stacked turban of his native
> Sudan.
> "Somehow  there is the feeling that someone who is white is safer and less
> scary,"  Professor Mattson said. "But I am who I am. So if there is some
> social
> capital  that I can use to counteract some of the negative perception and
> open ears to  what we have to say as a community, then that is a benefit."
>
> A short, trim woman with a quiet manner that belies her authority, Ms.
> Mattson grew up, by her own description, as a good, middle-class Roman
> Catholic
> school girl in Kitchener, Canada, a suburban community about 60 miles
> southwest
> of Toronto. She attended a Catholic girls high school and took piano lessons
> at  the convent, spending hours in church praying or contemplating the art.
> It
> was a  peaceful asylum removed from the raucous household where she was the
> sixth of  seven children.
> At 16, though, she stopped attending Mass. "I believe I made  a very serious
> attempt to understand my faith," she said, repeatedly sitting  with her
> religion teacher to ask questions about Catholicism and spirituality.  She
> found the
> answers wanting, she said, less and less relevant to her teenage  life.
>
> Ms. Mattson enrolled in the nearby University of Waterloo to study
> philosophy and fine arts, a determined agnostic. In 1986, while studying in
> Paris, she
> met her first Muslims, mostly West African students, and was struck  by
> their
> warmth, dignity and generosity.
> Back home, she started to read more  books about Islam and took classes in
> Arabic, which she now speaks fluently.  When first delving into the Koran,
> its
> explanations of the presence of the  creator in the natural world struck a
> chord. That echoed her own spiritual  sentiments developed during summers
> spent at
> the family's 200-year-old cottage  on an island in a Canadian lake without
> running water or a telephone.
>
> In 1987, as a college senior, she converted. "This religious community was
> giving me the framework for my spiritual experience, and so I entered into
> it,"
>  she said in an interview.
> At first she told only her mother, whom Ms.  Mattson describes as a strong,
> flexible, understanding woman. Her father, a  criminal lawyer, had died when
> she was 12 and her mother had worked in a factory  to support the family.
> "My mother was confused at first and did not  understand it," she said. The
> change was eased somewhat by the fact that her  oldest sister, Peggy Smith,
> had converted to Judaism before her marriage.
> But her brothers and sisters only found out months later, when she wrote
> them a letter from overseas. They were mostly concerned, she said, that she
> had
> not joined some cult, and vaguely dismayed that her bar-hopping days with
> them
>  had ended because Islam demands temperance.
> Now, Ms. Mattson and Ms. Smith  share certain common concerns —like keeping
> pork off the table at family  gatherings.
> "Sometimes it's only the Muslim and the Jew who are eating  Christmas dinner
> with my mother," Professor Mattson said with a laugh,  explaining that her
> siblings are off with their spouses. Conversation tends to  run around
> family
> issues rather than comparative religion, she said.
>
> Ms. Mattson's first exposure to the larger Muslim world came after she
> graduated from college, when childhood lessons about missionary work
> inspired  her
> to volunteer to teach Afghan women in a sprawling refugee camp of about
> 100,000 people in Peshawar, Pakistan. There, in what might be called the
> wild
> Muslim east, the group later known as the Taliban barred their women from
> attending her classes.
> "I remember clearly someone pointing a man out to me  and saying 'That's the
> brother of the man who killed Anwar Sadat.' " she  recalled. "That was
> freaky. I was thinking, what is going on here, and who are  these people?"
>
> But the most important person she met was Amer Aatek, an Egyptian engineer
> working to install a water system in the camp and playing uncle to numerous
> orphans. Not long afterward, they were quietly married in her house in
> Peshawar.
>  When the destitute refugee women learned that there had been neither
> trousseau  nor a banquet, they gave her a party and presented her with a
> wedding
> outfit: a  red velveteen top and billowing blue silk pants dotted with
> multicolored  pompoms. It was not exactly her style. She is given to
> headscarves in dark
> blue  or brown with long matching skirts and long-sleeved jackets.
> In 1989, she  enrolled in the University of Chicago as a Ph.D. student in
> early Islamic  history. Her husband played the main role in raising their
> daughter and son  during much of the 10 years it took to complete her
> dissertation,
> which was  based on a line from the Koran that translates as, "A believing
> slave is better  than a nonbelieving free man."
>
> The idea behind the revelation is that the faithful should ignore social
> status. Ms. Mattson said she wanted to know why slavery continued although
> the
> holy texts discouraged it, ultimately deciding that it was because religious
>
> scholars ignored political issues.
> "She is one of those people who  constantly strives for social justice,"
> said Wadad Kadi, one of her University  of Chicago professors. "She
> recognized
> the importance of fundamentally  understanding Islamic law and making it
> relevant to people's lives."
>
> In addition to being a professor of Islamic studies at the Hartford
> Seminary, she directs the program that trains Muslim chaplains for
> hospitals,
> universities or the military.
> Since her time as a student in Chicago,  Professor Mattson has worked with
> the Islamic Society, which was founded in  1963. She had served as vice
> president for the past five years, so her election  was both anticipated and
> unopposed. (Not only is the post unpaid, but she also  is expected to donate
> 1 percent
> of the salary from her paid job to the  organization.)
> American Muslims generally put their numbers around 6 million  but some
> demographers suggest it might be as little as half that.
>
> Ms. Mattson hopes to focus on Muslim women's rights and on how the current
> negative image of Islam will affect the young generation. She is also
> concerned
>  that the "terrorist" label is being abused — extended too widely against
> Muslim  groups doing charitable work among the Palestinians and elsewhere.
> Like  other mainstream Muslims, she struggles with how best to convince
> people that  the faith does not condone terrorist violence. She detects what
> she
> calls  "Muslim fatigue" among North Americans weary both of the extremists
> who
> use the  religion to justify their attacks and of the moderates who seem
> powerless to  influence them.
> "The sense I have from Americans is that they don't want to  hear Muslims
> talking about Islam anymore," she said. "They just want us to do  something
> to
> stop causing all these problems in their lives."
>
>
> ����������������������������������������������������������
> To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
> Web interface
> at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html
>
> To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to:
> http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
> To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
> [log in to unmask]
> ����������������������������������������������������������
>


-- 
Visit my blog at:  http://quickgm28.blogs.com/ginnys_thoughts_and_thing/