Keeping the Faith…in Farming
Growing up Muslim in 1980s Rockland County, NY, meant spending a lot of Saturdays in church basements. Nascent community that we were, we didn’t yet have a mosque to call our own. So the kids learned the stories of our holy book, the Qur’an, while the adults socialized and enjoyed their chai, all under the watchful eyes of Jesus and his sheep.
Mission: be a bridge person
To me, that’s one of the points of religion, is to understand the place of your ego. But you get out on that land, you sit there in the mud, and the sweat, and the sun and the rain and the wind and the snow, you know your place. You get your butt kicked, and you’re like, I am not the owner. I am the caretaker. This thing knows what it wants, and I have to respect that. To me, that’s one of the biggest lessons of being a fully submitted human being. A human being, I’m just going to say. A human being.
