AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EX-MUSLIM

Mozz

As you may know, the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice, began on Tuesday. It’s one of the most important holidays in Islam, and it commemorates that time Abraham almost sacrificed his kid because voices aka God asked him to.

As the name implies, the celebration traditionally consists of sacrificing an animal (goat, sheep, camel, cow, etc.) and distributing the meat to the poor, as well as to one’s family. Eid al-Adha begins the day after Hajj, the humongous pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim must make at least once in their lifetime (unless they’re too poor or physically unable). It was this festival that sparked the idea to speak with someone more familiar with the Islamic faith than ourselves, but in the end the conversation touched on other aspects of Islam as much as Eid al-Adha itself.

Vice: First off, I’d like to get your credentials. Who are you?
Mozz Manzoor: I was born in Kuwait and my family is from Pakistan. I was raised strictly Muslim. We moved back and forth from Pakistan to Kuwait a little bit, and when I was six years old we moved to Brooklyn. Even there, our household was still very, very much Muslim. When I was ten I moved back to Pakistan for two years. It was an interesting time, because I was totally immersed in the culture and the religion.

When I was 12 we moved back to the States. I was still the perfect little Muslim kid. It wasn’t until I was in high school, when I was about 16 or 17, that I started really questioning what my beliefs were and what I actually believed in—whether or not I actually agreed with all the things that we did. That led me down a path of discovering other religions and other philosophies, and eventually I came to the point where I’m at now—an atheist.

Now I run a business called the Sage Divine Group where I teach people how to use psychedelics like Salvia. It’s a far cry from my Muslim upbringing.

A Salvia teacher, huh? I smoked that stuff one time. Never again.
Why not, what was your experience like?

I felt like I was Saran-wrapped to the couch. I couldn’t move and I started drooling. It wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t fun in the least.
It’s a very powerful thing, and I find it to be kind of a temperamental thing.

Does that pay the bills?
No, no, I hope one day that will pay the bills but it doesn’t right now. I have a day job as a salesman at a credit card processing company, which is incredibly boring, and I also run a business with my best friend. It’s a lingerie news website, which is very interesting.

How did you get into that?
Well, for the past six years I’ve been working at the industry’s leading lingerie news publication. I just recently quit and my buddy and I started our own site.

Are your parents still religious?
Oh, very much so.

What do they think of your lingerie company and your way of life now?
It kind of is what it is. They went through a long period of trying to reconcile the fact that I wasn’t what they wanted me to be or wasn’t like them. Eventually they were just like, “Do well.” Now things are taking off. They’re happier about this job that I have now and they’re hoping this takes off and I can be an upstanding member of society with a regular nine to five, all that stuff.

So they’re supportive of you?
Well, I mean, as much as they can be. They’re more understanding than most Muslim parents. At a certain level, I do sort of maintain the face of being a Muslim. I have my own philosophies, but I tell them that I still believe in God and that keeps them placated.

Mozz’s father

Why did you guys move back and forth from Pakistan and the US a couple of times?
I think it was due to immigration reasons, like we had to be there to have some sort of interview in order to get our citizenship for some reason.

Do you think those moves influenced your current beliefs? Do you think that if you had stayed in Pakistan you would still be religious?
That’s a very interesting question, and the answer is probably. I mean, it’s an interesting side note about the concept of self. If I had stayed there I probably would have fallen into the culture because it just would have been what’s expected and what all my friends were doing. At the same time, I’m not sure that the concept of self is really that fragile.

I wanted to ask you about fatwās. Can anyone call themselves an Islamic scholar and issue a fatwā ?
Well, I don’t know if I’d call them scholars. You see, there are different sects that exist within the religion, and a certain segment of a certain country will say, “OK, we follow this mullah.” Certain people in another segment will follow another mullah.

And a mullah is sort of like a priest, right?
I guess you could say they’re like priests or preachers, but they have a bit more power.

Is there a certain mullah who has really sweet rules, like slacker than the other guys, who would be better to follow if you had to choose?
It’s usually done by what your family has always done, that’s what I’ve found. When people subscribe to a certain mullah’s version of whatever, it’s because their family was raised under this belief. The differences are really incredibly minor though.

Are Muslims still pissed at Salman Rushdie, or has the fatwā telling everyone to kill him passed its expiration date?
Oh they’re still pissed. Not so much everyday Muslims, like if my father ran in to Salman Rushdie he would probably just grumble under his breath and walk away. I don’t think anyone takes it so seriously anymore that if they saw him they would try to attack him, but there is definitely ill will, like, “You motherfucker!” That kind of thing.

They’re not fans.
No, they’re definitely not fans. They would speak out passionately in an argument about him and get very worked up and whatnot, but I don’t think any of the people I’ve ever known would do anything about it physically. Then again, it might be different in a country like Iraq or Afghanistan or something like that.

Yeah, he might have some problems if he went over there.
As far as American Muslims, I don’t think it’s that serious of an issue anymore.

I know a lot of Muslims have rules regarding music. I’ve heard that the only instrument permitted across the board is something called the ad-duff, which is sort of like a tambourine. You can play it at weddings and stuff. Other than that, do a lot of Muslims really frown on music?
No, I don’t think that’s very prevalent. I lived in Kuwait, which is a stronghold of pretty militant Islam, but I remember when I was a kid our neighbors would have little get-togethers and there would be people sitting around this giant sheet where all the food was laid out. We all sat down and ate, and at a certain point everyone would pull out these guitar-looking things–but they were more round–and they would play them and everyone would sing songs. I never encountered a restriction on musical instruments. Drums are pretty huge. Everybody loves the drums.

What about Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens? As I understand it, the reason he stopped playing music for a while was because of his conversion to Islam.
I’m not sure, but my gut reaction is that he stopped playing music because a lot of Western music is looked at as very visceral and sexual. They sometimes view it on the same level as drinking or doing drugs–it’s indulgent. That’s something that is frowned upon. It’s interesting how all the songs that people sang around those little get-togethers were all religious songs.

What do you know about the festival that started on Tuesday, Eid al-Adha?
That’s always been one of my favorites, actually. I don’t agree with much of what the religion has to say, but that one was always a lot fun. You get to watch an animal being sacrificed or slaughtered.

“Festival of Sacrifice,” is what it translates to, right?
Yeah. The whole thing is of to remember Abraham almost sacrificing his son, so what we do is sacrifice either a goat or a cow. One time I saw a camel. That was pretty interesting.

You saw them sacrifice a camel?
It was pretty intense.

I guess there’s no animal rights groups in Pakistan.
Oh no, none whatsoever. It’s a really sad issue because there are a lot of pretty amazing animals that exist in the wild there that have just been hunted almost to extinction. There’s nobody watching out for them and nobody cares.

It was an interesting experience for me, because I didn’t know what was about to happen. One day, my father and uncle went to the market and brought back these two goats. They were cute as hell. We kept them in our backyard and played with them. My cousins and I got really close to them–they were our pets. And then one day we find out that they were going to be slaughtered. I remember the moment pretty vividly. Me and all my cousins were lined up on the stairwell when the butcher came. He hung the goats upside down and cut them up. I remember crying my eyes out. All of us were. We were like, “You’re murdering out goats! You’re murdering our goats!”

I though you said this was one of your favorite festivals.
It’s fun now, looking back on it. I think it was a really important experience in my development, because it really gave me a very visceral and elemental sense of where my food comes from. Once the animal was slaughtered, they would cut the meat up and give a third to the beggars and the poor people outside. Then we’d distribute the rest of it among the family, and some of it you would cook and eat right there. It was an interesting experience to go through, and I appreciate it tremendously now because I think people here don’t have that connection to their food, or don’t understand where it comes from or the sacrifice that goes into you having a piece of steak on your plate.

Can you describe, physically, how they went about killing the animals?
It was really interesting. I saw a goat, and then I saw a giant bull, and then there was a camel that I saw in Kuwait. The butcher would come to the house and the goat would be outside and they would sort of corral it. One guy would be on one side and the other guy on another, and they would grab one of the legs and pull it, then turn it upside down and tie it up really quickly. Then they held if there and the butcher would put his knee on the goat’s neck and say “Allahu Akbar,” and cut the throat. They would let it sit there and bleed out for a while, and then they would turn it upside down and hang it. The head wouldn’t be completely off, but they would cut it so that it was dangling. The whole point was to let the blood bleed out of the body completely. Once it was done bleeding they would skin it, cut it open, take the entrails and everything out, and then hang the carcass there. A few hours later they would take it down and cut the meat up.

What do they do with the bigger animals, like camels and stuff? Do they string them up, too?
It was interesting. The camel was already sitting down and its feet were tied together when I saw it. It wasn’t up and about, that would be incredibly hard. They rolled it onto its side and quickly cut its throat. The process is always to say “Allahu Akbar,” then cut its throat, hang it upside down to let the blood drain out, and then butcher it.

How does camel meat taste?
I don’t remember, to be honest with you. I was pretty young when I was in Kuwait. I remember seeing the camel and I remember all the hubbub in the house, but I don’t remember how it tasted.

Is that a common dish?
Not really. Camels were way too expensive and way too valuable in Kuwait, so no one ever really ate them. But if you had to make a sacrifice, that was kind of a grand gesture. If you had a camel then your family was really wealthy.

There’s not one specific animal you’re supposed to sacrifice, it can be any animal?
Well, it has to be an animal that is halal. It can’t be a pig, you have to do a cow or a goat or some sort of livestock-y animal that’s OK to eat by Muslim law.

I always thought the way things went down with Abraham was kind of a dick move on God’s part. Making this guy who’s all about God go through the torment of bringing his kid to the altar and then just being like, “Ah, I’m just fucking with you Abe, here’s a ram.”
Well, that’s the crux of why religion is a problem in society. It gives people a “credible” reason to forgo logic, to forgo normal, rational thinking.

Do you know of anywhere in the city that has those sacrifices?
I don’t. I remember about 20 years ago there were some people who did it in their backyard and their neighbor’s kids were on the balcony and saw it happen, and those kids’ parents sued the Muslim family. It was a whole thing, but the Muslim family ended up winning. The law was established that it’s legal to do that, but you have to cover your surroundings so other people can’t look in. That was the compromise. I’m sure it happens, but I don’t know where.

Mozz

I wonder why Jews can practice Kapparot, their weird business with chickens, out in the open on the eve of Yom Kippur.
It’s much more acceptable for the Jewish faith to do it because they have a longer history and roots in this country. The Jewish community here is stronger when it comes to helping each other than the Muslim community is. The Muslim community here is very disjointed. There’s no central leadership. There’s no central togetherness. Everybody is factioned off. With the Jewish faith, it’s very centralized and everyone is sort of on the same page. What that gives you is political power, a voting bloc, a way to be counted. I think that’s why they are able to do that and be very forceful about saying, “These are our beliefs and you’re going to respect them.”

What do you think about the other Eid festival, the one at the end of Ramadan called Eid ul-Fitr? I’d imagine there’s a lot of great food at that one.
Yeah, the day I finally admitted to myself that I didn’t want to be a part of this anymore was when I was in high school during the month of Ramadan. Everyone was eating French fries and bacon and I couldn’t eat. My friends were like, “Dude, just fucking eat! It doesn’t make any sense and you know it!” After they badgered me for about half an hour I was like, “Why am I doing this? It doesn’t make any fucking sense to me.” From there I started thinking about how I don’t like the way they treat women, and then none of it made sense anymore.

Did you keep your parents in the dark about your eating at school during Ramadan?
Oh yeah, for the longest time. Ramadan means waking up at 4:30 in the morning and grabbing whatever you can eat so that you can survive the rest of the day. You do that and then you don’t eat until the sun goes down. It’s pretty rough. You do a month of that and then at the end everybody comes over and all the families have a giant feast with all this food. That’s sort of like our Christmas. You don’t exchange gifts, but you exchange money. All the older people give money to the younger kids.

That’s pretty awesome.
Yeah, it was a pretty good time.

Based on your experience, what’s your opinion on the treatment of women in Muslim communities?
A lot of things about Islam might sound nice, but there are some very core ideas that are just completely, completely unacceptable, like their treatment of women as livestock.

Why do you think women stay in the religion?
For the same exact reason I would have went along with it if I were there. There is no other choice allowed to you. It’s a system where everybody, by force, starts adhering to it and it becomes ingrained in them and then they become brainwashed. I think the major problem that the Islamic religion, or people in Islamic countries have with our culture here in the US, is that we don’t treat our women like property. Despite what they tell you, my personal belief is that that’s what it all comes down to: the freedoms that we give our women. There is no sense of men having to win the affections of women. You’re just given a woman. Men don’t ever think, “Oh, I have to look good” or, “Oh, I have to have a good job, or do this to win the affections of a woman.” It creates this ultra-chauvinistic society.

They’ve never been shot down at the bar, huh?
They would get shot down, but they haven’t had the chance. It’s a shame, because that’s what forces you to grow as a person and not be an infantile child into your 40s and 50s, you know what I mean?

I think what scares them most about the West is our view of women, and the chance that their idea of women could waste away and all of a sudden they would have to be responsible for themselves as men. I think that’s the biggest issue that men in Islamic society have with our culture.

OK, but do you feel that your dad looks at your mom as livestock? Do you not think that Muslim men love their wives to some extent?
To some extent. There’s a difference between habit, attachment, and love. If you have an arranged marriage and you tell yourself that this is the only option available and you have to deal with it, you’ll go along with it and eventually get used to being around someone. You have no choice but to relate to the other person, and you form this habitual dependency. That is not love. Love, in essence, is about choice. People in that culture will tell you that love comes after marriage–you marry someone and then you fall in love with them. You don’t fall in love with them, you fall into a habitual, co-dependent situation with them and you make the best of it.

Is arranged marriage an across the board thing, or is that usually more popular in the more conservative Muslim communities?
Chances are, if you’re a Muslim you’re going to have an arranged marriage. It’s a little different now, but not much. There are very small pockets of societies that exist here in the US where they’ll introduce each other first, but the Muslim woman still does not have the opportunity to go out and experience life and meet a man and fall in love. It’s always, “These are your choices, tell me if you like any of them.” So yes, the majority of Muslim marriages are still arranged.

For example, my sister was never allowed out of the house. She was never allowed to socialize with friends. Her teenage years were an incredible struggle for her. When she was in high school she started falling in with the wrong crowd and started doing drugs. My parents didn’t know how to handle her, because the real solution to that is to allow her to be a complete human being, but since their religion tells them that that’s not possible, and that if you’ve got a daughter as strong-headed and intelligent as my sister was, it’s really not going to work. So their solution was to find her a husband and marry her off–let it be someone else’s problem. They found this guy in Pakistan, and my sister was all about it because she figured if she could get out from under our parents thumb, maybe she’d have better luck with this guy.

How old was she at the time?
Seventeen. So they sent her off to Pakistan and had this elaborate wedding. She got married to this guy and she was all excited. He seemed nice at the onset, and she thought it might be alright, that she could spend her life with this guy rather than being cooped up in our parents’ house not being allowed to be herself. The guy turned out to be a real dick though. He was a typical, chauvinistic Pakistani man. She told me a story about being at his family’s house in Pakistan–they were sitting around having tea and his mom steps up and says, “Who’s going to have tea?” My sister said she’d like some tea, and her husband put her hand down and said, “No, you won’t.” She asked what he meant, and he said, “I’m not having any tea.”

It was an understood thing that she was his property, and he would treat her like he wanted. They moved to London, and then one day she said she was going to visit her family. She came here and then she phoned him the next day and said, “Go fuck yourself, I’m not coming back.” I asked her what happened, and she said, “It was horrible, he was an asshole. One day he threw me up against the wall.” I nearly lost my shit. “Are you kidding me?” I asked, and then she was like, “I took care of it.” She said she grabbed him by the Adam’s apple and sat him down and said, “Don’t you ever touch me again.” I taught her that Adam’s apple move a long time ago.

Were you proud that she used a move you taught her?
Yeah, it was an incredible moment for me. It felt good that she was able to take care of the situation. She was just like “Fuck that shit, fuck that guy, I’m not going back, you can all go fuck yourselves.” So then she moved back in with the parents for a little while, and then she met a really, really nice guy here at a bar. They started going out and she ended up moving in with him. The family went nuts. They didn’t want to talk to her, they didn’t want to see her. Then one day they heard she got pregnant. My mother nearly had a fucking heart attack. To save face with the family, they had this fake ass ceremony where they brought him to the mosque and had him officially converted to a Muslim. Then they had a little Muslim wedding ceremony. He went through all of that just to make life easier for her. Then they had the baby and she’s the most beautiful little thing in the world, and our parents are much more OK with it now because the baby’s here.

How is your sister’s relationship with your parents now?
They’re perfectly fine. The baby fixed everything. She’s two-and-a-half and the sweetest fucking thing in the world. That whole ordeal is what Muslim culture does though, and that’s why it’s such a bad thing. Despite what political correctness would tell you to say.

INTERVIEW BY JONATHAN SMITH