She Inspires, featuring Maya (17) as told to Fatima Salaam
People who know me will tell you I’m independent and love to take initiative. I’ll own that. I’m the oldest of four, I’m homeschooled, and somewhere along the way I became the one who steps up when something needs doing, whether I feel like it or not. That is just who I am.
But I wasn’t always this sure of myself. That part has a story.
I started out in western Massachusetts, in a place full of Muslims, two busy masjids, and friends everywhere. Then, when I was eleven and a half, we moved to a tiny town where we might be the only Muslim family for miles. Suddenly, I was very aware of how much I stood out and how badly I wanted friends who understood me.
When we moved, it did something to me. It made me turn inward. I was still homeschooled. At first, the quiet was hard. I had my siblings, though siblings do not quite count the same way. And then, slowly, I realized something that changed everything: The best company you can have is yourself. If I was going to spend all this time alone, I could either be miserable, or I could become someone I actually enjoyed being around. So I chose the second one. I leaned into my studies. I worked on myself. I decided these were my circumstances, and the only real question was what I was going to do about them.
Around the same time, RabaTEENS came into my life, and the timing could not have been more perfect. I had done Dragonflies first, and at twelve I knew I wanted RabaTEENS next. Anse Eamaan was looking for a teen admin, and I was only a few ḥalaqas in when I hopped on it. I stayed until this past January. I loved all of it: being around other Muslim teen girls, the anonymous Q and A where you could ask anything, the teachers who actually got us. I learned real skills too, the technical kind and the harder kind, like what to do when someone is not following the rules and you are the one who has to handle it.
More than anything, RabaTEENS was a space built for girls like me. Personal classes, made for Muslim teens, that took who we are into account. I understand now that I was being trained to walk into a world that was not built for us. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said that Islam began as something strange and will return as something strange, and blessed are the strangers. I used to feel like the odd one out. Now I know there is honor in it.
I did not get here alone. My mom started the root of all of it, taking us to the library, sharing her enthusiasm until it became ours, always pushing us to chase what we love and to think about how our knowledge could serve the ummah. Because of her, I fell hard for English language arts, reading and writing, and for Arabic studies.
I am the kind of girl who has opinions about books too. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, for the way a child’s eyes expose grown-up faulty thinking. I love Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. I later found out that there are ten books in that series. I read them all. I also l really enjoyed You Only Live Twice by Autumn Allen, which I think might be the first halal romance that actually gets Muslims right.
I am very grateful for my mentors. Anse Eamaan showed me how to lead, how to be assertive, how to be the person others can come to when they need help. And Anse Eva, my mom’s friend, showed me what it looks like to take everything you know and give it back.
Here is what I wish more people understood: We are not that different from you. I care about the same ordinary, everyday things everyone does. There is all this noise out there that says Muslims are weird or something to fear, and it bothers me more than I can say, because underneath it all we want the same things. Respect. Understanding. A little empathy. The mundane stuff is exactly what makes us all human.
If you are a girl reading this and you are struggling, feeling like you stick out, unsure about your hijab, wish you had true friends, doing everything right and still feeling out of place, here is what I would tell you: If Allah put you there, He put you there for a reason. He does not make mistakes. Maybe you belong in a way you have not discovered yet, with roots somewhere still waiting to be found. And whatever you are carrying, it will not last forever. At thirteen, I thought my hard year was the end of the world. Looking back, it really was not. Next week, next month, it passes. If Allah placed something on you, it is because He already knows you can carry it.
There are two things you should not compromise on: honesty and commitment. Nobody likes a liar, and telling the truth really is not that hard, even if sometimes you have to close your eyes to say it. And if you commit to something, do it with excellence and care about the person you are doing it for.
I am so grateful to RabaTEENS. As I finish my senior year, I am thinking about my life ahead. I want to keep my head buried in books that I have been meaning to read. I want to write beautifully and grow my tutoring business. I want to travel, starting close to home in the Berkshires and Boston, then out to masjids in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and Minnesota, and one day to Algeria to see my family, and to Spain. Ten years from now, I hope to have my master’s and my PhD, a family of my own, and a life spent studying and teaching.
I am still that girl who takes charge and cannot wait to focus fully on what she loves. But I am also the girl who learned, alone in a small town, that you can be the best company you keep because you have Allah. Everything is going to be ok.