THE SECRET LIFE OF A 'NAUGHTY' MUSLIM

Drink, drugs, casual sex… what happens when you are born and raised a Muslim, but choose to live a western lifestyle? Laila Baqri* explores the pain and struggle of being “Muslim-ish” ›

I’ve just got in. The oven clock flashes 1.03 AM. I fill a glass with water while simultaneously taking off the high-heeled boots I’ve had on since 7.30 AM yesterday. My mouth has the stale tang of several tequila shots and half a packet of Marlboro Lights. I knock the water back greedily. From out of the early-morning gloaming I see my phone light up – a WhatsApp from someone I half-remember meeting last night. My eyes flick over the preview message: “Come over,” it says. I consider it. Then I remember… it’s only Wednesday.

To many, this might sound like a standard Tuesday night for a 26-year-old woman, especially if you work in London, as I do. For me, however, every drag of a cigarette, every slam of a shot, every line of cocaine I’ve experimented with in dimly lit bathrooms, and every unsuitable boy I’ve drunkenly kissed at the end of the night, holds heavy consequences. That’s because my family are Muslim, which means they strongly disapprove of 99% of the life choices I have made tonight. So strongly, in fact, that if they ever found out, I may as well be dead to them. They would most likely cease all contact with me.

I am what you might call Muslim-ish. That is to say I am a Muslim woman who lives, for the most part, by western standards. And that’s problematic for everyone – the men I date, the friendships I keep and, most of all, the family I love more than anything.

It also means I live my life in a perpetual state of fracture, caught between two cultural expectations, the psychological consequences of which can be immense for the thousands of young Muslim-ish women and men just like me.

Feeling different