Open Letter to My Daughter

Dear Daughter,

Even though there was a lot of shouting, I don't want you to think that I didn't hear some of the things that you said. You said, "I'm a kid." I replied, "No, you're an adult."

Then we got into a stupid shouting match where both of us were saying, in effect, "I'm right and you're wrong."

The truth is that we were both right and wrong: Yes, you're still a kid, but you're also an adult — both legally and physically. You're still a kid because you still want to do things that kids do, like go to that concert with Samantha for her birthday.

Trust me: when you get to be my age, you probably won't want to go to rock concerts like you did when you were 18. You might not understand Iggy Pop's "I'm An Adult Now," but people like me find it amusing because we know what he's talking about. When your mother and I went to see David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails, we both had our ears plugged with wadded toilet paper because of the noise level. Neither babies nor senior citizens like loud noises, you know.

I think part of the problem is that adults send kids mixed messages. When the government wants 19-year-olds like you to go to war, it hands them an M-16 and says, "You're an adult now."

Why not? We let kids vote once they turn 18, expecting them to make an intelligent decision when they vote — right ? But a year before that 18-year-old is allowed to vote, at age 17, he or she can be tried as an adult for any crime committed. Yet when that same 17-year-old wants a beer, then we as a society want to treat that 17-year-old as a child, because the legal drinking age in all the states is 21.

What, they can't make an intelligent decision like adults are supposed to?

Years from now, when you actually consider yourself an adult, you're probably going to be horrified that both your and mother and I let you get away with. But I bet you turned your back and snickered into your hand when we thought you were going to a pyjama party with your friends when you were really going to some wild party with drinking, dancing and boys. Well, I believe in being consistent, even if I haven't always been consistent. Once you turn 16, you can get a driver's license and drive a car, so you ought to be able to drink and vote.

Now what could be more of an adult responsibility than driving a car ? While the American people may elect the "wrong" man or woman as President, that may not be potentially as devastating a consequence as getting behind the wheel of a car while drunk and possibly hurting or killing somebody in an accident. Yet we let people drive before we let them drink or vote. Something's wrong here.

Maybe we should start by trying people for violent crimes as adults when they turn six. Then we lower the drinking age to 12 or 13, let them vote at 18, and raise the driving age to 25 — because the way things are going now, you and a lot of your friends won't be able to afford a decent car until you turn 25 anyway.

I agree, Daughter, you're still a kid, though you want to do adult things. For example, you prefer a bottle of vodka over Barbie dolls. You would rather get a decent used car for Christmas rather than a brand new 10-speed bicycle. You work at the Joe's Bar and Grill 40 hours a week while going to college because $10 a week for an allowance is no longer enough money for you. Yet you still consider yourself a kid, and in some ways, you still are.

Right now, you feel that your mother and I have both failed you. After all, your mother and I went through a complicated divorce with you caught in the middle. If you have learned to play us off against each other, it's probably because you feel that we have both used you as leverage against each other. (I will stand mute at my arraignment rather then enter a plea here.)

Trust me, most kids feel that their parents have failed them — I blamed my parents too. I'm sure that each therapist that you have gone to at least thinks that your mother and I are the reason why you started cutting yourself with razor blades while at West Middle School rather than any conscious choice on your part. I'm sure that the reason why you spent your 16th birthday in jail in downtown Detroit had nothing to do with the fact that you raised an empty beer bottle against me in a manner that the arresting police officer thought was threatening. Even though the police arrested you for illegal possession of a jack knife just a few months before your 16th birthday and gave you a break, I'm sure you thought that you hadn't done anything wrong then either. Hey, a jack knife was considered a tool at one time, right ?

Well, Daughter, your mother and I could say that you have let us down, too, if we wanted. I'm sure that if you girlfriends had thought it was a good idea to chop off your nose, you would have thought it was a good idea, too. Mentally, you are well-above average in intelligence, yet I saw kids at your high school graduation get $5,000 scholarships for college that could have easily gone to you if you had only studied harder, instead of the measly $500 scholarship that didn't even pay for a full semester. Whose fault was that, eh ?

Physically, you are a beautiful young woman with beautiful naturally blond hair, yet you want to dye your hair in unnatural colours, put huge ear gauges in your ear lobes and cover your body with tattoos. The way I see it, you still want to mutilate yourself, except that you use ear gauges and tattoos instead of razor blades. You only mutilate yourself the way other kids do now.

Now who's your role model for that ? Your mother — who has no body piercings or tattoos of any kind — or Amy Winehouse ? I don't think it's fair to blame your mother on this one.

Now, I could go into great length about you smoking marijuana and tobacco, but I won't. You know as well as me that smoking cigarettes causes cancer while smoking marijuana is illegal — right ?

You can call me a hypocrite, if you want, because I used to smoke marijuana too. As well, I have admitted to dropping acid at least 16 times. But hypocrisy isn't illegal, nor does it cause lung cancer — at least for me.

But I quit smoking pot without ever having spent a day in jail for illegal possession, while you were arrested on our back porch with a bong in your hand in broad daylight while I was on the telephone to your grandmother in California. Whose fault was that ?

Yet I saw the logic in your decision then : you didn't want to disrespect both me and our landlord by using it in the basement ; the landlord wanted no drugs on the premises as part of the terms of our lease.

You and I, Daughter, are both at an age where we should know better. You would credit yourself with having good sense if someone suggested you jump off a freeway overpass onto oncoming traffic and you decided not to do it, yet you insist on blaming me for not wanting to get help when you admit that you have an addiction problem too. Something's wrong here too.

No, Rachel, you can't have it both ways: you can't take credit for good sense while denying any responsibility for bad judgment. While I definitely could have been a better parent, it's you who has made the decision to drive through your life on cruise control; you're still the driver. What's more, you're an adult now — we're both adults.

Jesus very rightly said: "Do as they say and not as they do." He understood that people may say the right thing, even if they don't do it.

I will freely admit to being a hypocrite, but if you call me "dad" without considering me your father, and say that you love me when you don't, then you are also a hypocrite.

I say this not to criticize you, but because you are right to call me your father even if you can't accept me as a father. I hope that your children will treat your husband with respect, even if everybody thinks he sometimes doesn't deserve it. I hope that your children will treat you with respect as well, even if you don't seem to deserve it sometimes.

You and I both need to grow up, Daughter.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (I Cor. 13:11)

How to Pick Up a Muslim Girl

This post is in response to an article that some magazine in Europe published on how to pick up Muslim women on the sly. Irate Muslims made death threats against the editors, and the owners felt compelled to print a retraction.

So you want to pick up a Muslim girl, eh? If you want to "pick up" a Muslim girl, you must proceed with caution. You see, Muslims don't like the idea of non-Muslims picking up Muslim girls for one-night stands and then tossing them aside when they're done. (Just like Christians don't like the idea of Muslim men doing the same to Christian girls.) However, it can be done: if you really want to pick up a Muslim girl, you can do it. Here's how: convert to Islam and then marry one.

"What?" I hear you say. "Me, become a Muslim and marry a Muslim?"

"Sure," I reply. "Really, it's very easy..."

Converting to Islam isn't very difficult. All you have to do is go to a mosque, say that you want to convert, and then repeat the Islamic confession of faith before other Muslims: "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."

Voilà, you're a Muslim. That wasn't so hard, was it? You didn't even have to click your heels and say it three times.

Of course, whether you want to be a good Muslim or not, that's another pair of sleeves. Being a good Muslim is a little trickier than simply being a Muslim, but what did you expect? There's always a catch, you know. The confession of faith is only one of the Five Pillars of Islam. You also have to bow down and pray towards Mecca five times a day, pay a tax to support the poor, observe the fast during the holy month of Ramadan, and make a pilgrimage to Mecca (if you are able.) As well, you have to observe sharia: no drinking, no eating pork, no adultery, no stealing, etc.

Okay, you are probably finding out already that being a Muslim isn't as easy as you thought it would be. But, trust me, being a born-again Christian isn't any easier, either. Oh sure, the evangelists will tell you that, by your faith, you are already saved and guaranteed salvation. Then you have to "show" that you are saved by voting for John McCain, because faith without works is dead. (James 2:17)Again, there's always a catch.

Well, it's no different being a Muslim. You can't just say that you're a Muslim; you have to prove it. Just like Christians, Muslims believe that the proof is in the pudding. If you go to a delicatessen right after you have converted and have a ham-on-rye sandwich, chances are that your fellow Muslims won't believe that you were sincere when you converted. And if you go to a bar and get smashed, they may really doubt your sincerity. (Though they may just think you're a neophyte who doesn't know better yet.)

But keep your eye on the prize: you want to pick up a Muslim girl, remember?

In trying to pick up a Muslim girl (and hopefully make her your wife), you are bound to confront other problems. You see, Middle Eastern society isn't as open as ours. In fact, Middle Eastern society is so segregated by gender that there is an Arab dialect in Yemen that is spoken only by women. (There are probably female dialects in Morocco and Algeria as well, but I think you get my drift.) Even if you were fluent in Arabic, and you were able to sneak into somebody's harem (by which I mean all the women of the household, not necessarily wives and concubines), the object of your affections may not be able to understand you. While the two of you may hook atoms, communication could be difficult, and relationships, in the end, are based on communication.

One of the great things about being a Muslim today, however, is that you don't have to be fluent in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, or any other language traditionally spoken by Muslims in the world. That's because a growing number of Muslims in the world today speak languages like English, German and French as their first language. Oh sure, it helps to know Arabic if you want to read the Koran, the sacred text of Islam, but we're not talking about reading the Koran here.

Besides, sneaking into a harem would be next to impossible. That's because harems really don't exist anymore. Like most Christians, Muslims in the West don't live in vast extended families like they do in Saudi Arabia or Yemen. Rather, they live in small houses or cramped apartments in the city. You may find a granny living under the same roof as her son, his wife and their children, but the son isn't likely to have three other wives. Nor is he likely to have dozens of children, though Muslim families in the West tend to be bigger than non-Muslim families. No, picking up a Muslim girl is more difficult than sneaking into a harem, because virtuous Muslim women no more hang out in harems today than they do in bars.

Because Muslim culture is a patriarchal culture, the way to a woman's heart is through her father. You will have to meet him, get to know him, and gain his trust. Above all, you must show respect — towards the daughter and the father. That means meeting the father on his terms. If he invites you over to his house for dinner, consider it an honour; that means that he sees you as a possible son-in-law. If he invites to dinner again, your chances are getting better. If there's a third and fourth time, you practically have a match. If there's a fifth time, the deal is almost certain. (Five is a magic number among the Muslims, just like three is among the Christians.)

The daughter is supposed to have some say in who she marries, but the father will forbid the match, no matter what, if he finds you unsuitable.

I trust that you see by now that finding a Muslim girl is an elaborate process. If you expect to find a sexually frustrated housewife or widow (or an errant daughter), you may get lucky, but you would really have to understand Muslim society in order to navigate the back roads and alleys in order to find a woman that observant Muslims would consider to be one of loose morals. That could be dangerous and ill-advised: they stone adulteresses and prostitutes in many Muslim countries, you know.

The best thing, therefore, is to play by their rules. If you want a Muslim girl, become a Muslim and marry a Muslim, and doors will open for you.

Good luck, and salaam aleikum.