Patricia Raybon’s coming to terms with her daughter Alana’s chosen faith was a tumultuous journey. “You have to be committed to bridging the divide, knowing that you’re going to have moments when it breaks down, and you get angry or have an argument,” she said. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
When Alana Raybon converted to Islam, her mother, Patricia, — a devout Christian — was devastated, feeling that she had failed her faith and family. She also felt very angry at her daughter for fragmenting their family.
But after a few terrible fights, they didn’t talk about the faith divide for 10 years. “It became the elephant in the room,” said Patricia, a longtime member of Shorter Community A.M.E. Church.
When they agreed to start talking about the taboo topic, buried emotions exploded like land mines, triggered by topics from the Boston Marathon bombing to something as simple as Mother’s Day.
The process, which took years, is chronicled in their new book, “Undivided: A Muslim Daughter, Her Christian Mother, Their Path to Peace,” which shows how overcoming their obstacles dramatically changed Patricia’s feeling about Muslims around the world — to the point of speaking out against Islamophobia in the wake of the recent incident at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Texas in which two men who aligned themselves with the Islamic State terrorist group were shot dead before they could attack participants.
The Raybons’ story is getting national attention. They’ve appeared on the “Today Show” and “Fox & Friends.” Last weekend they flew to Los Angeles to appear on the “Tavis Smiley” show on PBS.
On Tuesday, Patricia gave a talk called “Daring to Love My Muslim Daughter” at the Denver Seminary. And Jerry Jenkins of Colorado Springs, the Christian co-author of the best-selling “Left Behind” series, has praised the new book as “a stunner” on his blog.
“I identify with Patricia as a parent and grandparent and felt she was courageous in going public with this heartbreaking struggle,” Jenkins said in an e-mail.
Mother and daughter are learning that their reconciliation efforts give hope to others heartbroken over their own shattered families.
“I heard from (people) who said the divide wasn’t necessarily a faith divide, but something had come between people in the family,” said Patricia, in her mid-60s. “Parents not speaking to daughters or sons, daughters not speaking to parents. People are divided, and they’re hurting.”
In the book, mother and daughter write in a back-and-forth style, responding to each other’s confessions and reflections with a brutal honesty that triggers raw feelings.
“It was news to me that my mother was judging me based on my lack of Mother’s Day affection,” fumed Alana after learning about her mom’s hurt feelings because Alana and her sister don’t give gifts on that special day. “If that’s what she wants, then I’ll shower her with expensive gifts from expensive stores, but it won’t change my status as the daughter who ruined our family. I’ll still be in the gutter because of my faith choice.”
Patricia’s closest friend, Denise Materre, knows how hard the process has been. “I remember she went one time to visit Alana on Christmas, and it was such a disaster that she said, ‘I’m not doing that again.’ They still don’t get together on (religious) holidays, but they’ve found so many wonderful ways to celebrate things together.”
Materre also has watched Patricia develop a new openness to the Muslim community, such as the time she attended a breakfast at the Enlighten Foundation, a local group of Christian women, to hear about Muslims in Israel. The speaker was Ishmael Khaldi, the first Bedouin diplomat in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“She really soaked up everything she was hearing and was really trying to be a student,” Materre said. “She was especially interested in supporting Bedouin women, in terms of women’s health, child care and their ability to be economically self-sufficient.”
On this Mother’s Day, Patricia and her daughter are celebrating victory in their tumultuous interfaith journey — and they’re still talking, prepared for conflicts that may crop up in the future.
“We’re closer now than we ever have been in our entire life, and I am so grateful for that,” said Alana, 35. “I feel like I know my mother so much more now. I know what she needs.”
Patricia is glad she took the risk, despite her fears.
“I thought, ‘If this goes bad, I may lose my relationship with my daughter,’ ” she said one recent afternoon in her Aurora home. “But mothers can’t be angry with daughters. As a woman of faith, my anger at Alana for what I thought was a breach in our family just didn’t line up with who I say I am as a woman of faith.”
For people such as the Rev. Dr. Timothy Tyler of Shorter Community A.M.E. Church, their struggle toward conflict resolution is inspirational.
“It’s applicable to our times — whether it’s with Baltimore, ISIS (a common acronym for the Islamic State) or the incident that just happened in Texas,” he said. “It’s apropos to the struggles we’re dealing with on many levels.”
Click here to continue reading…
SOURCE: Colleen O’Connor
The Denver Post
