At Muslim American Society’s annual Tarbiya (self-development) and ‘Ilm (knowledge) Camp, or MAS TI, however, this is anything but true.
After a grueling semester in college, I was anxious for the spiritual high that the MAS TI Camp offers.
Last, year when I attended the camp for the first time, I was enthralled by the stunning Santa Barbara setting, the intimate interaction with American scholars of Islam, the sisterhood that helped us to reach skyward in pursuit of Allah’s pleasure and the nightly reflections that made me feel as if I was seeing the moon and mountains for the first time.
Therefore, it was with some trepidation that I met a score of sisters on the first day of this year’s camp, held on Dec. 23-29 in Santa Barbara.
As the program unraveled, I realized just how different this experience was going to be.
Last year’s TI Camp was a deeply personal adventure in which camp leaders helped us to break our old, distorted selves and mold ourselves into more perfect shapes.
We were expected to clean off our plates, to prefer our sisters over ourselves when the occasion arose and to help one another in times of need.
And, believe you me, the leaders weren’t afraid to call us out on our shortcomings.
This year, the camp was geared toward team-building and the collective effort.
"MAS is not an organization, though it is structurally organized. MAS is a movement," the amir (head) of the camp, Mohammad Subeh, impressed upon us time and time again.
And move we did.
Discipline in the camp was paramount, and punishments, such as laps around the campsite in the freezing morning air, though dealt out reluctantly by our mild amir, strove to inspire in us a heightened respect for our leaders, a sense of communal responsibility and the oh-so-difficult timeliness.
Prayer, meal, lecture, activity, break – that cycle was the rhythm of the camp. The heartbeat, of course, was in the lectures that Br. Omar Ahmed, Dr. Imad Albahri, Br. Mohammad Nassir and Sr. Bhawana Kamil led.
The single most moving speaker was Dr. Mohammad Allali of Orange County. This math and computer science professor reminded us that ritualistic worship and character were inextricably intertwined.
If the speakers were at the heart of this camp, then the activities ensured that blood flowed smoothly through the intricate web of arteries that connected brothers to brothers and sisters to sisters.
One activity that tested our mutual trust had one individual fall stiffly backward from a tabletop into a bed of interlinked arms. Another transported us to seventh century Arabia, where Quraysh scoured the campgrounds in hot pursuit of two teams of Muslims.
Not surprisingly, the Muslim teams won, and my team, Quraysh, reflected that all our efforts were in vain because they were not intended for Allah’s sake.
At one point in the game, I pried open a cabin door in search of a sister who stood inches away from me in the door’s shadow.
Ironically, if I had only waited a second longer, I would have heard her heave a sigh and I would have taken one more ‘Muslim’ prisoner.
As the camp drew to a close and as my sisters in Islam and I bid our farewells and prayed to see each other again in this life or in the next, it struck me that, if anything was to be flipped inside out in this camp, it most certainly wasn’t a backpack. It was me.
