Muslim on the spectrum

 Salaam and peace to you all,

I have created the blog to really be able to pen down my thoughts and give my perspective as a Muslim woman on the spectrum. I believe that within the neuro diverse community the voices of Muslim women are few and far between.  If you really search you will find them but they are not mainstream.  Do a google search or a youtube search for information on autism and you will find very few faces that are BAME and even fewer from the Muslim community.  So I realised I wanted someone to create a space for autistic Muslims but I was waiting for someone else to do it.  

So what makes autistic Muslims unique?  There are lots of struggles with faith and culture that are not necessarily represented by the mainstream neuro diverse community and there are struggles that are unique to my faith that other autistic Muslims will connect with.  

As part of being a Muslim it is part of my faith to pray five times a day and this is a fundamental part of the faith.  For years I have struggled with this and at the time I was not aware of being autistic. I had not even heard of the term prior to 2017 apart from the famous movie Rainman because I was a  huge Tom Cruise fan.  So for years I just felt like I was a  bad Muslim and that I had a weak faith and this added to low self esteem.  In fact there is a hadith which is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him (words to the effect) that the one who leaves the prayer has become a non believer.  I'm a literal thinker and I took this to mean that this was me. There were times where I was in such overload I could not pray I literally couldn't move to make wudu (ritual ablution) to pray.  

To pray or not to pray that is the question?  Some of my struggles with salah (prayer) I understand better now and I will attempt to list them below.

Salah (prayer) times are not static they move about in the summer they are very spaced out but the early morning prayer is very early, before sunrise.  In the winter they are so close together you barely breathe and another one is due.  I like routine and so it is very difficult to shift my routine to accommodate the changes in time.

Lots of people on the spectrum struggle with sleep it takes me ages to fall asleep and so the early morning prayer is very difficult and so is falling back to sleep after I have prayed.  Imagine you got to bed at 10pm you don't fall asleep until 12am you need to wake up at 3am to pray or later in winter months.  Then you pray and after washing your face you are literally wide awake so another three hours to fall asleep and by that time you have to get up to go to work or school or get up for the kids.

Before you pray you need to make ablution and that is problematic due to sensory needs.  Not so much in the summer as you dry off quickly and it is sometimes nice to feel the coolness of water on your skin and it can be refreshing in the summer.  But in winter I sometimes get my sock wet or the sleeve of my garment and I hate having that wetness and coldness against my skin.  When you pass water over you hair I wonder if i have covered a quarter of the head so i do a bot extra and end up washing my hair and then that is wet and in winter it's not a nice feeling.

So I made those hurdles what's next?   I struggle to shift focus once i'm invested in something so shifting to pray then do an activity and then I need to pray again so I need to shift my focus again.  My mind works like this, I do X until I finish X and in between I do not want to be disturbed and when I am I get disorientated.

This is that goes on behind the scenes for an autistic Muslim yet I still pray when I am not in a complete shut down or burn out. Burn out is another huge problem that needs it own post but it's like everything takes that much more effort for an autistic Muslim and autistic people generally.

As i have learnt more about my autistic traits I can better accommodate my own needs. I know i need time to shift from one activity to another so I can't delay the prayer time because it takes me extra time to shift my mindset.  In winter maybe I can have a portable hair dryer to carry in my pocket, I don't know, maybe move to a country where the changes in time are less dramatic, is there such a country? My geography is poor although I got a GCSE C grade so I might end up in Norway where it is dark for 23 hours a day at times of the year. 

Next time I plan to talk about the concept of time and how that can effect my day.  It is about the only thing I learnt for the NCFE understanding Autism course.