Growing Up UU: Picking Fights with Imams at Age 12

I'm a feminist.  I come from a family where the women are as educated or more educated than the men, and the only thing I was ever told I couldn't do based on my gender was drive a stick shift, which I can so... yeah, fuck you.

In my last GU^3, I discussed the 6th grade RE curriculum, where we visited various religious centers.  I've already told my Born-Again story, and the only thing memorable about the Buddhist temple was that it smelled, oddly, like Corn Flakes.  I did not go to the synagogue because I had something for Girl Scouts that night and to me, synagogue was a place to catch up on my Boxcar Children during my cousin's bat mitzvah ceremony.  That is, approximately, how much respect my mother has for Judaism/my dad's family.

Anyway, we also went to a mosque, which was really interesting for a couple of reasons:

1. It was a Sunday.  There was no one there besides the imam.
2. Mosques are BEAUTIFUL.  Plush carpet, marble, indoor fountains... our church was built in 1867-ish.  The furniture probably dated back to that time.
3. The moms leading the field trip actually deferred to another religion and wore headscarves.  I think some of us were asked if we needed them too, but I sure as hell didn't and I don't think any of the other girls would have admitted to having their period yet.

So, we were in a library and the imam was talking about women in Islam and I started asking questions.  I feel kind of bad in retrospect, but I think I learned a lot and I appreciated the imam's patience with me.  That imam's patience and calm when dealing with my fiery pro-woman rhetoric cemented my impression of American Muslims as people who put up with a lot of shit.  I have nothing but respect for them, and I think years later, the experience and my behavior made it easier for me to deal with religious leaders that can maintain a reasonable dialogue for questions.  Wow, that wasn't actually funny.  FAIL.