Meeting a Muslim

A few month's ago, I got a new consultant who is Muslim. I wish there was a manual for this -- it's too easy to be rude or inconsiderate by accident, and some of the cultural differences are not immediately apparent. In order to avoid asking direct questions that might be inadvertently inappropriate, I'd toss a topic into the ring, hoping he would jump in and tell me something, and usually he would oblige. For example, I mentioned that due to the combination of backgrounds on the team, it is a challenge for us to eat together, since everyone has different dietary restrictions. Just as I hoped, 'M' responded, and told me that he should be considered a vegetarian if we planned any team lunches. He does eat meat at home, but won't indulge otherwise, since he cannot be assured that the meat is prepared according to Islamic law.

I mentioned this to my boss, who was surprised that I already knew this, after a week. That was only the tip of the iceberg of what I knew -- 'M' was living in a friend's apartment, sleeping on a futon, and having to schedule with 4 people to use the bathroom in the morning. Even that information pales besides the details about the bedbugs. He showed me his bites each day, although they didn't seem that apparent on his dark skin. But that information wasn't really applicable to the team lunch, so I didn't share it with my boss.

One day "M' asked my about the various people on the team, and their backgrounds. Unfortunately, the denomination he asked follow-up questions about was Anglican. This church wouldn't have been my first choice if I wanted to make Christianity sound appealing. After all, starting a new church because the king wanted to divorce his wife so he could marry his pregnant mistress, is hardly a historic milestone we would want to boast about. But I felt that it was an honest question I should try to answer, so I tried to briefly give the historic context and was surprised to find out that there was only one point that seemed notable to him.

"Do you meant to tell me that Christians don't practice polygamy?"
"No".
"Not at all? Not even if a man can afford to feed both wives?"
"No".
"Oh". (disbelieving).

Of course, the conversation was made even more interesting by the fact that I was trying to speak excessively quietly, considering the fact that just on the other side of the partition was Olga, and I couldn't face defending Christianity against Islam and Atheistic Judaism at the same time.

Life became even more complicated when 'M' asked if he could leave the office for an hour at 1pm every Friday, to go to prayers. I figured that it was a reasonable enough request, and there was no legitimate way for me to restrict what kind of prayers someone could do, so I told him to simply remind me 10 minutes before. Then I suggested that the easiest way to handle it was for him to block out the time on his electronic schedule, and simply list it as an out-of-office meeting. He seemed amazed that I would cooperate with him, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't comfortable about it, internally, but it seemed the best thing to do, although I'm still not sure.

Polygamy wasn't the only thing that we had instinctively different reactions to. He mentioned that 'a friend of a friend' had trouble flying since 9/11, because of the excess airport security. When I questioned for details, he did admit that it seemed to be due to the fellow's last name, which coincidentally (we hope) happened to be Ben Ladin. Personally, I could understand why a TSA employee might feel he should check up on that.

'M' has now moved on to another assignment. But I hope that during his time here, he learned that it's safe to talk to Christians, and that we're people too.