Days of Eid: The Origin Story
Earlier this week, Forbes featured Days of Eid in an article about Muslim identities an the Fourth of July. I spoke with Tasmiha Khan, a contributor to Forbes who writes about Muslim women, about the need to celebrate the Muslim identity in America. While the 4th celebrates the ostensible founding of this country, we still have a way to go to celebrate everyone who calls this place home. Through Days of Eid, I acknowledge the need for Muslims to be the first to show love for ourselves and our families to tackle the issue of representation from the inside out.
Days of Eid focuses on building a proud Muslim home with the hope of extending it out to everyone around us. We take every opportunity to celebrate our Muslimness and our place within the fabric of American culture.
When I was really young, my family had a a tradition I looked forward to every year during the holidays-not Eid, but Christmas! We'd pile into our car and drive around the neighborhood on Christmas Eve to admire the twinkling lights decorating people's houses and lawn ornaments boasting Christmas cheer. I never experiences this same type of holiday spirit or enthusiasm with Eid, even though I grew up in a largely Muslim neighborhood and went to an Islamic school all my life. The Eid festivities were always compared to a Christmas standard: the outdoor home adornments, the Christmas music playing out of every store and every television channel airing Christmas movies.
With the rest of the world questioning the place of Muslims in America, it was really easy to lose sight of the beauty of Eid, and have pride in being Muslim. Especially when the local public school never really acknowledged Eid or have only recently adopted the Eid holiday into the school calendar. I believe in the need to recognize the importance of Eid in our own homes first before we rely on the world around us to represent Muslim holidays.
As a mother, I feel responsible for helping my children build a positive understanding and connection to their Muslim identity.
As a mother, I feel responsible for helping my children build a positive understanding and connection to their Muslim identity. For me this starts with knowing how to celebrate who you are through Eid! It's so important to celebrate with family. As a woman in hijab, I see so much out there defining who a Muslim woman is or has to be, whether from a traditional cultural perspective or from mass media. I struggled to find myself and define who I was because I didn't see myself represented. I worried about passing this identity struggle onto my kids and I didn't (and still don't) want them to struggle with being proud of who they are as young Muslims. After I had children, I really had to think about what tools I had in my tool kit to help build the Muslim home for my family.
So here I am with this desire to raise unapologetically proud Muslim children, and with a vision for how my home will look, but with very limited Islamic decor options. Since I couldn't find the products I wanted to have inside my home, I decided to make them. My husband and I joined together to form Days of Eid. Our expanding team put in a lot of energy and time to build a sample model of celebrating American cultural holidays with a Muslim flavor. This means creating products to remind us of our heritage and providing step-by-step tutorials on how to style our products. Our mission is to bring Muslim-facing home decor into your life and to celebrate our Muslimness in America, from Islamic holidays like Eid to calendar ones.