Life’s been moving on. I finished training for pro-wrestling. I had my debut. I managed, did an in ring interview, took some serious bumps, and got forced into the royal rumble. I’ll put the video up when I get it. That pic is JP Black lifting me up for body slam. The wrestler I managed, Jihad, is lying on the ground. I am the blur in JP’s arms. (pic will be up as soon as I remember how to load pics, where did the little edit buttons go?)

Anyone who knows me knows I am the rukhsa queen.  It isn’t too hard to keep within the boundaries of Islamic Law if you know where to look for a ruling that works for you.  Seriously.  That is what the Law is there for, to make your life easy within the boundaries of the divine will.  I’m a Sunni, but I gladly take rukhsas from the Shia.  If you got a rukhsa, baby, I’m buying!

I got a little worried about the Islamic propriety of all this wrasslin’ stuff I’ve been up to.  I mean there’s a lot of touching going on.  Even though I wear two jog bras and a couple of t-shirts, the men do not wear cups as if not protecting their genitals is somehow more manly.  There is this one move called a "schoolboy."  It requires me to lie on the floor behind my partner and wind my hand through his legs so that the back of my hand is touching his upper thigh.  You know what I also have to wind by to get there, eh hem.  Why can’t these guys wear cups!? 

The photo is of Randy Orton.  Now my classmates do not look like this (after all Randy is a TV Wrasslin’ Star on Steroids) and they wear shorts instead of little trunks, but I think the photo nicely illustrates my dilemma.

So I contacted Ayatullah Arman, a wrestling fan and self-styled Marja` taqlid in Australia for a fatwa on the matter.  If he keeps up fatwas like this, I’m liable to go back to him with all my scandalous problems!

Last weekend I celebrated the Prophet’s mawlid at Wrestlemania in Detroit.   It was the most perfect Wrestlemania weekend in all eternity, it must have been for the Prophet’s sake.  I met my beloved Sabu.  I saw the Sheik inducted to the hall of fame.  We had 14th row ringside seats.  Now who but God could arrange that?  I walked around wide-eyed saying, alhamdolelah, over and over.  I put on hijab to meet Sabu at a photo-op event.  I thought it would be a good way to make introductions faster.  Hey, I am wearing a scarf, guess who I am?  When I walked up to him, he bowed slightly and said, "Assalamu alaykum."  He was dressed in a suit with his "I am an Arab-Muslim Heel" headdress on.  I returned his salams and asked to take a picture with him alone. He grabbed me and said in my ear, "Let’s take this somewhere private." I replied, "Let’s go. I’m a good Muslim girl, but not that good." He and I chatted some more, he gave me a hug and I was on my way.  Unfortunately, I did not find a slip of paper with his room number in my pocket. 

I haven't been posting because, well, I haven't been thinking in that "committed progressive theoretical up on my soap box" way lately.  I've been happy, sleeping, working, researching, doing other things like cleaning my apartment and organizing my dvds.  Then I thought this morning…wait a sec!  I am a progressive Muslim, then anything I am into is "progressive Islam" is it not?  Okay, I don't think that.  You caught me.  This is merely a ploy so that I might post some errata and call it progressive Islam cause I got naught else to write about:

Muslim Wrestling Fans! Please join the new yahoo discussion group: Muslim Gimmick Wrestling! We'll talk about wrestling, Islam, anything else we want, but just us Muslim Wrestling fans.

Just click on the name to join the yahoo group

I am in Love, Love, Love with Titanes en el Ring.  You can catch some of their luchas on-line.  I just got a copy of their first film.  It is the essence of Saturday Morning movies back in the day.  Purrrrrrfect.

CLICK READ MORE TO JUMP TO THE VIDEOS

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE CHALLENGE THAT LED TO THE GRUDGE MATCH OF THE CENTURY!

Read the challenge here/click here to see the video of the match

A PEACE OFFERING

By Michael Muhammad Knight

With CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper investigating his “legal recourses” in regard to my articles, I would like to propose an alternative means of settling our differences.

Last night I went out to my backyard where I had my dog chained to a tree, and I walked up to that dog and I kicked him square in the mouth—and that dog looked up at me and said, “LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, MIKE KNIGHT—YOU ARE THE BADDEST MAN IN PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING TODAY!”

“Damn right,” I told that dog—but then he just smiled.

Is it appropriate behavior for a Muslim woman, a feminist Muslim woman, to go to professional wrestling events and scream a lot? Scream things that maybe no one should ever scream, except for maybe at a professional wrestling event? This week I went with my buddies Kathleen, Hassan, and Mike to see Smackdown taping (showing tonight 6-23 on UPN) and a live taping for ECW on Sci-Fi. I love wrestling. It is a living comic book series of superheros and villians building stories by battling each other over years. Each match is an issue that hooks me for the next one. Better than a comic book, the audience gets to take part in it. Audience reactions to the wrestlers can push the way a wrestler's story will be told. The wrestlers are performers and have to work with us to hate or love their gimmick. They have to improvise when we do not cheer for the guys the company thought we would. The audience has turned gimmicks around in the past. The audience is also interacting with each other. We all have our favorites, our allegiances, our "issues" that come out in the posters and in the chants we yell for each other's benefit not just at the wrestlers.