Maryam Jameelah

Biography

Jameelah was born Margret Marcus in New Rochelle, New York, to parents of German Jewish descent, and spent her early years in Westchester. As a child, Marcus was psychologically and socially ill at ease with her surroundings, and her mother described her as bright, exceptionally bright, but also "very nervous, sensitive, high-strung, and demanding". Even while in school she was attracted to Asian and particularly Arab culture and history, and counter to the support for Israel among people around her, she generally sympathised with the plight of Arabs and Palestinians. Another source describes her interests as zigzagging from Holocaust photographs, to "Palestinian suffering, then a Zionist youth group and, ultimately, fundamentalist Islam."

She entered the University of Rochester after high-school, but had to withdraw before classes began because of psychiatric problems. In Spring, 1953, she entered New York University. There she explored Reform Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, Ethical Culture and the Bahá'í Faith, but found them unsatisfactory, especially in their support for Zionism. In the summer of 1953, she suffered another nervous breakdown and fell into despair and exhaustion. It was during this period that she returned to her study of Islam and read the Quran. She was also inspired by Muhammad Asad's The Road to Mecca, which recounted his journey and eventual conversion from Judaism to Islam. At NYU she took a course on Judaism's influence on Islam which was taught by Rabbi and scholar Abraham Katsch, which ironically strengthened her attraction to Islam. However Marcus's health grew worse and she dropped out of the university in 1956 before graduation; from 1957 to 59 she was hospitalized for schizophrenia.

Returning home to White Plains in 1959, Marcus involved herself with various Islamic organizations, and began corresponding with Muslim leaders outside America, particularly Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamic Society) in Pakistan. Finally, on May 24, 1961, she converted to Islam and adopted the name Maryam Jameelah. After accepting Mawlana Maududi's invitation she emigrated to Pakistan in 1962, where she initially resided with him and his family. In 1963, she married Muhammad Yusuf Khan, a member of Jamaat-e-Islami, becoming his second wife. She had five children: two boys and three girls (the first of whom died in infancy). Jameelah regards these years (1962–64) to be the formative period of her life during which she matured and began her life's work as a Muslim defender of conservative Islam.

Writings

Jameelah started writing her first novel, Ahmad Khalil: The Story of a Palestinian Refugee and His Family at the age of twelve; she illustrated her book with pencil sketches and color drawings. She also studied drawing in Fall 1952 at Art Students League of New York, and exhibited her work at Bahai Center's Caravan of East and West art gallery. On her emigration to Pakistan she was told that art was un-Islamic by Maududi, and abandoned it in favor of writing. Her writings are supplemented by a number of audio and video tapes.

Jameelah was a prolific author, offering a conservative defense of traditional Islamic values and culture. She was deeply critical of secularism, materialism and modernization, both in Western society, as well as in Islam. She regarded traditions such as veiling, polygamy, and gender segregation (purdah) to be ordained by the Quran and by the words of Prophet Muhammad, and considered movements to change these customs to be a betrayal of Islamic teachings. Jameelah's books and articles have been translated into several languages including Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Bengali and Bahasa Indonesia. Her correspondence, manuscripts, bibliographies, chronologies, speeches, questionnaires, published articles, photographs, videocassettes, and artwork are included in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library collection of the New York Public Library. Jameelah's life is the subject of a book by the biographer Deborah Baker.