Finding your truth

10.26.2026 SIA MENSAH NEW EDIT V1 AUDIO ONLY: Hello friends, today we're speaking about finding one's courage. This is a conversation with Carl. But before we get started, I want to remind you to hit the subscribe button for immediate access to all the latest content so you don't miss these conversations that challenge the way we think. Friends, my next guest has had quite a journey, and my guess it is only the beginning. She grew up in a devout Muslim household in Brooklyn, New York. As a youth, she was Deeply immersed in Islamic practice, culture, and community. As a teenager, she secretly began questioning her religion. Let's welcome Sayamansa to the conversation. Thank you for having me, Carl. I look forward to our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today. Choosing to leave the faith you were raised with, which was a significant part of defining your family, must have been a very emotionally difficult process for you. How did your family initially react when you informed them of this decision? So I I left the faith when I was fifteen, but I didn't tell anyone until almost three years later, right before I turned 18. And they didn't react they didn't react very well to it. They certainly wish that I had, you know, stayed Muslim. But at that point it just it just wasn't working for me anymore. And I just had to, you know, live my truth and tell them, tell my parents what was true for me. It took them a few years to like really understand that I really wasn't coming back and it was not just the fluke, but eventually I think they kind of realized that that truly was my decision. How did you decide to go down this path? Yeah. So I was born as a Muslim to parents that converted to Islam before I was born. So they're converts, but I but I wasn't. And I grew up in an African American Muslim community in Brooklyn, New York, like you said. And when I was a girl, I really did enjoy being Muslim. I was also homeschooled until ninth grade. I wasn't homeschooled in second grade. That's a whatever. I had spent one year in public school and then I was homeschooled and then I went to public high school. It was right before tenth grade. There were always some things about Islam that I didn't quite agree with, even though those were things that I kind of put in the back burner. I said, you know what? I'm reading the singer Quran, which to me seems really dismissive of women in particular, but it's it probably only seems that way because my human brain cannot comprehend God's magnitude, right? And so I just need to pray about it. There are other things about Islam that I really, really enjoy. And so all I have to do is focus on what I enjoy. And what doesn't make sense to me, I will again pray on it. Because I I deeply believe, like most devout Muslims believe, that the Quran was the literal words. They were the literal words of God. What happened was I got to high school and I was exposed to different ideas than the ideas that I had that I was exposed to as a homeschooled Muslim girl in Brooklyn. And also I remember thinking to myself that I wanted to dress the way I I I wanted to dress the way other girls were dressing that were in my high school. But I said to myself, Well, you know what? God says I can't do it. Yes, I wanna wear, you know, I don't know, the jeans and the the mini skirts and the this and the that, but I have to be more modest. because this is what God wants me to do. And so basically, long story short, I ended up coming across a book that was ironically on my father's, it was on his bookshelf. I don't know why he had it, but it was called 360 Questions to Ask a Sunni Muslim. And it was written by this man who was very critical of Islam. And the the stranger story is that this man was literally a cult leader. So, and his name was Malachi York, cult leader. But The point that he raised was it was significant enough that it got me to thinking that maybe God didn't direct directly say these words. he basically said, unlike everything that I had been taught, which is the Quran was revealed from Maha from Allah to to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, it was direct transmission. No not a single word from the Arabic, the Arabic, I guess, revelation had changed exactly from beginning to end to now. I had learned in by reading this book that apparently in some Islamic hadiths and some sources it said that there were it said that Muhammad actually like the the whole Quran wasn't written down when he was alive. after he passed after he died, several of his companions came together and they were they basically underwent this task of compiling the verses they had memorized into like one single tone. And There was an implication there that occasionally there might be some changes. And when I saw that, I was like, Wait, if this is true. Well that yes, if what is true that can happen. Right. Both can't be true. And so that kind of set me off on my path. And I said, you know what? If verses don't make sense to me, I no longer have to say to myself, let me pray on it and like still do the th the right thing. I can say to myself, you know what? I don't agree with that verse. And I'm going to go within and say, okay, what's my inner morality saying? What's my inner sense of right and wrong saying? Let me go with that. And the other verses, if they continue to make sense to me, I will follow those. And so that's the long story, the short long story. As you're questioning it, why wouldn't you just say, I'm going to take this r religion and take parts of it that I really like and that I can focus on? Because I think all religions have parts and problems with it. that if we were gonna look at it, we're gonna be like, well, we don't like that and we don't like this, but you know, and I don't think you can judge a person by I would say a religion by a person because everyone practices differently. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say for me, it was it was really the verses that I consider to be pretty misogynistic that were in the Quran. And again, those were the ones that they always stood out to me even as a girl and I really wrestled with them and they really brought me the wrong way. One verse is one that I had studied from an Arabic perspective when I was in Arabic classes as a preteen. I was actually taking Arabic classes with an African American a fellow African American Muslim man who studied Arabic in Saudi Arabia and he was really fluent and I was picking up the language pretty fast. I haven't studied in many years and in and in no way am I fluent right now. I could like look at some letters that could probably sound outwards, but I can't really speak it on my own. I've I memorized verses of the Quran that I could still recite from memory as well. But beyond that, I I'm not a fluent speaker. But at the time when I was studying, because I was picking it up so quickly and because I hadn't yet reached puberty, my Arabic teacher allowed me to take classes with the men and the women, because he was often classes for adults, but my mom decided to just enroll me first in the women's class classes. And so anyway, I I was getting a double dose of Arabic lessons because I hadn't reached puberty. I just remember one time During the women's classes, we were dissecting a verse and it's basically it's it's what I now refer to as the wife beating verse. and I happen to have memorized the chapter and the verse number now because I constantly refer to it now when I a when I answer people when they ask me like what really stood out to you as something that was negative. In the the surah, the the chapter is four, which me s surah tundisa, the women, and the ayat or the verse is thirty-four. So four, thirty-four. And basically it's a prescription of what husbands are s are supposed to do if they fear disobedience from their wives. So first of all, that rubbed me the wrong way. Like why are women being punished in the first place for disobedi for disobeying their husbands? Like isn't shouldn't a partnership be equal? Like one party shouldn't be obeying the other, right? If that's, you know, whatever. That's number one. Number two, the punishments said if you fear dis if you fear disobedience from your wives first admonish them. And then I think the next one is forsake them in bed. And then the third one is if you s if you still fear it, then strike them. There might be a fourth one embedded in there, but I don't think so. Those are the three that I remember. And I and the other thing that I remember is we were like in this intense discussion trying to break down this Arabic word Doraba, which has several meanings, but the most common meaning, especially in the context in this verse, is to is to hit, to strike to be. So it can mean to beat, to hit, to strike, but also it can mean to give an example too. And so I remember we were going back and forth about what does Allah really mean? Does he really mean to literally beat your wife if if you think she might disobey you? Or, you know, does it mean you're giving her an example? Now, first of all, like that doesn't make sense if if it's a series of punishments that gets increasingly more severe. That doesn't make sense, right? It sounds like you're kinda going back to the first one, which is admonish her, right? If you're giving her an example in my opinion. And then but then second of all, my understanding is there there are hadiths which go on to explain exactly what is meant by the Quran, right? So Muslims most Muslim believe that the Qur'an is are the literal words of God and then the hadith, you know, some are authentic and some are not. But those are the the sayings and the the the ways of Prophet Muhammad basically. And so But even though not every Muslim believes that the had that all hadiths are authentic, the fact that you have a word that traditionally does mean to beep or or to hit, you have a hadith corroboration and then it's a series of increasing punishments. The it makes sense that that's what it means. So like that went, you know, that was something that I had to swallow when I was a girl and be like, okay, God, I don't understand what God means, but let me just swallow it. When I reached the when I realized that, probably Allah didn't actually say these literal words, I felt free to just say, I don't have to since I don't believe that God said these words, I can step away and I can explore the wider world of religion. And then I started to question other things that felt seemed really misogynistic to me. There are other examples of verses, but I'll I'll stop. And then how did your parents react when you told them? Yeah. Not very well. so there are actually a couple of things that that happened the night before I told them. I was literally turning eighteen this the day after. and we had actually we got into an altercation because I was actually hiding two secrets from my parents at the time. So I discovered in high school, like, you know, again, homeschool girl, kind of sheltered, but not really because I grew up in New York City. So like I was in a bubble. But the bubble was in a large metropolis, right? So it's a it was a weird shelter. It's very big city. It's a bubble in a it's a bubble in a bubble. Exact yeah, sorta, sorta. So anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is yes, I was sheltered, but I was still also exposed to other things despite I guess I guess in a moderated in a in a in a in a very particular way. my parents controlled the level of exposure to the outside world, but it wasn't necessarily one hundred percent. Right. So anyway, that bubble became even more permeable like when I went to high school. And I was exposed to different ideas. But also I ended up, you know, the the second secret that I had was I discovered that I sometimes could be attracted to girls. And so like I you know, this happened around sixteen, seventeen. I had a friend who, you know, she was an out lesbian, had a girlfriend, and we just got really close as friends. But she told me her story and she told me about having these feelings and knowing that she was a lesbian from a really young age, but also coming from a really Christian background and having her mom really reject her and how sad she was. And meeting her and hearing her story, like I there was a discrepancy between what my parents told me about homosexuality, which is it's unnatural, like there's something wrong with those people. And then meeting this person who I didn't foresee anything wrong with her. I thought she was really kind and it was clear that she was struggling with not feeling accepted by her parents. I kind of like like that broke apart my ideas that like there's something wrong with homosexuality. But then I guess it also broke apart whatever might have been hidden within me, a potential to sometimes be attracted to girls as well as boys. And so I like I discovered at some point that I was experiencing similar feelings towards her. That I had remembered that I was used to feeling towards boys. I was always liking some random boy throughout my entire life, basically, and certainly in high school. and so I kind of grappled with those feelings for a while, ended up telling my kind of my main friendship group, who was different from like that friend. And within my main friendship group, there happened to be a closeted lesbian who was struggling. She had a boyfriend at the time, but she was struggling with her sexuality. And she was like super interested. She was like What do you mean you like this girl? She was like, I could never like a girl. But then a few weeks later, she came to me and said, Actually, I think I'm a lesbian. We ended up going to Barnes and Noble, on our own to go to the LGBT, if you will, section and just reading and trying to figure out who we were. And long story short, we ended up in a relationship that summer. So that was like the summer before I went off to college. And so I was hiding that I'm in this relationship with this girl who I'd been friends with for quite a while, but I was also hiding that I wasn't Muslim. My parents suspected that I was in a relationship with the girl and they confronted me the day before I turned eighteen and it it wasn't good. I I couldn't like tell them outright that I was in a relationship with the girl. Like my parents were asking me directly, Are you a lesbian? Are you bisexual? I'm like, No, no, no. But they kept like pressuring me. And then finally at some point I said, you know what? No, I'm not those things. I because I can't tell you the truth. however, like I'm not Muslim. So it's I said I I'm not Muslim. And so yeah, they didn't react well. The next day, although I was 18, like my dad woke me up for Fajr prayer, which is like the dawn prayer, and made me pray. And I I felt really like offended that like I had to do that despite, you know, being honest with him. And then like I guess like the next layer of that was when I did go up to college. my my parents, they drove me. I went to Hampton University, which is in Virginia, a historically black school. And I was still at that time I still had to wear my head covering, even though again I was eighteen by that point. But like the minute that I got to my dorm, my parents were still there. I literally like ripped off my headscarf and it was like I didn't say I was done, but it was like my my declaration of independence. And you know, to my parents' credit, they didn't, you know, they didn't scream or anything. I think they were like, Okay, she's At this point, what can we do? And also they didn't make me wear it again when I would go home on breaks. So yeah. And then after leaving Islam and you joined the LGBTQ and progressive activist groups, what impact did these groups have on you? Okay, I went to Hampton University, which was a pretty conservative, historically black school, and there were no official organizations for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender identified. And I I say transgender identified for a reason. but whatever. We can get to that later if desired. But there were no affinity groups for this population of students when I went. And so again, I'm newly out as a bisexual. I'm in this relationship with this woman. It's my first relationship ever. And you know, she didn't come with me to Hampton. She stayed in New York and she went to school there. But we were still we maintained a long distance relationship throughout my freshman year. I'm looking around for support and looking around for groups and there were none. However, during my freshman year, I think maybe a couple of months into my freshman year, I read an article in our school newspaper, The Hampton Script, Hampton Script, about a senior lesbian who had been trying to get Hampton University to s to recognize a geished alliance as she had been organizing kind of, I guess, in secret. For several years and in secret, because again, Hampton wouldn't officially recognize it. She didn't want to be secretive about it, but she had to. So they would just meet underground. And so I, you know, I saw this article. I said, okay, someone is trying to do something. Let me like, who's this person? Who wrote the article? I tracked down the person who wrote the article and she happened to live in my dorm. we became friends and then she put me in touch with the person that was profiled. I I set up a meeting with that person and she said, Listen, I'm a senior. I feel like I've been fighting this administration. I'm over it. I don't have energy. You do it. If you're interested in it, you do it. And so I was like, I didn't necessarily sign up to take this on, but okay, I guess I'll do it. So I ended up Facebook had also just become a thing, become a thing at that point. And so I I went on Facebook and and at that time it was only for college students. I went on Facebook and I was like, Okay, Gay Shit Alliance at Hampton and let's try to form let's try to form a group. And so I ended up basically taking on the major leadership roles within Hampton University's, I guess, geysered alliance at the time. And so I guess the impact that it had on me was I it was another it was another opportunity for me to exercise exercise my convictions, right? Even with an environment that was constrictive and that didn't necessarily want me to. And so Hampton did not end up recognizing the Gayshard Alliance while I was there, even though I I did fight them on it. I think as my last hurrah, I went on a little media tour, even though I knew that my parents wouldn't be pleased to see me in the newspapers and they certainly weren't. But I went on the media tour to try to get Hampton to recognize the organization. Didn't work. And as I graduated in 2008 and I learned that the first time that Hampton actually did officially recognize an LGBT. organization was in twenty sixteen, so eight years after I graduated. So yeah. And then so now you're in these progressive activist groups. Yeah. What was the exact moment of realization that made you start questioning j gender ideology? Because we s I you touched on it before, but I know this is another issue. Yeah, this is another issue for me. And that's a that's a really, really good question. The exact moment, I would say that I was pretty open minded, towards the idea of gender ideology and certainly gender expansiveness, if you will, you know, throughout the time that I was kind of campaigning and and advocating on behalf of the community. I remain very open and accepting of gender expansiveness and by that I mean, you know, you're you Maybe you're male, maybe you're female, and you you engage in behaviors, you have a personality, you have a way of living in the world that is typical of the other sex. You know, have mannerisms, whatever that people associate with the other sex and that we typically see in the other sex. And so people might say you're feminine even though you're male. They may say you're masculine even though you're female. I think that that sort of diversity is natural and exists in nature. And so I at at one point I thought that Being being accepting of natural d gender diversity was the exact same thing and agreeing with gender identity ideology, which is basically from where I stand now, it's like codifying the idea of gender identity that because you're like more masculine and more feminine, like you know, inside that means you're like that's literally your identity and and you know, you should you therefore are basically the same as the other sex rather than maybe you have mannerisms that are more typical of the other sex. So I think again, I when I when it was first introduced to me, like I sort of agreed that those were the same. But over time I started like I think I always realized there were some cracks in the idi ideology, but but I wasn't like I wasn't I wasn't fully aware of like I wasn't fully aware of how deep the cracks were and how much it didn't actually make sense from my perspective, from the perspective I hold now. And I would say that that reminds me of being a Muslim girl and always sensing that there were some things in the Quran. That that's my next question, which I was gonna ask. Yeah, yeah. You've compared modern gender activism to religious fundamentalism. What is the biggest similarity you see between the two? I'd say one of the biggest similarities that I see between the two is the coercive nature. Of of the coercive and demanding nature of saying that if you don't believe exactly the way I say that you're not one of us and you need to be excommunicated. I'd say like that's a big one. And I know you asked for one, but I would say like the other one is is particularly I believe that it's not just religious in nature, but it's it's a patriarchal religion. And I I feel like I left a really controlling patriarchal religion. I think it's patriarchal because although there's room for, you know, women, by women I literally just mean adult human female. I don't I don't I'm not assigning a gender identity to that. I even though there's room for women to, you know, say that they to identify as trans men, as well as there there have there being room for men to identify as trans women, I think that really who's benefiting and who who who benefits from this is men. And I think that women are really taken from like women's rights are really deeply impacted by the codification of gender identity in ways that it's not really the same for men. And so and not to say that there are no negatives, I think there's negatives for both sexes and and also negatives for children. So and if we haven't ruffled enough feathers, you consider yourself you're you call yourself an ardent Zionist. Let's unpack that now. Okay. I know, I know. It's it it's yeah, I have all of these identities and whatever. I I still try to live my life in the way that, you know, I I try to get my points across in a way where people understand that I'm not attacking I'm not attacking human beings or saying human beings deserve this or that. I'm saying this is what I believe and let's have a conversation about it from a human to human perspective. So I I started identifying as a Zionist actually after October seventh, twenty twenty three. And that was an act of solidarity for me because I was really, really deeply disturbed, depressed, saddened, saddened by just the out outpouring of anti-Semitism, Jew hatred, just like an unwillingness to humanize and empathize with Israel and Israelis after they were brute like after Israel was horrifically attacked with and after they're still being like Hostages being held for for years, hostages that we learned were being starved, just like people that were murdered in the the most heinous of ways. Like those things happened, and then also seeing like Jew hatred increase, but then also seeing people sort of trying to hide their Jew hatred behind this idea that they're attacking Zionists, not Jews, when all of those things just made me go, this is ridiculous. But then also I I started to follow some people that considered themselves Zionists. I didn't I didn't really before October 7th know too much about Zionism. And there's still things that I I do want to learn and will learn. But I started to follow people like I I think Einet Vilf is her name. she wrote a book called We Should All Be Zionist, which I purchased on Amazon after I kind of saw her Twitter feed. And she made some really strong arguments about how you know how this is summarizing what from what I remember, like this is the this is basically the liberation movement, right, of the Jewish people. It has nothing to do with supremacy. It's not like it's not about hurting people, it's about recognizing the right of Isra of Israel and Israelis and Jews to like have a piece, a portion of the land where they're from, right? to just to be able to exist there in peace, in sovereignty and again to also to be able to exist there without being attacked. You know, and if they are attacked to be able to defend themselves. And so I'm like, I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm a Zionist and also I'm not gonna let people I'm not gonna let people just like divide Jews in Zionists and non Zionists and say the Zionists are bad and the non Zionists are good and like on my watch, if you will. Not to say that I'm like I I can force people to change that I'm doing very much, but I just felt like it it's a small act of solidarity to say if you're gonna label those people Zionists and you're gonna say that that's how you're going to push them out of society, guess what? I'm one too. You know what I mean? that was part of the reason. Do you consider yourself a religious spiritual person today, or have you stepped away from faith entirely? I haven't stepped away entirely. I I think I'm pretty I'm actually very spiritual despite leaning agnostic and and not really having the God question settled at this point. I don't think you need to have that s question settled. You can always question that. Yeah. And keep questioning that. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I I think I feel really similarly. you don't have to have it settled. I I still at the same time I I feel very spiritually inclined. I'm also really drawn to people that have like deep belief, deep faith. Because there's something really beautiful about just watching people's art in your journey and kind of seeing how their lives change or their lives change because they surrender to something beyond them. And I think that's where I I think that's where I can associate with religion the most, people surrendering to something beyond them. I think that's really beautiful. So even if I can't necessarily call it one thing or say it's definitely God or it's goddess or whatever. Although there's a there's a feminist part of me that does say goddess a lot because I I wanna push back on what I feel is the patriarchal conditioning I got from Islam. But even though I say that, again, like the question of is there a literal personal God out there, like that's hard for me. But the idea of stepping back and saying if there's not just me, there's not just my family, there's not just my tribe, there's something beyond that's ineffable. something is really beautiful about it and I feel really inspired by it. And so I do I actually do comparative religious studies. actually I think I saw recently that you interviewed Justin Sledge, I think is his Yes, I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. he's someone I I I found his YouTube channel Esoterico and I really I like his perspective on like you know, Western esotericism in particular. So like I I I have like a nerdy kind of interest in that realm as well. Yeah. but I think it's all It's all because I I'm interested in again, what makes you on a journey surrender. I'm on a journey. You're on a journey. And then looking back at your journey through religion, progressive politics, activism, where do you feel most at home? my goodness. You know, I feel like I'm on a journey when it comes to that question as well. I don't know that I f settle in a a place that where I can call home just yet. I think I think that home for me though would be a place where I can exist. I can have all of these complex identities and it just be okay. Right. I can be on my journey. I can question. I can I can sometimes have really strong convictions and I feel okay. So I guess right now that's like it's an internal place that I'm building because it I don't know that I feel that anywhere outside of me. Like it kind of feels hard to feel at home anyway, anywhere. I have all of these these t these places that feel like they're tents. And so I think that's part of my path right now, building that place first internally and then hopefully I can I can go outward and find home. And as we wrap up, is there anything I should have asked you, any parting thoughts you want to share with us? I yeah, I guess that my only parting thoughts are, you know, I think I touched on it earlier, but just I think it's so important for that like no matter How polarizing things are, no matter where you stand on this topic or that. I really think the most important thing that any of us can adopt is just an attitude of recognizing that's a human being on the other side of this argument. That's a human being on the other side of this divide. So, even if I have strong convictions, even if someone else has strong convictions and they're they're opposed, like I think, and I think that's actually part of the spirituality. that I think would be good if all of us kinda have some some measure of it. Let's step back. What's beyond us and what's beyond us is that like we are we're all on this path. We're all on a journey trying to find our way in a world that has several questions that are that will always be unanswered on some level. Yeah. Yeah. Siamenta, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you out there for listening. Let me know what you think. Put your thoughts in the comment section. And as always, until next time everyone Be safe.