Tumbled Thoughts On American Muslim Life

Hope

أمة محمد صلى الله تعالى عليه وسلم أمة الرجاء

The Ummah of Muhammad, may God the Exaulted send prayers and blessings on him, is the Ummah of hope. It is for this reason I am an optimist: Not out of some individual code of ethics but because the Best of Creation was hopeful and inspired so many with hope.

Was Jesus A Muslim?

“Islam isn’t a religion – it is a way of life.” I have heard both Muslims and non-Muslims express this sentiment. For believers this statement is meant to demonstrate how comprehensive God’s message is, covering not only the so-called spiritual aspects of life but also the seemingly secular components too. For polemicist denying Islam the status of being a religion serves to contribute to their agenda of challenging Muslim rights in western society. How should Islam be understood? And for that matter, what exactly is religion and how should we define it? Should we consider Islam a religion? Robert F. Shedinger, Professor of Religion at Luther College, addresses these questions in Was Jesus a Muslim?: Questioning Categories in the Study of Religion (Fortress Press, 2009).

Read the full post here.

Embracing Chris Hedges [?]

I have found the Muslim communities’ embracing of Chris Hedges to be a curious one. Not that I don’t find points of commonality with some of his writings, but I do find it curious, with his stances on theology (he dismisses the existence of angels) and the nature of religion, to be troublesome if not out of step with Islam itself:

“Religion is our finite, flawed and imperfect expression of the infinite.” - From I Don’t Believe In Atheists.

What I find so questionable about Hedges is that while he claims to be a proponent of religion, he seems to reduce religion to a purely human product. This, ironically, is not dissimilar from the atheists standpoint themselves. So, and correct me if I am wrong, it would seem that Hedges disagrees with like likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, not the essence of the arguments, but in form or style.

A very much needed explanation between the relationship between ‘Liberal’ Democracy and Islam by Dr. Sherman Abdul-Hakim Jackson. Available for a limited time only, you can get a copy of Dr Sherman Jackson’s powerful discourse: “White Supremacy: The Begininng of Modern Shirk?” from Lamppost Productions.

The only native Japanese Imam in Tokyo. 1 in 13 million.  

Saudi Airline’s are gonna need a bigger plane! It was tight for me at 6’5”!!

"We slipped through beneath the trees and, with just a few pulls on the oars, entered a harbour surrounded by strangely silent houses. Two men were squatting on the quay playing dice. Otherwise there was not a soul about. We entered the little mosque by the gate. In an alcove in half-light within sat a young man studying the Koran. His lids were half closed, his lips were murmuring softly. His body was rocking to and fro. In the middle of the hall a husbandman was saying his afternoon prayers. Again and again he touched his forehead to the floor and remained bowed down for what seemed to me an eternity. The soles of his feet gleamed in the straggling light that entered through the doorway. At length he stood up, first casting a dererential glance to right and left, over his shoulders - to greet his guardian angels, who stand behind him, said Cosmo."

— W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants.

Maher Wants Muslims To Go Away →

Maher is so emotionally, morally, and even existentially bankrupt, he’s had to resort to the only method he knows to stay in the lime light: bigotry.

In truth, who cares what Maher says. He doesn’t like the name “Muhammad”? Next. Is that going to change it from being the most popular baby name? No. Does he want Muslims to get out of the Western world? Not gonna happen any more than the Western world’s gonna get outta Muslims. He can rant and cry but in the end, Islam is here to stay, Muslims are here to stay and he’ll soon fade from the TV screen, a tired, old drunk, wallowing away his last days as a bitter, cynical atheist.

Hat tip to Yursil for the video.

Paying the Price For Our Lack of Vision

One of the most memorable lines from the Star Wars franchise was Emperor Palpatine’s cruel admonishment of Luke when he cackled, “you shall pay the price for your lack of vision”.  This chastisement was swiftly followed by searing bolts of blue lightening. If it weren’t for the timely intervention of Luke’s at-one-time sinister father, Darth Vader, Luke may have met a very unfortunate fate.  In what has also become now a cruel twist of fate, American Muslims are now paying their own price for lack of vision, as the United States now increasingly turns on Muslims, demonizing and terrorizing them, not unlike this recent incident in New York, where a mosque was attacked by a small pack of marauding teens. Similarly to Luke’s blunder, American Muslims simply did not adequately prepare, in this case, for life in America. Where is our Darth Vader in our time of despair?

Sadly, Islam in American, in its heretical inception—referred to as the First Resurrection via The Nation of Islam—did a far better job of indigenizing Islam.  The Second Resurrection [Islam 2.0?], consisted of both immigrant Muslims and new orthodox converts, who were initially unconcerned with the dominant culture’s views of Islam, and thus chose to either live anonymous lives in their new found homes—vis-a-vie through the door of whiteness—or in the case of Blackamerican Muslims, chose to live new lives that had little to do with the existential realities as colored folks living in a post-Jim Crow America. Both groups lived in a fantasy; a bubble.  Of particular interest to immigrant Muslims, whiteness has been the gateway that many if not most immigrants have successfully integrated into the American social landscape.  This created a dichotomy in American Islam in which immigrant Muslims increasingly turned a blind eye to the underside of assimilation: whiteness, and all of the unearned privilidges it entails. Blackamerican Muslims, having no such option, opted to simply limp along, paroting their immigrant counterparts without the Players Club incentives. Much to the dismay of [immigrant] Muslims, the 9/11 attacks did away with any hopes of Muslims being considered white/American, and thus we arrive back at our “price” for “lack of vision”. In another twist of ironic fate, blackness and its legacy of civil rights engagement [i.e., its holy protest against white domination and supremacy] seems to be the last bastion of hope for both communities. It is the only social modality that is seen and recognized as viably America: out of immigrant and indigenous Muslims, it’s the only one that’s socially acceptable, if not preferred. Perhaps if immigrant Muslims had not uncritically flocked to the banner of whiteness [I can hear Admiral Akbar shouting now, “it’s a trap” - or “it’s a twap”, however you prefer your phonetics] and Blackamerican Muslims had not been so quick to abondon blackness, we might very well be in a completely different situation today.

The Nation of Islam, and subsequently its splinter group, led by the courageous Warith Deen Muhammad, charted a vision of Islam [by Islam here, I mean as it was socially expressed by the NOI, and not by the normal rigors of classical Muslim theology] that sought to place the cares, concerns, and proclivities of [Black] American Muslims at the heart of its agenda.  And while the WD movement has also fallen on hard times, it still alludes to the crux of the current social predicament.

In many ways, Muslims in America were afforded a tremendous blessing post-9/11. Public sentiment towards Muslims was somewhat tarnished but by and large, the cloud of negative perceptions of Islam were held at bay, only occasionally making their way in to the public arena.  In fact, there was a notable calling amongst non-Muslims that the 9/11 attacks were perpetuated by a few terribly misguided souls and that Muslims and Islam were not to blame.  American Muslims, instead of capitalizing on this opportunity to push forward efforts to indigenize [not assimilate] themselves to their social, cultural and political landscapes, simply rested on their laurels.  Both sides of the indigenous/immigrant isle have been equally to blame.  Native-born Muslims still continued to favor a brand of Islam that was more about cultural acting than getting down to brass tax and most immigrant Muslims were so devastated at the quandary of being abandoned on the doorstep of whiteness that most of the efforts out of that community have been mostly assimilationist at best, if not simply down-right floundering.  So again, where is our Darth Vader in our time of need?

Simply put, it is my belief that if Muslims do not solve this issue [if it is already not too late], then Islam will suffer a fate worse than persecution: irrelevancy.  And by issue, I mean to address what is at the heart of mainstream America’s growing resentment towards Islam. I believe this to be mainly aesthetic: people simply do not like the way Islam looks and feels as a result of not knowing what Islam’s story is, or more precisely, what the American Muslims’ story is. And American Muslims have failed in telling their own story because they have yet to craft one. Narrative is crucial to survival in America; if you don’t have one, you don’t belong. Perhaps it’s not too late to stop, reflect, and take stock of our condition, our situation.  Let us look at examples from our common cultural past that have succeeded: the Nation of Islam as well as the American Jewish community, who have critically understood the necessity of story and narrative as a primary means of not only survival but also of flourishing. To delay any longer would be akin to another favorite Star Wars quote: “almost there … almost there …” – and we all know what happened next after that.

• For further reading, also see: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coalition-of-african-american-muslims-caam-responds-to-controversy-surrounding-park-51-project-101911568.html - hat tip to Tariq.
• Cross-posted at Muslim Matters and the Manrilla Blog.
• African-American Muslims: Left Out of the National Conversation on Islam, an Illume Magazine piece.