The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture.

I was on the phone with a friend of mine. He had called me about some problems he was having with his marriage. His a foreigner and his wife is American. They’re both Muslim. As of late, it seems that some things in the marriage have fallen apart and by his words, he described his wife as “going back to her roots”, meaning she no longer considered herself Muslim. This is a very familiar tune.

Life is not easy as a Muslim in American society as it stands now. Be you American born, convert or no, or foreigner. There are many things about American society that may seem to clash with Islam - I believe this has been culturally taught on both sides. For non-Muslims here in America, Islam seems foreign, maybe even barbaric. Women’s rights are abused. No tolerance for non-Muslims and so forth. I’m not here to really make an argument against those points per se but I’ll deal with it shortly. On the other hand are Muslims, either foreigners who have little to no understanding (and therefore appreciation) of American culture, or Americans who have learned the religion through the aforementioned foreign perspective. From that perspective, American culture can appaer to be crass, rude, obscene and sometimes outright blasphemous. So, as we can see, it’s easy for misunderstanding to come into play. But so far, this is just the Us & Them scenario. What happens when we’re talking about inter-Muslim play. Ah, my friend. The plot thickens.

As I tried to explain to my anguished friend, the main problem that stems from this case and thousands of other cases similar to it is that American Muslims, meaning those who are either born here of foreign ancestry traced back to the “Muslim World” or converts (like yours truly), have yet to take ownership of the religion. We have yet to be able to see ourselves, wholly and culturally as Muslim (and perhaps just as importantly in her case, American and Muslim). Now, this may be to a lesser extent for Blackamericans, as Islam is far more culturally accepted than, say, for white Americans, as is the case with my friends wife. When she became Muslim, she didn’t just put a rag on her head. She committed cultural apostacy. She, in a sense, left her whiteness in exchange for God knows what (pun may or may not be intended). She feels alienated. Alone. Confused. She sees little to no benefit in her shahadah (good topic for another time) and nothing but strife with her and her relation to her family and her world at large. This is nothing new. And more and more cases like this will continue to happen until American Muslims take ownership of the religion. To make it American.

Now that we’ve read the syllabus for Psychology of American Islam 101, we can now have a dialog on the subject. What’s to be done? Just how do we take ownership of the religion when there’s been a virtual strangle hold on the authority of the religion by foreign minds? These are the questions of the day. They must be fielded and answered, I believe, one man or woman at a time. Feel free to leave your thoughts.