As far as discounting your insight into the Black American Muslim experience, it depends on your upbringing and background. I know African Muslim who do have similar experiences as Black Americans, but they do come with a cultural edge that many of us Black Americans don’t have. Many of the Africans who make it to America are the children of elites, although there are some who came as refugees and were sponsored. Some lost everything when they came to America. Some become very Americanized and share similar struggles. Some of the statements you’ve written seem to indicate that while you are sympathetic to the troubles the Black community faces, you seem to lack empathy.

Maybe that is why some of the statements alienated Muslims like myself and Marc. It didn’t really speak to our shared experience as AFricans in the Diaspora. That experience is not homogeneous, African immigrants come to America with intact networks and families. Those networks provide resources and support where many of us converts lack that. In fact, many of our support networks are still tied to what other Muslims consider the jahiliyya. The sociological structure of Black families also prevent wealth accumulation. Our identity and the ways others see is is linked to the overall condition of African Americans. But immigrant Africans have complex identities and long standing ties to intellectual traditions. This is not to say that favored Black minorities, such as Carribean and African immigrants, are not subject to discrimination. Nor is that to say that just being born of immigrant African families gives one access to African culture, the wealth of Islamic traditions, and Islamic education. But I think it is important that we keep in mind the distinctions between how Islam developed in West Africa (where there were Muslim communities for 1000 years and some well established centers since 1000 AD) and America. We can’t just cut and paste institutions that were developed in a West African context and apply them to the inner city. Instead, we have to consider what worked and adapt those social institutions to fit the needs in America. And for that reason, I feel like there is so many important lessons that Black Americans can learn from WEst Africa. And that is where we can begin to dialogue and learn from each other. Dialogue is based on mutual respect and understanding, not imposing one’s views.

Well, I think I spent too much time dealing with the immigrant/Black divide. That’s subject for other discussions. I’d be interested to know more of what can be done in terms of spiritual development and work on the emotional well-being of a broken community.

as-salaamu ‘alaikum Aziza, you are not doing so well with your assessments of me and my background. You wrote,

“Maybe it has something to do with youth.”

I’m not exactly sure your age, marital or maternal status but, I’m over 30, a husband and father of three But if you wish to dismiss me and my experience as a Muslim in America with African origins, you have the right to do so. As you like.

as-salaamu ‘alaikum

Yursil, from what I gather Saifuddin was Fulani meaning that he was of West African origin. Some of his statements indicated he also recognized his identity distinct from African Americans. He seemed to comment as an outsider, telling African Americans to follow the West African model–the model of his ancestors. Melanin does not make one an expert on the social conditions that plague the African American community. I don’t understand Afro-Brazilian culture nor do I fully understand Haratine issues in Morocco (even though I might be treated as one while travelling or residing there). Many of these social conditions have lead to some serious spiritual diseases that are endemic in African American Sunni, Salafi, and yes even Sufi communities.

I am fully aware of the integral part that Sufism played in West Africa. That is the reason why I chose that as my particular field. West Africans took traditions and articulated them in ways that addressed local conditions. There are lessons to be learned about Islam in Africa–West Africa in particular. Transmission of knowledge and isnad does not mean statis. Islam in West Africa was very dynamic and open to change and creative interpretations. In the same way, African Americans and American Muslims will also articulate their spiritual development in different ways. I don’t think that Americans will slavishly adopt another mode, but instead will create a synthesis. The truth is not everyone is going to be into tasawwuf. There’s just too much diversity. Also, the tariqa is not going to play as large role in America as it did in West Africa, unless it starts focusing on many of the social functions it played in history (i.e. lodges for travellers, social aid during famine or time of need, establishing trustworthy business relations across wide distances, conflict resolution between tribes and factions, etc).

as-salaamu ‘alaikum, thank you for clearing this up Yursil. Marc and Aziza, perhaps you would like to re-read the post, Islam and Sufism in West Africa a second time without such biases as you expressed in earlier comments. You may find it insightful, the second time around.

Salamu’alaykum

I’m surprised at the attempt to belittle Saifuddin’s experience in this regard. Saifuddin, unlike myself, is a Black American and as a convert. Does that in itself give him the right to speak on the subject? Possibly not, but then again I don’t see why it makes his comment overstepping any bounds greater than your own comments on the subject.

As far as whether you Islam won’t “work” until it is done “right” I’m not sure why quotations are used because Saifuddin didn’t use those terms or words to describe your Islam. Rather, your article here is speaking of the consequences of no spiritual growth, and that in itself is trying to say what doesn’t work until its done ‘right’. Isn’t it?

salaam and thanks for the well thought out response. I second your emotions on what many of us from our generation may have been looking for – activism, social paradigm shifts and so on. I think to look at this critically, we can’t even discount the influence of 1st-gen hip-hop and how it also was right in line with that type of social clarion call. But the world is the world and we were young and found out that it takes more than slogans, incense and Pumas to change the world. Some of us looked inward while others drew inward. And some others besides those lashed out while yet others again tuned out and dropped off. Fortunately, as we have seen of late, there have been some winds of change. People are starting to look around at their friends and neighbors and at themselves and say, “Is this working? Is this pleasing to God? Is this what I was sent to do?” Again, it’s only a faint breeze but I force myself to hope that from thought comes action and that it’s just not a cool summer’s breeze, refreshing but brief, with the stagnant heat to follow it.

As for Saifuddin’s comments, I will address them in another post as well as other comments you’ve left here. But to put it simply for you again, you’re way over stepping your bounds. You’re meddling in something that is not your forte – that is to say the history and experience of the Blackamerican Muslim. Your words sound typically immigrant-arrogant. “You silly American converts – you’ll never achieve ‘true Islam’ until you do it our way”. You are entitled to think that tasawwuf may be the solution to all the world’s problems and we all have to have a shaykh in the way you deem one ought to have a shaykh. But when you come and tell me that my Islam is wrong and won’t “work” until it’s done “right”, you’re way out of scope. And it is here, scope, that is getting most Muslims into trouble or even I dare say the world in this Modernity. So I challenge you to go back and reexamine your Prophet’s life, his sunnah, his seerah, and see if it’s as scripted as you would have us believe. And as good as brother Yursil’s article may be, it is God who will challenge my faith and no mortal man!

Saifuddin, this comment is not intended on attacking your position. And, in fact, I have had little time to read your statements. I honestly think you don’t completely understand our sentiments as converts. Nor do you have a full understanding of the situation of Black Muslims in America. I am not saying that we don’t appreciate an outsiders perpective, sometimes it offers a fresh perspective. But sometimes inner dialogs are just that. And when someone is not empathetic or really feel where you are coming from tells you how you should feel or thing, it is like they are talking AT you, not WITh you.

So, with that in mind what I am writing below is more intended for American converts and is in now way intended to blast Sufi organizations, but merely an observation of the social orientations and changing trends in the African American Muslim community:

Marc,
Over the past 14 years I have seen some major shifts with a number of Muslims. Some transformations have been great, but other ones lack luster. For me, it was disappointing to see how people lived out our lofty faith and fell short of the ideals we all hold. I find rays of hope, but some days it is really clear that we understand just 10% of our faith. I don’t know if anybody has it on lock. Some people aren’t even trying.

I had a conversation with a friend who is also familiar with traditional Islam and we have numerous friends who are associated with this tariqa or that one. After almost a decade and a half, both of us went through many transformations in our orientation to Islam. I was one of those activist, fright oppression and inequality in America and oversears, kind of Muslims. I was taught that Islam had the solution to solve the problems in the inner city, in the Black community, and in the world in general. Islam was anti-oppression, uplifitng for women, the solution to unstable family lives, bad politics, etc. So, then when I saw Muslims use Islam to perpetuate the culture poverty, Muslim families unstable and single mothers living in poverty, the Middle class Muslims just as materialistic and immature as the20 year olds who ran the dot com start ups, I began to wonder about the superficiality of our understanding.

As I saw my own development fall short. I knew something was missing. Like you said, it was a man centered orientation. I needed to feel something more inside. I came to see tasawwuf as an essential component or getting at the core me, of healing, of getting real grounding. That being said, I used to have high expectations of the members of the turuq. But with even the mainstream orders that proport to follow the sunnah, I found a lot of weird stuff going on. People fell short of the ideals that I read about in books. There was cliquishness, group think, mean spiritedness, showiness, and big egos draped in acts of piety. Some sheikhs did shady things like forcing husbands to divorce wives, wives from husbands, having secret marriages, becoming extremely wealthy by following more evangelical conventions than our tradition of teaching from knee to knee. But I also know some Sufis who have had programs that have helped their followers reign in their nafs and be better people.

My mentor told me one day that the tariqa is a hospital. And a hospital is for sick people. There are different wards, some are in critical condition. Some are out patient. So, when someone is proud that they are in the exclusive ward, you have to wonder. There are many diseases of the soul, and the process of spiritual development makes those apparent, as well.The same can be said for Islam in general.

I find it interesting how this new generation of Muslims seems less interested in engaging with broader social issues and working to build community. We have either the culture of anger and despair or the culture of disengagement and the inner self. Sometimes it borders on solipsism. When I converted to Islam, my generation was all about the activism, the building, the brother and sisterhood. We really saw ourselves on the vanguard, we wanted to change the world. But we had no spiritual development. So what all know what that leads up to. Now I see the spiritual development but it is all nafsi (all about me). Now I hear people who want sacred knowledge, not so much as trying to find a way to apply it to improve our personal situation and uplift those around us, but just because we want to have it. It doesn’t seem like many of these students are thinking about how social conditions have a corrupting affect. Instead they are disengaged, obsessed with details, and seem just as anxiety ridden and judgmental as their co-religionists with a different orientation.

Sorry for the rambling. I just wanted to say that it is important to have both inner development and to work to better the lives of people around us. We cannot be shut up in our rooms doing our Arwad for 10 hours, while being mean to our neighbors and brothers and sisters. I guess it is about the balance, and not just some broad pendulum swings from this trend to that. So, I feel like what you’re saying is on point.

as-salaamu ‘alaikum. This is the second African or African-American that I have read in two days that is touching on their disappointment in their religion, Islam, and loosely point to an actual disappointment with the presiding Selafi position in this country. MashaAllah! Its about time.

I was wondering when African-Americans Muslims were going to return to their tradition roots which were developed and organized in tasawwuf and tariqat. Though I must admit given the current status of African-American Muslims and Americans in general accepting tariqat ways would be difficult. Particularly because it is a spiritual purging, but in order to advance on in path one must step on his ego and not build it up. The ego must be reduced to nothing, we end the end must seek to be nothing; seeking that nothingness sincerely, which means looking for nothing in return only what please Allah to bestow upon us.

So I am glad to see these kinds of writings on the internet. I wonder if anyone will actually act on these ideas. And as far as the cult-talk goes, this is typical jargon by non-Muslims about Muslims. It has been that way since the British and French orientalists began writing on the Orientals, i.e. the Muslims. For another spin on the cult-talk you may want to read Yursil’s article which puts your faith to the test.

Taking bayat means taking an oath. It is a sunnat, however a forgotten sunnat of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (may Peace and Blessings be upon him). When the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.s.) and the Believers, his Companions went to Hajj, for the first time afte…

As an aside, didja know that Jewish ettiquette is that when a person asks to convert, you’re supposed to try to talk them out of it? “My son, are you sure you know what you’re getting into?” Haha.

That photo your father took, is that depot town, Ypsilanti?

You are definitely ‘on point’ with the above musings! We were engaged in this conversation earlier and I am contented to see that the substance of our conversation (and others that we’ve had) have a broader, public forum for others to tap into, if they are remotely concerned. On a tangent point, I am currently reading “40 Million Dollar Slaves” by William Rhoden, and one quote that stands out is when the famous Black Nationalist woman, Audley “Queen Mother” Moore quips, “They not only called us Negroes, they made [my emphasis] us Negroes…’things’ that don’t know where they came from and don’t even care that they don’t know. Negro is a state of mind, and they massacred our minds.” If this be the case, then African Americans approach toward the Divine becomes even more daunting in that we must unmask our own elusive identity and then try to tap into our ultimate identity that lies solely within the Divine.

In light of what you’ve written, it is no wonder that African Americans’ proclivity is towards using religioun as a means to exercise justifiable anger, which is a great tragedy within itself. As was poignantly stated, religion (and/or spirituality–let’s not get bogged down by the appropriations) ought to be G-D centered, not hu-man centered. In general, but in particular for African Americans, it is all important to understand ourselves in relation to G-D i.e., created, Creator without the tags of Black, White, Hispanic. In other words, G-D is not merely a ‘means to an end’…G-D is the ‘means’ and the ‘end.’