I am not given over to commenting on politics [at least on-going discourses] with great frequency; I tend to prefer bigger picture issues, but I thought I would share a short piece on my reaction to John McCain and the rhetoric I’ve heard coming from the Republican party. This should not be seen as anti-Republicanism, as I am not a part line personality. Rather, it is a critique on what they are presenting to the American public, particularly as one coming from the Blackamerican population.

John McCain’s legitimacy, based on his service in the military, is a telling point. While it is certainly a terrible thing to be held in a POW camp, no one in the media has yet to look at the Vietnam war in terms of a) was this a beneficial war b) what did it accomplish for the United States and c) what has been done for all of the veterans who returned from the war, permanently scared [mentally and physically]. I find this whole legitimacy based on participation in an unjust war disgusting and misleading. It smacks of classic nativist ideologies. In fact, I was fully reminded of Marinetti, when listening to members of the Republican Party laud their support of McCain at the GOP convention:

“For twenty seven years we Futurists have rebelled aginst the the branding of war as antiaesthetic… Accordingly we state: … War is beautiful because it establishes man’s dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others… Poets and artists of Futurism!… remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art… may be illuminated by them!”

Some may find it an unduly harsh step to brand this kind of talk as facist/futurist but it does have many of the same talking points. Like Marinett’s Futurists, the GOP barked the very same anti-intellectualism that is present in Marinetti’s writings. That fact that the Republicans put forth war as an aesthetic, as something beautiful, is undeniable. The War On tError has certainly shown us plenty of burning villages and civilian casualties. And for what? What “evil criminal force” has been detained, dismantled or destroyed? Many a young man or woman returns home, their limbs replaced by that very same “dreamt-of metalization”. The poppy fields of Afghanistan are indeed ripe with “the fiery orchids of machine guns” and yet, drugs still pour into our country, not debilitated in the slightest. And as for the cannonades, we have our “shock and awe” and Missions Accomplished, yet do we have anything to show for it?

I cannot say with any certainty that Barack Obama will be able to bring about wide, social or economic changes, but given the doctrine that McCain and his party are spewing forth, given that someone as obviously unqualified as Palin has been championed over the accomplishments of the likes of Obama, we have to look and work for an auspicious outcome. The alternative seems grim indeed.

In a very short, some-what funny yet poignant YouTube video, Pastor Jamal Bryant delivers a sharp critique of the Republican National Convention as well as an overall observation of the political climate, public racial perceptions and that most unique of American neuroses, anti-intellectualism, especially when intellectualism takes the form of an educated Blackamerican. I don’t know about you, but by the end, I was ready to roll in the isles myself! Hat tip to Zain.

I had the pleasure of being invited to Dr. Zain Abdullah’s course, Islam in Global Perspective, at Temple University. The course was welcoming a selection of Fulbright scholars from abroad to discussed a number of issues such as what is Islam to Muslims, how do Muslims relate and form identities in a global cultural context and how is Islam experienced [symbolism] by Muslims, to name a few. Two of the books being discussed in the class were Mehran Kamrava’s The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity and Mark Levine’s Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam, a book that deals with religious/cultural permissibility, the impact of globalized values and its influence [Egypt was discussed in tonight's session] on Muslims. Afterwords, there was a very pleasant reception where I had the chance to engage a few of the visiting scholars and exchange thoughts and ideas. Many thanks to Dr. Abdullah for inviting me. A few images from the exchange.

It is my pleasure to present a most erudite article regarding not only the passing of Imam WD Mohammed [may Allah grant him Paradise] but a clarion call to the entire America Muslim community as to the milestone we’ve reached and where we ought to be heading. Enjoy.

Imam W. D. Mohammed and The Third Resurrection
by Sherman Abd al-Hakim Jackson

The passing of Imam W.D. Mohammed, may God have mercy upon him and grant him Paradise, has brought the Blackamerican Muslim community face to face with a reality that it has been more comfortable with ignoring than coming to terms with. Imam Mohammed’s death has signaled the end of the era of charismatic leadership in which the rank and file can look to a single leader to settle all major questions and chart the Community’s course for the future. Rather than being decided by a single voice, that future will have to be negotiated by the collective understandings and perspectives of the Community’s learned. This implies, of course, general agreement on who is learned and what the rules of engagement are. If the criterion is set too high, it will marginalize valuable voices and confirm an already widespread distrust of religious knowledge and those who claim to represent it. If it is set too low, it will open the Community to the ravages and abuses of those who think that the role of religion is to sanction their and or the dominant culture’s every undisciplined whim and passion.

In the years leading up to his death, Imam Mohammed strove mightily and with great farsightedness to empower his Community to carve out a dignified existence for themselves, to transition to what I have referred to as the “Third Resurrection,” whereby, individually and collectively, the Community is able to negotiate American reality in light of the Qur’an and Sunna. For the most part, however, the Imam had to go it alone, with few contributions from Blackamerican Muslim scholars outside his own movement.

Here we come to an embarrassingly sad fact about the state of Blackamerican Islam. For decades, Blackamerican Muslims have been venturing abroad to learn Arabic and the Islamic religious sciences. Yet, this has translated into little benefit and even less interfacing with the Community of Imam W.D. Mohammed — despite that community’s historically unique role in indigenizing Islam among Blackamericans. When we think across the spectrum of the most noted Blackamerican Muslim scholars - from myself to Zaid Shakir, from Aminah Wadud to Aminah McCloud - what we see is a veritable brain-drain out of the Blackamerican community into discourses and activities whose primary beneficiaries are not Blackamerican Muslims and or whose primary focus is not Blackamerican Muslim problems or concerns. Of course, there are exceptions, both in terms of individuals who contradict this description and in terms of some of the activities of the scholars named. But the fact that these are exceptions points to the reality that I am trying to describe: Blackamerican Muslim scholars have a closer relationship with the immigrant community than they have with the community of Imam W.D. Mohammed.

» Continue reading this post…