Many thanks to Thomas and his class at the William Penn Charter School - an educational institution built on Quaker values, for inviting me out to speak on Islam again. I have spoken before at William Penn and am always impressed with Tom’s class. This term, Tom was teaching a class centered around the theme of Peoples of the Book. The main text they were reading for the class was Karen Armstrong’s piece.
I spoke on the concept of the People of the Book, namely Jews and Christians, and how they were spoken of in the Qur’an and mentioned in the Sunnah but I also elaborated on the cultural knowledge of the pagan Arabs and what they knew of in terms of stories from the Torah or the Bible. A great deal of Orientalist scholarship has tried to paint the Arabian peninsula as being more isolated than it was. More recent scholarship counters that despite paganism and idolatry being a prevalent practice amongst the Arab tribes of Arabia pre-7th Century, the narratives of Moses, Jesus and Abraham, just to name a few, were known to these Arabs and thus were relevant to them. We also examined how not only is Islam seen by other religious traditions but more importantly, how does Islam see itself in the context of the People of the Book.
Continuing about the legacy of Biblical stories in the Arabian peninsula, without their cultural familiarity of these stories the Qur’an’s relevancy would have been greatly dimmished, hence giving rise to new and alternative scholarship that suggests the Arabian peninsula was more connected to its neighbors, primarily through trade, than has been previously suggested.
I also fielded questions from a number of students, with topics ranging from 9/11 [a perennial question] to how do Muslims negotiate marriage with non-Muslims. We also discussed the role that religion plays in informing social and cultural participation in religion. One of the students, whose family hails from a historical Muslim country, described his family dynamic which consisted of three generations in his household: his grandfather, his parents and he and his siblings. The grandfather still practiced, praying 5 times a day and so forth with the student’s parents being more lax in their religious consistency and finally the student, who said that he didn’t not think much about religion at all. All three generations seemed to function under one roof but more to the above point about culture, we had discussed whether or not, if his family had stayed in their country of origin, would he have been more apt to have had some form of communal practice. By coming and staying in America [i.e., his identity forming here] and his parents not being full-time practitioners, their religious practice tapered off to reflect their environment, where there were no secondary or tertiary enforcements to inform his religious consciousness.
We also discussed the phenomenon of Islam in the Blackamerican community. As a case point, illustrating the mass familiarity Blackamericans have with Islam, one of Blackamerican students in the course stated his grandfather was a Muslim. A brief talk was given to the unique status that Blackamerican Muslims hold as an indigenous American community, whose door is [currently] open to Islam and Blackamericans can freely choose to be Muslim without having to sacrifice anything in the public sphere.
I look forward to going back again. I congratulate Tom on running such an informative course for his students to learn about the many religious traditions we have in America.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
[...] I delivered a talk concerning the People of the Book, also known as Ahl-l-Kitab, a special designation that God gives to the Jews and Christians in the Qur’an, at William Penn Charter School. The class, taught by Thomas Rickards, is one of the yearly events I look eagerly forward to. The charter school, run the Quaker tradition, is an open-minded educational institution that continues to impress me with the wide variety of educational material they cover for young students. I look forward to coming back again soon. See here for more notes on the talk. [...]
October 11th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Sister Seeking,
What I meant by my statement is that to a great/er extent than say white and/or immigrant Muslims [Pakastani, Arab etc.], Blackamericans enjoy a great deal of civic protections in that are not afforded to other racial/ethnic groups. I will try to be precise:
White American Muslims: they enter into Islam, as the current political and cultural climate stands, running the risk of cultural/ethnic apostasy. In other words, the greater society looks at their choice to be Muslim being equal leaving all that they recognize and know [i.e., white and American] as acceptably white and American. So forth, a valid white identity of being both white and Muslim has not been established in the public sphere. Within this I have not spoken on whether or not Whiteamerican Muslims play a role in this.
Immigrant Muslims: while there are laws on the books protecting any and all groups from public discrimination, to be sure the public sentiment towards these groups is far from positive. We only need to look at the current rhetoric being issued forth by the McCain-Palin camp towards presidential candidate Barack Obama. In a recent Youtube video, many McCain-Palin supporters cast aspersions that Obama was a terrorist because of where his family was from and because of his middle name [Hussein]. Many of our Arab/Pakastini brothers and sisters are facing tremendous public backlash due to their respective origins. But to bring it back to your question, you cannot attack a Blackamerican, publicly, without their being an equal if not harsher backlash due to the protections afforded Blackamericans vis-a-vie our history as Black people in this country. That same cultural/historical protection has not been afforded to immigrant Muslims for a variety of reasons, a few in which I covered above or in other posts on this blog.
In the end, Blackamericans are in a unique vantage point due to our blackness and our Americanness - a boon that is not available to any other ethnic group in American. Are there cases of discrimination towards Blackamerican Muslims? To be sure there are. I am not living in a valley filled with milk and honey. But Blackamericans can enter into Islam without out that choice being looked at askance as not a valid choice of either blackness or Americanness. The same cannot be said of Whiteamericans or immigrant Muslims.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:31 am
I agree with you that Black American Muslims are uniquely positioned to be publicly Muslim without relinquishing their identity as either American or Black. Unfortunately, I see that eroding a bit. Back in the 90s when we became Muslim converting to Islam was in many ways another way of expressing a Black identity, an alternative religious identity confirmed membership to a non-European civilization and adoption of anti-colonia, anti-racist, and anti-imperialistic activism.
Over time, I saw people move away from that. I’ve seen the appropriation of Arab or South Asian cultural expressions in order overcome their Black identities. I’ve seen this type of escapism within both traditional and salafi circles. On the flip side, I’ve seen how certain religious expressions or adherence to modes of scholarship as accepted within the orthodoxy as critiqued by some Black American Muslims as a sort of “selling out.” Perhaps this is more contested than we’d like to think. But because our communities are stuck in these contestations which have turned into stale sloganeering, few of us are now providing a positive example to the broader society. Maybe we’re still riding off of the image of Malcolm, I dunno. Just some thoughts….
October 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I think we should be a bit more precise with this critique and I will clarify here for my intent: I am not against orthodoxy in any fashion. With the above state that, “orthodoxy is making our people dysfunctional”, I cannot concur with this. If I were to understand your and the judge’s statements correctly, it seems a misplaced sense of orthodoxy is what’s at play here. Many of my posts have been targeted at this misguided sense of religiosity but under no certain terms has that meant to be an attack on orthodoxy. In fact, I would profess my own creed, my own religious identity and practice as being firmly rooted in the tradition [small "t"] and spirit of orthodox Islam. Let us not be too hasty in our critiques on others before we banish whole realms of Muslims from the fold or potentially indite ourselves!
October 12th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I’m going to half [sic] to change my software program:
Correction:
Should read the six pillars of Eman ( faith)
October 15th, 2008 at 6:26 am
“I don’t have to cook! You should help around the house! I am not a maid! I have a right to not be verbally or emotionally abuse! Your money is my money and my women is well…my money!!”
SS: LOL : )
“I guess it would be more useful to think about who is promoting the ideal and why, rather than making broad sweeping claims about traditional positions on marital relations.”
SS: LOL-You got me there…
October 18th, 2008 at 1:58 am
AA- Marc,
Very interesting post…my one comment is too long to post here, so I simply made it into a blog entry…hope you don’t mind bro.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Nice article. Thanks.
Eugene