National Public Radio recently did an interview of Imam Anwar Muhaimin of Masjid Quba here in Philadelphia [ma sha'Allah, nice picture Imam Anwar!], my wife, as well as yours truly, asking how and why Blackamericans, despite the phenomenons of 9/11 and more recently, the FBI raid in Detroit, are drawn to Islam. I spoke at some length with the gentleman from the Associated Press, as did my wife, about the continuing evolution of Islam in the Blackamerican experience. You can read the article here. Even though AP did mention the part about Blackamericans being drawn to Islam for many of the social reasons, it did leave out some of the points I tried to elucidate concerning the breadth of reasons why Blackamericans come to Islam: social, spiritual, and otherwise. In other words, the reasons are as vast as there are people coming to it. Perhaps in the future this point can be discussed further at length.

Hat tip to Safiya for putting the AP in touch with us.

Update: Since the article seems to not be on NPR’s web site any longer, I’m going to insert it directly here.

JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer

By now, Sekou Jackson is used to the questions: Why does he need to leave a work meeting to pray? Don’t black Muslims convert to Islam in jail? Why would you even want to be Muslim?

“It’s kind of a double whammy to be African-American and Muslim,” said Jackson, who studies the Navy at the National Academy of Science in Washington. “You’re going to be judged.”

Jackson’s struggle may have gotten harder when the FBI on Wednesday raided a Detroit-area warehouse used by a Muslim group. The FBI said the group’s leader preached hate against the government, trafficked in stolen goods and belonged to a radical group that wants to establish a Muslim state in America. The imam of the group’s mosque, a black American named Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was killed in a shootout with agents.

Although the FBI was careful to say those arrested in Detroit were not mainstream Muslims, it has accused other black Muslims of similar crimes, most recently in May, when four men were charged with plotting to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down a military plane.

Yet the Muslim faith continues to convert many average African-Americans, who say they are attracted by Islam’s emphasis on equality, discipline and family.

“The unique history African-Americans have faced, we’re primed for accepting Islam,” said Jackson, 31, who grew up in a secular home and converted to Islam when he was about 18.

“When someone comes to you with a message that everyone is equal, that the only difference is the deeds that they do, of course people who have been oppressed will embrace that message,” Jackson said. “It’s a message of fairness.”

It was a message of black pride in the face of dehumanizing prejudice that launched Islam in America in the 1930s.

Created by a mysterious man named Wallace Fard, the “Lost-Found Nation of Islam” strayed far from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, but its mixture of self-reliance, black supremacy and white demonization resonated with many blacks. Some 30 years later, Malcolm X began the African-American movement toward traditional Islam when he left the Nation of Islam, went on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and proclaimed that all whites were not evil.

In 1975, the Nation split into two factions: a larger group that embraced orthodox Sunni practices, and another, led by Louis Farrakhan, that maintained the Nation’s separatist ideology.

Today, it is difficult to determine the number of Muslims in America. A 2007 Pew survey estimated 2.35 million, of whom 35 percent were African-American. Lawrence Mamiya, a Vassar College professor of religion and Africana studies and an expert on American Islam, said Muslim organizations count about 6 million members, a third of them black.

Most African-American Muslims are orthodox Sunnis who worship in about 300 mosques across the country, Mamiya said. The second-largest group follows Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, which has about 100 mosques in America, abroad and U.S. prisons, Mamiya said.

He said the third-largest group is the Ummah, founded by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the black activist formerly known as H. Rap Brown. The group has about 40 or 50 mosques. The organization targeted in the raid near Detroit was part of the Ummah, the FBI said.

“The vast majority of African-American Muslims are using the religion to strengthen their spirituality,” said Mamiya, who has interviewed many black Muslim leaders and congregants. He said the number of black Muslims is growing, but not as fast as before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Few white Americans convert to Islam “because the tendency is to view Islam as foreign,” he said. “For African-Americans, it’s part of their African heritage. There’s a long tradition (in Africa). … It moves them away from the Christianity they saw as a slave religion, as the religion that legitimized their slavery.”

Margari Hill was a California teenager seeking an antidote for nihilism and widespread disrespect of black women when she found Islam in 1993. A few years ago she began covering her hair with a hijab, or head scarf.

“I wanted to be thinking about humility and modesty,” said Hill, a 34-year-old teacher in Philadelphia. “I decided it would help me be a better Muslim and a better person.”

She also is attracted to Islam’s family values and the egalitarian message embodied by the prophet Muhammad’s “last sermon,” which according to Muslim scriptures says that no Arab, white or black person is superior or inferior to members of another race.

Hill’s husband, Marc Manley, said that many blacks who have struggled with crime, drugs or alcohol are drawn to Islam’s regimented lifestyle, which includes prayers five times a day.

“Especially in the urban context, it provides a vehicle for African-Americans to deal with those ills,” he said. “It provides a buffer or a barrier.”

Muhaimin was born into a Muslim family after his parents embraced Islam in the 1950s. He grew up in Saudi Arabia, “but was very clear from a young age that I was and am an American citizen.”

“America is my country, I love the United States,” he said. “I don’t agree with everything our politicians do in our name, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a citizen of this country.”

___

On the Net:

Margari Hill’s blog: http://www.azizaizmargari.wordpress.com

Marc Manley’s blog: http://www.manrilla.net

The Quba Institute: http://www.qubainstitute.com

(This version CORRECTS that FBI raid was on warehouse, not mosque.)

Sister Heather wrote a very thoughtful article entitled, Don’t Mind the Trolls for Examiner.com . It is an account and analysis on the practice of certain pseudo-ananymous people who leave asinine and offensive comments on blogs and web sites. Read the article here.

Finding Our Moral Compass is a two-part lecture regarding the fundamental principles of Islamic spirituality (tasawwuf) and a discussion of the stations of certitude (maqamat al-yaqin) based on the work of ‘Abd al-Wahid b. ‘Ashir, Al-Murshid Al-Mu’in, with additional insights taken from Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali’s, Garden of the Seekers and Reliance of the Travelers (Rawdat al-Talibin wa ‘Umdat al-Salikin).

The text for this lecture is based on al-Murshid Al-Mu’in ‘ala al-Daruri min ‘Ulum al-Din (The Helpful Guide to Essential Religious Knowledge) has been studied by Maliki students of Morocco for over 3 centuries. The author is ‘Abd Al-Wahid b. ‘Ashir (1040 AH/1631 CE), a versatile scholar from Fes, Morocco. This work covers the fundamentals of the three pivotal topics of the Islamic teachings: Islam, Iman, and Ihsan (practice, belief, and ethics). Our focus will be in the third area (Ihsan). In particular, we will concentrate on what Ibn ‘Ashir terms ‘The stations of certitude’ (maqamat al-yaqin) after an introduction into the principles of the Islamic conception of moral refinement.

Shaykh Abdullah Ali’s lectures are an excellent opportunity for Muslims looking to expand their depth of understanding of Islam as well as glean some insights on how to elevate their practice of the religion.

It is slowly closing in on a year since I’ve taken to the minbar. The experience has been a humbling one in many ways. Frustrating in others. For those who have never done so, it is hard to know the pressure and responsibility one ensues when stepping up in front of your fellow brothers and sisters, let alone the time commitment it takes to write meaningful material week after week. It is also meeting the challenge of fulfilling a role that the Prophet [s] himself carried out. The challenge of saying something pertinent, meaningful, and appropriate whilst being careful to not commit errors, or speak something amiss. In many ways, it makes one an easy target for vain ridicule, from those who would peck at splinters in another’s eye, whilst ignoring their own glaring shortcomings. Such has been my experience thus far.

In the past ten months I have experienced several odd and disturbing circumstances from audience members who feel the need to correct, even when there has been no infraction. This may seem defensive, as if I would not welcome honest criticism. I do indeed welcome it, when it is sincere, and when it is conducted with etiquette and the mannerisms befitting the circumstances. I will try and be as straight forward as I can be.

One of the first khutbahs I delivered, I man from the audience approached me afterward, wishing to have a discussion about certain Arabic words I uttered during the service. The man was a native speaker of Arabic and thus seemed compelled to defend his language. Oddly enough during this engagement, another brother, also a native speaker, happened to present as well. The first brother accused me of misspeaking some words, of which I defended my position. The gentleman’s rebuttal was based in the fact that Arabic was not my native language, despite having taught and studied it for over 15 years. In the end, my friend, also a native speaker, interjected and corrected the brother, stating that in fact, my use of the word had been correct, and that he was mistaken. This only resulted in strengthening his regard against me and in result, consumed a considerable amount of time defending his position that was becoming weaker and weaker. To this day, the brother approaches me from time to time to challenge me on various facts of Arabic grammar that have little personal meaning for me.

Another case, more recently, came after the khutbah and resulted from my recitation of the prayer which I led. The brother [it's always men!], of Turkish extraction, took me aside and inquired about the “odd way” in which I recited the Qur’an. I smiled, knowingly, and explained to him that he was not the first person to ask about my recitation style, which was not, by the way, personal, but rather of a qira’ah that he had never heard before, namely Warsh. I asked him if he knew the name of the style that he recited in, to which he replied, “you know, just normal Qur’an”. I laughed, in good mirth, and told him that he was used to Hafs, and that I had recited in Warsh, a style perhaps not so familiar in his native Turkey. I also asked if he had studied tajwid formally or not, to which he replied in the negative. To this he continued and insisted that I had made a mistake in my recitation. Welcoming the possibility, I asked him where [I had recited suwrah al-A'la and ash-Sharh]. He noted certain places in the suwar that he felt was incorrect, of which I informed him these were places where the styles between Hafs and Warsh were most apparent to him and it was mainly a result of him not being familiar with the latter’s style. To my amazement, despite admitting he had no formal training with tajwid and more specifically, Warsh, he pressed his case forward. Having to get back to work, I recommended he learn the rules of tajwid and tried to leave it at that. However, the conversation did not finish here, to which he met me at my office just a few short hours later, where he continued to cry his case for my supposed error. Being in an overly indulgent mood, I showed him my mashaf of both Warsh and Hafs, clearly demonstrating the differences between the two as well as playing the recitations of noted reciters, both in the two schools of recitation. The brother left my office with lingering traces of mistrust, as if by some witchcraft I had won my case, though he still seemed to distrust what had been presented before him. All the while during this he persisted in inquiring where I had learned my Arabic and other Islamic knowledge. It just seemed too amazing that a kid from Detroit could have learned two Qur’anic recitations when he, hailing from the lands of Islam, had not even understood the basics of one.

I say all this in that it is one, on a personal level, aggravating to have to deal with such treatment. I have been present at other khutbahs where there have been other khatibs who have made mistakes in their recitation, yet, when they happened to be of the right persuasion – i.e., Arab or Desi, then they were beyond reproach. After all, how could such genuinely Muslim people commit an error when the religion pumps through their veins? Two, that it is a real lack of respect for the religion, to treat a person, who has been elected by the community to take the mantle of delivering the khutbah, but because they are not of the proper ethnic group, the proper respect is not given them, no matter what level of knowledge they may have obtained.

I knew that when I accepted the responsibility to do this, of putting myself up on that minbar, that pulpit, that I would be opening myself for shots. However, after nearly a year of doing so, I am now in serious consideration of stepping down. It may not prove to be worth the insult and disrespect.