Over the years [16 of them for me now] I have seen a disparagingly absence of manners amongst the Muslims. We have no couth in how we talk, critique and debate one another. In a recent post I came across, I felt compelled to write a little piece. My apologies if it seems to border on the polemical but I felt it needed saying anyway.

So here we have it. Muslim vs. Muslim in a virtual cage match. I have observed many of these volleys and have tried to put it to pen and pixel. It’s not an easy task. But, here ‘goes.

I think one aspect that some of the critics of Eteraz miss or don’t even look at is why does Eterez say that things that he does. Why do “liberal Muslims” say the things they do. To be sure, there are some who may have fallen into the trap of post-Enlightenment religious thinking and that is to make religion subservient to personal desires - in other words, jettison whatever is inconvenient or doesn’t reinforce our ill-perceived independence of God.

But Muslims today are under tremendous pressures from the dominant society to author and practice a version of Islam that caters to their fears, prejudices and proclivities and not towards what Muslims think is pleasing to God. As Muslims, we should be very much cognizant of this and take this into account when we have truck with our fellow brothers and sisters.

Before I continue, I should point out that I have not agreed with everything that Ali Eteraz has written. In truth, I have not read many of his posts in a while as I feel out of touch with what it was he was writing - but to say that he’s not entitled to write it, well, I think we have to tolerate and debate in a way that would uphold the ethics and standards of our Beloved Example. Simply trashing Ali Eteraz and making comparisons between him and Shaytan is in my opinion, ridiculous, unwarranted and uncouth.

But the critique doesn’t stop there. Above all, and I have seen this everywhere, there is absolutely NO LOVE BETWEEN THE MUSLIMS! The last two times I saw Dr. Sherman Jackson, he spoke about the woeful absence of love in the Muslim community. I couldn’t agree more. I have read here and in other places the critiques on Ali [and I believe many of them are warranted at least in the spirit of debate] but I have not seen one person offer to help him [if he is so satanically misguided], take the time out to correct his conduct or - aqueedah or what ever it is that many of his critics feel is awry. This type of mean-spirited, name bashing is NOT THE SUNNAH and is NOT OF THE CHARACTER OF THE PROPHET! I would love to have the opportunity to sit down with Ali Eteraz and discuss some of his points and maybe exchange a few words and see where he’s coming from. But I will not trash the man’s name publicly like so and NEITHER SHOULD ANY OF YOU! This goes not simply for Ali Eteraz, but for the correspondences I see all over the blogosphere.

Am I saying that none of us have the right to have a disagreement with Ali Eteraz? No. But it should be done in the best way.

We need the love. We need to get it back. And we need to get it back NOW.

And God knows best…

Above photo was taken in Detroit, Michigan, December 2004.

…and other collected thoughts on the MANA conference.

So, here we are, a full week after the successful MANA conference and we’re already starting to see the mud slinging around the Muslim blogosphere. I was beginning to think real change had in fact come from this conference. But don’t mistake my sarcasm for critiquing MANA. In fact, it’s just the opposite. In fact, I would like to again extend my thanks to MANA for hosting their first conference. God willing, this is just the first of many more successful conferences.

So what should we expect from a conference such as this MANA conference? Should we emerge from it to find the streets paved with gold? Or as Conan so once eloquently put it: “to hear the lamentations of the women”? Perhaps – or perhaps not. I will have to say in defense of MANA I certainly encountered many happy and motivated faces of those who attended the various workshops. And while I didn’t attend any myself I have it on good account that they were well constructed and of value.

It is precisely that last word, value, that keeps bouncing around and around inside my head as I ponder our current condition. If we do not value ourselves then I think very little will change. And from what Dr. Jackson had to say during his speech, that seemed to be one of his underpinning points – we as Blackamerican Muslims are in a unique vantage point, one where Allah has chosen us to be in this spot, this place, and this time, as the receptacles and carriers of Islam to this part of the world at this point in Time and History. So the perduring question is: what we gon’ do?

» Continue reading this post…

As of late, I have heard a tremendous talk about the State of Such-And-Such Islam; the State of Islam in America. The State of Blackamerican Islam and so forth. There has been majlis councils, shura councils, and every other kind of advisory board that one can shake a stick at. And yet, at the heart of many of these discussion that I have been privy to, none discuss matters of the heart. None discuss the lack of spiritual growth, that in my opinion, lies much closer to the root of the issues that are plaguing [if I may be so bold] and concerning Muslims all throughout America.

I have had a number of discussions lately with a few of my contemporaries, both Muslim and Christian, where we all displayed a general concern over the modern temperament of religious thought and dialog. In a recent conversation with another Blackamerican Muslim that I keep a correspondence with, he dismayed over how the Islam that he was handed has not played out to the Islam he was looking for. My accretion and addendum to his thought was that for many of us, and here I’m speaking as a middle 30’s Black male, we were in search of an identity and spirituality was not something that was on our radar. Consequently, the Islam that we were handed [or better yet, the Islam we handed ourselves] failed to have a prolonged shelf life. As we changed, it did not. In fact, change and mobility was never a part of the initial design concept, if you take my meaning. Instead of using Islam as a vehicle for moral and spiritual upliftment, instead it has been used as a means of justifying whatever idiosyncrasies we have; in our case [Blackamerican], it has been used to perpetuate a diseased mental state of no spiritual [and sometimes intellectual] growth. Get out of the ‘Hood? No! Instead, I will author a version of Islam that says I’m justified at being mad at Whitey and can stay stymied in poor economic, educational and health conditions. In other words, “It’s a Black Thang”.

But for me, the real loss here is not simply a lack of spirituality for the sake of itself but rather the shift of Islam [and for me, really, any religious tradition] from being God/Allah centered, to man centered. This may come as somewhat of a shock in that Islam prides itself as a religion where God is Central. All. One. And yet, so much of our quotidian religiosity is steeped in a man-centered ideology. I will try to illustrate some examples here. Make no mistake, I would not pretend to begrudge anyone coming from a Blackamerican background the resentment s/he may feel towards American society and how it has related or lack thereof, to Blacks. Institutionalized racism. Brutality. Unequal access to resources such as education, health care and wealth making opportunities. The list goes on. But by taking Islam and appropriating its religious and spiritual teachings solely to justify an existence that is based on the reaction to White fears, proclivities and injustices, woefully moves this mode of Islam from a God-centered religion to a man-centered. For who else should be alter our existence more for? Man? Or God? Allow me to tie this loop back in to my earlier statement.

» Continue reading this post…

As of late I have been given over to thoughts pertaining to Christianity and Christendom [definitions forthcoming] and how it has affected myself as well as society, in my opinion, on such topics as cosmology, God-concept and how we think about religion as a whole. These thoughts come from my thirty four years, sans three of four years of early childhood, in observance of how I have come to think of God as well as the many interactions and reactions that I have witnessed people have when conversing about God and religion.

First, I should introduce the notion of Christianity and Christendom as two very separate and distinct entities. One does not equate the other. In fact, I hope to point out some similarities between the evolution of Christendom out of Christianity and such neologisms as Islamic this or Islamic that [especially things like "Islamic society", etc]. Recent research into early Christian Gnostic literature has shed an amazing amount of light on early notions of what constituted Christian belief, both in terms of exegesis and practice. This bears a striking resemblance to early Muslim thought regarding creed and practice as well. They both share a commonality that can best be summed up as “agree to disagree”. In other words, there was no single, overriding authority that could claim a hegemonic orthodoxy and excommunicate others as heretical. How funny it is that we should be living at a time when such early questions should come around again – what remains is how will we answer them. Shall we answer them as the Early Communities did, fostering a real sense of diversity or inclusion, or give way to narrow-minded viewpoints [yes, I am avoiding fundamentalist here as I believe this word has been striped of any linguistic meaning given the media’s indulgent misuse of it]. Time will tell.

» Continue reading this post…