Tag: Arab diaspora

Interesting NYT article on American converts to Islam who become imams:

Most American mosques import their clerics from overseas — some who preach extremism, some who cannot speak English, and most who cannot begin to speak to young American Muslims growing up on hip-hop and in mixed-sex chat rooms. Mr. Yusuf, 48, and Mr. Shakir, 50, are using their clout to create the first Islamic seminary in the United States, where they hope to train a new generation of imams and scholars who can reconcile Islam and American culture.

The seminary is still in its fledgling stages, but Mr. Yusuf and Mr. Shakir have gained a large following by being equally at home in Islamic tradition and modern American culture. Mr. Yusuf dazzles his audiences by weaving into one of his typical half-hour talks quotations from St. Augustine, Patton, Eric Erikson, Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Auden, Robert Bly, Gen. William C. Westmoreland and the Bible. He is the host of a TV reality show that is popular in the Middle East, in which he takes a vanload of Arabs on a road trip across the United States to visit people who might challenge Arab stereotypes about Americans, like the antiwar protesters demonstrating outside the Republican National Convention.

Mr. Shakir mixes passages from the Koran with a few lines of rap, and channels accents from ghetto to Valley Girl. Some of his students call him the next Malcolm X — out of his earshot, because he so often preaches the importance of humility.

Both men draw overflow crowds in theaters, mosques and university auditoriums that seat thousands. Their books and CD’s are pored over by young Muslims in study groups. As scholars and proselytizers of the faith, they have a much higher profile than most imams, as Muslim clerics who are usually in charge of mosques are known. Their message is that both Islam and America have gone seriously astray, and that American Muslims have a responsibility to harness their growing numbers and economic power to help set them straight.

They sound like American Amr Khaleds.

I haven’t commented on the murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland last month, partly because I thought the incident was blown out of proportion by many on the blogosphere and elsewhere, particularly on the right but also on the left. I also did not feel that sorry for Van Gogh, who was after all a racist, and did not think he deserved the martyr status that many have now bestowed upon him. It’s rather strange that Americans, who live in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of homicides (and inter-racial gang violence), are so passionate about this one. Obviously he did not deserve to die and I am horrified at the religious fundamentalist motives that seem to have driven his murderer. But let’s keep things in perspective here.

One person who did just that this week in Salama Ahmed Salama, an Al Ahram columnist. I don’t particularly agree with Salama generally, but he hit the nail in a recent piece translated and published by the Al Ahram Weekly:

Antagonistic approaches to religion are not helpful to women, either inside or outside Europe. And Van Gogh was an extremely controversial figure, a member of an extreme rightwing party that Muslims see as a threat to Dutch society, a party that calls Muslims a fifth column of “sheep-buggers”. Since the murder mosques and Muslim schools have been attacked in the Netherlands while the Dutch government has cracked down on those it calls a terrorist threat, closing down meeting places and deporting many. [sic]

It may well be the right of the Dutch director to express his opinion. But incitement to hatred can easily backfire, particularly when xenophobia is the order of the day. Most European governments have done little to help minorities fit in. Discrimination is common when ethnic minorities seek jobs, housing, schooling and other social services. As a result entire districts have been turned into Muslim ghettos, into breeding places for extremism.

Immigrants went to Europe as cheap labour. There are 15 million immigrants in Europe, including five million in France, three million in Germany and one million in the Netherlands. These minorities needed help from the state, which they did not receive. More than three decades have passed since the first wave of immigration began during which the governments concerned did little to help the immigrants integrate. And now a number of emerging rightwing parties want the immigrants thrown out.

The immigrants are not entirely blameless. They should have done more to integrate. But the governments’ fault is worse, for it is the responsibility of the state to promote cultural and social harmony.

With Islamophobia on the rise Europe wants Islam to adapt to European values, rather than for Muslims to fit in. Recent statements made by a Belgian archbishop are a case in point. No one is calling on the Jews to alter their religion. No one wants Christians of various denominations to change their beliefs. But Muslims are asked to rethink their tenets. A European, or American, Islam is the solution, we are told. And several Arab intellectuals and writers seem to agree.

So Van Gogh, who’s become something to a hero in the West, was a racist. People are comparing him to Salman Rushdie, a great author whose critique of his own religion is much more subtle than Van Gogh’s shock-flicks. To me it seems he hardly deserves our compassion. He didn’t deserve to die, and if he hadn’t he would have remained a marginal filmmaker with a following among Dutch racists if some Moroccan idiot hadn’t decided to kill him. Instead, because of his act of insanity, his name is a rallying cry for racism. I can understand European intellectuals being worried about the rise of Islamist extremism among Arab immigrants — so am I — but Arab intellectuals, as Salama points out, don’t need to go about taking every opportunity to talk about a crisis in Islam or some other vague conceit every time a hate crime takes place. There are enough real problems about.

This is from last week, but worth mentioning. Jonathan Steele in the Guardian reviews a new book by Olivier Roy called “Globalised Islam.” According the the review, Roy offers a comprehensive snapshot of Islam as it is practiced (in Muslim and in European countries) across the world today, with all its contradictions, nuances and different gradations. Roy argues against reducing Islam to the “a religion of hate” stereotype, and argues that the problems and violence of the Middle East are not based in religion.

I’m not sure I agree with the argument that Islamic fundamentalism is in its death-throes. And I find the “Islam is really a religion of peace” argument used very disingenuously at times. While I can attest from my daily life here in Egypt that the great majority of Muslims have nothing extremist about them, the truth is that all religions contain a good dose of potential intolerance. What’s true is, as Roy apparently writes, that “The key question is not what the Koran really says, but what Muslims say the Koran says.” The Koran is an unescapable legitimizing reference point in Muslim debate, but it is used to argue very different points. If you read (Moroccan feminist Islamic scholar) Fatima Mernissi on the Koran, and you come away withe respect and fascination for a meaningful, multi-faceted text which contains the seed of some radical and inspiring ideas. Read some of the contemporary sheikhs handing out fatwas based on the Koran, and you come away thinking it’s one great compendium of bigotry.

It’s worth noting that Roy is French. The French may well end up being at the forefront of a movement to understand and integrate Islam into the West (10% of the population in France is Muslim). Europe in general is grappling with Islam in a much closer and I would say much more mature and nuanced way than America is. There are great perils ahead (racism on the part of Europeans, extremism on the part of immigrant Muslims) but if an educated, empowered Muslim community emergese in Europe they could have a real impact on world affairs and on their home countries.

The Chicago Tribune ran this interesting article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s US chapter a few days ago. It’s worth reading, if only to see the reach of one of the oldest modern political movements in the Middle East — one that continues to have much influence in its birthplace, Egypt, and far beyond:

Many Muslims believe that the Brotherhood is a noble international movement that supports the true teachings of Islam and unwaveringly defends Muslims who have come under attack around the world, from Chechens to Palestinians to Iraqis. But others view it as an extreme organization that breeds intolerance and militancy.

“They have this idea that Muslims come first, not that humans come first,” says Mustafa Saied, 32, a Floridian who left the U.S. Brotherhood in 1998.

While separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of American democracy, the international Brotherhood preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic. The group also champions martyrdom and jihad, or holy war, as a means of self-defense and has provided the philosophical underpinnings for Muslim militants worldwide.

Many moderate Muslims in America are uncomfortable with the views preached at mosques influenced by the Brotherhood, scholars say. Those experts point to a 2001 study sponsored by four Muslim advocacy and religious groups that found that only a third of U.S. Muslims attend mosques.