Reading the latest issue of the Message, several questions occurred to me which seemed relevant from the point of view of the above topic.

I saw an ad for an Islamic Center Executive Director by the Islamic Association of North Texas in this magazine. It is revealing that while the ad says that things like "North American management and/or business experience," "demonstrated leadership qualities, excellent communication skills, good people skills, public speaking ability," etc., are a MUST, it merely mentions "history with and experience in Islamic work and activities as highly desirable." Notice that even the latter qualification is in the realm of activism, such as fundraising. Nowhere is there any mention of Islamic knowledge of any kind whatsoever.

This is fascinating. We all know that we are currently "importing" khatibs/"scholars" etc. from abroad. Such people often are good at some technical skills but are quite unaware of the social context and dynamics of this society. Perhaps the people advertising for the Islamic Center Director felt that almost no one who is indigenous has the "Islamic" qualifications which probably ought to be part of any leadership role (at least in terms of having certain core knowledge) in an Islamic organization. In this sense, the responsibility for not having pursued Islamic knowledge falls squarely on our shoulders.

In the same magazine, there is an article glorifying the uniqueness of the "American Muslim." Fascinating quotes from it follow (it is to be noted that this is a fairly common theme among activist American-born Muslims - I have met hundreds and hundreds of such people who echo the same sentiments):

Excerpts:

"As my undergraduate days come to a close, I can look back on the past four years as being exactly the way I wanted them to be: fast and furious...I have had the chance to be with a UNIQUE kind of Muslim: an AMERICAN MUSLIM. Those MUSLIMS WHO ARE COMING OF AGE IN THE WEST, PRIMARILY IN THE US, ARE PERHAPS THE BEST GENERATION THAT THE UMMAH HAS YET PRODUCED; THEY ARE HIGHLY EDUCATED, OBSERVANT OF AN ISLAM LARGELY UNHINDERED BY THE CULTURAL BAGGAGE THAT STIFLES IT IN SO MANY MUSLIM COUNTRIES AND HAVE AN UPWARD MOBILITY THAT WILL MAKE THEM THE BRIGHT HOPE OF THE MUSLIM WORLD.

For the first time in history, the dominant power in the West contains millions of Muslims, MANY OF WHOM HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO GAIN HIGH OFFICE AND INFLUENCE. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THAT CAN STOP DETERMINED MUSLIMS FROM BECOMING POLICY-MAKERS AND LEADERS IN OUR GOVERNMENT...

The Muslim world by itself is mostly a collection of small, dysfunctional countries run by small, dysfunctional minds...Few Muslim countries are on the right track in terms of creating a multi-party democracy, a free-market system, and a minimum social safety net....

Leadership is clearly not going to come from the Muslim world. The mantle of leadership has fallen on American Muslims (other Western Muslims live in even more racist societies such as the U.K. and France where they are unlikely to become influential)...It is a great irony that the Muslim world's brightest hope lies not in a warlord come to deliver them of their woes, a Salahuddin or Khairuddin Pasha, nor in a new movement, BUT IN HIGHLY-EDUCATED AND SOPHISITICATED WESTERNERS WHO HAPPEN TO BE FOLLOWERS OF ISLAM." (emphasis added)

Now, how come we are producing this kind of thinking?

Our minds are colonized and that is all that is necessary in this day and age. England does not need to send in 100,000 troops anymore to India, nor does the United States need to send in a million troops to Pakistan to colonize us. All that they need to do is to colonize our minds, which we are letting them do.

We cannot pretend that educating people in a certain mode of thinking through their entire formal schooling years will not fail to produce a certain kind of individual, whose worldview will not be in accord with the Qur'an and the sunnah.

Brothers and sisters - think what will be the condition of third or fourth generation Muslims in this country who are not educated Islamically? Muslims came to this country not 30 years ago, but the first wave occurred 100 years ago. Those (mostly Lebanese, Syrian, and other Arab) Muslim immigrants are almost completely assimilated today, to the point that many simply acknowledge being Muslims but may never even have prayed once in their lives.

The methods of assimilation 100 or even 50 years ago were infinitely inferior to those that exist today. Therefore, the process of assimilation will take place at a much faster pace (unless we do what HAS to be done).

The process of assimilation is not at all aided one bit by the vast majority of those who "lead" Muslims in this country, since they are focused mostly on somehow being seen not as "threats" to this country or its economic or political system. Much of this stems from their own need to be "accepted" when they arrived in the 1960's and a little later.

So we need new leaders - but among the younger generation, most have very little knowledge of Islam. The foreign born ones often bring in distorted perspectives and excessive affiliation to movements. So what will happen in the future?

In the same magazine, one sister writes about the influence of music on Muslims. It says at one point, "Do not panic if you hear your child listening to this music. Do not scream and yell at them and flip off the radio, or throw these CDs and cassettes into the trash; that would only increase the rebellion in an already rebellious teen."

The question that arises is this: How could the parents have let this influence get to the point where any active intereference is likely to lead to overt "rebellion"? This is the result of not taking charge of the child's education from DAY ONE, and hoping instead that somehow, later on down the line, the process will be taken care of and the child will be "Islamized".

Yet another article is extremely representative of activists who want to take part in politics. It is called: "Framer's Intent - Muslim Empowerment: Implementing the US Constitution through Shariah." The argument that the American Constitution is an "Islamic document" and that the Founding Fathers were "functionally" Islamic is staple for the advocates of political participation. The entire tenor of the argument is that the SHARIAH APPROACHES THE BRILLIANCE OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (not the other way around, although even that would be total ignorance of both the Shariy'ah as well as the American Constitution).

As I said, this argument is entirely typical of the attitude of thousands of young Muslim activists in this country - i.e., those who see themselves as committed and truly sincere. Hence, even sincerity is often not enough when it comes to having independence of thought and appropriateness of action in accordance with Islamic imperatives.

It is fairly obvious how we got to this extremely dangerous point of near assimilation/extinction. But a lot can still be done to take charge of the situation and to radically change course.

The ummah today is like a cesspool. It is terribly dirty water, and everyone is standing in it, slamming their feet and throwing dirty water and mud on others standing in it too.

The way out is to abandon the brand of activism that today passes for Islamic commitment. If we leave this whole scenario and return some years later, believe me, nothing will have changed. There will still be the same problems, the same dilemmas.

We have to realize that there are no easy, immediately implementable, one-word solutions. Do ------ (fill in the blank) and everything will be all right. Systematically, some of us have to remove ourselves from this mud (recognize that involvement with the community is an absolute must, but mostly as a way of keeping in touch with the reality of the situation and the actual needs of real Muslims, not as a way of expecting to make some "contribution" that can, in the immediate future, alter things in a substantial way) and begin thinking about the future - even the distant future.

I believe that one of the biggest mistakes we have consistently been making for many decades (and even longer) is to say, let's take care of things now, we have to do this for the short-term. As a result, almost all of our efforts get diverted into stop-gap measures. It may seem brutal (but it isn't) that certain immediate "needs" might have to be ignored (don't worry, "activists" will jump in and fill the void if you exit this sphere) for the sake of the future.

Consider - when you spend enormous amounts of time in organizational activities for your MSA, what is the result of such activities?

When you spend time fund-raising, writing letters, trying to send relief supplies, etc., what is the result of such activity?

In short, I believe that the real challenge is not fighting to regain the lost territory of Palestine or Kashmir or whatever - even if we regained the lost territory, what shall we teach these Muslim children? What will be the basis of the "newly-liberated" society?

Our prescriptions are flawed because we see the source of enslavement in physical occupation, when in fact this mode of occupation is passe and only the more brute forces of certain groups of people (in Serbia, in India, in Israel, for instance) demand the imposition of such rule.

We WILLINGLY chose to come here to STUDY a certain way of THINKING and APPROACHING PROBLEMS. That is all that needs to happen today in order for us to be enslaved.

It is not that you can send your child to a so-called "Islamic school" and simultaneously assault them with confusing signals from the rest of the environment around them and expect to produce a healthy, mature, wise, knowledgeable Muslim adult.

Is there an "Islamic biology" or "Islamic physics" to teach this child? Has any Muslim written decently on world history over the last 100 years from the Islamic point of view? If not, how can we teach children history written from an unIslamic perspective and expect them to remain "Islamic"? If the child does so, he/she will certainly be terribly confused and the seeds for loss of faith will already have been implanted.

We have a clear choice to make. Either we can want to hold on to our "comfort" zone - most of us have found something to give us comfort, something to hold on to, something to disguise the darkness of Muslim society and of its tremendous problems. Most of us have come to the position of saying, oh, things are not that bad, there are many Islamic "movements" making a contribution, we are improving, etc., etc. Either we believe in these fanatasies - or, we decide that we will not choose comfort for the sake of real work, and decide to change our own lives first, and work on a certain vision for the future.