Friday, April 4, 2014
Thursday, April 3, 2014
April 5th: The Inaugural Zaytuna College Conference (This Sat - Livestream available)
The steady increase of Muslim presence in the West over the past thirty years—a trend driven primarily by negative economic and political factors in the Muslim world—has caused tremendous strain on the community’s intellectual, economic, and professional resources, which now support over 2,200 mosques, 475 schools, and a vibrant non-profit sector. While this growth poses profound challenges, it also presents extraordinary opportunities. One area marked by both challenges and opportunities is the effort to establish Islamic institutions of higher education in the West. This inaugural Zaytuna College conference seeks to examine the emerging conversation about institutions of Islamic higher education in the West with an eye toward the challenges facing the community.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, the University of California, Berkeley Center for Race and Gender, and the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.
http://zaytunacollege.org/event/april5
2011 Book: "The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics How Sunni Legal Theorists Imagined a Revealed Law" by David R. Vishanoff
This book is the first historical analysis of those parts of Islamic legal theory that deal with the language of revelation, and a milestone in reconstructing the missing history of legal theory in the ninth and tenth centuries. It offers a fresh interpretation of al-Shafii’s seminal thought, and traces the development of four different responses to his hermeneutic, culminating in the works of Ibn Hazm, Abd al-Jabbar, al-Baqillani, and Abu Yala Ibn al-Farra. It reveals startling connections between rationalism and literalism, and documents how the remarkable diversity that characterized even traditionalist schools of law was eclipsed in the fifth/eleventh century by a pragmatic hermeneutic that gave jurists the interpretive power and flexibility they needed to claim revealed status for their legal doctrines. More than a detailed and richly documented history, this book opens new avenues for the comparative study of legal and hermeneutical theories, and offers new insights into unstated premises that shape and restrict Muslim legal discourse today. The book is of interest to all occupied with classical Islam, the development of Islamic law, and comparative hermeneutical research.
Product Details Publisher: American Oriental Society
Publication date: 2011
Bibliographic info: 344 pages
Language(s): English
Cover: Cloth
ISBN: 0-940490-31-5
ISBN13: 978-0-940490-31-4
Reviews "The book in general reflects penetrating thorough research and careful interpretation of a wide range of legal sources and secondary studies, and its major conclusions are set forth convincingly. The reaffirmation of the pivotal role of al-Shafi`i's al-Risala in the conception and elaboration of mainstream Sunni legal theory against recent views questioning this role is to be appreciated. Both achievement and problematic of al-Shafi`i's hermeneutics within his legal theory are preceptively analyzed." - Wilferd Madelung, Ilahiyat Studies 2.2 (2011)
https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_41B0FF3UN.HTM
via Yusuf
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Appropriating Islamic Tradition(s) in the Racialized Classed Context of America: The Example and Legacy of Malcolm X
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Peace and blessings be upon the beloved of God
By: Ebad(ur) Rahman [1]
In their recent study on Muslim American youth, Selcuk Sirin and Michelle Fine, remind us that “there is no singular, monolithic category of people called ‘Muslim Americans.’ Rather, there are many groups of people who can be labeled as Muslim American.” [2] Contrary to what some people (especially Islamophobic nativists) may assume, Muslims in America are not solely here through recent immigration, but also through conversion, especially in the African American community. Recently, Imam Zaid Shakir in a facebook post, writes:
Black History Month should be of interest to every Muslim, especially in America. It is estimated that upwards to 20% of the Africans enslaved in the Americas were Muslim. In some areas, such as the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and parts of Virginia, the percentages of Muslims in the slave population may have approached 40%. The fact that the search of a random African American, Alex Haley, for his roots led him to a Muslim village in West Africa is indicative of the widespread Muslim presence among the enslaved population here in the Americas. [3]
According to some studies, African American Muslims make up __ % of the American Muslim population today. Many of these converts view their embrace of Islam as part of a reclaiming of the African legacy of their ancestors.[4] Perhaps the most notable and well known American Muslim of the twentieth century is Malcolm X, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Malcolm X not only sought to empower his people through Islam in the context of racism and segregation, but generations of Americans after his have been inspired by him and sought to follow in his footsteps.[5] Many have looked to his example in articulating a vision of Islam that is relevant to the society and the times they find themselves in, especially in the struggle for greater social justice in this country, and throughout the world. How this legacy can be built upon to articulate an understanding of Islam that is relevant and speaks to today’s realities of racial and social (and perhaps most importantly economic) injustice in America is what I intend to explore in this paper.
Brother Malcolm
Truth teller about the night side of American democracy
Tellin' America like it is
Its vicious legacy of white supremacy
We shall never forget the witness that you bore
We shall never forget the love that you laid bare
Your fiery spirit is at work among the younger generation
They and us shall never forget you
-Cornel West in 3Ms[6]
As Professor Hamid Dabashi at Columbia notes, although Malcolm X is a pivotal figure in the history of the struggle for social justice in America, “generations of American students come to college having scarcely read a word about Malcolm X, and yet everything about Martin Luther King Jr.”[7]
As Brother Malcolm's wife, Dr. Betty Shabazz, has said at the 96th Street Islamic Cultural Center in '93/'94 [sources: Imam Zaid Shakir & Imam Shair Abdul-Mani who were physically there at the gathering]: 'Everyone is claiming Malcolm, but the Muslims. But Malcolm was a Muslim.' Indeed, one aspect of the overlooked legacy of Malcolm X is how instrumental he was in bringing others to Islam - both in his lifetime and afterwards, especially through the impact of his Autobiography.
Unquestionably, Malcolm X is most well-known for his sharp analyses and consciousness in regards to the racialized conditions of America. In this regard, Malcolm famously himself advocated for Americans to study Islam as a means to “erase from its society the race problem.”[8] Regarding Malcolm X and his articulations of ideals for racial equality, Jamillah Karim, former Spellman College professor of religious studies, notes that “for African American Muslims, what made Islam relevant – and therefore appealing enough for them to convert – was its protest against white supremacy and its empowerment of African American people.”[9] Yet, as Karim and Sherman Jackson, professor at USC, who she draws from note, these concerns often took a backseat during the shift of religious authority that occurred in this country as Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia immigrated in mass numbers starting in 1965. This occurred, ironically, following the repeal of race-based quotas through civil rights legislation.[10] After this, a “virtual monopoly [by the recent immigrant Muslims occurred] over the definition of a properly constituted ‘Islamic’ life in America.” This in turn left Blackamerican Muslims—a term popularized by Jackson who traces it to Eric Lincoln--“increasingly unable to address their cultural, political, and social reality in ways that were either effective in an American context or likely to be recognized as ‘Islamic’ in a Muslim one.”[11] Although in the past there had been attempts to make Islam relevant in the American context as exemplified in the life and vision of Malcolm X, Jackson notes that most of the Blackamerican Muslim community began—consciously and unconsciously--importing the ideological rifts present among overseas Muslims.[12] He notes the contrast between Blackamerican Christians such as black liberation theologians James Cone and Cornel West who were able to “address Blackamerican concerns as Christians” with “the newly entrenched inability of Blackamerican Muslims to speak effectively to these concerns as Muslims.”[13]
To address this problem and empower Blackamerican Muslims to ‘take ownership of their religion’, Jackson argues that a particular understanding of Islam can be falsely universalized and presented as the one and only understanding possible. By noting the extent to which interpretations and understandings of Islam emerge from historical circumstances with an emphasis on the role of human agency, Jackson argues to “look to the classical legacy as the starting point rather than the end of its contemplation.”[14] To address the challenge of articulating an authentic and relevant understanding of the religion especially in the context of Blackamericans, Jackson writes that both mastery or deep study of the rich scholarship of Muslim tradition and appropriation or making relevant to one’s own circumstances are necessary.[15] Had Malcolm X continued his growth and evolution in Islam, Jackson suggests:
Malcolm himself might be leading the way in the transfer of Islamic religious authority from immigrant to native-born hands. And in this capacity, he would have come full-circle from a marginalized consumer of “Islamic” ideas to being among the producers of the parameters of a properly constituted orthodox Islam in America.[16] I would argue that an example of someone today who continues the legacy of Malcolm X and moves Jackson’s theory into practice by embodying a mastery and appropriation of the Islamic tradition today is Imam Zaid Shakir.
Imam Zaid Shakir
"I’ll teach her about a people that gave birth to Malcolm AND Imam Zaid" -Brother Dash, Can I Marry Your Daughter?[17]
“You represent the Prophetic Islamic legacy of Malcolm X” –Cornel West to Imam Zaid Shakir[18]
Described by The New York Times as one of the “leading intellectual lights for a new generation of American Muslims,” Imam Zaid Shakir, a co-founder and professor at the Zaytuna College, draws from his life experiences, education in political science and international relations, and grassroots activism to make his study of Islam relevant to the Muslim American community today.[19] He is an example of someone who has gone to the Middle Eastern “Muslim world” to study their traditions and engages in the process of appropriating them in the here and now of the 21st Century American context. On the issue of racism for example, as Karim writes in her article “Islam for the People,” Imam Zaid like Malcolm X, articulates Islam as an ideal for racial equality while at the same criticizing racism amongst American Muslims.[20] In his article entitled “Islam, The Prophet Muhammad and Blackness,” Imam Zaid refers to W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cornel West, in identifying racism as “the most nagging and festering social ill plaguing our society” and criticizes many Muslims who have “endorsed this disease.”[21]
[For a quick bio brief, this is from Imam Zaid's Wiki entry on facebook as of 3/30/2014:
"Born in Berkeley, California and with his formative years in New Britain, Connecticut, he accepted Islam in 1977 while serving in the United States Air Force and shortly after changed his name to Zaid Salim Shakir. A summa cum laude graduate, he obtained a BA in International Relations at American University in Washington, D.C. and later earned his MA in Political Science at Rutgers University. While at Rutgers, he led a successful campaign for disinvestment from South Africa, and co-founded New Brunswick Islamic Center, formerly known as Masjid al-Huda. After a year of studying Arabic in Cairo, Egypt, he settled in New Haven, Connecticut and continued his community activism, co-founding Masjid al-Islam, the Tri-State Muslim Education Initiative, and the Connecticut Muslim Coordinating Committee. As Imam of Masjid al-Islam from 1988 to 1994 he spearheaded a community renewal and grassroots anti-drug effort. He also taught political science and Arabic at Southern Connecticut State University. He served as an interfaith council Chaplain at Yale University and developed the Chaplaincy Sensitivity Training for physicians at Yale New Haven Hospital.
He then left for Syria to pursue his studies in the traditional Islamic Sciences. For seven years in Syria, and briefly in Morocco, he immersed himself in an intense study of Arabic, Islamic law, Quranic studies, and spirituality. In 2001, he was the first American graduate from Syria's Abu Nour University with a BA in Islamic Sciences and returned to Connecticut, serving again as the Imam of Masjid al-Islam, and writing and speaking frequently on a host of issues."
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zaid-Shakir/113438155337444]
Imam Zaid takes the issue of race head-on as one that must be addressed in the American context for religion to be relevant. In an event on “Martin & Malcolm: Implications of their Legacies for the Future,” in Oakland in 2005 which I attended, Imam Zaid argued for the broader value of Dr. King and Malcolm X’s message beyond their immediate religious constituency. Imam Zaid went on to say that these two leaders articulated a vision of their religious traditions that was relevant to the societal issues they were confronting. This was because they
Clearly, Imam Zaid does not subscribe to a notion that Islam somehow wipes away the question of race from the American context, but sees racism and white racial supremacy as something that must be confronted. In a recent sermon, rather than exacerbating racial divisions within the American Muslim community, Imam Zaid advocates for solidarity between the “immigrant” and “indigenous” Muslim communities,
We mentioned the immigrants and the converts, may Allah […] bless us to build strong bridges and relationships between those two groups, because only when those two groups are brought together, will Islam fulfill its destiny in this land. Only then will Islam be a powerful force of good and virtue, when those forces come together. May Allah bless us to work together to bring those forces together.[23]
Imam Zaid also acknowledges the class differences within the communities—something as I will discuss later, Jackson does not really attend to--and instead of pitting one socio-racial-demographic group against the other, provides practical examples of how those with greater educational and professional resources can help those without. Two examples he gives of organizations that serve as beacons for communal work are IMAN (Inner-City Muslim Action Network) based in Chicago and the Umma Community Clinic in Los Angeles.[24] IMAN was founded in 1995 “by Muslim students, community residents and leaders responding to the pervasive symptoms of inner-city poverty and abandonment.” It aims to provide services, “organizing and arts agenda stem[ming] from our spiritual convictions about community service, human compassion, and social justice, particularly for marginalized people of color.”[25] The Umma Community Clinic was founded by students at UCLA who sought to serve the underserved, in “one of the poorest and most medically underserved areas of the region.”[26] Both of these organizations illustrate the power of Muslims (and non-Muslims) of different backgrounds of class, race, and social privilege, collaborating to ameliorate their community.
Yet, members of the Muslim American communities do not always see eye to eye with each other in a shared effort against social injustice. One can catch a glimpse of the recent tension between immigrant and Blackamerican communities in a letter written in September 2008 by Azhar Usman, a prominent Muslim attorney and comedian of Indian descent. In a widely circulated letter written after the passing of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad who was another pivotal figure in articulating a relevant understanding of Islam in America Usman wrote: “I would like to unburden myself of something that has been sitting like a ton of bricks on my heart for my entire life. I want to apologize to my Blackamerican brothers and sisters in Islam…” and proceeded to apologize for “so much of the historical wrongdoing of so-called "immigrant Muslims"—wrongdoings that have been so hurtful, and insulting, and degrading, and disrespectful, and dismissive, and marginalizing, and often downright dehumanizing.”[27]
Also demonstrating the reality of racism within the American Muslim community, a Muslim spoken-word artist, Dasham Brookins or ‘Brother Dash’, writes about the “unspoken reality of racism and culturalism” in a piece entitled “Can I Marry Your Daughter?” He says “If the Prophet was Bilal [a black Ethiopian] would you reject your deen [religion]? Deny your Rabb [Lord] and still say you’re so fresh and so clean?” highlighting how notions of the racial transcendence Islam calls for conflicts with on the ground reality when black men face obstacles in trying to marry a woman of mostly Arab and South Asian descent. [28] This reflects a problem amongst the dominant Muslim immigrant community in the United States which Jackson believes is “sustained by a deeply entrenched racial myopia or agnosticism” which has clouded their vision of America[29]. Jackson points out that “The events and aftermath of September 11, 2001, may have changed this to a degree, as many immigrant Muslims have come to a keener understanding of both the racialization of Islam (and thus they now speak of racial profiling”) and of their own status as a socially nonwhite group (even if many of them remain legally white).”[30] Outlining his vision for the coming together of immigrant and Blackamericans, Jackson writes for the need to both groups to “accept their Western experience as a primary element in shaping their respective identities.” This would, he posits, allow both of them “to see each other as participants in a common history.”[31] As he writes:
Critique of Jackson
Despite the extreme importance and value of Jackson’s foundational work, like all human endeavors, it is subject to critique. In this regard, Chan-Malik makes a case for the positive effect conversations in ethnic studies, particularly in regards to Asian Americans and Blackamericans relations, could have on the debate of Islam in America. This, she writes “can provide Muslim Americans new discursive horizons for moving beyond past schism, and getting onto the business of articulating the “common cause[s] of our communities.”[34] After introducing Jackson’s key arguments, Chan-Malik writes: “Jackson’s texts relies on a number of essentialized notions of Black-immigrant difference that further contribute to, and ultimately reify…divisions within the community.”[35] She argues that Jackson oversimplifies the relationship that immigrants and blacks have towards whiteness as “immigrant Muslims covet whiteness, Blackamericans stand opposed to it.”[36] Chan-Malik problematizes this essentialization and questions Jackson’s assertion that immigrant Muslims largely enjoy a ‘legally white status.’ She concludes that Jackson’s critique should focus on ethnic particularism rather than a desire by immigrants to assimilate. This critique should also be attentive to the evolution of forms of white privilege, such as in the emphasis of ethnic over racial identities following the culture wars of the 70s.
Chan-Malik also points to Jackson’s “under-acknowledgement of the class diversity of immigrant Muslim communities”[37]. This point caught my eye as well, because class is almost completely absent from Jackson’s analysis of American society. Except for a brief footnote in Jackson’s book regarding the working class immigrants of cities like New York or Detroit, where many Muslims may work as taxicab drivers or in manual labor, the assumption in his analysis tends to be that Muslim immigrants are largely doctors and engineers, who live in the suburbs, and are just enjoying the fruits of privilege on the backs of those who have been racially marginalized, especially Blackamericans. Jackson’s vision of a Malcolm X can also be radically contrasted with that of Cornel West.
West posits that Malcolm X would embrace and espouse the kind of socialism West argues for in his text:
What Malcolm X or anyone who has passed already would espouse were he/she alive today is a subject that can be endlessly debated. Indeed, Manning Marable in his new biography argues for Malcolm X’s leaning towards greater class consciousness in his later days and a growing solidarity with the global south.[39] Most relevant to this paper, is the fact that such an important issue as class is conspicuously missing in Jackson’s writings.
Part of the limitation of Jackson’s analysis and validation of Chan-Malik’s point regarding the value of ethnic studies to this discussion can be seen in the fact that Jackson’s training and previous writings have largely been in the field of Islamic Studies, relating to medieval theology such as the work of the great medieval theologians, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya, as well as constitutional jurisprudence of another medieval Muslim scholar, al-Qarafi.[40] Jackson should be applauded for his effort in starting a much needed conversation on the topic of race and Islam in America, and his contemporaries should be encouraged to further the discussion via relevant critical analyses. Chan-Malik’s suggestion for the incorporation of ethnic and religious studies and the need for interdisciplinary work to take place between the two fields are fully justified.
Jamillah Karim’s work, with her training in anthropology and the social sciences, is an example of interdisciplinary work which brings together the issues of religion, race, class and gender. She also goes further than Jackson in nuancing the ways race plays out with recent non-European immigrants to America. With the immigration of non-Europeans, Karim writes that “new forms of American racism have developed that extend beyond the black-white color line while simultaneously reinforcing it.” While non-European immigrants often face discrimination, there is a tendency to “subscribe to this privileged status to set themselves apart from African Americans” in a context where “blackness is reviled.”[41] Karim looks at the phenomenon of nativism in some African American discourses and focuses on the notion of the ummah (Muslim nation or community) as an ideal which is supposed to transcend racial, ethnic, and economic divisions and prioritize the solidarity of Muslim believers while simultaneously calling for justice.[42] Whether American Muslims can live up to “the ideal that Malcolm X envisioned” in a context where “new ethnic identities have been formed and racialized in ways that pit African Americans and immigrants against each other” is the pressing challenge of the moment.[43] This moment allows the possibility of “creating a common American Muslim identity inclusive of both African Americans and immigrants” especially among young adult Muslims.[44]
The recent surge in Islamophobia, especially manifesting in the controversy surrounding Park 51 and most recently around the television series “All-American Muslim”, is an illustration of the racial underpinnings of hatred directed towards Muslims constructed as non-whites, foreign, immigrant, and alien. It is an ironic but historical trend that resistance towards a group becomes the means for forming solidarity within the community of Muslims--Blackamericans, immigrants and others, as they come under attack for their association and embrace of Islam.[45] It is therefore unfortunate that the recent study Backlash 9/11 aiming to record not only the post 9/11 backlash directed towards Arabs and Muslims in America but also the mobilization that sprung up in its response does not include much about African American Muslims. This is supposedly because “as groups, African American Muslims and other converts have not been targets of government initiatives; thus they do not fall within the purview of our study.”[46] However a quick review of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali’s post conversion life strongly suggests that, Blackamerican Muslims and other converts have been affected by government surveillance, discrimination and the general trend of Islamophobia. This reasoning perhaps highlights the need to broaden our perspectives of ethnic and racial solidarity especially in academic circles.
This sentiment is further reinforced by Jackson’s correct observation regarding the importance of Blackamericans’ embrace of Islam in complicating the claims of Islam as foreign to the American landscape. “It is primarily through Blackamerican conversion that Islam enjoys whatever status it does as a bona fide American religion” because “Blackamericans remain the only indigenous Americans whose conversion to Islam connotes neither cultural nor ethnic apostasy.” Without this indigenous presence, Jackson believes “Islam would be orphaned in United States, with virtually nothing to save it from being relegated to the status of an alien, hostile threat.”
It remains to be seen how Muslims in America will address their realities in a systematic fashion. It would certainly do much good for Muslims in this country to learn and draw from the experiences of religious minorities and communities of color. By studying and connecting with the history of what Cornel West calls the underside or “night-side” of American democracy, Muslim Americans can intimately get to know America not just as a mythical, "magical" place of dreams and hopes, but one of struggle, heart-wrenching discrimination and abuse. The experience of a people in this country whose humanity was and in many ways continues to be denied, yet forged on, and struggle to this day to empower and raise the consciousness of others, is a legacy and history we sorely need to tap into today.
There is much to learn from the experiences and history of Islam in the Blackamerican community, for this rich community in particular affords a much needed rubric to help Muslim Americans articulate an understanding of Islam that is relevant to their concerns, needs and realities of today. In this analysis, drawing from the insights of Karim and Malik-Chan, we must be attentive to the ways in which racial formations in America are complicated beyond just black and white. In the global context, we also must find a way to stand for justice, confront government abuses while condemning terrorism and forge bonds of solidarity with other racial and ethnic minority groups and classes. Central to this project must be internalizing the reality, as Imam Zaid Shakir writes; that “We are all in this together.”[47] This is made painfully clear by the racial underpinnings of the dehumanization of Muslims and other peoples of color in this country and abroad. Perhaps, if, as Jackson articulates, white supremacy can be seen as a common enemy to all peoples (including whites) Muslims in America may have real grounds for the building of a common struggle.
walhamdullilah...
Works Cited
Bakalian, Amy and Mehdi Bozogmehr Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009.
Barboza, Steven. American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Bayoumi, Moustafa. How Does It Feel to be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America. New York: The Penguin Press, 2008.
Brookins, Dasham. "Can I Marry Your Daughter Spoken Word Poet, Writer and Photographer Brother Dash. Web. 19 Dec. 2011.
Chan-Malik, Sylvia. ""Common Cause": On the Black-Immigrant Debate and Constructing the Muslim
American." Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 2.8 (May 2011): 1-39. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. http://ucsc.academia.edu/SylviaChanMalik/Papers/639681/_Common_Cause_On_the_Black-Immigrant_Debate_and_Constructing_the_Muslim_American.
Cone, James H. Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. New York: Orbis Books, 1991 [2002].
Craun, Dustin. "Cornel West Just Shouted out @ImamZaidShakir "you Represent the Prophetic Islamic Legacy of Malcolm X"" Twitter. 3 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2011..
Dabashi, Hamid. “U.S. Muslims are Americans too.” 26 Nov. 2009..
Hedges, Chris. “Turning King’s Dream Into a Nightmare.” Truthdig 17 Jan. 2010.
Goodstein, Laurie. “U.S. Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground.” New York Times. 18 June, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/us/18imams.html?pagewanted=print.
Grewal, Zareena. “Marriage in color: race, religion and spouse selection in four American mosques.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2. February 2009, 323-345.
Jamal, Amaney and Nadine Naber. Eds. Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2008.
Jackson, Sherman. "Ibn Taymîyah on Trial in Damascus," The Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 41-85.
----Islamic Law and the State: the Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb Al-Dīn Al-Qarāfī. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996.
--- On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghāzalīʼs Fayṣal Al-Tafriqa Bayna Al-Islam Wa Al-zandaqa. Karachi: Oxford UP, 2002.
---- Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
-- “Black Orientalism.” Black Routes to Islam. Ed. Manning Marable & Hishaam Aidi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
-- Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009
Karim, Jamillah. American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, And Gender Within the Ummah [Muslim community], New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: a Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
Shakir, Zaid. Scattered Pictures: Reflections of An American Muslim. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2005.
--- “We are All in This Together.” 17 Oct. 2010. http://www.newislamicdirections.com/nid/notes/we_are_all_in_this_together/.
--- "Imam Zaid Shakir: Eid Al-Adha 2010 Sermon." YouTube. Zaytuna, 19 Nov. 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011..
--- "Martin and Malcolm Slideshow with Dr. Cornell West and Imam Zaid Shakir."New Islamic Directions - Imam Zaid Shakir. 10 Apr. 2009. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.slideshow-with-dr-cornell-west-and-imam-zaid-shakir/>.
Sirin, Selcuk, and Michelle Fine. Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Usman, Azhar. “An apology.” 14 Sept. 2008. http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2813/
Webb, Suhaib. "Framing the Discussion on Culture & the Fitna of the Immigrant/Indigenous
Dichotomy." SuhaibWebb.com — Your Virtual Mosque. 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Dec. 2011..
West, Cornel. Prophecy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 1982 [2002]. 143-144
Wise, Tim. Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2009. 23.
X, Malcolm and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964 [1999].
Yusuf, Hamza & Zaid Shakir. “Civic Involvement: An Islamic Imperative” in Agenda to Change Our Condition. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2007. 51-52
[1] This paper was originally conceived as a term paper for Professor Millery Polyne’s seminar on Black Intellectual Thought Across the Atlantic in the fall of 2011 at NYU.
[2] Sirin, Selcuk, and Michelle Fine. Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods. New York: New York University Press, 2008. 37.
[3] https://www.facebook.com/imamzaidshakir/posts/10151931621828359
[4] Sylvanie Diouf, Allan Austin reference. As Imam Zaid has pointed out, even Alex Haley in his own search for his roots, traces his ancestors to a Muslim village in Africa, named Kunta Kinta. [reference]
[5] This idea is captured in the title of this collection of stories of various American converts to Islam: Barboza, Steven. American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Many converts, as highlighted by the renowned Muslim American scholar of the Nawawi Foundation (nawawi.org) in Chicago, Dr. Umar F. Abd-Allah, point to the Autobiography as the catalyst for their conversions to Islam, as was in his own case. As he recounts, as an English major at Cornell he stayed up all night reading the Autobiography into the morning and subsequently converted to Islam and switched his studies to Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, where he wrote his dissertation in 1978. See "Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah Chairman of the Board & Scholar-in-Residence." Nawawi Foundation. 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011..
[6] This spoken word piece can be heard as the background of a slideshow of the December 2nd, 2005 event in Oakland, CA. “Martin & Malcolm: Implications of their Legacies for the Future,” featuring Imam Zaid Shakir and Cornel West. Shakir, Zaid. "Martin and Malcolm Slideshow with Dr. Cornell West and Imam Zaid Shakir."New Islamic Directions - Imam Zaid Shakir. 10 Apr. 2009. Web. 18 Dec. 2011..
[7] Dabashi, Hamid. “U.S. Muslims are Americans too.” 26 Nov. 2009..
Union Theological Seminary professor James Cone, in fact, calls
attention to the coming together of the viewpoints of Malcolm X and
Martin Luther King and their complimentary relationship near the end of
their lives. See Cone, James H. Martin & Malcolm & America: A
Dream or a Nightmare. New York: Orbis Books, 1991 [2002]. See also,
Hedges, Chris. “Turning King’s Dream Into a Nightmare.” Truthdig 17 Jan.
2010.
.
In fact, Professor Dabashi’s statement in regards to Dr. King
(‘everything) is an overstatement especially given the selective memory
of mainstream celebrations of Dr. King’s life “I have a dream” which is
often told with neglect to even the first words of that very same King
speech in reference to the “insufficient funds” of America’s promise to
the Afro American. Note Dr. Cornel West’s apt characterization of this
phenemon as the ‘Santa Clausification’ of Dr. King. [See this, also in
reference to Nelson Mandela, in Imam Zaid & Cornel West: Malcolm and
Martin DVD].
[8] X, Malcolm and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964 [1999]. 370-371.
[9] Karim, Jamillah. American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, And Gender Within the Ummah [Muslim community], New York: New York University Press, 2009. 42-43.
[10] Jackson, Sherman. Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 3-4. Jackson writes of “the hegemonic presumptions and deployments of modern, Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam, particularly as manifested in the collective vision of Muslim immigrants to the United States.”
[11] Jackson, 4. Jackson uses the term “Blackamerican” because in his view “the force of American history has essentially transformed these erstwhile Africans into a new people,” see pg. 17 of the same book.
[12] Al-Amin, Jamil. Revolution by the Book. Maryland: Writers’ Inc, 1994 could perhaps be cited as another attempt in articulating a relevant articulation of Islam in America.
[13] Jackson, 73.
[14] Jackson, 8.
[15] Jackson, 5.
[16] Jackson, 167-168.
[17] Brookins, Dasham. "Can I Marry Your Daughter"Spoken Word Poet, Writer and Photographer Brother Dash. Web. 19 Dec. 2011..
[18] Craun, Dustin. "Cornel West Just Shouted out @ImamZaidShakir "you Represent the Prophetic Islamic Legacy of Malcolm X"" Twitter. 3 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2011..
[19] Goodstein, Laurie. “U.S. Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground.” New York Times. 18 June, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/us/18imams.html?pagewanted=print. Full disclosure, I studied with Imam Zaid in a pilot seminary program at the Zaytuna Institute from 2004-2008.
[20] Karim, 47.
[21] Shakir, Zaid. Scattered Pictures: Reflections of An American Muslim. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2005. 76.
[22] (1:56-4:30) of “Martin and Malcolm” DVD/CD
[23] Shakir, Zaid. "Imam Zaid Shakir: Eid Al-Adha 2010 Sermon." YouTube. Zaytuna, 19 Nov. 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011..
[24] Yusuf, Hamza & Zaid Shakir. “Civic Involvement: An Islamic Imperative” in Agenda to Change Our Condition. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2007. 51-52
[25] "ABOUT." Inner-City Muslim Action Network. Web. 19 Dec. 2011..
[26] "HISTORY-UMMA Community Clinic." HOME - UMMA Community Clinic. Web. 19 Dec. 2011..
[27] Usman, Azhar. “An apology.” 14 Sept. 2008. http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2813/
[28] Brookins, Dasham. “Can I Marry Your Daughter?” 9 Jul 2009. http://brotherdash.com/?p=68
[29] Jackson, Sherman. Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 3. Also see Jackson’s talk on “Muslims, Race and Racial Agnosia in America” at the University of Southern California, January 21, 2010. http://capture.usc.edu/mediasite//Viewer/?peid=4c726a4f18904c14b47448346e4b3b5c
[30] Ibid. 165.
[31] Jackson, 92.
[32] Jackson, 94-95
[33] See Webb, Suhaib. "Framing the Discussion on Culture & the Fitna of the Immigrant/Indigenous Dichotomy." SuhaibWebb.com — Your Virtual Mosque. 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Dec. 2011..
[34] Chan-Malik, Sylvia. ""Common Cause": On the Black-Immigrant Debate and Constructing the Muslim American." Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 2.8 (May 2011): 1-39. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. http://ucsc.academia.edu/SylviaChanMalik/Papers/639681/_Common_Cause_On_the_Black-Immigrant_Debate_and_Constructing_the_Muslim_American, 3.
[35] Ibid. 21.
[36] Ibid. 23.
[37] Ibid, 29.
[38] West writes: West, Cornel. Prophecy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 1982 [2002]. 143-144
[39] See Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: a Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
[40] See Jackson, Sherman A. Islamic Law and the State: the Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb Al-Dīn Al-Qarāfī. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996; On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghāzalīʼs Fayṣal Al-Tafriqa Bayna Al-Islam Wa Al-zandaqa. Karachi: Oxford UP, 2002. Also, his "Ibn Taymîyah on Trial in Damascus," The Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 41-85.
[41] Karim, 5.
[42] Karim, 6-7.
[43] Karim, 3, 21.
[44] Karim, 23. Another fascinating study which examines how young Muslim Americans engage in protest against racism in America is that of inter-racial marriage. See Grewal, Zareena. “Marriage in color: race, religion and spouse selection in four American mosques.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2. February 2009, 323-345.
[45] Jackson, Sherman. “Black Orientalism.” Black Routes to Islam. Ed. Manning Marable & Hishaam Aidi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 44
[46] Bakalian, Amy and Mehdi Bozogmehr Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009. 8.
[47] Shakir, Zaid. “We are All in This Together.” 17 Oct. 2010. http://www.newislamicdirections.com/nid/notes/we_are_all_in_this_together/.
Peace and blessings be upon the beloved of God
By: Ebad(ur) Rahman [1]
In their recent study on Muslim American youth, Selcuk Sirin and Michelle Fine, remind us that “there is no singular, monolithic category of people called ‘Muslim Americans.’ Rather, there are many groups of people who can be labeled as Muslim American.” [2] Contrary to what some people (especially Islamophobic nativists) may assume, Muslims in America are not solely here through recent immigration, but also through conversion, especially in the African American community. Recently, Imam Zaid Shakir in a facebook post, writes:
Black History Month should be of interest to every Muslim, especially in America. It is estimated that upwards to 20% of the Africans enslaved in the Americas were Muslim. In some areas, such as the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and parts of Virginia, the percentages of Muslims in the slave population may have approached 40%. The fact that the search of a random African American, Alex Haley, for his roots led him to a Muslim village in West Africa is indicative of the widespread Muslim presence among the enslaved population here in the Americas. [3]
According to some studies, African American Muslims make up __ % of the American Muslim population today. Many of these converts view their embrace of Islam as part of a reclaiming of the African legacy of their ancestors.[4] Perhaps the most notable and well known American Muslim of the twentieth century is Malcolm X, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Malcolm X not only sought to empower his people through Islam in the context of racism and segregation, but generations of Americans after his have been inspired by him and sought to follow in his footsteps.[5] Many have looked to his example in articulating a vision of Islam that is relevant to the society and the times they find themselves in, especially in the struggle for greater social justice in this country, and throughout the world. How this legacy can be built upon to articulate an understanding of Islam that is relevant and speaks to today’s realities of racial and social (and perhaps most importantly economic) injustice in America is what I intend to explore in this paper.
Brother Malcolm
Truth teller about the night side of American democracy
Tellin' America like it is
Its vicious legacy of white supremacy
We shall never forget the witness that you bore
We shall never forget the love that you laid bare
Your fiery spirit is at work among the younger generation
They and us shall never forget you
-Cornel West in 3Ms[6]
As Professor Hamid Dabashi at Columbia notes, although Malcolm X is a pivotal figure in the history of the struggle for social justice in America, “generations of American students come to college having scarcely read a word about Malcolm X, and yet everything about Martin Luther King Jr.”[7]
As Brother Malcolm's wife, Dr. Betty Shabazz, has said at the 96th Street Islamic Cultural Center in '93/'94 [sources: Imam Zaid Shakir & Imam Shair Abdul-Mani who were physically there at the gathering]: 'Everyone is claiming Malcolm, but the Muslims. But Malcolm was a Muslim.' Indeed, one aspect of the overlooked legacy of Malcolm X is how instrumental he was in bringing others to Islam - both in his lifetime and afterwards, especially through the impact of his Autobiography.
Unquestionably, Malcolm X is most well-known for his sharp analyses and consciousness in regards to the racialized conditions of America. In this regard, Malcolm famously himself advocated for Americans to study Islam as a means to “erase from its society the race problem.”[8] Regarding Malcolm X and his articulations of ideals for racial equality, Jamillah Karim, former Spellman College professor of religious studies, notes that “for African American Muslims, what made Islam relevant – and therefore appealing enough for them to convert – was its protest against white supremacy and its empowerment of African American people.”[9] Yet, as Karim and Sherman Jackson, professor at USC, who she draws from note, these concerns often took a backseat during the shift of religious authority that occurred in this country as Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia immigrated in mass numbers starting in 1965. This occurred, ironically, following the repeal of race-based quotas through civil rights legislation.[10] After this, a “virtual monopoly [by the recent immigrant Muslims occurred] over the definition of a properly constituted ‘Islamic’ life in America.” This in turn left Blackamerican Muslims—a term popularized by Jackson who traces it to Eric Lincoln--“increasingly unable to address their cultural, political, and social reality in ways that were either effective in an American context or likely to be recognized as ‘Islamic’ in a Muslim one.”[11] Although in the past there had been attempts to make Islam relevant in the American context as exemplified in the life and vision of Malcolm X, Jackson notes that most of the Blackamerican Muslim community began—consciously and unconsciously--importing the ideological rifts present among overseas Muslims.[12] He notes the contrast between Blackamerican Christians such as black liberation theologians James Cone and Cornel West who were able to “address Blackamerican concerns as Christians” with “the newly entrenched inability of Blackamerican Muslims to speak effectively to these concerns as Muslims.”[13]
To address this problem and empower Blackamerican Muslims to ‘take ownership of their religion’, Jackson argues that a particular understanding of Islam can be falsely universalized and presented as the one and only understanding possible. By noting the extent to which interpretations and understandings of Islam emerge from historical circumstances with an emphasis on the role of human agency, Jackson argues to “look to the classical legacy as the starting point rather than the end of its contemplation.”[14] To address the challenge of articulating an authentic and relevant understanding of the religion especially in the context of Blackamericans, Jackson writes that both mastery or deep study of the rich scholarship of Muslim tradition and appropriation or making relevant to one’s own circumstances are necessary.[15] Had Malcolm X continued his growth and evolution in Islam, Jackson suggests:
Malcolm himself might be leading the way in the transfer of Islamic religious authority from immigrant to native-born hands. And in this capacity, he would have come full-circle from a marginalized consumer of “Islamic” ideas to being among the producers of the parameters of a properly constituted orthodox Islam in America.[16] I would argue that an example of someone today who continues the legacy of Malcolm X and moves Jackson’s theory into practice by embodying a mastery and appropriation of the Islamic tradition today is Imam Zaid Shakir.
Imam Zaid Shakir
"I’ll teach her about a people that gave birth to Malcolm AND Imam Zaid" -Brother Dash, Can I Marry Your Daughter?[17]
“You represent the Prophetic Islamic legacy of Malcolm X” –Cornel West to Imam Zaid Shakir[18]
Described by The New York Times as one of the “leading intellectual lights for a new generation of American Muslims,” Imam Zaid Shakir, a co-founder and professor at the Zaytuna College, draws from his life experiences, education in political science and international relations, and grassroots activism to make his study of Islam relevant to the Muslim American community today.[19] He is an example of someone who has gone to the Middle Eastern “Muslim world” to study their traditions and engages in the process of appropriating them in the here and now of the 21st Century American context. On the issue of racism for example, as Karim writes in her article “Islam for the People,” Imam Zaid like Malcolm X, articulates Islam as an ideal for racial equality while at the same criticizing racism amongst American Muslims.[20] In his article entitled “Islam, The Prophet Muhammad and Blackness,” Imam Zaid refers to W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cornel West, in identifying racism as “the most nagging and festering social ill plaguing our society” and criticizes many Muslims who have “endorsed this disease.”[21]
[For a quick bio brief, this is from Imam Zaid's Wiki entry on facebook as of 3/30/2014:
"Born in Berkeley, California and with his formative years in New Britain, Connecticut, he accepted Islam in 1977 while serving in the United States Air Force and shortly after changed his name to Zaid Salim Shakir. A summa cum laude graduate, he obtained a BA in International Relations at American University in Washington, D.C. and later earned his MA in Political Science at Rutgers University. While at Rutgers, he led a successful campaign for disinvestment from South Africa, and co-founded New Brunswick Islamic Center, formerly known as Masjid al-Huda. After a year of studying Arabic in Cairo, Egypt, he settled in New Haven, Connecticut and continued his community activism, co-founding Masjid al-Islam, the Tri-State Muslim Education Initiative, and the Connecticut Muslim Coordinating Committee. As Imam of Masjid al-Islam from 1988 to 1994 he spearheaded a community renewal and grassroots anti-drug effort. He also taught political science and Arabic at Southern Connecticut State University. He served as an interfaith council Chaplain at Yale University and developed the Chaplaincy Sensitivity Training for physicians at Yale New Haven Hospital.
He then left for Syria to pursue his studies in the traditional Islamic Sciences. For seven years in Syria, and briefly in Morocco, he immersed himself in an intense study of Arabic, Islamic law, Quranic studies, and spirituality. In 2001, he was the first American graduate from Syria's Abu Nour University with a BA in Islamic Sciences and returned to Connecticut, serving again as the Imam of Masjid al-Islam, and writing and speaking frequently on a host of issues."
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zaid-Shakir/113438155337444]
Imam Zaid takes the issue of race head-on as one that must be addressed in the American context for religion to be relevant. In an event on “Martin & Malcolm: Implications of their Legacies for the Future,” in Oakland in 2005 which I attended, Imam Zaid argued for the broader value of Dr. King and Malcolm X’s message beyond their immediate religious constituency. Imam Zaid went on to say that these two leaders articulated a vision of their religious traditions that was relevant to the societal issues they were confronting. This was because they
did not allow themselves to see their religions as a false universal that could be separated from the particular context of race in America and the history of the struggle against racist supremacy, white supremacy in America, so they lived their faith in that context and in the context of that struggle they were shaped by forces that were bigger than any particular religion, they were shaped by forces that defied adequate understanding from one particular perspective, so they were able to transcend their immediate religious context and involve themselves in a struggle that engulfs an entire people, that engulfed and involved an entire nation and that struggle goes on. That struggle goes on, therefore, what they had to say about it and how they contributed to it is still relevant in the day and time that we live in. (emphasis mine).[22]
Clearly, Imam Zaid does not subscribe to a notion that Islam somehow wipes away the question of race from the American context, but sees racism and white racial supremacy as something that must be confronted. In a recent sermon, rather than exacerbating racial divisions within the American Muslim community, Imam Zaid advocates for solidarity between the “immigrant” and “indigenous” Muslim communities,
We mentioned the immigrants and the converts, may Allah […] bless us to build strong bridges and relationships between those two groups, because only when those two groups are brought together, will Islam fulfill its destiny in this land. Only then will Islam be a powerful force of good and virtue, when those forces come together. May Allah bless us to work together to bring those forces together.[23]
Imam Zaid also acknowledges the class differences within the communities—something as I will discuss later, Jackson does not really attend to--and instead of pitting one socio-racial-demographic group against the other, provides practical examples of how those with greater educational and professional resources can help those without. Two examples he gives of organizations that serve as beacons for communal work are IMAN (Inner-City Muslim Action Network) based in Chicago and the Umma Community Clinic in Los Angeles.[24] IMAN was founded in 1995 “by Muslim students, community residents and leaders responding to the pervasive symptoms of inner-city poverty and abandonment.” It aims to provide services, “organizing and arts agenda stem[ming] from our spiritual convictions about community service, human compassion, and social justice, particularly for marginalized people of color.”[25] The Umma Community Clinic was founded by students at UCLA who sought to serve the underserved, in “one of the poorest and most medically underserved areas of the region.”[26] Both of these organizations illustrate the power of Muslims (and non-Muslims) of different backgrounds of class, race, and social privilege, collaborating to ameliorate their community.
Yet, members of the Muslim American communities do not always see eye to eye with each other in a shared effort against social injustice. One can catch a glimpse of the recent tension between immigrant and Blackamerican communities in a letter written in September 2008 by Azhar Usman, a prominent Muslim attorney and comedian of Indian descent. In a widely circulated letter written after the passing of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad who was another pivotal figure in articulating a relevant understanding of Islam in America Usman wrote: “I would like to unburden myself of something that has been sitting like a ton of bricks on my heart for my entire life. I want to apologize to my Blackamerican brothers and sisters in Islam…” and proceeded to apologize for “so much of the historical wrongdoing of so-called "immigrant Muslims"—wrongdoings that have been so hurtful, and insulting, and degrading, and disrespectful, and dismissive, and marginalizing, and often downright dehumanizing.”[27]
Also demonstrating the reality of racism within the American Muslim community, a Muslim spoken-word artist, Dasham Brookins or ‘Brother Dash’, writes about the “unspoken reality of racism and culturalism” in a piece entitled “Can I Marry Your Daughter?” He says “If the Prophet was Bilal [a black Ethiopian] would you reject your deen [religion]? Deny your Rabb [Lord] and still say you’re so fresh and so clean?” highlighting how notions of the racial transcendence Islam calls for conflicts with on the ground reality when black men face obstacles in trying to marry a woman of mostly Arab and South Asian descent. [28] This reflects a problem amongst the dominant Muslim immigrant community in the United States which Jackson believes is “sustained by a deeply entrenched racial myopia or agnosticism” which has clouded their vision of America[29]. Jackson points out that “The events and aftermath of September 11, 2001, may have changed this to a degree, as many immigrant Muslims have come to a keener understanding of both the racialization of Islam (and thus they now speak of racial profiling”) and of their own status as a socially nonwhite group (even if many of them remain legally white).”[30] Outlining his vision for the coming together of immigrant and Blackamericans, Jackson writes for the need to both groups to “accept their Western experience as a primary element in shaping their respective identities.” This would, he posits, allow both of them “to see each other as participants in a common history.”[31] As he writes:
From this perspective, the Post-Colonial Muslim might be able to see that he and the Negro are products of the same historical process. Both reflect the unlit side of the Enlightenment, the darker dimensions of the triumph of "Western" man, the scarred and mutilated underbelly of modernity, with all its hypocrisy, racial terror, and moral myopia: "We hold these truths to be self-evident," in the most brutal and inhumane period of American slavery; "Liberte, equalite, fraternite," on the eve of the most unequal, unbrotherly, and dehumanizing period of European colonial savagery.
On this understanding, the immigrant and Blackamerican Muslim could join forces as part of the corrective conscience of the West, a new Western consciousness committed to liberating both itself and humanity from the debilitating self-alienation and idolatry imposed by the false universals of white supremacy.[32] [emphasis mine]
Critique of Jackson
Despite the extreme importance and value of Jackson’s foundational work, like all human endeavors, it is subject to critique. In this regard, Chan-Malik makes a case for the positive effect conversations in ethnic studies, particularly in regards to Asian Americans and Blackamericans relations, could have on the debate of Islam in America. This, she writes “can provide Muslim Americans new discursive horizons for moving beyond past schism, and getting onto the business of articulating the “common cause[s] of our communities.”[34] After introducing Jackson’s key arguments, Chan-Malik writes: “Jackson’s texts relies on a number of essentialized notions of Black-immigrant difference that further contribute to, and ultimately reify…divisions within the community.”[35] She argues that Jackson oversimplifies the relationship that immigrants and blacks have towards whiteness as “immigrant Muslims covet whiteness, Blackamericans stand opposed to it.”[36] Chan-Malik problematizes this essentialization and questions Jackson’s assertion that immigrant Muslims largely enjoy a ‘legally white status.’ She concludes that Jackson’s critique should focus on ethnic particularism rather than a desire by immigrants to assimilate. This critique should also be attentive to the evolution of forms of white privilege, such as in the emphasis of ethnic over racial identities following the culture wars of the 70s.
Chan-Malik also points to Jackson’s “under-acknowledgement of the class diversity of immigrant Muslim communities”[37]. This point caught my eye as well, because class is almost completely absent from Jackson’s analysis of American society. Except for a brief footnote in Jackson’s book regarding the working class immigrants of cities like New York or Detroit, where many Muslims may work as taxicab drivers or in manual labor, the assumption in his analysis tends to be that Muslim immigrants are largely doctors and engineers, who live in the suburbs, and are just enjoying the fruits of privilege on the backs of those who have been racially marginalized, especially Blackamericans. Jackson’s vision of a Malcolm X can also be radically contrasted with that of Cornel West.
West posits that Malcolm X would embrace and espouse the kind of socialism West argues for in his text:
The tragedy of Malcolm X (similar to that of King) was that he did not live long enough to project this new black vision of society. Unlike King, he precluded capitalism (and any version thereof) as a possibility, but he never unequivocally affirmed the socialist vision… [Had he continued his mission] my hunch is that his religious sensibilities…black cultural sentiments, moral convictions, political consciousness, and personal engagement would have evolved into revolutionary Islamic perspective and praxis closely similar to the viewpoint put forward in this book.[38]
What Malcolm X or anyone who has passed already would espouse were he/she alive today is a subject that can be endlessly debated. Indeed, Manning Marable in his new biography argues for Malcolm X’s leaning towards greater class consciousness in his later days and a growing solidarity with the global south.[39] Most relevant to this paper, is the fact that such an important issue as class is conspicuously missing in Jackson’s writings.
Part of the limitation of Jackson’s analysis and validation of Chan-Malik’s point regarding the value of ethnic studies to this discussion can be seen in the fact that Jackson’s training and previous writings have largely been in the field of Islamic Studies, relating to medieval theology such as the work of the great medieval theologians, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya, as well as constitutional jurisprudence of another medieval Muslim scholar, al-Qarafi.[40] Jackson should be applauded for his effort in starting a much needed conversation on the topic of race and Islam in America, and his contemporaries should be encouraged to further the discussion via relevant critical analyses. Chan-Malik’s suggestion for the incorporation of ethnic and religious studies and the need for interdisciplinary work to take place between the two fields are fully justified.
Jamillah Karim’s work, with her training in anthropology and the social sciences, is an example of interdisciplinary work which brings together the issues of religion, race, class and gender. She also goes further than Jackson in nuancing the ways race plays out with recent non-European immigrants to America. With the immigration of non-Europeans, Karim writes that “new forms of American racism have developed that extend beyond the black-white color line while simultaneously reinforcing it.” While non-European immigrants often face discrimination, there is a tendency to “subscribe to this privileged status to set themselves apart from African Americans” in a context where “blackness is reviled.”[41] Karim looks at the phenomenon of nativism in some African American discourses and focuses on the notion of the ummah (Muslim nation or community) as an ideal which is supposed to transcend racial, ethnic, and economic divisions and prioritize the solidarity of Muslim believers while simultaneously calling for justice.[42] Whether American Muslims can live up to “the ideal that Malcolm X envisioned” in a context where “new ethnic identities have been formed and racialized in ways that pit African Americans and immigrants against each other” is the pressing challenge of the moment.[43] This moment allows the possibility of “creating a common American Muslim identity inclusive of both African Americans and immigrants” especially among young adult Muslims.[44]
The recent surge in Islamophobia, especially manifesting in the controversy surrounding Park 51 and most recently around the television series “All-American Muslim”, is an illustration of the racial underpinnings of hatred directed towards Muslims constructed as non-whites, foreign, immigrant, and alien. It is an ironic but historical trend that resistance towards a group becomes the means for forming solidarity within the community of Muslims--Blackamericans, immigrants and others, as they come under attack for their association and embrace of Islam.[45] It is therefore unfortunate that the recent study Backlash 9/11 aiming to record not only the post 9/11 backlash directed towards Arabs and Muslims in America but also the mobilization that sprung up in its response does not include much about African American Muslims. This is supposedly because “as groups, African American Muslims and other converts have not been targets of government initiatives; thus they do not fall within the purview of our study.”[46] However a quick review of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali’s post conversion life strongly suggests that, Blackamerican Muslims and other converts have been affected by government surveillance, discrimination and the general trend of Islamophobia. This reasoning perhaps highlights the need to broaden our perspectives of ethnic and racial solidarity especially in academic circles.
This sentiment is further reinforced by Jackson’s correct observation regarding the importance of Blackamericans’ embrace of Islam in complicating the claims of Islam as foreign to the American landscape. “It is primarily through Blackamerican conversion that Islam enjoys whatever status it does as a bona fide American religion” because “Blackamericans remain the only indigenous Americans whose conversion to Islam connotes neither cultural nor ethnic apostasy.” Without this indigenous presence, Jackson believes “Islam would be orphaned in United States, with virtually nothing to save it from being relegated to the status of an alien, hostile threat.”
It remains to be seen how Muslims in America will address their realities in a systematic fashion. It would certainly do much good for Muslims in this country to learn and draw from the experiences of religious minorities and communities of color. By studying and connecting with the history of what Cornel West calls the underside or “night-side” of American democracy, Muslim Americans can intimately get to know America not just as a mythical, "magical" place of dreams and hopes, but one of struggle, heart-wrenching discrimination and abuse. The experience of a people in this country whose humanity was and in many ways continues to be denied, yet forged on, and struggle to this day to empower and raise the consciousness of others, is a legacy and history we sorely need to tap into today.
There is much to learn from the experiences and history of Islam in the Blackamerican community, for this rich community in particular affords a much needed rubric to help Muslim Americans articulate an understanding of Islam that is relevant to their concerns, needs and realities of today. In this analysis, drawing from the insights of Karim and Malik-Chan, we must be attentive to the ways in which racial formations in America are complicated beyond just black and white. In the global context, we also must find a way to stand for justice, confront government abuses while condemning terrorism and forge bonds of solidarity with other racial and ethnic minority groups and classes. Central to this project must be internalizing the reality, as Imam Zaid Shakir writes; that “We are all in this together.”[47] This is made painfully clear by the racial underpinnings of the dehumanization of Muslims and other peoples of color in this country and abroad. Perhaps, if, as Jackson articulates, white supremacy can be seen as a common enemy to all peoples (including whites) Muslims in America may have real grounds for the building of a common struggle.
walhamdullilah...
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Craun, Dustin. "Cornel West Just Shouted out @ImamZaidShakir "you Represent the Prophetic Islamic Legacy of Malcolm X"" Twitter. 3 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.
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Goodstein, Laurie. “U.S. Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground.” New York Times. 18 June, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/us/18imams.html?pagewanted=print.
Grewal, Zareena. “Marriage in color: race, religion and spouse selection in four American mosques.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2. February 2009, 323-345.
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----Islamic Law and the State: the Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb Al-Dīn Al-Qarāfī. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996.
--- On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghāzalīʼs Fayṣal Al-Tafriqa Bayna Al-Islam Wa Al-zandaqa. Karachi: Oxford UP, 2002.
---- Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
-- “Black Orientalism.” Black Routes to Islam. Ed. Manning Marable & Hishaam Aidi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
-- Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009
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Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: a Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
Shakir, Zaid. Scattered Pictures: Reflections of An American Muslim. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2005.
--- “We are All in This Together.” 17 Oct. 2010. http://www.newislamicdirections.com/nid/notes/we_are_all_in_this_together/.
--- "Imam Zaid Shakir: Eid Al-Adha 2010 Sermon." YouTube. Zaytuna, 19 Nov. 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.
--- "Martin and Malcolm Slideshow with Dr. Cornell West and Imam Zaid Shakir."New Islamic Directions - Imam Zaid Shakir. 10 Apr. 2009. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.
Sirin, Selcuk, and Michelle Fine. Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Usman, Azhar. “An apology.” 14 Sept. 2008. http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2813/
Webb, Suhaib. "Framing the Discussion on Culture & the Fitna of the Immigrant/Indigenous
Dichotomy." SuhaibWebb.com — Your Virtual Mosque. 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Dec. 2011.
West, Cornel. Prophecy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 1982 [2002]. 143-144
Wise, Tim. Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2009. 23.
X, Malcolm and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964 [1999].
Yusuf, Hamza & Zaid Shakir. “Civic Involvement: An Islamic Imperative” in Agenda to Change Our Condition. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2007. 51-52
[1] This paper was originally conceived as a term paper for Professor Millery Polyne’s seminar on Black Intellectual Thought Across the Atlantic in the fall of 2011 at NYU.
[2] Sirin, Selcuk, and Michelle Fine. Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods. New York: New York University Press, 2008. 37.
[3] https://www.facebook.com/imamzaidshakir/posts/10151931621828359
[4] Sylvanie Diouf, Allan Austin reference. As Imam Zaid has pointed out, even Alex Haley in his own search for his roots, traces his ancestors to a Muslim village in Africa, named Kunta Kinta. [reference]
[5] This idea is captured in the title of this collection of stories of various American converts to Islam: Barboza, Steven. American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Many converts, as highlighted by the renowned Muslim American scholar of the Nawawi Foundation (nawawi.org) in Chicago, Dr. Umar F. Abd-Allah, point to the Autobiography as the catalyst for their conversions to Islam, as was in his own case. As he recounts, as an English major at Cornell he stayed up all night reading the Autobiography into the morning and subsequently converted to Islam and switched his studies to Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, where he wrote his dissertation in 1978. See "Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah Chairman of the Board & Scholar-in-Residence." Nawawi Foundation. 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.
[6] This spoken word piece can be heard as the background of a slideshow of the December 2nd, 2005 event in Oakland, CA. “Martin & Malcolm: Implications of their Legacies for the Future,” featuring Imam Zaid Shakir and Cornel West. Shakir, Zaid. "Martin and Malcolm Slideshow with Dr. Cornell West and Imam Zaid Shakir."New Islamic Directions - Imam Zaid Shakir. 10 Apr. 2009. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.
[7] Dabashi, Hamid. “U.S. Muslims are Americans too.” 26 Nov. 2009.
[8] X, Malcolm and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964 [1999]. 370-371.
[9] Karim, Jamillah. American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, And Gender Within the Ummah [Muslim community], New York: New York University Press, 2009. 42-43.
[10] Jackson, Sherman. Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 3-4. Jackson writes of “the hegemonic presumptions and deployments of modern, Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam, particularly as manifested in the collective vision of Muslim immigrants to the United States.”
[11] Jackson, 4. Jackson uses the term “Blackamerican” because in his view “the force of American history has essentially transformed these erstwhile Africans into a new people,” see pg. 17 of the same book.
[12] Al-Amin, Jamil. Revolution by the Book. Maryland: Writers’ Inc, 1994 could perhaps be cited as another attempt in articulating a relevant articulation of Islam in America.
[13] Jackson, 73.
[14] Jackson, 8.
[15] Jackson, 5.
[16] Jackson, 167-168.
[17] Brookins, Dasham. "Can I Marry Your Daughter"Spoken Word Poet, Writer and Photographer Brother Dash. Web. 19 Dec. 2011.
[18] Craun, Dustin. "Cornel West Just Shouted out @ImamZaidShakir "you Represent the Prophetic Islamic Legacy of Malcolm X"" Twitter. 3 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.
[19] Goodstein, Laurie. “U.S. Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground.” New York Times. 18 June, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/us/18imams.html?pagewanted=print. Full disclosure, I studied with Imam Zaid in a pilot seminary program at the Zaytuna Institute from 2004-2008.
[20] Karim, 47.
[21] Shakir, Zaid. Scattered Pictures: Reflections of An American Muslim. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2005. 76.
[22] (1:56-4:30) of “Martin and Malcolm” DVD/CD
[23] Shakir, Zaid. "Imam Zaid Shakir: Eid Al-Adha 2010 Sermon." YouTube. Zaytuna, 19 Nov. 2010. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.
[24] Yusuf, Hamza & Zaid Shakir. “Civic Involvement: An Islamic Imperative” in Agenda to Change Our Condition. Hayward: Zaytuna Institute, 2007. 51-52
[25] "ABOUT." Inner-City Muslim Action Network. Web. 19 Dec. 2011.
[26] "HISTORY-UMMA Community Clinic." HOME - UMMA Community Clinic. Web. 19 Dec. 2011.
[27] Usman, Azhar. “An apology.” 14 Sept. 2008. http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2813/
[28] Brookins, Dasham. “Can I Marry Your Daughter?” 9 Jul 2009. http://brotherdash.com/?p=68
[29] Jackson, Sherman. Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 3. Also see Jackson’s talk on “Muslims, Race and Racial Agnosia in America” at the University of Southern California, January 21, 2010. http://capture.usc.edu/mediasite//Viewer/?peid=4c726a4f18904c14b47448346e4b3b5c
[30] Ibid. 165.
[31] Jackson, 92.
[32] Jackson, 94-95
[33] See Webb, Suhaib. "Framing the Discussion on Culture & the Fitna of the Immigrant/Indigenous Dichotomy." SuhaibWebb.com — Your Virtual Mosque. 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Dec. 2011.
[34] Chan-Malik, Sylvia. ""Common Cause": On the Black-Immigrant Debate and Constructing the Muslim American." Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 2.8 (May 2011): 1-39. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. http://ucsc.academia.edu/SylviaChanMalik/Papers/639681/_Common_Cause_On_the_Black-Immigrant_Debate_and_Constructing_the_Muslim_American, 3.
[35] Ibid. 21.
[36] Ibid. 23.
[37] Ibid, 29.
[38] West writes: West, Cornel. Prophecy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 1982 [2002]. 143-144
[39] See Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: a Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
[40] See Jackson, Sherman A. Islamic Law and the State: the Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb Al-Dīn Al-Qarāfī. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996; On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghāzalīʼs Fayṣal Al-Tafriqa Bayna Al-Islam Wa Al-zandaqa. Karachi: Oxford UP, 2002. Also, his "Ibn Taymîyah on Trial in Damascus," The Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 41-85.
[41] Karim, 5.
[42] Karim, 6-7.
[43] Karim, 3, 21.
[44] Karim, 23. Another fascinating study which examines how young Muslim Americans engage in protest against racism in America is that of inter-racial marriage. See Grewal, Zareena. “Marriage in color: race, religion and spouse selection in four American mosques.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2. February 2009, 323-345.
[45] Jackson, Sherman. “Black Orientalism.” Black Routes to Islam. Ed. Manning Marable & Hishaam Aidi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 44
[46] Bakalian, Amy and Mehdi Bozogmehr Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009. 8.
[47] Shakir, Zaid. “We are All in This Together.” 17 Oct. 2010. http://www.newislamicdirections.com/nid/notes/we_are_all_in_this_together/.
Paper I Wrote: "The Road to God as Personal Experience of Meaning"
Ebad Rahman
Baseball as a
Road to God
Professors John
Sexton & Mike Murray
May 7, 2012
The
Road to God as Personal Experience of Meaning
As
the semester ends, I ask myself what have I taken away from the course? What
are the insights that I genuinely can carry forth into my religious life and
community? In this paper, I will attempt to highlight what I believe to be the
most important insights I take away this semester by highlight significant
moments in several texts we have encountered. Using baseball, I will argue for
the need for personal and direct experience of the sacred—something organized
forms of religions are increasingly becoming alienating from as they become
institutionalized and material interests take precedence.
Religion for many people is
something to be avoided or seen as silly. How have the ideals, beliefs and
stories of what many of us take to be sublime moments of encounter with the
divine become so sullied and associated with abuse and hurt? I believe the
professionalization of baseball is insightful for understanding why many people
fear the abuses of religion in an institutionalized form. This is through the loss of underlying meaning
of those religions which can also been seen in the commercialization of
baseball whereby it loss the simplicity of the play element that Johan Huizinga
highlights in Homo Ludens. Huizinga
writes of how “with the increasing systemization and regimentation of sport,
something of the pure play-quality is inevitably lost”[1]. The
transformation of the simple play element into commercialized franchise points
to this transformation of a personal, meaningful endeavor into established structures
that become barriers to individualized experience especially through the
substation of meaning for profit.
This
commercialization of baseball is reflected in a statement Hal Chase “who was
unarguably the best player on the rooster of the Highlanders (or Yankees, as
the newspaper came to call them” makes in the middle of Eric Greenberg’s The Celebrant. Chase says in response to
the idea of him being a philosopher:
No. I am a
professional ballplayer. ‘Professional’ means only one thing. You do it for
money. But the bastards don’t let you go where the money’s best. They strap you
with the reserve clause and tie you up for life. The National Commission may be
bread and butter to you, but it’s cost me thousands. If I’d signed two years
before I did, when the leagues were at each other’s throats, I’d have made
three times the money. I hit twenty points over three hundred my first full
year, and that winter they sent me a contract that knocked me down five hundred
dollars. ‘Sure you did all right,’ they said, ‘but the club didn’t win.’ As if
it was my fault! I’d been busting my ass all year. Well, that’s when I saw my
way clear. I’m a professional ballplayer. I do it for money, and if there’s
more money in losing than in winning, shit if I care.[2].
This
passionate statement from Chase highlights how the struggle of an individual is
not valued when material interests take over and become the sole determining
factor for what is considered to be success. It is a reflection of our larger
society’s obsession with material things as the highest thing to which we can
aspire to do define ourselves by. It tells of how owners try to take advantage
of talent instead of letting it shine for its own sake. This then has an effect
on the players themselves, transforming heroes into losing their ideals and
entering the ‘rat race.’ Unfortunately, too many of our religious institutions
have given into this goal as well where it is only about increasing their
territory, authority, or power and not about allowing people to experience the
ineffable.
William James writes of the division
of the religious field into institutional and personal religion. “In the more
personal branch of religion,” he writes,
It is on the
contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the center of
interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness.
And although the favor of the God, as forfeited or gained, is still an
essential feature of the story, and theology plays a vital part therein, yet
the acts to which this sort of religions prompts are personal not ritual acts,
the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical
organization, with its priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to
altogether secondary place. The relation goes direct from heart to heart, from
soul to soul, between man and his maker.[3]
It
is through this personal encounter with questions of our own feebleness, our
being alone and empty without meaning, that this personal relationship with the
sacred can emerge based on experience and reflection. The quote from James also
points to a major contention towards religion or God today. If through baseball
or love, or really anything that makes us realize there is more to life than
the material, we wish to have a relationship of appreciating and expressing awe
at the ineffable, it is usually institutional barriers that lead people not to
continue this quest for meaning. People are rightfully angered by the abuse
that occurs at the hands of people who claim to know what God’s will is for
certain and think they can pass judgment on peoples’ standing with God. People,
I believe, largely want to have that personal relationship with God that gives
soulful meaning to one’s lives. What they don’t want to deal with is other
peoples’ biases and psychological baggage that hinders them from their being
able to communicate with their personal maker.
I think James insight of this
division of religious experience is crucial to understanding how just as the
primacy of the play element has been largely lost in commercialized baseball,
so too has the essential experience of encountering the sacred has been clouded
and even stomped out in institutionalized forms of religion. Primacy is placed
instead on dogma, on repeating what individuals who are seen as giants, saints,
great scholars or even mystics of the past have said. But if we do not have experiences of our own,
repetition of books of creed, are not sufficient for truly having a
relationship with God. I recently have been struggling with this in a recent
lecture by an esteemed scholar of Islam. There was indeed beauty and awe at
just being able to see that here has a remarkably accomplished elderly scholar who continued to teach the religion and even prayed
standing. But in his lecture, his statement encouraging people to believe in
God and not have any doubt, fell short of encouraging people to experience the
sacred for themselves. As I reflected about this with a friend, we exclaimed
how just telling people not have to doubt and to have faith does not help for a
true religious experience. People must be encouraged to go on a journey to
investigate and question themselves in light of their existence, in light of
the world we live in, and the events that surround us.
It
is through reflection upon the events in our lives that push us to question
ourselves about what we stand for. This is also a personal encounter where we
must decide for ourselves based on our understanding of what is moral and in
congruence with our ideals rather than falling back to the institutions of our
society. It can make us question the institutional forms of practice in our
society by reflecting upon the shared humanity of others in a very personal way.
Here, the history of baseball also provides a lesson that can inspire us to do
question ourselves regarding how we often fall short of our professed ideals as
in the story of Jackie Robinson and the racism that prevented blacks from
joining and being one with white baseball players. In Pete Hamill’s Snow in August, Rabbi Hirsch “seemed to
have chosen baseball as his key to understanding America”.[4]
This is particularly insightful for us in speaking about the accessibility of
God to people and how institutional barriers are set up to exclude marginalized
figures and communities from having that access. It is also insightful for
taking us from just theory and feel-good-religion and ideals to think about the
concrete situation of black people in America. Theologically, this is an
important move to make—to take our religious ideals of shared humanity, wishing
for each other what we wish for ourselves, and putting it to the test of lived
reality. It is to push us to imagine what it would be like to be on the
receiving side of such cruelty and intolerance. It is to do what Michael did
when he
tried to imagine
what it must be like to be Robinson…What was it like to wake up every goddamned
morning and see that skin and know that some shmuck looked down on you just for
that?...How could that be? Michael’s anger rose in him and then faded. If I’m
angry, he thought, sitting here, still white or pink, how must Robinson feel?[5]
This
feeling must push us to act in the world, seeking aide from the Divine, but
also carrying out our responsibility God asks of us. It is to “trust in God and
tie your camel” as the famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad goes. It calls us
to act in the world voicing dissent against injustice rather than faulting
people for not believing enough—the mistake I believe Hamill engages in as he
tries to wrestle with the problem of the evil, particularly in light of the
atrocities of the Holocaust. Rather than absolve ourselves of responsibility by
appealing to the ineffable, we must set out as Red Barber did “to do a deep self
examination. I attempted to find out who I was. This did not come easily, and
it was not done lightly”[6].
Just as Barber engages with this process of question who he is and what he
stands for, and puts the ideals he had learned about being concerned for others
into action in the case of Jackie Robinson, so too must we confront the
questions that face us as we grow and interact with others. Not just others, we
must engage with our own beliefs and examine them, especially when we find our
religious ideals being twisted to exclude certain people or to privilege
others.
Keeping
an eye on the abuses of institutionalized forms of religion does not have to
push us to completely dismiss religious traditions as having nothing to offer
us in the modern world. It is rather to appropriate the tradition and make it
relevant and meaningful to us in our context. Here we can see the value that so
many characters in our readings derived from connecting themselves to a
tradition or story larger than themselves. It shows us a fallacy of modernity where
we are supposed to be uprooted from traditions, left to figure out meaning on
our own, supposedly through the saving light of reason with the Enlightenment
hope of cutting away all superstition and myth. As Eliade points out, this
process where repetition and cycles of life are “emptied of its religious
content, necessarily leads to a pessimistic vision of existence”.[7]
This I believe is an accurate description of lives without meaning beyond
survival or the amassing of wealth.
Perhaps
it is a modern obsession with facticity that pushes believers in the modern
world to become literalists and do away with metaphorical understanding of scriptural
narrations. I imagine pre-modern people were much more comfortable with telling
stories to derive meaning from rather than being obsessed with whether they
happened or not. It also shows us how scholars of scripture who go on for pages
in the commentaries of scripture about where a certain incident took place,
what they were wearing, eating, etc. often miss the point of the story. It is
like the novice ballgame spectator who only focuses on the ball. It takes experience
and wisdom to develop a sensitivity to notice and appreciate what is happening
in front of one’s eyes. As Gideon Clark remembers his father telling him,
“Gideon, there’s a lot more to watching a baseball game than keeping your eye
on the ball.”[8]
The value of spiritual masters, in the wisdom we might benefit from those who
have gone before us, lies when people like Matthew Clark genuinely want to
share that experience and teach us how to experience it for ourselves by paying
attention to the symphony on the field that is a metaphor for life.
If
we think of religious experience as related to aesthetics, we see the limitations
of an Enlightenment obsession with rationality and science—with that which can
be measured and calculated. We can then recognize something humanity may be
losing as it sees itself to be progressing from the shackles of myth that is
seen as false instead of as providing meaning. It is like Robert Coover’s
description of Cuss in The Universal
Baseball Association, Inc. whose “mockery encapsulates him, cuts him off
from any sense of wonder or mystery, make life nothing more than getting by
with the least pain possible…such a life seems less than human.”[9] Such
a void makes one not appreciate the richness of life and substitutes mere
survival if not enjoyment with living a meaningful life. Although this may seem
to be primitive, as Huizinga writes, “In this sphere of sacred play the child
and the poet are at home with the savage. His aesthetic sensibility has brought
the modern man closer to this sphere than the ‘enlightened man of the 18th
century ever was”[10].
The feelings that inspire “beauty, fright, and mystery” are not necessarily
products of a rational analysis of a piece of artwork or of nature, but rather,
it is with reconnecting with the play element in us from childhood, that we
rekindle a part of our humanity that the modern world is often at odds with.
Something
that accounts for the alienation we face when trying to experience the sacred
directly and personally is our distance from the natural environment of the
world. We increasingly live and work in urban spaces with apartment buildings,
mass produced furniture, food, clothes, where it is unthinkable to trace where
these products are coming from in terms of natural resources and the work that
has gone into making them. There is distance modern people experience from the
seasons of the year as well as the alternation of day and night. Baseball, A.
Barlett Giamatti writes, is special among the sports because “The game was
outdoors, on grass, in the sun. It began at winter’s end, and ended before
frost. It made the most of high skies, clement weather, and the times of
planting and growth.”[11]
This connection with nature provided a way to sit in front of a beautiful green
lawn mixed with earth. It is a telling metaphor for our attempts to hit a ball
into the horizons instead of remaining on the ground. Thus, “Baseball is at
home in the natural world, mindful of its own fragility.” This can be read as
also acknowledging our limitations and feebleness before the awesomeness of the
natural environment as Rabbi Heschel highlights. This reflection upon the
universe can push us out of our slumber to think there is nothing greater than
ourselves, to a higher being or presence who we are indebted to[12].
By
having standards more lofty than that of the judgment of other human beings and
material success, we embark on a journey to God. It is to lift our eyes to
heavens, rather than merely what others may think of that we can undergo a path
of renewal and transformation even when we make mistakes and slip up. These
mistakes may cause us to lose our careers in organized baseball, as it did to
Roy Hobbs, but still hold out a promise for making amends and possibly getting
right with God. I see The Natural as
the struggle of a man to finally break out of the corrupt greedy structures of
institutionalized baseball to start over again even if it costs him “Miss Paris”
and thirty five thousand dollars. We need hope and meaning to be able to make
choices that going beyond material considerations. For Hobbs it is the belief
in love for more than himself that ultimately motivates him. “You must win,
Roy,” Iris tells him. “Win for our boy.”[13]
Iris points something of meaning to Hobbs that is greater than all the riches
in the world. It is giving hope and meaning to future generations as
represented in their son. As she said earlier, “Without heroes we’re all plain
people and don’t know how far we can go.”[14]
Meaning and significance is thus given through aspiration that Hobbs can embody
for others. Yet it is through his efforts at trying to be an inspiration, and
not necessarily his success in doing so, that is the standard of success if we
take the personal approach of valuing an individual by their intention.
Institutional and commercial standards do not have room for this sort of
‘measurement.’ An attentive to the sacred can help us appreciate the efforts to
be true to a higher calling even amidst our failures. This is only through an
intimate knowledge of the struggles of an individual and judging through eyes
of mercy rather than a cold calculating analysis of the ‘hard facts’.
When
we went to Citi Fields earlier this month, a classmate remarked, “I wonder how
the field would look without all the advertisements.” It was a profound
reflection I thought and I looked across the stands for the numerous ads that
on display for the duration of the game. It is a metaphor for how bombarded we
are with distractions that prevent us from appreciating what is in front of us.
For this reason there truly is wisdom in the injunction to take time out of our
daily monotonous routines to undergo a pilgrimage or journey for purification
and retrospection. This push us to think about how perhaps we are approaching
faith and religion from the wrong door if we try to simply get at it through an
appeal to rationality and facticity? Perhaps, the road to God, like love, is
about openness to experience. This is what baseball can offer us when we try to
understand the thrill and love for the game that it inspires in a child who
identifies with players and a team and casts his hopes with the Dodgers for
example. There is more to life than simple calculations. If it were just about
calculations, the newspaper stats would have been sufficient for Doris Goodwin.
But there was something in the experience of her watching the game and keeping
score herself with the hope of pleasing and sharing in the joy of recounting
the game to her father that made it worthwhile. What I take away from the class
is that only through a personal relationship with the ineffable, where we
recognize the limitations of the rational process, and allow ourselves to
experiences that do not show up in graphs and charts, but nonetheless are real,
can we approach God. We must encourage people to embark on personal journeys to
find themselves and find their relationship with God through mystery and awe
rather than appealing to accept religious dogma without experiencing the sacred
for themselves.
Barber,
Red. "On Jackie Robinson." The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told.
By Jeff Silverman. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2001.
Coover,
Robert. The Universal Baseball Association: Inc. J Henry Waugh, Prop.
[S.l.]: New American Library (A Plume Book), 1968. Print.
Eliade,
Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1959. Print.
Giamatti,
A. Bartlett. and Kenneth S. Robson. A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball
Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1998. Print.
Greenberg, Eric Rolfe. The
Celebrant: A Novel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1983. Print.
Hamill,
Pete. Snow in August. Thorndike, Me.: Thorndike, 1997. Print.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God
in Search of Man; a Philosophy of Judaism. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Cudahy, 1955. Print.
Huizinga, Johan. Homo
Ludens; a Study of the Play-element in Culture. Boston: Beacon, 1955.
Print.
James, William. The
Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York:
Modern Library, 1936. Print.
Kinsella, W. P. The Iowa
Baseball Confederacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Print.
[1] Huizinga,
Johan. Homo Ludens; a Study of the Play-element in Culture. Boston:
Beacon, 1955, 197.
[2] Greenberg, Eric Rolfe. The Celebrant: A Novel.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1983, 172.
[3] James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A
Study in Human Nature. New York: Modern Library, 1936, 17.
[5] Hamil, Snow in August, 179.
[6] Barber,
Red. "On Jackie Robinson." The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told.
By Jeff Silverman. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2001, 133.
[7] Eliade, Mircea.
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1959, 107.
[8] Kinsella,
W. P. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986,
248.
[9] Coover,
Robert. The Universal Baseball Association: Inc. J Henry Waugh, Prop.
[S.l.]: New American Library (A Plume Book), 1968, 252.
[10] Huizinga, 26.
[11] Giamatti,
A. Bartlett. and Kenneth S. Robson. A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball
Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1998, 56.
[12] Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God in Search of Man; a
Philosophy of Judaism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1955, 112.
[14] Ibid, 148.
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