Dr. J: 'Indigenization' v. 'Assimilation'

the distinction between 'indigenization,' that is, carving out a space for oneself in society and "assimilation," that is, accepting the place in society assigned to one by the dominant group. In the case of Blackamerican Muslims, this is a critical distinction, for, as both blacks and as Muslims, experience has suggested that the dominant culture does not have all the answers and that in many instances accepting the invitation to be included in the latter might be tantamount to accepting admission into a burning building.

-pg. 169 of Sherman Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican

[footnote 80: To take just one example of the inadequacies of present understandings of both pluralism and equality, Stephen Carter notes that he was told by a leading evangelist that Muslim inmates have no cause to complain because they have all the rights and privileges that Christian inmates have. Carter perceptively responds: "No doubt they do. But they would prefer to have the rights they need as Muslims. The right to do everything that Christians are allowed to do is not the same as the right to follow God in their own way." Carter, God's Name in Vain, 157-158. See also my "Shari'ah, Democracy and the Modern Nation State: Some Reflections on Islam, Popular Rule and Pluralism," Fordham International Law Journal 27, no. 1 (December, 2003): 102-107.]

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Dr. J - Resistance

Did I say that I love this man for his vision, thoughtfulness, scholarship and relevancy! :)

From such a position, that is, within the American constitutional order, the enterprises of resistance and protest would be able to reassert themselves as acts dedicated to reforming America and to holding her to her own ideals, rather than as attempts to destroy her or impose upon her an alien vision from without. Resistance, however, would have to emerge as a positive, efficacious effort that served a higher good. Indeed, Blackamerican Muslims would have to recognize that blind resistance is no less grounded in a false universal than is the order that it blindly resists.

-pg. 168 of Islam and the Blackamerican by Sherman A. Jackson

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False Universals and "Immigrant Islam" 4

Having said this much, I should add that Immigrant Islam is not synonymous with immigrant Muslims, especially those of the second and third generations, many of whom are actually opposed to its hegemony. Thus, while a successful Third Resurrection will necessarily attack the false pretensions of Immigrant Islam in general, this does not mean that it must target immigrant Muslims. The Third Resurrection is aimed at ideas not at people. Still, in the absence of a viable, American alternative, most immigrant Muslims are likely to remain at least provisional supporters of Immigrant Islam, for, if nothing else, the latter goes a long way in preserving their sense of authenticity, identity, and ownership. In this context, it remains to be seen how disaffected immigrant Muslims will relate to the Third Resurrection and vice versa.

-pg. 13 of Sherman A. Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection

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False Universals and "Immigrant Islam" 3

In all of this, the classical Tradition plays a misleading and profoundly problematic role. On the one hand, it rarely informs the actual substance of the doctrines of Immigrant Islam, at least not directly. This is because most immigrant Muslims are themselves only slightly less removed from the classical Tradition than are their Blackamerican counterparts. On the other hand, the classical Tradition is presumed, by natural inference, to be the basis of immigrant articulations, in which capacity in actually confers authority upon the latter. Because, however, Immigrant Islam is not really based on the classical Tradition, it cannot transfer the latter’s power of self-authentication to Blackamerican Muslims. As a result, the latter are forced to proceed without the power or possibility of self-authentication, which leaves them to process their black, American reality through the prism of the real and/or imagined expectations of immigrant and overseas possessors of “true Islam.”

–pg. 12-13 of Sherman A. Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection

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False Universals and "Immigrant Islam" 2

This essentialism is reinforced by the mental habit of trying to subsume Old and New World realities under a single articulation of Islam. Even when Immigrant Islam purports to address specifically American issues, half its audience remains the teeming throngs and popular clerics of the Middle East and Asia. As one Muslim immigrant writer recently boasted, his column in a Western newspaper was also run in the Muslim world, enabling him to speak to both audiences simultaneously. [16] But on such an arrangement, with rare exceptions, the real object of his ruminations could be neither the concrete realities of New York or Karachi or Cairo, but, rather, an empty abstraction hovering somewhere over the Atlanitc. Yet, because these declarations carry the imprimatur of having issued from an individual from the Muslim world and because non-Western critics located in the West are able to present their cultural inheritance as bona fide and useful knowledge, these prescriptions routinely pass for a genuine engagement of "the West" in the name of Islam.

–pg. 12 of Sherman A. Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection

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False Universals and "Immigrant Islam" 1

Immigrant Islam embodies the habit of universalizing the particular. It enshrines the historically informed expressions of Islam in the modern Muslim world as the standard of normativeness for Muslims everywhere. In fact, it equates its understanding of Islam itself with a simple, unmediated perception of an undifferentiated ontological reality. On this approach, “true Islam” can only assume one form anywhere it goes. And in this process, Immigrant Islam’s interpretations are effectively placed beyond critique via the tacit denial that they are in fact interpretations. In short, Immigrant Islam does not interpret; it merely transfers “true” Islam from one location to the next.

-pg. 12 of Sherman A. Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection

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More of Dr. J laying a foundation/framework

Quoting in a different style that I think is more readable (and encouraging to give more time to reflect upon before moving to the next sentence - especially when each one is so packed!):

These are all quotes from Dr. Sherman A. Jackson's 2005 book Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection

"The Third Resurrection is not a romantic, iconoclastic, antimodernity impulse that seeks refuge in the material lifestyle of the medieval past." -pg. 6

"Its primary interest lies, rather, in certain structural features of classical Muslim ecumenicism whose function it was to reconcile the competing interests of interpretive integrity and intrareligious pluralism." -pg. 6-7

"Given the breadth of its geographical expansion and its conscious decision not to adjudicate doctrinal disputes through a centralized ecclesiastical authority, classical Sunnism was forced to develop alternative mechanisms for this purpose. These mechanisms provided the ability to adjust to changing circumstances as the religion moved through space and time." -pg. 7

"It is primarily these mechanisms, rather than any body of fixed medieval doctrines, that the Third Resurrection seeks to enlist into the cause of Blackamerican Islam." -pg. 7

“This system produced a stunningly massive body of legal, theological, and religious doctrine, some worthy of consideration in a modern context, others empatically not. In negotiating its way to a dignified American existence, the Third Resurrection will look to the classical legacy as the starting point rather than the end of its contemplation." -pg. 11

"More importantly, the structural features of classical Islam will confer upon Blackamerican Muslims both the right and the responsibility to develop their own body of concrete doctrine." -pg. 8

"This is not to convert the classical Tradition into an ideological flea-market or a license to abandon the value and/or concept of orthodoxy. Indeed, Blackamerican Muslims will be able to purchase the advantages of the classical system only by paying the cost of recognizing its constraint. Still, given their role as independent agents, as opposed to passive recipients, in the process of formulating doctrine, the classical Tradition will function as both a brake and as an accelerator.” – pg. 8

"By false universal, I am referring to the phenomenon of history internalized, normalized, and then forgotten as history. This invariably leads to the tendency to speak in universal terms but from a particularly cultural, ideological, or historical perspective. In this process, the cognitive mass [mask?] of the universal category eclipses the contribution of the particular perspective from which the speakers speaks. "Human," ''Islam,'' ''justice,'' and the like are all taken, thus, to represent not particular understandings but ontological realities that are equally esteemed and apprehended by everyone, save the stupid, the primitive, or the morally depraved." - pg. 9

"From this vantage point, only those who subscribe to specific concretions of these ostensibly universal categories are justified in laying any claim to them. In this capacity, and precisely because it is so imperceptible, the false universal turns out to function as a powerful tool of domination.” – pg. 9

"All of this is evocative, of course, of the postmodernist assault on Enlightenment universalism. While postmodernist discourse has deepened my appreciation for these matters, it is not the actual source and beginning of my critique." [footnote 10] -pg. 9

"This goes back, rather, to Sunni Tradition, specifically the writings of the Hanbali jurist and theologian, Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiya (d.728/1328), who mounted a devastating critique of the early Greek and later Muslim doctrine of ontological universals. Over the course of this campaign, Ibn Taymiya defends the integrity of primordial, natural reason (fitra) against the aspersions cast upon it by the rationalist proponents of formal definitions and logical syllogisms.” – pg. 9

“This denial of ontological universals has direct and far-reaching implications for our understanding of both Islam and race."- pg. 11

"As for Islam, it implies that there is no “real,” “true,” or “authentic” Islam apart from the historical instantiations (read interpretations) of the religion in the world. Even if the Qur’an and the Sunna were to remain physically in the world, there would no doctrine of Unanimous Consensus or Five Pillars or jihad in the absence of Muslims, for these are products of human understanding rather than ontological givens." - pg. 11-12

"And while this does not imply that any particular doctrine or school is ipso false, it does mean that none is transcendent." - pg. 12

"Muslims, in other words, whenever and wherever they happen to be, are ensconced in historical situatedness, and this endows them with a perspective from which they speak." - pg. 12

"Where their uncoordinated efforts results in unanimous agreement, this may serve as the functional equivalent of a transcendent view, inasmuch as the agreement itself shows the view to be impervious to the dictates of any particular perspective. But where there is disagreement (assuming due dillegence) no particular perspective can be justified in projecting itself onto the world as a universal standard for all. It is here that my critique of what I have been referring to as “Immigrant Islam” begins.” –pg. 12

-to be continued?...

If you are blown away by Dr. Jackson's thought, please get his book Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection!

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