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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