"In disavowing race as a factor in achieving educational diversity, the court all but ensured that the student population at the campuses of elite institutions will become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29/us/affirmative-action-supreme-court
Just completed reading this little book called This America which I enjoyed for its erudition, snapshots of significant events, thinkers/writers, and lively writing style. I would like to further investigate explorations of liberalism. I'm particularly interested in the ability of contemporary believers, especially Muslims, and their ability to practice their faith commitments and flourish in a US context, but also elsewhere in Europe or Muslim-majority countries.
The book is based on her previously published articles linked here:
Abraham/Ibrahim is mentioned nearly seventy times throughout the text of the Qur'an, and only Moses's/Musa's name appears more frequently in the book. [...] A title the Qur'an uses for Abraham/Ibrahim that is also shared by both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is "friend of God" [khalil Allah] (Q4:125; cf. Isa. 41:8; Jas 2:23).
The Qur'an presents Abraham/Ibrahim as a true believer who, even though he predated the Prophet Muhammad by centuries, is the prototype for all Muslims to follow because he lived his life in complete submission to God's will.
His exemplary character is summed up in this verse, which explains both what Abraham/Ibrahim was and what he was not. "Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian, but he was an upright person [hanifan] who submitted [musliman] and was not one of those who associate [mushrikin]" (Q3:67).
Because he lived long before both Judaism and Christianity, he should not be identified with either of those religions. He was also not someone who committed the sin of shirk, or association, by violating the unity of God and associating something or someone in creation with the uncreated diety.
Abraham/Ibrahim is described in this verse as a hanif, which is translated as "upright person," and is often understood to be someone who practices monotheism. The word hanif appears twelve times in the Qur'an with eight of them referring to Abraham/Ibrahim, who is the only person identified this way by name in the text. [...]
The important role that Abraham/Ibrahim plays as a model believer can be seen in another way in Q3:67. The Arabic word that is translated here as "who submitted" is "muslim," a term that describes a person who engages in the act of submission that gives the religion of Islam its name. The verse reflects the belief that, long before the coming of Muhammad, prophets like Abraham/Ibrahim and their followers were living lives of submission to God's will. This is why Muhammad is repeatedly told in the Qur'an that he should follow the "religion of Abraham/Ibrahim" -- his task was not to found a new faith, but to call people back to the way that God had intended for humanity from the beginning. "Then We revealed to you (Muhammad) to folllow the religion of Abraham, who was an upright person and was not one of those who associate (Q16:123; cf. Q2:135; Q3:95; Q6:161; Q22:78).
[...] Abraham/Ibrahim was not guilty of shirk (association) because he practiced shukr (thankfulness).
"Truly, there is a good example for you in Abraham" (Q60:4).
--John Kaltner & Younus Y. Mirza, The Bible and the Qur'an: Biblical Figures in the Islamic Tradition (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 10-15.
Dr. Worthen is a historian at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who writes frequently about higher education.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/opinion/college-students-monks-mental-health-smart-phones.html
If I speak of the students last it is not merely because they were the crucial persons with whom I spent my time, as must be true in any college; it is also because no way exists of describing what really goes on in a classroom once the door is closed. What goes on is a kind of secret between him who stands and those who sit. I knew this from the first; it was my secret even more than it was theirs. They had their own responses which I could hear or see them make: they raised their hands, they talked, they shook their heads, they laughed, they looked bored; and special approval or disapproval they expressed -- the custom is now obsolete -- by stamping or shuffling their feet on the floor. But even then I could believe that if anything of true moment was happening in their minds there was no immediate way for them to show it, any more than I could show, except by talking in the maturest way I could, and following any new idea as far as it would take me, how much our conversations interested me and how much I learned from them.
Mark Van Doren, My Columbia: Reminiscences of University Life, ed. Ashbel Green (New York: Columbia University, 2005), 110.
Malcolm X taught himself to read and write in prison, the hard way. He copied the dictionary, page by page, struggling to pronounce the words and to commit the definitions to memory.
In his autobiography he writes: ". . . as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. . . . I never had been so truly free in my life."
New worlds continued to open, but none would have if Malcolm hadn't first transformed himself this way. This crucial point has been missed in the recent reappraisals of the Malcolm X legacy.
Malcolm X's newly acquired reading skills allowed him to transform himself from hustler to disciple of the Black Muslim separatist, Elijah Muhammad. Eventually the disciple saw through Black Muslim racism and embraced a more inclusive humanism. The metamorphosis had yet to be completed when Malcolm was murdered in 1965.
In the wake of the movie "Malcolm X," newspapers and journals have carried reassessments and speculations about what he would be doing if he were alive today. Black conservatives, focusing on Malcolm's insistence on black self-sufficiency, call him the founder of their movement. But black liberals say Malcolm's nationalism would have kept him forever apart from those conservatives who doubt the need for civil rights laws.
It's striking that this debate ignores the central transformation of Malcolm's life. In prison he came to see illiteracy as a second, inner jail that could confine him forever. His autobiography is most moving when it shows him breaching those walls and making contact with the world of ideas. This example remains crucial because African-Americans still suffer alarming illiteracy rates.
What would Malcolm X be doing if he were alive? Politics, perhaps. But surely he would be among the fiercest literacy advocates that the nation has ever known.
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 6, 1993, Section A, Page 20 of the National edition with the headline: When X = Literacy.
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/06/opinion/when-x-literacy.html
“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“Do you know what successful ministry is?” he asked. “When you change and touch the lives of people, when you make a difference in their lives, when you give them hope, when you help them go back to school and get an education. That’s successful ministry. But even seminarians I teach are looking at ministry like it’s a “be like Mike” basketball role model they are pursuing. Instead of important and life-changing questions being addressed, the questions one hears are: How many members do we have? How many CDs and DVDs have we produced? How much money do we make? That’s not a successful ministry. Too many seminary students aren’t interested in making things better. They’re interested in becoming like T.D. Jakes, in building a megachurch. They’re not interested in being in the hood, with those who have lost hope.”
https://ebaadenews.blogspot.com/2011/09/chris-hedges-rev-jeremiah-wright.html
