Eavesdropping on a Sunni Muslim Scholar Upon the Passing of One of Islam's National Leaders (see Post #421 for obit)Imam Warith Deen Mohammed and The Third Resurrection
by Dr. Sherman Abd al-Hakim Jackson
Imâm Mohammed’s death has signaled the end of the era of charismatic leadership in which the rank and file can look to a single leader to settle all major questions and chart the Community’s course for the future.
(snip)
In the years leading up to his death, Imam Mohammed strove mightily and with great farsightedness to empower his Community to carve out a dignified existence for themselves, to transition to what I have referred to as the “Third Resurrection,” whereby, individually and collectively, the Community is able to negotiate American reality in light of the Qur’ân and Sunna. For the most part, however, the Imam had to go it alone, with few contributions from Blackamerican Muslim scholars outside his own movement.
Here we come to an embarrassingly sad fact about the state of Blackamerican Islam. For decades, Blackamerican Muslims have been venturing abroad to learn Arabic and the Islamic religious sciences. Yet, this has translated into little benefit and even less interfacing with the Community of Imam W.D. Mohammed — despite that community’s historically unique role in indigenizing Islam among Blackamericans.
When we think across the spectrum of the most noted Blackamerican Muslim scholars – from
(I) myself [Sherman Abd al-Hakim Jackson] to
(II) Zaid Shakir, from
(III) Aminah McCloud to
(IV) Aminah Wadud
– what we see is a veritable brain-drain out of the Blackamerican community into discourses and activities whose primary beneficiaries are not Blackamerican Muslims and or whose primary focus is not Blackamerican Muslim problems or concerns.
Of course, there are exceptions, both in terms of individuals who contradict this description and in terms of some of the activities of the scholars named.
But the fact that these are exceptions points to the reality that I am trying to describe: Blackamerican Muslim scholars have a closer relationship with the immigrant community than they have with the community of Imam W.D. Mohammed. To be fair, there are understandable reasons for this:
1) it is easier (and safer) to direct the Islamic sciences to the realities of the Muslim world and by extension the perspective of Muslim immigrants;
2) Muslim immigrants have more financial wherewithal to support such activities as lecturing, teaching and writing;
3) the immigrant community has a greater ability to validate scholars as scholars; and
4) the media (which plays an enormous role in setting the Muslim agenda in America) tends overwhelmingly to focus on immigrant issues.
Beyond all of this, however, there lurks a far more subtle, sadder and less talked about reality that has for decades plagued the relationship between the followers of Imam W.D. Mohammed and the rest of the Blackamerican Sunni community.
(snip) I remember Philadelphia in the late 70s and early 80s, when Imam Mohammed was in this midst of his history-making transition.
(snip)
We were better than them; for we were real Sunnis, not half-baptist wannabes. For all our ‘knowledge,’ however, we were completely devoid of wisdom and even more ignorant of the Sunna of Muhammad (SAWS). Of course, our high-handed arrogance would produce over time an understandable counter-arrogance.
To the Imam’s community, we were confused, self-hating Negroes, wannabe Arabs, fresh off the back of the bus onto the back of the camel.
If what we displayed was what the so-called Islamic sciences were supposed to be about, they would have little use for them. Ultimately, this would lead to a quiet resentment, mistrust and even hostility, not only towards us but also towards the so-called Islamic tradition that we so dismally (mis)represented.
I may be wrong, but I suspect that Philadelphia was no anomaly in this regard, that this was a fairly widespread phenomenon across the country. The death of Imam Mohammed, however, has now forced us all to take collective responsibility for this toxic state of affairs.
Imam Mohammed may be succeeded by another leader; but he is not likely to be replaced; for who could fill his shoes? The new leadership, therefore – not unlike Blackamerican Muslim leadership in general — will have to find ways to spread greater Islamic literacy among the rank and file, to empower them to engage the religion on their own, in order to enable them to sustain their commitment to it.
As for the rest of the Blackamerican Sunni community – especially the scholars – I pray that Allah will inspire us and show us the way to mend this relationship.
(snip)
In concrete terms, perhaps this year’s MANA conference in Philadelphia could be the starting point of a broad-based dialogue. And if not the MANA conference, perhaps the conference held by Imam Mohammed’s community next year could be the forum.
FACES of ISLAM'S FUTURE?---Four Prominent Scholars
I. Dr. SHERMAN ABD AL-HAKIM JACKSON is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Visiting Professor of Law and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan.
Bio of Dr Abdul Hakim Sherman Jackson, native of Philadelphia, PA
EDUCATION
1990 Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.
1986 Master of Arts, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.
1982 Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.
From 1987-89, he served as Executive Director for the Center of Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in Cairo, Egypt.
Dr. Abd al-Hakim Jackson has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University and Wayne State University.
LANGUAGES
Arabic (Classical); Egyptian, Levantine, Saudi Arabian and Sudanese dialects; French; German; Persian.
ASSOCIATIONS
Dr. Abd al-Hakim Jackson is co-founder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), a primary instructor at its programs, and a member of its Board of Trustees.
Jackson is also a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, past president of the Shari-‘ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA) and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). He is a sought-after speaker and has lectured throughout the US and in numerous countries abroad.
BOOKS
Islam and the Blackamerican
The Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam
Islamic Law and the State
Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection
II. ZAID SHAKIR
Ricky D. Mitchell [Zaid Shakir] was born May 24, 1956 in Berkeley, California and was raised in the Atlanta and Hartford projects alongside six other children. He changed his name to Zaid Shakir when he converted to Islam in 1977. Today, he is one of the foremost Islamic scholars in the west.
It was while serving in the Air Force that he accepted Islam in 1977. He remained in the military for four years and received an accommodation medal for his dedicated service. He earned a BA in International Relations from the American University in Washington, DC in 1983. A summa cum laude graduate, Imam Shakir went on to receive his Masters in Political Science from Rutgers University where he was also a student leader.
While at Rutgers, he led a successful campaign for disinvestment from South Africa, and co-founded a local Islamic center, 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 spear-headed a community renewal and grassroots anti-drug effort, also accepted the position as Professor and 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.
Shakir 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 with some of the top Muslim scholars of our age. In 2001, he was the first American graduate from Syria's prestigious Abu Nour University and returned to Connecticut, serving again as the Imam of Masjid al-Islam, and writing and speaking frequently on a host of issues.
In 2003, as a scholar-in-residence at Zaytuna Institute located in California, Shakir began to teach Arabic, Law, and Islamic Spirituality. And, in 2008, he co-founded the Berkeley, California - based Zaytuna College dedicated to the revival of Islamic Sciences and the preservation of traditional teaching methods.
He has continued his spiritual, academic and community work, speaking and writing extensively on religion, socio-political and race issues. Imam Shakir has been invited to lecture at several prominent universities including Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Rutgers, and Temple University.
He is the author of the groundbreaking books Heirs of the Prophets and Scattered Pictures
Discover the Networks
Shakir is known for having expressed his desire to see the United States eventually become -- "not by violent means, but by persuasion" -- a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law. "Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country," he said.
In Shakir's view, Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the existing American order, because it "is against the orders and ordainments of Allah." "[T]he orientation of the Quran," he explains, "pushes us in the exact opposite direction."
Shakir also appears to embrace 9/11 conspiracy theories. In October 2007 he described the September 11th attacks as having "occurred under dubious circumstances that have yet to be thoroughly examined."
According to Shakir, American foreign policy has been hijacked by the military-industrial complex. In May 2009 he admonished the U.S. for its "pattern of demonization, destabilization, and the invasion of hapless Third World nations," saying that such aggression is always carried out under the guise of national interests. Among those he listed as victims of American "demonization" were Hugo Chavez, Manuel Noriega, Muammar Qadhafi, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
III. AMINAH McCLOUD, Age 60
CV
EDUCATION
1993 Ph.D. Temple University: Islamic Studies
1987 M. A. Temple University: Islamic Studies
1977 B.Sc. Temple University: Pharmacy
1970 B. S. Lincoln University : Physics/Math
CAREER
DePaul University (the largest Catholic University in the U.S.)
2004 Director, Islamic World Studies Program
1993-2003 Professor, Islamic Studies in Religious Studies, DePaul University
1990 Instructor, Religious studies, DePaul University
BOOKS
African American Islam
Questions of Faith
Transnational Muslims in American Society and Silks: The Textures of American Muslim Women's Lives
Currently working on Owning Islam: African American Islam in 21st Century
Also, she is a Fulbright Scholar, consultant on Muslim affairs for the courts, and current editor of The Journal of Islamic Law and Culture.
She is the founder of the Islam in America Conference at DePaul University which houses the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture and the “Islam in America Archives.”
Discover the Networks
In 2004 McCloud was a signatory to a document denouncing the Patriot Act and imploring U.S. authorities to grant Tariq Ramadan permission to teach at Notre Dame University. Ramadan -- the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, who founded the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood -- had been denied a visa because of his connections to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
ASSOCIATIONS
In addition to her teaching career, Professor McCloud has been a consultant to the Ford Foundation's "Civil Rights and Muslims in America" project, and [is one of twenty-two Advisors on] Harvard University's Pluralism Project. McCloud is also a speaker with the Muslim Students Association.
From PBS Frontline, 2002
According to Dr. McCloud, African-American conversion to Islam sometimes results from dissatisfaction with Christianity. "In 2002, Christianity is still about race," she says. "It's still the blond-haired white Jesus with blue eyes. They're saying 'No, I'm not worshipping white men.'"
Other times, African-Americans convert to Islam because they're feel dissatisfied. "For some others who were not inside of a structured religious community, it is 'I want to be inside of a structured religious community,'" Dr. McCloud explains.
Two years ago, controversy erupted in Palos Heights, Ill. when its rapidly growing Muslim community proposed building a new mosque and community center on the site of an empty church. Public hearings were held, during which some residents who objected to the mosque proposed a recreation center in its place. Other residents spoke up against what they called "open racism."
The Muslims ultimately agreed not to buy the church and accepted a monetary settlement, but still they went to court charging discrimination. A federal judge has ordered the two sides to enter into an interfaith dialogue.
Dr. Aminah McCloud is serving as an [interfaith] advisor to the Muslim community in Palos Heights while the case awaits trial.
She converted to Islam in 1966. An expert in Islamic Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Dr. McCloud built her career studying Muslims. "I think that judge, whoever he or she is, just ought to be given a Nobel Prize," she says. "And even though [the judge] ordered it, the people in this community had to think enough of their community to take up the challenge. And they have."
2004 NYT Article
Ms. McCloud was a freshman at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1966 when she first met large numbers of African Muslims and was attracted to their spiritual and political vitality. She became a Muslim, too, coming from a family background of no particular religious affiliation.
"Muslims saw the issues of race in global terms, and they let me know that American racism and separatism were also a kind of apartheid," she recalled. "From my perspective as a young adult, the tactics used by the civil rights movement were wrong. You don't put women and children out to fight white men with dogs. The goal of being a citizen should not be to get people to let you eat in their restaurant."
She moved to Philadelphia and worked as a pharmacist, but after repeated holdups at gunpoint where she worked, her nerves were raw. She was reminded by a Muslim friend of the paucity of Muslim scholars.
Although she was the divorced mother of three young children, she went back to school at Temple University and majored in Islamic studies, finishing her doctorate in 1993. "I did it as a commitment to the community," she said.
She is now married to Frederick Thaufeer al-Deen, a former federal prison chaplain.
(snip)
Ms. McCloud is known for being an energetic activist among American Muslims. She is a fixture at any number of community meetings and a board member of the American Muslim Council and of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations CAIR.
She is also proud of the legal work she has done as a consultant for cases of capital murder, divorce and wrongful death in which Islam is an issue.
(snip)
In Ms. McCloud's view, most Americans don't understand how politically and socially diverse American Muslims are. She said the government estimated that 46 percent of the country's six million Muslims are black. There is often tension between African-Americans and other ethnic groups that practice Islam, she said. And African-American Muslims often experience friction with non-Muslim African-Americans, most of whom are Christian. Ms. McCloud said pointedly: "After 9/11, white Protestant churches invited Muslims in to speak. African-American churches did not."
(snip)
One of her books will focus on the Nation of Islam. Ms. McCloud has spent a great deal of time with Mr. Farrakhan and finds him an intelligent, charismatic man. She believes the public view of him as a social and religious leader is distorted because of the focus on his incendiary statements.
"He has been talking abut inequities and injustices among black Americans for a long time," Ms. McCloud said. "To distill his views down to one sentence to what he utters about Jews is an utter negation of what he has done, in the same way that no one has written off Thomas Jefferson because he raped a slave woman."
One major question, she said, is in what direction the Nation will take its brand of Islam. The Nation has always been evolving, she noted, from its inception during the segregated 1930's to the prominent stage it occupied in the 60's, when Malcolm X dominated, to this new century.
Now, she argues, it has been moving toward traditional Islam while still focusing on using Islamic law to raise the status of blacks in society.
But most black Muslims are not members of Mr. Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, she stressed. She has found at least five groups that call themselves the Nation of Islam, with different leaders and different focuses. Most of the communities seem to be in big cities like Chicago, New York, Detroit and Los Angeles.
IV. AMINAH WADUD
Controversial Islamic feminist and scholar, Mary Teasley [Amina Wadud] was born September 25, 1952 in Bethesda, Maryland. Her father was a Methodist minister and her mother descended from Muslim slaves of Arab, Berber and African ancestry dating back to the 8th Century.
EDUCATION
1975 - B.S, from The University of Pennsylvania
M.A. in Near Eastern Studies
1988 Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan
She studied advanced Arabic in Egypt at the American University in Cairo, she studied Qur'anic studies and tafsir at Cairo University, and took a course in Philosophy at Al-Azhar University.
CAREER
She achieved Full Professor of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia, in 2007. She retired from there as of 2008.
Prior to joining VCU, she held a three-year contract as Assistant Professor at the International Islamic University Malaysia, between 1989 and 1993.
She is currently a visiting professor at the Center for Religious and Cross Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta,Indonesia.
Wadud's research specialities include gender and Qur'anic studies.
EARLY LIFE
She converted to Islam as an undergraduate in the early 1970s....Not long after her conversion, Ms. Wadud wrote her first paper on women and Islam, in which she concluded that "everything was hunky-dory," she recalls. She would later revise that assessment.
By the time she entered graduate school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor she had become deeply distressed at how the Muslim tradition often depicted women as inferior to men. She remembers, for example, hearing Muslims argue that women in Islam should not be allowed to drive. "Is that right?" she asked herself.
She turned to the Koran for answers. Before she began her research, she made herself a promise: If it was true that the Koran really did view women as inferior, she could no longer be a Muslim. She would abandon the religion. Instead, however, Ms. Wadud came to believe that the Koran "adapts to the modern woman as smoothly as it adapted to the original Muslim community 14 centuries ago." The product of her research was Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text From a Woman's Perspective, a short book, at just over a hundred pages, that continues to be influential and controversial more than a decade after it was published.
In the book, Ms. Wadud argues that verses in the Koran used to justify the subjugation of women have been taken out of context or otherwise misused. She writes that those who believe that men are superior to women have interpreted the Koran "in accordance with those assumptions." In other words, the prejudice can be found not in the Koran itself, but in the Koran's readers.
The book that saved her faith also established her scholarly reputation.
Breaking New Ground (from Wapedia)
Wadud was the subject of much controversy, debate and Muslim juristic discourse after leading a Friday prayer (salat) of over 100 male and female Muslims in the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York on March 18, 2005, breaking with the tradition of having only male imams (prayer leaders). Three mosques had refused to host the service and the museum that had agreed to host it pulled out after a bomb threat.
In August 1994, Wadud delivered a Friday khutbah (sermon) on "Islam as Engaged Surrender" at the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, South Africa. At the time, this was largely unheard of in the Muslim world. As a result, there were attempts in Virginia by some Muslims to have her dismissed from her position at Virginia Commonwealth University.
PBS Frontline Interview
NOTE: What Wadud calls "Progressive Islam" may be viewed by others as re-inventing Islam. She is certainly unique, and, I would think, much appreciated by religious pluralists and trans-nationalists. This entire interview is worthy of note, if only from that perspective.
You have talked about "progressive Muslim" -- I forget exactly the term you used. What do you mean by "progressive?"
There is a very strong articulation among a select body of Muslim intellectuals and activists to literally progress Islam from some of the places where its thinking and its vitality have been throttled from the dynamism that I think is inherent in Islam. I think Islam itself is a progression. I think it progresses, in one sense, metaphysically, before the beginning of historical Islam, but certainly, in a radical way, with the first revelation to the prophet Muhammad.
The idea of that progression being arrested by a number of disruptions, like colonialism, has caused what we in the West have sometimes identified as a resurgence. But actually, in a sense, it has just been a reclaiming of our own trajectory. Our trajectory is to continue to move towards the betterment of our own humanity, as representatives or trustees or agents of the divine.
... There are thinkers who will intentionally grapple with the complexity of preserving the integrity of the Islamic tradition ... combining it in a dynamic way with what it means to encounter all of these complexities of modernity or postmodernity. I consider these people to be progressive intellectuals, and I consider that their articulations have many common features and that their goals are very similar, in that they are trying to preserve Islam. But they're not trying to preserve a singular understanding of Islam that came from, say, the Medina time of the prophet.
(snip)
But are there not also statements in the Quran about fighting those who fight you, for example? And that could be taken in a very allegorical way. There are also, there is also the example of the prophet -- who was a warrior, who led armies.
Certainly, the history of Islam includes periods of time where Islam, as a minority community, was up against considerable odds. And the responsibility for actual armed struggle in order to survive and in order to preserve itself was legitimated and it was legitimated in the text. Again, we have the understanding that the text has both a context and a universal objective. So my critical ideas about textual analysis include being aware, when a passage or a concept or an idea is an idea whose time is not eternal, but rather whose time is immediate.
In other words, yes, there were commandments to fight. And these were commandments relative only to an immediate circumstance. That circumstance has to be understood in order to even make an application of that verse. We do not have similar circumstances in a pluralistic world. And so it is not possible to seek guidance from aspects of text which are not universal in their own intent.
So how do you both sustain the integrity but allow for, and in fact promote, dynamism? That's progressive Islamic thought.
