Friday June 11, 2010
VIEW: Of pens and names —Dr Mahjabeen Islam
The written word, in the hands of the majority, can achieve what partisan governments or extremist ideologies cannot, especially when it can be transported across the world in the blink of an eye
I write because it gives me a high. If, in the process, some cobwebs in the reader’s mind and mine can be cleared, it is just an added bonus. “How can you be an addictionist, you do not drink or do drugs!” said an outraged colleague when he found out that I was practising as one. Amused, I reminded him that a doctor did not have to suffer all the diseases that they treated; after all, a nun-obstetrician delivered my first child. Just as with addictive substances such as alcohol, narcotics and cocaine, not only do I get a rush after writing an article, I go back for more. The only difference is that the readers’ feedback takes the process from a personal issue to a micro-step towards changing mindsets.
How we interact with one another is very directly related, I believe, to how we were raised. Certain hot-button phrases in recent articles and the heavily Muslim premise of others have triggered a barrage of e-mails from my Indian friends. There are some that are courteous, the majority, however, spews hate and calls my Prophet (PBUH) and me names. I will never forget one of them: it was so packed with expletives that I broke out in a sweat.
I try to acknowledge all my e-mails, especially from the readers of my articles, but when the rhetoric and the venom are terminal, they hit the trash folder. There are some articles that seem to hit the reader’s sweet spot. And then the appreciative deluge hits. And when the article is about sensitive socio-political issues, my gratification is deep.
One learns the depth and beauty of certain issues that are addressed in Islam only by close personal experience. God swears by the pen in Surah Qalam (68:1): “By the pen and what the angels write in the records of men,” and then in the beautiful Surah Alaq (96:4) “Read for thy Sustainer is the Most Bountiful One who has taught man the use of the pen — taught man what he did not know.” And in the most majestic of ways that only the Quran can, Surah Luqman (31:27) showcases God’s infinite glory: “And if all the trees on earth were pens and the sea were ink, with seven more seas yet added to it, the words of God would not be exhausted, for verily God is Almighty, Wise.”
The Quran, combined with the famous Hadith, “The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr,” underscores the importance of knowledge and the written word and develops the concept of “jihad of the pen”. A pervasive misunderstanding is equating jihad with battle when that is the minor jihad. Jihad-ul-Akbar or the greater jihad is that against the nafs or one’s baser instincts. And jihad of the pen has a unique place in targeting the epicentre of all actions — the mind.
With the internet revolution and disseminating articles and messages of peace and sanity, it is possible to break even steel webs of the mind. Sometimes it seems that Chicken Little was right and the sky is falling down. Especially in Pakistan. Or on Pakistan, perhaps. Collectively the citizens of the world are operating at such a high stress level that we fail to realise that the movements of any stripe that aim to destroy and reign do not have the support of the mass of humanity, the majority of which scrapes to make both ends meet.
It behoves those that write and read to have virtual and actual discussions about the plethora of issues that affect us, be they local, national or international. At the risk of annoying the recipient, send your friends and family articles that pique your interest, write letters to the editor of the local paper for it is only when these solos combine to form a chorus that envelops the world that there can be a global citizen protest when travesties occur. And worldwide kudos for acts of courage and compassion.
The UN has lost its credibility; multiple resolutions remain un-implemented, while others are passed by governments that have hijacked the entire process and are not representative of the sentiment of their own people. The written word, in the hands of the majority, can achieve what partisan governments or extremist ideologies cannot, especially when it can be transported across the world in the blink of an eye.
My last name of course has had issues. My first name has been no exception. A great fan of Persian poetry, my father, God bless his soul, decided on a tongue twister. And it has taken its toll on tongues indeed. Soon after arrival in the US, I was introduced to a car saleslady: “This is Mahjabeen.” “Magic Beans?” she exclaimed, her eyes wide. Friends in my residency programme remind me of that and intermittently call me that till today. To most non-Pakistani Americans, the word ‘Mahjabeen’ causes silence or stuttering. Some friends, in typical American style, have taken it upon themselves to shorten it to “Marge”. Arabs do not realise that the name is Mah, which means moon and Jabeen, which means forehead; they change it to ‘Muhhajabeen’, meaning one that observes hijab. And I fail on both counts — wrong meaning, no hijab.
I did observe hijab for nine months a few years ago. But my vanity got the better of me, so that jihad against my nafs clearly failed.
I was complaining about the massacre of ‘Mahjabeen’ one day and an Indian Gujarati lady said, ever so sweetly, “I do not see what the problem is with pronouncing your name, MayZabeen!”
In 1996, I was to be introduced to a large gathering and an elderly Arab gentleman confronted by having to pronounce my name, hesitated and then said, “And this is Mujahideen Islam!” I was a bit discomfited then but feel now that maybe there is one jihad I can try to do. In my own small way — jihad of the pen.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Monday, June 14, 2010
Are we an unjust people?
Are we an unjust people?
Friday June 4, 2010
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\06\04\story_4-6-2010_pg3_3
Are we an unjust people? —Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Our heroes are not Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Jinnah. We are a nation adrift. We idolise looters and plunderers, we follow the morally corrupt, and we are roused to frenzy by the hypocritical voices of hate, garbed in beards and turbans, hijabs and niqabs
It is like the pot, read Pakistanis, calling the kettle, read Israelis, black. Over 100 Ahmedis were massacred while praying and the protest from the Pakistani nation was individual, muted, minimal, and quickly forgotten. Just a few days later, Israel kills 20 activists in the Freedom Flotilla and Pakistanis were aflame in cities across the nation, pelting stones at police, burning cars and property. Protestors in Karachi included fully veiled women with children facing water cannons and police batons. Is there something wrong with this picture, or is it just me?
I wondered why the news anchors kept calling the Ahmedi mosque a “house of worship”, got a clue, researched it and realised with utter disgust that calling an Ahmedi a Muslim and their houses of worship ‘mosques’ would indict the journalist under Pakistan’s ludicrous Blasphemy Law. The patron saint of legislating Ahmedis as non-Muslim was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, all for glaring, personal political motive. Saudi Arabia aided and abetted this then, and its Wahabi/Salafi philosophy of hate continues it. Bhutto’s move for political expediency occurred in 1974 and if it was heresy that the ultra-right was afraid of, it was successful in incriminating Pakistan in the state-sponsored homicide of its own people.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may have taken responsibility for the massacre, but there is no shortage of hate-mongers in Pakistan. Muslims and Pakistanis protest when they are profiled in the west. When mosques are targeted, we go on overdrive with screams of “this is a hate crime”. But at home we give august reception to flakes like Amir Liaquat Hussain who whips up thousands of 21-year-olds, in a single sitting, to rise and kill those that are wajibul qatl (the ones that must rightfully be killed). Within two days of one such tirade, an Ahmedi doctor who served a large segment of an underprivileged population was mercilessly murdered, and his killers escaped with impunity. After another hate speech, an Ahmedi physician couple was brutally murdered. And yes guess again, the killers were not brought to justice.
Our nation’s ethos is moulded by two glorious men: Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In this anti-Ahmedi vendetta, we must wonder what they would think. Would the mercy and fine sense of justice of the most perfect of all men, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), condone the murder of even one Ahmedi? Would the pluralism and principles of Jinnah turn a blind eye to the horrifying massacre of Ahmedis while they knelt to God?
But our heroes are not Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Jinnah. We are a nation adrift. We idolise looters and plunderers, we follow the morally corrupt, and we are roused to frenzy by the hypocritical voices of hate, garbed in beards and turbans, hijabs and niqabs.
Any number of Palestinians can be killed and no one cares; one Israeli or in this case 20 Turks die and there is global protest. Similarly, Pakistanis kill 100 praying Ahmedis and no one cares, but when Israel kills 20 activists, Pakistanis are infuriated. So you are expendable if you are a Palestinian or an Ahmedi, and Pakistanis can kill one another, no problem, Israel cannot. The ‘halal for me to drink, haram for you to drink’ premise.
The art of political expediency must be learned from Pakistani politicians, in the vein of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Officials and leaders of major political parties took quite some time to decide how best to appear mealy-mouthed in condemning the attacks. And Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmad might as well have been dead themselves or in bliss, who knows. Shahbaz Sharif took the cake: in worried, soft mumblings, he referred to the victims as “woh jo mar gaye hain”. Even if he could not dare, terrified as he appeared of committing political suicide, call the victims shaheed, could he not have had the basic decency to have referred to them in a more polite manner such as jaan bahaq perhaps? You see these are the stars that lead the nation. And the Sharif brothers were long-term guests of the Saudi nation. Blood is expendable; favours must not be forgotten.
While there is an active and violent anti-Ahmedi movement, it is vital for the Pakistani nation to understand that those that believe in the Day of Judgement and “God’s justice is finer than the weight of an atom” (Quran 99:7), that ours is a complicit silence. Turning a blind eye and a deaf ear, just because the neighbourhood imam has brainwashed us to hate Ahmedis, is making us culpable of a major sin under “amar bil maroof wa nahin anal munkar” (promote the good and forbid the evil, Quran 31: 17). Regardless of the evil myopia of the ultra-right, each sane, adult Muslim will be called to account for this disconnect: murder and condoning it is a major sin and ostracising and killing those that deny Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) being the last prophet is not a pillar of faith.
Pakistan as a nation must face that it stands in complicit silence and tacit agreement with all that brutalise its minorities. The greatest loss of self-respect is when one falls in one’s own estimation. Pakistanis hate each other, harbour fanatics, kill their brothers and condone murder.
The civilian population should be disarmed immediately. Perhaps with the rising food, petrol and gas prices, there can be a food-for-weapons programme. Hate-mongering and spreading discord among people should be prosecuted in the court system in an effective and exemplary manner, with punishment that makes the collective hair of the nation stand on end.
The PPP must redeem its founder and have the moral courage to reverse the legislation that classified Ahmedis as non-Muslims. Anyone that recites the kalma is classified as a Muslim, the rest is between them and God. No Muslim is in a position to classify another as non-Muslim.
The vile scourge of terrorism will not end until each and every citizen plays his/her part. We must first believe that it is wrong to take a life, that jihad is first against one’s nafs (base instincts) and the other only in self-defence and never against unarmed non-combatants.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Friday June 4, 2010
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\06\04\story_4-6-2010_pg3_3
Are we an unjust people? —Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Our heroes are not Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Jinnah. We are a nation adrift. We idolise looters and plunderers, we follow the morally corrupt, and we are roused to frenzy by the hypocritical voices of hate, garbed in beards and turbans, hijabs and niqabs
It is like the pot, read Pakistanis, calling the kettle, read Israelis, black. Over 100 Ahmedis were massacred while praying and the protest from the Pakistani nation was individual, muted, minimal, and quickly forgotten. Just a few days later, Israel kills 20 activists in the Freedom Flotilla and Pakistanis were aflame in cities across the nation, pelting stones at police, burning cars and property. Protestors in Karachi included fully veiled women with children facing water cannons and police batons. Is there something wrong with this picture, or is it just me?
I wondered why the news anchors kept calling the Ahmedi mosque a “house of worship”, got a clue, researched it and realised with utter disgust that calling an Ahmedi a Muslim and their houses of worship ‘mosques’ would indict the journalist under Pakistan’s ludicrous Blasphemy Law. The patron saint of legislating Ahmedis as non-Muslim was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, all for glaring, personal political motive. Saudi Arabia aided and abetted this then, and its Wahabi/Salafi philosophy of hate continues it. Bhutto’s move for political expediency occurred in 1974 and if it was heresy that the ultra-right was afraid of, it was successful in incriminating Pakistan in the state-sponsored homicide of its own people.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may have taken responsibility for the massacre, but there is no shortage of hate-mongers in Pakistan. Muslims and Pakistanis protest when they are profiled in the west. When mosques are targeted, we go on overdrive with screams of “this is a hate crime”. But at home we give august reception to flakes like Amir Liaquat Hussain who whips up thousands of 21-year-olds, in a single sitting, to rise and kill those that are wajibul qatl (the ones that must rightfully be killed). Within two days of one such tirade, an Ahmedi doctor who served a large segment of an underprivileged population was mercilessly murdered, and his killers escaped with impunity. After another hate speech, an Ahmedi physician couple was brutally murdered. And yes guess again, the killers were not brought to justice.
Our nation’s ethos is moulded by two glorious men: Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In this anti-Ahmedi vendetta, we must wonder what they would think. Would the mercy and fine sense of justice of the most perfect of all men, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), condone the murder of even one Ahmedi? Would the pluralism and principles of Jinnah turn a blind eye to the horrifying massacre of Ahmedis while they knelt to God?
But our heroes are not Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Jinnah. We are a nation adrift. We idolise looters and plunderers, we follow the morally corrupt, and we are roused to frenzy by the hypocritical voices of hate, garbed in beards and turbans, hijabs and niqabs.
Any number of Palestinians can be killed and no one cares; one Israeli or in this case 20 Turks die and there is global protest. Similarly, Pakistanis kill 100 praying Ahmedis and no one cares, but when Israel kills 20 activists, Pakistanis are infuriated. So you are expendable if you are a Palestinian or an Ahmedi, and Pakistanis can kill one another, no problem, Israel cannot. The ‘halal for me to drink, haram for you to drink’ premise.
The art of political expediency must be learned from Pakistani politicians, in the vein of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Officials and leaders of major political parties took quite some time to decide how best to appear mealy-mouthed in condemning the attacks. And Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmad might as well have been dead themselves or in bliss, who knows. Shahbaz Sharif took the cake: in worried, soft mumblings, he referred to the victims as “woh jo mar gaye hain”. Even if he could not dare, terrified as he appeared of committing political suicide, call the victims shaheed, could he not have had the basic decency to have referred to them in a more polite manner such as jaan bahaq perhaps? You see these are the stars that lead the nation. And the Sharif brothers were long-term guests of the Saudi nation. Blood is expendable; favours must not be forgotten.
While there is an active and violent anti-Ahmedi movement, it is vital for the Pakistani nation to understand that those that believe in the Day of Judgement and “God’s justice is finer than the weight of an atom” (Quran 99:7), that ours is a complicit silence. Turning a blind eye and a deaf ear, just because the neighbourhood imam has brainwashed us to hate Ahmedis, is making us culpable of a major sin under “amar bil maroof wa nahin anal munkar” (promote the good and forbid the evil, Quran 31: 17). Regardless of the evil myopia of the ultra-right, each sane, adult Muslim will be called to account for this disconnect: murder and condoning it is a major sin and ostracising and killing those that deny Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) being the last prophet is not a pillar of faith.
Pakistan as a nation must face that it stands in complicit silence and tacit agreement with all that brutalise its minorities. The greatest loss of self-respect is when one falls in one’s own estimation. Pakistanis hate each other, harbour fanatics, kill their brothers and condone murder.
The civilian population should be disarmed immediately. Perhaps with the rising food, petrol and gas prices, there can be a food-for-weapons programme. Hate-mongering and spreading discord among people should be prosecuted in the court system in an effective and exemplary manner, with punishment that makes the collective hair of the nation stand on end.
The PPP must redeem its founder and have the moral courage to reverse the legislation that classified Ahmedis as non-Muslims. Anyone that recites the kalma is classified as a Muslim, the rest is between them and God. No Muslim is in a position to classify another as non-Muslim.
The vile scourge of terrorism will not end until each and every citizen plays his/her part. We must first believe that it is wrong to take a life, that jihad is first against one’s nafs (base instincts) and the other only in self-defence and never against unarmed non-combatants.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Review of Akbar Ahmed's Journey into America
Review of Akbar Ahmed's Journey into America:The Challenge of Islam
Friday May 28, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: Muslims in the American frame – by Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam
By Akbar Ahmed
Brookings Institution Press; Pp 528; $ 29.95
With the word ‘Muslim’ now
synonymous with terrorism, Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam by Akbar Ahmed is a vital read. The cover of the book is in itself heavy with controversial symbolism. Silhouetted against a gorgeous sunrise, the flame of the Statue of Liberty seems to be reaching for the crescent and star.
In what he terms a ‘Muslim Odyssey’, Akbar Ahmed and his team of anthropological researchers travelled across the US over one year to 75 cities and 100 mosques, homes and schools to sample Muslim and non-Muslim sentiment on a variety of issues. The scope of this study is daunting. Over and above, the author wraps it all in a readable format. And though Dr Akbar Ahmed is an academic and the book dense with information, it remains user-friendly to the end.
To understand the pickle that Muslims find themselves in, what with the general sentiment being that Islam has been hijacked by a rogue-fringe, Ahmed lays the foundation with a superb explanation of the development of American identity. Primordial identity is rooted, he says, in the seminal landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth. Puritans like Edward Winslow, who arrived on the Mayflower, and John Winthrop, who came later on the Arbella from England, embodied the primordial identity. The premise of primordial identity was that God had granted the US to Christians, so they could build an ideal community patterned directly on the teachings of the Bible.
Roger Williams is credited with the development of pluralist identity a century before the founding fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin were advocating religious freedom. In the Providence Agreement, Williams stated, “The state should allow all religions, including the Turkish [Islamic] one.”
Predator identity and the concept of zero tolerance developed under Josiah Winslow, the son of Edward Winslow. “Within half a century of the Mayflower’s landing, the native tribes would be decimated in New England. They would be killed by the settlers and their descendants, ravaged by disease or sold into slavery.”
The founding fathers forged the pluralist identity and Ahmed quotes George Washington’s famous words, “The bosom of America was to open to receive the oppressed and persecuted of all nations, whom we shall welcome, to all our rights and privileges; they may be Mahometans, Jews or Christians of any sect or they may be atheists.” Presidents Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt “helped redefine primordial identity by fusing it with predator identity”.
Akbar Ahmed explains how World War II realigned the American identity but also saw the internment of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of them US citizens. John F Kennedy inaugurated the new flowering of a pluralist US. The Immigration and Nationality Act reversed decades of immigration policies designed to block non-whites from the US and granted millions of Asians, Africans and Latin Americans the opportunity to experience the American dream.
“On September 11, 2001, Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia who had been attracted to pluralist America woke to find they had tumbled from their comfortable positions in the professional middle class. These Muslims had not studied enough history to know that this was but another side of American society. From the time of the earliest settlers, Americans have reacted with ferocity to any threat. The policy of zero tolerance is embedded in the deep structures of their society. Muslims saw that their beloved pluralist America had morphed into a minatory predator and were baffled,” writes Ahmed.
I have quoted this paragraph verbatim for it crystallises the mayhem that rules our lives post-9/11. Ahmed details the Bush-Cheney terms and how “they twisted the law to their predatory vision”. The war in Iraq was based on the created threat of weapons of mass destruction and the terrorist threat enacted the Patriot Act. “The spirit and content of the Bush administration’s harsh actions were in keeping with the old predator identity of Josiah Winslow and Andrew Jackson, except that now the targets would be Muslims. Dick Cheney became the poster-child of the predator identity.”
After the reader grasps, with epiphany like clarity, the genesis of Islamophobia, Ahmed details his odyssey across the land. Strident verbal abuse at ‘Hikma’, a group of Muslim students in Los Angeles, contrasts with the many events of soothing warmth. In almost a sine curve fashion, the book details the various Muslim mindsets in prisons, among African-Americans, Latino-Americans, South Asians, converts to Islam and many others. Individual stories underscore the pride, pain and perplexity that run in American-Muslims.
Throughout the book, the author juxtaposes the perspective of the Muslim-American with the non-Muslim one. The ease with which Akbar Ahmed details history and comfortably jumps to modern-day rappers and youth icons testify to his skill as an anthropologist.
Ahmed describes meetings with literalist Muslims, also known as Salafi or Wahabi, detailing their concrete view of socio-politics in much the same way that they interpret Islam. In the section on ‘Homegrown Terrorists’, the author is aghast at the tone of CNN interviewer Wolf Blitzer: “Here was a top media personality asking me if there was a ‘perverse’ school of Islamic thought that required Muslims to go to strip clubs and enjoy lap dancing while at the same time getting ready to kill” and whether Major Nidal Hassan was an ‘Islamic jihadist terrorist’ or just someone who had gone ‘berserk’. The author’s sad resignation can be noted in this line: “The debate about Muslims had gone on for years, yet this latest combination of terms proved that Americans were nowhere close to understanding Muslims and Muslims to explaining themselves satisfactorily.”
The expanse and depth of Journey into America is difficult to accurately portray. Muslims and non-Muslims, especially in leadership positions, must own a copy, dog-ear it and return to it for the treasure house of information and sharp analysis that it is. It will be the talk of the town and you would not want to be left out.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Friday May 28, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: Muslims in the American frame – by Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam
By Akbar Ahmed
Brookings Institution Press; Pp 528; $ 29.95
With the word ‘Muslim’ now
synonymous with terrorism, Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam by Akbar Ahmed is a vital read. The cover of the book is in itself heavy with controversial symbolism. Silhouetted against a gorgeous sunrise, the flame of the Statue of Liberty seems to be reaching for the crescent and star.
In what he terms a ‘Muslim Odyssey’, Akbar Ahmed and his team of anthropological researchers travelled across the US over one year to 75 cities and 100 mosques, homes and schools to sample Muslim and non-Muslim sentiment on a variety of issues. The scope of this study is daunting. Over and above, the author wraps it all in a readable format. And though Dr Akbar Ahmed is an academic and the book dense with information, it remains user-friendly to the end.
To understand the pickle that Muslims find themselves in, what with the general sentiment being that Islam has been hijacked by a rogue-fringe, Ahmed lays the foundation with a superb explanation of the development of American identity. Primordial identity is rooted, he says, in the seminal landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth. Puritans like Edward Winslow, who arrived on the Mayflower, and John Winthrop, who came later on the Arbella from England, embodied the primordial identity. The premise of primordial identity was that God had granted the US to Christians, so they could build an ideal community patterned directly on the teachings of the Bible.
Roger Williams is credited with the development of pluralist identity a century before the founding fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin were advocating religious freedom. In the Providence Agreement, Williams stated, “The state should allow all religions, including the Turkish [Islamic] one.”
Predator identity and the concept of zero tolerance developed under Josiah Winslow, the son of Edward Winslow. “Within half a century of the Mayflower’s landing, the native tribes would be decimated in New England. They would be killed by the settlers and their descendants, ravaged by disease or sold into slavery.”
The founding fathers forged the pluralist identity and Ahmed quotes George Washington’s famous words, “The bosom of America was to open to receive the oppressed and persecuted of all nations, whom we shall welcome, to all our rights and privileges; they may be Mahometans, Jews or Christians of any sect or they may be atheists.” Presidents Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt “helped redefine primordial identity by fusing it with predator identity”.
Akbar Ahmed explains how World War II realigned the American identity but also saw the internment of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of them US citizens. John F Kennedy inaugurated the new flowering of a pluralist US. The Immigration and Nationality Act reversed decades of immigration policies designed to block non-whites from the US and granted millions of Asians, Africans and Latin Americans the opportunity to experience the American dream.
“On September 11, 2001, Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia who had been attracted to pluralist America woke to find they had tumbled from their comfortable positions in the professional middle class. These Muslims had not studied enough history to know that this was but another side of American society. From the time of the earliest settlers, Americans have reacted with ferocity to any threat. The policy of zero tolerance is embedded in the deep structures of their society. Muslims saw that their beloved pluralist America had morphed into a minatory predator and were baffled,” writes Ahmed.
I have quoted this paragraph verbatim for it crystallises the mayhem that rules our lives post-9/11. Ahmed details the Bush-Cheney terms and how “they twisted the law to their predatory vision”. The war in Iraq was based on the created threat of weapons of mass destruction and the terrorist threat enacted the Patriot Act. “The spirit and content of the Bush administration’s harsh actions were in keeping with the old predator identity of Josiah Winslow and Andrew Jackson, except that now the targets would be Muslims. Dick Cheney became the poster-child of the predator identity.”
After the reader grasps, with epiphany like clarity, the genesis of Islamophobia, Ahmed details his odyssey across the land. Strident verbal abuse at ‘Hikma’, a group of Muslim students in Los Angeles, contrasts with the many events of soothing warmth. In almost a sine curve fashion, the book details the various Muslim mindsets in prisons, among African-Americans, Latino-Americans, South Asians, converts to Islam and many others. Individual stories underscore the pride, pain and perplexity that run in American-Muslims.
Throughout the book, the author juxtaposes the perspective of the Muslim-American with the non-Muslim one. The ease with which Akbar Ahmed details history and comfortably jumps to modern-day rappers and youth icons testify to his skill as an anthropologist.
Ahmed describes meetings with literalist Muslims, also known as Salafi or Wahabi, detailing their concrete view of socio-politics in much the same way that they interpret Islam. In the section on ‘Homegrown Terrorists’, the author is aghast at the tone of CNN interviewer Wolf Blitzer: “Here was a top media personality asking me if there was a ‘perverse’ school of Islamic thought that required Muslims to go to strip clubs and enjoy lap dancing while at the same time getting ready to kill” and whether Major Nidal Hassan was an ‘Islamic jihadist terrorist’ or just someone who had gone ‘berserk’. The author’s sad resignation can be noted in this line: “The debate about Muslims had gone on for years, yet this latest combination of terms proved that Americans were nowhere close to understanding Muslims and Muslims to explaining themselves satisfactorily.”
The expanse and depth of Journey into America is difficult to accurately portray. Muslims and non-Muslims, especially in leadership positions, must own a copy, dog-ear it and return to it for the treasure house of information and sharp analysis that it is. It will be the talk of the town and you would not want to be left out.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Revisiting the Friday Sermon
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C05%5C21%5Cstory_21-5-2010_pg3_3
Friday May 21, 2010
VIEW: Revisiting the Friday sermon –Dr Mahjabeen Islam
The best and the brightest with an interest in Islam should be given scholarships in Islamic universities and then incentivised financially to take up spiritual leadership as a profession
It is important to be solution oriented, I know. ‘The power of the Friday sermon’ (Daily Times, May 14, 2010) took the entire article to detail the golden opportunity that is missed by imams the world over to inhibit the start of disenchantment and the development of extremism. Now we can springboard for solutions.
The situation with mosques in Pakistan is very different from that in North America and it is thus important to customise the solution.
In Pakistan, with the exception perhaps of the very large mosques, most are the foci of prayer alone. Many have attached schools or madrassas. The criteria for leading congregational prayer according to a Hadith (narrated by Abu Masud Al-Ansari and reported by Muslim) are first, knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah, and then seniority.
The mosques in Pakistan remain largely unregulated and the majority is manned by imams who are only capable of leading prayers or have memorised the Quran. It is a micro-minority that has true religious training and a good grasp of the Quran, the Sunnah, Hadith, shariah, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), ethics, philosophy and economic and social issues.
With a congregation that is a captive audience every Friday, it is vital that governmental regulation monitors the content of the Friday sermon as well as what is taught in the madrassas. Specific guidelines must be formatted and implemented. This is a relatively immediate solution.
What will really change the situation will take a decade, maybe a generation. Pakistani society must pull itself up by its bootstraps and change its view of imams. Throwing around slurs such as “fundos” and “jamaati” and channelling bright and wealthy students to become doctors and engineers and the less advantaged toward becoming imams is, needless to say, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The cycle of economic disadvantage being perpetuated also needs to be broken. The best and the brightest with an interest in Islam should be given scholarships in Islamic universities and then incentivised financially to take up spiritual leadership as a profession. When the poorest and the least educated become imams and are given half an hour or more every Friday to spout off at will, without perspectives or controls, extremism can only grow.
In North America the situation has a different yet equally tragic face. Imams are largely imported from the Muslim world and they may be well schooled in religion but they are oblivious to current day socio-politics. A distraught Arab-American woman went with her husband to a North American imam for desperate counselling: “My husband is gay,” she said and her husband did not deny it. “Sister, do not worry. Put on some nice nightclothes and rent a hotel room and everything will be alright,” was the imam’s reply. They divorced soon thereafter. Not that they would not have anyway, but the content and tenor of the imam’s counselling leaves a lot to be desired, you will agree.
Understanding issues that befuddle the youth is again an area that most North American imams are terrible at. There are questions about homosexuality, dating Muslims, drug abuse, incest, domestic violence and sometimes just adjustment and acceptance. Many an imam in the US has only one answer to these questions: “haram!” If they were dealing with the village idiot that might fly but in our complex society it only serves to alienate and depress an already struggling Muslim youth.
Many North American mosques have imams deliver lectures in the language of the majority community of the mosque. Some are advanced enough that headphones with a live translation into English are provided. How attractive is that ambience to American-born youth?
Heavy accents in English and literal translations from their native tongues are terribly inhibiting. A Pakistani youth may understand the Pakistanised English of the imam but his or her full attention cannot be guaranteed in this situation. Already the sermon is out-of-touch; the accent makes it stratospheric.
In North America mosques and Islamic Centres must decide what the role of the imam shall be. Will he only lead the prayers or will he be the spiritual leader of the Centre as well? And it is not just in Toledo Ohio where imams get contentious with the Boards and Councils of Islamic Centres and make ludicrous statements like “it is humanly not possible to lead all five prayers in the mosque”. This is happening all over, and frequently if not always the imam lives either connected to the mosque or a stone’s throw away. And this is not peculiar to one particular nationality — an Arab here and a South Asian in San Jose where my very Americanised uncle opens the mosque for the dawn prayer, gives the azaan and many a time leads the prayer of two to three people, while the imam snores in his home one storey above!
A job description of imams should again be preferably templated in a central authority and then distributed for use across the continent. Imams, like the rest of us, bring a great deal of mental baggage with them from their countries of origin. And a lot of it is related to women. Gender roles, especially as detailed in Islam, should not just be understood, they must be applied to the North American context.
Policy regarding the treatment of women in a mosque is shaped by the imam. If the Salafi brand of Islam is followed, Muslim women are gowned, gloved and shoved into hallways to pray, or cloistered in cluttered rooms with closed circuit television to pray among wailing babies and rambunctious toddlers. All the while the men pray in a hushed environ.
Imams are supposed to be role models for the congregation. A squeaky clean personal life, unsoiled by clandestine marital alliances, violation of employment contracts, working all the hours that they are paid for and not arrogating sinless priesthood upon themselves or ownership of the mosque would be good first steps toward the role-model persona. Their Friday sermons must be read, preapproved by the Boards of the mosques and placed on the mosque website for further education of the congregation.
And the most important change will happen only when American-born youth choose to become imams, educated in institutions here. Muslim parents must facilitate this, rather than pushing their disinterested progeny into the default profession: medicine.
In Pakistan as well as in North America, Muslims must focus on the roles, character, qualifications and politics of the men that have millions captive to their sermon on Fridays the world over. The change though initially slow would eventually be exponential. And you will agree it is about time.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Friday May 21, 2010
VIEW: Revisiting the Friday sermon –Dr Mahjabeen Islam
The best and the brightest with an interest in Islam should be given scholarships in Islamic universities and then incentivised financially to take up spiritual leadership as a profession
It is important to be solution oriented, I know. ‘The power of the Friday sermon’ (Daily Times, May 14, 2010) took the entire article to detail the golden opportunity that is missed by imams the world over to inhibit the start of disenchantment and the development of extremism. Now we can springboard for solutions.
The situation with mosques in Pakistan is very different from that in North America and it is thus important to customise the solution.
In Pakistan, with the exception perhaps of the very large mosques, most are the foci of prayer alone. Many have attached schools or madrassas. The criteria for leading congregational prayer according to a Hadith (narrated by Abu Masud Al-Ansari and reported by Muslim) are first, knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah, and then seniority.
The mosques in Pakistan remain largely unregulated and the majority is manned by imams who are only capable of leading prayers or have memorised the Quran. It is a micro-minority that has true religious training and a good grasp of the Quran, the Sunnah, Hadith, shariah, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), ethics, philosophy and economic and social issues.
With a congregation that is a captive audience every Friday, it is vital that governmental regulation monitors the content of the Friday sermon as well as what is taught in the madrassas. Specific guidelines must be formatted and implemented. This is a relatively immediate solution.
What will really change the situation will take a decade, maybe a generation. Pakistani society must pull itself up by its bootstraps and change its view of imams. Throwing around slurs such as “fundos” and “jamaati” and channelling bright and wealthy students to become doctors and engineers and the less advantaged toward becoming imams is, needless to say, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The cycle of economic disadvantage being perpetuated also needs to be broken. The best and the brightest with an interest in Islam should be given scholarships in Islamic universities and then incentivised financially to take up spiritual leadership as a profession. When the poorest and the least educated become imams and are given half an hour or more every Friday to spout off at will, without perspectives or controls, extremism can only grow.
In North America the situation has a different yet equally tragic face. Imams are largely imported from the Muslim world and they may be well schooled in religion but they are oblivious to current day socio-politics. A distraught Arab-American woman went with her husband to a North American imam for desperate counselling: “My husband is gay,” she said and her husband did not deny it. “Sister, do not worry. Put on some nice nightclothes and rent a hotel room and everything will be alright,” was the imam’s reply. They divorced soon thereafter. Not that they would not have anyway, but the content and tenor of the imam’s counselling leaves a lot to be desired, you will agree.
Understanding issues that befuddle the youth is again an area that most North American imams are terrible at. There are questions about homosexuality, dating Muslims, drug abuse, incest, domestic violence and sometimes just adjustment and acceptance. Many an imam in the US has only one answer to these questions: “haram!” If they were dealing with the village idiot that might fly but in our complex society it only serves to alienate and depress an already struggling Muslim youth.
Many North American mosques have imams deliver lectures in the language of the majority community of the mosque. Some are advanced enough that headphones with a live translation into English are provided. How attractive is that ambience to American-born youth?
Heavy accents in English and literal translations from their native tongues are terribly inhibiting. A Pakistani youth may understand the Pakistanised English of the imam but his or her full attention cannot be guaranteed in this situation. Already the sermon is out-of-touch; the accent makes it stratospheric.
In North America mosques and Islamic Centres must decide what the role of the imam shall be. Will he only lead the prayers or will he be the spiritual leader of the Centre as well? And it is not just in Toledo Ohio where imams get contentious with the Boards and Councils of Islamic Centres and make ludicrous statements like “it is humanly not possible to lead all five prayers in the mosque”. This is happening all over, and frequently if not always the imam lives either connected to the mosque or a stone’s throw away. And this is not peculiar to one particular nationality — an Arab here and a South Asian in San Jose where my very Americanised uncle opens the mosque for the dawn prayer, gives the azaan and many a time leads the prayer of two to three people, while the imam snores in his home one storey above!
A job description of imams should again be preferably templated in a central authority and then distributed for use across the continent. Imams, like the rest of us, bring a great deal of mental baggage with them from their countries of origin. And a lot of it is related to women. Gender roles, especially as detailed in Islam, should not just be understood, they must be applied to the North American context.
Policy regarding the treatment of women in a mosque is shaped by the imam. If the Salafi brand of Islam is followed, Muslim women are gowned, gloved and shoved into hallways to pray, or cloistered in cluttered rooms with closed circuit television to pray among wailing babies and rambunctious toddlers. All the while the men pray in a hushed environ.
Imams are supposed to be role models for the congregation. A squeaky clean personal life, unsoiled by clandestine marital alliances, violation of employment contracts, working all the hours that they are paid for and not arrogating sinless priesthood upon themselves or ownership of the mosque would be good first steps toward the role-model persona. Their Friday sermons must be read, preapproved by the Boards of the mosques and placed on the mosque website for further education of the congregation.
And the most important change will happen only when American-born youth choose to become imams, educated in institutions here. Muslim parents must facilitate this, rather than pushing their disinterested progeny into the default profession: medicine.
In Pakistan as well as in North America, Muslims must focus on the roles, character, qualifications and politics of the men that have millions captive to their sermon on Fridays the world over. The change though initially slow would eventually be exponential. And you will agree it is about time.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
The Power of the Friday Sermon
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C05%5C14%5Cstory_14-5-2010_pg3_5
Friday May 14, 2010
VIEW: The power of the Friday sermon —Dr Mahjabeen Islam
If a disenchanted, angry and possibly economically distraught young man does attend the Friday prayer and for a half hour is compelled to listen to an imam, the opportunity for preaching Islam’s message of “killing non-combatants is haram” becomes a golden one
Imagine tens of millions of Muslims as captive audiences to imams for a half hour every Friday all across the globe. The Friday sermon is so much a part of the prayer itself that one cannot talk, text or phone during it.
Through the ages the Juma prayer has been ingrained as part of the Friday schedule of observant Muslim men. And yet most daydream during the sermon, shutting out the frequently out-of-touch imam. With the rapidly escalating state of global insecurity perpetrated by fringe-fanatics, it behoves the larger Muslim population to go into overdrive and find very quickly what it is that we can do to stem this tide of lunacy in the name of Islam.
Feeling similarly violated after the London train bombings in 2005, I felt I had an epiphany: Project Friday Khutba I called it. The premise is a simple statement in every Friday sermon plainly calling terrorism haram (forbidden). The Friday sermon is governed by rules: there must be a quotation from the Quran, one from the Hadith, and by most schools of thought some reflection on areas of current day socio-politics.
To understand the impact of this better, first, the current state of imams the world over deserves attention. In Pakistan and probably most of the Muslim world, bright achieving children become professionals: doctors, engineers, architects, accountants and the like. As a general rule, imams, mullahs and maulvis are unfortunately a default profession. Some of them are products of orphanages and thus there is the added layer of the pathology of an absent family life.
Unlike clergy schools in Christianity and Judaism, the basic prerequisite of being an imam in the Muslim world may only be that of being hafiz (having memorised the Quran). The non-religious education of an imam may be either non-existent or minuscule, up to the tenth grade, usually not university level.
The North American situation is similarly bleak. Most imams are imports from the Arab and Muslim world, with thick accents in English and little understanding of the North American Muslim socio-politics. Some are graduates of Al-Azhar in Egypt or the International Islamic University in Islamabad, but mindsets do not change with BAs or even PhDs. Egocentricity, myopia, self-aggrandisement, frank materialism, hidden agendas, strong male chauvinism and intense patriarchy characterise the majority of imams in North America. There is also a perverse penchant for four marriages, the public one under American or Canadian law and a couple others under their distorted interpretation of Islamic law. For shame!
The intense interest in sex is so transparent that during taraweeh (the evening prayer in Ramadan), the sole subject across the continent is how intercourse is allowed during the nights of Ramadan. And to these specimens we have given over our religion and the spiritual leadership of the Muslim masses!
In Surah Juma (62:9) the Quran says, “O you who believe! When the call for prayer is given on [Friday] the day of congregation, rush towards the remembrance of Allah and stop buying and selling; this is better for you if you understand.” As per a Hadith, women are exempted due to childcare constraints but I figure that if I am a wage-earner and monitor a medical schedule and do not have little children to tend at home, Friday prayer becomes mandatory on me as well, for the Quran always supersedes a Hadith. I digress only to prove that Friday prayer at the mosque is equivalently imposed on both genders. And that swells the population that the imams have access to.
If you draw upon memory you will agree that in the most major of world events, imams slickly go ostrich. It is true that a lot of them are totally clueless and have not heard about what is going on. Others feel that if they put on their robes and sit in the pulpit and act important and talk about minutiae like how not to close your eyes when you are standing for prayer, the elephant in the mosque, I mean the room, will miraculously go away.
“Sister, sister we do not have no terrorists in the mosque!” I was told dismissively when I approached a couple of imams to implement what is perfectly doable after the London train bombings. I thought machines had x-ray vision; here they were claiming to know the minds of their entire congregations?
If a disenchanted, angry and possibly economically distraught young man does attend the Friday prayer and for a half hour is compelled to listen to an imam, the opportunity for preaching Islam’s message of “killing non-combatants is haram” becomes a golden one.
Dire economic straits seem to rule the world over as well as a deep well of fury against the West for the perceived injustices in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and now Pakistan. One does not need both for an explosive future; one is more than enough to capitalise and build on.
The premise is “diloan mein kehney sunney sey kudoorat aa hi jati hai, safai laakh ho lekin adavat aa hi jati hai” (listening to and talking about things does cause misgivings, regardless of rationalisations an enmity does build up).
All of us develop in the crucible of our own very personal worldview. With Faisal Shahzad an ideological pull seems to have done it. With the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the same seems to apply, for it was his father that alerted the authorities of his leanings. Neither of them were economically disadvantaged, though talk has it Shahzad’s home was foreclosed a year before the event.
Islam is a deeds-based religion and for those of us so inclined it is necessary to do a quick inventory and see how we fit on the world stage and what it is that we can do to prevent the crazies from wresting our religion. Umar ibn al-Khattab advised to “do your hisab (accounting) before it is done for you”. On a collective level, as an ummah we need to make it mandatory on ourselves to determine the causes of this lunacy and develop ideas to deal with it.
No imam holds divinity in the eyes of God. Imams serve the mosque and are answerable to mosque councils and boards. Their job descriptions should be documented, their sermons prepared in advance and reviewed and each sermon should clearly state that terrorism is haram and that “killing one is like killing all of humanity” (Quran, Maidah, 5:32).
On July 17, 2005, 500 imams in Britain issued a fatwa (religious decree) condemning the use of violence and destruction of innocent lives, saying suicide bombings were “vehemently prohibited”.
On July 28, 2005, the Fiqh Council of North America together with 120 religious organisations and leaders in North America issued a fatwa that unequivocally labels terrorism and cooperation with its perpetrators as haram in Islam. And with each insult this condemnation chorus continues.
What is needed by the Fiqh Council of North America and imams the world over is to go a few steps further. They, Muslim governments and congregations themselves, should do some house-cleaning of imams that are equivocal about violence or openly promote it. And use the Friday sermon to wash the brains of the flock of any extremist ideology that might be taking root.
Allama Iqbal poetically translated verse 11 of Surah Ra’ad that “God does not change the condition of a people unless they themselves make the decision to change” with: “Khuda ney aaj tak us qaum ki halat nahin badli na ho jis ko khayal khud apni halat key badalney ka.”
Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular have been brought to a precipice it seems. We need to de-escalate quickly. The message in the Friday sermon can be effective and powerfully reverberating, being all the while clothed in the beautiful tranquillity of Islam.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Friday May 14, 2010
VIEW: The power of the Friday sermon —Dr Mahjabeen Islam
If a disenchanted, angry and possibly economically distraught young man does attend the Friday prayer and for a half hour is compelled to listen to an imam, the opportunity for preaching Islam’s message of “killing non-combatants is haram” becomes a golden one
Imagine tens of millions of Muslims as captive audiences to imams for a half hour every Friday all across the globe. The Friday sermon is so much a part of the prayer itself that one cannot talk, text or phone during it.
Through the ages the Juma prayer has been ingrained as part of the Friday schedule of observant Muslim men. And yet most daydream during the sermon, shutting out the frequently out-of-touch imam. With the rapidly escalating state of global insecurity perpetrated by fringe-fanatics, it behoves the larger Muslim population to go into overdrive and find very quickly what it is that we can do to stem this tide of lunacy in the name of Islam.
Feeling similarly violated after the London train bombings in 2005, I felt I had an epiphany: Project Friday Khutba I called it. The premise is a simple statement in every Friday sermon plainly calling terrorism haram (forbidden). The Friday sermon is governed by rules: there must be a quotation from the Quran, one from the Hadith, and by most schools of thought some reflection on areas of current day socio-politics.
To understand the impact of this better, first, the current state of imams the world over deserves attention. In Pakistan and probably most of the Muslim world, bright achieving children become professionals: doctors, engineers, architects, accountants and the like. As a general rule, imams, mullahs and maulvis are unfortunately a default profession. Some of them are products of orphanages and thus there is the added layer of the pathology of an absent family life.
Unlike clergy schools in Christianity and Judaism, the basic prerequisite of being an imam in the Muslim world may only be that of being hafiz (having memorised the Quran). The non-religious education of an imam may be either non-existent or minuscule, up to the tenth grade, usually not university level.
The North American situation is similarly bleak. Most imams are imports from the Arab and Muslim world, with thick accents in English and little understanding of the North American Muslim socio-politics. Some are graduates of Al-Azhar in Egypt or the International Islamic University in Islamabad, but mindsets do not change with BAs or even PhDs. Egocentricity, myopia, self-aggrandisement, frank materialism, hidden agendas, strong male chauvinism and intense patriarchy characterise the majority of imams in North America. There is also a perverse penchant for four marriages, the public one under American or Canadian law and a couple others under their distorted interpretation of Islamic law. For shame!
The intense interest in sex is so transparent that during taraweeh (the evening prayer in Ramadan), the sole subject across the continent is how intercourse is allowed during the nights of Ramadan. And to these specimens we have given over our religion and the spiritual leadership of the Muslim masses!
In Surah Juma (62:9) the Quran says, “O you who believe! When the call for prayer is given on [Friday] the day of congregation, rush towards the remembrance of Allah and stop buying and selling; this is better for you if you understand.” As per a Hadith, women are exempted due to childcare constraints but I figure that if I am a wage-earner and monitor a medical schedule and do not have little children to tend at home, Friday prayer becomes mandatory on me as well, for the Quran always supersedes a Hadith. I digress only to prove that Friday prayer at the mosque is equivalently imposed on both genders. And that swells the population that the imams have access to.
If you draw upon memory you will agree that in the most major of world events, imams slickly go ostrich. It is true that a lot of them are totally clueless and have not heard about what is going on. Others feel that if they put on their robes and sit in the pulpit and act important and talk about minutiae like how not to close your eyes when you are standing for prayer, the elephant in the mosque, I mean the room, will miraculously go away.
“Sister, sister we do not have no terrorists in the mosque!” I was told dismissively when I approached a couple of imams to implement what is perfectly doable after the London train bombings. I thought machines had x-ray vision; here they were claiming to know the minds of their entire congregations?
If a disenchanted, angry and possibly economically distraught young man does attend the Friday prayer and for a half hour is compelled to listen to an imam, the opportunity for preaching Islam’s message of “killing non-combatants is haram” becomes a golden one.
Dire economic straits seem to rule the world over as well as a deep well of fury against the West for the perceived injustices in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and now Pakistan. One does not need both for an explosive future; one is more than enough to capitalise and build on.
The premise is “diloan mein kehney sunney sey kudoorat aa hi jati hai, safai laakh ho lekin adavat aa hi jati hai” (listening to and talking about things does cause misgivings, regardless of rationalisations an enmity does build up).
All of us develop in the crucible of our own very personal worldview. With Faisal Shahzad an ideological pull seems to have done it. With the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the same seems to apply, for it was his father that alerted the authorities of his leanings. Neither of them were economically disadvantaged, though talk has it Shahzad’s home was foreclosed a year before the event.
Islam is a deeds-based religion and for those of us so inclined it is necessary to do a quick inventory and see how we fit on the world stage and what it is that we can do to prevent the crazies from wresting our religion. Umar ibn al-Khattab advised to “do your hisab (accounting) before it is done for you”. On a collective level, as an ummah we need to make it mandatory on ourselves to determine the causes of this lunacy and develop ideas to deal with it.
No imam holds divinity in the eyes of God. Imams serve the mosque and are answerable to mosque councils and boards. Their job descriptions should be documented, their sermons prepared in advance and reviewed and each sermon should clearly state that terrorism is haram and that “killing one is like killing all of humanity” (Quran, Maidah, 5:32).
On July 17, 2005, 500 imams in Britain issued a fatwa (religious decree) condemning the use of violence and destruction of innocent lives, saying suicide bombings were “vehemently prohibited”.
On July 28, 2005, the Fiqh Council of North America together with 120 religious organisations and leaders in North America issued a fatwa that unequivocally labels terrorism and cooperation with its perpetrators as haram in Islam. And with each insult this condemnation chorus continues.
What is needed by the Fiqh Council of North America and imams the world over is to go a few steps further. They, Muslim governments and congregations themselves, should do some house-cleaning of imams that are equivocal about violence or openly promote it. And use the Friday sermon to wash the brains of the flock of any extremist ideology that might be taking root.
Allama Iqbal poetically translated verse 11 of Surah Ra’ad that “God does not change the condition of a people unless they themselves make the decision to change” with: “Khuda ney aaj tak us qaum ki halat nahin badli na ho jis ko khayal khud apni halat key badalney ka.”
Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular have been brought to a precipice it seems. We need to de-escalate quickly. The message in the Friday sermon can be effective and powerfully reverberating, being all the while clothed in the beautiful tranquillity of Islam.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Silence or condittional condemnation
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\05\07\story_7-5-2010_pg3_3
Friday, May 07, 2010
VIEW: Silence or conditional condemnation —Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Ours is a nation with many Joseph Goebbels. We rattle on in convoluted, minute details and in the effort to convince others, delude only ourselves, unfortunately so deeply that we lose the beginning of lies and the death of the truth
Unstinted condemnation with no ifs, ands, or buts. That really is what live consciences do, but stretched by money, pulled by power, crushed for survival or encased in apathy, as a nation and an ummah, we are either mute or babbling.
As though life and world politics were not tough enough, we now have a Pakistani-American, Faisal Shahzad, trying to blow up an SUV in Times Square.
Those embedded deeply in faith, practicing the details of the Sunnah with mid-calf pyjamas and beards-but-no-moustaches frequently forget the most basic litmus test of Islam: the premise of intention. Shahzad faces terrorism and explosive charges. These include “attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and transporting an explosive device with the intent to kill”. The key word here is “intent”. The Quran in Surah Nisa (4:135) says succinctly: “Testify to the truth even if it goes against yourselves, your parents or your relatives.” This verse has interminable depth and it nudges you to listen to and strengthen your moral compass, for going against oneself and one’s parents is mighty hard to do.
With the construction of the Times Square bomb there could have been significant destruction and death, had it detonated. New York City has billboards all over urging people: “If you see something, say something.” And that is what street vendor Lance Orton did when he saw that the illegally parked SUV’s engine was running and smoke was emanating from it. Muslim-American and Pakistani-American organisations were quick to condemn. But at times like these there is a predictable dead silence in Pakistan. The elephant in the room is always ignored, looked around or looked through — if one can do all those things even metaphorically with an enormity such as an elephant.
Interestingly, the Friday sermon is set up such that it is not complete unless current socio-political issues are discussed. And this is the bane of mosques not just in Pakistan but even here in North America. The imams or spiritual leaders of mosques are so totally clueless about the importance of linking socio-political issues with Islam and what it says about a particular issue that when earth-shattering events occur (for example the assassination of Benazir Bhutto), the imam is found talking about some obscure, entirely unrelated issue.
Muslims are ridiculed, and I might add, rightfully so when we continually claim that “Islam means peace”, but all around us are bombs and killings by wild-eyed beasts audaciously claiming connection with the magnificence that Islam is. It is one thing for some of us to quote the Quran that “killing an innocent is like killing all of humanity and saving one is like saving all of humanity” (5:32) but it is quite another to have the corner on the market on killing non-combatants.
So the religious leaders and imams of Pakistan were silent. And the feeling that “good, the US deserves it” could be heard across the seven seas. But what has happened to our moral compass? True that drones raining bombs on innocents is beyond reprehensible, but like Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur wrote in these pages recently, two wrongs do not make a right. What does your religion say? What does your heart say?
The carnage that the US spreads in Afghanistan and Iraq, the dehumanisation of the Palestinians by Israel and the rape of the Kashmiri nation by India can never be entirely encompassed in the feebleness of words and no grieving will ever suffice. And yet justifying all acts of terror against innocent American civilians based on the injustice perpetrated by governments is firstly unjust in and of itself, and secondly, is not achieving the intended goal.
While Pakistani imams put blinders on, the leaders babbled. Instead of spending millions on mehndis, Pakistani politicians would be wise to invest in some leadership and media training. Perhaps some psychotherapy might be in order so that this reflexive conspiracy-theory-explaining-all could be dealt with. Most felt that Shahzad was being used by entities to indict and damage Pakistan. Others, including Interior Minister Rehman Malik, were borderline ludicrous: Shahzad they said was now an American and so he was “the US’s problem”. Excuse me? Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had the nerve to say in an official interview that Shahzad’s, and attacks such as his, may well be retaliation for American drone attacks in Pakistan. “We should not be so naïve to think that they will not react,” he said. Interestingly, the Pakistani government overtly condemns the drones but has given a wink and a nod to the American government to bomb the alleged terrorist strongholds with impunity. Have we no shame?
Very interestingly, nowhere does one notice straight condemnation. Ours is a nation with many Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s infamous information minister. We rattle on in convoluted, minute details and in the effort to convince others, delude only ourselves, unfortunately so deeply that we lose the beginning of lies and the death of the truth.
Promote the good and forbid the evil (Amar Bil Maroof wa Nahi Anil Munkar) is one of the foundational principles of Islam. In its elaboration we are to physically stop the wrong if we are able, if not we are to verbally do so and if that is not possible we are to at the minimum think that this is wrong. The last option is the weakest manifestation of faith.
Historically, when do Muslims protest? As a general rule when Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is disrespected. But is that all we are urged by God and the Prophet (PBUH) to do? Is this all that our minds encompass and allow? How can we reduce the breadth of such an all-encompassing faith to only one item? Do we realise that ours is a faith that has stark accountability and the promise of justice in this world and the next?
With the two angels on each shoulder and God above as well as our record being handed to us on the Day of Judgement, how can those of us who hang our hats on religion justify our monocular brand of practice? And remember if we protest the veracity of the record, a time and place video waits to shame us. As I age and come across the Muslims from across the spectrum I notice, as is apparent in other faiths as well, that the ultra-right comes with inbuilt blinders and the darkest of sunglasses. And ironically they are controlling the Muslim conversation. And even more ironically, they are the squeaky-wheel minority.
The silent majority must un-press the mute button. If religion does not guide you, let your heart, let your mind. All of us in our own ways must protest terrorism, for no religion or creed, especially Islam, condones the slaughter of innocents.
And if we do not, then we should not bemoan the wholesale hijacking of Islam, the maligning of Pakistan or the endangering of Muslim-Americans. Silence means consent. And conditional condemnation is psychobabble.
Mahjabeen Islam is a freelance columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Friday, May 07, 2010
VIEW: Silence or conditional condemnation —Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Ours is a nation with many Joseph Goebbels. We rattle on in convoluted, minute details and in the effort to convince others, delude only ourselves, unfortunately so deeply that we lose the beginning of lies and the death of the truth
Unstinted condemnation with no ifs, ands, or buts. That really is what live consciences do, but stretched by money, pulled by power, crushed for survival or encased in apathy, as a nation and an ummah, we are either mute or babbling.
As though life and world politics were not tough enough, we now have a Pakistani-American, Faisal Shahzad, trying to blow up an SUV in Times Square.
Those embedded deeply in faith, practicing the details of the Sunnah with mid-calf pyjamas and beards-but-no-moustaches frequently forget the most basic litmus test of Islam: the premise of intention. Shahzad faces terrorism and explosive charges. These include “attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and transporting an explosive device with the intent to kill”. The key word here is “intent”. The Quran in Surah Nisa (4:135) says succinctly: “Testify to the truth even if it goes against yourselves, your parents or your relatives.” This verse has interminable depth and it nudges you to listen to and strengthen your moral compass, for going against oneself and one’s parents is mighty hard to do.
With the construction of the Times Square bomb there could have been significant destruction and death, had it detonated. New York City has billboards all over urging people: “If you see something, say something.” And that is what street vendor Lance Orton did when he saw that the illegally parked SUV’s engine was running and smoke was emanating from it. Muslim-American and Pakistani-American organisations were quick to condemn. But at times like these there is a predictable dead silence in Pakistan. The elephant in the room is always ignored, looked around or looked through — if one can do all those things even metaphorically with an enormity such as an elephant.
Interestingly, the Friday sermon is set up such that it is not complete unless current socio-political issues are discussed. And this is the bane of mosques not just in Pakistan but even here in North America. The imams or spiritual leaders of mosques are so totally clueless about the importance of linking socio-political issues with Islam and what it says about a particular issue that when earth-shattering events occur (for example the assassination of Benazir Bhutto), the imam is found talking about some obscure, entirely unrelated issue.
Muslims are ridiculed, and I might add, rightfully so when we continually claim that “Islam means peace”, but all around us are bombs and killings by wild-eyed beasts audaciously claiming connection with the magnificence that Islam is. It is one thing for some of us to quote the Quran that “killing an innocent is like killing all of humanity and saving one is like saving all of humanity” (5:32) but it is quite another to have the corner on the market on killing non-combatants.
So the religious leaders and imams of Pakistan were silent. And the feeling that “good, the US deserves it” could be heard across the seven seas. But what has happened to our moral compass? True that drones raining bombs on innocents is beyond reprehensible, but like Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur wrote in these pages recently, two wrongs do not make a right. What does your religion say? What does your heart say?
The carnage that the US spreads in Afghanistan and Iraq, the dehumanisation of the Palestinians by Israel and the rape of the Kashmiri nation by India can never be entirely encompassed in the feebleness of words and no grieving will ever suffice. And yet justifying all acts of terror against innocent American civilians based on the injustice perpetrated by governments is firstly unjust in and of itself, and secondly, is not achieving the intended goal.
While Pakistani imams put blinders on, the leaders babbled. Instead of spending millions on mehndis, Pakistani politicians would be wise to invest in some leadership and media training. Perhaps some psychotherapy might be in order so that this reflexive conspiracy-theory-explaining-all could be dealt with. Most felt that Shahzad was being used by entities to indict and damage Pakistan. Others, including Interior Minister Rehman Malik, were borderline ludicrous: Shahzad they said was now an American and so he was “the US’s problem”. Excuse me? Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had the nerve to say in an official interview that Shahzad’s, and attacks such as his, may well be retaliation for American drone attacks in Pakistan. “We should not be so naïve to think that they will not react,” he said. Interestingly, the Pakistani government overtly condemns the drones but has given a wink and a nod to the American government to bomb the alleged terrorist strongholds with impunity. Have we no shame?
Very interestingly, nowhere does one notice straight condemnation. Ours is a nation with many Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s infamous information minister. We rattle on in convoluted, minute details and in the effort to convince others, delude only ourselves, unfortunately so deeply that we lose the beginning of lies and the death of the truth.
Promote the good and forbid the evil (Amar Bil Maroof wa Nahi Anil Munkar) is one of the foundational principles of Islam. In its elaboration we are to physically stop the wrong if we are able, if not we are to verbally do so and if that is not possible we are to at the minimum think that this is wrong. The last option is the weakest manifestation of faith.
Historically, when do Muslims protest? As a general rule when Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is disrespected. But is that all we are urged by God and the Prophet (PBUH) to do? Is this all that our minds encompass and allow? How can we reduce the breadth of such an all-encompassing faith to only one item? Do we realise that ours is a faith that has stark accountability and the promise of justice in this world and the next?
With the two angels on each shoulder and God above as well as our record being handed to us on the Day of Judgement, how can those of us who hang our hats on religion justify our monocular brand of practice? And remember if we protest the veracity of the record, a time and place video waits to shame us. As I age and come across the Muslims from across the spectrum I notice, as is apparent in other faiths as well, that the ultra-right comes with inbuilt blinders and the darkest of sunglasses. And ironically they are controlling the Muslim conversation. And even more ironically, they are the squeaky-wheel minority.
The silent majority must un-press the mute button. If religion does not guide you, let your heart, let your mind. All of us in our own ways must protest terrorism, for no religion or creed, especially Islam, condones the slaughter of innocents.
And if we do not, then we should not bemoan the wholesale hijacking of Islam, the maligning of Pakistan or the endangering of Muslim-Americans. Silence means consent. And conditional condemnation is psychobabble.
Mahjabeen Islam is a freelance columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Changing the Muslim Conversation
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C04%5C29%5Cstory_29-4-2010_pg3_2
Thursday, April 29, 2010
VIEW: Changing the Muslim conversation —Mahjabeen Islam
In the pre-modern era, religious scholars controlled the discussion; now anyone even vaguely familiar with the Quran and prophetic tradition can write a book and gain credibility. Specifically, authorship does not connote authority
So is Abu-Talha Al-Amreeki going
to be speaking for me now? A 20-year old, formerly known as Zachary Adam Chesser, is now media-commissioned to be the loudest responder to the South Park incident satirising Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). On cursory examination, why should he not be? If you posted bloodied photos of Theo van Gogh (murdered in 2004 for making a film critical of Islam), with the threat that South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone would share the same fate, you would grab the spotlight too.
Will we always sit up to the squeakiest wheel? Have Muslims, especially Muslim-Americans undergone a wholesale abdication and left the conversation to a loner previously interested in Goth and satanic bands with now radicalism as a primary interest? And ‘Sheikh’ Osama bin Laden as his motivating idol?
I watched the South Park cartoon and must admit was more amused than offended. There is a refrain throughout this episode that Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) face cannot be shown. Other religious figures, especially Moses, are shown irreverently as well, but this is a cartoon! Finally, they settle on showing Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in a bear costume. No sooner is the cartoon aired that Abu Talha Al-Amreeki posted the threats on his website as well as in interviews and the networks went crazy. As he had, I thought. When asked whether he was threatening the lives of Trey and Stone he said that their work was threatening their lives.
In his lifetime, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was targeted on a daily basis by a hateful woman who dropped garbage on him as he walked by. When the smelly load did not appear one day he went to her home to determine the reason, only to find her unwell. The other more poignant event is that of Taif where Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), during his attempt to spread the message of Islam was mocked, jeered and pelted with stones to the point that the blood congealed in his sandals and he almost fainted. According to an authentic Hadith, on his return from Taif, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, “Why should I pray for the destruction of the people of Taif? I do hope that their posterity will be among the believers in the one Allah.”
Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) is probably the most accurately documented life in history. These and other events of his life portray his tolerance and forbearance in face of insult. And his amazing perspective and forgiveness.
In the hierarchy, our love is to be for God, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and then parents. The respect for Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is made incumbent on all Muslims, which includes that Muslims are not to portray the likeness of Muhammad (PBUH).
The Quran reverberates: “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). It would be utopia if people of all persuasions had the magnanimity and basic courtesy to respect all religious and culturally important figures. One does not have to be a deep religious scholar to say with complete credence that killing, or even threatening someone for insulting the Prophet of Islam (PBUH), goes against the very basic tenet shared with the Abrahamic faiths: thou shalt not kill. What my non-Muslim neighbour, the television or an article does with Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is not a fight I am supposed to fight. I move on or hit delete.
In a Christian-Muslim-Jewish dialogue, Dr Sherman Jackson, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, detangles the issue of “Who Speaks for Islam” very skilfully. He traces the history of authority in Islam. Islam, he says, has no problem with pluralism and that, in pre-modern times, Islamic jurists had the authority but no power and the situation stood much like the current day American model of the separation of church and state. The problem began with the development of the modern nation-state in which the authority of the religious scholars could be successfully marginalised. And the paradigm shifted when activists wanted power to affect the socio-political order.
Currently, Dr Jackson says, classical jurists are competing with modern activists in representing Islam. In these pantheon activists, heroic acts, and authors of whatever book on Islam and Muslims, are considered to have authority. The heroic stand is taken by Osama bin Laden. In the pre-modern era, religious scholars controlled the discussion; now anyone even vaguely familiar with the Quran and Prophetic tradition can write a book and gain credibility. Specifically, authorship does not connote authority.
Dr Jackson expands on the role of the West and how Anwar Awlaki, the man who allegedly inspired Major Hasan in the Fort Hood incident, was converted by the West into an authority. He is referred to as a cleric when, in actuality, Awlaki’s credentials are unknown.
So why, I ask you, is Abou Talha Al-Amreeki not written off as just another lunatic? Are his blue eyes and flowing brown beard giving him credibility even though Revolution Muslim has all of 12 followers? Muslims in general and the media in particular are misdirected. The ones offended by South Park must choose their battles, no pun intended. The media, following journalistic ethics, ought to do basic homework and interview representative organisations such as CAIR, Council of American-Islamic Relations and MPAC, Muslim Public Affairs Council, or individuals of scholarly credentials such as Dr Sherman Jackson, Dr Akbar Ahmed of American University or Dalia Mogahed (former President Obama’s adviser on Muslim relations), among many others all across North America.
Incidents like South Park unnecessarily endanger us all. Together we can change that if we alter the interaction by marginalising the violent and discoursing with the deserved. And, of course, keeping response to offence in perspective.
Mahjabeen Islam is a family physician, addictionist and freelance columnist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be
reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
Thursday, April 29, 2010
VIEW: Changing the Muslim conversation —Mahjabeen Islam
In the pre-modern era, religious scholars controlled the discussion; now anyone even vaguely familiar with the Quran and prophetic tradition can write a book and gain credibility. Specifically, authorship does not connote authority
So is Abu-Talha Al-Amreeki going
to be speaking for me now? A 20-year old, formerly known as Zachary Adam Chesser, is now media-commissioned to be the loudest responder to the South Park incident satirising Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). On cursory examination, why should he not be? If you posted bloodied photos of Theo van Gogh (murdered in 2004 for making a film critical of Islam), with the threat that South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone would share the same fate, you would grab the spotlight too.
Will we always sit up to the squeakiest wheel? Have Muslims, especially Muslim-Americans undergone a wholesale abdication and left the conversation to a loner previously interested in Goth and satanic bands with now radicalism as a primary interest? And ‘Sheikh’ Osama bin Laden as his motivating idol?
I watched the South Park cartoon and must admit was more amused than offended. There is a refrain throughout this episode that Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) face cannot be shown. Other religious figures, especially Moses, are shown irreverently as well, but this is a cartoon! Finally, they settle on showing Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in a bear costume. No sooner is the cartoon aired that Abu Talha Al-Amreeki posted the threats on his website as well as in interviews and the networks went crazy. As he had, I thought. When asked whether he was threatening the lives of Trey and Stone he said that their work was threatening their lives.
In his lifetime, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was targeted on a daily basis by a hateful woman who dropped garbage on him as he walked by. When the smelly load did not appear one day he went to her home to determine the reason, only to find her unwell. The other more poignant event is that of Taif where Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), during his attempt to spread the message of Islam was mocked, jeered and pelted with stones to the point that the blood congealed in his sandals and he almost fainted. According to an authentic Hadith, on his return from Taif, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, “Why should I pray for the destruction of the people of Taif? I do hope that their posterity will be among the believers in the one Allah.”
Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) is probably the most accurately documented life in history. These and other events of his life portray his tolerance and forbearance in face of insult. And his amazing perspective and forgiveness.
In the hierarchy, our love is to be for God, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and then parents. The respect for Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is made incumbent on all Muslims, which includes that Muslims are not to portray the likeness of Muhammad (PBUH).
The Quran reverberates: “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). It would be utopia if people of all persuasions had the magnanimity and basic courtesy to respect all religious and culturally important figures. One does not have to be a deep religious scholar to say with complete credence that killing, or even threatening someone for insulting the Prophet of Islam (PBUH), goes against the very basic tenet shared with the Abrahamic faiths: thou shalt not kill. What my non-Muslim neighbour, the television or an article does with Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is not a fight I am supposed to fight. I move on or hit delete.
In a Christian-Muslim-Jewish dialogue, Dr Sherman Jackson, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, detangles the issue of “Who Speaks for Islam” very skilfully. He traces the history of authority in Islam. Islam, he says, has no problem with pluralism and that, in pre-modern times, Islamic jurists had the authority but no power and the situation stood much like the current day American model of the separation of church and state. The problem began with the development of the modern nation-state in which the authority of the religious scholars could be successfully marginalised. And the paradigm shifted when activists wanted power to affect the socio-political order.
Currently, Dr Jackson says, classical jurists are competing with modern activists in representing Islam. In these pantheon activists, heroic acts, and authors of whatever book on Islam and Muslims, are considered to have authority. The heroic stand is taken by Osama bin Laden. In the pre-modern era, religious scholars controlled the discussion; now anyone even vaguely familiar with the Quran and Prophetic tradition can write a book and gain credibility. Specifically, authorship does not connote authority.
Dr Jackson expands on the role of the West and how Anwar Awlaki, the man who allegedly inspired Major Hasan in the Fort Hood incident, was converted by the West into an authority. He is referred to as a cleric when, in actuality, Awlaki’s credentials are unknown.
So why, I ask you, is Abou Talha Al-Amreeki not written off as just another lunatic? Are his blue eyes and flowing brown beard giving him credibility even though Revolution Muslim has all of 12 followers? Muslims in general and the media in particular are misdirected. The ones offended by South Park must choose their battles, no pun intended. The media, following journalistic ethics, ought to do basic homework and interview representative organisations such as CAIR, Council of American-Islamic Relations and MPAC, Muslim Public Affairs Council, or individuals of scholarly credentials such as Dr Sherman Jackson, Dr Akbar Ahmed of American University or Dalia Mogahed (former President Obama’s adviser on Muslim relations), among many others all across North America.
Incidents like South Park unnecessarily endanger us all. Together we can change that if we alter the interaction by marginalising the violent and discoursing with the deserved. And, of course, keeping response to offence in perspective.
Mahjabeen Islam is a family physician, addictionist and freelance columnist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be
reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com
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