WHY CHANGE IS POSSIBLE? THE BASES OF HOPE
In spite of the very challenging state of our country and our community, and in spite of some discouraging signs from the history of both, I am much more optimistic about change than it may be suggested by the analysis of our reality and our history. And like the assessment, this optimism is well-founded. I am also fully aware of the formidable obstacles to change and I am expecting a fierce resistance. That has been the case with every reformer, and every reform movement, be it religious or civic. Usually, people don't want to confront their reality especially if it is not pleasant and they don't want to leave their comfort zone especially if there is no fire. And in our case, there are some extra obstacles and reasons for resistance that increase the odds against change.
Ironically, both the impediments to change and the basis for hope converge on the fundamental issues of identity and mission. Indeed, the lack of rallying cause and the serious identity issues are behind most of our difficulties. But also our identity and our cause are the main bases of the hope for change. Indeed, with a great faith, a great country, and a great cause it would be much easier and more natural to make history than to justify failure. So, unless one questions those greatnesses, we have very solid bases for hope, except that we must be true to our great identity and we must champion our great cause. That's why the key to affect change and launch and inspire a genuine and relevant American Islamic movement is to commit our community's members and institutions to the divine mission and to America.
ELEMENTS OF OUR STRENGTH AND HOPE
1- OUR COUNTRY AND COMMUNITY:
Indeed, in spite of some troubling past and present events, trends, phenomena, and policies, America continues to be a great and unique country. This is due, largely, to our constitution and founding values, which guarantee fundamental rights and liberties, and offer a level playing field and fair rules for civic engagement. With its deeply entrenched pluralism, America continues to be unique in giving its citizens the opportunity to live out their dreams and in giving communities the opportunity to organize and make a difference. It is a dynamic and vibrant society where the systems, the norms, and the policies are amenable to change and correction by committed and well-organized people no matter how short they are in resources.
However, as American citizens we should be loyal to America not only because of its greatness, uniqueness and what it can do for us, but simply because it is our country. Everything else is an add-on or a supplement. But America's uniqueness and greatness, compared to any other country, should help American Muslims develop a genuine and coherent American Muslim identity and successfully integrate in society in spite of some of the reasons that pushed for ambivalence towards America and isolation from society.
Indeed, compared to any other country, America offers considerable advantages to its citizens, including its religious and ethnic minorities. The details of those general advantages and those specific to Muslims are beyond the scope of this article. However, one can safely assert that there is hardly a better place in the world for Muslims to thrive, make a difference, and have a significant impact not only on America but also on the whole world, especially the Muslim world.
Two other factors reinforce our bases for hope to affect change: (1) the great potential of the community and (2) the unique opportunity that was created by the election of Obama whose presidential campaign has transformed into a movement for change at least on the domestic front. Indeed, in many aspects (including education and income), the American Muslim community is well above the American average. More importantly, the community has repeatedly and impressively responded whenever it was mobilized for a clear cause, especially when the cause was championed by a competent leadership with a clear vision. That was more or less the case from the founding phase, which resulted in the swift proliferation of Islamic Centers and Schools, to the impressive response to 9/11. And all along, the American Muslim community responded impressively to crises and disasters in the Muslim world. However, the problem has always been the lack of a leadership with an expansive and integrated vision that can sustain mobilization and growth and integrate efforts to produce the needed synergy, buildup, and breakthrough, independently of emergencies. This also accounts for another dilemma that constitutes another basis for hope: the fact that the human and financial resources and potential of our community is largely untapped. Finally, the success of the numerous communities and groups in America in achieving relevance and advancing their causes should be a source of inspiration for us, especially that many of those communities and groups don't exceed ours in size or potential.
However, the American society is a very competitive society. And while the opportunity is there individuals' success and communities' relevance are hard earned. Both individuals and communities have to prove themselves, and must be not only serious and dedicated but also persistent and sophisticated.
For our community, 9/11 was a major blow to its image, its progress, and its prospects. However, the community was steered in the right direction by leaders and prominent organizations that assessed the situation properly and acted swiftly and decisively. The immediate goal was to weather the storm, and that goal was achieved with a reasonable success, paved the door for taking the community to the next level of development and integration through the introduction of some long overdue reforms. The community's response to the 'shock therapy' was great and within few years it was significantly transformed. Unfortunately, once the storm appeared to be over, the whole process was stalled by those who were passively resisting it. They never believed in the reforms. They didn't understand America nor did they commit to it. And they didn't even appreciate that our community and its standing will not (and should not) go back to the pre 9/11 conditions. Once again, our community missed a great opportunity and was let down by some incompetent and shortsighted leadership. However, the residual gains were significant, and the community today is much more receptive to fundamental reforms. Leaders and organizations that are unable or unwilling to evolve will make themselves irrelevant and will miss the train of change and reform.
2- OUR FAITH:
When it comes to change, both our country and our community offer great and tremendous advantages that constitute solid bases for hope and powerful sources of inspirations. However, our biggest source of hope and inspiration is Islam, which gave birth to a great movement that affected great change in a very hostile environment and much more unfavorable conditions. Indeed, Islam gave birth to a great community out of a small number of mostly poor, illiterate, and pagan Bedouins who belonged to different tribes that were constantly fighting each other both for survival and for petty issues. The prophetic community not only contributed to the advancement of humanity but also engendered a great and lasting civilization and transformed the world in the span of one generation. Such great accomplishment was made even though the prophetic community was subject to very harsh religious persecution and was - for about 20 years - the target of all kinds of uprooting conspiracies that threatened its very survival.
Such phenomenon was not a one-time event. Rather, throughout its history and in all kinds of circumstances, Islam had repeatedly produced relevant movements of revival and reform that affected meaningful change. Is it too much to hope that in the 21st century, and with all the advantages of our community and country, that Islam can transform the American Muslim community into a relevant movement for change?
This hope is based on the firm belief that Islam is a timeless and universal guidance and the prophetic legacy is a timeless model of understanding, practicing, and promoting Islam and building an effective Muslim community. However, as Karen Armstrong indicated, a key element in the success of the prophetic movement was that it was rooted in its time. Similarly, the key to our success is to develop a genuinely American (not even Americanized) Islam that starts with a genuine and coherent American Muslim identity, personality, in addition to a relevant understanding and practice of Islam. This relevant understanding and practice of Islam will result in a viable and relevant lifestyle, discourse, platform, individual, collective and communal models.
It is us who are making Islam and making ourselves irrelevant by holding tight to a foreign and ambivalent identity, and sticking to an out-of-date and out-of-touch version of Islam that was twisted, frozen, and blended to a decadent culture. Indeed, the root causes of our unwillingness or inability to integrate and therefore become relevant are (1) our reluctance to resolve in unequivocal way the issue of identity and other fundamental issues; (2) our resistance or fear to go all the way to the timeless sources of guidance, understand and implement them in a way that is relevant to our reality and blend the original version of Islam with the American culture. Instead, we insist on using the products of the same exercise that was performed in different places and times. These products are not transferable in times or in space, with customization or without customization, simply because they were developed to deal with a unique setting. We need to note that continuous change is a defining characteristic of our world, and the communication and digital revolutions have remarkably accelerated the pace of change. But, while they shrunk this world into a global village, they could not eliminate the distinguishing features of regions and people. Therefore, it is only natural that understanding and living Islam and fulfilling its mission will happen differently in different times and places. And the prime responsibility of Muslims at all times and places is to root their faith and themselves in their times and their society, and strive to be relevant, not to transplant the work that was done in another setting.
This is especially true because rooting Islam in time and space was not always successful, which means that when we rely on what people have done in another era or another culture, we may end up transplanting an experience that failed or did not evolve in its own birth place. Plus, even in this global village, the products of civilization are transferred downward from the more advanced to the less advanced, not the opposite, which makes it more futile for us to try to transplant to America a model from any other part of the world.
This exercise of rediscovering the original and real Islam and making it relevant is needed not only in America, but across the world, because even in Muslim countries it was not done for a long time, and wherever it was done its intellectual and human products did not evolve and therefore became largely irrelevant, at least as a source of inspiration and a force of change.
The litmus test for the proper and relevant understanding and practice of Islam is the community's relevance and its proper understanding and effective engagement of the society. That is the exercise that we must undertake and that is the challenge that we must take on.
3-OUR CAUSE:
Not only is our faith a great source of inspiration and empowerment, our country a great place to thrive, and our community's potential great, but also our cause is a winning cause due to its divine nature and noble purpose. Indeed, we are championing our cause and building our movement in response to the divine call and seeking only the good pleasure of Allah and the wellbeing of our country, our people, and humanity at large. How could another cause be nobler and more winning than this cause of ours! Indeed, Allah's work will be done and His Purpose will be fulfilled. So, those who aspire and strive to become true, faithful embodiments and effective instruments of the divine will could not fail.
The divine purpose calls on members of the human family to strive to be exemplary and engaged citizens, to aspire high, to realize their full potential, and to cooperate for the greater good. Compared to the situation of Muslims almost everywhere else in the world, American Muslims are privileged because fulfilling the divine purpose meshes seamlessly with upholding the constitution. In particular, justice and peace at all levels constitute the top objectives of the divine message and messengers. Indeed, Islam is unequivocal about the equality among all people, and Allah makes the establishment and upholding of justice the purpose of sending messengers and revelations "We sent aforetime our messengers with clear signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance, that men may stand forth in justice" [57, 27]. Justice, which is defined as the virtue that gives everyone his due, is the master virtue and includes most other virtues. The prophet (pbuh) linked the success of his mission to the prevalence of peace and the rule of law, when he said "when my mission is accomplished a traveler will travel from Sana'a to Hadramout fearing none but Allah and worrying only about the wolf attacking his sheep". We may take this for granted but that was a powerful and profound characterization of the prevalence of freedom, peace, and the rule of law that the people of Arabia could envision and were actually dreaming of. And in a famous incident and statement to reprimand one of his prominent governors, Omar ibn al-Khattab made it clear that liberty is a self-evident truth and an unalienable right endowed by the Creator (he was referring to a Christian citizen living under a Muslim rule).
There will always be mistakes and setbacks, and generous sacrifices will always be needed. But that's part of the growing pain and the price of relevance in this life and heaven in the hereafter. Even at the time of the prophet and great companions, engaging the environment was not flawless, risk-free, or without sacrifices and setbacks. However, they were very effective in rippling successes and accomplishments, containing damage, and quickly recovering from setbacks. That's how they were able to sustain buildup to surmount obstacles and break through ceilings.
Finally, but most importantly, our hope rests exclusively on Allah's Guidance and Help, which He promised for those who strive in His way and champion His cause. Indeed, from an Islamic perspective, success comes only from Allah, and it is granted for those who advocate Allah's cause and effectively use His rules, regardless of people's faith and intention. And Allah promised that the advocates of His cause will not be overcome.
Allah's support is neither unconditional nor exclusive for Muslims, and therefore should not be taken for granted and should not be used as an excuse for unfounded hopes, inadequate planning, inefficient work, or stingy sacrifices. A number of requirements and conditions have to be met for Muslims to qualify for Allah's 'extra' Help other than the fruits of effectively using His rules, which are accessible and fairly awarded for everybody. Put in a nutshell, those requirements entail the fulfillment of the divine mission with pure intention and utmost passion and sophistication. Indeed, Islam states, and history confirms, that only when they meet this condition do Muslims become united, empowered, and relevant, and qualify for Allah's guidance and help. Interestingly, that was the case even during the life of the prophet (pbuh), and Muslims learned this lesson in different ways in Badr, Uhud, al-Ahzab, and Hunayn.
