avari | haroon moghul

Sherman Jackson's inestimable service to Anglophones' Islam

There are two types of good books. The first is the kind that is addictive, that you plunge into and plow through-the kind you must simply and immediately complete.

The second are those which are revelatory, whose every sentence demands that you linger. Not only is it a pleasure to read twice or thrice, but a requirement. Each paragraph reveals something to you - good books of this type teach you about the world. The best teach you about yourself.

Dr Jackson has translated an introductory work of Tasawwuf, titled "Sufism for Non-Sufis?" Although pricier than one would like, it is worth having and still better to share. It is that very infrequent book that offers the wisdom of faith and the challenges it sets before us in an accessible and attractive way.

I can't recommend it enough. As always, Dr Jackson remains one of our most valuable minds. May Allah bless and preserve him and raise among us more such scholars.

Buy Sneakers, Dissolve Parliament, Destroy Egypt

I haven't yet had the chance to seriously process what just happened in Egypt, but my initial feeling is that the dissolution of parliament is a stunningly cynical move (even for Egypt's deep state), and further a short-sighted one which could have serious consequences for the country -- the military is more and more deciding to draw battle lines, and wants to set up the Islamists to represent their nemesis in that struggle.  It's a struggle state authoritarianism is quite familiar with across the region.  

I've written up some thoughts at Religion Dispatches:

And the Islamists, too, might read these lessons in their own way: They can participate in politics, but not really. Or only under strict limits, which others will decide for them. That didn’t work in Algeria, and tens of thousands died in a war that the deep state exploited for its purposes. It only worked in Turkey until the former Islamists overcame the deep state, and turned it to their side. But Turkey seems right now an exception: Across the region, there is a sense of ominous paralysis. It’s not that the center cannot hold. It’s that there is no center. 

The Politics of Islam in America: New America Foundation, New York - June 21 2012

JUNE 21, 2012 6:30 – 8:15PM 199 LAFAYETTE STREET, THIRD FLOOR JUST PAST SPRING AT KENMARE—AND UPSTAIRS FROM LA ESQUINA!  Young, well-educated, and ethnically diverse, many American Muslims have achieved the American Dream. But in the post-9/11 world, Muslims face a complex political reality: extremists aim to obscure that diversity in a cloud of fundamentalism, while fear of law enforcement surveillance and rising Islamophobia from mainstream political actors has more and more Muslims uncertain about their place in the American political landscape.  In this election year, we'll explore how Islam has become a political football, what Muslims themselves are doing about it, and how major political parties should engage this segment of the electorate. Speakers will focus on New York's 800,000 strong Muslim community, how American Muslims' views of President Obama have evolved, and whether the right could be a more natural home for American Muslims than the left.  GUARANTEE YOUR PLACE, RSVP NOW FEATURING ZEBA KHAN Founder, American Muslims for Obama (2008)  LINDA SARSOUR  National Advocacy Director, National Network for Arab American Communities  JENNIFER BRYSON  Director, Islam and Civil Society Project The Witherspoon Institute HAROON MOGHUL Research Fellow, National Security Studies Program, New America Foundation Associate Editor, Religion Dispatches

 

The Islamophobia Crisis: Christopher Caldwell in @TNR

I've covered Christopher Caldwell before--and so I do once more.  The author of a popular monograph on Europe's alleged Muslim problem, as well as a columnist at the rightly well-regarded Financial Times, Caldwell recently returned to the subject of Islam and Europe with an essay in The New Republic, titled "Europe's Other Crisis."  

Namely, Muslims.  While Caldwell is always an erudite writer, and comfortable moving across genres and sources, his arguments remain seriously and inexplicably selective, and his perspective worryingly one-sided and seriously exaggerated in alarmism.  I covered his TNR essay for Religion Dispatches, because it demanded a strong reaction (in no small measure due to the seriousness with which his arguments are received):

Caldwell is so busied with Europe’s “lopsided” relationship with its Muslims that he overlooks the outright slaughter of tens of thousands of Muslims as Western Europe sat by, or even actively hampered the victims’ right to self-defense. It’s unfortunate that such selectivity might be Caldwell's greatest consistency.

As you can see, I am especially miffed by Caldwell's blindness to the longstanding population of Eastern European Muslims, who are deeply relevant to, but entirely ignored by, his argument (or, rather, his lack of one):

Caldwell makes no mention of any of this, nor of Eastern Europe’s ancient Muslim communities. There have been Eastern European Muslims for longer than Protestantism has existed, and yet Islam is still, centuries on, the Other, notable only as immigrant victimizer.

Read the full essay here. 

Why I Stopped Believing in God: A Journey Through Atheism

A few days ago, White Cloud Press published All-American: 45 American Men on Being Muslim, an amazing collection of personal stories that lets American Muslim men represent themselves. Ourselves. At last. Too often, we're spoken about, or spoken to, and don't claim ownership of our own stories.

I made the difficult decision to tell a story in this book, one I didn't think I ever would: A story of atheism, of lost faith, of anger with God that was impossible to contain. In All American, I share how and why I stopped, for a time, believing in God, because I was overwhelmed, frustrated, and deeply depressed by Islam.

At AltMuslimah, there's an article about the book, which includes this excerpt about my own story:

The individual essays begin with a bang, as Haroon Moghul, a public intellectual, displays a raw honesty about the difficulties of Islam’s central command, to believe in God – how a totalitarian commitment to the “endless tasks assigned by Islam” left him “crumpled in otherworldly exhaustion, ” before he found himself able to accept Islam as a long term journey marked by balance. This vulnerability of belief makes for a fantastic humanizing introduction to the American Muslim man, who is often feared precisely because he is seen as impervious to any religious vacillation.

I told the story, despite a lot of fear and concern about how it would be received, because I felt it to be deeply important to American Muslims--too many of us struggle quietly, and in shame, with our faith. It's also quite important for America more generally, to know that Muslims are humans, and we too struggle with our faith, a rich and complicated tradition that asks a lot, but can also give a lot.

You can buy the book at a great 40% discount from the publisher (it's just $10.17, and you can't beat that kind of price). Trust me: Reading the lineup of contributors, you'll not regret what you've bought. It's definitely worth sharing, too, as a gift, or for friends, libraries, and schools.

What is the Ummah? Join Me Through Bosnia and Turkey

I came back two nights ago from a nine-day tour of Muslim Spain; my third trip to the country in the past year, it was a tremendously rewarding experience.  But what is always far more fulfilling is not that I can experience it, but that God has given me the chance to share the richness, complexity, and delights of one of Islam's greatest expressions with others.  We had about 40 people on this year's trip through the heartland of Muslim Spain; since we've returned, we've gotten great feedback, including this post by Bushra Burney on her experience.

To me, Islam is as a light, and as time has passed, different peoples and cultures have carried that light to different places.  By necessity, that light must fragment, it must dim, and it must bend--nothing can ever match the intensity and piety of the Prophetic period.  But in that fragmentation is a different kind of beauty: We see how different peoples and cultures realized the same values in different conditions.  For some time, Muslim Spain was powerful and formidable.  During other times, it was weak, on the defensive, and nobly clinging to what little space it had left.

There is a long tradition of traveling to learn--to expand one's horizons.  Mobility and dynamism are at the heart of authentic Islam.  This is what my trips are meant to do.  By going to Spain, we see what Muslims did, where they went wrong, and how they survived and thrived.  And at the end of that trip, we learn how Muslim Spain didn't disappear so much as transform, remaining behind in habits, words, and buildings, or moving to different places--among the most important of which was Eastern Europe.  For if there is any other experience of European Islam that can rival Spain's, it is the Balkans'.

I am leading a group to Bosnia and Turkey from July 6-15, 2012 (that's just five weeks away.)  Full details are available here; the trip is open to anyone who's interested.  It will be a chance to learn about the incredible depth and rootedness of a Western Muslim experience.  This is not at all to say that Islam is uniquely or exclusively Western, but for those of us who are Western and Muslim, learning this history is valuable and important.  This trip is also a chance to go to a place where Islam still clings to the mountains and valleys, as Bosnia sometimes seems to be the twilight of Granada (of 2012, not 1492).

We go because I think we need a better understanding of ummah.

Not that we are all the same, or must be the same.  Not that we are and must be a crude political project.  But because, like an ummah, we descend spiritually from one loving tradition, and we are now as siblings to one another, and despite our differences, we need to know we are there for each other, that we see and recognize and appreciate one another.  For Bosnia, especially, this is a deeply fulfilling experience: Bosnians will appreciate that Western Muslims, like themselves, understand what they have been through, and once we as Americans and Canadians see and know this truth, we will work harder to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Here are three essays I wrote last year on the importance of Bosnia to the Western Muslim experience: The Bleeding Heart of Muslim Europe; 'We Found My Father, Except For His Hand'; and, A Tiny Little Mecca for the West.

Here are some pictures of Bosnia's tremendous landscape, historical and natural.  Bosnia's one of the few countries that you'll leave saying, "I never imagined such a place existed, and don't think I will see such a place again."  

And then we'll go to Istanbul, the thriving heart of the former Ottomans, and now the booming capital of a Turkish renaissance--not politically, but with something that includes and transcends that.  Istanbul is a little bit like seeing world-changing ambition and energy in action, a Muslim place that is delightfully and overwhelmingly messy, a monster of a city that is so achingly old and so breathtakingly young, it seems to be its own planet.

And, again, package details from Dar El Salam Travel.

 

Masjid e Qurtuba

Early in the morning, Tuesday, May 22nd.

Masjid e Qurtuba

You wouldn’t think it would hurt so much

To enter an ancient age

 

You wouldn’t think you’d come in the middle of the night

Touch the walls and ask for forgiveness

 

You wouldn’t think something so heavy

Could sweep you off your feet

 

You wouldn’t think it you’d want to touch her walls

And slip secretly inside

 

The best I can do

is pray next to you

 

For the sake of all the prayers of all the peoples

Who will never come back here again

            Can you pray for me?

Come See Bosnia and Turkey With Me (July 6-15, 2012)

I'm excited to announce "The Ottoman Express," an upcoming tour of Bosnia and Turkey made possible by Dar El Salam Travel (the same folks behind our Spain trip).  

I've designed and will be leading an exploration of Muslim history, the Balkan wars, and Islam in Europe today--Bosnia is beautiful, Istanbul is amazing, and you'll love them both.

If you don't believe me, check out these pictures of our itinerary.

The Ottoman Express starts on July 6 and takes you through Sarajevo, Srebrenica (where we'll visit the genocide memorial and meet the victims' families), and Mostar (where we'll tour a fantastic old town and see some of the most beautiful mosques you can imagine) in Bosnia and then finishes in Istanbul.

For online registration, please visit http://www.darelsalam.com/tourcategorylist.aspx?categoryid=647 

If you have any questions, please call Dar El Salam at 1-866-327-7252 or visit their offices in New York, Houston, or Los Angeles.  Dar El Salam's general contact Information: http://www.darelsalam.com/contactus.aspx

Islamic Capitalism

In Benjamin Kunkel's long, rewarding, and thoughtful reflection on debt, credit, the nature of money and contemporary finance ("Forgive us our debts"), I found this intriguing selection from David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years.  It is a discussion of the nature of early Islamic capitalism, global, free-market, private (in the sense of private property), but not usurious, purely self-interested, or consumerist.  It suggests, albeit very loosely and not without caveats, that we need not be trapped between socialism and capitalism: 

By abandoning the usurious practices that had made them so obnoxious to their neighbours for untold centuries before, [merchants] were able to become – alongside religious teachers – the effective leaders of their communities … The spread of Islam allowed the market to become a global phenomenon … But the very fact that this was, in a certain way, a genuinely free market, not one created by the government and backed by its police and prisons – a world of handshake deals and paper promises backed only by the integrity of the signer – meant that it could never really become the world imagined by those who later adopted many of the same ideas and arguments: one of purely self-interested individuals vying for material advantage by any means at hand.

Can America and the Muslim World Be Friends?

Can America and The Muslim World Be Friends? At the Alaska World Affairs Council on April 6, Mohgul discussed the Muslim world’s relationship with the West over the years asking audiences to consider, “Can America and the Muslim World Be Friends?”  Listen to the audio here; the speech begins at about 5 minutes in.