American Muslims
Posted on 17. Sep, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in Opinion
Quantum Note
Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
The little stuntman from Gainesville, Florida, lived through his limelight of a few days, like the annoying fly which flutters around one’s face before its inevitable disappearance in the dustbin. America has moved on to a post-September 11, 2010 low season, although the next hype may be just around the corner.
Forgotten under the darkness of the limelight focusing on the little pastor are historical realities of American Muslims and their equally historical future. From the sea-farers of the pre-Columbus era to the hordes of African slaves, and from the largely ignored “pure-blooded” Americans to the not-so-pure emigrant community now living under anxieties of a bleak future dawning on them and their progeny in the land of their dreams, the spectrum of American Muslims spans generations just as it spans the extraordinary large range of their spiritual, emotional, psychological, social, and economic states.
Even though there are no accurate statistics of how many Muslims are present in the United States of America, the 2010 estimate of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), fixing that number at 7 million, is not unreasonable. Numbers are, however, not so important in an era when a pastor tending to a flock of less than 30 souls can grab world attention with a little stunt. What is important, however, is the future of these and new Muslims in the land of honey and flowing rivers where they live side by side with Daniel Pipes, Steven Emersons and Robert Spencers, who can always spin a tale of a growing radical Islamist Wahhabi influence in America and strike massive fears in the heart of American soul now yearning for nothing, waiting for nothing, as Faulkner, the last of the American novelists who still cared for the soul so rightly pointed out at the Nobel Banquet when he spoke at the City Hall in Stockholm, on December 10, 1950: “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”
American Muslims now share that universal doom hanging over the American soul, but in a way different from others as they have to bear the additional burden of physical, economic, social and emotional torment spun by American media, which has produced a general suspicion, if not hatred, against Muslims: all Muslims, especially the immigrants, are suspect terrorists until proven otherwise.
In a world characterized by such stark failures as the silence of the so-called international community over the death of innocent men, women, and children in northern Pakistan where drone attacks have now become regular, the inability of the government of Pakistan to even protest against these drone attacks on its own citizens, and the continuous doom hanging over the Palestinians, American Muslims have a moral obligation to protest against these outrageous criminal activities. But the hyper-media has forestalled this pro-active possibility by putting them on the defensive.
All that the American Muslims are able to do in this post-9/11 era is to simply live on the edge and fight for what should already be their right as citizens of a country where the rule of law is supposedly exemplary, where democracy has reached its perfection, as they claim, where equal opportunities are supposed to be the norm. But one cannot expect this in an era of platitudes, where one incident can lead to a complete reorientation of state policies, and imaginary fears can lead the most powerful military power on earth to spend astronomical amounts of money on erecting a security apparatus that has eroded the notions of freedom and dignity. One cannot hope to have any proactive role by a community so terrorized as the Muslims of America to actually stand in front of the White House now occupied by a black man and say: stop those drones now, Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama!
No, that is only possible if American Muslims rise above their full stomachs and redefine their role as citizens of a state where naturalization of fear has killed all hope of justice, liberty, and freedom and where hardly a day passes when someone in the mainstream media does not spin a tale about a distant enemy—Iran, al-Qaeda, Taliban—just about to attack America. Such sensationalism has made words like terrorists, violence, extremists, so commonplace that no one thinks twice about the vague notions associated with these words, but these words deflect attention from the real life realities: enormous amounts of explosive materials being thrown from the skies over hapless populace; existential travail of the men who live in that heart of darkness called Guantánamo Bay, the death and destruction of over one million lives in Iraq, for which no one is assuming responsibility, and the continuous debasement of life in Afghanistan. These real issues have been sacrificed at the American alter for imaginary fears and American Muslims have accomplice in this act of replacement of the real for the imaginary.
There is hardly an organization of American Muslims dedicated to a proactive policy of creating a real niche for this large community. Most of them are merely dealing with existential dilemmas; this is true of mosque committees as it is of those nation-wide Islamic organizations which attract thousands of Muslims to their annual dinners which are increasingly becoming fashion-shows and star-stuck autograph sessions.
Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder-president of Center for Islam and Science (www.cis-ca.org), Canada, and editor of
Islam & Science, a semi-annual journal of Islamic perspectives on science and civilization. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry (University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1983), and then left the field of experimental science to fully devote himself to study Islam, its spiritual, intellectual and scientific traditions.
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he has lived in Canada since 1979. He has held academic and research positions at University of Saskatchewan (1979-1984), University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-85), and McGill University (1986). During 1990-1999, he pursued his research and study on various aspects of Islam in Pakistan, where he also worked as Director, Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH) between 1991-96 and as Director, Pakistan Academy of Sciences (1998-99).
During 1999-2001, Dr. Iqbal was Program Director (Muslim World) for the Science-Religion Course Program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), Berkeley, USA.
Dr. Iqbal has published books and papers on the relationship between Islam and science, Islam and the West, the contemporary situation of Muslims, and the history of Islamic science.
His publications include Islam and Science, God, Life and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives , Science and Islam, Dawn in Madinah: A Pilgrim’s Passage , The Making of Islamic Science (IBT, 2009) and a few more titles.
He is the General Editor of the forthcoming seven-volume Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, the first English language reference work on the Qur’an based on fourteen centuries of Muslim reflection and scholarship. He is a regular contributor to Opinion Maker.
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Ayesha Villalobos
17. Sep, 2010
Asalaamalaekum
We exist as a race, and Islam is a living force for the millions of Muslim worldwide.
comprising nearly one-third of the inhabitants of the world.What have you stated above holds true that even here in the Philippines theres no solid platform or organization that really have a solid take in defending Muslims rights and fighting back against grieve attacked on Muslims identity.,Last July I visited Camp Bagong Diwa to have a short talk with some of the political detainees there, and i learned that there are 300 Muslim detainees majority of them are suspected members of Abu Sayyaf group . The past years, the Camp Bagong Diwa incident, wherein some Muslims were killed due to the authorities clear breach of Human rights of the detainees.
http://www.newsbreak.com.ph/democracyandgovernance/downloads/camp_bagongdiwa.pdf
We as a Muslim should not only assert in restoring our Muslim identity in an individualistic level but rather in a unified, compounded platform. There are lessons that we can draw from the past that may serve as a guide for us in the present and in the upcoming times. We are once a mighty nation ruling the greater part of the world. From the desert, since time immemorial Muslims were already free men and soldiers. We need to re- articulate our life purpose as a Muslim .We have been too idle, or perhaps too proud to lift our hands to thrust away the flies, and yet we cry out ! Meeri Allah!! We should be very glad to get our share of the bread and honey that descend to the lot of our brothers and sisters, but we do little or nothing towards in obtaining them
Dr.A.K.Tewari
17. Sep, 2010
I can understand the agony of Pak borm Canadian author as well as the impossible deam of a day dreamer dared to comment on the article .Islam and science ,a topic deserves to be analysed but I am sure no one will be agree that the present condition of muslims is due to mis interpretation of Islamic – Science.
Dr_killer_WHALE
25. Sep, 2010
DEAR tWari, Abey pobari, you are as ignorant as your father and as uneducated as your mother. So shut up and provide us a good point. Radical hindu
Dan
18. Sep, 2010
Just an opinion shared by many Americans, there should be no American Muslims, nor Muslims in America. Send them back with a bucket and shovel to play in their sand piles.
Toxick 1
18. Sep, 2010
AAAwwwww…poor misunderstood muslims. If you don’t like your treatment, go back wherever it is you sandfleas originate. No one I know asked you to come here in the first place.
OpulenceIhasit
18. Sep, 2010
Beat it you troll.
Also, your masters asked us to come here because the natives here are fat and lazy trailer trash who can’t do the basic of jobs. They marketed this country as the land of opportunity, so that they could some competent workers to replace the junkfood eating scum that reside here.
Dr_killer_WHALE
25. Sep, 2010
yOU HAVE BEEN FIXED BY THE THEIR MASTER WATCHING AMERICAN IDOL……. AND EATING MCDONALDS
Mysteryworshiper
18. Sep, 2010
Toxic, you might want to take a look here:
http://mynameisjoecortina.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/it-wasn%e2%80%99t-the-arabs-stupid-it-was-the-jews-part-1/
Dave
18. Sep, 2010
Laughing at the assertion that the media is biased against Muslims. Since 9/11/2010, the media has bent over backwards to release a torrent of pro-Islam/Muslim articles.
I haven’t seen one piece that accurately details the true danger presented to our nation by Muslims.
There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. They are either screaming bloody murder and threatening genocide against somebody because someone exercised their constitutional right to speak or they will be doing that at some point in the future.
Look at any Muslim dominated nation. They are almost universal in their ridiculous levels of violence.
Muslims are not safe and are not compatible with western culture.
If someone is Muslim, they need to move to a Muslim nation like Iran or Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
Why should we allow scum that hate us to benefit from the work of our Christian forefathers in creating this wonderful nation?
RightofRush
18. Sep, 2010
Dave, you’ve nailed it. The only lasting peace recognized by Muslims with the infidel, requires that the infidel converts, allows himself to be subjugated to the will of Islam, or accepts death.
William Whitten
18. Sep, 2010
Dave you are an ignorant idiot.
r2d2
18. Sep, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaJ7URfBPco&feature=related
William Whitten
18. Sep, 2010
I’ve run into Toxic on other forums. The creature is practically illiterate.
However, I don’t like people who consider themselves as anything other than individuals.
I don’t like Jews who are Jews first and human beings second.
I don’t like Christians who consider themselves Christians first and human beings second.
And I don’t like Muslims who consider themselves Muslims first and human beings second.
If you want to be a human being who lives in America…that’s all it takes for me. Otherwise I consider you all totally misguided.
\\ll//
an anti-christ
18. Sep, 2010
Excellent William! You are one of the too few enlightened individuals who understands that the problems are first created when human beings divide themselves into groups that imply difference or maybe even superiority to other human beings. We should all keep it simple and keep sacred the common denominator of our being human for that is trully all that matters. Respect
an anti-christ
18. Sep, 2010
Dear Dr. Iqbal,
Of course, you’ve hit the nail on the head with your perceptions. I wish I could speak for all Americans when I express my sincere respect for the religion of Islam and support for all Muslims in their right to worship the one God within the contexts of the american or any other culture where they happen to live. The foundation of America is based upon truths accorded by God to all peoples, and so it is the duty of every American, regardless of faith, to also fight for the human rights of liberty and equality for Muslims living in America. It could be blamed on ignorance for believing the media propaganda that instigates fear and enmity, but for anyone who claims a belief in God, their is absolutely no excuse for the disrespect and condemnation of other people because of their religion, especially since it is obvious that the conflicting ideologies are of cultural and political nature. And there is only one entity in existence who is reserved the right to judge the conscience of human beings. Guess who.
Elwood Cid
19. Sep, 2010
Violent Jihadists, and their non-combatant enablers, are a clear and present danger to freedom loving peoples everywhere. Western Constitutional Democracies need to remain vigilant and ready to fight this threat whenever it presents itself.
fender
19. Sep, 2010
Our greatest alley in the growth of Islam is the american caucasian female.What a great statistic.
sgt rompecoglioni
20. Sep, 2010
Hit the road Mustafa! Nobody invited you here and don’t get me wrong. You just invite trouble here that will affect you later. Just remmember what happened to the jews back in WW2. and why?
If you think this is another weimar republic you are wrong.
At anytime the wheel can change and they will hunt you any where on this face of the Earth. US is everywhere you want. The american people are fed enough with your stupid ideology and we are not anymore religious as you are,I mean brain washed, but you are just brain washed by religion. Don’t try to rise the monster just like Japan did in WW2. Go back to your camels and stay there, don’t tell me what to do in my home. China, Russia, EU, USA, Australia, will outnumber you, they got the power to wipe you out in seconds without any nuclear weapons. Just remmember who pull the sword will die by sword, Capishi?
Cure
22. Sep, 2010
Um sgt rompecoglioni…
You have his name wrong…it’s MUZAFFAR, not Mustafa.
…speaking of China…why would China want to “wipe us out”…we make up almost 20 million of their population…
And as for wiping us out…you can’t.
The thing is most americans and europeans or even aussies are too engrossed with their own lives…so entangled that they don’t care enough to send us back to our “sand piles”.
And FYI, it’s “Capiche”, and not “Capishi”.
Capiche ?