So this is a continuation of: islam and the blackamerican: finally reading it. As I'm getting more into the book I'm starting to feel that it would be too hard to summarize what I'm reading and do it justice. So I'll just pull out one nugget which seems worth pointing out, especially in the light of the recent events in Oakland.
In most religious conversations, debates and discussions in which I find myself, I often take the position of holding up an idealized Islam which contrasts with the various imperfect practices, vices, flaws and scandals which exist in the Muslim world. And so any flaws are attributed to culture, economic conditions, educational levels, political manipulation, lingering effects of colonialism, neo-colonialism and globalization, etc. Islam is perfect, but its implementation is always a work in progress.
Many Muslims make the extra step of identifying an idealized universal Islam with the particular understanding of Islam which they have from "back home" in Muslim countries, and this becomes the scale against which Islam in America is measured. (And of course, the American understanding of Islam will necessarily be found wanting. I've even heard the comment from one person: "There is no Islam in America, just good intentions"). But as Jackson points out, this way of thinking fundamentally sets up immigrant Muslims from "over there" (even medical doctors and engineers) as religious authority figures while it disadvantages American Muslims (no matter how well-read). Ethnicity and immigrant status can effectively become a proxy for religious learning.
Jackson goes on to suggest that instead of speaking of a single universal Islam, it makes more sense to think in terms of multiple culturally and historically conditioned Islams. More specifically, just as one can speak of Black Religion which is born out of Blackamerican history one can also speak of Post-Colonial Religion which comes out of the formerly colonized developing world's experiences with the West. And where Black Religion has been a liberating force and a form of resistance to domination, according to Jackson, Post-Colonial Religion "seeks first and foremost to reverse the sociocultural and psychological influences of the West, either by seizing political power as a means of redirecting society or through and ideological rejection of all perceived influences of the West." And so immigrant Islam isn't more pure or more universal, it is just conditioned by a different set of circumstances.
(to be continued...)
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