American Muslims leaving islam in droves?
Dr. Jeffery Lang
To the Homegrown American Sisters and Brothers
At present, our community in America, whether or not we are aware of it or
acknowledge it, is engulfed in a decisive conflict, and we are taking heavy
losses. Mass numbers of descendents of Muslims, converts, and spiritual seekers
are forsaking the American Islamic community and many of these will inevitably
abandon the religion. The confrontation is of course not military but rather is
occurring on the intellectual plane. On one front our religion is being both
subtly and overtly demeaned by the media. On another, anti-Islam websites are
assaulting the faith with mostly discarded but now resurrected antiquated
orientalist criticisms.
On another, an extreme, virulent and irrational interpretation of the faith has
assumed, with a good deal of outside support, center stage on the world scene.
On another, most mosques in this country impose in the name of Islam, traditions
and beliefs of questionable necessity that obfuscate the fundamental message of
God's last revelation to humanity and that are driving individuals from the
faith in droves, and that serve to confirm for too many youth of Muslim
parentage and American converts the overriding negative impression of Islam that
society seems to hold at large. Instead of seeing a path to spiritual growth,
enlightenment and fulfillment many of these disengaged Muslims start to see a
stagnant, retrogressive, patriarchal remnant of a lagging culture, mired in
meaningless controversies and hollow, lifeless formalism.
If this is going to be countered, it will require an immense and courageous
intellectual effort, and those upon whose shoulders this challenge and duty
primarily rests are the second generation and converts who have held fast to
their faith despite the many challenges this has presented. It is you, the
activist American Muslim youth and converts, though your numbers are small, who
have been placed in a pivotal role. Through your American upbringing, you have
come to fully know and understand the surrounding society, and through your love
and commitment to God and your religion, in a milieu that constantly tests it,
you have by nature and necessity become the crucial bridge between your faith
and its future in this country. You are in the best position to rationally
respond to Islam's detractors and to communicate and demonstrate to your fellow
countrymen and women what it really means to be a Muslim. You think their think,
talk their talk, and appreciate their confusions and concerns. You are also in
the best position to reassess the vast tradition that has come down to us in the
name of Islam. It is precisely because you have not been reared in a traditional
Muslim culture and because you have been taught since your first day in school
to search, question, critique, and analyze that you are the prime candidates to
endeavor to separate religion from culture, to distinguish the essential to
Islam from time and place bound interpretations. It is you who are best able to
understand and communicate to the disaffected Muslim youth. This is your jihad
(struggle), a jihad for minds and hearts, a jihad of intellect and reason.
So I encourage you to arm yourselves, my younger brothers and sisters, with
books, and pens and personal computers, and all the other instruments of
learning. And arm yourselves with knowledge of your religious tradition and the
works and thoughts of its great minds of the past. But also arm yourselves with
modern techniques of critical, analytical, investigative research, so that you
can better study and critique past contributions in the Islamic sciences. Learn
all you can in your coursework, and especially in such fields as religious
studies, history, anthropology, and linguistics. Arm yourselves also, if you
have the inclination and aptitude, with advanced degrees in these areas of
research so critical to the project of reappraising our community's traditions.
And arm yourselves with humility, because it is vital to objectivity, and with
courage and perseverance, brothers and sisters, because you will be opposed from
without and within the Muslim community.
And remember to always pursue the truth, for God is the Truth, and always pray
for and trust in His guidance. And so arm yourselves also with steadfast
devotion to your Lord, never forgetting that to Him, and Him only, you have
surrendered-not to a tradition, or a school of thought, or a local community or
culture, or scholarly legacy-and that your living, striving, sacrifice and
dying, all is for Allah.
The article was excerpted from Dr. Jeffrey Lang's book entitled Losing My
Religion, an in depth analysis of the current acculturation of the Muslim
American identity.
Dr. Jeffrey Lang is Professor of Mathematics at The University of Kansas,
Lawrence, Kansas. He is the author of two best selling works: Struggling to
Surrender and Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America. Both Books have
been translated into other languages.
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idiots and seek inspiration from the first community in Mecca and
Medina.