Islam and Race Relations

Towards the end of my first marriage, my soon-to-be ex told me that she should have married another Pakistani because he would understand her better. We never had disagreements directly about race, so I assume this is a judgement about the overall trend of my behavior. Because I was consciously adopting a Pakistani identity I no doubt engaged in too much essenctializing, reducing the complex phenomena of Pakistani culture to easily adopted symbols. The increased intensity of my commitment to Islam which followed upon my trip to Lahore and Islamabad also contributed to the deterioration of our relationship, for related reasons. I fastened on to the Islamic identity of Pakistan while that aspect of Pakistan was what she disliked the most. She favored the elements of continuity with the shared culture of India, even learning Bharatnatyam.

I've had to struggle with this issue since I first converted to Islam. I always felt bad when my brothers (or my then wife) would call me "the white guy?" Didn't they get the message that I wasn't white anymore? Didn't they see my long scraggly beard, my kufi, my shalwar-kameez? Didn't they see the kafiyyah I wore in solidarity with my Occupied brothers and sisters in Palestine? I got called the same names they did, "rag-head," "sand-nigger," and what not. Why couldn't they get with the program? Now, of course, I see how pretentious and narcissistic this was. I think the comments that I received that I was more Pakistani than Pakistani people may have been a good-natured attempt to get me see the reality of my position. In the end, I could shave my beard and switch back to jeans and a t-shirt. They were stuck with their skin-colour, facial features, and names. It's not good to humour someone with an obsessive "Dances with Wolves" complex.

While not a major problem in my current marriage, there have been some flare ups. There has never been an argument over specific things that I have said, but my comments here and there left her with a nagging feeling that I look at her in a paternalistic way. The problem for me is two fold: I have to look at myself, my actions, my words and determine what truth there is in her statement and I have to express my reply in a way that will not strengthen the very suspicions that it is meant to alleviate.

Zizek mentioned the need to get beyond the paternalistic multicultural bullshit that keeps us from connecting as individuals (the my culture is great, your culture is great syndrome). But it is sometimes that connection that leads to a more intense racial feeling; when we feel connected, we express ourselves more freely. When we express ourselves more freely, we are more likely to say something that will be misconstrued or that becomes demeaning due to the social position of the person making the statement. Should I then retreat into the multicultural bubble, expressing my admiration for her culture or, to be more precise, for the strength of Indian women? Is that not patronizing as well? Zizek's answer to this conundrum was to form a new solidarity based on struggle. It may not be a panacea, but I think it will be an effective response not just to the problem of inter-cultural or inter-racial marriages, but to solidarity within the Muslim and American communities. We can unite together in the struggle to build a strong family, to deal with the serious issues facing the Muslim community,to confront the flagrant injustice that constitutes the social fabric in America.

Who am I?

I am a white convert to Islam. I have written elsewhere of my conversion to Islam giving the rational arguments I found persuasive, describing my experience as an activist against the Occupation of Palestine and against the Iraq War as essential in framing the emotional structure which made my conversion posible. These considerations are true as far as they go, but they are incomplete. I am a white convert to Islam. That needs to be foregrounded to understand the innerworkings of the process of deliberation that resulted in my choice. My conversion can be fruitfully interpreted as a fetishistic disavowal of my own whiteness. Filled with rage at the rank injustices perpetrated against the “third world” abroad and against people of color at home, I sought to distance myself from the cultural and social order that were responsible and, if possible, acquired oppression. Michael Muhammad Knight has written on this phenomenon in his articles for Muslim Wake Up!, so this may not be surprising to some of my readers. I do think that there was something deeper going on here than a case of bad conscience. I never, for example, disavowed my Appalachian heritage or my Irish heritage or my German heritage. I think that I was attempting to give up my status as a pure cartesian subject, a universal man, and embrace a new particularity. The category of white, in western culture at least, is the category of the cartesian subject. It alone is universal, free from history but engaged in the conversation of ideas. All other identities, black, Arab, Indian, Muslim, Jewish, are particular, contingent, bound up inextricably in their specific histories and struggles. The problem, of course, is that this transforms white people into rootless cyphers with no history, no sense of the past while at the same time making it possible to exclude those assigned a particular identity from category of universal humanity that are recognized as the bearers of human rights. It doesn't just suck to be you. It sucks to be. I think this phenomena is profoundly illustrated by the late history of Judaism. From the enlightenment until the rise of the Nazis, the Jewish struggle was to define themselves a cartesian, universal men, as members of a cosmopolitan society free from the particularities of their religion and ethnicity. Judaism itself began to take on this character, transforming, in the guise of Reform Judaism, into a universal monotheism. The Jewish mission then became of one of being the apostles of universality. The failure of this project, culminating in the rise of the Nazis, launched the Jewish people onto a new trajectory: they now seek to particularize themselves, their culture, language and religion. The acme of this particularization is the State of Israel, the ultimate state of exception.

I am a white convert to Islam. I fell in love with a woman of Pakistani descent. This sustained my interest in Islam and, along with my inability to accept the sordid fruit of Zionism, resulted in my rejection of Judaism as a viable religious choice. This is ironic, given that, like many Pakistani women born in this country, her relationship with Islam was and is strained at best. Regardless, I loved her madly, she reciprocated in her own way and we married. The following years were varied in their emotional texture but I recall them as happy. I desperately embraced a Pakistani identity, learning Urdu, reading up on the history and culture of Pakistan, enjoying urdu poetry, listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Junoon. I even embraced the appropriate even-handed apologetic stance when the subject of the 1971 civil war was brought up. Despite all of this, there were fundamental illusions underpinning are relationship and failings of character on both sides. We divorced and I had to come to terms with my immediate lack of identity once Pakistan had been subtracted from me.

For a time, I seriously considered leaving Islam. I stopped using my muslim name, flirted in my quiet way with non-Muslim girls, didn't pray very much, etc. My Muslim identity was saved by the fortuitous advent of Ramadan and the considerable amount of time that members of the Muslim Student Association spent with me. I swallowed my doubts, completed my degree, went to work in the community. I got married again. But a doubt deferred, like a dream, explodes.

And that brings me to this current project. The only way to find closure, one way or another, is for me to write about and explore the cracks I see in the edifice in Islam. To explore also my own inner life and the hidden springs of my intentions. Some of this blog will be political, some philosophical, some polemical, some personal. I welcome your comments, for and against, Muslim, Atheist, Christian, Hindu, Jew.

I will say, quite clearly, that I am not Irshad Manji. I am not Ibn Warraq. I am not Ayan Hirsi Ali. I still love my Muslim friends and I still see good in the community and beauty in the religion. I am categorically and unequivocally against imperialism, sexism, and racism in all of their forms. I am a hard-core anti-Capitalist and unrepentent Leftist. What brings me to this present venture is my growing feeling that this is simply not enough. To quote Rage Against the Machine, “I'm a truth addict, oh shit I gotta head rush.” I need to reconcile the contradictions I see, in the intellectual edifice of Islam itself, between the ideology of Islam and empirical reality, between the ideals and the practice of the Muslim community. This last is complicated; it is not that Muslims fail to live up to the perfect ideals of Islam. Often, I see Muslims behaving virtuously and courageously in spite of Islam. This especially true when it comes to the rights of women, where I see many people desperately seeking justification in texts for the upright actions dictated by their hearts.