Even before the horror of September 11 major problems in our communities and leadership were glaringly obvious, but rarely addressed. Perhaps writer Yahya Emerick, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Islam expressed the problems best in his essay Demanding Professionalism in our Masjid.

He writes:

There is absolutely no American convert, who was involved in some type of worship community before his or her conversion, who doesn’t see the glaring inadequacies of our Muslim communities when compared with their previous experiences. But what happens? As Emerick points out, people leave. They go elsewhere to have their needs met.

Think of your own local community. In spite of how we love to trumpet that Islam is growing and growing try and remember how many American converts you have seen come in, stay for a while, and then disappear. Try and remember how many people you have seen walk in, curious about Islam, never to return. In my locale I have seen this regularly for years. Indeed, I’m the odd bird to have stuck around so long, most are gone within a year or two.

Why is this? Why do they leave? And if they have experience of functioning worship communities why are they unable to exert a positive influence on the development of their new dysfunctional worship communities?

It is entirely too facile to say “they weren’t really Muslims to begin with.” These are people who are often relatively well-read in religions and religious thought. They are often people who have been searching, researching, questioning, and looking for The Truth. They’ve often read more, and more widely about Islam than have many who were born into the religion. It is a cliché (but clichés are based in realities) that “there is no one so convinced as a convert.” How could any organization lose such people and alienate them to such a degree and with such regularity? One would almost have to make an effort to do that.

This problem is not particular to converts, but holds true for many of those born into the religion as well. One only needs to take a look at the disparity in numbers between any daily salat (masjid empty) and an ‘Eid dinner (masjid jammed) to know that many—many? most!—of those born into the Qur’anic religious traditions are, for all intents and purposes, just as absent, lost, and “disappeared” as so many of the converts and people interested in Islam.

So, what’s the problem?

Our leadership is the problem. The people in positions of authority are the problem.

First of all, the simple fact is, as Emerick points out, our leaders are incompetent. They do not have the education, skills, training or experience to guide and develop a healthy, life-enhancing worship community. He writes:

Who in their right mind hires people, or places people into positions for which they are not trained, and are thus most likely destined to fail? Isn’t that just a little bit wacky? Its a lose-lose proposition that doesn’t even take above-average intelligence to figure out and doesn’t allow for any debate.

Ah! But here is the key: who hires or chooses Muslim-American leaders and places them into positions of authority? In my experience the answer is they put themselves there, and keep themselves there.

When I wrote “My First Year as a Muslim” I was unseasoned. I did not know the ways of today’s Muslim communities, or my local community. And so, I was not quite correct when I wrote: “The administrative structure of the masjid needs to be changed... ...perhaps people need to serve in these positions for two years...” I assumed active members of the community rotated positions of authority each year. Now, I know what they say about assuming things. But it seems a reasonable assumption. After all, we’re talking about a volunteer effort—there is no paid minister, nor secretary, nor caretaker. In such an organization everyone needs to chip in and help. Many of the jobs though, are unpleasant (who wants to clean a public bathroom?) and many might be very time-consuming, taking time from family or other pursuits.

Now, I might volunteer my time to regularly clean bathrooms for six months to a year, but I sure don’t want to be locked into doing it for an indefinite period of time that could last forever. Near the end of my service period I would expect to find or meet my replacement and show the routine to him or her so they could pick right up and keep the bathrooms clean. That would be the process of “institutionalization” whereby necessary jobs are not dependent upon one individual, but are within a system that recruits and trains and places appropriate people into appropriate positions so there is a continuity, and all necessary jobs are filled.

When I suggested people should remain in a position for a two-year commitment it was intended as an aid to proper activities planning, community development and institutionalization. I thought the obvious dysfunction I observed my first year was due to the fact that positions of authority rotated personnel too often!

What I did not realize was that there was no substantive rotation of personnel at all. Rather, the same group of individuals were always in the positions of authority. They played a game of musical chairs—one year director, the next president, the next secretary, the next chair of some council, etc. It has been this way for ten years or more. My guess is, it is pretty much the same in your community too.

So, we have people in positions of authority who are entrenched and incompetent. This situation continues not because of apathy or inactivity on the part of the general people. In my locale there have been attempts to “clean up” our organizations, but these entrenched people hold onto their positions for dear life, and will stoop very low to do so.

I’ll not regale you with stories the “old timers” in my locale tell of incidents fifteen and twenty years ago. I’ll not tell you how passion over sighting or calculating the moon’s position (but not, say, world hunger, or domestic violence) has led to fist fights and threats with a gun. I’ll not tell you about an embezzler protected by his religio-ethnic friends from the criminal consequences of his actions while employees lost jobs—and walked away with a very bad impression of Muslims. I’ll not tell you how similar people give khutbas or are placed in positions such as that of director of religious education for their masjid though they have no formal education or training at all in theology or religious studies, nor in adolescent or adult education. I’ll not tell you of rumors of beatings and physical threats, economic threats, professional threats, liens placed on homes, harassing phone calls late at night, the absence of open financial records, the rumors of Ikhwan being present and in charge. There are just so many stories like these, and I’m sure you’ve got plenty too. These stories do not seem exceptional—they appear to represent standard operating procedure in my experience, confirmed by many in other locales as their experience too. As the saying goes, where there is smoke, there is fire.

What I will tell you about is the story of when a group of us tried to do the simplest, most normal, most sane thing one could think of: implement and follow the organizational Bylaws of our masjid. I don’t know of any other story that so clearly illustrates my personal experience and direct observation of the incompetence, bad faith, and flat-out corruption of Muslim-American leadership at the local level, and the dismal failure of the people to hold them accountable.

I want you to think again of your own locale. Does your masjid have organizational rules or Bylaws that spell out “how things are done” and the positions of responsibility and chain of accountability? Are those rules followed to the letter? They should be, because those rules are an agreement among all the members of that organization. Are not people commanded by God in the Qur’an to honor their agreements? What is the status of a person who willfully refuses to honor his or her agreement freely made with others? What is the label you would use to describe such a person?

It was 1995 and “Ali” (not his real name) was elected president of the executive committee. Ali, born into the religion and an immigrant to the US, had an epiphany of sorts, unbeknownst to anyone. He had realized that those entrenched in the positions of authority had failed to develop the community in a healthy manner and had failed to respond to the actual needs of the community.

Ali formed his executive committee and the first thing they did was to issue a memo to the other two oversight committees that the masjid had not been following its own Bylaws, and they intended to begin implementation of the Bylaws. To that end, two things needed to be changed. There was a bank account that was not allowed for in the Bylaws that required only one signature to withdraw money. It needed to be closed and merged with the regular masjid account which (of course!) required two signatures for withdrawals and was allowed for in the Bylaws. The other change needed was that the masjid had an employment contract for a salaried position with someone who was not legal to work here. We needed to formally void that contract. The person could still do his job (he wasn’t actually even being paid, and he clearly was not qualified for the job in the first place) but the organization simply could not have a written contract with him as a salaried employee.

The resistance from those people, entrenched for years in those positions of authority, and their friends, was truly amazing to behold and continued for months. The very fact that anyone in any organization would resist—much less strenuously resist—honoring their agreement to abide by the rules is mind-boggling in it implications. The fact is, it is corrupt. Only the morally-ethically perverted could argue otherwise. Indeed, one of these people (who mostly functioned “behind the scenes”) brought the whole issue into the US court system over the closing of that “extra” bank account that required only one signature to withdraw funds—the signature of that person with whom we had the illegal employment contract. Interesting, eh?

The masjid could not fight that. It could not afford the attorney fees. We had to settle. The “extra” account remained, but at least it would require an additional signature. We were all stunned at the lengths these people would go to in order to maintain power and control. The “old timers” say that every time they tried to clean up the organization it was as if “an invisible hand” came down to keep the entrenched incompetents well-entrenched.

Once the situation was brought into the court system I wrote an article about it for the community newsletter. For this article I solicited quotes and comments from all involved. Only those asking for the members to honor their agreements offered comment. One I included was: “The problem is that two to three individuals in the administration think they are exempt from the Bylaws. My advice to them is to abrogate the Bylaws and declare themselves Kings for life. This would be more honest.”

I expected outrage from the community members once this hit the streets. The Board of Trustees now stood accused of eight direct violations of their own Bylaws. Some of the members of the Board claimed they had never even been given the various memos by their Chair! I certainly expected outrage from them too. But like my first open letter, the article was ignored. And the status quo remained. One Board member resigned. And those would-be do-good reformers all drifted away, their only involvement was to attend Friday prayers out of a sense of obligation—the same effect as having left completely. Indeed, this was the beginning of the end for my own personal involvement with the local community, finally culminating in a refusal to attend Friday prayers or set foot in a masjid.... like so many others I had seen before me, and you most likely have seen for yourself, and as I have been told in so many e-mails.

How to explain the complicity of the community members with leadership that is so corrupt they brazenly flaunt their dismissal of organizational Bylaws, and engage in highly questionable financial practices, and will even drag an intra-masjid issue into the US court system? (And this wasn’t the first time for that.) It is pretty easy to figure out. Community members are either afraid of them, personally benefiting from it in some way, or are simply the same type of people, having no difficulty at all breaking their agreements freely made with others. Everyone else eventually leaves or gives up.

What is most sad and distressing is that I later learned some of the “old timers” were indeed present and knew what was going on. As I was told, they did not stand up for what was right out of fear, and though they thought we could “be hurt” they did not even warn us about that.

This is a dismal and depressing moral-ethical lapse on the part of my entire local Muslim community as a whole, and is representative of its history.

Now, before you jump on me with some version of “But we do nothing but good!” What is the situation in your local community? Really?

Are your khutbas and halaqas even remotely relevant to your actual lived daily experience? Or are they often a version of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” How much attention is given in your community to international issues and how much attention given to local issues—where you stand a chance of actually effecting real change for The Good? What are the qualifications of those in positions of authority? Do they show up for meetings on time, and organized? Are the phones answered, and calls returned in a timely manner? Are they holding meetings required by your Bylaws? Are there responsible minutes kept of these meetings? If not, why not? Are you concerned about Muslim youth? Well then, do your youth leaders have any education or training or employment experience in areas of child or adolescent behavior, psychology and education? If not, why not? Does your local community follow its own rules? If not, why not? Is your Muslim-American organization run as professionally as your place of employment-- with just as much planning, and research, and training, and accountability, and evaluation procedures? If not, why not? Which of these do you claim is more important to you as a Muslim-American? Your place of employment, or your masjid?

And then there are our national organizations, a parade of alphabet letters: ISNA, ICNA, CAIR, IANA, AMC, ISCA, MPAC, MSA, WAMY, NAIT, etc. each clamoring and asserting they somehow represent Muslim-Americans and sometimes even “true Islam” whatever that is. My guess is, all of you have, or have heard, valid complaints about how these organizations are run. Most of us have attended those banal orgies of Muslim self-stroking they call a “conference” from which we may have left with a buzz and some consumer items, but no new skills or practical information or programming ideas for community development. (If you didn’t go home from a conference with a new set of practical, do-able ideas or skills or programs to try in your own locale then that conference was most likely pretty much a waste of time and money.)

Let’s be clear before I continue: I am not a member of any Muslim organization, and give only guarded emotional support to one or two of them. I have not contributed money to any of them for many years, though I have in the past. They do not speak for me, nor do they represent me as a Muslim-American.

So, with that disclaimer, two words, one name, sums it all up: Hisham Kabbani.

I first encountered the name online before there was a World Wide Web. It was obvious this guy Kabbani was not at all liked by a very vocal group of people who did like some guys named bin Bazz and Albani. I didn’t pay all that much attention to what seemed to me at the time to be “us and them” games, detached from the real world, so to speak. The Kabbani people did seem the more thoughtful and reasonable, the bin Bazz and Albani people seemed strangely frenetic and woefully ignorant of important issues related to theologizing. Of course, I soon learned who the various personalities were, and what they represented.

A few years later suddenly this Kabbani guy almost explodes onto the scene and is obviously well-funded. He presents himself as an actual, bona fide leader of the Sufi version of Islam from a long-established, classic school of thought. Cool. Kind of exotic. I was excited and hopeful about this new personality on the Muslim-American scene, and could not help but be impressed with the production values and attitude of his The Muslim Magazine, to which I subscribed. Battle lines were drawn. Kabbani came out swinging against the Wahabi version of Islam with his magazines and books and a new Muslim presence in the States. I cheered.

And then, the infamous address to the US State Department on January 7, 1999.

From the transcript at his web site:

Strong words from Shaykh Kabbani! While I certainly don’t know anything about nukes, or international terrorism networks, or the Russian Mob, I do know that if you substitute “the Wahabi version of Islam” for each instance of “extremist” in those quotes we do indeed get an accurate snapshot of the dynamics in today’s Muslim-American communities.

Does your local masjid have open financial records so you actually know where the money is going? If not, why not? And, frankly, I think his 80% figure is too low—all of us know of the Wahabi version of Islam. We’ve been being bludgeoned with it and by it for at least a decade. As Kabbani says elsewhere in that address they have grabbed the microphone.

Be that as it may, what is of interest to us here is not so much his statements, but the response to it from many Muslim-American national organizations.

A statement was released on February 26, 1999 by seven of our national organizations: American Muslim Political Coordination Council (AMPCC), American Muslim Alliance (AMA), American Muslim Council (AMC), Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), & Muslim Students Association of USA & Canada (MSA). Later, it was reported that the Ministry of Imam W. Deen Mohammed added their endorsement to the statement as did Hamza Yusuf, Director of the Zaytuna Institute, and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. On March 3rd American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism (AMILA) signed on.

Their statement was so strong it elicited many threats against Kabbani from Muslims. Unfortunately, their statement was also clearly misleading in how it represented the content of Kabbani’s speech—one need only read the transcript of the speech to realize that.

These organizations put out this statement without having spoken to Kabbani, and without having asked for clarification of his speech and meaning. They just immediately attacked, and clearly misrepresented him. They accused him of strengthening the “impression that the Muslim community as a whole is extremist.” They say Kabbani “has put the entire American Muslim community under unjustified suspicion” and engaged in “the irresponsible act of providing false information to government officials.”

They write at one point:

Of course, we know now that this was not a “bizarre specter” but a very real, and very terrifying possibility that endangers the entire planet.

Kabbani was correct. What eleven of our national organizations called a “bizarre specter” was actually the very real nightmare of 9-11 carried out by flight students. Kabbani clearly stated bin Laden’s group would initiate a major attack, and of course, “dirty bomb” has entered the American public discourse and consciousness since that attack. We all know that WAMY, MYNA and the MSA are a bit Wahabiesque in their outlook.

Not only did these organizations “jump the gun” and violate very basic precepts of the Qur’an and Sunnah in attacking Kabbani without thought or consultation, but they clearly did not know what was going on around them in the world. Or perhaps some are indeed involved with and actively supportive of Wahabiesque extremism as they have been accused of being.

Regardless, what this illustrates is failure on a number of levels. None of these organizations engaged in thoughtful reflection or private discussion with Kabbani before issuing a major public statement capable of enflaming the types of people who issue threats. They did not follow standard “adab.” And they were just simply wrong. Very dangerously wrong.

There is more to this story, of course. I myself had personal interaction with Nihad Awad and Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR regarding this issue. All that did was confirm my suspicions: our leadership is, at best, incompetent. That story is actually available at Kabbani’s ISCA web site.

Now please, do not assume I’m necessarily a blanket supporter of Kabbani’s group. I’m not. They obviously have problems too. The magazine has disappeared and I think they owe me money for an unfulfilled subscription. And Kabbani disappeared from the scene after this incident. The Islamic Supreme Council of America often seems much more interested in affairs overseas, belying their ill-considered name.

In other words: none of these organizations actually inspire confidence or provide quality leadership, and in my opinion are simply not worthy of support. And I didn't even tell you of ISNA’s sham of an investigation into the local dispute over following Bylaws, nor did I tell you the story of.... etc., etc.

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