What are Americans like?
It is not easy to sketch a profile of the average American given
their diversity...
"Americans are cynical. Consequently, if you profess to believe something, then you had better practice what you preach; otherwise, they will be quick to judge you a hypocrite. They might also conclude that since you are a Muslim and you do bad things, that Islam is bad. It is obviously faulty logic, but the fact remains that they will judge Islam by your actions...
"As children, Americans are taught that it is impolite to discuss religion or politics. So while they might bring up the subjects when they are alone with you, they could think that it is in bad taste to discuss the issue in the presence of a group of people. Some individuals are very embarrassed to discuss religion in public....
"Americans are amazed at how friendly Muslims are. Some will interpret it as naiveté, but nonetheless they will find your politeness, kindness, honesty, and concern very refreshing. This is most important, because Americans complain that religious people are only interested in their souls, but not in them, not in their personality.... Friendship; displays of concern about their health, their families, their school grades; invitations to dinner; and small gifts are very touching in the busy impersonal world that America has become.
"Americans tend to be punctual. If you have an appointment, either business or social, then be on time. Also, Americans rarely visit someone unannounced. Even good friends or relatives will call before they drop in for a visit.
"To many, Islam is synonymous with the sword, oil, Arabs, slavery for women, and disgusting displays of wealth. Misrepresentations of Islam are commonplace. For example, a Bible handbook printed by a Protestant press calls Islam, "a religion of the sword and hate".... Try to show them that these stereotypes are not true. This won't be easy, because often the Muslims who are most visible are the ones who act the most un-Islamically....
"Because few Americans know much about Christian theology, do not assume that they understand or accept the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Trinity, original sin.... Find out what his understanding of Christianity is, and use his understanding as the basis for introducing Islam to him.... you will find many Christians who do not believe that Jesus is God or that a baby is born sinful... Christianity has divided into so many churches, sects, and cults, that it is extremely difficult to even talk about "the beliefs" of Christians. One of the most common mistakes that Muslims make is to assume that all Christians believe the same doctrines and practice the same rituals. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Americans are confused by the fragmentation that is characteristic of Protestantism. I have heard them say, "I don't understand why there are so many groups each saying he is right and all the rest are wrong, yet they all want to go to the same place. It just doesn't make sense." Yet the fierce individuality of Americans, particularly in the south and midwest, turns them away from Catholicism. They say, "I don't want any Pope telling me what to believe". Muslims must demonstrate that Islam is a single harmonious brotherhood without a hierarchy.) Let Christians know that Islam is open, trusting and stresses love, justice, human dignity, and individual responsibility. The Islamic prohibitions against back-biting and spying will also appeal to American's sense of privacy.
What can I do?
"Christianity claims to be the religion of Love.... When a Muslim has said or done a particularly generous thing, I have heard well-intentioned Christians say, "He is more Christian than Christians are". Simple acts of love that are much appreciated by Americans are: cards of flowers given upon the death of a loved one, an offer to go to the grocery when someone is sick, an occasional telephone call asking them how they are doing, a post card when you go on vacation, a "thinking of you" card when separated by long distances and time, or a smile and the words "I don't know how to tell you how much our friendship means to me".
"Donate GOOD books on Islam to local public libraries, school libraries, libraries within university religious studies departments, seminaries, professors teaching courses on Islam, local ministers/priests, high school humanities/sociology teachers, professors teaching intro sociology courses, etc. Invite high school classes, professors, women's groups, church groups, writers of religious columns in newspapers etc to tour your Islamic center. Serve refreshments and give them the chance to ask questions....
"Use the media wisely. Plan your activities well in advance and then notify relevant individuals... Contact newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations at least a week or two ahead of time. Remind them a few days before the activity. Do not forget to announce the beginning of Ramadan and the days of the Feasts. Distribute flyers in prominent well-attended locations. Make them bright and catchy with the date, time, and location clear. Have the brothers and sisters personally invite guests. It helps to print inexpensive personal invitations that can be distributed.
"Do your homework and study Islam as well as other religions and cultural beliefs....use wisdom, psychology, and your knowledge of the culture and the other religions... Remember that ultimately success within da'wah work is dependent on the will of Allah. For us there is only trying.
Who is a good candidate for da'wah?
"It is always wise to hold meeting/workshops with Muslim brothers and sisters explaining the psychology of da'wah before engaging on a large scale program of dialogues with Christians.
"Cult members tend to be white, middle class, and between 18 and 30 years old... Over 35% are ex-Catholics and 15% are ex-Jews. It is believed that the reasons these individuals turn to cults is a combination of the traditional church's failure to address their search for personal identity and meaning, the breakdown of the American family, moral relativism and decay, and crass materialism. If Muslims are to reach this group, then they must portray a strong sense of community, brotherhood, moral purity, and spirituality. Unless Muslims can shake the stereotypical view of Islam as the religion of hate and wealth, these individuals will continue to turn to cults. Since the 18-30 age group is desperately looking for a real community or family, let them know about and experience Islamic brotherhood. Be friendly, talk, and give them a feeling of security. Converts to Islam in this age group should be kept busy in organizing and carrying out masjid
activities.
"Episcopalians, Catholics, and Lutherans are used to highly ritualistic religions. Their members will be attracted to the Islamic form of prayer and fasting Many of these individuals have a keen sense of social justice. If there is any area that Muslims in America have neglected it is a sense of social justice. Muslims in the US must become more visible and vehement in their support of minority rights, fair wage laws, and economic reform.
"Fundamentalists are not impressed by ritual. They seek stability, assurance of a perfect divinely inspired religious text, and emotional satisfaction from their religion. They treat the Bible as a science text; therefore, they will be impressed by demonstrations of the agreement of science and religion. ... Remember that these groups have a very strong emotional attachment to Jesus as their Savior. Rather than directly attacking the sin of shirk, let them know what the Qur'an and ahadith say about Jesus.... Sura XIX often impresses fundamentalists. Liberal Protestants do not take the Bible as infallible so these tactics won't work with them, although they will be intellectually interested in the Qur'an and in comparing religions. For many fundamentalists, drinking, gambling, pornography, dancing and rock music are viewed as immoral. The Islamic sense of morality can serve as a common ground for dialogue with them....."
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One segment of the population that I believe would be fruitful
if targeted for da'wah is that of recovering addicts. Many of
these people participate in Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous.
These programs are based on the "12 Steps"-- an unabashedly
spiritual program that fits well with Islam. People often have
problems with this spiritual content-- they are ripe for Islam!!
The 12 Step program has expanded greatly. In Allegheny county
there are 22 different groups utilizing the 12 Steps. AA and NA
alone have tens of meetings everyday, all day, in just about every
city.
1. We admitted we were powerless over (alcohol)-- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to (alcoholics) and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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For sociologist Robert Bellah, America is a "culture of separation".
"American cultural traditions define personality, achievement,
and the purpose of human life in ways that leave the individual
suspended in glorious, but terrifying, isolation."
"Within the disciplinary and sub disciplinary 'compartments'
of intellectual culture, though there is little integration between
them, there is still meaning and intensity in the search for truth.
In popular culture, it is hard to say even that much. To take
an extreme example, television, it would be difficult to argue
that there is any coherent ideology or overall message that it
communicates."
However, the separation is not the whole story, otherwise the
culture would collapse because of incoherence.
"...we owe the meaning of our lives to biblical and republican
traditions of which we seldom consciously think..... The litmus
test that both the biblical and republican traditions give us
for assaying the health of a society is how it deals with the
problem of wealth and poverty.... Both (biblical) testaments make
it clear that societies sharply divided between rich and poor
are not in accord with the will of God. Classic republican theory
from Aristotle to the American founders rested on the assumption
that free institutions could survive in a society only if there
were a rough equality of condition, that extremes of wealth and
poverty are incompatible with a republic."
"But the solution to our problems remains opaque because
of our profound ambivalence... The American dream is often a very
private dream of being the star, the uniquely successful and admirable
one, the one who stands out from the crowd of ordinary fold who
don't know how. And since we have believed in that dream for
a long time and worked very hard to make it come true, it is hard
for us to give it up, even though it contradicts another dream
that we have--- that of living in a society that would really
be worth living in."
"What we fear above all... is that if we give up our dream of private success for a more genuinely integrated societal community, we will be abandoning our separation and individuation, collapsing into dependence and tyranny."
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1. Be Kind
be easy! first things first! relax!
do you think they are kufr, or believers looking for Islam?
2. Know What is Inside You.
cultural issues such as clothing and gender relations
racism and other prejudices
feelings of fear, anger, insecurity, resentment regardless of
cause or object
3. Know Who the Other Person Is
you don't know, so listen
4. Know What You Know and What You Don't
have you studied other people's religions or beliefs?
be honest-- don't make excuses for what some Muslims do
admit and acknowledge differences among Muslims identify your preferences as your personal opinion
stick with the basics
5. It is for Allah to Guide: Get Out Of The Way!
are you too proud of yourself?
do you think you're special?
do you secretly yearn for power and authority?
are you thinking of the other person's soul, or your reward?
6. Practice What You Preach
do you study Islam?
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Frances Fitzgerald, a winner of the Pulitzer prize, views Americans as Utopian.
She studied four diverse American communities. Each community was, in a sense,
artificial. Each was a self-contained collection of people who were the same.
Each limited contact with other types of people. Each had unique social customs.
The communities were: 1) The Castro, a gay enclave in San Francisco. One need
never deal with a heterosexual there. 2) Liberty Baptist, Jerry Falwell's fundamentalist
Baptist church in Lynchberg Virginia. One need never meet a person who thinks
differently than you do. 3) Sun City is a retirement community in Florida. The
members are over 60. One need never see children there. 4) Rajneeshpuram is
an incorporated town in Oregon consisting entirely of the followers of Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh.
Fitzgerald writes:
"...the four groups had some rather important things in common... all four
groups appear quintessentially American. In the first place, the people who
joined such groups had to the extraordinary notion that they could start all
over again from scratch. Uncomfortable with, or simply careless of, their own
personal histories and their family traditions, they thought they could shuck
them off and make new lives, new families, even new societies. They aimed to
reinvent themselves. From a European perspective this was an absurd enterprise.
Man could change the political system by reform or revolution; he could change
the social system by changing the means of production. But he-- or she-- could
not erase history of pull himself up by his own bootstraps. Yet Americans characteristically
continued to try.
"That individuals could start over again, and if necessary reinvent themselves,
was one of the great legends of American life. It was the stuff of self-improvement
manuals, generation after generation, and the attempt was a major theme in American
literature.
"...it also happened with some fair frequency that groups of Americans just stopped doing what they were doing, took themselves off, and started something quite new. In certain periods of history-- as the 1840s-- Americans began a great variety and profusion of new enterprises: Utopian communities, new religions, and reform movements-- enterprises indeed as different in nature as Sun City and Rajneeshpuram.
It may be that the racial situation is one of the defining characteristics
of Americans. One may posit that it is an archtype for all people
of the world to ponder together. Bosnians and Serbs, Palestinians
and Israelis, Turks and Kurds, Sunni and Shi'a, Pakistanis and
Kuwaitis.... you get the point. :-)
Shelby Steele, in "The Content of our Character"
writes:
"I think the racial struggle in America has always been primarily a struggle
for innocence. White racism from the beginning has been a claim of white innocence
and therefore of white entitlement to subjugate blacks. And in the sixties,
as went innocence so went power. Blacks used the innocence that grew out of
their long subjugation to seize more power, while whites lost some of their
innocence and so lost a degree of power over blacks. Both races instinctively
understand that to lose innocence is to lose power (in relation to each other).
To be innocent someone else must be guilty, a natural law that leads the races
to forge their innocence on each other's backs. The inferiority of the black
always makes the white man superior; the evil might of whites makes blacks good.
This pattern means that both races have hidden investment in racism and racial
disharmony despite their good intentions to the contrary. Power defines relations,
and power requires innocence, which, in turn, requires racism and racial division.
Dr. Steele casts his gaze towards one group, the whites:
"I think that white guilt, in its broad sense, springs from a knowledge
of ill-gotten advantage... White Americans know that their historical
advantage comes from the subjugation of an entire people. So, even for whites
today for whom racism is anathema, there is no escape from the knowledge that
makes for guilt. Racial guilt simply accompanies the condition of being white
in America.... For whites, seeing for innocence means seeing themselves and
blacks in ways that minimize white guilt. Often this amounts to a kind of white
revisionism (as when people say they are 'color-blind')... many of us have aspired
to racial color blindness, but few would grant that he ever reached this sublimely
guiltless state. (Such a statement is a) clearly revised reality, moved forward
into some heretofore unknown America where all racial determinism would have
vanished. (Such people) are not racist, as that term is commonly used, but neither
do I thank that (they are) capable of seeing color without making attributions..."
And then towards the other group, the blacks:
"So we have a hidden investment in victimization and poverty. These distressing
conditions have been the source of our only real power, and there is an unconscious
sort of gravitation toward them, a complaining celebration of them. One sees
evidence of this in the near happiness with which certain black leaders recount
the horror of Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, and other recent instances of racial
tension. As one is saddened by these tragic events, one is also repelled at
the way some black leaders-- agitated to near hysteria by the scent of victim
power inherent in them-- leap forward to exploit them as evidence of black innocence
and white guilt. It is as though they sense the decline of black victimization
as a loss of standing and dive into the middle of these incidents as if they
were reservoirs of pure black innocence swollen with potential power.
And then towards both:
"'Innocence is ignorance,' Kierkegaard says, and if this is so, the claim of innocence amounts to an insistence on ignorance, a refusal to know. In their assertions of innocence both races carve out very functional areas of ignorance for themselves-- territories of blindness that license a misguided pursuit of power. Whites gain superiority by not knowing blacks; blacks gain entitlement by not seeing their own responsibility for bettering themselves. The power each race seeks in relation to the other is grounded in a double-edged ignorance of the self as well as of the other."
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Dawah would seem to be a simple thing
very complex
dawah is always a process over time
overnight conversions are the least stable
dawah involves interaction with another
what happens when we interact with another
for many dawah is also across cultures
best way is establishment of relationship
do this by showing your vulnerabilities
ask the other person's opinions
identify your feelings
pay attention to language
rarely do people change from information alone
it has to relate to their life
one simple point, over and over
searchers ask questions
dogmatists have the answers
simple challenges to explore the issue
how much time spent on sports or hobbies?
problem with materials
looks and production
change behavior to change attitudes
invite over to your house
get them to the masjid
what changes people
change in behavior
new information that conflicts with belief system
recognition of inconsistencies in one's beliefs
changes in law
who changes
victims of discrimination or prejudice
people "hitting bottem"
young people
will change back without a supportive environment
the american will feel alienated
1. What is inside of us?
kafr or sincere believers?
belief in God and charitible giving
denial of racism
prepared to give pleasing arguments?
mimicing others?
honesty!
find one thing wrong, throw out the rest
humor?
2. Preparation?
Allah's sunnan
psychology, sociology
know Americans?
are women in shorts "whores"?
know Christianity? hate Jews?
kafrs?
managing emotions
3. Who are Americans?
cynical and mistrustful
"don't tell me what to do!"
freedom to choose
ok for me, but not for the other guy
can re-make the self
conflict between individual and community
sincere seekers and dogmatists