Muslims
in America:
The Challenges of Political Activism
Rules
and observations
Absolute
political unity is impossible and should not be our ultimate goal.
It would lead to totalitarianism. To protect diversity in opinion
and pluralism we have 'organization'. There will always be
differences in opinion and perspectives and objectives in
communities on political issues. This is where good leadership comes
in. Remember that emphasis of the Prophet, (peace and blessings be
upon him) once a Muhajir (an immigrant) had made their way to
Medina, was to bring the Ansar (helper) and Muhajir
together through marriages and compromise and other means. Yet he
never outlawed or punished for diversity in opinions or methods of
doing things. So long as Muslims are not promoting sinful activity
in our communities, their right to disagree is validated by the Sunnah.
The
leadership in our communities must be selected from a pool of men
and women who have proven themselves as organizers, knowledgeable of
Islam and adherents to the religion. These leaders set the pace in
pursuit of consensus and cooperation based on reasonable compromises
among the various factions within the community.
In seeking to understand how other ethnic and religious groups have
entered the political mainstream in America, we look at other
immigrant group experiences. Jews have been one of the more
successful and effective groups politically, and Muslims spend a lot
of time trying to understand and emulate their model. What is often
ignored in this exercise is that the machinery constructed by many
early immigrant groups, including Jews, was constructed to
facilitate organized criminal activity. When they came to America at
the turn of the century these immigrants organized their communities
to protect and facilitate and support union and interest of their
workers (bear in mind also that some of the earlier and powerful
unions were black market ones that guarded their illegal
operations). Through such unions and cartels huge pools of money
were made available to used for the protecting the political
interests of the immigrant communities within the Anglo-Saxon
political mainstream.
The
models we are continuously trying to emulate are not really compatible
with either our program or our primary objectives. |
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The
Muslim community is a religious community founded on adherence to
Islamic laws. It is prohibited from this very basic requirement of
community organization and empowerment in the United States. The
models we are continuously trying to emulate are not really
compatible with either our program or our primary objectives.
This
brings us to the subject of Islamic political idealism and the ideas
that cause us to believe that we should be involved in politics. If
a group pursues power and wealth it does not have to begin its
entrance into the mainstream culture with politics, because
politics, or at least the politics of voting and lobbying, does not
necessarily lead to power or wealth. Some of the most powerful and
influential institutions, whether legal and illegal, did not
organize around 'politics'. They were organized around crime and
survival, and that led to politics. If Muslims decide that we should
share in these purely immoral pursuits, we have nothing more than to
amass huge sums of money, recruit a few soulless goons and start
business. The name of this game would be "Let's see who is the
most ruthless and unethical."
If,
on the other hand, Muslims are interested in playing by Islamic
rules and bringing the Islamic program to light through lobbying and
pushing for reforms in America that will reenergize American
morality and the founding principles that made America great, we may
need to create a model of participation.
Religion
and politics have traditionally been kept separate from one another
in the United States due to secular interpretations of the first
amendment. Of course, many religious communities are beginning to
challenge the secularists' interpretation of the first amendment,
arguing that Church and State as institutions cannot be literally
separate in a country where 90% of the people say they believe in
and worship God. It defies reason to imagine that these people can
ignore their consciences when making important decisions that
pertain to civic life.
The
Supreme Court through recent decisions has shown that it is ready to
restore to the fifty states many of the rights that have been
questioned or ignored. Most people assume that the Court in so doing
is seeking to minimize the power of the federal government and
restore the rights of states to 'oversee' the affairs of its
citizens. If this trend should become a real transformation from
federalist to states rights we may see religion again become a
center of civic activism in every venue, including politics.
What
are the historic roles of the Church and other religious
institutions in the United States in the mainstreaming of immigrants
and their political activism? Historically it seems that religious
participation in politics in America has focused primarily on
advocacy. Religious groups have been the advocates of humane
policies and have been the most active in calling governments to end
repressive tactics against minority citizens. The Catholic Church
played a significant role in the reform of migrant worker laws and
immigration bills that affected migrant workers and their children.
Other religious institutions have chimed in from time to time on
issues like crime and gun control, which have been the primary focus
of inner city groups, mostly African American and Protestant. They
have adopted these issues because they are the primary plagues of
their communities (though their takes on these issues vary
considerably). The more liberal faction believes that guns kill
people, while the more conservative faction argues that people are
killing people using guns.
The
religious communities must come back into the mainstream and restore
moral thinking as a paradigm for government policy making. |
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The
federal government addresses all such issues, yet outside the
religious or moral arguments made against such behaviors.
Increasingly, however, religious communities are making the case
that these are moral issues and that the religious communities must
come back into the mainstream and restore moral thinking as a
paradigm for government policy making.
Some
believe that the Supreme Court's apparent and growing sympathy for
the states indicates that its members share this attitude. Smaller
state governments have always been receptive and affected by the
religious character of community, while the federal government in
America has sought to maintain its secular character in order to
avoid any hint that the federal government in America is adopting an
ideology, particularly a religious ideology. Unfortunately most
political elites have not recognized that secularism is an ideology,
and in fact is what might be called a retro-religion.
