Shifting Sands: Daw’ah for America

AS A revert to the Muslim faith who resides here in America, I have undertaken an objective project that I hope will occupy my thoughts as well as others’ for some time to come: to understand, as best as possible, mitigating factors inhibiting daw’ah efforts here in the United States. America’s founding fathers adopted a democratic social state in which political authority supersedes religion, allowing for legislation and the rule of law to legitimize a majority whose opinions and interests hold sway over the minority, and whose vested physical and moral authority facilitates economic prosperity.

Consequently, any individual or collective effort that runs counter to the interests and opinions of the majority becomes a political question to be resolved through judicial efforts. It is no accident, then, that the U.S. civil rights movement, heralded as a monumental example of political society and its dynamism, ushered in both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, legalizing the African-American’s voting and citizenship rights. Ever since its inception, America’s white majority enjoyed and sanctioned a degree of socio-economic prosperity imposed by laws that segregated African-Americans, thereby imposing a type of omnipotence that James Madison, one of the most influential founding fathers of this country, envisioned would tyrannize the minority, propelling them to resort to physical force, if necessary.

The historical situation described here is analogous to the shifting sand syndrome. Anyone who has ever experienced sand shifting beneath her or his feet due to the tide will admit to this fact. There is an eerie feeling of a void that generates tremendous anxiety. So as to avoid this eerie feeling of helplessness, the swimmer heads for shore, thereby establishing a feeling of endless security that abandoned them for even a second. American society faced a moral quandary then; African-Americans didn’t share that feeling of moral equality with whites, and the latter, which was not conscious of segregated laws that spawned white moral superiority, fell victim to moral degeneration. One French historian has written that such laws constantly undermines the very basis of the U.S. Constitution and attacks the creative principles on which America’s laws were founded; it leads to troubles and revolutions; and any nation that suffers from it is in a state of violent transition.

Whenever violent transitions occur in any society, when moral fault-lines give way to feelings of anxiety, people generally seek some sort of anchor; the anchor is faith. But when security is achieved, when there no longer is any vestige of insecurity, they lose faith; everything is back to normal. Americans are hesitant to imagine another moral shift in today’s society; and though Americans generally read and hear about other moral passions that affect dynamic international issues outside the United States, imagination forbids them to think that it doesn’t affect them in any substantial way. Moral passions generate into political situations chiefly because of oppressive laws, the tyranny of one portion of humanity over another, or some sort of occupation on the part of one portion of humanity over another. Isn’t there the conclusion, on the part of Americans, to suppose that these processes, which are largely due to America’s foreign policy, are not occurring outside their borders and will consequently affect economic issues here in the United States? If they do, I am sure that their anxieties will lessen, and they will seek to understand in more detail why such international events are occurring today. Americans dare not imagine, for some reason, that the Israeli government, who project an image of a representative democracy, has been occupying Palestinian land and the moral fitness of Palestinians for over fifty years.

Many African-Americans embrace the Muslim faith because such moral fault-lines, which could occur at any moment, enabled them to embrace a faith that generates spiritual discipline and an acute awareness of dynamic international events elsewhere. Nonetheless, do Americans understand why whites, in general, embrace the Muslim faith?

Dr. Murad Hoffman is a recent revert to the Muslim faith but also served as German ambassador to Algeria during the 1960’s. His chief motivation for embracing the faith comes from his observation of Muslim freedom fighters in Algeria, who sought to extricate French colonialism there. This observation led him to believe that a faith that induces spiritual discipline and an acute awareness of historical morality is an enlightened religion indeed.

The writer is a recent revert to Islam and can be reached at: drummondhugh@verizon.net