The Life of a Muslim "Rock Star" ~ a Reply

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem

As Salamu alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh

dear Imam Zaid,

Last year on hajj on the day of Arafat between dhuhr and maghrib I prayed at length for Shaykh Hamza and his wife and children, and all the members of his extended family, most of them by name. Similarly I prayed for you, brother Zaid, and for your family, by the name of each person I knew, and by those whose names I did not (for surely Allah knows them), and for any unborn children of these families, as well as for the future wives and husbands of these family’s children and grandchildren. Specifically, each time I said prayers for an individual family member, whether named or un-named, I asked each time on behalf of that person and all future generations of descendents of the person for whom I prayed, who may yet come to live on this earth (and surely their names have always been known to Allah) that Allah bestow his grace and mercy on each of them, strengthen each one of them in the deen and grant each of them taqwa, and also bestow health, long life, and prosperity on each one of them.

And I prayed similarly for the success of the Zaytuna Institute and College, and for all of the people affiliated with it, or in any way within its circle, including each teacher and staff member I knew or had encountered, and those I had not encountered, and I asked Allah to remember anyone whom I knew but had momentarily forgotten. And yet these were still a small part of my prayers. I prayed the sun would stay up long enough that I might complete all of my du’a between dhuhr and maghrib on that blessed day.

Given these prayers which are forever in my heart from that day as a plea to Almighty God, brother Zaid, do you really believe that I would try to personally insult you? Astaghfirullah. May God forgive us both.

I tried to tweak the institutional conscience of Zaytuna. That was my goal. I still think it needs tweaking.

As for your good works, al Hamdulillah.

As for your having made my comments public, you could have withheld the comment I had submitted privately and replied to me via the email I provided you. You could have kept the concerns I expressed a relatively private matter, rather than turning it into a dramatic spectacle for your blog audience. But you did not. I will not even speculate as to why, because only God really knows, and my opinion doesn’t matter on that.

My du’a for you and your family is the same today as it was on the day of Arafat. I pray that Almighty God has accepted my prayers and may continue to do so.


Ya Allah

___________________


Habibi, after you chose to post my comments publicly on your web site, rather than reply to me privately, you then posted your sarcastically toned reply “The Life of a Muslim ‘Rock Star’”.

Four days ago, I communicated through private channels to you about your negative comments, but you have not seen fit to respond. Thus it is that this reply to you is being posted here:

As far as the notoriety or adulation accorded any particular person goes in our culture, whether that person is muslim or not, this was not the subject of concern in my letter to you earlier this week, nor was it the focus of the main point I was attempting to make in the comments I had sent to you nearly two weeks ago, which you chose to post several days later. I simply noted that such things were used by the media to distract people from more important concerns.

It is unfortunate that your personal notoriety seems to have been the issue of greatest concern to you in your reply. Your focussing on this issue served only to distract your readers further from the issue at hand.

The comments I had submitted to you were concerned first and foremost with the suffering of masses of people, of whom only Allah knows the true number, who seem to have found little or no advocacy from some of the 'leaders' and institutions within the umma, whether in the East or the West, including Zaytuna.

Thus, I sought to draw attention to people of genuine courage, Cynthia McKinney among them, who put their lives on the line to bring aid to some of those dispossessed peoples who happen also to be muslim (though McKinney herself is not), and to the fact that these bringers of aid were likewise not only being persecuted and prosecuted, but that their efforts and their plight was also being subjected to a total media blackout, with no outcry of concern or expression of support from the ‘leaders’ of the umma (not to mention the world of politics), whether Eastern, Western, Zaytuna, or otherwise.

It was the Roman playwright Juvenal who wrote (circa 200) “the People have abdicated our duties … everything now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

In my comment to you, I spoke to this issue of “bread and circuses”, particularly the latter half of that pair, namely media-generated distractions which serve to divert the attention and energy of the mass of citizens from matters of which they ought to be aware and concerned to matters of little or no import. Some wags have referred to these diversionary tactics as "weapons of mass distraction." And I invoked Michael Jackson as being emblematic of that mass media circus.

It still shocks me that the homepage of the Zaytuna Institute features essays on the passing of Michael Jackson by both Sh. Hamza and yourself, brother Zaid, whereas nowhere on the site do I find any articles, essays, or opinions addressing the genocide in Gaza. Nor do I find there any promotion of, or support for, the attempts to bring aid to these worthy and horribly suffering people, nor any writing directed toward heightening awareness of the ongoing atrocities of the conflagrations in Iraq, Afghanistan, more recently Pakistan, and now Xinjiang, not to mention the previous invasion of Lebanon.

I do find the consistent, official silence on these matters, on the deaths, dismemberment, depredation and deprivation of the most basic of human rights to life and security in one’s person and one’s home of (collectively) millions of human beings, who are also our brothers and sisters in the umma, and the destruction of their land and societies, utterly stunning.

And yet the passing of Michael Jackson merits two entire articles, featured as the most current and significant writings of Sh. Hamza and Imam Zaid on the Zaytuna homepage.

Michael Jackson is in God’s hands now. May he find peace and mercy there.

We the living have responsibility for what continues on this earth.

Clearly my words lacked the necessary art to reflect what I felt in a manner that could be received as such by others. Perhaps it is in this kind of frustrated exhortation where my simmering disquiet at much that is transpiring in the world finds its Achilles heel, rather than other afflictions.

I believe that dhikrullah with reflection on tawheed is our most valuable spiritual tool for strengthening our taqwa, and for firming our resolve to do good works in this world. But I also believe that we must never forget the suffering of all our sisters and brothers with whom we share the bond of humanity. If we ever allow ourselves to forget this, it is at the extreme peril of all of us in the human family, I believe. That truly was the only message I had tried to convey.

Obviously, from the hardening of nafs all around that it provoked, my attempt was inept.

My goal was solely to tweak Zaytuna’s institutional conscience, and to beg the question of the duty incumbent upon each of us to advocate for social justice in the form of basic human rights for all of humanity, including each member of the muslim umma, not to be bombed, gassed, burnt, shot at, dismembered, starved or made homeless by violent aggression. I think this duty falls even more heavily on the shoulders of those who have taken on a public leadership role, because your voices have a greater opportunity to be heard.

It takes me aback that you would disparage my expression of this matter of conscience, of a concern for a primary religious duty, the apparent neglect of which is deeply troubling to my heart and profoundly disquieting to my mind, and then to try and say it was dishonest, as if it were some kind of dodge or cover for a different agenda. Contrary to what I have been told by one prominent “shaykh,” I have never believed that there is such a thing as a “benign Machiavellianism”. Na’udhubillah. May Allah protect us from such schemes and scheming.

I do not believe for a single instant that the ends can ever justify the means. The means themselves are, in fact, the end. And both must be honorable. Nevertheless, believing this is true, and acting upon this belief, has at times put me unwittingly at odds with people whom I had assumed to be my natural allies.

It was not my intent to “pick a fight” but rather, to paraphrase Wm. Shakespeare, to prick the conscience of the institution and the public expressions of the two men who are its sine qua non. I find it too disconcerting for me to consider it ironic at this point that the issue I sought to raise, about the untold suffering and depredation of millions of our brothers and sisters in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Xinjiang, continues to go ignored in favor of a most spirited defense against an imagined affront to one of two personalities.

This seems to me to bespeak a misidentification with nafs.

How could my addressing matters of conscience and religious duty, by asking a question, be construed in any way as threatening to you or Zaytuna? Yes, I asked a very pointed question. Is that not allowed? Are you as people to be considered sacrosanct, or infallible, like some people consider the Pope? I hope not.

And I asked my question to you privately. You chose to make it public. Further, you misused your public forum to personally attack my integrity and honesty, claiming that I intentionally misstated facts with the intent to mislead people, and you wrote publicly more than once that I am a liar, insinuating that I was a repeated one at that. What gives, akh?

Did you do that as a private individual or as a representative of Zaytuna? Either way, in legal terms, brother Zaid, what you have done is called libel.

On a deeper level, it is an offense against my honor as a human being.

Your repeated claim that I intentionally misstated facts with the intention to mislead are completely erroneous. You seized upon my use of the phrase "this week" to quibble over a couple of days. Further to the matter, I had submitted my comments to you three days before you chose to post them. So your words are not only false, but also appear to be maliciously stated, and they are thus morally offensive.

Is such conduct worthy of someone who regularly describes himself as “amongst the most respected and influential Islamic scholars in the West”? Surely it is not the way to treat a brother who has made du'a for you and your loved ones at Arafah?

The repercussions of this oblique correspondence have damaged my relationships with a number of people I hold dear, possibly beyond human repair. But Allah is the Restorer. Everything that has transpired since I wrote to you has caused me a great deal of soul-searching, even more than usual. The process is ongoing and I pray to Allah for guidance and taqwa, as I have prayed and continue to pray for that for all of us. I try to accept the unwanted scorn of others as a gift, and pray to allow it to further soften my nafs. It is in that field beyond nafs, at least in part, to which I feel Jalalud’din Rumi pointed.

My most heartfelt apologies to anyone at Zaytuna who may have been adversely affected by any fitna that was inadvertently caused by my having had the temerity to have questioned that which is apparently held by some people to be outside the bounds of a rational and civil discourse that is direct and meaningful. To them, I ask that you please accept my most sincere regrets for the unintended consequences of my well-intended questions, which were meant to stir the conscience and to provoke constructive thinking.

May Allah protect all of us from the untoward effects of our own good intentions.

And may Allah bless us and have mercy upon us all.


Muslim “Rock Stars” and the Media Circus

Congratulations on your many good works, brother Zaid. Props to you for it. No disrepect. But I never questioned how hard you work or what sacrifices you might make in your personal life. I was addressing the public statements promoted on the Zaytuna website.

I’m not sure it was appropriate to hear your hour by hour itinerary. Indeed, there was no personal attack levied against you as a human being. Rock stars do spend too much time on the road for their family’s liking, work long, hard hours, and sacrifice much for their followers. Nothing you said contradicts my use of the term.

But you created a rhetorical “straw man” by making the words “rock star” the focus of your argument in reply to my comments. I used the term for its culturally descriptive accuracy. I see no pejorative qualities to its use whatsoever, and intended none. I stand by my words with a clear conscience and an open heart to you. Thou dost protest too much, methinks.

Specifically, I put the term “rock star” in quotation marks because it was just that, a quote – from the title of a laudatory Wall Street Journal profile of Sh. Hamza Yusuf. It was not my invention. But I certainly do not in any way consider it to be a derogatory term. Just an idiomatic one with a fair degree of descriptive validity.

On occasion I have heard program staff at events jokingly but quite affectionately refer to Sh. Hamza as "Elvis", as in "Elvis is in the building" or "Elvis has left the building". As a music fan, I am reasonably certain you are familiar with those phrases. Indeed, the first sentence in another very favorable profile published in the October 2007 edition of the magazine Egypt Today read in part “Hamza Yusuf is the Elvis Presley of Western Muslims.”

So the use of the term “rock star” in the context of my comments could hardly be considered to have been intended as an insult. You chose to interpret them that way. Taking cover behind the pretence of having been insulted, you churned a non-existent controversy out of those two words in the process of refusing to address the real substance of my comment, which was not even about you. It was about the sudden appearance on the Zaytuna website of links to essays by both of its public figures focusing on a pop culture media distraction in lieu of more pressing matters, and an exhortation to both of you to address these other issues. Mea culpa.

Indeed, you simply engaged in a lot more distraction with your provocatively sarcastic and defamatory ad hominem attacks on my person. You ignored the substance of my original comments, which I made in good faith, and had not intended unkindly. If you found the term I quoted to be insulting to you then you should not have made it public in the first place.

Nor should you have repeated it nine or ten more times like some fascinating mantra in your published reply, stirring your acolytes up into a frenzy (speak of being “pwned”, indeed).

I submitted my comments to you so you would read them. I do not have your email address, but you had mine along with my comments. Your blog is moderated so you control what is posted in the comments section. There was a three day lag between the time I sent my remarks to you and when you put them up in the comments section of your blog. You made the choice to make them public, not me. And then you adopted the posture of having been attacked.

Nevertheless, thank you for posting the story about the Free Gaza relief missions of the two ships “Dignity” and “the Spirit of Humanity” that I submitted. Nota Bene: The morally moving words of the courageous and forthright Cynthia McKinney, who sailed on both ships, can be heard by linking to her “Letter from an Israeli prison.”

Barakallahu fikum.

As far as the straw man argument about vocabulary goes, I do, however, consider the “rock star” appellation to be emblematic of a very real and potentially problematic phenomenon, i.e. the “cult of personality” which can develop around any charismatic individual from any walk of life in any setting, whether the field is entertainment, business, politics, religion, what have you. Perhaps it may be a consideration of this subtext which riled you. Instead of anger and sarcasm, perhaps a more constructive response might be reflection and introspection.

Our good works should speak for themselves. Many rock or pop stars will choose among worthy causes, weighing which is more popular or less controversial, keeping at least one eye on the prize of positive PR. Some will also tell you straight up how great and wonderful they or their works are, and how long-suffering they are for their followers or fans.

Michael Jackson himself, may God rest his soul, wrote extensively in this vein about his good works, his perception of being persecuted, and his sacrifices, referring to himself in language befitting a martyr. Allahu ‘alim. I truly pitied the man for what he must have suffered as a child. Indeed, there is a genuine and horribly ironic connection between his own childhood abuse and the ongoing suffering of people to whom I tried to draw attention, which his later life and death served through the misuse of the media juggernaut only to obscure and distract us from.

In any case, I apologize to you for having used words that you say you found personally offensive. It was not my intention to cause offense to you or your many defenders. Please realize that in using the term I did not, and do not, consider it to be anything derogatory, just an accurate cultural description of a phenomenon, as referenced in the Wall St. Journal and Egypt Today profiles of Sh. Hamza and Zaytuna.

Astaghfirullah.

As far as to why there has been a total media blackout on the Free Gaza mission and Cynthia McKinney’s imprisonment, there is this from the San Francisco Bay View National Black News [in brackets]:

[Had it not been for Twitter, I doubt that I would even have been aware that Cynthia McKinney was held hostage in Israel after attempting to deliver aid and supplies to the Palestinians. There has been a resounding silence on this issue as CNN, MSNBC and other mainstream media sources rush to give us the latest news on the death of Michael Jackson.]

[Jackson was truly an iconic figure, however the man is dead and Cynthia is alive. His memorial is receiving massive coverage and the announcement that his body would be present was considered breaking news. Even Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s resignation has garnered more media and internet attention. Though McKinney is safely back on U.S. soil, her wellbeing during her ordeal was of little concern.]

[As celebrities and media personnel rush to speak about the ways in which Michael Jackson transcended race, the erasure of the plight of McKinney proves that race and gender continue to divide the country.]

[Her mission was righteous and her intentions good, yet it matters not because the world places very little value on the bodies of Black women. “If Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state,” McKinney said. (SF Bay View National Black News. July 9, 2009)]

Personally, I think the reasons for the media blackout go much deeper than race or gender, and reach to the level of disinformation, or in this case, censorship of information altogether.

I think the media silence points to a desire to keep the public in the dark about current events of substance, and focused on trivial pursuits. And I took exception to Zaytuna appearing to be complicit in that process, however unwittingly.

Your harping on my use of the term “this week”, and the apparent lag of a couple of days from when you wrote your essay to when I read it, I find to be another straw man. I intended no deception whatsoever, and I am both insulted and appalled that you would find it within your ethical precepts to repeatedly call a man a liar on the basis of nothing beyond your own blindly indignant presumption. Subhanallah. I find that pretty shocking. At best.

Al Hamdulillah.

Most of all, I am deeply sorry that the point I had tried to make about our societal complacency over the wars of aggression against so many people, particularly muslims, being waged not only by Israel, but by our own United States, the U.K. and other nations, remains buried and unsung along with the victims of those wars.

Contrary to what you have written, brother Zaid, I do not believe that the umma is so disjointed and dysfunctional that we are incapable of speaking out meaningfully on these matters, or are prevented from taking meaningful action as citizens because we have not donated enough money to certain institutions, as you alluded in an earlier post on your website. But your mean-spirited words in response to my expressions of conscience certainly drove a wider wedge more deeply into another part of the umma, serving to distract and divide it further.

Nor do I concur with you that too much negative press has been written (as if) about what you term “the Zionist state”, or that muslims ought to engage in excessive self-flagellation and criticize ourselves rather than take a pro-active stand for human rights. I really do not buy this tack at all. I think it is quite self-defeating.

The last thrust and parry of your critique of my remarks reads:

[“Finally, you state, “Astaghfirullah. The “rock stars” of the muslim umma should themselves be concerned with the state of the people who comprise the mass of humanity and the umma, more than about other rock or pop stars. We as muslims and human beings, our umma, and its institutions and leaders, are all indeed capable of so much better. Are we not?” I will be the first to acknowledge that I can do better. What about you?]

Yes, that is why I wrote “We as muslims and human beings...are all indeed capable of so much better. Are we not?” We, the first person plural, includes “I”, also a muslim and human being. That was the summation of my exhortation to you as one of the public voices of Zaytuna, to myself, and to all of us, as muslims and human beings.

Apart from being needlessly defamatory to me personally, I believe your response discredits you. I sent you a personal, heartfelt expression of moral indignation and you decided to try to turn it into a street brawl. Perhaps I should have expected that, but I did not. I was not attempting to pick a fight with you, nor am I now.

Nor, as a man who is older than you, and who has spent almost my entire career, the better part of my adult life, in the service of disadvantaged and displaced or dispossessed peoples, do I wish to engage in an unseemly contest to compare notes on how many people either of us may have helped, or how many lives we may have saved, or will help or save, or how hard we have worked, do work, or will work, in our respective careers or our sacrifices over the course of our lives. Allahu ‘alim wa na’udhubillah. May Allah protect us from such hubris. I am shocked yet again. Bamboozled, not.

Shock me once, shame on you. Shock me twice........won’t get shocked again, to paraphrase a former president.

May Almighty God bless you and your family always, brother Zaid, and all your good works.

May Allah relieve your heart and deliver us from this fitna.

May Allah, the Protector and Guide, protect our umma and guide us all to good works and to a correct understanding of the deen.

And may the Lord of all the worlds, the Subtle, the Patient, grant all of us in the human family Mercy and Compassion.


The Nature of the Deen of the Zaytuna Institute and College

I received a far more polite (if less than satisfying) response from a director of the Zaytuna Institute to my question. He wrote:

“I want to thank you for your concern and thoughts regarding the issues you have raised. All of us at Zaytuna -- staff, board, scholars -- are deeply pained by the events unfolding in Palestine. At the same time, as an institution of higher education, we do not publicly address current events as such, although our scholars do express their personal thoughts on such matters in their writings -- as well as their public speaking before small and large gatherings.”

To which I replied:

Thank you for the kindness of your response and for the thoughts expressed within it. You raised the issue of Zaytuna being an educational institution, and thus not taking a stand on any political issues. If Zaytuna is set up as a 501(c)3 educational, religious, or charitable organization, then as such it would be prohibited under its tax exempt designation from endorsing or promoting a specific political candidate in an election. It is nevertheless permitted to engage in other political activity such as advocating for certain issues, and even lobbying Congress for the passage of legislation. This I recall from having been a director of a 501(c)3 corporation many years ago.

So Zaytuna, as an educational organization, or its officers and employees are not prohibited by tax law or any other statute from publicly taking any issue-driven political stances per se, though it may be that its own articles of incorporation or bylaws could prohibit this. If that is the case, then there would be a dilemma inherent if any of Zaytuna’s personnel were to publish overt political commentary on the Zaytuna website, or even to make such speeches when utilizing Zaytuna’s resources. If such a prohibition against political or social advocacy is not formalized in the articles of incorporation or bylaws, then this non-political stance is either a matter of policy (whether formal or informal), or one of personal preference on the part of the individuals concerned.

All of that legalese set aside for a moment, it begs the issue of the nature of Islam itself, and the duty we, as human beings and muslims, each have to humanity and to the muslim umma.

Can there even be such a thing as an Islam that is divorced from advocacy for basic human rights?

If a muslim institution has exempted itself or its leaders from such advocacy, then what in principle and in fact is the Islam that it seeks to promote?

These are anything but trivial or rhetorical questions. Quite the contrary. They cut to the core of the matter of what any muslim organization or institution is about. It would be my contention that the deen and this most basic form of social justice are exquisitely and inextricably interwoven and bound, historically, morally, and theologically.

This may well be the most salient question that Zaytuna and its leaders need to consider as they move ahead with plans for a college, Insha’allah.

What kind of Islam will the Zaytuna College promote, one denatured of a commitment to the social justice of human rights at all levels and in all spheres? Or will such basic concerns be as intrinsically and explicitly embedded in its mission as they are in the deen itself?

Failure to address this matter may influence whether the project fails or succeeds or, more to the point, what it may actually succeed in accomplishing, and whether it is for better or worse.

Allahu ‘alim.


Salam, RHM