White Muslims, Again

Umar Lee, whose website is frequently enraging but always engaging, is presenting a series of ideas about what it means to be white and muslim, and they are at such odds with each other I don’t know how they stay on the same page.

First of all,

one thing you cannot be and be white in my mind is Muslim.

which he believes to be true across the board.

Second, about himself,

African-American brothers … are the Muslims I have always been the closest to and have been able to identity with the most.

Third, on his favorite punching bag, other white muslims,

I despise the patronizing and phoniness of guilty white liberals, but the Muslim community is full of them. These Muslims take shahadah and immediately begin a full imitation of some group, Arabs, Pakistanis, African-Americans, etc, and are subservient and un-critical of these cultures while being fiercely critical of any white culture…. I think that some of these Muslims, but not all, embrace Islam to stop being white…

Several commenters on his site have picked up on the inherent contradictions in these three opinions, the biggest one being, what exactly is the difference between Umar Lee gravitating to the black community, and other brothers gravitating to the arab or the pakistani or the black community? I’d sincerely like Umar to answer that, since he is so vicious in his anger at these other brothers. From where I’m standing, there’s no difference at all, except perhaps that Umar had some prior connection to the black community before becoming muslim. If that is the case, these other brothers are simply guilty of being less further along in the process of acculturation or assimilation into a “foreign” milieu. These brothers never really become arab or pakistani any more than Umar becomes black - they simply become more comfortable in, more knowledgable of and more accepted by the community they have adopted. Alhamdulillah. Now, I would suggest that both people, Umar and the arabized or pakified brother, would be of most direct benefit to the society at large if they can use their position in between two ethnic communities to build bridges of understanding, rather than to simply retreat into these communities they have adopted. Middle class white America needs your sympathetic, compassionate dawah, Umar. Tease not the tofu. Look past the lattes.

The most troublesome part of Umar’s racial construct is the idea that one cannot be white and muslim. If we uncritically accept this idea, then the pain and confusion that Umar and other commenters here feel is unavoidable - you’ve lost your community and so you must find another or be lost alone in the wilderness. But wait - who says you can’t be white and muslim? There are some on the far right who might say you can’t be muslim and American, but who here would agree to that? We are muslim Americans and proud of it, no? If you were born here and you grew up here then you are inalienably American no matter who you vote for or who you pray to. You can’t shake it off if you tried - not that some haven’t tried.

Being white isn’t all that much different. It’s about how you look and how you speak. If you have a native accent and white skin, congratulations, you are in-group, and you can’t leave if you wanted to. It’s true that at one time, your religion mattered. Jews and Catholics were non-white. But that is not race today. Not too many people out there really care what god you pray to, and it won’t stop them from serving you well at a restaurant or giving you a job. Cabbies will pick you up. Cops will let you go.

Unless! Unless you have decorated yourself with enough flagrantly Islamic symbols that they question you, such as a stereotypical muslim beard - long, untrimmed, with no mustache - or a big loud kufi. Then you might get some strange looks. Even then, as soon as you open your mouth and unaccented English emerges, *poof*, you’re back in. “Oh”, they think, “You’re actually just a white boy with a beard and a funny hat!” What Americans don’t like is foreigners, not eccentric white people. I say this as a white convert who has been wearing a full beard and a kufi every single day for very nearly fifteen years. I have never once been treated badly by an anonymous white person in public because I’m muslim. Yes, I’ve been stared at; yes, I’ve been asked what my deal is exactly; but never once have I stopped receiving customary white privilege from my fellow white people. O my fellow white muslims! If you think we all automatically stop being white by virtue of practicing Islam, you are gravely mistaken. Your family may disown you, your friends might stop speaking to you, but to the white man on the street, you are still white. Now, you can be ashamed of that, you can be proud of that, you can protest against that, but that is how things are in America in 2007. And the fact is, that is good for dawah, as Abdul Alim and others have pointed out. The fact that the average white person is not automatically suspicious or hostile of you as they may be with a black, pakistani, or arab muslim means you have an extra advantage to introduce them to Islam, the religion of Allah, that is open to and perfect for all people, all races, for all time.

[Disclaimer: All of the above may not apply to hijabi white women; I’m speaking to men here.]

I should add, O my fellow white muslims, in case it isn’t clear, that being white and being taken for white has nothing to do with what your politics are, which ethnic groups you have affinity for, how racist or colorblind you are, what European country your forefathers emigrated from, what neighborhood you grew up in, what race your best friends are, what food you prefer to eat, what clothes you prefer to wear, how high or low your tax bracket or education level is, how much you buy into or reject mainstream American culture, to what degree you fight the power or are a tool of the man, or how much you love or hate being white! All of those deep and complicated emotions you may be struggling with have nothing whatsoever to do with how you are treated at first glance by other white people, which does not change upon taking shahadah, so get over yourself.

[Update: Umar Lee has responded.]

[Update: My response in plain text to excerpts of his response in bold. Follow the link above for his full response.]

I think gravitating was the wrong word for me to use.

Use whatever word you like. Umar, you are an authentic product of your experiences and deserve to feel proud and secure in who you are. My question is not how black or white you feel. That’s your business. My question is what is the difference between a white boy who grows up in a non-white milieu from birth, a white boy who arrives there at the age of ten with his mother, or one who arrives there of his own free will at age 20? Give any of those people 20 years and basic social skills and you will find them to be nearly as comfortable, knowledgeable and accepted in their adopted community as you are in yours. (It just gets a bit harder with age.) So why are you hating on these newcomers? I still fail to see any difference between you and them except time. You may not have tried to acculturate, but that is what it is called.

The only white people I can really relate to are those like I grew up with, hard-working blue-collar guys.

This is hardly surprising or unique to you. The white people I relate to the best are the white people I grew up with too. That’s because they and I belong to the same socio-economic class, speak the same dialect and explored the same geography as kids.

…white Muslims skin remains white, but are they viewed as brethren in white America? …. We no longer have a racial or ethnic group to identity with…

Well, Umar, I’m not sure what to say. I never felt like I had “brethren in white America” before I became muslim. That’s because there is nothing more to being white than having white skin. To put it another way, there is nothing more to being white than not being discriminated against by white people. I would have zero in common with some random white man that you pluck off the streets of Arizona or some such place, other than we are both Americans, and that we have both never experienced discrimination based on our skin color. But beyond that… white racial identity? The only people I know of who talk about white racial identity are wh!te power lunatics. For the rest of us, I thought, white is not a meaningful racial designation. I wrote on this over at my blog in response to Abu Noor and I’m just going to paste that exchange here if you don’t mind:

Abu Noor: that doesnt’ mean that you have to accept how other people see you as being the way you see yourself
Agreed, absolutely. The next point I’ll be heading off to make at Umar’s is that “white” is not a defining characteristic of most white people’s identity, except for the few sorry bastards who fill out the ranks of the kl@n and the like. I don’t feel white because I have no blessed idea what feeling white means. White doesn’t explain anything about me, and I have no doubt that it doesn’t explain anything about you or any other white person. If I were to ask you to write down all the important things about you that make you who you are, you may write: muslim, father, lawyer, husband, Chicagoan, etc. Would “white” make the list? Would you even think to put it down? No, because the color of your skin is a meaningless signifier, if you are white. That is the greatest privilege of being white in American society, that I do not need to be defined by my skin color, that I am accepted as I am, that people see me and see a man, not a black man, not an Ayrab or anything else. The tragedy is that it doesn’t apply to everyone else.

See Gary Kamiya’s excellent article on race for more of what I’m getting at here.

there is no overriding American identity divorced from race for the vast majority of people and the culture in general

Really? McDonalds is white food? Rugged individualism is a white ethic? Democratic process is a white institution? Jeans, t-shirt and a baseball cap are a white costume? There is nothing more that you could surmise about who or what a person is from the word “white” than you could from the word “American”, except that you would know he had never suffered discrimination from other white people.

“Being white is not that much different [from being American]”, is that a serious statement?

Yes, what I meant is that “white” is largely unshakeable. You can’t get rid of it. Clearly you disagree, but I’m not sure why yet.

… If you think that Jews are seen as anything other than an “alien” group be a large and diverse segment of American society then I suggest you go and read some studies.

Well, I am Jewish on my mother’s side, which qualifies me to claim Israeli citizenship. That’s pretty Jewish. And yet, I’ve never been treated badly, because nobody has any idea, because I’m white! See what I’m getting at here?

… When you are white in America you are expected to act in a certain way and there is room for differences depending where you live and your economic status within that construct. If you fail to meet that vision you do not stop being white per se but you become a hated figure.

So again, white or not white? I’m not understanding the distinctions you’re trying to make here. What is this way that white Americans are expected to act? Is this expectation any different from the way all Americans are expected to act? And who is making these expectations exactly? There seems to be this idea in your mind of a monolithic white culture, but I’m just not seeing it. This country is unimaginably vast, and the ways people live in it are unimaginably different. Bohemian gays in San Francisco? Blue Dog democrats in Detroit? Bible thumping baptists in the South? Are any or all of those “white” ways of being? Because there are blacks, hispanics and who knows who else in all of those demographics.

I also think that if you feel all of white America will accept you try going … to places like…

Umar, I’m not trying to say all of America will accept me. There are ugly people here in our country that will hate others for all manner of reasons. I once saw a car in Detroit with a bumper-sticker saying “Speak English or go home!” Much to my surprise, the driver was black. This is a big country, Umar. There are now a number of people who are in fact Islamophobes and may hate on me if they can figure out that I’m muslim. These generally are the people that you seem to enjoy butting heads with on this blog and in real life. But they are at the moment just a tiny part of our great nation, and it is up to us to educate our countrymen with compassion and good sense so that things don’t get out of hand.

if you are true to Islam you will become a stranger in your own land

If you are true to Islam, you will live in this world like a stranger, for our true abode is the hereafter.

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Published:
11.14.07 / 1pm
Category:
Islam