Bumiputih! Rofl. I’ve never heard that one before..got to share it with the family.

Yup white FEMALE converts lose their WP that’s for sure. They can’t see our skin for our hijab if you kwim? No one ever thought I was arab until I converted, no one ever yelled go back to Pakistan before I converted. White male converts have it so easy. Even in the mosque they are so loved. Women, forget it unless you are single and they want to hook you up with someone from back home who needs a visa…yup..heard lots of stories like that.

I don’t really know if Lina Joy is a hard core Chrisitan – you know, trinitarian, Jesus as son of God etc – or whether she just wanted to be able to have a beer and hit the club without being harrassed. Imagine it’s the former for sake of discussion.

So does Lina Joy still benefit from being Malay in Malaysia, despite her Christianity? If Lina Joy walks down the street with a big cross around her neck, would she be treated the same way an ethnic Tamil Malaysian wearing a cross would be? Does she practice her faith any better for having consciously chosen Christianity than American Christians? Does her upbringing as a malay muslim affect the way she understands Christianity?

Oh it works fine in practice, it just doesn’t work in theory
What can I say, Americans have hangups about race, because of our very ugly national history. I’m quite at peace with it – no really – despite this epic blog post. I’m an American who practices Islam who has the advantage of fair skin. That’s pretty much the condensed version of where I’m at. I won’t pretend it didn’t take me a long time to arrive at that, particularly the American part.

I think lots of converts struggle because Islam as we understand it is such a radical critique of our society that they sometimes forget they are still in it and of it as much as they ever were. Frankly speaking a fair amount of the pathology and dysfunction found in the convert community, and I’m sorry to say there is a considerable amount, boils down to confusion over whether they have left their culture behind. They have not.

“Thus the white convert doesn’t leave the White Race behind because there is no such thing. He is simply by his example broadening what is possible for an American to be.”

Forgive my ignorance. Why is it so difficult to be a white American muslim without having the angst of having to belong to one ethnic label or another. Perhaps too, the issue here is the angst about muslim plurality – for muslim and non-muslim alike.

A Nigerian muslim sister said that I (Malaysian, nicely bronze) cannot possibly be a muslim as I don’t wear the hijab although it was I who invited her for iftar. My english colleagues thought that I cannot be a proper muslim (like my restrained Eqyptian collegues) as I was in full swing during a departmental Christmas party.

Back to white muslim Americans: I am optimistic about Americans accepting the plurality of whatever it is that makes ‘white American’ – as long as being white muslim doesn’t mean you are dressed like an ‘ethnic muslim’ with beard and kufi or, jilbab and refuse to shake the hands of a male colleague.

(Correct me if I’m wrong. Forgive me if I have spoken out of turn)