HAMZA
YUSUF:
Okay. I think it’s a great question. I’m pretty… I’m actually quite
familiar with the British situation. I have less familiarity, though
some, with what’s happening with continental Europe, but you
know, I would say in the British model, I think it’s very dangerous for
the government to be directly involved in funding. And the main reason
for that is a lot of the extremism that has arisen in the Muslim world is a
direct result of this co-opted Islam that is seen as buttressing up these
totalitarian governments. And Muslims generally are extremely wary of
government involvement in their religion, and a lot of the voices that are
listened to are voices… I’ll give you one example. (Inaudible) in Europe,
his, his popularity went up considerably because he was not allowed to come
into the United States, in Europe. I mean, I can guarantee that there’s a
direct correlation, because Muslims who are seen somehow as standing up against
what other Muslims consider unjust foreign policy or whatever, they have a
credibility amongst the Muslims and in the community. So I think
government involvement, the best thing that they can do is just be, you know,
helpful in facilitating, just in terms of the legalities of what’s needed, and
not being road-blocks in the way.
I
think there’s a lot of, in this country there’s an immense amount of just fear
of anything associated with Islam. I think the governments need to become
more sophisticated in understanding the nuances of the community and the fact
that for instance, the Deobandi community is not a
threat to, they’re very conservative, they’re
apolitical. They actually emerged out of the Indian rebellion of 1857 and
decided that military struggle was no longer an appropriate strategy, and they
felt that a knowledge-based struggle was much more important. And so that
is their focus.
Now
their support of the Taliban in Afghanistan had much more to do with the Deobandi, just the fact that the Taliban was associated
with the Deoband community and not so much with its
involvement with al-Qaeda, which is a whole other problem. I mean the
Taliban’s involvement, which is a whole other problem. So, you know, I
think there’s a, I personally, you know, I’ve been involved in an advisory capacity
in the UK with the British government, but just my, the fact that I’ve been
associated in any way with the British government has had a negative impact on
my own credibility within the community in certain sectors, and you know, so
that’s why I’ve tended to try to keep, just avoid those types of associations
because of the impact it has on the credibility within the community.
IRINA
A. FASKIANOS:
Terrific, next question.
OPERATOR: Thank you.
QUESTIONER
C:
Thank you, Shaykh Hamza,
for your kind, nice explanation. I have a question about, when you say,
when you said in your presentation about why Islam is compatible with the
West. Could you elaborate on that, what you mean by that?
HAMZA
YUSUF:
Well what I would say is that there are a lot of Muslims, active practicing
Muslims, that don’t fully understand a lot of the principles upon which Western
political society certainly, and to a large extent cultural society, is
predicated. And so there’s a belief, because of the post-colonial trauma
that exists within a lot of the Muslim world, and certainly in the minds of a
lot of immigrants in these countries, there are many devout Muslims that just
simply see the West and anything that it advocates as being antithetical to
Islam. I think that’s changing, and it’s a necessary change. So I
do feel it’s changing within the community, but it’s not changing fast enough
and a lot of the young people-- the United Kingdom is a really good example of
this-- a lot of the young people are just completely alienated from the
political process, from the idea they can even participate.
I
mean, there’s, and this is where the dangers arise, I think. It’s
certainly, many of the American Muslims, Canadian Muslims and European Muslims
as well, many of them actually have very little to do with Islamic
communities. They’re quite assimilated and they’re living lives as
doctors and engineers and taxi drivers and other things. But for those
that are deeply committed to Islam, if they don’t, if they’re not presented
with an Islam that enables them to be fully Western and fully Muslim at the
same time… the West, like Islam, is not a monolithic. There’s, we have
orthodox Jews that live in the heart of Brooklyn that don’t read newspapers or
watch television and they’ve been here for over one-hundred years. And
they’re part of the tapestry of America. But the vast majority of them
pose no, you know, threat whatsoever, and probably you know, all of them with
the exception of some ultra-orthodox, very extreme groups that advocate hatred
toward Arabs and whatever, you find the reverse on the reverse side.
But my
point is, is that there are people that can be understanding
that this is part of the West, that there are many ways to be Western.
That I can be isolationist like the ultra-orthodox community and still be part
of the tapestry of this country. I can also be integrationist. I
can be fully active in-- swearing an oath of allegiance to the constitution
does not negate one’s faith. Keith Ellison, who’s a congressman, swore an
oath of allegiance to the constitution. There are many Muslims that view
that as completely unacceptable and as an act of apostasy. And so I think it’s
important that from within the tradition itself, which we have ample room for
presenting diverse opinion and view from within the tradition itself, I think
many of these problems can be resolved if they’re done with sensitivity towards
the community and awareness of many of the devout Muslims’ desires to simply
live lives that are congruent with their deepest religious beliefs.
QUESTIONER
C:
Thank you. I thank CFR for the initiation of this full kind of program
and I hope they can continue and encourage other organizations also to keep a
tab on this. Thank you very much.
IRINA
A. FASKIANOS:
Wonderful. We do intend to continue. We have a whole fall
lineup. So we will send that out. Next question.
OPERATOR: Okay, our next
question.
QUESTIONER
D:
Yes, thank you very much. Thank you very much for this talk. I work
with an organization called the American Jewish Committee and we’re starting a
task force towards Muslim-Jewish relations, and I’d like to put it to you maybe
to help me explore ways in which we can, we can improve such relations.
Thank you very much.
HAMZA
YUSUF:
Okay, well thank you for the question. I think personally, the Muslim
community has so much to learn from the Jewish community and the Jewish
community’s experience. Because a lot of the very same issues that are
going on within the Jewish community are going on within the Muslim community,
and to me it’s sad that we’re not able to see the incredible similarities
between these two expressions of Abrahamic
tradition. So, you know, I think the onus is on both sides to reach out,
to be more conciliatory. I think there’s a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment
in the Muslim community that, that much of it is political. I don’t think
it’s as much historical and I think Bernard Lewis would agree with that. I’ve
read his book about Jews under Islam, and I think he would agree with that too,
that in fact he argues that much of the anti-Semitic ideology that’s crept into
the Muslim world was actually exported from Europe, from the Christians.
That doesn’t mean that there’s not, I think, a lot of problem within our
tradition. But I think the Jewish tradition has the same problem with the
Talmud, it has the same problem with their own
pre-modern sources. There are things that are objectionable in all of the
Abrahamic traditions’ pre-modern formulations, and
how we are able to maintain our tradition while recognizing that there were
egregious mistakes made by even some of the greatest of scholars. I mean
that is a very sensitive area, I think, for all three of the faiths, probably
more specifically for the Jewish and Islamic faiths because of the weight that
we put on these classical scholars.
So I
would say that we definitely, it’s starting to happen, I’m definitely seeing
it. I’ve been trying to be more outspoken about the anti-Jewish sentiment
that exists within the community in recent years, because I’ve recognized it as
a major problem within the Muslim community. And I think also the fear
that exists within the Jewish community-- much of it I don’t think is phobia,
it think it’s rational fear, because of a lot of the unfortunate rhetoric that’s
emanated from the Middle East-- but I think a lot of that fear has to be
alleviated by the American Muslim community. And I think that we in
America have an extraordinary, and really a unique opportunity to try to
transgress, to try to transcend these political barriers that we have
now. And I think that the central and most important thing at this stage
is to leave Palestine out of this because I’ve just found that it’s a
completely, it’s just an area that I think we need to establish relations.
Before we get into any discussions about what’s going on overseas we need to
really look at what’s happening here and how we can improve the situation
between our communities here.
IRINA
A. FASKIANOS:
Thank you, next question, comment.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Your next question.
QUESTIONER
E:
Hello. Hello.
IRINA
A. FASKIANOS:
Yes, you’re on.
QUESTIONER
E:
Okay, thanks. I’m actually, I wanted to thank you for your comments and
also attest that you, Shaykh Hamza,
has actually spoken out against any kind of anti-, you
know, the anti-Jewish sentiment. I heard you speak two years ago at
(inaudible) and clearly you did that. My question is; I’m actually an
attorney. I was in New York and now I’m in public policy school at the
Kennedy school, and I wanted to push you a little bit about nomenclature.
You spoke on sometimes about, let’s say moderates or other ones, and I’m not, I
wanted to get some clarification, because I’m not comfortable within the
formality on-- sometimes the words are used in terms of labeling. I don’t
think they’re saying that this, but I wanted to get more clarification, how can
we be a part of the process of helping to establish good public policy but at
the same time, I myself am not comfortable with being defined as a moderate or
a progressive Muslim. So if you can elaborate on that I would appreciate
it.
HAMZA
YUSUF:
Well, yeah, it’s a great question. The topic of nomenclature is an
incredibly important one. There’s actually a scholar from Morocco that,
he has an argument that much of the problem in the world is what he calls
(inaudible), which is the crisis of technical terminology. You know, the
words we use are so poorly defined in what we mean by them and this is
obviously, you know, in the pre-modern society, in the pre-modern society the
basis of any debate or discussion was a definition of terms. A
(inaudible) was a common term that was used in the medieval period. When
somebody used a term, the interlocutor would say, you know, define the term so
we know what you’re talking about. And so I totally agree with you, it’s
a major problem. I certainly don’t have an answer to the problem.
Moderation is something that is based on a definition of extremes. And
extremes, if you look in the United Kingdom for instance, you have a spectrum
from the Guardian to the Daily Telegraph, which is certainly a
broader political spectrum than we would have. In this country, much of
what shows up in the Guardian would be considered extreme left, whereas
in England it’s not considered extreme left, it’s considered mainstream
left. So I think whoever defines these, and this is Foucault’s labeling
theory, you know that people in power tend to have the power of
definition. So I would agree with you. I find problems with all
these terms and, you know, I just, we have to do our best and try to at least
define them from within our own usage.
IRINA
A. FASKIANOS:
Great, next question, comment.
OPERATOR: Your next question.
QUESTIONER
F:
Hi. I have a very short question and then another question, my main
question. The short one is, what is the RAND
classification system of U.S. Muslims? I’m not familiar with that.
And the longer question is, you mentioned the specific
conditions and needs of U.S. Muslims. And you also mentioned trying to do
without the baggage of immigrant Muslims from the Middle East. I’m
looking for, that it shouldn’t, that Middle East immigrants sometimes bring
baggage that perhaps should not be part of the discourse here in the
U.S., and I guess my question is, how does one really separate that out,
since immigrants are so much part of the American experience, and living in
Southern California, certainly the Muslim American experience? Not
exclusively immigrant by any means, but quite large immigrant communities,
many, not all, from the Middle East, as well as South Asia, Africa and other
places. But how is this sort of talking about how does one be a good
Muslim and say that one be both Eastern and Western? Is that possible, is
that part of the specific conditions in the U.S., or are you saying that this
is really about defining how to be both Western and Muslim together?
Thank you.
HAMZA
YUSUF:
Okay. Well in terms of the first one, RAND, has a, you know, I think they
have six or seven categories. You can look it up on their website.
You know, they have, you know, fundamentalist, extremist, they have moderate,
but they have boxes to show you their views in different, like women. So
they’ll say, you know, that the fundamentalist, extremist, you know, believe
that women should have their head covered and this, that. Well, I mean,
that’s, there are many Muslims that believe that that wouldn’t fall into that
category. So I think…
QUESTIONER
F:
Right.
HAMZA
YUSUF:
Categories as you know are always problematic. They work really well in
physical nomenclature when you’re using taxonomy or something like that, you
know. A horse, you can use a category to define horses, even though a
thoroughbred is different from, you know, a Tennessee walker or something like
that. But when you get into humans and psychological categories,
categories based on belief, it becomes a lot more complex. So I just feel
those categories are often too simplistic, and they will often do more harm
than good, because people end up being pigeonholed or stereotyped in categories
that don’t suit them.
In
terms of the second question, I think we tend to forget that over 30 percent of
the Muslims in America are actually indigenous. African-American,
increasingly Hispanic-American, Caucasian-American, so we already have 30
percent. But the indigenization of Islam has yet to occur.
It’s occurred to a certain degree within the African-American community, but
within that community you will find expressions of Islam that are purely Middle
Eastern. So you’ll find in an inner city in New York, an African-American
woman dressed from head to toe in a black abaya with
gloves and a veil, believing that this is Islam. Whereas if you go to
African, the African continent, you won’t find any African women dressed like
that, from Senegal, or Mauritania, where I lived, or anywhere, even Sudan and
places like that. You’ll find very different expressions.
So the
process of an indigenization of Islam in America is going to take time.
And what I mean by that indigenization is that, where a Western, a person born
here, whether an immigrant child who is born and raised here, that they do not
feel that their religion is an imported religion. It’s an alien religion.
It has to do with Pakistan. Or, and when I became Muslim for instance,
there were certain cultural choices in front of me. You could become a
Pakistani Muslim. And I know American converts who became so Pakistani
they actually adopted a Pakistanian accent when they
spoke English because of the time they spent amongst South Asian Muslims.
And the same is true with people that adopt certain Arab cultures. I, for
a period of my life, adopted a North African expression of Islam, and it still
influences my Islam to this day. But I’m increasingly becoming aware of
the need for people to feel comfortable, what my friend Dr. Winter from
Cambridge University says is that Muslims need to be able to make the jump from
the West to Islam without losing their clothes in the process. And I
think that really expresses that idea of, that you don’t have to adopt a
foreign culture. That you can be Muslim, you can watch the Super Bowl,
you can partake in Thanksgiving and certain cultural expressions without
feeling that you’re doing something wrong, which right now there are many, many
Muslims that still believe that, that there is a total incompatibility.
And so we have an isolationist culture.
QUESTIONER
F:
Thank you.
IRINA
A. FASKIANOS:
Shaykh Hamza, thank you so
much. I think we’ve reached the end of our time, and indeed have gone
over, but this has been a terrific forty-five minutes.
HAMZA
YUSUF:
Okay.
IRINA
A. FASKIANOS:
I think everybody would agree. We appreciate your insights. If you
want to learn more about Zaytuna, the website is
zaytuna.org, very easy to remember. So all of you,
thank you for participating in today’s call. Our initiative, the Religion
and Foreign Policy Initiative, seeks to connect religious and congregational
leaders, scholars, and thinkers from across the country in cross-denominational
conversations such as these to deepen the understanding of religion on U.S.
foreign policy. We would greatly appreciate your feedback and topics that
you might like to discuss in future calls, so please send us your ideas to
[email protected]. Our schedule for the fall lineup of calls is now
set. You all should receive the agenda. Our next one will be on
October 17, with Walter Russell Mead on his book, and he will be discussing
religion and the open society. So I hope you join us for that. So
thank you all and again thank you Shaykh Hamza for your, your insights
today.
HAMZA
YUSUF:
Okay, Irina, thank you.