Umar Lee has posted an exposé of what he calls “Rand Institute Muslims” or RIMs as they supposedly exist in 21st-century America. Their characteristics, according to him, are “detachment from the Islamic Revival”, supporting Palestinian causes based on the writings of Noam Chomsky rather than of Muslim scholars and activists, Anglicising and Westernising Islam, but above all, a demasculinised, upper-class mentality with a tendency towards a hippie-ish form of Sufism. He concludes by accusing Shaikh Hamza Yusuf of representing all ten of these characteristics and being the “RIM in chief for America”. I have shied away from “debating” Umar over his ramblings about “masculinity” the last couple of years, but when I see these same attitudes paired with slander of scholars, I cannot continue to keep quiet.
So, I intend to take his claims point by point.
1 - Detachment from The Islamic Revival
Part of the RIM line of thinking is to invent an Islam that is completely detached from politics. Instead of looking at those Muslim leaders, such as Imam Hasan al-Banna, who saw the modern world , colonialism and Western domination and developed a system based on Islamic principals to reform Muslim societies based on the principals of the Sunnah, and admiring them, RIMS call this “Islamist Modernism” as they sit in non-Muslim countries in their affluence.
The historic role of many Muslim organizations in America has been to raise money for and support groups in Muslim countries seeking to reform their societies based on the principals of al-Islam. RIMS reject this. They want no part of helping any Islamic Movement and even slander those engaged in the revival. Simultaneously they are at peace with many corrupt Muslim regimes and are joined at the hip in fighting the Islamic Movement which they both seek to destroy. They cede the public and political life of Muslim societies to secular forces and opt to relegate the role of Islam to the home and family life.
In America RIMS use their position to claim the role of good harmless upper-class Western Muslims who have no affinity for, or attachment to, those misguided Third World Muslim movements trying to establish Sharia and remove tyrants. While the Islamic Revival is working in the trenches of Muslim societies to reform; RIMS prefer to sit in circles and make dhikr and make duah that one day a miracle will occur and everything will change. Those RIMS in America sit in coffee shops using language strange to Muslims, but well-known to grad students of liberal arts colleges, to distance themselves from the dirty masses in the revival.
It is a well-known fact that the Muslims most willing to slander those who participate in Islamic movements are the pro-Saudi wing of the “salafi” sect, not the Sufis around Hamza Yusuf. The former are notorious for discouraging their followers from participating in any political movement or activity whatsoever, especially when it is aimed at unseating rulers (especially their pet rulers) in the Muslim world, and for claiming that we were commanded to establish “tawheed”, not an Islamic state. They also recruit (at least in the UK) from the ghettoes as much as from the universities, although they had a stranglehold on certain university Islamic Societies in the UK in the late 1990s. In the UK, at least, Islamo-political groups have had no trouble over the years recruiting in major universities, including the major University of London colleges (these being the most prestigious colleges that most state school students bother hoping to go to), and it is a fact that they borrowed from European ideologies, including fascism, and that their English rhetoric is full of engineer-speak which would have been unknown to any classical scholar.
I do not defend anyone who white-washes a known tyrant (e.g. the “Sufis” who posted apologia for Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, and claimed his elections were free and fair when they were in fact a sham), but I have heard Shaikh Hamza on tape saying some definitely uncomplimentary things about various Arab rulers, comparing them to dogs, as in his tape Hajj: Journey to the House of God (I will not mention any rulers’ names, for obvious reasons). He mentions the practice of allowing “dignitaries” into the Ka’ba, and this is what follows (I heard this tape several years ago and this may not be word-for-word correct, but this is the gist of what he said):
I don’t know what sort of dignity these people have, because many of them are just thugs who got to power by killing people and kicking people’s heads in. It would be more apt to call a dog a dignitary … [and that’s not very apt] because a dog is just acting out its dogginess, and you can’t blame a dog for being a dog, but you can blame a human being for acting like something less than an animal.
In relation to the practice of putting pictures of Presidents on walls, he chastised citizens of a certain country for not having the courage to say, “it’s not halaal to keep a picture and it’s not halaal to keep a dog, so why would it be halaal to keep a picture of a dog?”. If he is “at peace” with some of these leaders, it may have a lot to do with keeping routes open for students to go and study in the Muslim world, since that, not at al-Maghrib or Zaytuna or even at any Indian-run Darul-Uloom, is where most of the scholars are, and we need scholars as much as, if not more than, we need fundraisers and activists.
2 - The Way They Support Palestine
The only international political issue you will hear RIMS speak on (besides maybe Dafur or opposition to so-called honor killings and female genital mutilation) is Palestine. This is because they can speak on behalf of Palestine without using the language of the Islamic Movement. In their advocacy for Palestine they do not quote many actual Palestinians or the likes of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi or Sheikh Safir al-Hawali. Instead they will quote non-Muslims (often atheists who are hostile to any religion) such as Noam Chomsky and John Esposito. They will also never verbally support an Islamic group, such as Hamas, who are fighting for liberation based on the principals of Islam. In this they are ceding the political argument to secular forces in Palestine and here in the West they are just making an alliance with, and using the arguments of, the secular left.
This may not be true in America, but in this country, any pro-Palestine demo is likely to contain movement Islamists, often with barely concealed links to Hamas such as Azzam Tamimi, and secular and otherwise non-Muslim pro-Palestine activists. The demonstration itself will contain a mixture of Muslims - perhaps the majority - and others, prominently including Marxists.
3 - Getting them to Condemn Homosexuality is Like Pulling Teeth
You will find that RIMS in the West will go at great pains to avoid condemning homosexuality and will often go all the way to the border of saying it is OK in Islam. Many say they support gay rights because Muslims are also an unpopular group in search of tolerance from the society. This is their position in 2009, as many are shy to let their positive views towards homosexuality be known, but we will see how shy they will be in ten or twenty years.
Explicitly pro-gay “Muslims” are one particular circus (the so-called Al-Fatiha Foundation and a few associated organisations like IMAAN) and they and their arguments have been widely rejected. There may be some modernists who have these views, but in relation to Hamza Yusuf, this statement is simply false. If you want to know what Shaikh Hamza says about the matter, you might read this (on what appears to be a pro-gay site):
Traditional Muslim scholars don’t accept alternative interpretations to the Quoran. Hamza Yusuf, a Muslim scholar at the Bay Area’s Zaytuna Institute, condemns those who try to find new meaning in the holy text.
“If one considers it acceptable in Islam [to be gay], then he or she is not considered to be a Muslim by consensus of the scholars,” Yusuf said. “On this I know no debate whatsoever.”
In many western countries, the battle against homosexuality has been lost. In the UK, “civil partnerships” are now law and a registrar has been dismissed for refusing to register them; a hotelier can be prosecuted for refusing to hire a double room to a gay couple. Whether this is the case in California I don’t know (I’m sure it isn’t everywhere in the USA), but Muslims have often found themselves on the same side as the gay lobby because the two groups have most of the same enemies, or to put it another way, the conservative Christians who are anti-gay hate Muslims as much, if not more. Both groups have links to the Labour party in the UK (although perhaps the gay vote has gone more to the Liberal Democrats more recently) and to the Democrats in the USA, and Umar himself wrote that he voted Democratic in 2000, when the mainstream Islamic groups told Muslims to vote for GW Bush. So a public condemnation of homosexuality might serve little practical purpose in such an environment; if you want him to condemn it, I suggest asking him privately. I am sure most Muslims do not want to hear rants about homosexuality from imams anyway; it is not healthy to think too much about what other people do in their beds, be it lawful or unlawful.
4 - Rewriting Islam to Comply with Feminism
As RIMS seek their guidance on social issues from academia and the modern world they are forced to reinterpret the traditional understandings of gender relations in Islam. In doing this they highlight anything in the Quran and Sunnah they can find that is seen as kind towards women and downplay, or completely throw out, anything that is contrary to the norms of the modern Western world which favors historical Muslim patriarchy.
This may be true of some modernist “Muslims” in the USA. However, Shaikh Hamza has explicitly condemned one well-known Moroccan feminist, Fatima Mernissi, for leading many sisters astray, and if he really was openly distorting Islam to comply with the demands of feminism, many of which - even at the more liberal end, never mind the radicals - are diametrically opposed to Islam, he would not get the appreciation of thousands of Muslims who have no truck with feminism, and even the scholars would eventually disassociate themselves from him.
5 - A Hatred of Masculinity
As one teacher and friend of mine stated they seek an Islam “without testicular fortitude”. The Sunnah and history of Islam is rewritten and the likes of Khald Ibn Waleed (r.a.) are downplayed and the Prophet (s.a.s.) and the Sahabah are made to be non-violent hippies who sat around gawking at butterflies all day. Northing could be further from the truth. The Prophet {s.a.s.) was a warrior and many of the Sahabah that he loved were straight-up killers. Others were robbers (robbing the caravans of the kufar). Others took women and young girls as the booty of war. Islam spread through jihad and was sustained by the sword of very masculine men. Romantically, the fairy tale “fluffy” version of love that is the norm today was also strange to the Sahabah and in the history of Islam, outside of Rumi (who many if not most consider to be a deviant) there is very little in terms of a history of romance being glorified by learned religious men. There is love in Islam, and a love between man and women, but it is something entirely different then what we have come to understand it in the West.
This is where it starts to get seriously offensive, and I do not just mean to me personally. The Sahabah were not “straight-up killers” but men who fought in battles and killed when it was necessary and lawful to do so, and not otherwise. This is the same as men throughout history: both my grandfathers served in World War II, and if they did not kill personally, they assisted others in doing so, and after the war was over and they were discharged, they killed no more. A “straight-up killer” is a criminal, not a warrior, and there are hadeeth in which we are told not to draw weapons on other Muslims and in which Sahabah were reprimanded for killing people presumed to be hypocrites. The only Muslims at that time who carried out caravan raids were the group who were prevented from migrating to Madinah by the treaty of Hudaybiyyah; this was a tribulation the Meccans brought on themselves by demanding to be able to hold Muslims in Makkah. They raided Meccan caravans and nobody else’s, and as soon as the Meccans relieved the Muslims of that part of the treaty, they migrated to Madinah and stopped raiding caravans.
As for Rumi, nobody except modern, ignorant sectarians consider him a deviant. You will find his Mathnawi quoted liberally in books by Deobandis, for example (you can find a translation into English of a Deobandi commentary on the Mathnawi, entitled something like Ma’arif-e-Masnavi), and they are certainly not pacifists or hippies. It is also a known fact that, while the rule of Islam was spread initially by the sword of jihad, the conversion of people to Islam was because of other factors, including the justice they observed from the conquerors and the work of Sufis, and the latter was particularly true in India and the Far East.
6 - An Upper Class Mentality
The vast majority, I will say almost all, RIMS come from at least a middle-class background. A big percentage are wealthy. Vey few are working-class. The reason for this is that the RIM message of peace with the modern world, liberal social views, a detachment from politics, pacifism, a love of kafir philosophers, and feminization, is not something that is going to appeal to the working-class or fly in the hood of people of any color.
RIMS are living the good life in the West and have a lot of dunya. They want to protect their position so they don’t want to rock the boat as the society is working well for them. Most have never been to a ghetto or working-class masjid and don’t have a clue as to how the other half feels. Many others, look down upon less affluent Muslims without fancy degrees, and see themselves as the elite class of the Muslim community. Any masculine form of Islam is seen as something for the poor and ignorant masses. American Salafis are barely even recognized as Muslims by RIMS.
The problem with this is that, to have a balanced community, we need Muslims of every class and this includes university-educated middle-class people. Our community is not complete with just small merchants and drivers (and I’m a driver myself). One of the biggest problems we have as a community in the West is the legacy of over-emphasising da’wah to people in the urban ghetto since the mid-20th century, which has led to an influx of people from criminal backgrounds and chaotic family situations, some of whom have been loath to leave their baggage behind, and to the acrimonious sectarianism of the late-1990s “salafi inquisition”. While the “low-hanging fruit” were picked in the ghetto, nothing much was done about the middle classes and people in the country - with the result that Islam has remained an urban minority religion and that not a single village exists in the UK where the practice of Islam is normal; there may be some in the USA. Quite apart from the fact that these people grow and raise our food, Islam will not have “arrived” in the UK or USA until we can say “this part of the country is Muslim”.
While the sort of Muslims he refers to may exist - the sort who lapped up the Muslim WakeUp propaganda a few years ago probably fit his description pretty well - Umar is wrong, yet again, to pin Shaikh Hamza or his followers to it. Many of them are struggling in isolation in various parts of the provincial USA, bringing up families on low income and so on, and particularly struggling to bring their children up Islamically (this has come up from time to time on the blogs I read, and it is a particular concern of mine here in London, not that I have any children at present). They do not all live in California and spend their time putting the world to rights over $4 lattes.
The RIM message, even if they tried, would never succeed with the working-class and the poor. Because our experience in this society is different and we do not live in comfort and we are seeking to change the conditions here and not make peace with them and we are on the offensive and not the defensive.
Do some middle-class people not undertake work to help improve conditions for the poor? Not all, but Umar’s stereotypical academic is more likely to than a mainstream American suburban middle-class person, who buys a house a long-way from where the “great unwashed” live and locks the doors three times. Umar has not much to say about them, however.
7 - Using English Instead of Arabic
The Sunnah becomes the Prophetic Tradition. Shariah become Sacred Law, Allah becomes God, etc. RIM converts usually keep their non-Muslim names (especially if they are white). The more Western and white Islam can be made by RIMS the better (although this is a futile effort).
There is no need to take an Arabic name, or indeed any new name unless one’s existing name is offensive to Islam, for example, the name of an idol or an anti-Islamic Arabic Christian name like Abdul-Maseeh. Most of the Sahaba did not take new names, and non-Arabic names are common in parts of the world where Arabic is not spoken; Arabic naming customs are rare outside the Arabic-speaking world, in fact, other than among converts and “salafis” in the West. The rest of what he refers to here is not unlawful or offensive, particularly when explaining Islam to non-Muslims, and those scholars who use these terms in writing (e.g. Shaikh Nuh Keller in the Reliance of the Traveller) use the Arabic words otherwise.
8 - Bordering on the Worship of the Creation
Polar bears, global warming and sodomy are the greatest political causes of this young generation. As not to seem dated RIMS stretch Muslim texts to come close as they can to the environmentalists.
Global warming, and its human causes, i.e. emissions from factories, power stations and transport, is accepted by the vast majority of the world’s scientists and its impact, although slow to develop, is likely to be enormous and mostly detrimental, particularly in Muslim countries. Never mind polar bears; it is likely to cause worsening droughts in countries on the fringes of deserts (e.g. north and west Africa) and floods in places like Bangladesh, which has a population of well over 100 million and most of them are Muslim. All this so that Americans and Europeans can maintain their taste for cheap luxury and easy, fast travel. This should actually be a higher priority for Muslims than it actually is, given all that poor Muslims have to lose from it, but then, Muslims would have to change their habits like everyone else. It is not even close to worship of the creation; without disputing that things happen by the will of Allah ta’ala, the scientists all tell us that if you raise the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by burning too much too quickly, all the while cutting down acre after acre of forest to raise soya to feed cattle for fast food, the world will get warmer and the consequences will be destructions and impoverishment.
9 - Elevation of Their Leaders and Scholars
RIMS are seen as favorable by the West and the enemies of Islam because their leaders can change the religion. When you make taqleed you have a barrier between you and the Quran and Sunnah. You need the leader you have an allegiance to in order to understand matters. If that leader, who may be a scholar and may even be a descendent of the Prophet (s.a.s.), is in the pocket of the corrupt Muslim regimes or is a sellout to the enemies of Islam then you have to sell out with him and we see this with corrupt muftis throughout the Muslim World.
Not true. Taqleed means following qualified scholarship, not just any “Zaid or Amr”, and when an individual scholar gives an answer to a fiqh question which is too lenient or too strict, people will notice and warn against following that ruling (many of Shaikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s rulings from Al-Halaal w’al-Haraam fi’l-Islaam have been refuted, and we all saw what happened when Shaikh Hamza himself made some controversial statements about the rewards in Paradise after 9/11). Nobody follows a contemporary scholar in this way; they follow a madhhab, often in the form of a reference text from a pre-modern scholar (e.g. al-Maqaasid by Imam Nawawi for the Shafi’is, and al-Risaala by Ibn Abi Zaid al-Qairawaani for the Malikiks), and will mostly seek and follow the relied-upon position in that school, not a variant position from a modern scholar. Corrupt muftis tend to be discredited and distrusted among the people, and anyone who has travelled to Egypt and mentioned the names of prominent muftis to any local practising Muslim over a coffee will find this out quickly.
10 - They Sound Like Hippies When They Talk and Engage in Bizarre Acts
If they are talking all day and using spiritual language and do not seem to be making any sense to anyone not on a hallucinogenic drug they are probably a RIM. Also, if they sit in circles to venerate the Prophet (s.a.s.) or go to graves to venerate so-called saints, and use homoerotic poems while doing both, then you know they are RIMS.
The poems are not homoerotic at all; there is an awful lot about the physical beauty and purity of the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) in the hadeeth literature (not that this is the only subject of those poems), which no doubt was appreciated more by the male Sahaba than the women who lived in Madinah then (radhi Allahu ‘anhum), since many of the women were in purdah and might have seen the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) rarely if at all. It is a huge slander to impute such motives to poems written by Islamic scholars, since this is what all of the genuine Sufis were - one would have expected someone to object if they found the content inappropriate. It is important to note that men in the Muslim world have much more physical contact with each other than we do here in the West, where two men who are seen hugging or holding hands in public might be accused of being gay lovers. Gatherings to offer blessings, known as salawaat, on the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) have been common in the Muslim world for centuries, long before anyone in the west thought it might be a good idea to promote this in order to discourage extremism.
This is not a refutation of all Sufis. There are many Sufis in the West who are not RIMS and there are many Sufi leaders critical of this way of thinking and behaving. However, amongst the Muslim upper-class, second-generation immigrant Muslims, and white converts, RIMS are plentiful. I know I will loose some friends when I say this, but I feel I must say this because I fear Allah and love the Muslims, so it must be said. Hamza Yusuf represents all ten of these points and is the RIM in chief for America. If the enemies of Islam could get the entire ummah to follow him and his likes they would do it and for all for the reasons I have stated above.
In my experience, there is no gulf between Shaikh Hamza, Shaikh Nuh and their associates and followers and the traditional Islamic scholars from the Subcontinent and their followers. In the days of the Youth Tarbiyyah Conference in England, for example, you will have found plenty of Shaikh Nuh’s students and others who had been on the Deen Intensives and the like. I have met white convert “Sufis” who have a low opinion of immigrant Muslims and their British descendents, but apart from the Murabitun who are a specific group (and not all white), they are a very small minority here. Most converts with a low opinion of ethnic Muslims are “salafis” whose hardline sectarian attitudes give them a reason to despise other Muslims who they believe look down on them. I would have thought that the enemies of Islam would have been rubbing their hands with glee at the sight of Muslims falling out with each other because one would not disassociate themselves from another Muslim who was “off the manhaj”.
Umar also significantly misunderstands what the 2003 RAND report, Civil Democratic Islam (PDF), was all about. While it did advocate supporting traditionalists “enough to keep them viable against the fundamentalists (if and wherever those are our choices) and to prevent a closer alliance between these two groups” (p.47, PDF p.63), its main support was for modernists, as you can see on page 48 of the report (PDF page 64):
Some additional, more-direct activities will be necessary to support this overall approach, such as the following: - Help break the fundamentalist and traditionalist monopoly on defining, explaining, and interpreting Islam. - Identify appropriate modernist scholars to manage a Web site that answers questions related to daily conduct and offers modernist Islamic legal opinions. - Encourage modernist scholars to write textbooks and develop curricula. - Publish introductory books at subsidized rates to make them as available as the tractates of fundamentalist authors. - Use popular regional media, such as radio, to introduce the thoughts and practices of modernist Muslims to broaden the international view of what Islam means and can mean.
This hardly qualifies Shaikh Hamza to be the “RIM in chief for America”, since he has long nailed his colours to the traditionalist mast and opposed modernism. They believe in supporting traditionalists as a mere side-show to keep the devout happy, and if Shaikh Hamza is accused of being the dupe of that strategy, despite the fact that it has been published openly, then his accusers had better find evidence of that support, in terms of funding or other material support, and put up or shut up (and I do not mean the occasional speaking engagement, but rather consistent support over a long period).
The post contains accusations which are true of some Muslims in America, but I don’t believe them to be true of Shaikh Hamza, let alone that he is the “chief” of them. There are well-known groups of “Sufis” who pose as cuddly hippies and who then inform on Muslim groups and publically call them extremists and Hamas fronts etc., and yet these are all groups Shaikh Hamza has spoken to at their conventions, when one would have expected him to set up a rival organisation or at least attack them publically if he was on the RAND payroll and regarded them as deviant or extremist. Shaikh Hamza’s form of Sufism is actually pretty conservative; I have sat with them both in England and in Egypt, and their dhikr gatherings don’t involve the hadra that some of the North African Sufi turuq have; it consists of reading and singing poetry and reciting what are sometimes called litanies (in Arabic, rawaatib), including one by Imam Nawawi, and reading from the Qur’an.
Umar’s post frankly seethes with the class resentment of American academia which has been obvious in many of his other posts. Somehow he seems to think all Muslim men should be as “manly” as those he knows in the American inner city, when they are not like that and never have been. In most of the Muslim world you do not need to keep your wits about you, you do not need to avoid looking at people, particularly men, unless you want to get challenged for a fight or even just murdered on the spot; in fact, you are unlikely to get into a fight at all unless you try to rob someone or insult someone’s mother. However run-down they look and however poor the people are, people are polite and civilised. Why should any American Muslim not from the ghetto or a run-down neighbourhood in the “rust belt” aspire to the kind of “manliness” which is a cancer even there? Self-restraint is not a virtue among them. Backing down from confrontation, even when there is no good reason for it, or not taking revenge when you “should”, is called being a “pussy”. (We have this problem in the UK as well.) If the Sahaba had been anything like them, can you imagine their reaction when the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) told them not to kill a whole list of people during the reconquest of Makkah, including anyone who took refuge in this house or that house, despite all that some of those people had done before the Hijra?
The Ummah needs middle-class people. We cannot be a community made up of an under-educated working class mass with a few very super-wealthy people who made their money from oil and occasionally shower a bit of money on everyone else. The West became powerful when it developed an educated, reproducing middle class (before this, only priests and monastics got educated), and from this came professionals and thinkers. Where are we going as a community if we are just the manual workers and small merchants? Downhill all the way. It is a good thing that there are a lot of converts coming out of the universities; the biggest problem is that traditional Islam is under-represented in most of them. They tend to get into dead-end political revival groups (not including the Muslim Brotherhood), many of which have a long history of failure, and other groups which appeal to the juvenile instinct for rebellion.
If Umar had bothered to do a bit of research before posting such a long screed and then naming only one name, his post might have struck a chord, but as it is, it is just a rant against his usual pet hates and ends with the slander of a scholar of Islam who is innocent of most of what he alleges. I do believe there are people in both Britain and America who fit most of his claims - middle-class Sufis who look down on other Muslims, middle-class non-practising Muslims with deviant ideas who look to non-Muslims for support and attack the Muslims, and so on, but I believe he has picked the wrong target, of all the targets that are out there.
In response to Ginny’s post, he has responded with more of the same, and invited people over to his house to (you guessed it) fight over it. I am not sure who he wants to come all the way to St Louis to fight him (not Ginny, I hope), and besides, you cannot win an argument by beating up your opponent. You might shut them up, you might put them in hospital or the morgue, but everyone else will know that you had run out of arguments and resorted to your fists and that you are a no-good bully and a bad loser. I do not care what class you are. Over the years I have managed to have discussions with Muslims (and others) of many classes and races in good and bad parts of London without coming to blows once, and the key is to behave like a decent Muslim, to keep your cool, remember your adab, not to talk about things which are likely to start fights, not to use insulting or coarse language, and not to display open contempt for the other person. I know who my Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) is, and the difference between a prophet and a teacher of Islam; you will be asked also about the things you said and wrote about other people, and slander of scholars is worse than slander of ordinary people other than when it concerns adultery or anything else that could actually lead to harm, and all your “testicular fortitude” will not save you when you have to account for these things.
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I suppose I conform to many of Umar’s criteria for Rand Institute Muslims. Yes, I’m fine about gay people, I’m a feminist, and would certainly choose to read a proper social scientists on matters of political events rather than a madrassa trained textual scholar who thinks he has a right to pronounce on everything. And I do dislike maschismo, as well as being inclined towards Sufi interpretations of Islam, including some of its more heterodox expressions. And? I don’t invite anyone to believe my views are superior - I am no ‘reformer’ and I consider the Rand report arrant nonsense. There a few mainstream Muslim traditions I would condemn, even though we may hold different views on some issues. I love Islam, and pretty much all who sail in her. But some of us do have a tendency to talk a load of old tommy rot at times, Umar.
Linking the masculinity of the sahaba to the violent sexual taking of slave women and girls… I find this problematic. Such actions were acceptable 1400 years ago, but is this the much blabbed about “masculinity” that Mr. Lee seeks to promote today, in a Muslim community already teeming with the very worst psychological issues that you (and he) have mentioned? I don’t know when it became “feminism” to try to resurrect some of the religion’s positive teachings about women, and try to decry some of the very real abuses against women perpetrated by Muslims, in the name of Islam. I guess us women should, in Lee’s very imaginary Islamic ideal, shut up, put a veil back on our faces, and get steppin’ to the kitchen (barefoot, of course).
Salaam Alaikum,
A wonderful post, Masha Allah. This is why your Brass Crescent was so richly deserved.
Sorry I posted before I finished my thoughts.
I just wanted to say that hating on this kind of new view of the environment and activism is really self defeating and not at all cohesive with the supremacist sort of view of Islam that someone like Mr. Lee (and many other Muslims) holds. If Islam is indeed the most supreme philosophy and belief, then it follows that Muslims have more responsibility than anyone else to take care of the environment and push for reform. Last time I checked, we all lived here, and as you say, it is poor Muslims in places like Indonesia, and India who are most likely to be negatively impacted by environmental change — and they are the working class people who are least likely to be able to do anything about policies that impact the global environment.
This is, of course, in addition to all those teachings about how those things you wronged will testify against you on the day of judgment. In all, Lee’s comments on this (and other things) remind me more of the fundamentalist and evangelical Christian movements than anything I ever found in Islam.
Finally, more and more Americans are seeing that our First Amendment will not allow us to deny gay Americans the right to marry, as well as some other things, since the denial is based solely in religious reasoning. Muslims can get with the program and wake up and see that the same First Amendment and the same argument that equal marriage rights activists are using can be applied to Muslims (notably polygamists) or we can keep holding hands with the likes of James Dobson and other right wingers. You don’t have to like or accept what someone else does in the bedroom to recognize that when you live in America (and I agree with you that thinking on it is probably not best, and preachers / imams who go on about it excessively probably have deep psychological issues), you agree to uphold the Constitution, and if people don’t like that, I’m so sure those Muslim countries will be ever-so-welcoming of them.
BismillahirRahmanirRahim,
An interesting topic, with perhaps more issues raised than can be handled in one blogpost.
While Umar Lee may have gone overboard in casting Hamza Yusuf as the king of ‘RAND Muslims,’ I think he raises some valid issues.
It’s important for Muslims to remember, that any leader we have in these times is not above questioning. There are traditions from Rasulullah that warn about leaders in the end of times appearing to be knowledgeable, but in reality are `asaghir (“little ones”) who are the worst hypocrits.
These are real prophecies, not to be dismissed or overlooked while we consult our Maliki and Shafi’i manuals of fiqh on obscure matters. We should ask ourselves why the stalwarts among the `ulema are deemphasizing these aspects of the deen, in favor of efforts to canonize and bring an ecclesiastical framework to Islamic knowledge.
The reason why this should be a cause for concern, and a vital discussion for us, lies in the nature of leadership itself. For example, Malcolm X may not have been a scholar or faqih, but he led by his example in standing up for the truth, even when it was bitter and politically inconvenient. And his efforts, galvanized many Muslims in America against obvious injustices. The authorities feared his agitations would bring about an uprising, and he was assassinated while speaking the truth to power. Many still remember his example today, and became Muslim through him.
There is historical precedent for this kind of an uprising against injustice - from Salahuddin Ayubi (ra). And many others who we may come to know, once we truly learn about our history.
Your response to Umar Lee, while methodical and in my opinion, with good adab (manners), has a kind of finality to it, that smacks of the Salafi/Wahabi refutations. I feel this should not be about defending Hamza Yusuf, despite our love for what he’s done. It should raise further questions.
It was from Hamza Yusuf that I learned, that Imam Shafi’i used to make du’a before engaging in debate, that Allah place the truth on the opponent’s tongue, so that he would be able to accept it.
We should respect Umar Lee’s opinions, and not sweep our dirty laundry under the carpet in the name of ‘defending our scholars.’
Your description of the pro-Saudi Salafis is mostly true, but there are Sufi/Ash’aris groups and individuals who are just as harsh towards the Islamist groups such as the Ahbash and other Sufis who never criticise the actions of the Arab governments and place all the blame on the Islamist groups. As for the Rand report, then aren’t we seeing its’ recommendations being implemented with groups like the Radical Middle Way of which Hamza Yusuf is a participant? How do the Sufi/Ash’aris justify participating in a group which calls for a “moderate” Islaam while it is being backed by a government which is invading and occupying Muslim lands and promoting groups which are calling for a secularist “Islaam”.
Assalamu alaikum, I was not aware that he’d responded to my post as I’d not gone back and reread his post after I’d initially commented on it, but if he wants me to “come and fight him” as a woman, what does that say exactly? And I’m not surprosed at that response if that’s indeed his response. I kind of half expected that anyway.
Brother all I can say is, Masha’Allah, great response. I am a reader of that blog but for some reason I completely missed this post about Sh. Hamza. Divine providence perhaps, because it seriously elevated my blood pressure. Sometimes Umar is right, sometimes he is wrong. But on this issue he is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong.
I have so much that I could say as well, but it really isn’t necessary. You summarized it wonderfully. All I will say is that to know Sh. Hamza is to love him (and we know him personally). My husband and I would not be where we are today without him. May Allah protect him and his family from people who seek to discredit and destroy him. Sh. Hamza, far from sipping lattes in beatnik cafes, works his tail end off for Islam and Muslims, (night and day, day and night). While some Muslims are spending their time destroying and knocking others down, Sh. Hamza (as well as a whole host of others)are spending their time trying to build us up. BTW didn’t he just open up a Muslim college in California? I am sure his handlers at Rand would not readily approve. ;)
What is the deal with tearing down scholars? Ya Allah. With so many problems in our Ummah, this should be the LAST THING we should invest our precious time in.
J.A.K. for this refutation Brother. I know it took alot of time and effort. May Allah reward you for it.
Salam alaikum, Umar was making a generalisation- he could of used an adverb to ‘qualify’ his points. But he did not.
Looking at the ‘generalisation’ he is generally ‘correct’..
Unlike you, Yusuf, I think the most ‘offensive’ comment is the most accurate. The Sahabah were killers- and the hyphenated ‘straight up’ is descriptive and adjectival. It does not imply ‘criminal’, for their business was straight up killing fii sababillah.
Many of the ‘classical’ sufis, in this positive sense, were also ‘straight up killers’ and eagerly participated in Jihad. Patriarchy is central, not peripheral, to Islam; and Islam is attacked most for that conception of male-female relations.
On these 2 points, the muruu’a (ie, the ideal of manliness) and ‘patriarchy’, Islam is distorted. And ‘distorted’ so as to please the ‘attackers’. Few say this, Umar did.
The attraction of the salafi da’wa is that it emphasises the obvious and seems less in tension with the plain meaning of the sources of the religion. A liberal or sufi or feminist or lesbian or homosexual may not like this. But we follow Islam. We ask Allah for guidance. He alone we worship and He alone we call for help.
Salaams, Yusuf;
while I agree with almost every statement you make above, and think you were right in your articulation of what was wrong with his arguments about ‘masculinity’ and theology/politics/sectarianism - I just want to offer this one word about brother Umar, and he is our brother, although his words (particularly vicious towards Sh. Hamza) are unacceptable.
I think he’s suffering, he just got divorced and recently lost his job with a taxi company, and while the issues he’s writing about are ongoing concerns with him, his reasons for sounding so bitter now are personal. I don’t mean to drag his personal situation into public view, though he clearly meant his words to be public and they can’t really not be refuted - but just as someone who knows that sympathy is both from the Sunnah (and not ‘effeminate’), I urge you to consider that Umar is also suffering, and that his words may be emerging now because of his personal concerns.
wa Allahu alim
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
Saarim: Shaikh Hamza participated in the RMW at the very beginning, not long after the 7th July bombings when the British government was looking for ways to wean young Muslims away from extremism, and with good reason. More recently, RMW events have consisted of entertainers and “community leaders”, not Islamic scholars. Shaikh Hamza last participated in a RMW event in February 2007.
Yursil’s written a timely response on his Mind, Body, Soul blog:
http://www.yursil.com/blog/200.....s-point-1/
He’s covered core issues that all of us in this comment thread, lost sight of. Masha’Allah to him.
Salaam aleikum,
Though many parts of your refutation of Umar’s posts do have some merit (especially in relation to Qwardawi and Saudi funded Salafis). It fails on most objective measures to disprove that hamza yusuf is indeed (either willingly or unwillingly) part of the RAND efforts at modernizing and eliminating Islam politically as a threat to Western domination of the Muslim World. You have said nothing about any of the following:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2.....-j03.shtml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....eligion.uk
audio: http://www.radicalmiddleway.co.....038;vid=10
video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5fApgQUvBM
Hamza Yusuf - The Voice of God: http://www.muslimwakeup.com/ma.....-of-go.php
“The next evening, while we waited for Hamza Yusuf to arrive, I heard a young woman standing behind me tell her friend, “Even if Hamza Yusuf had three wives, I would kill to be his fourth wife!” What followed was the distinct sound of my brain shrinking.”
source: “Zaytuna’s Smelly Kebaabs” http://www.muslimwakeup.com/ma.....smelly.php
http://www.themodernreligion.c.....ition.html
http://www.sunnah.org/events/hamza/khatry.htm
(pics are worth a thousand words).
http://articles.latimes.com/20.....g-clarke20
Smiling with a war criminal: http://pmunadebate.blogspot.co.....d-war.html
This was followed by Zaid Shakir writing a public letter changing his story TWICE as to how this “meeting” or function came about (i.e. hamza yusuf was “tricked” and then later “not told” that he would be sharing a stage with Blair):
http://pmunadebate.blogspot.co.....yusuf.html
More associations with promoters of RMW and neo-cons here: http://pmunadebate.blogspot.co.....beral.html
“Majority of American constitution is Islamic” http://hamzayusuf.faithweb.com....._hour.html
”..Islam is an intelligent religion. The laws are there to serve human beings; we are not there to serve the law. We are there to serve Allah, and that is why whenever the law does not serve you, you are permitted to abandon it, and that is actually following the law. That is where the confusion lies because people do not realize that. The law is for our benefit, not for our harm. Therefore, if the law harms us, we no longer have to abide by it.You cannot worship the sacred law because the law is there to serve you; it is for your maslaha, your benefit, and that is our fiqh.”
source: “Question of Hijab These Days” http://muslim-canada.org/hijabthesedays.html
That sufism IS being promoted by both the U.S./UK govts. as a way of destroying political opposition to their imperial plans for the Muslim world. A recent cursory look over what the Economist wrote on this illustrates this:
http://www.economist.com/world.....d=12792544
along with the pro-Israeli U.S. News & World Report which outlined how 3 different U.S. govt. agencies conferenced on promoting “moderate” sufi Muslims in preparation for invading Iraq. They EXPLICITLY said they MUST change Islam to suit the new political reality:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/n.....5roots.htm
in the UK think-tanks and govt. bodies do pretty much the same thing (though on a more local level):
http://www.ukwatch.net/article.....in_britain
I will stop here for now, but there is a LOT more than just this. However I don’t expect that you will either publish this comment nor allow room for any objective discussion (since many of his followers are emotionally attached to that which they adore). In the end, I will put my faith in Allah (swt) that the Muslim Ummah will be able to see, hear, and undertand that which is the truth.
salaam aleikum, sameer
Salaamu alaikum,
Brother Umar has mentioned what a Rand document states and has not really proven anything, Post 911, tons of self-appointed commentators on Islam in America have appeared when they were unheard of before and had not did much for Islam in America. Now, we are suppose to find their poorly researched diatribes as factual. While not all fit this bill, many do. Authorship is one thing, Authority quite another. Hamza Yusuf’s work with the community is well know. He has brought his understanding of Islam to middle-class immigrant kids (saving many) and taken Islam to a certain segment of the population, often times (although not exclusively) middle-class, college educated people. This is the background he comes from. Umar plays the poor white chocolate role and hangs on the belt straps of many African American Muslims when he should go to the working class white communities across the country and bring the deen to his tribe. Let him visit working class white America and be rejected from his people, and then lets see how tough he is. Go do dawah to Joe the Dumber and the good ole boys. Maybe he is waiting for them to contact him on his blog or his facebook.
This wacko claim of “masculinity” is easily responded to by reading the sirah. Is it “masculine” in America to cry simply over reading a religious text? - All of the Sahabah shed tears consistently - hardly “masculine” by midwest standards. Or what of the Nabi (‘alayhis salam) kissing his grandchildren and the ‘arab - the supposed “masculine” symbol - retorting that he had 10 children not a one he ever kissed to which the Nabi retorted “Those who do not show mercy, will not receive it”.
It is interesting to note that the greatest human form of mercy was a FEMININE example given by the Nabi ‘alayhis salaam; a woman losing her child in the battle and upon finding him grabbed hold of him and put him to her breast. The Nabi explaining this is only one part of the 99 parts of Allah’s mercy!
It seems to me that the Nabi (‘alayhis salam) redefined “masculinity” by “feminising” it, and abandoned the stereotypes that some 1400 years later still exist in America and elsewhere. It certainly would do Umar good to sit beneath the Sunni scholars who have mastered Adab before he go on a rant that stinks of pseudo-salafistic tainted dogma.
Just my thoughts though.
Bismillah
as salamu alaykum
Umar Lee said,
“if they sit in circles to venerate the Prophet (s.a.s.),…… then you know they are RIMS.”
then he goes on to say,
“This is not a refutation of all Sufis.”
What sufi tariqa doesn’t sit in circles to venerate and honor our Beloved Messenger of Allah (sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam)?
Allahumma salli ‘ala sayyidina muhammadan abdika wa rasulika an nabi al ummi wa ala aalihi wa sahbihi wa sallam!
Jazakallah for the clarification.Can you please throw light on the real poltical agenda of the RAND corporation? Without getting personal,is Umar Lee perhaps trying to warn muslims about Rand itself and its dubious agenda to weaken muslim resolve?The tragedy if Gaza calls for a full scale analysis of organisations that are bent on destroying muslim resurgence.The Gaza genocide is truly an indictment on ALL DEMOCRACY.Being nice and soft on these critical issues facing the Ummah will NOT stop the greater plans to annihilate Palestinians and possibly all muslims from the face of the earth.The scholars thelselves lack direction and cannot provide effective leadership while muslims are being slaughtered.We need to really start looking within ourselves and explore counter stratgies and gain new perspectives .
Hussein
Point 1
I agree that some Salafis, a particular strand of Salafis that I would call madhkalee Salafis, are by far the worst in this regard as they not only discourage political action and support of Muslim movements but may discourage even the study of the modern world and keeping up on the news.
The old Hamza Yusuf was quite eloquent in his political arguments. I would like to know when these statements were made
Point 2
So we can agree that there is a difference in American and Britain.
Point 3
There are so many examples of Hamza Yusuf saying dodgy things regarding homosexuality I could not put them in one post. What I want to see from him is a definitive statement in public on this issue. From personal experience, I know of several of his followers who are open supporters of gay rights. A student at Zaytuna told me that he suspect that Hamza is soft on gays because a lot of his students in the Bay Area are “struggling with issues of sexuality”. This is also about politics. Like you said, there is an alliance; but in a historical context this is a temporary alliance, but the young Muslims of today have come of age thinking that Islam is the Left and the Left is Islam and the only real enemy is the right-wing, and that is not the case.
Point 4
I am referring to the spirits of arguments and what is written not to a position that he holds.
Part 5
I will address this in detail in a post coming out Wednesday insha’Allah
Part 6
The class argument offends a lot of people and most do not understand it; because in America in this generation we have lost an understanding of class. My argument is not that I dislike people who are upper-class, or that there is a necessary virtue in being poor, it is that there are Muslims who have merged their Islamic ideas with the norms of upper-class America. Poor Muslims know that their lives have to change (even if they do not change them) and that this society is flawed. I do not see the same recognition from many of the upper-class Muslims I describe. So, it is not their affluence I am attacking, it is their world-view. The last paragraph I did not quite understand.
Part 7
This is just a difference of opinion that reflects a social vision and is not an important part of the discussion.
Part 8
I respect what science has to say on this. But, Global Warming is not the end of the world, we have been told how the world will end by the Messenger of Allah (s.a.s.). So, we know that whatever the ill-effect of Global Warming is, it will not end human life. Now, having said that, we must do a better job in living more environmentally friendly lifestyles and I am all for more fuel-efficient vehicles, urbanization, more public transit, organic meats, etc. But, we must keep our young people away from the radical elements of this “green movement”.
Part 9
I understand the position on taqleed. However, I also see how it has been used to quiet the Muslim masses and it is one reason RAND wants to promote Sufism.
Part 10
I’m sorry akh; but many of these poems sound homo to me and the way some of these men at these gatherings speak to one another telling each other how beautiful they are is ajeeb to me.
There is a lot more physical contact between males in the Muslim World and some of that is good. It shows the love between brothers and the love between Muslim brothers is one of the most beautiful things I have been blessed to experience. However, to keep it real, pedophilia is also rampant in many parts of the Muslim World. I know of people who were sodomized by male teachers at Islamic madrassas and others who had to pull their sons out. I, for one, would love to send my sons (if Allah blesses me to have boy) to a Muslim boarding school; but I fear this for them.
FYI, JAK Brother Dawud for your concern, but alhamdudilah I am still married. Wednesday inshaAllah I am coming with a clarification of my commentary on the Sahabah.
There are so many examples of Hamza Yusuf saying dodgy things regarding homosexuality
state your sources, I mean all you’ve provided so far is what someone told you
Salaam alaikum Umar, I’ve tried to ignore a lot of the recent fitnah you caused. But there is one thing I wanted to address. You know nothing about the Zaytuna students or the Muslim community in the Bay Area, California. Even your generalizations about California Muslims in the past is way off the mark. You’ve never been this far West and I doubt you know many people from this region. Your circle probably has little experience with any of the Zaytuna people or other Sufis. I’m sure you’ve gleaned most of your sources from the Web. You conflate so much that it becomes clear that you have only superficial knowledge of the issues you’re talking about. I highly advise that you focus on what you know.
bismillah
as salamu ‘alaykum
Response to Umar on his response to part 8.
The beautiful thing about Islam is that it is a religion that looks at the whole. When our scholars focus on the environment as much as they do they don’t do so ignoring everything else that is a must to address, but caring for our earth, for animals, for our bodies, all of it, is our responsibility and in order for us to attain the akhlaq our Beloved Messenger of Allah (SallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) had we must our lives in a holistic way.
Margari,
That is exactly what I wanted to say but didn’t. May Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala allow us all to take heed from that. aameen
Salaam alaikum Umm Layth,
Our blogs should inform, educate, encourage believers to do what’s right, discourage the wrong, and build bridges.This is why I am going to work towards promoting that code of blogging ethics that you talked about. Pointless debates, slandering, backbiting, and name calling is just idle talk taking away our time from ibadah and doing good deeds. Our blogs should be something that benefits believers and invites non-Muslims to a rich and beautiful deen. May Allah guide us and purify our intentions.
I think few people are with Margari on this post:
http://www.mujahideenryder.net.....ent-133034
I point I forgot to mention is that pro-Saudi Salafis have been condemned and refuted by many Salafi ‘ulama and shuyookh for their defeatist manhaj. Bro. Yusuf, you can condemn terrorism and “extremism” without participating in groups backed by the British government to promote a “moderate” Islaam and Sufi/Ash’ari shuyookh are still participating in events organised by the Radical Middle Way. I think the question isn’t really about Hamza Yusuf, but whether certain Western governments are promoting or backing certain Sufis or “Traditionals” and their groups as a counterbalance to other more “extreme” Muslims. I think this is going on to a certain extent and the onus is upon these “Traditional” shuyookh and du’aat to make their position clear upon this matter.
There are a lot of things offensive about his original post, but the most offensive is the way he spoke of the sahaba, may Allah be pleased with them. To see that view echoed by others is really disturbing. It’s appalling adab with the sahaba to use such words in describing them. Being a killer is practically synonymous with being a murderer, or being bloodthirsty. The sahaba were brave, yes they were masculine, they showed strength when they needed to, they fought when they needed to, and in battle they killed when they needed to. But you cannot call them killers. That is thoughtless disrespectful language, it doesn’t matter how “street” you are, we as Muslims are supposed to have good speech!
The damage to Traditional Islam has primarily damaged been by elements who claim to represent it and not from individuals like Umar Lee.
This has ranged from the shameless encouragement and support of very untraditional people like Ed Hussain to dodgy alliances with the Policy Exchange.
I find some of Yusuf’s remarks to be utterly risible, particularly when he equated those from the ghettos as being “low-hanging fruit” and other cantankerous descriptions of those from the Ghetto. The reality is that in the UK for example most of those from these areas are becoming Muslims are a faster rate than other areas and this is something which is praiseworthy, which even your Shaykh Hamza Yusuf himself as attested to and so has Umar F Abd Allah!
As for Yusuf’s ridiculous views about Salafis and Ghettos then he is in close proximity to many in London yet never ever ventures to them to really find out just what is actually taking place! Therefore, there has been an “over-emphasis” (as Yusuf oddly describes it!) of da’wah in the ghettos as this is where Islam is being more rapidly accepted. This itself has been subject to much in the way of research and study. I also found Yusuf’s statements about “criminal backgrounds and chaotic family situations” which Yusuf equated with ghetto life to also be rather obtuse. Such a sanctimonious description of ghetto life is precisely the kind of ipse-dixit that Lee was emphasising in his initial article. For it is well known that those from middle-class backgrounds can also be subject to “chaotic family backgrounds” which in some instances can be just as detrimental to the persona as being raised in a single-parent home in the ghettos of the UK or the US
http://www.salafimanhaj.com/pd.....j_RAND.pdf
AbdulHaq, what do you think of Bilaal Davis receiving money from the British government to combat “extremism” as mentioned in a British newspaper?
“There is a lot more physical contact between males in the Muslim World and some of that is good.”
So you’re saying that the majority of it is not?
“However, to keep it real, pedophilia is also rampant in many parts of the Muslim World. I know of people who were sodomized by male teachers at Islamic madrassas and others who had to pull their sons out. I, for one, would love to send my sons (if Allah blesses me to have boy) to a Muslim boarding school; but I fear this for them.”
May Allah send a few of his lions to off these homo-rapists. This a great example we should return to Allah’s law. These criminals would be killed immediately. Allahu Akbar. A muslim should not have to fear sending their muslim child to a muslim school. :(
Dear Yusuf,
I must say that I find your defense of Shaikh Hamzah compelling and complete.
I do agreee with Umar Lee’s comments, but not their target.
They would have been better applied to Khalid Abu AL Fadl, Fatima Mernessi and other modernists, whose deviance from classical Islamic fiqh and aqeedah, is self proclaimed with pride.
I must also point out that Umar Lee crossed the line by referring to the Sahaba as killers,and thieves. This was apparently done in their defense and in defense of Umar’s view of Masculinity.
This is so repellent a comment that it places him beyond Alhus Sunnah, I advise him to fear Allah and repent.
I also want to say that no real scholar has to respond to this type of accusation, rather it is upto Umar Lee to present himself before Hamzah Yusuf and direct his tirade in person to his face. THAT is real masculinity.
Why do environmentalists have this puritanical hatred of aviation? Aviation is responsible for less than 1.5 % of global CO2 emissions, and it doesn’t matter if this percentage increases as long as it is primarily due to reductions in emissions from other sources. I think you’ve been reading too much Monbiot.
Why not go after the big CO2 sources by replacing fossil fuel power stations with nuclear ones, and encouraging the use of electric cars?
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