Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1998, Pages 123-124

Mahjabeen's Musings: A Muslim Traveler Along the American Way

The Immorality of Political Apathy Among America's Fortunate Muslims

By Dr. Mahjabeen Islam-Husain

They tell me that it's a matter of expectation. Everything in life is, perhaps. Life would be so much simpler if the priority schedules of members of a community were in sync.

In 1996, those who participated in organization of the United Muslim Association of Toledo (UMAT)—a coming together of members of five Toledo mosques—as well as setting up a local chapter of the American Muslim Alliance, felt a huge sense of accomplishment and progress. The first very well attended UMAT event in September 1996, at which political candidates introduced themselves to Toledo's Muslims and then listened to Muslim concerns, was hailed as a milestone in Toledo's history. The local AMA chapter published and circulated a list of endorsed candidates for the November elections and from results of an exit poll, again conducted by the local AMA, many Muslims voted per our recommendations.

Then the daily grind took over, and our community slid back into its slumberous cocoon. Some "living room" critics sardonically commented on UMAT's premature birth and consequent demise. Perhaps it was the national election year, and thus the enthusiasm, or maybe it was the novelty. Muslims getting organized? Impossible! And so, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the novelty wore off the attention waned.

Being a physician I should have known that the prognosis of a comatose patient is guarded at best. AMA's national chair, Dr. Agha Saeed, adopted the "gentle coercion" tactics for which he is justly famous to prod us out of our slumber. Our local executive committee reacted by organizing a "Political Awareness Education" event, and advertised it the same way we had publicized the election year event in 1996.

With our premier event the attendance was 350. With this event, held at 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, all of 15 enthusiasts showed up. We tried to console ourselves by rationalizing—people were busy with this or that, on vacation, etc. etc.

It was their loss, I thought to myself. Our speaker, AMA vice president Dr. Shabbir Safdar of St. Louis, was well-organized and inspiring. They missed out on a very educational talk. Also, I told myself, in addition to all the extenuating rationalizations above, movements always start with a handful of people.

I had pretty much adjusted to the disappointment, encrypting the rationalizations in my brain, and though tired, decided to take my mother to a presentation by Zia Moheyuddin, a Pakistani actor and stage personality. To my amazement, there were about 200 people there.

I certainly enjoyed his reading of English and Urdu prose and poetry, but I know for a fact that it was well beyond the comprehension of a large number of people in the audience. He recited prose of Shakespearean proportions and Urdu poetry of Ghalib and Faiz. And yet there were 200 people there as a result of notifications no different than the ones for the AMA event that afternoon.

The human mind chooses entertainment over education—I can understand that. But can't we do both? Or would the synapses fatigue? I know for a fact that the majority of people who were there for Zia Moheyuddin did not fathom his presentation, but would have come home from Dr. Safdar's presentation with a crisp understanding of the methods of involvement and participation in U.S. politics.

Perhaps Muslims don't realize that awareness of, and preferably involvement in, American politics is almost as important for our children as saving for their college educations. It was great to reminisce about Pakistan and the good old days, but couldn't we have been prospective in the daytime and retrospective in the evening?

Obviously not. Political inertia among Muslim Americans is a sad reflection of our myopia. Many of us are not even aware of our numerical strength. Others, who are, continually enlarge upon our disunity and forever bode gloom and doom.

It is my theory, based on first-hand experience and observation, that a personal religious revival occurs in most people in their 30s and 40s. For most Muslims this new-found spirituality is not very novel—just an invigoration of a system of belief and action whose foundation was laid in childhood and early adulthood. For young Muslims, therefore, dealing with this change in one's life should not be so time-intensive as to exclude involvement in other arenas of life.

Re-discovering our great faith is a very special milestone in our lives. But realizing that the greatest duty to the Almighty is to submit to His will and to spread His Word in the confines of this ephemeral life should be the focus of our spiritual rebirth.

Countries where there are the largest concentrations of Muslims are, unfortunately, all in the Third World. Muslims there are necessarily caught up in the struggle of daily living where the source of the next meal and the dearth of shelter dominate the time of the citizen and the government. When the basic necessities of life are uncertain, spreading God's Word is, at best, delving in the impossible.

In the Muslim world, religion has rapidly acquired the taken-for-granted state. The adhan, or call to prayer, is heard five times a day resonating from the numerous mosques and no explanation is needed for fasting in Ramadan. Islam is within the rubric of the community, especially the middle class. But these are the classically powerless.

The elites are a different story. For them, Islam is a happenstance. Ironically for the Muslim world, these are the people with the power, absolute power, which often is paired with absolute corruption. They can wield power ruthlessly. Islam is very redundant.

A case in point (and a pet peeve of mine) is Pakistan—the only country created in the name of Islam. Pakistan is predominantly Muslim, and the nurturer of great scholars like Maulana Maudoodi. Islam is practiced by the lower and middle classes as though it were imprinted in their genes. The power-wielding elite is another story. Far removed from the struggle to survive, they are the people who can buy a good education, make government policies and adapt their morals to the latest fashions. The percentage of this stratum versus the population is minuscule, but its breadth of influence is disproportionately large.

Perhaps the world as a whole has degenerated morally. It seems as though technological advancement and traditional values are diametrically opposed. It's painful to see that a country founded on the basis of a religion which has explicit rules of behavior is run by people whose lives are Pakistani counterparts of the decadence of soap operas.

A Double Standard

Societies have always practiced a double standard. Before the partition of India, it was acceptable for men of good families to watch tavayifs, female dancers, of suspect reputations. Visiting these women of song and dance did not damage the moral integrity of their fans, and in fact was thought to be educational, kind of like evening finishing school (the Academy of the Arts!).

These men were subsequently married to young, beautiful women from wonderful families—complete with clout and influence. In contrast to their musical counterparts, these well-bred women were always moral cherubs. There was segregation of the sexes and many a time the interaction of these sheltered girls with the opposite sex was limited to members of their family. Our musical sisters were in a minority, society at large cast a benevolent blind eye toward them, and as a whole practiced Islamic values.

India and Pakistan have fought many wars, and though Pakistan maintains its independence, it has been overtaken by Hindu culture. Thanks to modern technology, a country with rampant illiteracy and poverty boasts satellite dishes, VCR and television in a shockingly large number of homes (and shacks).The mores of Bollywood (the subcontinent's film-making center in Bombay/Mumbai) have overtaken our cumbersome Muslim beliefs.

The greatest manifestation of this is the spectacle at weddings. It used to be (in the good ole days) that girls in a segregated environment would sit around a drum and sing a few wedding songs. Segregation now is a thing dinosaurian.

Islam forbids alcohol. That too is sooo archaic. Islam enjoins modesty of attire. Now we dare to bare, the more the better. And as though that were not enough, our sisters and our daughters bounce, shake and shiver to the last detail of the original choreography of the Indian movie. These are young girls, 15 to 20, with parents looking on proudly, together with a multitude of male guests, as well as the necessary accoutrements of comfortable living—their servants, drivers, gardeners, cooks, etc.

What a tremendous role reversal! The great granddaddies of these hapless females sneaked off to their musical dates, while these girls boldly display their talents! Just as society then condoned the actions of those men, Muslim society in Pakistan has become desensitized to the point of accepting this current degenerate behavior without protest. Promiscuity a generation ago was cause for absolute ostracism. Now it is a given.

It is naive to expect Muslim renaissance from this backdrop. Muslim communities in North America are, interestingly, the conservatives in the Muslim world. Perhaps, being surrounded by secularism, we fear that our children will be enveloped by it. Many of today's Muslim parents are more particular and more practicing than were our own parents and, thankfully, we have many very happy endings.

We in North America have been blessed with the freedom of democracy, which in itself has allowed us to raise our children and live our lives by the dictates of Islam. Perhaps we have reached a state of saturation of effort. Though we live in a democracy, the shackles of materialism and agnosticism are forever at hand, and we continue our daily struggle, or jihad, to oppose them.

We must realize, post haste, that the answer to America's social ills lies in the values taught by Islam, and hopefully exemplified by us. Our very survival as a distinct religious community, therefore, lies in participation in the law-making process of this country.

Forming political action committees and backing candidates, in and of itself, is grossly insufficient to do the job. American politicians have a very skewed understanding of Islam and Muslims. Their information sources are written, funded and controlled by anti-Muslim entities. The mind of a desperate politician is focused only on attainment of elected office. Anything else is irrelevant.

It is not just international issues that are of concern to American Muslims. The drug abuse at my daughters' junior high school, and their drug abuse resistance education is of greater concern to me than the politics of the Muslim world. Muslims must understand that achieving political office is not the goal. The process of standing for election, and replacing negative Muslim stereotypes in the minds of Americans, should be our primary goal. Replacing the awe about the whole electoral process in the minds of Muslims should be the other.

Starting the process by standing for political office would be like opening a floodgate of activity for Muslims. If Muslims in North America do not respond to this very urgent call to our collective conscience, we will set ourselves back at least a generation. Silence has traditionally meant consent. Political apathy is no different.