Strength Through Diversity

Islam, Strength Through Diversity

Vision:

Muslims in America are a diverse group of people coming from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. Today that diversity is counterproductive. The vision for the next ISNA national conference is to provide a focused, clearly articulated message to trigger a yearlong effort to turn the diversity into a powerful, energizing and unifying force in America.

What are the problems?

1- Low understanding of differences and low tolerance of differences. People don't know and don't try to see things from the other person's perspective. This leads to people operating on assumptions of what the other person thinks or feels.

2- Low self-esteem: There are a large number of Muslims that define themselves by their culture. They feel threatened by the American culture because they don't know how to react to it so it leads to further culture isolation.

3- Physical Barriers: Mosques and organizations have developed many barriers that are culture-centric. There could be an Indo/Pack Mosque and an Arab Mosque very close to each other in the same town. Also many Muslims will only marry within their culture group. These and other physical barriers lead to further isolation.

4- Arrogance / Racism: Many people grow up arrogant or racist attitudes towards other groups of people. For example: many Arabs think a Jew is sub human, black people are racists and American culture is idealized while many black people, for example, feel racist attitudes from the immigrant community etc. This arrogance has also spread within the different “Islamic groups”, each group thinks they are superior Muslims than others.

5- Elitism: Many groups think they know what is best for Islam in America. Each group then takes an elitist attitude towards other groups that are “wasting their time”, and there is a lot of jealousy and a desire to take over the groups that are actually successful at doing something.

6- Lack of Vision: Islam is the perfect unified religion so by definition there is no ideological problem that separates us that can't be overcome by a better understanding of the religion.

A Call to Action: “The year of Reaching out to People”

We must make a conscious effort to reach out to each other… Reach out to other ethnic groups. Reach out to that person you haven't talked to in years… Reach out to your non-Muslim neighbors. Make this the year for getting to know people. We need to realize how human we all are.

A- Every person must make a commitment to God that in this coming year you will invite three people that has never been to your house over for a visit. Feed them and talk to them and find out how human people really are.

B- This year every person must make a commitment to God to reach out to a family member with whom there are strained relations. Start with the question “What can I do to improve our relationship?” You have to sincerely try to change yourself for God to improve your relationship.

C- Partner up with a “study buddy”: Every husband and wife must spend time with each other every week working on their religion. This means working together not one being a critical teacher of the other, but both working together with love and mercy to better understand their religion and serve Allah. If the parents take their religion seriously on there own they will be able to transition to a “family faith time”. Kids need to see that you are sincere that it is important before they will take you seriously.

D- Break the physical barriers between us. If there are several Masjids in your town, make a committed effort to alternate between them even if you don't like what the other Masjid is doing. Reach out to people as friends and brothers in Islam.

Find your heart… learn to love again… learn to love people again… learn to love the Truth… learn to love to speak the truth… learn to love to live the Truth. Every Muslim should be a fanatic about learning and improving themselves and their knowledge. No one is perfect and in the end it will be your soul on Judgment Day… Are you going to trust your soul to the blind obedience of some Sheikh? Some human being? Even the companions were not blindly obedient to the prophet… They were intelligently obedient and so were better followers. That is our goal: to become intelligent followers and intelligent leaders. So take responsibility for yourself and empower yourself with knowledge and follow the divine logic of Allah the divine logic of the Qur'an and the example of our leader the Prophet Muhammad. God promises us that any person that turns to Him with humility shall be elevated, purified and in the end shall regain his or her human dignity!