I’m unabashadly pantheistic, it’s the only way Tauhid makes any sense for me. If I viewed allah the way Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Abdul-Wahab, etc etc. did, as kind of a giant sky man, unconnected to me or any larger universal scheme beyond merely being its architect…I wouldn’t really see the point in Islam.

I was down in Tucson last week, fuckin Muslims EVERYWHERE in the Uinversity area. I went to Penguin’s to grab an ice cream cone and there were like 20 teenage girls in hijab around. I saw just as many hijabis over by like Tucson& Broadway. I went to Ali Baba’s and saw a Lebanese kid I met at Jummah like 16 months ago who told me he’s trying to become a cop now. I miss Tucson sometimes, much as I like my new surroundings, but your posts on ICT help me from missing it too badly.

<

• Login or register to post comments

Your khutba reviews are annoying to be frank.

I’m tired of them because your mosque is not the center of the world and your mosque’s sectarianism as validated by TriciaP annoyed the fuck out of me.  You should discontinue this practice, and trying to be anonymous is a complete bore in my opinion.

You warned me about being played by Arab chauvinists in San Diego, but you know, I can’t be played.  I’m as bellicose as President Ahmedinejad of Iran.  I lack the pre-requisites of being "submissive" to some mosque board and always downplaying the troubling aspects of our community.

If someone tried to shut up the female portion of the mosque, I would say something to that man.

It is annoying that you give checks for female led prayer events and then you just yield to male patriarchy in your own mosque.

You want to be an activist, at least have the balls to do so.

Somalis annoy me too, they seem to be shocked to find a Muslim with a fair complexion and clean shaven face.  I feel like telling them, ever watch Arab pop videos, the men on them are "white" looking, they could pass as "Italian" since some Italian Americans do not consider themselves white.

Somalis are aggressive and clique-ish.  Is it wrong to make generalizations like these, especially of your fellow Muslims.  Most Muslims with their annoying pre-conceived notions of what a Muslim is suppose to look like annoys the fuck out of me.

I use the term "fuck" since shit, being in a verbally abusive work environment like the Navy, where commissioned officers from the Navy Academy walk around the ship clueless like a bunch of mothafuckers with a stick up their ass, think they are shit.  I remember when my aunt said to one of them, "Well my nephew may be enlisted, but he went to a more competitive school than you."  Persian arrogance at its best!

I hate university mosques, they have some elitist assholes up in there.

Thank God no mosque is located near a major national research university in San Diego, those mosques are filled with a bunch of pricks who want to "out Islamicize" the "culturally corrupt" Muslims who don’t "have the intellectual capacity" to comprehend "the deviance in their daily practice of Islam."

When I’m in your hood Omar, I will ask for Tricia, armed with my sitar, I will bust out playing it in the parking lot, will the Sunni board confront me over my "deviance" and "sinful enjoyment of music"?

San Diego’s Muslim community is dispersed geographically.  There is no one central mosque that dictates what is "Islamic" for the community.  The community is predictably divided by language, race, ethnicity, and national origins.  There is no singular activist voice either, there are competing groups trying to foster Muslim solidarity when there is little interaction in the community beyond one’s individual identity.  San Diego is also large, with communities divided by canyons and highways, sometimes distance discourages interaction.

Mosques in San Diego are "commuter mosques" where you make salaat and try to escape by making the obligatory greetings and split.  The mosques have a different feel from the ones in Orange County and Los Angeles.  Los Angeles has the infamous King Fadh mosque in Culver City, a gift bestowed by the Saudi monarchy on the Angeleno Muslim community.  So what if the imam was deported for terrorist ties after 9/11, and several mosques in the area have been linked to ties with terrorism and mentioned in the 9/11 Report.  San Diego’s mosques are also tainted too in this aspect.

Seeing armed police officers parked with their Crown Victoria at Abu Bakr now, is pretty common especially when CAIR sends me panicky e-mail updates about how Islamophobia is on the rise and I can be pulled over before flying.  Look, everytime I board a plane now, I usually have to go through additional screening, and in my head I’m cursing al-Qaeda for this situation.  So much for Muslim solidarity!

I hang out with fellow ethnic Persians and Afghans, they don’t veil, they don’t worry about fraternizing with the opposite sex, they don’t attempt to re-establish the Saudi regime in America, etc.

I guess traumatizing experiences with Islamism makes this community of "immigrant elites" wary of "Sunnah lifestyles" that are dysfunctional in a modern secular, multi-cultural republic and world power.

The last time I hung out with Muslims was over the weekend in Mission Beach, where over 2,000 people gathered to celebrate Noruz (Iranians, Afghans, Kurds, Baha’i, Parsis, etc.).  And not everyone in the crowd was Muslim, it was a nice inter-religious gathering of ethnic Middle Eastern and South/Central Asians tied together not by competing notions of salvation but common ethnic bonds.

Chill, Gustavo. I enjoy the khutba reviews; they are just that, one person’s perspective. If you don’t like the way Omar does them, then by all means, do your own. But I, and others reading the site, do like them.

The problem is, there is no mosque in La Jolla, I work on Fridays and my lunch breaks are between 11 and noon.  Communal prayers are held after my lunch break when I have to assist residents with feeding and then put them back to bed to prevent fatigue so they have energy in the afternoon.  I’ve been told that my job is haraam for males to perform, since I deal with an older population 85 and over, who are mostly females.  Women there have sexually harassed me, one has grabbed my genitalia and carassed my ass when assisting another resident with an activity of daily living. 

I can’t do my own khutba reviews, but I don’t attend the same masjid.  I told you, mosques in San Diego are "commuter mosques" since most Muslims attend the mosque on Sunday more sometimes than Friday.  But since the Sunni purists don’t want to accommodate for Muslims who can’t afford the "Sunnah lifestyle,"  only  expect 1/10 of the Muslim community in the United States to attend the masjid on a regular basis.  America mandates Muslims to assimilate and aculturate to the dominant norms here, even Jews made the transition and are now as American as apple pie.  The earliest synagogues in America adhered to gender apartheid and disallowed women from having public roles in terms of public worship.  Only a fraction of Jews still observe these traditions now, but I highly doubt Muslims will change.

Mosques in America attract only conservative Muslims largely, alienating the flexible and more liberal minded majority who would like to attend, but mosques make it impossible to do so.

I’m pursuing a career in the Muslim ghetto profession of medicine/nursing.  However, women have a sexual libido even when they approach death and transition from this world to another plane.  For Muslims, especially arrogant Sunnis who criminalize human sexuality as Tricia P does, I will have an issue with them.

My reading in Farsi is poor compared to Arabic, I don’t even know some of the Perso-Arabic letters which are unique to Farsi and Urdu.

I don’t have the convenience of walking from my academic department to a mosque in a college town.  I’m sorry if I come off strong, but not all of us are graduate students.  My income to debt ratio is high, and well since nursing has lots of overtime, I’m working sixteen hour shifts to eliminate debts which some accounts are approaching liquidation as we speak.

Yes, I use credit and I have accrued debt in the form of interest.  Even Islamic banking uses the principle of interest, calling it profit in a deceptive manner.

I don’t associate with many Muslims because they annoy me with their pre-conceived notions of Islam.  They have the free time to ponder over Sufi elitist writings like Ibn Arabi, who I don’t particularly care for.  Shall I say that some of his beliefs border on "heresy" and I don’t say this lightly since I identify with a minority sect in Islam which is often subject to abuse and slander, even by some of Omar’s fellow worshippers who according to Tricia hate Shia.  The choice of the verb hate is distressful to me.

Perhaps I should be kinder to Omar, unlike him, I can go to my immigrant ghetto community and experience Islamic solidarity even if I can’t stand other immigrant groups.  Not too many Italian American Muslims out there, most Italians are commemorating Holy Week as we speak.

What is the socio-economic background of the Islamic Center of Tucson anyways?

Is everyone enrolled at the University of Arizona?

Is there no one at your mosque which only has a high school diploma?  Works a blue-collared job like construction, south Arizona was growing like Las Vegas for sometime, but who would want to live in that hot blazing xenophobic inferno sandwiched between California and the "Land of Enchantment"?

You have no refugees from war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Sudan, or Bosnia-Herzegovina?

Mosques in California are diverse, you have a plurality of Muslims with formal educational credentials and the types of jobs they perform.

You seem to have replaced Salafi Islam with "ivory tower" eliticism which is just as annoying if not more.  I can seem to have a greater tolerance for Salafis, but for Muslims who perpetuate the "model minority myth" annoy me.

Look, rather than giving zakat to Palestinian refugees in Beirut, why not give zakat to inner city Black Muslim youth, by setting up scholarship funds so that native Black Muslim children are more represented on college campuses like their immigrant Black Muslim youth from the Horn of Africa or West Africa?

It is one thing if you have personal access to education due to Veteran Benefits that are denied to most Americans, even working Americans, join the military and you join one of the lesser known forms of socialism allowed in a nation traditionally hostile to big government bureaucracy.  So what if the VA may have compromised your personal identity with the theft of some lap tops in a DC suburb, I hope your zeal for Sufi elitism is equally passionate about social justice in this country.

I know many undergrads who are concerned with "access to education" (buzz word for affirmative action) and what not.  Grad students on the other hand, remember I only have an undergrad degree right now and pursuing vocational nursing training in the US, at UCLA were either down to earth or arrogant aspiring academics.  When I do pursue my grad degree in either medicine or nursing, I will use my position and access to power in this country to help others. 

I noticed Islamic studies students are not activists, unlike Islamic associations in Iran, where students risk expulsion for societal change or denial of their degrees, Islamic studies simply reinforces the status quo in Islam, focusing on the "dead Arab and Persian elitist canon" and not engaging in activist social policy research to help Muslims reach their potential.  Shit, I guess I will have to double in Islamic studies focusing on medicine/nursing, doing research on alternative medicinal procedures in traditional Muslim societies to see if they are effective or not.  "Asian" alternative medicine is big now in the medical field, with more and more health care providers specializing in "Asian" medicine, but no one seems interested in "Islamic" medicine.  It seems, when we discuss "Asian" medicine large chunks of Asia are excluded since these societies are Muslim majority now.

I guess that’s the Shia in me, to use Islam as a vehicle for revolutionary change.  It seems Shia are more pragmatic in their Islamism, they address issues facing their constituents today, focused less on theological purity as Sunnis who live in the past and desire to recreate pre-modern dynastic empires in the name of Islam.

I have seriously considered Islamic studies, but would an academic department be interested in my proposed thesis?  I believe that academia should be a source for praxis, not merely receiving critical acclaim among your colleagues in some professional journal or conference.

It was a non-theistic secular Argentine Jew raised in Israel who inspired me to pursue Islamic studies, he was one of my professors at UCLA, hated by many of his fellow Jewish colleagues and students, but hey, when you irritate your fellow religious colleagues, you must be doing something right.

Truth is not to be painless, it sometimes is cruel.

>>Your khutba reviews are annoying to be frank.

So what; don’t read them, then. but, you can’t resist because vouyerism about someone else’s Friday Prayer is like crack.

Actually, I’m paying for my degree out of my own pocket, a source of unending bitterness that no sufi would likely cure me of…I refused the VA benefits when I first enlisted because I needed the money to bring my wife over, actually, and plus, I had joined for revenge and had no plans for an edu-ma-cation at the time.

– A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.

OmarG, I can be a shit talker at times.

Just remember one thing, based on conversations from some former and current worshippers at your mosque, Tucson’s mosque needs to re-examine its sectarianism, you know it’s un-American to be anti-Shia when Bush bombed the fuck out of Baghdad and handed over power to the majority there.

Look, I say shit in the mosque all the time here in San Diego that raises eyebrows.

I don’t give a flying fuck, fuck them!

Your writing is like opium to me!

I’m hooked to you Muslim Tony Soprano!

I posted once on here, but apparently my legacy has endured thanks to GustavoMustafa who has mentioned my name at least 3 times on this thread. I have some replies:

"Mosques in America attract only conservative Muslims largely, alienating the flexible and more liberal minded majority who would like to attend, but mosques make it impossible to do so."

Where did you get this idea? So the conservatives pushed out the flexible people? Are you invertebrates or what? Who forced you to leave the mosque rather than stay and effect change, as the rest of us attempt to do? If the so-called flexible Muslims would swarm the mosque in crowds, there’s be no room for the conservatives to dominate. But  you forget, we have a lot of non-practicing Muslims out there. Those people tend not to come to the mosque and there is nothing we can do about it.

We also have another genre of Muslims, those who are so elitist and so quick to point out the weaknesses of the community that they are in self-imposed exile, writing hostile comments about their compatriots from the comfort of their swivelling computer armchairs. Where are you when there’s a community vote? Where are you at the interfaith marches? Where ARE you people? Can anyone in the community sympathize when this is your chosen lifestyle? I agree with many of your complaints about the culture of our mosques but again, where the heck are you?

‘Tis much easier to give up and languish in that comfortable hermitage of "self-righteousness" and "victimization" than to put up with some of the annoying aspects of our brothers and sisters in order to pull and drag things along to where we want them. I prefer to put up with annoyance, if in doing so I can make one small change after another that will gradually bring about a silent revolution. I know others who have the same approach. Lambaste it if you will. Say it’s too little, that we’re not being true "revolutionaries," as you accused Omar. But are people more likely to listen to someone who appears to be coming from inside, or  5 or so people who run a blog and post entries so they can all agree on how grand they are in comparison to all the other "sheep" at their respective mosques?

The whole tenor of this website ("Sheep are for Eid") smacks of holier-than-thou attitudes, the very attitudes you see in others and which drove the first wedge between you and other Muslims that Im sure caused you much pain. This website is honestly dangerous, as I see nothing but a piling up of complaints done in intellectual isolation among people who already think alike, each person fuelling the others to further heights of isolation and negativity which is bound to result in extremism one day.  You, GustavoMustafa, continue to narrow down your list of acceptable Muslims until you will one day find yourself in an even more exclusive community than the "ghetto, immigrant" one you currently frequent. And is that really what Allah wanted for you when He guided you and I to Islam? Sadness? Frustration? Isolation?

If you want to join an exclusive group of Muslims, find the progressive Muslim equivalent of Al Qaeda, because movements like those begin, innocently enough, with spaces like these, where a bunch of people complain in isolation, finding fault in the majority of Muslims, the true approach residing in the minority. Im not saying their aims are identical to yours—in fact theyre the opposite—but that kind of isolation is a very real threat to Muslims.

Salaams Tricia,

Not sure if you read my review (I think its the more important part of this thread, eh…) but I wrote this:

>>I noticed at this time that someone had tried to close the women’s partition in the back because I could hear it clear as day. I could not tell if one of the women did it, or as in some other weeks, a man

Which one was it? I don’t turn my head for fear that people will think I am trying to cop a virtual feel out of my muslim sisters, so I didn’t see who tries to close it.

– A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.

Sister Tricia, I was raped for being gay.  So the issue of sexuality is a deeply personal one for me.  In my family, women have been violated by male relatives who happened to be Muslim.  So my adamant or "extremist" stance on gender apartheid in Muslim circles is influenced by life experiences which might be considered atypical or not the norm.

You espouse a subtle form of homophobia.  You admitted that your congregation has people who "hate Shia."  How does that sit with someone who is Shia?  How does it feel when you are told, "Shia are outside the fold of Islam.  They deviate from the path of the Prophet and therefore they lie in the realm of Unbelief."

The differences with Shia and Sunni are more cosmetic than skin deep.  We have slight differences in how we observe Ramadan like assigning certain nights for commemorating the earlier Revelations of the Torah, Psalms, and Gospels.  We also commemorate some pivotal moments in the life of Hamzat Ali ibn Talib which include his birth and martyrdom.  We also add an extra line to the adhan when you come to communal prayer.  But nothing that would set us apart from Truth because these rituals are merely rituals, they do not interfere with the core observance of Islam.

Plus, Shi’ism is more alligned with an "ethnic form" of Islam, Shi’ism denotes ethnicity for many Shia, which is not harmful per se as long as people keep in mind that there are multiple approaches to Truth.  This is also a Shia teaching that promotes plurality while emphasizing unity.

If someone is going to attack the sect of Islam I adhere to simply because it is not affiliated with the Saudi kingdom and it happens to be the minority sect, how should I respond?  One commentator here said your mosque displayed the Saudi flag, it is one thing to display a shahada flag, quite another to display the flag of a foreign entity.  No mosque in San Diego has ever to my knowledge displayed a foreign flag, because these mosques are adamant about "no politics" rule.  But considering your mosque is a college town mosque, many colleges have been endowed with financial patronage from the "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" including Harvard University.  Not many university Islamic studies centers have ties to the Teheran regime.

Is it wrong for a Muslim male to think that partitions and screens are unnecessary.  Were there screens during the time of the Revelation?  Most people would agree that such arrangements in the mosque were not observed.  Screens and veils were solidified in Islamic culture when Islam came in contact with Persian practices of purdah, which were observed by upper class urban elite women.  Similar forms of veiling were also observed in Greek Byzantine culture. 

You’re the one who thinks homosexuality is a lifestyle in your phrasing "chosen lifestyle", but is it something I can willingly turn off at will?  I wish I could just tune out my feelings for the same sex, it would make life easier.  But if I was to pursue a relationship with a woman, I would not be fully happy with the arrangement.  How could I justify such a compromise for the sake of conforming to heterosexist norms which are deemed applicable to all people.

Have you been gay bashed?  Have you experienced hostility because someone thought you exhibited effeminate traits that were deemed unmanly and inappropriate for your biologically assigned sex and genitalia? 

Have you been threatened with common household tools.  Has someone ever forced you in a compromising position, willing to rape you in a "people of Lut" fashion?  I have.

I do attend the mosque when I can.  But I work, and sadly, most working environments I’m in do not permit lunch breaks between 1-2, when the majority of khutbas are scheduled.

You asked "How can someone sympathize with your chosen lifestyle?"

Being gay does not mean I drink alcohol.  I don’t.  Being gay does not mean I act in a flamboyant manner where gender norms are thrown out the window.  I don’t.  Being gay does not mean I have multiple sexual partners that change in frequency like night and day.  I don’t.  Being gay does not mean I pursue all forms of hedonism.  I don’t.

I simply engage in intimate relations with people who happen to be of the same gender as me.  My boyfriend is a Sunni Muslim if you had to label his brand of observance.  He’s a revert, not many Shia are big on proselytizing the faith for newcomers.  I noticed in the UK there are many Shia reverts, but not so in America.

I don’t demand special treatment.  I simply demand that people respect me for who I am not disrespect me for the self-imposed labels I use.

Judge me as a person not as a "Shiite" or "fag."  I’m not a label, I’m a person who is complex and may not always conform to some pre-conceived notion of the label.

I’m not isolated from Muslims.  I have Muslim friends, but many of them are not practicing either.  We come and go in the Muslim scene, but then again, I also engage in interfaith gatherings.

I attend Hindu pujas to Krishna, Nikhil, Rama, Sita, Ganesha, etc.  I’m half Mexican, and the feminine side of the Divine espoused in Catholicism’s Marian cult seems cool.  Of course, as a Mexican, I have a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe in my room.  I don’t engage in oraciones (prayers in Spanish) over the  icon.  I also have a picture of the archangel Malak Taus, which in the Yazidi  Kurdish faith (neither Muslim or Christian) is presented as a peacock, and a Zoroastrian Mahamazda disc.

Also, most people here are not isolated from the Muslim community.  However, I do take issue with people who think there is one inflexible defintion of Islam, which does not take into account that people do not perceive a message in the same manner.  There will be some differences of opinion, but that doesn’t mean someone is outside the fold of belief. 

Gustavo,

In my latest post I was not returning to the subject of homosexuality. However in the post I made a long time ago, I simply reiterated the stance of Islam which is clear and which 99.9% of scholars and laymen alike agree on. If someone has feelings towards the oposite sex that are very hard to control, I do not feel he should be punished and condoned for that alone. In Islam, we only sin if we act on something, but if we hold back from doing the thing that Allah dislikes, we actually get a reward. Thats my stance on that issue.

My comment on "chosen lifestyles" was referring to the exiled lifestyle of the progressive Muslims who dont really engage with the mosque but criticize from afar.

Gustavo, you are preaching to the choir as far as the partition is concerned. The only reason the partition Omar mentions is open on Fridays is because I worked to get it that way (with the support of other sisters of course). And each time a brother comes up and closes it, I open it, or another sister usually, if Im not there, and the brother leaves it. It’s usually one or two guys out of the hundreds there.

You are also preaching to the choir as far as the Shia are concerned. Again, I’ve said a few words to the board behind the scenes concerning a particular guy who, whenever he gives khutba, feels the need to mention that Shiia are not Muslim. Unfortunately, he’s also a former president, from what I hear. What I told you long ago about the Shia was that yes, our mosque, and the lectures in it, are based on the understanding of the Sunnis, however Shia can come. I mean really how plausible is it to have a Shii give khutba and say that Abu Bakr and Umar was usurpers when 99% of the mosque views them with respect?

That’s like allowing a Protestant to give an anti-Pope sermon in a Catholic church. These are reasons we have worship in separate places, certain ideas simply can’t be accomodated, or the minority must accomodate itself to the majority, in this instance it is Sunni Islam. However I’d like to be very clear that I understand what the Shiia go through, a few are friends of mine, however the mosque and its khutbas are based on Sunni Islam and that is nothing to apologize for.

Omar: Dont think I was there that week, but I hope the women who were there got up and opened it up again. We will continue opening it back up until they realize we want it that way and closing it up is futile. There shoudl even be a sign posted in the men’s area right next to the partition, asking them to leave it open. Unless it’s gone for some reason, otherwise they are ignoring the sign.

The mosque that I pray at usually is called Abu Bakr though it is officially called the Islamic Center of San Diego.

I have accommodated to the majority.  But American Islam should be less concerned with labels, and more concerned with unity, since ultimately, to the majority we have to "prove" ourselves.

Shia Americans are less prone to curse Abu Bakr, Umar, and Aisha.

I am trying to obtain opinions from muslims about –

http://www.TheTenQuestionsOfLife.com

Riaz

How cool. I like your activity. I always wanted to learn more about foreign people and their culture. I found here a little path that made me realize some of yours. If i can`t do this threw traveling at least threw the internet. Keep up the good work by telling people about others.
____________
Credit Card Debt

Gustavo perhaps you can give me some assistance. I have a friend and she thinks her husband is gay. I have told her that she should ask him, but she is shy about being that direct. The main issue is, he won’t have sex with her. Since their marriage he has had sex with her once a month and then its very short and perfunctory. This poor sister is in over her head, I can’t advise her I have no knowledge of such things. But your statement, should I marry…” my answer would be please don’t marry a female to prove a point to people, and to make anyone happy, because that would destroy a life, as my friend has demonstrated. She has no where to turn, and no one to talk to. Now she wants a divorce, but guess what? She loves him.
And, he loves her, but he can’t respond to her because he is a closet gay. What are some of the things she should ask him? Should she stay married and take a lover?