Thus sayeth a person to my wife today about an American convert she knows who talks about Islam. When she told me this, I immediately knew it applied to me as well since that man and I have in common our whiteness and maleness. You see, people expect a brown immigrant who speaks with an accent when they hear someone representing Islam. Even better if they are exotic with a turban or Azharite red Fez. When they don't get it, thier pre-programmed wiring tells them that the representative must not be authentic. This is despite the equally feasible conclusion that thier expectation itself was flawed, but Hummer-driving Americans who never deserved to have US Marines die for them never look within themselves for the error.

Today, while my mouth was dry and my stomach rumbling, I opened an email from MPAC (it does not seem to be up on thier site, yet). It was an editorial from one of the few national Muslim organizations that I trust, so I read it from start to finish. Salam al-Marayati wrote about the need of American Muslims to pressure the US Government to benefit more from American Muslim inputs when making policy. As I was reading, I thought that this was actually a good idea. It would finally put American Muslims in publicly prominent positions that help America. This would be a stunning public refutal of Islamophobic charges that Muslims are just freeloaders and freeriders in America. I have no doubt that Mr al-Marayati does not intend to achieve the typical Islamist goal of penetrating our government to assist fellow Islamists overseas like some immigrant Muslim organizations wistfully desire. Instead, I think he genuinely desires this as a public relations coup, one that our community badly needs.

I am a cultural imperialist. Yes, I am. No, I won't get tangled in webs of deconstructionist doubt. Change needs to happen, but how? Such things as fearing women's voices, disregarding women's desires and so on are all deeply ingrained in the culture. So is a seeming disregard for cause and effect: refuse to work against extremism = being blamed for standing by. Yet how can we convince others to change?

We agree that such cultural attitudes are disfunctional at best and morally wrong and sinful at worst. But, lately I've been approaching the problem as one of cultural engineering and social change: what strategies and tactics can we devise and perform to effect cultural change? Female led prayer is one such tactic, but what is the overall strategy and what other tools do we have at our disposal? This web site and others which write sanely about our insanities is a good start, but writing and speaking (categories of communiticaing) only go so far. The Prophet preached but he also performed. Last week I learned about a concept in anthropology called performativity, which means that Muslim identity is what we do and what we agree to say it is. It took a while to wrap my head around that one because it sounds far too much like the Quranic quoting of how God creates, "Be! and it Is" (kun fa-yakun). But, apparently this is how human minds construct culture.

This post is satire. This post is satire. This post is satire.

(Please read with the voice of Jeremy Irons in Die Hard 2)
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"This is a communique from the Western Turncoats Front for Converts (aka , WTF-Converts). Many Muslim immigrants worship insurgents and make excuses for terrorists who target our nation. It is high time we turn the tables, is it not? For too long, Western converts to the great Islamic religion have been shunned for not adapting themselves as clients of the Master Race of Islam, or whatever ethnicity of the person who showed them how to be Muslim. Because of this, and the ignoring of our communal and familial interest, indeed the denial of our familes as kafirs and our communities as  the immigrants' enemy, we are the oppressed minority of the American Ummah."

My father is one of those swarthy-looking Sicilians and my wife is Arab. So the Hell what, you must be wondering. Well, here in the South West profiling has been alive and well for quite a while, and I'm god damn sick of it! The straw that broke the camel's back came a few days ago when we drove to Tomsbtone, AZ. You know, Tombstone, the OK Corral, Doc Holiday, Wyatt Erp. If you don't know it, well I just suppose you had to go to school here to know. Anyhow, we had a great time given my penchant for historical sites and archeological treasure troves. Now, if one can ignore the rampant kitch that fondles the tourists, then its good to go.

from Vach El, Springfield’s own American Dervish, utopian dreamer, and anti-work poet, patron saint of the Uplift Church of Beauty (our local Moorish Orthodox Church).

The Gospel of Beauty
by Vachel Lindsay

Being the new "Creed of a Beggar" by that vain and foolish mendicant, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay. Printed for his personal friends in his home village—Springfield, Illinois. It is his intention to carry this gospel across the country beginning June, 1912, returning in due time.

I. (Prologue.) I come to you penniless and afoot to bring a message. I am starting a new religious idea. The idea does not say "No" to any creed that you have heard. After this, let the denomination to which you now belong be called in your heart The Church of Beauty or The Church of the Open Sky. The Church of Beauty has two sides: The Love of Beauty and The Love of God.

Muslim Hedonist mentioned some of the reasons why Tradition is a bad word among some Progressives:

...because they see it as either largely irrelevant to modern North American life, or as an entry-point for mullas to exercise the power of veto over anything too forward-looking.

Laury mentioned how she felt conservative compared to some other Progressives. This got me thinking about my place in life opposite of tradition. I know a professor in my department who starts almost every intellectual conversation by abruptly saying, "But, what do you mean by XYZ?" Its supposed to elicit a detailed uet succinct definition of terms.

Europe and the United States are suffering from problems of demographics and economics, respectively. Everyone from European hospitals to Pat Robertson have become concerned about the declining birth rate of Europe. By not procreating Europe is aging. She is on the verge of demographic collapse. A low birth rate means that European countries have to tolerate immigration from various Muslim countries as there are not enough Europeans to do all the chores. Having to accept immigration by people of color on a lower socioeconomic rung who do not share the European ideals is not something Europe wants. Rightist columns have taken hold in France, Italy, Austria and even liberal Netherlands.