We're Part of Something Big

I had started out with YADA (Yet Another Downer Article) this evening. However, disengaging successfully from battle has often produced a fleeting sense of elation for me: of survival, of victory, of feeling more alive than before. So, let's catch something positive from that elation, fleeting as it is. So, I was reading a posting of Tariq Nelson when he mentioned something I've believed internally for a very long time: interethnic marriages among Muslims in America will produce a melding of culture which will foster a native American Muslim identity. I first came to believe this when I noticed in San Diego that all of our family freinds (the ones we got along with, anyway) were mixed marriages: Iranian-Americans with Pakistani-Americans with Italian-Americans with Malays with Arab-Americans with Immigrants with Turks and so on. It was easy to be among them, because as a recovering Salafi, they were often more American and cosmopolitan than I.

We're part of something big here! We're witnessing the emergence of a native American-Muslim/Muslim American identity. This is the same process which so many others have experienced in centuries past. Its as if history is repeating itself. The old identities and loyalties merge literally into one family and I see this as one way we can lovingly understand each other and get the engine of cultural exchange and development working hot.

We're part of something good here! Its easy not to fall into the trap of fearing another ethnicity when you're sleeping with one of its members, eh? Instead of being myopic and blandly adhering to one cultural way, we're seeing a grand narrative of negotiation among wives, husbands, children, grandparent, and in-laws. What foods should we eat? Why does your father do it that way? How important is zabiha meat to you, dear? Do you really have to wear *that*? All these things are happening within families instead of erupting as fist fights in mosques. We're slowly seeing that there are multiple methods and understandings; we're finding it impossible to dismiss them outright when doing so means not getting any tonight.

We're part of something big and good here as Muslims in America, and for once I'm proud to be a part of it.