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When compassion tastes like poison

Posted August 6th, 2006 by Muslim Hedonist
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Where I live, there are (at least) two Islams, and two Muslim communities.


One of these Islams is what I call "al-hamdulillah Islam." This is the Islam of ISNA, CAIR, NASIMCO, the Tablighi Jamaat, the local Rif'ai dervishes. Different as these groups are, they all have one feature in common—-they generally experience Islam as a Good Thing. They tend to be Proud to be Muslims.


The second of these Islams is what I call the Islam of the walking wounded. Some of these walking wounded are refugees who've fled Islamist governments, or Islamist violence in their homelands. Some are torture survivors. Some have had appalling abuse visited upon them right here in North America in the name of Islam.


There doesn't tend to be an awful lot of social or institutional interaction between these two kinds of Islams where I live. The Muslim walking wounded tend to keep away from al-hamdu lillah Muslims. They have good reason to be highly allergic to anything smelling of political Islam, which lets out attendance at events such as the ISNA conference, for instance.


Al-hamdu lillah Muslims, for their part, are often very uncomfortable around the Muslim walking wounded. For one thing, some of these walking wounded don't suffer in silence. There are those of them who, given half a chance, will rant on for hours about Islam and Shariah and stonings and mullas…. Some are almost morbidly suspicious of even the slightest hint of Islamic revivalism, and hurl epithets like "fundamentalist" at the drop of a hat.


Some of the al-hamdu lillah Muslims have no time for the Muslim walking wounded. They dismiss them as "anti-Islam", "self-hating", "followers of Daniel Pipes", or "misled."  But nonetheless, some al-hamdu lillah Muslims do try to respond with compassion to the Muslim walking wounded that they meet. They listen. They acknowledge the hurt of the speaker. Sometimes they cry.  


But then, just as the walking wounded begins to feel that they get it, then the al-hamdu lillah Muslim starts to talk about how an "ideal" Islamic state "should" be. Or about the ideas of Tariq Ramadan or Abd al-Karim Soroush. Or how the "true" Shar'i punishment for adultery is "only" lashing (rather than stoning to death). Or how women should be convinced rather than forced to wear hijab.


It's at moments like these that compassion can taste more like poison.


Does such "compassion" really attempt to understand the pain of the other? To come to grips with all that it implies? Or is it really an attempt to avoid the critique that reality offers the utopian ideas which are so common in much of the North American discourse on Islam? 


Can anything, no matter how horrific, cause al-hamdu lillah Muslims to seriously  reexamine these  ideas?

Comments

I think there is a middle

On August 6th, 2006 Laury Silvers says:

I think there is a middle group. It is formed by the truly compassionate of the al-hamdu lilah muslims and the walking wounded who have healed some. There are whole communities of these people. My friend Debra Mubashshir Majeed tells me that the Imam Muhammad folks are willing to look, not lie, and act.


The problem seems to me to be that people get defensive about “Islam.” I want to say don’t be defensive about “Islam.” Be defensive about yourself, you are the one at fault here. Islam is not in rules or in doctine it is in individual Muslims relationships with others. It is in the willingness to chose one ruling over another when we have better options.


Well said, MH.


You inspire me. I’ve been wanting to say something for a while, but wasn’t sure if I should post it. Maybe I will now. I think it through during the day.

MH, if it helps, I used to

On August 6th, 2006 Omar Gatto says:

MH, if it helps, I used to be one of those al-hamdu types. Occaisonally I would meet Muslims who were the ralking wounded type; sometimes I’d dismiss them as having weak iman. I remember another convert who was in a PhD in divinity studies; he used to work in halfway houses and the doses of reality I got from him actually invoked some real compassion in me. I credit the growing compassion I had for people (and still do, to some extent when I let myself) with helping me to snap out of it. So, the al-hamdu crowd can be influenced away from that kind of simplistic thinking through continued interaction with the wounded and solid liberal arts education along with hard core travel to Muslim and then non-Muslim countries. At least that’s what worked for me / on me.


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

I find it interesting that

On August 6th, 2006 GustavoMustafa says:

I find it interesting that you mention that North American Muslims and the community in general is concerned with utopian ideas, I for one do not want nor desire a supranational Islamic state encompassing the Muslim world with a divine right kingship.


I for one only have to look at Iran to see what a nightmare this wishful thinking can become.


My iman is growing, but I find it disdainful when others dismiss the walking wounded as having weak iman. Who is qualified to say such an audacious thing?


My travels to the Middle East reconfirmed for me that the Middle East is no Edenic Paradise of sharia with veiled women and bearded men.

It reminds me of Holocaust

On August 7th, 2006 Irving Karchmar (not verified) says:

It reminds me of Holocaust survivors coming to America and meeting American Jews who had no idea of what they went through, or how in such horror faith loses meaning. Only survival matters, and how it changes you.


There are no easy answers, only sad questions, “What would I do in such a situation? Would I die with the rest, or try and survive by any means possible? Is life more important that faith, when we all die in the end anyway? Does it matter to God?


Each person must answer these questions for him/herself. Each person is responsible for their own soul.

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