Thu Mar 03, 2005 (Islam) Comments

[An e-mail to my father in response to Thomas Friedman's essay, Brave, Young and Muslim.]

Interesting. But isn't it notable that the author Friedman cites, Ms. Manji, emigrated to Canada before writing her book about Islam's pluralistic traditions? Writing from afar, in The West, she criticizes the keepers of her cultural heritage for straying from ijtihad, independent thinking. Now, who's values is Ms. Manji representing? What does this remote admonishment have to do with Arab self-governance? Doesn't it say more about Ms. Manji's enlightenment as a woman of the Western World than it does about the enlightenment of a young Arab generation?

When an Arab author, not a exile, writes an Islamic novel equivalent to Huckleberry Finn- and it sells and is discussed and fought over- then the world will stand up and take notice that something's a' brewing in Islamic culture. When an Islamic author depicts the hero of a novel as saying to his elders that he is willing to go to Hell because he feels what they have taught him is morally wrong, then we in The West can be hopeful rather than apprehensive of Islamic culture. Until then we are limited to praising the wisdom of Islamic exiles, which is more an exercise of our vanity than hope.

This is exactly the perspective that frustrated me in college when I was forced to sit through Black and Caribbean literature in order to earn my teaching certificate. I could never get past the feeling that the professor and his empathetic students were admiring themselves for being so cultured. Look at how smart and generous we students of the First World are for taking time to understand the struggles of the Third World. There was an element of vanity in it that I had trouble swallowing. There was something absurd about the professor driving his Mercedes to class, boasting about his achievements as president of a national African American fraternity, then asking a class populated by middle class college students to empathize as strongly as he with the illiterate oppressed black peoples depicted in his favorite literature.