Dear Brother Mazin,
Assalamu
alaykum. Thank you for your e-mails of
January 13 and 31. I am in the process
of moving into a new office and also preparing for a trip to Europe, but I
promise to visit your website, www.mrc.8k.com,
and give any comments, in sha'a Allah.
That evening in
Madina was enjoyable. I was surprised to
hear that a department on Western scholarship on Islam existed, even though you
indicated that it now is no longer really functional. This is a tragedy, because the Muslims and
non-Muslims must understand each other and the obstacles to dialogue before
they can cooperate to address the threats to religion worldwide and to their
respective faiths, and thereby to advance the cause of justice, which is
central to Islam.
My Center for
Policy Research is supporting a conference, entitled "East-West Symposium:
America, Islam, and the West in the New Millennium,"
together with the two lead organizations, the United
Association for Studies and Research and John Esposito's Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding.
The date, as I recall, is April 26-28th. We would like to sponsor you to participate
in this conference. As soon as we have a
printed program and details, I will mail you the invitation, together with some
other materials.
What is your postal address?
One of the items I
will mail to you is the first issue of a new magazine, The American Muslim,
which is the confessed "mouthpiece" of the Ikhwan movement in
America. I have helped with editing and
written a piece for it on "The Future of Islam in America." Unfortunately, the Ikhwan, which encompasses
all seven of the national Islamic organizations in America, used as a name for
their new magazine the name used from 1992 to
1995 for another magazine that was designed to be a forum for
the non-Ikhwan in America.
This American
Muslim was the brainchild of Sr. Sheila Musaji, and at the end had sixteen
associate editors, each responsible for a different area of interest. I was associate editor for political
affairs. They included all the leading
Muslim scholars born in America. The
objective was to bring together for dialogue all the different trends within
the American umma. We held two North
American Islamic Pow-Wows for this purpose (a "powwow" is the name
given by the Native Americans to a gathering of the tribes).
Unfortunately, its
very success, and the fact that it was so heavily oriented toward American-born
Muslims, caused the Ikhwan to boycott it, so it received no financial support
(American Muslims are almost universally poor), and folded four years ago. My aim was to help Sister Sheila revive it,
which I may do under another name, Tamkin, which means to "empower"
truth and justice. I
deliberately work with both the Ikhwan and the non-Ikhwan (including various
Sufi orders), but this is a difficult task.
We will have a single umma in America only when the
second-generation Muslims take the national leadership positions and leave
behind the cultural and political baggage that has burdened the Islamic
movement in America.
My life-time goal
is to help launch an American Islamist movement, which would build on the
insights of Hassan al Banna, but apply them creatively in America. In my view, very few of the Ikhwan really
understand the spiritual, psychological, and political framework of their
alleged mentor. We have a good article
on the educational system of Hassan al Banna in the next issue of our Middle
East Affairs Journal, which may broaden the horizons of those who may have a
superficial understanding of his leadership.
This article was too long to put in the new American Muslim, whereas we
specialize on scholarly articles of several thousand words.
Perhaps this
summer, in sha'a Allah, the CPR will put out the first issue of The
Traditionalist Review, which will spell out the aims of the new Islamist
movement in America.
Assalamu
alaykum wa rahmat Allahi wa barakatuhu,
Faruq 'Abd al Haqq (Bob Crane)
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