Converts, wtf — leaders, opinion-makers, spokesmen

Where do (Sunni) white convert leaders and opinion-makers come from?

Once upon a time (way back in the early ’80′s), there were few converts where I lived at the time. I would actually get excited when I encountered one. Wow, someone like me!

In those days, there were a few converts who were in the process of becoming household names among conservative, mostly immigrant North American Muslims—but this was usually because they gave inspirational speeches at conferences or MSA events. They spoke on topics such as why they converted to Islam,  or on why Islam is “misunderstood.” They were trophy Muslims, because they were white and (usually) male and reasonably articulate. But few if any immigrant Muslims looked to them for leadership or religious guidance.

There were a few white male converts who spoke at less “mainstream” Muslim events, because they were political activists (or more often, politically opinionated and holding eccentric political views). They weren’t really “leaders” either in any sense. Their political views were welcomed to the extent that they agreed with those of the immigrant Muslims organizing these events.

Converts, wtf — Impossible predicaments

It’s hard to begin to get a handle on white converts. Even if I limit myself to North America—though I’m not sure that doing that would be entirely accurate. Even back in the stone age (aka pre-internet days), when communications were so painfully expensive/slow, our experiences as white converts were affected by whatever contacts we had with the experiences or ideas of white converts elsewhere (particularly in western Europe). It seems that ours is a transnational experience.

There really is no “white convert community” in the sense of a fixed entity. It’s more like a flowing river… or less poetically, a revolving door, with people entering and exiting all the time (and some still whirling around and around). The convert population is forever in flux. There don’t seem to be many statistics available, presumably in part because it must be hard to study such a small population that is geographically dispersed. One study in Illinois by a Muslim researcher in the late ’90′s found that about 75% of American converts (race not mentioned) leave Islam, but how applicable these numbers might to elsewhere in North America or to the situation now even in Illinois is unclear. But speaking from experience, the converts I knew were often highly mobile in more ways than one: Some left Islam. Some left conservative Islam for much more liberal interpretations (which for us at that time meant pretty much that they had left Islam… and we lost contact with them). Some moved across the continent… or to the other side of the world. Some moved repeatedly.

Converts, wtf?? — Introduction

The recent news items involving converts and extremism continue to really bother me. I mean, wtf??? What on earth is going on here?

Part of the problem is (for lack of a better word) the horror. Who on earth would have thought that it could be in any way appropriate to hack anyone to death? Some things are just beyond belief.  Young men barely out of high school going somewhere half-way across the world to blow sh*t up and kill people they don’t know much if anything about, inspired by apparently little more than… propaganda videos with men in fatigues with Arabic slogans on their headbands and carrying guns while nasheeds play in the background??

There’s that type of horror, and then there is the quieter, yet somehow even more chilling horror. The stories of converts who get sucked into the role of enabler for extremists. Whether knowingly or unknowingly… or somewhere in-between. Extremists not only in the narrow sense that tends to dominate media coverage—those who use violence—but extremists in terms of social and/or political attitudes.

Part of the problem (again for lack of a better word) is the shame factor. In the public eye, these are my people.

Entitlement… and identity blues, and persecution complexes

In the last post, I talked about how “The Thaw” reminds me so much of similar North American Muslim discourses that I encountered when I converted. In particular, “The Thaw” reminds me of a particular Muslim rap song by Native Deen that I encountered well after I converted, but when my kids were young and thirsting for all the worldly things that we were trying to censor or prevent their access to.

For us, worried about keeping our kids Muslim (meaning, very conservative and inward-looking Muslim), the cassette tapes of “Muslim rap” and nasheed boy-bands and folk-y stuff that were slowly becoming available in the place we were living in the late ’90′s and early 2000′s seemed like a godsend. At least, Muslim songs with English words for a change that went beyond kindergartener-sounding stuff like “A is for Allah.” Music that sounded cool enough that it could engage our increasingly restless preteens and teenagers. We were perennially short of money, true, but we bought those tapes whenever we could get them, and played them for the kids (and to be honest, also for our own musically-starved selves…) at home and in the car.

Some of the lyrics of these songs disturbed me to varying degrees, but I tried to shove my reservations to the back of my mind. Here we were, after having endured years of music drought, making do with a few Arabic and Urdu nasheeds that we either didn’t completely understand or understood too well (and didn’t like their message…). We now had something half-way decent in English, that the kids would actually listen to. Far be it from me to start raising picky questions about lyrics. I’d better just be grateful, and hope that they’d keep on writing and performing, and that the writing would get better.

We didn’t have that many tapes, so as we played them, the same songs would come up over and over. I soon unwillingly learned the words to Native Deen’s “M.U.S.L.I.M,” and tried to suppress a twinge of… I wasn’t quite sure what… whenever it came on:

Creating an “entitled” generation… is all too easy

Back to our discussion of converts and downward spirals….

Recently, an evangelical Christian youth group’s video, “The Thaw,” has been making the rounds. (For the video, a transcript, and Libby Anne’s take on it, go here.) Watching it brought back so many memories.

It was fascinating to see a process in action, laid out so clearly… that I had lived through, and that we had tried to put our kids through. A key part of the downward spiral that converts can so easily get caught up in… and that can end up mentally and emotionally trapping them in what amounts to an alternate universe.

Some of “The Thaw”‘s detractors have compared the military rhetoric it uses to a jihadi video. [Which is rather absurd, btw---do the folks who made that point seriously think that hymns like "Onward, Christian Soldiers" owe their existence to jihadi or Muslim influence? Just lol. Christians have never had too much trouble being violent all on their own.] But that’s not primarily what I’m talking about here. While we were steeped in this sort of militant rhetoric as well, what I found most striking about this video is the sense of entitlement that these young people have.

Righteous entitlement. For me, the most chilling part of the video was when the girl with the turquoise and white striped shirt and braces claimed that non-Christians “have stolen our country.” What an incendiary claim.

Like a cluster bomb

I often read blogs belonging to others who are at various points on the recovery-from-a-highly-conservative-religious-movement process. Partly, because sometimes I run across things or stories that helps me think more clearly about the issues that I am trying to sort out. Partly, because some of these bloggers are damn good writers. And partly… to feel less alone.

Recovery for me is rather like dealing with the aftermath of a cluster bomb. It’s not just the initial dropping of the bomb that you’re dealing with….
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demonstration_cluster_bomb.jpg)

Much of what I read, I can identify with up to a point. But it’s rare—very rare—for me to read anything online and to feel that it describes my situation so well that it is almost as if I am seeing my reflection in a mirror. All the same, that is what reading Lynn Beisner’s post, “Why I Don’t Tell People I was in a Cult” was like for me.  (I found it via Libby Anne’s take on it.)

Lynn writes:

“How can you tell someone the truth about your past when there’s a good chance they won’t believe you?

I am part of a minority group that I call “People with a Big Story” for lack of a better term. People with Big Stories have two things in common. First, something has happened in their lives that is so outside the range of the ordinary that it seems unbelievable to most people. The second thing is that this unbelievable event impacts their lives so greatly that they cannot keep it private.

For People with a Big Story, the most private and painful part of our lives, the stories we would want to share only with those we trust the most, cannot be hidden from people who know us. [....] What makes my sojourn in the cult different from other traumatic life events is that it created such a gaping hole in my personal history that I do not have a choice to keep it private. What makes it necessary for me to tell the Big Story is not the trauma of drills or the physical abuse that I survived. It is all that I missed…..

You cannot know me very well without having to know this. You would be surprised at how hard it is to go more than a few good conversations with a person that I like without hitting on a subject where an honest response would require knowledge of The Big Story….

“As my shaykh taught me…”

On the last post, Bebe g commented:

“…We were even taught by our pakistani sheik that all white people where naturally evil and would never convert to Islam because they naturally have dark hearts. But he was quick to marry a white woman 1st chance he had. Good thing I never believed him.. To many people who are donned leaders of the community and are followed by the ignorant non reading locals….”

Hoo boy, did that part of her comment trigger memories! Things that people’s shaykhs taught them. Or, things that people claimed that their shaykhs had taught them, anyhow. Things that people we looked up to as “scholars” and “shaykhs” taught us, and that we felt that we had to believe. Things that people claimed to know because they were following the Sufi path….

My earliest memory of that sort of thing falls into the latter category. We were visiting the family of a friend of my ex. This friend (and his family) were from the same ethnic background, but that was about where the similarities ended, because the friend (unlike my ex) was a devoted Sufi who followed a shaykh from back home. (My ex told me later that this shaykh was a charlatan who was well known for his shady financial dealings and lavish person lifestyle… but anyway.) While we were at my ex’s friend’s house, we met another of that shaykh’s murids. When the murid realized that I am a convert, he immediately wanted to know what my ethnic background was.

I replied that my mother’s side of the family is originally from X, and my father’s side from Y.

The murid loudly objected, telling me: “No, you are only what your father is, not what your mother is! Your essence can only come from your father.”