Dowry!

Here are some pictures from my dowry (May 7, 2011). A general overview of the day included some of the following. My women representatives go forward to meet and negotiate with the women of Dama’s family; these negotiations are primarily through song and dance.

Once the women welcome everyone to their home, there are introductions and then, as all African’s must do, they feed the guest. After a while, Dama’s negotiator asks why we are there. Numerous proverbs are spoken back and forth between the negotiators until they ask me directly, why I am there. There are only two times I am allowed to speak, when they ask me why I am there and to identify Damaris.

After I say I am there for Damaris Wambui they bring out groups of women/girls for me to choose from. The whole day is filled with drama and humor. The first group of women include little children and then they bring out old women, and ask me if I can recognize Dama. The final group is not as humorous as the girls are disguised from head to toe. There are consequences if I choose the wrong girl; as Dama’s negotiator said in a stern voice “You will be heavily fined if you choose the wrong one!” Thankfully I choose the right one!

Later, the dowry negotiation took place and Dama’s family accepted the amount and gave the go ahead for the wedding. Here are some of the photos from the day. I hope you enjoy.

Dowry! pt.2

Here's a letter my professor Dr. Steve Rasmussen sent to his friends. I thought his perspective was interesting. I hope you enjoy.

A week ago, I participated in my first bride price negotiations/traditional wedding between two of my missions students: Aaron and Damaris. This takes place at the bride’s home. This covenant focuses on the two families, not the couple. Dama never spoke and Aaron only for the following humorous moment: The elders asked Aaron if he was sure he was at the right place and he really knew who Dama was. They brought out a few kids and then grandmas for him to choose. Finally they brought out the women below. He managed to select Dama.

After dinner the real task began in deep Kikuyu language: The older men and women representatives from each family negotiated and paid the cash amounts to “plant the branch,” to “open the door,” to set a wedding date and to buy drinks for everyone present. We accomplished in one day what used to require a series of visits. The actual bride price can now be negotiated and slowly paid to her mother who sympathizes with their finances.

Thank God for answering prayers for welcome into the family at a price that students becoming missionaries could afford. Pray for their finishing their MA missions: IsIamic studies degrees and their future. After their wedding and graduation, Aaron and Damaris plan to apply their learning together as missionaries to a MusIim context.

I learned with everyone as one representative of the groom’s family. (They live near Olympia, Washington, USA and will only come for the church/Western wedding in July.) Currently Damaris and several of Aaron’s team including the older man and woman representing his parents are studying Anthropology with me. My Indian Anthro student videotaped to show people at home the amazing spectacle of his friend paying the bride’s family instead of receiving dowry from her family. Last fall, Aaron did his anthropology paper on Kikuyu engagements and weddings. This day, he got to apply his learning!

Islam in America: Four Waves

A basic knowledge of Islam is becoming essential for every person living in American. The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.6 million Muslims living in the U.S. (0.8% of the total U.S. population) in 2010 and will rise to 6.2 million (1.7%) by 2030 (The future of...2011). In fact, Islam is the third-largest U.S. religion, and in the first half of the twenty-first century it is expected to be second largest surpassing Judaism. Therefore, it is no longer appropriate to think of Muslims as those people in the Middle East, Africa or Asia. Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is an American religion (Neusner 2003, 173).

The attempt to understand Islam in America is not an easy task. The minority Muslim population is not easily recognized because it is characterized by diversity and socio-political complexities. This paper will understand the emergence of Islam in America in four waves; diaspora, black, puritan, and intellectual Islam. The four waves can be understood on a historical continuum of sorts starting with the emergence of Islam in the eighteenth century to the present context in the twenty first century. Analyzing the four waves, point to the fact that Islam in America must be understood in light of its complexities in order for the greater society to properly understand the Muslim population.

Islam in America: Diaspora Islam

The largest population of Muslims in the United States is ‘Diaspora Islam.’ The term ‘Diaspora Islam’ simply refers to Muslims who live outside of their native homeland. There are at least three subcategories for diaspora Islam; slave, immigrant, and student Muslims. The first category of diaspora Muslims is ‘slaves’ which is not represented today; however they lay the historical and cultural backdrop for a considerable amount of American Muslims today. Understanding the Muslims who were slaves is essential for understanding the American Muslim mind and conscience today.

Even before slaves arrived in the Americas there was a Muslims presence. Some scholars argue that Muslims visited America nearly two centuries before the time of Christopher Columbus’s venture in 1492. Jane Smith writes, “Muslims sailed from Spain and parts of the northwestern coast of Africa to both South and North America and were among the members of Columbus’s own crew” (Smith 1999: 50). However, by the late seventeen hundreds, there was a definite Muslim presence in America. Samuel Hill notes that by 1800, some 500,000 Africans arrived in what became the United States. Historians estimate that between 15 to 30 percent of all enslaved African men, and less than 15 percent of the enslaved African women, were Muslims (Hill 2005: 394). The suppression and abuse of slaves to express their Islamic faith would prove to be underlining influence of ‘black Islam’ in the twentieth century.

The second group of diaspora Muslims is immigrant Islam. Immigrant Islam represents the largest group of diaspora Muslims. Historically immigrant Muslims arrived in America to better their lives and return to their homeland. Today some Muslims have the same dream while others never have the intention to return to their homeland. Pew Research Center findings show that “Children under age 15 make up a relatively small portion of the U.S. Muslim population today. Only 13.1% of Muslims are in the 0-14 age group. This reflects the fact that a large proportion of Muslims in the U.S. are newer immigrants who arrived as adults (The future of…2011). Immigrant Muslims will continue to face numerous challenges. One such challenge among immigrant Muslims is to be unified. Asma Gull Hasan, an American Muslims, believes, “One of the significant jihads or struggles that American Muslims are facing is unifying their community. Unification will take some time to achieve” (Hasan 2004:177). The issues facing immigrant Muslims not only affect Muslims but all immigrants.

The final group of diaspora Muslims is university students. These Muslims do not reflect numerical statistics but play a pivotal role in the emergence of Islam in America. Muslim youth who are studying at universities come from a variety of predominantly Islamic countries with the requirement that they return to payback and serve their home country. These students face the same problems as most international students. The students often find themselves lonely, depressed, and disconnected from the greater community. The American Muslim community has tried to mobilize these students to not only fit into their societies but be effective Muslim activist for their university campuses. The Muslims Student Association (MSA) specifically works for the rights of Muslim students on their campuses. They also try to equip them to live faithfully as Muslims on their campuses. Mission Islam, Youth with a Mission is another organization that encourages and equips Muslim students and youth to share their faith with their peers. Then Islamic American University offers distant learning degrees for Muslims who want to learn more about their faith while they spend time in America. All these Islamic organization have the same agenda which is to confirm and expand the Islamic faith in America. The needs of Muslim students are often met through these organizations.

Islam in America: Black Islam

The emergence of slaves from Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth century brought Islam to the shores of America. The suppression of religion and livelihood inevitably influenced not only slaves understanding of Islam, but also their racial identity. Overtime black Muslims reacted to their racially stigmatized society and formed a ‘black supremacy’ movement called ‘black Islam.’ The effects of racism diminished orthodox Islam and used Islam as a means to favor one’s ethnic bias. During the slave movement there was even a “sense among many blacks that their slave master were using Christianity’s teaching of turning the other cheek as an excuse to oppress them and beat them in the name of Christianity” (Tsoukalas 2001: 2). The religious effect of slavery was the assumption that Christianity was for the white slave owner and Islam represents the black slave. During the nineteenth and twentieth century African Americans came to accept Islam as it offered liberation while Christianity represented suppression by white people. The leading organization of black Islam became known as the Nation of Islam which would eventually change not only Islam in America but also the African American community. Today rappers and rap groups such as Public Enemy and Ice Cube and “numerous African-American college and university student publications actively promote many of the beliefs and ideas held by the Nation of Islam” (Martin 2003: 450).

In order to understand the Nation of Islam one must understand how the nineteenth-century cultural, political and religious soil produced the early twentieth-century Black Nationalist activists. Two of those activists were Marcus Garvey and Noble Drew Ali. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association represents the political forerunner to the NOI while Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple represented the religious foundation of the NOI. Marcus Garvey emphasized Black Factories Corporation and black business; however he became known for insistence for blacks to go “back to Africa culturally while developing a nation within a nation in the United States” (Tsoukalas 2001: 8). On the other hand Noble Drew Ali represented the religious foundation of the NOI. He believed the ancient Moabites are the divine Asiatic nation all blacks are Asiatics, they are the original inhabitants of the earth and the progenitors of all nonwhite nations. Therefore Ali believed Jesus was black and the white man is evil and will be completely destroyed on the Day of Judgment. Ali also believed he was Jesus Christ and the prophet Muhammad reincarnated (Tsoukalas 2001: 13). These two men would greatly influence the NOI.

After Noble Drew Ali’s death W.D. Fard fashioned the NOI and personally taught Elijah Muhammad who later become Fard’s predecessor. The NOI came to believe that Fard was the messenger sent by God to continue the work of the two previous men. Fard eventually claimed to be the reincarnate Noble Drew Ali. The teachings of Fard were not Islamic but shaped by the social and religious environment. The religious teachings of Fard have been denied by orthodox Muslims. For instance, Fard taught that Joseph was hopeless of marrying Marry which made him impregnate her with Jesus. Louis A DeCaro Jr. notes that Fard’s anti-incarnational theology not only violates Christianity but also violates Islam (Decaro 1998: 15). These heretical claims by Christian and Muslim standards would continue to plague the NOI for years to come. Possibly the most heretical claim was by Elijah Muhammad when he claimed that Wallace Fard was “Allah in person,” God to the NOI (Tsoukalas 2001: 13).

Under Fard’s leadership the membership of NOI was a dismal eight thousand however it would soon change under the new leadership of Elijah Muhammad, as the movement went national. With the help of Elijah’s close friend Malcolm X “members grew to perhaps 300,000” (Martin 2003: 451). After Muhammad’s death another charismatic leader Louis Abdul Farrakhan took over NOI and the members continued to grow. The Honorable Farrakhan is still leading the NOI under his anti Jew and white racist beliefs. He is not afraid to use the Christian scriptures to back up his beliefs, but nevertheless demanding his ties to Islam.

The Nation of Islam is considered by most Muslims as a heretical religion. Still the NOI remains a considerable voice among Muslims in America. Followers of the NOI are active in prisons and university campuses where they announce their Islamic ideologies but more importantly their anti white beliefs. The movement of ‘black Islam’ or the NOI can be understood as an adaptationist movement. The original black Muslims adapted to their environment, mostly under force. The NOI adapted their racist beliefs to their understanding of Islam. The NOI understood as Islamic must be understood in the context of culture and history.

Islam in America: Puritan Islam

The attacks of September 11, 2001 will forever be embedded in the minds of Americans. The interpretation of those events differs greatly. The aftermath of 9/11 has left Americans with numerous caricatures and stereotypes of the Muslims world. In December 2005, Gallup Poll of American households asked Americans what they most admired about Muslims societies, “The answer nothing was the most frequent response. The second most frequent response? ‘I don’t know.’ Combined, these two responses represented the majority (57%) of Americans surveyed” (Esposito 2007: 1). However, John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed’s research findings show that “Muslims around the world say that the one thing the West can do to improve relations with their societies is to moderate their views toward Muslims and respect Islam” (2007: xiii). The question of how Christians are to understand the current theological struggle within Islam is of great value in order to properly engage their Muslim neighbor with the gospel.

There are many noted Western Islamic scholars who have tried to explain the apparent tension between two extremes. Khaled Abou El Fadl uses the terminology of puritans which he admits has been substituted by other authors as fundamentalists, militants, extremists, radicals, and simply Islamists. Fadl uses the term puritan because “the distinguishing characteristic of this group is the absolutist and uncompromising nature of its beliefs…in the sense that it is intolerant of competing points of view and considers pluralist realities to be a form of contamination of the unadulterated truth” (2005: 18). The importance of terminology is crucial as sterotypes and lies are often used through terminology. The truth remains; there are Puritan Muslims in America who are terrorist, while there are Muslims who are not terrorist.

Islam in America: Intellectual Islam

A new term has risen over the last two decades which favors Muslims coming out of secular or modern countries, the ‘Muslim intellectual.’ As Esposito and Voll speak of the Muslim intellectual:

Their ideas provide the foundations for many of the programs of Islamic movements throughout the world. Even for those who disagree with them and dispute their claims, these activists thinkers have shaped the conceptual world and set the terms of most debates in the Muslim world. These people, their organizations, and their modes of thinking have been part of the heart of what has come to be called the Islamic resurgence of the end of the twentieth century. (2001: 3)

The authors explain the characteristics of Muslim intellectuals as upholding Western ideals. The contemporary Muslims the authors try to articulate are based upon the resurgence of Islam, especially in non-Islamic and Western countries. Simply put, the Muslim intellectual is someone who responds and appeals to the modern and Western world. There are three key Muslim intellectuals who have laid the foundation for Islamic thought in the States.

The first Muslim intellectual is Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Nasr’s obvious displeasure with modern man is that he has wandered into dangerous territory and in some sense lost the awareness and means for appropriation of the sacred. He speaks often against the evils of modernity which he recognizes as rationalism, evolutionism, humanism, secularism, materialism, and imperialism. Nasr understands his intended audience as both Westerners and Muslims who have come under the sway of the modern West. Nasr admits that his plea for the return of tradition is targeted primarily for:

…young Muslims who are the products of modern educational systems that he is concerned. More specifically, in some of his writings his interest is to help explain little known aspects of Shi’ite intellectual life…counter the perception, most evident in Western scholarship that Islam fell into decadence after the Mongol invasion. He calls it a dangerous illusion that modern Muslims are somehow separated from their tradition by an intellectual vacuum. (Jane Smith 1991: 80, 81)

According to Nasr Muslims have failed to critique what is wrong with the West. Muslims have mistakenly adapted their religion to the modern world. The cost of not living within a community that does not carry ongoing tradition is the failure to carry out the mission of Islam.

The second Muslim intellectual who has greatly influenced American Islam is Ismail Al-Faruqi. John Esposito explains Faruqi as a ‘Muslim scholar-activist.’ Faruqi addressed issues of identity, authenticity, acculturation, and Western political and cultural imperialism, which are still significant to the Muslim community today, even though he died in 1986 (John Esposito 1991: 65). Early in his career he emphasized the centrality of Arabism to Islamic history and civilization. Faruqi explained, “If Arabism is the spirit and best expression of Islamic values in a human community, then the pieces that do not seem to fit, such as non-Arab Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs, are to be understood as unconscious and uncultivated expressions of Arabism” (Ibid: 67). The importance of Arabism is not necessarily in culture or religion but in personality. Later he would emphasize the importance of Islamic culture and identity as he put his energy into Christian and Muslim relations. Al-faruqi’s presentations of Islam combined Islamic beliefs and values with Western philosophical/ religious issues and language. Esposito makes the point that some might point this to his Western education; however Esposito explains it is more probable to credit it to his desire to present Islam as the only viable response to modern issues that, in his estimation, Western culture had failed to address adequately (Ibid: 74). Faruqi believed the weakness of American Muslims was the fact that they abandoned “ijtihad, which is the source of creativity in Islam, the opposition of revelation and reason, the separation of thought and action, and cultural and religious dualism” (Ibid: 77). In this sense Fauqi is different than Nasr for he believed Islam combined faith and practice and that thought and intention must issue in action informed a life in which scholarship and activism were intertwined.

The third notable Muslim Intellectual to observe is Fazlur Rahman. Rahman was born in India, studied at Oxford, and eventually taught at the University of California and Chicago. At the University of Chicago he arguably became the leading Muslim modernist scholar of his generation. Over his career Rahman greatly influenced the Islamic and Western intellectual heritage “namely, the Qur’an and Sunna, on the one side, and philosophy on the other” (Frederick Penny 1991: 105). Frederick Mathewson Denny concludes Rahman’s legacy by saying:

Rahman considered the infinitely inventive human intellect to be, apart from the Revelation itself, the main “sign”…of God’s benevolent and just purposes in the created realm. The Quran certainly is the fundamental authority and its commands must be obeyed; but without the believers’ intellectual exertion (itjihad) to comprehend and apply it within the often confusing and contradictory circumstances of historical process, it will languish as a prisoner of dead tradition instead of being permitted to shed its full illumination and regenerating power in the Umma and the world. (Haddad 1991: 105)

The impact of Rahman on American Islam has greatly changed the perspective of many people of religion. Before people like Rahman the majority of Americans saw Islam as either a black or Arab religion filled with religious mysticism and fervor. However Rahman paved the way for people to no longer see a disconnect between Western intellectualism and Islam.