Dr. Sherman Jackson - United We Stand One Nation

United We Stand: One Nation

Opening Prayers

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Speaker Introduction

Our next speaker is Dr. Sherman Jackson. Dr. Jackson is the King-Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture, Professor of Religion, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991.

He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University, Wayne State University, and was recently offered a full professorship at Stanford University. From 1987 to 1989, he served as Executive Director of the Center of Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of several books, including Islam and the Black American Looking Towards the Third Resurrection, and most recently, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering.

He is co-founder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims, a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, past president of the Sharia Scholars Association of North America, and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust. He is featured on the Washington Post Newsweek blog, On Faith, and is listed by Religion Newswriters Foundation's Religion Link as among the top ten experts on Islam in America. Dr. Jackson will address the topic, United We Stand, One Nation.

Khutbat al-Hajah

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

All praise is due to Allah. We praise Him, seek His help, and ask for His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and the evil of our deeds. Whomever Allah guides, none can misguide; and whomever Allah leaves astray, none can guide.

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, without any partners; and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah. We seek His help, His forgiveness, and His guidance.

We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls, from the evil of our deeds. Whosoever Allah guides is not misguided. Whosoever is led astray is not guided.

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger. The Lord has opened my heart, and has made my affairs easy, and has made my speech clear.

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

Opening Remarks

Peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon you. I have a dilemma here, because these lights are blinding me. But if I put my sunglasses on, I can't read my notes.

So I'll have to try and, I hope you'll pardon my squinting and frowning. But it's not about you, it's about the lights. I've been asked to come and talk particularly about the business of us as Muslims in America.

And the whole enterprise of being American Muslims. And this in a number of ways is a rather difficult topic to talk about. Particularly in the politically charged atmosphere in which we presently exist.

And perhaps most especially in the context of this 10th anniversary of the tragic events of 9-11. It's difficult for a number of reasons. One, so many of the people who have come before me have said many of the things that reflected my own thoughts and sentiments on the topic.

So in some ways I feel that there's a limited amount of space to add much of significance and meaning. The second reason is that, quite frankly, we live in a time when there are forces in our society that are bent on denying Muslims a dignified existence in this land. And to that end, one of the ways in which they go about trying to pursue that end is by misrepresenting what Muslims say.

And I think it is something of a statement on the invalidity of their cause that they have to spread falsehoods and misrepresentations in order to promote their cause. They come to events like this, they sit and listen, and then they distort what Muslims have to say. And particularly given the sensitivity of the topic of Muslim Americans, that kind of a talk is particularly susceptible to that kind of misrepresentation.

And I'm saying this not from a theoretical point of view, I'm saying it as someone who has witnessed the way that my own words have been twisted and misrepresented on any number of occasions.

The Challenge of Four Different Audiences

But the big reason why this is a more difficult topic is that to speak about the issue of Muslim American identity is difficult in the sense that in doing so, one has to sort of navigate one's way through the perspectives, through the sensibilities, in fact, even perhaps the political agendas of at least four different groups. In other words, one is not just talking to a single group in which one can expect one's words to be heard through the prism of that group.

Rather, one is talking to at least four groups, and therefore there are at least four different ways in which one's words might be understood. And therefore, four different ways in which one's words might be misunderstood. And this is one of the challenges that comes along with speaking about this kind of a topic.

And these disparate groups, in my mind, represent four. The first is Muslims in the Muslim world, and one may wonder why one would pay any attention to the reality of the fact that Muslims in the Muslim world will be hearing this kind of a talk. But the reality is that these cameras, the internet, and other forms make it not only possible, but likely that these words will reach the ears of Muslims all over the world.

And I think in this context, we have to remember the whole point of our being here. We are here to try to add understanding and healing to what is a very precarious situation for us all. And so it matters the perspective from which people hear what we have to say.

And if we as Muslims in America speak in ways that reflect insensitivity, callousness, and inability to take the perspective of Muslims in other parts of the world, then that is not likely to contribute positively to our ability to communicate across those lines. I'll talk a little more about that in just a minute.

The second group that is listening to these kinds of talks about Muslim-American identity is the group of the non-Muslims of the dominant group in America.

And I'll say a little word about them in a minute as well. Third, we have Muslims in America, and this group is divided into two mindsets in this context. The first is that group of Muslims who, quite frankly, still nurse a number of reservations about this whole enterprise of being Muslim and American.

On the one hand, they want to fully embrace this idea, but there are any number of issues that continue to stand between them and a full embrace of the whole idea of being American. And some of what stands between them has to do with some of the rhetoric that has been generated by some of the powers that be that confuse Muslims in terms of what their own position as Muslims in this country should be. So that's the third group of Muslims.

And that's the third group that I need to try to address. And the fourth group are also Muslims in America, but this group of Muslims doesn't have any reservations about being Muslim-American. In fact, they have an overwhelming interest in being Muslim-Americans, but in all too many instances, their interest in being Muslim-Americans is not matched by a principled engagement of what it actually means to be Muslim-American.

In other words, Muslims who are very much interested in enjoying the privileges and the rights and the opportunities that go along with being American, but who are far less interested in identifying and recognizing what their obligations are as Muslim-Americans.

The Importance of Authentic Identity

So now, with that sort of landscape being set up out there, I want to try to say a word to each of these groups so that when I talk about the whole issue of being Muslim-American, it's understood in the context in which I mean it. Because it is eminently important that if Muslims are going to proceed in American society and say that we are Muslim-Americans, that sentiment has to be deeply and honestly felt.

Because if it is not deeply and honestly felt, that hesitation will emanate to the people of the American society. They will know that you are speaking half-heartedly, and that will actually have the effect of undermining us as Muslims in this country. We have to be aware and honest about one thing.

No one likes to be in the presence of people who lie to them and seek to manipulate them. No one likes to live in the presence of that kind of reality. And so it's important for us as Muslims that if we are going to say we are Muslim-Americans, that we mean it, that we embrace it, that we are able to stand behind it.

Not on interest alone, but on principle as Muslims who believe in the Quran, believe in the Sunnah of the Prophet, and who believe in that grand tradition of ours that is the Islamic tradition.

Addressing Muslims in the Muslim World

So let me begin with the whole enterprise of the difficulty that goes along with the fact that when I say I'm a Muslim-American, that there are Muslims in the Muslim world who are listening to me, and they hear this. And the problem in many instances is that, in my experience, many of our brothers and sisters in the Muslim world, when they hear us say that we are Muslim-Americans, when they hear us identify with America in this or that capacity, the tendency is all too often to equate America with American foreign policy.

And so if I say that I am an American, the tendency is to assume that somehow I either identify, condone, or am willing to whitewash American foreign policy. And I think here it's important for us to say that the very fact that I identify as a Muslim-American does not at all entail, to any degree, the notion that I rubber stamp or go along with American foreign policy.

It is very important for us to be sensitive to this reality, because when we come to an occasion like this, marking the 10th anniversary of the victims of 9-11, and Muslims in the Muslim world hear us stand here and offer our condolences, as we should to our countrymen, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, when they hear that, and then they say, well, wait a minute, these Muslim-Americans are talking about the people who died on 9-11, but they have nothing to say about a half a million babies who died in Iraq because of American sanctions that were imposed on their country?

They have nothing to say about the chaos, death, and destruction that have been visited on these countries as a function of American foreign policy? When Muslims hear this kind of presentation, and they are left with the sense that we as Muslim-Americans, and the very meaning of being a Muslim- American, suggest that we empathize with American tragedy, but we don't empathize with any other tragedy, what Muslims in the Muslim world are likely to say, if this is the kind of Muslims that America is breeding, then America can go to hell, and she can take her little sell-out Muslims with her.

That's the mentality that is likely to come out of this. And for me, this is a concern. Not because I want to placate misplaced feelings, but because it's important that we respect the feelings of people if we want to begin to communicate with them.

We have to go to people where they are. They experience realities that suggest to them things about America, that leave them with a certain perspective on America. Then we stand up and identify with America.

How does that bring them to look at us, and then how are we then likely to be able to communicate to them, or with them, in such a way that will bring greater peace, greater understanding, and a greater ability to understand America? We have a responsibility to be careful about the way in which we communicate. And this is why I want to say here that I am a Muslim-American, and I love my country not as a government, but as home. This is, to me, home.

And by the way, this is not an exclusively Muslim perspective. In fact, I was in the airport here in Washington, D.C., not long ago, and I saw a coffee mug, I think it was a coffee mug or a t-shirt, of course produced by non-Muslims, that said, I love my country. It's my government that I'm afraid of.

So there is a difference between loving my country and necessarily being in agreement with everything that my government does. And I think that we need to be clear about that. And Muslims in the Muslim world need to be clear about that.

As Muslim-Americans, we are going to strive to make positive contributions to American domestic and foreign policy. We may not always succeed, but just as it is not fair for me to expect you to disavow your country in the Muslim world simply because it has foreign policies that do not live up to our expectations, it is also not fair for you to ask me to disavow my country simply because it has foreign policies that do not live up to our expectations. We don't live in perfect countries.

We don't live in perfect societies. But these are our societies. And a part of our charge is that we work to make these societies better societies.

Because this is home. This is where my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren are likely to die. And so I have a commitment in trying to contribute to the betterment of this society.

And so again, when I say that I am an American, this is not a rubber stamp of American foreign policy.

Addressing the Dominant Group

Moving on to the second group, and that is the dominant group of Americans who often abuse and exploit the Muslim's attempt to position his or herself in America as an American Muslim. These are people, and many Muslims fall victim to accepting this mentality.