Jehron Muhammad: Islam calls faithful to activism
During a recent discussion about Islam and activism at a coffee shop in downtown Philadelphia, Tony Monteiro said many "persons of the book," whether they're of the Jewish faith, practice Christianity or follow the tenants of Islam, see faith "as a matter of one's personal upliftment, rather than the upliftment of the people."
Monteiro is a longtime social activist and former professor of African American studies at Temple University. He said religion has two sides: "the prophetic which is the side that advocates for justice and even revolution, and the religious side that is just personal, where there is no prophetic element."
He called the religious side the "opiate of the people, where people are encouraged to turn their backs on the world and focus on the (afterlife) world they hope to achieve." Monteiro, one of the principal organizers of last year's very successful, "Reclaiming Our Future: The Black Radical Tradition In Our Time," conference, said that on the other side of such a myopic or personal view concerning faith "is a side that's activist and what we call prophetic.
"This is where one attempts to base his or her life upon service to the people. And to the extent that one believes in a God, and one believes that man is made for God, the question becomes, is the God you believe in a God of Justice?"
Islam's holy text, the Quran, encourages the faithful to, "Be strict observers of justice, bearers of true evidence for the sake of Allah, even though it be against yourselves or (against your) parents or near of kin …"
During the 23 years that Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, he united the tribes of Arabia, raised the status of women, restored social justice to the people, and purified the land of false idol worship. To say that Islam's personal or individual uplift is not directly tied to administering to the wider community, with, as the Quran encourages, "their property and their persons," is to be remiss in one's duty.
Islam reserves a month of each year, Ramadan, where one's individual recommitment to the principles of the faith is coupled with community involvement. The Muslim leader that most personifies activism, Monteiro said, is Million Man March organizer and Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan. One of the reasons, he said "many conservative Muslims have such a problem with Minister Farrakhan is his activism."
In fact according to Gayraud S. Wilmore's 1973 book "Black Religion And Black Radicalism," Malcolm X, a mentor of Farrakhan, "brought black religion and black politics together for the spiritual edification and political empowerment of Black people." Gayraud argued that the "radical faiths" of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King that produced the activism that they are both known for "coalesce in the opaque depths of a black spirituality that is neither Protestant nor Catholic, Christian or Islamic in its essence, but both comprehends and transcends these ways of believing in God by experiencing his real presence, by becoming one with him in suffering, in struggle and in the celebration of the liberation of man."
Monteiro says Islam in the United States has this comfortable professional class of mostly immigrant Muslims, who don't want to rock the boat, and as a result may be "conspiring to undermine the potentiality of Muslim youth," he said. "And it's kind of a tragic thing when you don't see a lot of Muslim youth in these marches or at conferences like the Black Radical Tradition Conference.
In addition, Monteiro discussed Islam and activism in the context of the Western Hemisphere based African Diaspora. "Islam plays a role because Islam is viewed, first as non-European. And It does not uphold racial categories. In fact, it tries to separate itself from it."
Few are aware that it was a Muslim, Duse Muhammad, who influenced Marcus Garvey and a former slave, a Jamaican Muslim named Dutty Bookman, who both, in turn, influenced the Haitian revolution. Islam's influence in the Western Hemisphere often played a big role because people historically saw the Christian church as tied up to the system of colonialism and racism. "So Islam was part of that self liberation from all of the negativity that was a part of Western Christianity," Dr. Monteiro said.