Open Thread Sunday – Nov. 30, 2008

Innalhamdolillah.  Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem.  Indeed, all praise is for Allāh.  In the Name of Allāh, Whose Mercy transcends every comparison, Who is Always Merciful.

[submitted by abu abdAllah]

Only Allāh Knows.  Certainly, this writer does not know.  When I first composed this open thread, it was several days before these events.  subḥānAllāh.  If you need something completely different, try this. Otherwise, I've left the article below intact, but there is no doubt that recent events affect the way one reads what had been the very first words of this post:

India Calling to a whole generation — the sons and daughters of expatriates who left India seeking fortunes in the West:

Which raises a heart-stirring question: If our parents left India and trudged westward for us, if they manufactured from scratch a new life there for us, if they slogged, saved, sacrificed to make our lives lighter than theirs, then what does it mean when we choose to migrate to the place they forsook?

My parents married in India and then embarked to America on a lonely, thrilling adventure. They learned together to drive, shop in malls, paint a house. They decided who and how to be. They kept reinventing themselves, discarding the invention, starting anew…  It was extraordinary, and ordinary: This is what America did to people, what it always has done.

India, having fruitlessly pursued command economics, tried something new: It liberalized, privatized, globalized. The economy boomed, and hope began to course through towns and villages shackled by fatalism and low expectations.

America, meanwhile, floundered. In a blink of history came 9/11, outsourcing, Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, rising economies, rogue nuclear nations, climate change, dwindling oil, a financial crisis.

My love for the country of my birth has never flickered. But these new times piqued interest in my ancestral land. Many of us, the stepchildren of India, felt its change of spirit, felt the gravitational force of condensed hope. And we came…

The excerpts above are from a New York Times article written by a non-Muslim who was born and raised in the US but made a home for himself in India.  Many children of immigrants from South Asia grow up believing they would never want to live there, and yet many find it a rewarding experience.

And if you have not enjoyed it yet, you should read this great contrast of Muslim hijrah experience written by guest writer Bint Imam.

For our readers living in the US, UK, Australia, and Europe, what would it take for you to pack up and move to a Muslim country?  Or to a non-Muslim country in the developing world?  One your parents may have left behind, or your ancestors?  Would you feel more or less easy about moving to a country to which you had no family ties?  For our readers living in the Muslim world, do you still feel that your opportunity lies in the West?  How do you define opportunity?