Keep supporting MuslimMatters for the sake of Allah
Alhamdulillah, we're at over 850 supporters. Help us get to 900 supporters this month. All it takes is a small gift from a reader like you to keep us going, for just $2 / month.
The Prophet (SAW) has taught us the best of deeds are those that done consistently, even if they are small. Click here to support MuslimMatters with a monthly donation of $2 per month. Set it and collect blessings from Allah (swt) for the khayr you're supporting without thinking about it.
There’s a lot of ways instant Internet fame can go wrong. So many people good, bad or otherwise become absolutely unbearable when the spotlight reaches them. So many of us have no real purpose in life or otherwise that we don’t know how to use fame if we ever achieve it. So much so that I fear for people who achieve instant fame. There’s probably few other surefire ways to lose one’s soul. But Ibn Ali clearly had a message despite his being plucked from obscurity and not asking for fame. Why did he do it? Because he’s Muslim and that’s what Muslims do. That simple line is the most honest bit of dawah I’ve heard from any Muslim in the limelight (momentary or otherwise).
Ibn Ali brought up Islam when he didn’t have to. He pointed people to Islam, he didn’t run away from it. And he gave God and Islam credit for his good deed. Does this sound familiar? No, not at all. The unwritten script amongst Muslims these days is to avoid at all costs talking about Islam and Muslims if one does talk about it be vague; if controversy comes up, deflect; and make being Muslim as normal and as inconsequential as eating apple pie -which you must insist you like a lot.
This is largely the fault of Muslim leadership in America turning away from black Muslims and toward immigrant Muslims. Despite our shared faith, we have completely different sociopolitical realities. Black Muslims could care less about being accepted by the mainstream -when you’ve been rejected from the beginning of your forced migration eventually you become indifferent to their acceptance. Immigrant Muslims, on the other hand, choose to leave their countries in search of the American dream which includes acceptance by the mainstream. A project that was going fine until 9/11. That connection to foreign terror made immigrant Muslims have to fight for acceptance in a way they never had -which explains the nauseating “I’m just like you” rhetoric. But Black Muslims like Ibn Ali have a strange freedom only allowed to outcasts, to basically keep being themselves, business as usual.
My dad never stopped wearing the jalabia or kufi after 9/11, it really had nothing to do with him and he never had to prove it didn’t. When many immigrant Muslims talk about Islam they speak from a place of fear when Black Muslims speak about Islam, we speak out of freedom. That freedom allows for an unadulterated dawah that isn’t concerned with naafsi naafsi. The concern is not how will this make me look?. It’s just concerned with truth. Ibn Ali didn’t set out to do a dawah campaign and in reality, we don’t need to. With out any money, fancy lights, or professional cameras, Allah chose Ibn Ali to speak and to say “Islam is the reason why I’m on the right path”.
Is that a good PR answer? Is that the kind of answer that with make Americans cozy? Was it well researched for virality? No, but it is exactly the kind of dawah that makes a real impact and changes hearts for the better.
Nuriddeen Knight is an interdisciplinary instructor, writer and counselor. See her initiative: Nooralshadhili.com and read more from her blog: bythefigandtheolive.com
Not an orator
April 19, 2017 at 1:42 AM
So amazing! I might have never done that :-(
I always feel I’m not good at explaining things so I just quit trying because I might be asked something I cant answer out of nervousness. Allah help me. How I wish I could be more bold, confident and show my faith without the feeling of what-will-they-think-of-me. Please give me some tips
Talibah
April 19, 2017 at 4:51 AM
Yes to all of this! This is why I loved what he did so much. Because this is what Islam in the Black US American community looks like to me.
https://www.alimprogram.org/articles/after-ali/?utm_content=bufferb4e79&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
“American Muslims, I think, may want to consider carefully whether they want to invest all of their energies in the short-term interest of “better press,” broader acceptance or a self-referential moral infallibility, or commit themselves long-term to living out their principles, warts and all, in a manner that earns America’s trust, as Ali did.”
“Yet, there is a danger, I fear, of the meaning and importance of Ali being sacrificed to an understandable desire (given the fragility of the socio-political moment in which we live) to instrumentalize his legacy in ways that misapprehend and thus betray his commitment to principle, in pursuit of an endless series of unstable, mutually contradictory short-term interests.
Ali’s primary commitment was, rather, to serving God, as he understood God, as a matter of principle and because he believed he had a non-negotiable obligation to do so. The people he served were simply the beneficiaries of this non-negotiable commitment, in the same way the Qur’ān portrays the poor, orphans and prisoners of war benefiting from Muslims’ commitment to God: “We feed you purely for the sake of God. We desire from you neither reward nor thanks.” [76:8] As for Ali’s adversaries, they ended up evolving in a manner that reflects the lesson the Prophet’s wife ‘Ā’ishah shared with the Companion and first Umayyad Caliph, Mu‘āwīyah b. Abī Sufyān: “Whoever seeks the pleasure of the people via actions that are displeasing to God, God will cause His and the people’s displeasure to descend upon them. But whoever seeks the pleasure of God, even if at the displeasure of the people, God will eventually cause both His and the people’s pleasure to descend upon them.”
Talibah
April 19, 2017 at 5:14 AM
When i saw the video of the two boys fighting and the subsequent reconciliation, it reminded me of how organically Islam is implemented in the Black community. And that this is what a real Muslim does–not a ‘moderate’ Muslim but a Muslim. And I loved the way he engaged the humanity of the boys by offering reminders instead of writing them off as ‘thugs’. They were young men who didn’t really want to fight and who needed guidance.
Ahmed
April 20, 2017 at 4:01 AM
Ibn Ali did something i could never do and Allah put barakah in his effort. I look up to him. May Allah make it eaiser for us all to do what he did.
What in the name of Allah is up with that second video? Subhan Allah soooo much ignorance!
Like the zaniyyah that said “my father said a muslim is someone that submits to a higher force, my athiest boyfriend is therefore muslim because he believes in gravity which is a higher force (im paraphrasing)”
Laa ilaha illAllah !
Please dont advertise such foolishness!
Kilian Smith
April 23, 2017 at 1:28 PM
Alhamdulilah