The Politics Behind Amina Wadud

(And not the Fiqh!)

March 18, 2005: Professor Amina Wadud acts as imamah for a “mixed-gender Jumuah salah” in New York City, with dozens of news people looking on.

Surf the message boards connecting Amina Wadud’s supporters just long enough, and it becomes obvious: the people around her are ready to rumble and itching to fight!

On one of the boards, connected with a well-known “progressive Muslim” website, someone set the tone with a posting appreciating Nevin Reda’s essay about “the Islamic basis for female-led prayer.” He whooped: 

don't hurt 'em, nevin. damn, you killed them on that piece.

Of course, the “killed” were Muslims and Muslimahs who didn’t accept that Professor Wadud or any other woman should lead co-ed groups in salah.

Other posters rattled their sabers, too. Dissenters straying onto the board risked getting their intelligence, mental health, and sexuality dissed by the regulars. Sometimes the regulars themselves got so stoked that they turned on each other, in case somebody seemed to stray from the hard line: “If you don’t stand with Sister Amina, don’t call yourself a progressive!”

How times evolve! Just five years ago, the “progressive Muslims” of the day were only saying that Islam was possible, even better off, without Khilafah. They also said that “American Muslims,” sanctioned by an “American Fiqh,” needed to adopt western political ideas and “participate in the System” to just survive. When the “Khilafah Kids” took the “Islamic Democrats” to task, and challenged them—sometimes harshly, we admit—to produce Islamic evidence supporting their stands, the “progressive democrats” changed the subject and scolded the “kids” for their bad manners (adab) and rough behavior.

But it’s a new game now. Professor Wadud’s Jumuah “flash mob” kept the meeting place secret from the public until the end to manage protesters and hotheads. Nevertheless, they did everything they could to “toss the cat into the henhouse”; and at least someone among them had the smarts to get the kafir press heavily involved. A hundred participants at the function were watched by a hundred reporters and photographers hoping to see some trouble.

That meant plenty of free publicity for the newer version of “progressive Muslims.” Today, they’re just a tiny faction with just one or two thousand declared members throughout the world, lumped mainly in North America, South Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. However, they dream of getting much bigger by building coalitions among wildly divergent groups of Muslims—and their children—who remain shaken and dissatisfied in the wake of September 11, 2001 CE. These include, for example, local “Muslim punks” who “reverted” to Islam to rebel against American society—until they met the immigrant Muslim babbitts[*]. Others might be children of Immigrants who see themselves as “cultural” Muslims, yet wish that their lives were more like those of the characters in Sex and the City. They chafe under what they see as Islam’s “restrictions,” and fear that they will miss out on the stuff their parents came to America to get. On the fringes also lurk atheist-“Muslims” and Marxist-“Muslims” (e.g., Tariq Ali)

To all appearances, the leadership of this emerging “progressive” coalition is in the early stages of defining a “Reform Islam” analogous to “Reform Judaism” in the USA. Its doctrines have not been well defined yet, but Reform Muslims resemble members of the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, balancing out the Bush republicanism of their parents. They include lifestyle liberals who approve even of adultery and homosexuality. Even so, there is considerable bumping of noses between the hijab-haters and hijab-tolerants. There is agreement on one thing: the Deen of Muhammad (SAAW) needs extensive renovations based on a free-style hot-dog “ijtihad,” starting with the basics. Under their system, a “Muslim” is anybody who calls himself or herself one. Period.

The so-called “progressives” would like to think that they are modern, though they remind us more of their defeated grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Would they dare to rehash any of these outmoded ideas if President Bush and his crew weren’t squeezing Muslims everywhere to fix their Deen in the service of Washington’s endless world domination? Fortunately for the Ummah, the President’s manipulations are coming too soon and too clumsy. Overseas, many people are more appalled than attracted by what the progressive Muslims call for. This has led to considerable backlash even among self-proclaimed nationalists and “moderates” who say that the “progressives” have stepped out of Islam.  The cartoon below is an Arab reaction to the Amina Wadud affair. The radio says, “It’s Jumuah time. Muslims should take care to follow American innovations in doing it.”   

Yvonne Haddad of Georgetown University had this to say about American Muslim “modernists” in the wake of the US government’s deconstruction of the old local leadership, “People in America think that they are going to be the vanguards of change…But for Arab Muslims in the Middle East, American Muslims continue to be viewed on the margins of the faith.”

It might well turn out that “progressive” chatter from America will immunize Muslims elsewhere from the new-old ideas that Washington would like to see the Ummah at large adopt.

If anyone, the young “progressive” movement most threatens its elders—in some cases, its very parents—who originally coined the term, “American Islam.” These men and women, today in control of big organizations like ISNA and CAIR, have worked very hard for decades to craft a “conservative” Islam (following the Jewish analogy) that coexists with American capitalism and tacitly supports the separation of mosque and state. In addition, these same people have patiently offered themselves as go-betweens from the kafir elite to the colonized. Over the years, their steady efforts have borne many fruits: “American Islam’s” repudiation of the Islamic State, the re-invention of jihad as a state of mind only, the jettisoning of Palestine and India, the watering-down of da'wah—and bloc votes for George W. Bush, among others. As icing on the cake, some of them got political appointments or jobs in think-tanks, and saw their analyses published in The New York Times. Others got a few extra dollars for the charities chasing after the ever-multiplying problems of Muslims. The emergence of a brash, loud “progressive Islam” cutting in front of them, ready to bow and scrape even further to please American power, certainly disrupts years of labor and hoping. For now, the elders of ISNA and CAIR seem to be doing the smart thing by ignoring their “progressive” children, praying that the young punks will burn out or eat each other up.

But a few are hedging their bets. Until now, Professor Muqtedar Khan, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, has avoided taking an open stand in favor of Amina Wadud. For this, the “progressives” have branded him a “chicken.”  In his article, “Woman Leading Jummah Prayers: Why am I Silent?” the man who once dreamed of being the first Muslim Henry Kissinger tries to explain to his constituency how he is not a barnyard fowl. But he promises to “write an analysis on the debate once it rests.” Perhaps he will, depending on the winds. (Submitted 4/15/2005)