What Imam Suhaib Webb Taught Me

It’s very easy, growing up in a family that is not only culturally but also theologically conservative, to approach issues from a position of defensiveness.  Defense is not always a bad thing; when it comes to matters of faith, better we think carefully and slowly than jump the gun.  I wish more Muslim countries spent more of their money meaningfully defending themselves, their culture and, not least of all, their citizens.  I wish more Muslims defended their values and taught them, so they could be understood as so worth defending.  But the bad thing about defensiveness is that it inculcates a certain rigidity, a slowness to realize — to arrive — where others like myself might have arrived years before.  It took me a long time to come to terms with my own frustration with the practice of Islam, the objectives of Muslims, our relationships with other communities and our vision — especially in the Muslim world — or the apparent absence of one.  And when I say come to terms, I mean only that I came to terms with the existence of a deep frustration and cynicism.  How to deal with that is my life project.  You can expect my blog to catalog it.

That cynicism can kill.  Not literally (but maybe that too, right?).  Cynicism destroys faith, destroys hope, destroys motivation.  Why do anything when everything seems to go from bad to worse regardless?  It is not hard to think the same looking at the Muslim world and many Muslim communities.  I know there are profound signs of hope, but sometimes there are equally shocking signs of distress, indications of failure and paralyzing feelings of suffocation.  That’s what guided me to realize, more and more, and especially with my work at NYU, the immense importance of a deep spiritual place.  More than that even: serene.  Not just emotional but physical, an actual location in the three dimensions.  How much I underestimated the importance of finding a masjid, a community, that welcomes, challenges and improves, instead of ignores, dulls and insults.  We can tell people in our community, “You have to go to jumu’ah.”  It is for men a fard.  But what happens when the khutbah sucks, the Imam is lost, nobody understands anything and half the congregation, namely the youth, end up falling off and disappearing, because nobody cares and so, in cynicism, they do not care in a kind of wa ‘alaykum salam for forever.  Nobody leaves the board; nobody shares seats; nobody implements suggestions.  The ummah is so afraid of its youth.  That is: Our world is afraid of our future.

Now I want to tell people, “If your masjid stinks, start another one.”  If you can’t, just don’t go.  We can implement the American principle of survival of the fittest.  All these fancy masajid that spend their cash on domes and unnecessary flourishes, when they have limited cash and it is better spent elsewhere, how many have I been to that feature hundreds of adults but only a handful of youth?  What is that going to accomplish for these communities, except abandoned masajid and disinterested, uninformed, cynical Muslims, a tiny minority in a hugely attractive and dynamic American sea?  Good-bye.  And I used to be afraid, or at least deeply worried, that such sentiments, when aired, would contribute to a gradual erosion of a certain conservative strength that sustains Islam at a time when so many other religions become increasingly subservient to microtrends, shifts in faith, practice, liturgy and meaning, to sate temporary appetites and in so doing to drastically punch holes in the solidity of faith, the Eternal Refuge, As-Samad, that God is, and provides through the faith.  This is where Imam Suhaib Webb comes in.