Saturday, December 26, 2015

“The Story of Nuh” Christmas Day Lecture Draws Large Crowd of Spirited Young Muslims, Leaves Many Questions Unanswered

By Nadrat Siddique
 
Fairfax, VA
December 25, 2015
 
To attend a lecture on "The Story of Nuh" seemed to me, the ideal "Christmas" day activity. The event was sponsored by MakeSpace--a group of primarily youth and professionals whose aims include "helping the community develop an American Muslim identity." It was held at the Shirley Gate Mosque in Fairfax, VA, in one of the nation's wealthiest counties.
 
Despite a downpour of rain just prior to the event, the parking lot was completely packed when I arrived a few minutes into the lecture. The lecture hall in the mosque basement, was similarly filled to capacity, with few empty seats, with at least two thirds of the attendees young women in hijab. Alhamdulillah it seemed the spirit of Islam was alive among Northern Virginia Muslims.
 
The youthful lecturer, Adam Jamal, of Pakistani origin, spoke eloquently and was very informative. Perusing Surah Nuh in its entirety, he held the audience's attention for the duration of the 3 hour event.
 
To my uninformed mind, the lecture, which afforded no Q&A period, raised more questions than it answered. For instance, early on in the lecture, Jamal spoke of the delineation of one's people. Very often when you say "your people," you mean those from your country of origin, said Jamal. But in reality, your people are the people around you, he insisted.
 
So, the lecturer was asserting that if one lived in Sodom and Gomorrah, one's people would necessarily be the Sodomites? Or if one lived in a war-mongering society which murdered over a million Muslims without qualm, the war mongerers- and not the Muslims being killed, would be one's people? I was not getting it.
 
Further into the lecture, Jamal described the treatment meted out by a corrupt society to a warner, messenger, or in general to one who tells the truth (and in doing so challenges the prevailing power structure):
 
1) Prevailing powers attempt to coopt the warner; if that does not work,
2) The prevailing powers attempt to discredit the warner, make fun of him, or designate him as crazy; if that does not work,
3) The prevailing powers torture or even kill the warner.
 
Adam Jamal did not offer any examples of who such a warner, gadfly, or maverick might be in our times. Some possible examples which came to mind, and which he might have drawn, were Dr. Omar Abdel Rahman (blind, diabetic hafiz-e-Qur'an and opponent of the Egyptian dictatorship, imprisoned for life in the American Gulag for his staunch opposition to the U.S. backed dictator in country); Osama Bin Ladin (millionaire Saudi who left all worldly belongings to fight first the Soviets and then the American invaders in Afghanistan); and Lal Masjid's Abdul Rashid Ghazi (Pakistani cleric who opposed the aerial destruction of a plethora of mosques across the Pakistani frontier, and who ultimately gave his life when his mosque was besieged by the Pakistan army).
 
Despite the very stark parallels to today's society and Nuh's (AS) time, Jamal failed to draw a single parallel between the two, rendering the lecture entirely theoretical. Oddly, the lecturer also did not mention Nuh's (AS) estrangement from his son, who rejected Islam, the fact that Nuh (AS) left him behind when the flood came, and the symbolic value of such a decision. He did however, repeatedly emphasize the 950 year period during which Nuh (AS) struggled to establish Allah's way, as if it were a literal 950 years (I'm not convinced it was).
 
The event was part of a series put together by the Bayyinah Institute. Bayyinah emphasizes the importance of learning Arabic, and appears allied with Zaytuna College, Qurtaba Institute, and other U.S. government approved Muslim entities which seek to coopt and render politically impotent young Muslims with a passion for Islam. And clearly, the Muslim youth who filled the room to the brim that evening had that passion. In sequestering themselves at a Muslim event on a rainy “Christmas” evening, they were clearly saying “La” to the shirk, materialism, and excesses surrounding them that day. The question remained how a paid Qur’anic Arabic lecturer such as Jamal would direct such positive energies.