Identity and Community

The day that I first gained a strong sense of my own identity as a Muslim still stands out as one of the most profound days of my life, second only to the day of my shahada. I was sitting in my apartment in Damascus, Syria, reading Michael Muhammad Knight's Blue Eyed Devil, a memoir of his travels around the U.S. looking for "Islamic America." I had been engrossed in the book from the very beginning, but I remember the rest of the world fading into the background when he mentioned Sapelo Island, Georgia. Mike was visiting the grave of Bilali Muhammad, an African Muslim enslaved on Sapelo in the nineteenth century, to pay his respects and recite the fatiha over him and his family. Reading this completely changed my reality. I'm from St. Simons Island, just south of Sapelo. I visited Sapelo most summers as a child. I had family friends who lived there (who I later learned are descendants of Bilali Muhammad). Yet I had learned none of this history as a child. It struck me that I had traveled across the world to live in a "Muslim country" when, all along, Islam had been right there in my back yard.

This sense of having an identity that felt authentically Muslim and comfortably familiar intensified when I finally returned home. I was blessed to meet Imam Maajid Ali at Masjid Jihad in Savannah, Georgia, who was kind enough to spend a few hours with me after Jumuah prayers one Friday. I discovered a grandfatherly black southern man, like others I had known growing up, who loved Allah and His Messenger and recited the Quran with a slight twang. We talked about my story, Bilali Muhammad, and I told him what a relief it was to meet someone like him. I'll never forget one of the gems he dropped on me that day: "We believe Allah is closer to us than our jugular vein but many of us think His religion has to be strange and foreign. It's not! It was never supposed to be!"

These words were healing for me. My conversion had led to a light form of "cultural apostasy" that many new Muslims experience. Our openness to Islam can very easily creep into a willingness to embrace new social norms or cultural practices that seem "Islamic" even if they feel uncomfortable and inauthentic. For me, this was as mild as moving to the Middle East because I believed that was where I could authentic Islam. But I have met many other converts along the way who threw out their wardrobes for thobes or, far more drastically, just gave up on interacting with the opposite gender because they believed their own social etiquette was deficient.

Quite the opposite, our religion affirms the basic goodness that all humans know. The Messenger of God ﷺ tells us, "People are like mines of gold and silver. The best of you before Islam are the best of you in Islam." Whatever our backgrounds may be, they are fundamentally good and worth preserving once we enter the religion. Of course, we come to Islam looking for guidance and differing degrees of reformation. But this is simply a process of identifying the gold within ourselves and separating it from our rough characteristics that have kept it hidden. This gold--what we already know to be good, truthful, and wholesome--must form the basis of our identities as Muslims for our religion to become authentically our own.

Islam’s affirmation of our humanity goes beyond the individual level. The Creator also tells us, “O humanity, we have created you male and female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know one another. The noblest of you in the sight of God are the most pious, and God is All-Knowing and Aware.” (49:13) Our ethnic and national backgrounds are part of God’s creation. Preserving them must be one of our imperatives once we enter the religion. This is nothing short of gratitude to God and it is the surest way of relating to our fellow Muslims and navigating our communities. Difference gives us something to share with one another. It invites conversation, brotherly and sisterly intimacy, as well as the chance to reflect on our own customs. Mercifully, and quite contrary to today’s world, it is not the basis for hierarchy between peoples. As new Muslims, we are free to learn about and adapt the cultural and ethnic difference we find in our communities without feeling the need to disavow our own backgrounds. We may add thobes to our wardrobe without discarding our other clothes; we can refine our etiquette with the opposite gender instead of avoiding them altogether. When we have a strong sense of self, our life in community with other Muslims can become a joyful process of discovery.

The Prophet ﷺ used to pray: “O Allah, make us love Medina as much as we love Makkah.” The Medinans gave the Messenger of God a home after he had been driven out of Makkah and they embraced as a Prophet and a leader. Yet the honor he received there did not diminish his love of his homeland. Rather, his love simply expanded. In the end, God gave him both Makkah and Medina. This a Prophetic example we can follow as we make a new home for ourselves in this religion and in the community of Muslims.

We ask God to expand our hearts, and God alone gives success.