Reaching to the Peripheries of Our Community
I begin with praise and thanks to God who does not burden us beyond what we can bear. The topic of this article is a difficult one, and it marks a new direction for the Welcome Home Blog. God willing, many future articles will address the work we do at Taleef, where it comes from, and where we see it going in the future. This article will address some new language that many of you have heard us using at Taleef: that we serve those at the peripheries of our communities. I discuss how we came to this description of our work, what a periphery is, and what the unique growth of the Muslim community's periphery in the U.S. (though much of this transcends this country) is teaching us about the future of Islam in America. As the article explains, we are constantly thinking about the work we do at Taleef and modifying our understanding of it so that we may improve. So this is intended to start a conversation, both with our community members and our sister communities around the country. I would be honored to hear your thoughts at wcaldwell@taleefcollective.org.
What Do You Do at Taleef?
One of the most difficult tasks we've faced at Taleef over the years has been answering the question, "What do you do at Taleef?" First time attendees at our campuses in Fremont and Chicago often sense something different about the space, the people there, and the content we offer. So we are often asked about what Taleef is, as well as how and why we operate the way that we do. This has led to countless hours of internal conversations on how best to answer these questions. Until very recently, we've never offered an official answer.
The first reason for this is that, even if Taleef does offer something special or unique within the wider Muslim community, we think that ought not be the case in principle. Taleef is simply a community of Muslims who love Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. That ought to translate into how people are welcomed into our spaces, our cleanliness and aesthetics, and the relevance of what and how we teach. So we have never wanted to pigeonhole something as universal as Islamic education or Prophetic adab as the brand of a particular organization.
However, when we have had to name what it is we do at Taleef, we have often explained it in terms of the demographics we serve. Taleef has always had a strong convert care program. This was something that our founder, Usama Canon, pioneered within the organization in Fremont and it was the main avenue through which Taleef expanded to Chicago. While Taleef has always done much more than provide services and programming for newcomers to Islam, the guiding principles of our convert care program have shaped nearly everything at Taleef—from the accessibility of our content down to very specific practices like the "no knowledge rule," which requires our teachers to translate all Arabic terminology. In practice, the appeal of this "convert care" approach has been far wider than the convert community. Many, and often the majority, of our community members are Muslims born into Muslim families who are attracted to Taleef precisely because of these priorities. So the second reason for our struggle to answer the question of what we do at Taleef has come from the issue of how to name this. "Convert care+?" "Convert and convert-adjacent programming?" We've come up with many clunky answers over the years, none of which were satisfying or actually descriptive.
More recently we've started to use language that is actually descriptive. Taleef serves spiritual seekers, newcomers to Islam, and the youth. If you've been in our spaces in the past couple of years, you have probably heard us say this. What unites these groups is a common need for accessible educational content and a genuine sense of companionship that will allow them to come into their own as Muslims. We think this works quite well as a description of what we do and who we serve. Yet you may have also noticed us reaching toward an actual theory of why these groups are an important and urgent priority—not simply at Taleef but in the wider Muslim community. Seekers, newcomers, and youth occupy the periphery of our community; they live at our outer edges and need to be ushered consciously toward the center.
Why Focus upon the Periphery?
In truth, I think we have always sensed this dynamic at Taleef. For years we have used the slogan, "Come as you are to Islam as it is." We believe Islam has a center that is defined by the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, and the living tradition through which these have been handed down from generation to generation. And we have always attempted to facilitate passage into this center from the periphery by inviting anyone to "come as you are." We maintain a high internal standard but a low barrier for entry.
If we can use the analogy of a bicycle wheel, Taleef has attempted to serve as a spoke that provides a path from the outer edges of our communities to the hub of "Islam as it is," a solid and empowering grounding in the religion. The outer edge is where the rubber meets the road. It must be defined by the low barrier of entry, just as a bicycle's tire will naturally collect gravel, grass, or sand. The Muslim community must have spokes like Taleef because those who remain at the peripheries get crushed from the repeated turning of the wheel. Every Ramadan, Eid, or Friday that passes without welcoming and initiating seekers, newcomers, and youth increases the risk of their alienation, disillusionment, or apathy. When the spokes work, centripetal force naturally draws them toward the center. When the spokes work, the hub supports the wheel and the wheel allows the hub to continue turning.
Again, our understanding is that Taleef ought not be unique in doing this work. This process is how Islam has spread and grown historically. Indeed, what we now consider to form the center of our tradition originally came from the peripheries. The religious sciences would not exist as they do today without Imam al-Ghazali, a Persian. Sibawayh, the great grammarian of the Arabic language, also was not an Arab but a Persian. Islam survived the onslaught of the Mongols thanks to the Mamluks, Turkic slaves who eventually founded one of the great Muslim empires. Many of these same Mongols later became Muslims. As the historian Richard Bulliet argues, the success of Islam can only be understood from its peripheries because "in truth the edge ultimately creates the center."
Crisis at the Periphery
A growing periphery, in most cases, would be a welcome development. It would suggest Islam's wide appeal, the arrival of new blood, and a bright future for our communities. Yet, in practice, this has not been the case in many of our communities across this country. In the spirit of full transparency, our work at Taleef has always been characterized by a sense of crisis. Moreover, we know from conversations with many people at our sister communities around the country that we are not alone in sensing this. One of our greatest struggles is dealing not with the multitudes gathering a the peripheries but with a center that is not ready to receive them. Our community members can and, more frequently than we would like, do fail to find their way toward the hub. We are fighting centrifugal forces rather than being able to rely upon the forces that have historically allowed Islam to grow from its peripheries.
This takes us back to our inability to define Taleef solely in terms of its convert care work. That "convert-adjacent," "convert+" demographic has always been with us. Their presence, while absolutely welcome, suggests a disturbing trend: the periphery is also growing from the center rather than solely from the arrival of new blood. Muslims—converts and born Muslims alike—are leaving their communities, and sometimes their religion, not because they are lured by something beyond it but because they feel pushed outward by a force they often cannot name. In retrospect, the main limitation of "convert care" was that it was too narrow a framing. There is a real need among Muslims of all religious backgrounds for spaces where they are deliberately invited into the religion in a way that is accessible and relevant to a young American adult.
A recent lecture by Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, "The Crisis of Marrying Outside the Faith," provides an excellent example of the common struggle many young Muslims face today. I highly encourage everyone to watch this video, especially if the topic of this article seems foreign to you. He reflects in this video upon a conversation with two parents of a young woman who decided to marry a non-Muslim man. Many of the solutions he offers on how to avoid this type of struggle going forward struck me as very familiar: lower the barrier for entry into marriage, facilitate healthy public gender mixing among the youth, allow open conversations about love and romantic relationships. We have much the same methodology around marriage at Taleef. Once upon a time, I would have pigeonholed this methodology as specific to convert care. Our lack of Muslim family members usually requires lower barriers and spaces where we can meet each other directly. Many of us are already used to speaking more openly about romance. Moreover, I think the majority of us have been ready to accept that such things would not take place in masajid where different cultural norms dominate. However, Shaykh Yasir argues in this video that, no, in fact, even young Muslims with Muslim families are not culturally at home with the norms around marriage in many masajid. If converts were ever unique in their struggles to adopt and live Islam authentically, this appears no longer to be the case. There is a common disjuncture between Muslim youth of all stripes and the established Muslim communities in America. Therefore, there is a common crisis of translation, transmission, and initiation that we must face together.
Indeed, this video does suggest that there is a crisis that is larger than marriage—more so because of what is left unsaid than what is said. Shaykh Yasir is clearly walking on eggshells, even apologizing for raising the issue in his community, throughout the video. As a teacher in a Muslim community, I know this dance all too well. This is what we do when we know a topic will not be well-received. Yet marriage is not just any topic. It is not a pet fiqh issue. It is the crux of transmitting Islam to the next generation. If this one issue is not addressed, what we have seen at Taleef for years—that the periphery is growing from the center—the wheel will collapse upon itself. Therefore the true value of this video, from my vantage, is that it demonstrates a growing awareness of a center that cannot hold. And with awareness we may begin a productive conversation.
Crawling out of the Convert Care Pigeonhole
If this article is anything, it is a call for more spokes on the wheel. At Taleef, we're already doing work to ensure that "convert care" is a skillset that someone in every Muslim community across the country possesses. We have best practices that we're willing to share. However, anyone can check in with the converts in their community to better understand and improve their experience. If converts are uncomfortable bringing their parents to jumuah, the other youth in the community are probably uncomfortable (or bored, or alienated) at jumuah. If you see converts going outside the community to get married, you can bet most of the youth will do the same. None of these issues are isolated or particular to a single demographic: they all boil down to the readiness of our institutions to receive and integrate our peripheries.
And while there will always be specific services that newcomers to Islam need, what we have called "convert care" at Taleef will also need to change. The needs underlying this term have become too universal to continue pigeonholing them with a single demographic in our communities. The next stage in the evolution of convert care will have to be a product of the collective genius of our ummah in this country. However, I would like to start that conversation with a suggestion. Rites of passage, by which a community consciously recognizes a young man or woman as a full member with full rights and responsibilities, may be the necessary bidah hasanah, or beautiful innovation, of our age. If the problem of marriage that Shaykh Yasir indicates tells us anything, it is that we are not passing the baton to the next generation. So perhaps we simply need to deliberately pass the baton. And God knows best.