This post was written during the month of Ramadan 1440 AH.
As a white American, I have gone through a decades-long process of unlearning the white supremacy that was engrained in me in the formative years of my life. The pillars of that unlearning have been:
1) developing substantive encounters with non-white people
2) listening to non-white narratives with as much empathy as I can
3) being in non-white spaces even when I wasn’t fully comfortable
4) having real-life role models who were not white
There is no doubt in my mind that the ways of engaging with others that I have struggled to embrace by this ongoing experience have had a central role to play in my unlearning the dominant Sunni narratives of Islamic history, thought, and practice. Even though I read about Shi’ism fairly soon after converting, it wasn’t a real thing to me. It took going through the same 4 pillars of unlearning for me to experience Shi’ism as real. I even remember asking Najam Haider and Tariq al-Jamil for book recommendations when I first got to Princeton in 2002. In the course of the exchange, they said, “Give it 10 years, and you’ll become Shi’i.” I thought they were totally wrong, but more than 10 years later I was sitting in Najam’s office admitting that they had been right. It was one of the hardest things, to admit that for years I just couldn’t see it.
I was frustrated with God when this process began, because it began with simply wanting to rectify my state with God. And I thought that meant I was going to be led deeper into the study and practice of the Maliki madhhab and the suhba of Shadhili and Qadiri shaykhs with whom I already had a close relationship. But instead it led me to the majalis of Imam Husayn, which completely upended my life. I made new Shi’i friends, listened to alternative Shi’i narratives, was uncomfortable at times in Shi’i spaces, and started to embrace Shi’i role models. At times, I worried that Shaytan had me in his grasp, and began praying for protection from Shaytan more fervently than I ever had done. And almost every single du’a I uttered became about guidance. “O Allah, just guide me to what You want. I don’t care what it is anymore, because You know best.”
And over and over again, this process led me away from what had once seemed perfectly natural and normal. But because it had happened once before with whiteness, it wasn’t a complete shock. The only difference was that I had explicitly chosen Sunnism whereas I was born into whiteness. But over time I realized that wasn’t quite true. I had chosen Islam, and the only real option at the time to learn and practice it was through a Sunni modality.
For me, a real turning point was fajr prayer in Kadhimayn in Baghdad. The night before I had visited the 7th and 9th Imams buried there, along with many notable Shi’i scholars. The shaykh leading the prayer was an old and knowledgeable scholar, the congregation was probably 1000 people, and the masjid was large and beautiful. And I remember thinking, “Oh my God, if this was what I was introduced to as Islam when I first converted, I never would have questioned it!” I think it was the first real moment in my life where I saw Shi’ism as just plain Islam, the same way I had thought about Sunnism for many years.
When you grow up white, you never talk about people or things as “white,” although you qualify many other things with ethnic adjectives like “Black people” or “Indian food.” Similarly, my experience of Sunnism was where we rarely talked about things as Sunni, and instead used the word “Islam,” “Islamic,” or “Muslim.” So “Islamic literacy” really just meant “Sunni literacy,” and “Islamic law” really just meant Sunni law. But we rarely saw it that way.
The privileging of a dominant category is perhaps an unavoidable part of life. By privileging the Twelver-Shi’i narrative of Shi’ism, for example, one underplays the narratives of Isma’ili communities. However, what is not unavoidable is being completely blind to them. Just as I expect my own white sisters and brothers in humanity to open their eyes to whiteness, I expect my own Sunni sisters and brothers in faith to open their eyes to the dominant Sunni narrative of speaking about Islam.
At the end of the day, we are all going to die. Today we have to act on what we believe pleases Allah, manifesting the balance between hope and fear. But tomorrow we might revise what we believe pleases Allah most, and thus we will act differently. As Shaykh Rizwan Arastu taught me, we are not held accountable today for what we will find out tomorrow. Each day we try to do our best with what we currently have. Life is a continual process of change, and we hope that change leads to positive growth.
But the past is always with us. I am still white, and I am still culturally Sunni in many respects. I don’t know what day during Muharram Pakistanis talk about which figures from the Karbala narrative (is it ‘Ali al-Akbar day or Qasim day?), nor do I understand the reasons why some Shi’is seem to dislike other Shi’is so much. When I lead people in prayer, I have had to learn how to pray according to Ja’fari fiqh in a way that doesn’t alienate Sunnis who aren’t used to praying behind Shi’is. After 40 years of being white in America, and 17 or so years of being Sunni in the Ummah, I can never have the social experience of a Shi’i kid growing up in LA or NYC. And that is okay.
When I look back, the only real reason I became Muslim was to prepare for death. It was only the Qur’an that convinced me that I would live after my death, and have to face Perfect Judgement. That is the main motivating factor for trying to neutralize my contributions to white supremacy. And maybe that is the secret of the Shi’i tradition for me – that it is the most hopeful of all narratives. That even if one is of the greatest people who ever walked this Earth
that even when one’s mother and father were from the greatest people to walk this earth
that even when one’s grandfather was the greatest person to walk this earth
that the people who claim to practice the same religion as you
that the people who claim to honor the same prophet as you
that the people who memorize the same book as you
that they can still chop your head off, alone in the desert, surrounded by the bodies of your family and friends who died defending you
and it can still all be okay
in some miraculous and completely radical way
it can still work out beautifully in the end
if we are of those who stand with Husayn
even when the Ummah is united against him
actively and through tacit consent
that we can look death and evil and oppression squarely in the face
even when it is done by the Salaf
and see nothing but Beauty
because we know what Islam really is
by the Mercy of the Most Merciful
Alhamdulillah, fortunately Allah swt is the recipient of our prayers. Hasbunallah, RabbunAllah.
Peace David
Al-salam ‘alaykum. Thanks so much for reading and commenting over the years. Hope you have been well!
Fantastic! Thank you for opening up to us and letting us into your journey.
Thanks! Hope you have been well.
Greetings from the UK. Thanks so much brother for sharing your reflections. It was very refreshing to read.
I have a question for you and feel free not to answer it if it’s too personal. I’ve been thinking a lot about the types of issues you’ve brought up in your post for months and I’m curious to learn more about a particular aspect of your journey. After 17 years of being sunni, how exactly do you think you were able to reallocate the importance of certain individuals in the “muslim” narrative. As a shia, perhaps the only way to understand the events after the death of the prophet is to accept that certain personalities who were loyal to the prophet during his life and committed to Islam as the final religion for decades, essentially betrayed the message after the death of the prophet. You can argue that the extent of this betrayal varies, but within the shii framework, I don’t think you can argue that they were well-meaning and didn’t realize the weight of their actions. These people are central to mainstream sunni Islam the way the ahlulbayt are central to shii Islam. I can’t imagine how difficult it might have been to disassociate them from your understanding of Islam. And especially because there’s a wealth of information on both sides of the debate about the status of many of the prophet’s companions. It seems to me that if someone is at the crossroads of evidence offered by both sides (and truly engages with both literatures), it would be so difficult, if not near impossible, to say definitively that one narrative is Haq while the other is selective or manipulated. At that crossroads, how did you side with shiism? And how were you able to dissociate your love from individuals who you probably believed were the heroes of Islam for nearly 2 decades? Sorry if this comment is too personal for a public post or not directly related to your post, but these thoughts have been plaguing me for months and I thought you might be interested to share some of your insight.
It’s a hard question to answer in brief, but I’ll try my best. Religion is a series of choices, nested within one another. For example, one might come to believe firmly in God for any number of reasons. If that is the case, then one will not spend much time exploring the various strands of Buddhism that are atheistic. Then perhaps that person comes to a place of certainty about a particular text and the way that represents what God wants from humanity. It could be the Bible, the Qur’an, or the Bhagavad Gita, just to name the three most popular ones. Then, let’s say the person becomes convinced about a person representing God. At this point, all three things – person, text, and God – are connected in an intimate way. So when moving forward to add something else, the central question is how to remain faithful to the first three. One has already disassociated from so much on this journey – from the religious views of the majority of humanity, from texts that have been revered for thousands of years, and so on – and so to all of a sudden switch one’s focus from a search for guidance to a concern about disassociation is wrong. Better to ask oneself how to deepen one’s loyalty to that which one has already committed to. And in doing so, I was overwhelmed by the virtues and beauty and inspiration that flows from the Ahl al-Bayt (alayhim al-salam), such that it deepened my certainty and connection to Qur’an (text), Muhammad (person) and God. For me, the Hadith of thaqalayn is a living reality in that regard. My responsibility is to follow guidance as best as I can see it, not to denigrate others who have chosen differently from me. I pray that we are all guided by the Guide (الهادي), ameen. اللهم صل على محمد وآل محمد
How do you manage to justify n adapt to the
shiis’ articles of faith which were not there during the final prophet’ /messenger’s time? For a start there is to be your acceptance of an Imamate (Imamate is the Shi’a belief that all these imams should be spiritual descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Shi’a Muslims believe that imams protect the religion and help to guide Muslims along the right path. Today, Shi’a Muslim communities are led by imams, who are seen as having been chosen by God.)
I suggest reading “The Origins and Development of Shia Islam” by S.H.M. Jafri. It is a good starting place to think through this question. https://www.al-islam.org/origins-and-early-development-shia-islam-sayyid-husayn-muhammad-jafari
Thank you for sharing brother. May Allah bless and protect you, your family, and all others around you. Lots of love.
ameen wa iyyakum. Hope all is well in Kuwait!
Salamutations.
The road is long. Once the certainties of sunnism. Now the certainties of shi’ism. Ahead, who knows? To unlearn the dogmas of all political constructs, perhaps? To embrace a Quranic Islam, closer to its essence? Allah alone knows what tomorrow holds. We are all on this journey. Our paths diverge, crisscross and sometimes merge. Walk on. We have not arrived yet.
Yes, sunnism is a political construct. So too others ways. These realisations hit us along the way, as we study history and our Book. Yes, the Quran speaks clearly of the cruelty of the Quresh; this is why we cannot embrace them. Many are the reasons that scholars steer us away from reading and reflecting on their Quran for ourselves. The Quran talks about this too.
This Book will take us home, inshallah. If we let it, it will be our guide. As you say, we just have to unlearn a few things along the way. Onwards…
wa ‘alaykum al-salam. Since I know that anything I think is also a construct (as opposed to revelation), one of the means that I used to adjudicate this dilemma was to read the Qur’an from front to back with the accompanying du’a that Allah teach me through it as to which tradition within Islam to identify with. When I did that, I felt that the Qur’an was more in-line with the Shi’i tradition. This was one of the things that pushed me towards Shi’ism. My marja’, Sayyid Taqi al-Modarresi of Karbala, encourages the study of the Qur’an at all levels of his religious seminary (hawza), and has authored an 18-volume commentary of his own. So at the very least I am certain that he understands the Qur’an better than me!
Alhamdulilah. Onwards…