The African-American brothers there outnumbered the White brothers but about 2-1.

“As a result, the go to Sufism which allows anything, as long you “feel one with Allaah”. ” and
“Sufism does not really demand such a serious quest for that which is authentic in Islaam.”
-Again, this is a complete fabrication born of your sectarian view of Islam and your exclusivist conception of truth.

The majority of classical scholars of Islam were members of Sufi orders, including the Hanbali muqalid Shaykh Ibn Taymiyyah, whilst the bida’ known as Salafiyyah was completely unknown.

What is happening here is complex. I have visited Shaikh Nakzim’s Derga. There many blacks, Turks and Asians there;many whites (including working class Greek Cypriots).

But what you observe is not always comforting. Blacks marry blacks;while white Muslims are offered Asian women. You can not blame Turks for this. It seems a Indo-Pak problem.
The Sufis are dominant. They control the representation of Islam here;but it has 60s,phony flavour to it. It is nice to hear the brothers in search of ilm are in this city. Im in North London and do not hear much about the
brothers in the South. I’m from similiar background to the Brixton brothers . The search for Islam’s essence must wade through seductive rhetoric about classical tassawuf,without realising its propenets may be different from your Rumis and Hassan al Basris. Liberal claim to represent Islam as soley a Sufi journey is off-putting to many (whites too).

Unfortunately, the thread has done very little to critically and seriously assess the very important issues which it set out to try and document. There are severak points to make about the post.

1. The thread is sadly regurgitating stereotypes which in of themselves are “Very dangerous”. To try and assert about Salafees of African origins that :
“What is associated with the former catergory is street-attitude, literalism, intolerance, extremism and takfir.”

…is simplistic to say the least. This is in itself a dangerous assertion as it leads to casting aspersions against black Muslims by directly/indirectly linking them to having inclinations towards extremism, takfeer and intolerance. In London, Brixton Mosque for example is accused of this and for example, Abdullah Faysal, a well-known extremist, is known by the Salafee community for going extreme after he was challenged by the Salafees and ousted from the Brixton area. Incidently, he made Salafiyyah his main nemesis and abused its scholars and followers as being passive. Yet, even though Abdullah Faysal was ousted and eject from the Brixton are in the early 90s and called to extremism in West London and other parts of the UK, to this day some of the tabloid press still refer to him as being “a Brixton Mosque preacher” (!!?) even though he was never the Imaam of the Mosque and even when he did give khutbahs there this was in the early 90s, when the Mosque was not run by the Salafees and when Faysal did not call to the extremism he did from 93 onwards!

So, what happened was that people associated him Brixton Mosque due to racial stereotypes which this thread has also continued in repeating.

2. Then with regards to academia, this is another issue which black Salafees are accused of being devoid of, and this is a sterotype. As many black Salafees have academic prowess but are just not referred to at all or recognised.

3. Salafiyyah tends to break class divisions and as a result they are easily the most ethnically diverse and inter-marry with little hierarchy among them, as opposed to the those from the Sufi persuasion. So for example, if you look at a Salafee community like Brixton in London, then they are diverse and tend to inter-marry regardless, but a Sufi community like al-Muraabitoon in Norwich are totally segregated along racial lines, with the black ones separate from the white ones generally.

Furthermore, in London at one stage some white Salafee brothers were the main callers to Salafiyyah in the UK and they came from not even middle-class background, but upper-middle class backgrounds! This is itself totally demolishes the specious claims of the thread. Where is the “embedded racial and class division of the UK manifested in its revert Muslim population” seen within this similitude??

4. It is rather odd that the article did not refer whatsoever to the racism and intolerance of most of the Muslim community from the Indo-Pak sub-continent. This was not touched on at all in the piece and to somehow refrain from mentioing this as if it is somehow irrelevant, is foolhardy. As a result, people will gravitate to people who share their own cultural upbringing, origins and this in itself is not harmful. But the thread did not touch on at all the impact of such backward un-Islamic cultural Hindu caste system traditions at all.

5. In reflecting on the thread (‘in serach of jannah’, March 4 2007) we understand why uniformed people may come to such simplistic conclusions, yet the reality is that the black well-educated Middle-class Christians, before embracing Islaam, as many of black Salafees were, don’t fit the category of having “street attitudes”. Black people come to Salafiyyah after their search for absolute truth which will take them away from the degradation of the society in which they are living in and can be proved not only by blind faith but in a serious critical many. This gives them strength and is not related to their colour, background or where they are from.

One of the reasons why some white Muslims may move away from black reverts (if this is even the case as the ‘in serach of jannah’ thread claims) is due to their colonial superiority complexes, and that this can fit into Islaam. As a result, the go to Sufism which allows anything, as long you “feel one with Allaah”. Salafiyyah, restricts to what Allaah says and what the Prophet says. So some of it is opposite to what the article claims, for real Islaam, Salafiyyah requires study and enquiry whilst (hardcore) Sufism does not really demand such a serious quest for that which is authentic in Islaam.

AbdulHaq al-Ashanti

dr. sherman jackson mentioned an interesting point about this in a class I attended a long time ago… that looking historically at the african american community, it’s one that was largely protestant (ie: with a de-emphasis on the clergy and an emphasis on a direct relationship with the sacred texts) as opposed to Catholicism which has a focus on the clergy… and this may have translated into the african american community’s practice of religion after they embraced Islam, with an inclination to salafism which has a more direct relationship with the texts, than tassawuf or other movements. I don’t know if it’s the same in the UK?

interesting post bro, jazak Allahu khayran.

wasalaamu alaykum

so long as you remain clear that these are generalizations and your own perspective, these are (somewhat) fair characterizations – although I think they’re unfair to those who are strongly attached to Sunni Islam in either camp, and those like myself who are attracted to both Imam Ghazali and Malcolm X, who respect both ibn Taymiyya and Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi.

Also, I’m Canadian and don’t have the anger issues, nor are Canadian Salafis as generally rude and ’street-thug’ typified as they seem to be in England. When I spoke to professors from Madinah University, they told me of their fear of some of their English students, who as they said “left after four years, not having moderated or adapted their views in the slightest.” Don’t blame either the “Traditional” or the “Salafi” schools of thought for the extremists, who as you fairly point out, have more sociological and political reasons for their anger and resentment, than theological.

I also think that there are more complexities out there, but perhaps those can be discussed later.

Best regards, Salaams,
Dawud

You’ve failed to close an italic block somewhere in this article, which is why, from the second sentence in the second paragraph, it’s all italic.

Anyway, your observation about tasawwuf coming to be associated with Nietzsche really only applies to one group of so-called Sufis, namely the Murabitun. None of the other Sufi groups I’ve come across have had any interest in such philosophy. I had a brief encounter with their London group from 1998-9 and I have always been against it, because they were mostly middle-class non-Muslims from the 19th century with too much time on their hands reacting to the problems in Christianity, and none of these issues affect us. My attitude has always been: who needs Nietzsche when we have the likes of Imam al-Ghazali?

I have personally had negative encounters with other middle-class White Muslims, but I still believe they are a minority of the White converts who became “Sufis”, even if they are some of the more prominent. Most are in groups like Shaikh Nazim’s or Shaikh Nuh Keller’s and both have a strong ethnic mix, with a large number of both black and white converts.

As for why so many Black converts become “salafis”, the likely reason is that there is already a critical mass of such people in south London, based around Brixton masjid, and that Blacks looking for Islam often gravitate towards those of their own kind because, among other things, they mostly speak English rather than Urdu or whatever.

You seem to suggest that white middle class reverts are attempting to create some sort of psuedo-sufism charatertised by western philosophers, but with regard to black salafis, do you think that they are infuencing salafism in anyway, or are they just joining what is already a “extereme” school of thought.