By In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
My blueprint for a unified, healthy, peaceful and faithful Muslim community
The Believers are but a single Brotherhood: So make peace and reconciliation between your two (contending) brothers; and fear Allah, that ye may receive Mercy. 49:10
By the grace of Allah (SW), there have been some rightly guided Muslim visionary leaders who have been paving the way for Muslim unity in the midst of our blissful diversity in the Americas.
O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things). Holy Quran 49:13
Indeed there cannot be a full utilization of our collective talents and contributions in the absence of a unified front. Muslim unity maximizes our strength, reduces our weakness, widens our contributions and prevents us from wasting natural and human resources with overlapping communal endeavors. With this unity, we can achieve more and in a quicker fashion with less individual sacrifices.
And hold fast, all together, by the rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves; and remember with gratitude Allah’s favor on you; for ye were enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His Grace, ye became brethren; and ye were on the brink of the pit of Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus doth Allah make His Signs clear to you: That ye may be guided. Holy Quran 3:103.
To achieve a long term time tested unity, we must recognize, appreciate and welcome the default of human diversity and experience. We must embrace a unity without uniformity.
And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colors: verily in that are Signs for those who know. Holy Quran 30:22.
Our Muslim unity must create and promote an environment of building up individual members and not that of their humiliation isolation or destruction.
O ye who believe! Let not some men among you laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor let some women laugh at others: It may be that the (latter are better than the (former): Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used of one) after he has believed: And those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong. Holy Quran 49:11.
The unity must recognize individual representations based on experience, ethnicity and group dynamic. To actualized this ideal unified front, I would suggest to categorize America Muslim groups in three categories, regardless of race, ethnicity or nationality:
1. Indigenous Muslim Americans.
2. Muslim Immigrant (1914 and later).
3. The American born children of immigrants.
Recognizing these individual group experience, attitude and interests only help us to strengthen our unity, while undermining it renders us as dysfunctional and ineffective. We must allow leaders in each group to advocate on behalf of their peers, thereby establishing a unity with self representations.
If it had been thy Lord’s will, they would all have believed,- all who are on earth! wilt thou then compel mankind, against their will, to believe! Holy Quran 10:99.
Personal experience confirms my commitment for public safety
I write this in response to a meeting I had with an esteem representative from a New York City Based organization that is trying to unite Muslim New Yorkers.
As an immigrant Muslim community activist who have been a crime victim many in the city, and whose peers (cabdrivers, store owners, etc…) are victimized on a daily bases by criminal elements in our neighborhoods, my visible public safety advocacy does not obviously sit well with some of the Muslim leaders in New York, who erroneously deem me naïve or sold out. May Allah (SW) guide us! Long live unity.
Sheikh Moussa Drammeh, Chairman,
Islamic Cultural Center of North America.
Publisher,
Muslim Community Report Newspaper