“How do we talk about Islam,” begins with the question of how to define an entire religious
tradition.
For scholars like myself “Islam” is not a thing, an object, with borders and properties
that can be measured and weighed.
For us, “Islam,” is the collection of all things that Muslims have said or done
over time; just as “Christianity,” is the collection of all things that Christians
have said or done over time.
Any person, speaking from within their tradition, has the right to define that tradition.
This means that Christians have the right to say, “Christianity is x” and Muslims
have the right to say, “Islam is y.”
My challenge, as a scholar, is to recognize the incredible diversity of Muslims, and their
experiences and voices, both today and throughout history.
Muslims today live on every continent.
Most media coverage related to Muslim peoples focuses on a vague part of the world called
the “Middle East,” which sometimes includes North Africa and parts of Central Asia, depending
on who you ask.
Within this region, people often confuse the terms “Muslim” and “Arab.”
“Arab” refers to an ethnic identity related to people who speak Arabic as a native language.
While many Arabs are Muslims, others are Christian, or Jewish, or members of religious minorities
such as Druze, Baha’i, and Yazidi.
And just as not all people living in the Middle East are Muslim, many are not Arab either.
Most people living in Turkey identify as Turkish, while most people living in Iran identify
as Persian and speak a language called Farsi.
Still other communities identify as Kurdish or Berber.
In contrast, “Muslim,” refers to a religious identity and Muslims can be of any ethnic,
racial, or national background.
Although most Americans think of Muslims as living in the Middle East, the largest populations
of Muslims today live in Asia, including South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh and East Asian countries like Indonesia.
My own research focuses on the history of Muslim communities living in West Africa.
We have evidence for the presence of Muslims in this region from as early as the eleventh
century, and there may have been communities of Muslims in East Africa as early as the
seventh or eighth centuries.
Today, there are Muslims in almost all African countries, and around thirty percent of all
Africans are Muslims.
Because Muslims have been living in Africa for over a thousand years, some of the enslaved
Africans brought to the Americas during the era of the slave trade were Muslims.
When Great Britain and France abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, many
more Muslims were still brought to the Americas forcibly as indentured laborers.
The descendants of these enslaved and indentured Muslims continue to live in the Americas today.
In the United States, many Black Americans became Muslim during the early twentieth century,
including famous figures such as Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.
In 1965, Congress made immigration quotas based on national origin illegal and as a
result many more Muslims came to live in the United States during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Many of the American-born children and grandchildren of these immigrants are going to college with
you now.
Because of this incredible diversity of Muslim backgrounds, experiences, and voices, scholars
like myself do not recognize one overarching expression of “Islam” or what it means
to be Muslim.
A Muslim living in China might answer the question, “What is Islam?” in a way very
different from someone living in Kenya, someone living in Trinidad, or someone living in France.
Even within one country, Muslims of different ethnic, racial, or class backgrounds – or
simply of different personalities - might define their religion very differently from
one another.
As a scholar, I choose not to take sides.
I do not recognize any of these definitions as more or less accurate, or more or less
“true.”
For me, Islam is a vast, never-ending collection of voices and experiences.
And this position has consequences – particularly for how we talk about “Islam.”
Students and friends often ask me questions such as, “what does Islam say about x?”
But “Islam,” can’t “say” anything – for Islam does not speak with one voice.
As a society, I think we will have more productive conversations if we rephrase our questions
to ask, “what do Muslims say…?”
This may seem like a minor detail, a nit-picking point – it is not.
Making this change moves discussions away from large, undefined, and abstract concepts
and begins to refocus our attention on people – on actual human lives.
Focusing on people is always a powerful move, and hopefully it will give us, at the very
least, a place to begin.