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Being white, muslim, and American – a great debate a couple of years ago between bin Gregory and Umar Lee. Abu Noor makes an appearance in comment threads.
I sometimes feel like there’s an ocean of amazing debate out there in the Islamsphere that we are all too willing to forget about, and thus we often reinvent the wheel.
aziz 10:58 am on February 5, 2010 Permalink |
FWIW my take on the debate is that Umar made a key observation that “whiteness” is defined as who you aren’t more than who you are. In thta sense, “white” is no longer just a racial term, just like “African American” is no longer just a racial term (related debate: is Barack Obama an African American?). Race is just a lazy designation for tribe nowadays. It’s not such a far leap to discus Avatar from here…
And I think I have to agree that “being muslim” is definitely non-white, even if you are. That’s not to say that white privilege is erased upon conversion, but it may be probationary … see our own highly relevant debate about white privilege here at Talk Islam, which spun off into a guest post by Willow at COB.
(I wonder what the view of all this from across the Pond is. thabet, do we Americans seem more or less obsessed with race to you than Britishers?)
thabet 6:45 am on February 7, 2010 Permalink |
I think you just talk about it more.
We pretend that isn’t an issue any more.
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee 8:03 am on February 7, 2010 Permalink |
I think it is a real issue but I also think a large amount of the discussion about race in America is inane and almost always focused on the least important aspects of the issue, which really bothers me.
willow 1:33 pm on February 7, 2010 Permalink |
Yup.
bingregory 8:18 am on February 9, 2010 Permalink |
Thanks for the link. I’m on vacation with the parents at the moment – just checking in. That post is in the top five most frequently visited pages on my site, fwiw, so I hope it’s of some benefit to somebody.