Here's a link to today's featured article on Racialicious:

The Muslim Ummah is One Ummah Without Regard to Race, Origin Or Color *
Rolling Ruminations has hosted a blog carnival** on White Privilege and the Muslim Ummah.. As regular readers know, it gets kind of heavy around here when we start discussing the intersection of race and religion. True to form, the carnival featured a range of opinions." ...

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* ummah is an Arabic word that means "people"; "the Muslim community"

** in this context "carnival" means a presentation of a variety of brief essays with different points of view

-snip-

Racialicious provides excerpts from several of the guest articles as well as comments from its blog readers. Because a hyperlink to the original blog is provided, Racialicious readers may chose to visit the original blog to read all of the featured essays and any comments that might be posted on that blog.

Most of the articles that I read expressed the opinion that within Muslim communities in the USA there appears to be a preference for White converts to Islam and prejudice against Black or darker skinned Muslims (either African American converts to Islam or Muslims who were born in East Africa or West Africa).

Here are two reader comments about this topic:


1. Abu Sinan wrote:

This is an issue that is often covered in the American Muslim community.

Umar Lee, a well known white convert to Islam and blogger has stated that a white converting to Islam is tantamount to "apostating from the white race".

I am very mixed on that statement, as bin Gregory said, when a white person converts to Islam they dont loose their white skin and the perks that come with that.

But then it gets murky from there. Because I convert to Islam does that mean I must give up my white/European culture? No more Goethe, Heine or Schiller? I cannot drink a non alcoholic beer during October Fest?

And, unless one has a long beard, wears a kuffiyah (skullcap) and changes their name, a white Muslim isnt even easily identifiable anyways. Again, as bin Gregory says, more often than not the white guy with a long beard will be seen as weird, or here in Northern Virigina, just someone who has driven in from the rural areas outside of the Metro DC area.

There is also the issue of white privledge in the Muslim community itself. I have been put out as the "token white guy" so many times it makes me sick. They dont want to put forward the guy with the beard, the lady with hijab or the PoC convert because of all of the stereotypes that go with that. They want to put out the white convert because it says "hey, we're normal, we even get regular Americans (as Archy Bunker would say) to convert".

However dont let this tokenism, proof of white privledge and stereotype fool you, but to the public the white convert ( or any American convert) is a nice image, but heaven forbid if you come knocking on their door to want to marry their daughter.

Heaven forbid, if as a white guy, you marry one of "their" country's women, because all bets are off.

This is a VERY complicated issue and diverts in many different directions on many different issues.

I also think, in this case, there is a big difference in the amount of privledge being white gets you depending on whether or not you are male or female.

White females will often have "born" Muslims fighting over them for marriage, whereas white Muslim men might find it MUCH harder to find a "born" Muslim mate. Even then it is complicated because some born Muslim women from certain groups are known to target white men for marriage. But in all of these cases the targeting or refusal are all often based on racial stereotypes of the white man or white female.

Ie, white men are easy to control. Umar Less, again, has talked about how many North African women, and Arab women in general, look for white converts because they can make them "hen pecked". Of course gaining immigration status is an issue for both white men and women.

White women are often seen as gulible, easy (a factor that can work for or against the woman) and less demanding than "born Muslim" women.

You cold do 30,000 words on this subject and still not cover everything.

Posted 29 May 2009 at 10:34 am ¶

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10. Sobia wrote:

@Abu Sinan:

Agreed. There is an immense amount of racism within the global Muslim community not all of which can be blamed on post-colonial realities. There appears to be a blend of racism and religious bigotry.

I've heard comments such as "Pakistanis don't know Islam" or "those Black Muslims aren't really Muslim."

Skin colour/ethnicity/nationality gets tied in with piety.

Posted 30 May 2009 at 1:32 pm ¶

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/05/29/link-love-the-white-privilege-the-ummah-carnival/#comments