A Blues Jihad

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Listening to the musical genius of the late Yusef Lateef takes us to a blues place.  The complexity of notes, innovative compositions, Lateef blended soul-stirring sounds from all over the world…blues sounds if you will, translated to what he called 'autophysiophsychic' music.  In his masterful sonnets you can hear the blues of Arabia, Africa, Brazil, Asia and America.  His musical lane covered most of the suffering world as his Blues found existential harmony with theirs. The world has always found a common language in the blues of struggle and music.  Music scores across hues and ideologies landing on the spirit of humanity…this is where we find the Blues.  This isn’t an ode to the 'Gentle Giant' but a reflection of the Muslim women and men of his generation who weren't afraid to express their Blues and triumphed in a bipolar world.

To borrow Cornel West’s contextualization of the Blues, catastrophe and struggle lies within the quiet beats of the Blues.  In other words, out of struggle, pain, agony and despair of living with one's 'back against the wall', the Blues is born, bearing testimony to atrocity while applying comfort and perspective to the pain-filled disciple.  This Blues, popularized through African-American music, has roots everywhere there is struggle, it is the elixir of the sufferer, activating them on a spiritual journey, confronting their struggles and finding resolve through compassion.  As the Blues teaches many lessons, there’s an important message for a group of people who culturally rarely partake of its musical feast…Muslims.

The term for struggle in Islam is Jihad.  Like the Blues, it is the struggle against the catastrophic.  Oppression, poverty, abuse, sin are all catastrophic events affecting the body-spirit and community.  Islam teaches its disciples to combat the evils with compassion and prayer.  To uplift and correct the spirit through reflection and community transformation.  Like the Blues, Jihad speaks to and speaks out against injustice to the body-spirit and humanity while covering both with peace and love.

You see, Islam means Peace and Jihad is its Blues song.  Have you ever witnessed a Muslim Bluesman or Blueswoman recite al-Fatiha in prayer? Like any great Blues song, the first verse draws the supplicant in as the disciple's somber tones reflects the difficulties of the day and pains of the community.  By the 2^nd verse (rakaa), the disciple has transported the congregation to the foot of the Creator, crying a Blues hymn for himself and the community, begging for relief and peace from a world filled with catastrophe.  

The Blues is the yang of Jihad, without it, Jihad becomes chillingly misconstrued and out of balance.  If Muslims learn from a Bluespeople who have suffered with perseverance, revolted with compassion and exercised liberation with inclusion and forgiveness then perhaps Islam could become a 'gentle giant' in the world.  A faith fighting against the catastrophic with love and compassion...a Blues Jihad.   

Mipsterz; A call for Acceptance or Freedom

Hipster Muslims are nothing new.  I was raised surrounded by Muslims who were the hippest folk around.  In the 70’s it was nothing to see Muslim men in leather coats, kufis, dashikis and dark glasses walking with a lean and Muslim women in heels and afros with nose rings draped in colorful garb, scarves and hijabs included.  American Muslims have always been hip with social and spiritual swag.  As with every generation there’s a reinvention of what was, a neo-defining of the past…the old Muslim cool is now Muslim hipsters or Mipsterz. 

There’s already been a ton of talk on the Mipsterz video so I won’t describe its contents but let’s just say if you haven’t seen it see it. Visually it’s stunning; socially it’s thought-provoking depicting the humanity of Muslim women.  Muslim diversity is what’s in the ring not Islam the faith. There also seems to be a deeper message, a latent cry for freedom, more than acceptance by the majority and popular, but an underlying message to Muslim families that our women are still wrestling with equality.

The humanness of Muslims makes us as different as snowflakes.  Allah(swt) created us with a variety of styles, looks, colors, views, likes, ideas, etc. so how could we be expected to constrict our community to a monolithic Muslim identity. What would that monolithic identity dress like, talk like, look like.   Should it be like Afghan women under Taliban jurist or like the American Muslim artist Me’shell Ndegeochello (Suhaila Bashir-Shakur).  

Ok, I probably lost some Muslim readers by now but seriously, what amazes me is a faith that has touted the freedom and equality of women for over 1400 years is still embattled with the role and position of women within its own community.  Like Plessey v. Ferguson, separate but equal, African-Americans were legally free and equal but socialized inequalities resulted in Jim Crow rules and years of social oppression and discrimination.  I wrestle with the fact that in too many cases, Muslim women have been given a ‘bad check’ under the notion of ‘equality’ under various interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence.  I’m not a jurist, a scholar or even a wanna-be Imam, neither is this an exegesis on Quran but as a born and bred Muslim I bear witness to the mask we wear when addressing equality. We can’t equal the playing field because we’re playing on the same field.

Whatever side you are on, whether you agree that a Muslim woman should be viewed publically or not, we as Muslims have to take a serious listen to the rumblings in our community for the salvation of our community. What’s interesting, we already know Muslim women like this so why the shock and divisiveness…it’s the mask that Paul Laurence Dunbar describes in his famed poem ‘We Wear the Mask’ or as Jaz Z raps in the soundtrack, “New money, they looking down on me, Blue bloods they trying to clown on me, you can turn up your nose high society, Never gone turn down the homie”.  Muslimahs, let the haters hate, look down on you and clown you but know that they can’t turn you down…only the One that create you wears the Crown.  Blaze a path so the ones to follow know, not that it’s cool to be Muslim but it’s cool to be themselves while keeping their faith.

#Mipsterz