Following up on the issue of religion and cultural appropriation, I found a Persian livejournal blogger who wrestles with the question: How do you all feel about white American folks wanting to participate in spiritual/cultural things that are not their own?
5 comments:
See, my thing is, ALL cultures are appropriations and mishmashes of other cultures, so getting mad at cultural appropriation is kind of pointless. If White girls wanna wear Saris, that doesn't bother me any more than Desi girls wearing jeans and raybans. The kids in her blog entry sound like pushy idiots, but that's 95% of anarchists for you (and I'm saying this as an anarchist).
Oh, by the way, I suggested a global muslim sports blog to Umar, to see if he was interested, you're another person I wouldn't mind having involved if you have any interest, you seem pretty eloquent and knowledgable on a lot of topics. Check his blog entry on baseball, comments section, for more details.
Umm Zaid
Maybe you should be careful abotu questioning the Iman of others. I see plenty of "born" Muslims who are not exactly holding their end up. There are plenty of black reverts too, who do things contrary to orthodox Islam (which, by the way, is not nessiscarily seperate from Sufism, something else you may want to avoid making blanket statements about). People only like attacking white reverts cos we're a safe target, I'm beginning to think. Plus, I've dealt with poverty and oppression, I didn't become a Muslim to experience it vicariously, thank you.
I'm generally happy to see vigorous discussion but this is starting to get personal folks. We should calm down some.
I would have to agree with da here, all cultures are exactly that.
the problem with many Muslims in particular is their idea that Islam is culturally exclusive to them as an ethnic group, and as such anyone that follows them in that is somehow appropriating something that is not theirs. Possible reasons for this: Maybe because those whose dislike such 'appropriation' are presenting their culture as Din, or really have no method of differentiating between the two because of their ignorance of the religion.
The problem of Muslim Identity is solved (by the above said people) not by learning Islam and practicing it, but by making culture part and parcel of the supposed Din you follow, thus you are never wrong.
With this having being typical of many immigrant and african-american communities, this method of problem solving has now transposed itself onto the small but growing white American Muslim community, by pseudo allegiance to some sort of quasi-Balkan-Turkish contingent or even wilder claims of the ancient druids being a pre-Islamic period Islamic group, and thus Muslims of European descent are somehow re-claiming their lost Islamic history, and (thank God!) instead of being the spawn of hell, can actually claim to be "real" Muslims now having found themselves a medieval link.
I am applying this here as muslims, why? becuase Allah gave us religion which is principle based, unlike ethnic, socio-economic and culture based religions before Islam.
so enough ranting, but you all may find this write-up interesting as it somewhat connects to the topic
Emulation
of Non-Arabs in their dress
Notes
on Emulation of Non-Arabs in their dress
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