Is THEM Guilty of Shirk? - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

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28:88 "And call not, besides Allah, on another god. there is no god but He. Everything (that exists) will perish except His own Face. To Him belongs the Command, and to Him will ye (all) be brought back. 35:3 "O men! Call to mind the grace of Allah unto you! Is there a creator, other than Allah, to give you sustenance from heaven or earth? There is no god but He: How then are ye deluded away from the Truth?" 40:62 "Such is Allah, your Lord, the Creator of all things, there is no god but He: Then how ye are deluded away from the Truth!" 47:19 "Know, therefore, that there is no god but Allah, and ask forgiveness for thy fault, and for the men and women who believe: for Allah knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes." Sincerely, Mubaashir Uqdah 2.] Dr Wesley Muhammad - Response to Brother Mubaasir Uqdah‟s Review: Part I As-salaam Alaikum! I would like to first thank Bro Mubaashir Uqdah for the time he has taken to carefully view my lecture and write an in-depth and reasonably fair review of it. I respect his scholarship and representation of our brother, the late Imam W.D. Mohammed. I have equal respect for the scholarship and representation of Imam Salim Mu‘min and Imam Benjamin Bilal. These erudite brothers come to mind when I reflect on a recent experience I had with the Honorable Minister Farrakhan, whom I follow and of whom I am a student. This past July I was among those fortunate enough to join Brother Minister Farrakhan for dinner at the National House in Chicago, during which he shared with his guests, among other things, his desire to see his followers and the followers of Imām Wārrithuddīn come together as a unified community descendant from the spiritual loins of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (hereafter THEM). The Minister acknowledged that our claim that God is a man is the obstacle to this unity. Because members of the Imām‘s community tend to be more learned in the Arabic Islamic tradition and frequently engaged the Qur‘an and the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad (s) in the Arabic, they are convinced with most of the Muslim world of the theological error of this aspect of THEM‘s teaching of Islam, believing it to be nothing less than shirk (as Bro Salim and Bro Mubaashir have both affirmed). Being trained in Classical Arabic myself, however, and being inspired to go behind the ‗ulemaic‘ gatekeepers of Islamic tradition and straight to the Classical Arabic texts themselves, I happen to know that this conclusion by many in the Islamic world is based on a rather shallow engagement of the Classical Arabic sources and tradition. The theological interpretation of the Qur‘ān and Sunna that is held up as the criterion by which THEM‘s teaching is judged as shirk is in fact grounded less in the Arabic Qur‘ān and Sunna themselves but rather in non-Arabic (and even non-Islamic) ideas and interpretations that have accreted within Islam over the last several centuries and which today, ironically, merely pass as ‗true Islam‘. At several points in his review of my lecture Bro Mubaashir exhibited and relied upon this same shallow engagement of the Arabic sources. I thus did not find his conclusion surprising at all. Nevertheless, I share Bro Minister Farrakhan‘s desire and believe that, if we can engage the Classical Arabic sources together as brothers (and sisters), we might just be able to remove that obstacle to our collective unity once and for all. 12
In his review Bro Mubaashir displayed honorable attention to and patience with the arguments I laid out in the lecture, shunning the emotionalism and acrimonious speech that often characterizes this particular dialogue. For this I am grateful and I pray that I am found equally attentive, patient and levelheaded in this response. Bro Mubaashir hoped that I would find some benefit in his review; I certainly did. Despite the erudition exhibited in this review, however, there are three unfortunate trends that mar it and ultimately render his (counter-) arguments unpersuasive: 1.) the tendency to use straw-man arguments, where the straw-man is a mischaracterization of my position as articulated in that Philly lecture 2.) the tendency to juxtapose ―Dr Wesley‘s claims‖ on behalf of the Qur‘an with his claims, but passing the latter off as ‗what the Qur‘an actually says‘ rather than his own ideological, idiosyncratic reading of the Qur‘an and 3.) this conflation of the Qur‘an and his idiosyncratic reading of the Qur‘an is supported by the tendency to man-handle and thus mistranslate and misrepresent Qur‘anic verses and hadith statements. In these cases Bro Mubaashir tries to pass obvious eisegesis off as strict, non-sectarian exegesis (tafsir), which it simply is not 4.) Finally, there is in this review the noticeable tendency to misrepresent the Classical Arabic/Islamic Tradition in general in an attempt to claim prestigious precedent for his (and the Muslim world‘s today) very non-Semitic view of God. I cannot address every single point made by Bro Mubaashir- such a response would be long and tedious. I have to be selective (which even still may seem long and tedious). However, in Part II of this response I hope to address other matters, such as Surat al-Ikhlas [112] and Surat al-Shura [42]:11. I.] Misrepresenting the Classical Islamic Tradition Bro Mubaashir begins his review by echoing the sentiment of Bro Imam Salim Mu‘min that ―the only way Dr. Wesley's case proves that the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad are not guilty of shirk is if he changes the definition of the word shirk to something other than what it means.‖ This, Beloveds, is deflection. The problem is not at all our respective understandings of shirk: we three all agree that a mushrik is one who associates partners with Allah. The problem is our respective understandings of ―Allah‖ to whom no partners may be legitimately associated. We who adhere to the Islam taught to us by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad understand that Allah is a man – a divine man rather than a mortal man, but a man nonetheless. In my most recent book, ―Take Another Look: The Qur‘an, the Sunna, and the Islam of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,‖ I demonstrate that this understanding of Allah is absolutely consistent with the Qur‘an and Sunna when these are no longer read through the lens of al- Ghazzali and other non-Arab converts to Islam who rejected the Black Arabs to whom the message first came and their understanding of the religion. These non-Arab converts – particularly the Persians and Byzantines – introduced a new understanding of God and a peculiar way of reading the Qur‘an so as to locate this new God therein. I introduced this history in Philly and identified there the great Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855) as the champion of the Islam of the original Black Arabs against those who tried to de-Arabize the religion by (among other things) replacing the Semitic God of the Qur‘an with the Greek God of Hellenism. In my lecture (and book) I emphasized this Black Arab/White convert dichotomy in understanding Islam because the Prophet pointed it out. ―Zayd b. Aslam related that the Prophet (s) saw a vision and told his companions about it. He said: ―I saw a group of black sheep and a group of white sheep then mixed with them [until the white sheep became so numerous that the black sheep could no longer be seen in the herd of sheep.] I interpreted it to mean that [the black sheep are the Arabs. They will accept Islam and become many. As for the white sheep, they are the non-Arabs (i.e. Persians, Turks, Byzantines, ect.)] They will enter Islam and then share with you your wealth and your genealogy [and become so numerous that the Arabs will not be noticed amongst them.]‖ The Companions became surprised by what he (s) said. Then one said, ―The non-Arab Persians will enter our land, O‘ Messenger of Allah?!‖ The Prophet (s) then said, ―Yes. By He Who Has my soul in His Hand, 13
Page 1 and 2: Is THEM Guilty of Shirk? The Long O
Page 3 and 4: ARGUMENT 1 First, Dr. Wesley refers
Page 5 and 6: your Allah is one Allah. So stand t
Page 7 and 8: "He ran the race." "He ran up the b
Page 9 and 10: He adds to his case by saying that
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Page 17 and 18: came to the Prophet as a young man.
Page 19 and 20: Sunna is a formless, invisible God
Page 21 and 22: Salaam Bro Dr Wesley Muhammad 3.] D
Page 23 and 24: ―When the Prophet tells his peopl
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Page 29 and 30: When Imam Mubaashir stated; ―As a
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Page 35 and 36: secondary meaning ―He manifested
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Page 39 and 40: people say, ―He (God) is solid,
Page 41 and 42: ―Within the pages of the Holy Qur
Page 43 and 44: Salaam 12.] Kyle J. Ismail -Respons
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Page 47 and 48: To negate an act of the past we may
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Page 51 and 52: which He bestowed on Mary, and a sp
Page 53 and 54: After all, how could we believe thi
Page 55 and 56: things, whoever says any of which,
Page 57 and 58: We are all familiar with the Greek
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different opinions between the Saha
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the sociological enigma of the mode
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23.] Imam Salim Mu‟min Response t
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Is THEM Guilty of Shirk? - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

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