Transformative Integration, Not Assimilation

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

    In their fear of an Islamophobic onslaught that has made detainment camps for American Muslims and the nukeing of Makkah legitimate topics for polite discussion, some Muslims are debating whether they should flee America or at least assimilate by no longer practicing their religion. 

    A difficult but more Islamic response would be to integrate into American society by bringing the best of Islam and the best of America together in order to fulfill the vision of the Preamble to the American Constitution, which called for peace, prosperity, and freedom through the interfaith harmony of transcendent and compassionate justice.

    There is no escape from oppression and death in any physical sense, so that hijra (to move from one place to another) in a material sense will not solve any problems and would merely change the venue or location of our vulnerability to oppression.  Assimilation clearly can never be an option for any person on a religious path because it would mean spiritual suicide, which is an unforgivable sin.  The best response to overwhelming evil, therefore, whether it comes from terrorists or counter-terrorists or counter-counter-terrorists, is to transform ourselves as the only means to transform the world.

    Certainly we can and should work to transform the unjust institutions of the world, as well as to lesson the injustices that result from them, but these efforts can never succeed in any meaningful way except through the cumulative efforts of individual persons to change themselves, so that the power of God can work through them in ways that we may not even be able to understand.

    This does not mean that individual Muslims should not physically move to a better environment than America is right now, as tens of thousands of Muslims have already done during the past decade.  This means only that such hijra will not adequately address the real challenges, which are spiritual and can be met only within the environment where we find ourselves.

    We cannot escape evil, but we can overcome it by being the persons that God created us to be.  Most Muslims in America were born here, so being Americans is part of our being. To be an American means to follow one’s own religious path as a catalyzing force to bring out the best of America as a model of justice, tranquility, prosperity, and freedom for the world.  The spiritual hijra of which Jeremy Henzell Thomas has spoken is a means to the self-transformation that may be possible only by remaining where we already are.