Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Part 3)

I recommend reading the full article, particularly if you're interested in the topic specifically or the growth of Islam in America in general.

Highlights (Part 3):

Times change, and viable cultures adapt. It was a matter of consensus among Islamic legal thinkers that the legal judgments of earlier times had to be brought under constant review to insure that they remained in keeping with the times. A standard legal aphorism declared: “Let no one repudiate the change of rulings with the change of times.” By the same token, Islamic legal consensus renounced mechanical application of the law through unthinking reiteration of standard texts.

Even when [Ibn Batuta's] travels took him as far afield as the heart of China, the Indian Ocean islands, and sub-Saharan Africa, he generally felt at home. Despite their distinctive local color, the Muslim societies he witnessed reflected traditional Islam’s cultural instinct for balancing regional diversity
within the overriding framework of the revealed law’s transcendental unity.

The ancient Islamic culture of ethnic Chinese Muslims (the Hui) is especially instructive for us in America today, since it flourished within the confines of a consummately brilliant non-Muslim civilization. Chinese Muslim culture empowered the Hui psychologically, allowing them to maintain a unified sense of self, take interpretative control of their faith, and work out an authentic Islamic self-definition, which was at once authentically Muslim but open to the Chinese ethos around them.

Like others, Swahili-speaking Muslims took pride in classical Arabic, cultivated it fully, and gave it deserved prominence, especially in the teaching and recitation of the Qur’an. But they carefully employed Swahili for all religious knowledge and other cultural purposes, creating a Swahili intelligentsia throughout the coastal rim, which caught Ibn Ba~‰~a’s attention during his visit. To be a Muslim in East Africa meant to master the Swahili tongue, take on Swahili Muslim culture, and enter into “Swahilidom” ("Uswahili").

These folktales were ancient, sometimes dating back to the Neolithic period, thousands of years before Christ. Consequently, they contained creation myths and cosmologies imbued with animistic values and beliefs. Instead of rejecting the tales, Muslims retold them by adopting Auta (“the baby of the family”), a primary character who, like the Lion King, is typically the object of envy but ultimately wins out over his enemies by virtue of basic goodness, blessing, and good fortune. They transformed “the baby of the family” into an Islamic cultural hero, who constituted a role model, represented Islamic norms, and helped pioneer the construction of an integrated vision of an indigenous West African Muslim culture.

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