The High School Halaqa Begins

We don't have to organize religion. But we do have to share religion.

We’re now over a month into the high school halaqa. This year, I’ve got just over two dozen students. I’ve split the young women and men into separate classes, no matter whether they’re sophomores or seniors. Over the last three years, I’ve learned the more collaborative each class, the more invested the students will feel.

That’s not the only thing I’ve learned. With high schoolers, actively figuring out what Islam means to them, we’re wasting our time (or we’re not very imaginative) if we’re trying to force-feed a rigid curriculum. They already have enough of that in school anyway. How have these learnings shaped this year’s halaqa?

Welcome to Week One (of the Rest of Your Lives)

Last summer, I meticulously planned out the fall (2023) and spring (2024) semesters. In the fall, we’d read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, watch the Spike Lee film, and explore some of the story of American Islam. In the spring, coinciding with Ramadan, we’d focus on Imam al-Ghazali and specifically the concept of tawakkul. Except the world interrupted.

Our fall semester turned into a kind of haphazard back-and-forth, frequently bouncing from Malcolm X to what Israel was doing to Gaza and the awful enthusiasm of the Biden administration for the indiscriminate killing of civilians. It was a jarring moment. As the semester was winding down, I knew the spring would go differently. We did talk about tawakkul, of course.

But we also talked a lot more about Palestine, about our responsibilities as American Muslims, and that nuanced, flexible approach, bringing together religion, tradition, history, community, culture and politics seemed to work well. On a few occasions, we had debates and conversations that stretched well over the allotted hour, with all the students enthusiastically and eagerly participating.

What does it mean to be a teacher?

Of course, I must direct our learning. I must also step back when appropriate and encourage them to wade in. Teaching students as they grow older is developing the art of backing off with increasing regularity, until they’re equal participants in the conversation. That’s not to say I’m not leading. When it’s helpful, I offer them resources, ideas, and of course criticism and broader perspective.

But they must feel like the conversation is me talking with them, not at them. They must feel the halaqa is me talking them with me, not putting them through the motions. The upperclassmen are more confident, which makes sense, so I give them more space to develop their ideas. Too, I want the 9th and 10th graders to see that developing knowledge and perspective makes you more capable of contributing.

I certainly don’t believe only one set of voices can speak. But I also don’t believe we get to say whatever we want without qualifications.

Which is why this summer, and speaking of tawakkul, I decided we’d do a lot more with a lot less planned in advance. I selected a deceptively simple frame and would then fill it out week-by-week, my overarching goals nuanced by what was happening in our classes, in our lives, and in the other halaqas. If you’re planning a halaqa, reflect on this as well. Don’t take on more than you know you’ll need in advance.

Start with a basic point. Help them understand it. Then think through how to apply it. Think of your halaqa, in other words, as an explanatory framework. As you accumulate more data, it develops. As you receive feedback, you might remove, emphasize or amend. That’s healthy—that’s how we live. That’s how we grow. And that’s definitely how we should teach.

Kama Qala’ Raīs Bill Clinton

President Bill Clinton once said that there was nothing wrong with America that couldn’t be fixed with what’s right with America. That’s actually a very powerful frame, which illuminates how America as a country (should) rest on ideas and values accessible to all of us. Can we say the same about Islam and how we live as Muslims—is our faith really participatory and empowering?

Or is it intimidating and off-putting?

A healthy belief system is like a democracy—it should have meaningful checks and balances. A dangerous belief system is like a cult (or a dictatorship; is there a difference?)—it brooks no meaningful criticism. Islam, of course, is not a political ideology or a country. But since the passing of the blessed Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, Islam has not been univocal.

Islam cannot be. To believe as much, to believe — as the Taliban, or the governments of Saudi Arabia or Iran propose, that there authority is practically unassailable — is to violate one of the most vital components of our faith. There is one God and no more Prophecy after the Messenger, Muhammad, peace be upon him. When the blessed Prophet passed, Abu Bakr (may God be pleased with him) took charge.

He was esteemed as one of the best people to have ever lived, a beautiful, saintly soul, promised paradise, the best friend and father-in-law of the Prophet, peace be upon him. And yet what did he say? Follow me when I follow God and the Prophet (peace be upon him)—meaning, in other words, that all Muslims had to aspire to a standard beyond themselves (and that no Muslim, even a Caliph, is immune from criticism).

Can we empower our young Muslims to see how Islam is meant to be that way? Can we help them grow into mature Muslims who understand that responsibly upholding this faith means learning this faith to contribute to its flourishing, that responsible religiosity means respecting the wisdom, integrity, and dynamism of faith, which reassures us when we are down but restrains us should we rise too high?

An unhealthy culture excuses the excesses, belligerence, or privilege of an elite; a healthy one points out we all have obligations and rights, and our common religious language is meant to help us live up to both of these. I want my halaqas to be a part of finding their way into this responsibility. If you want to be part of a conversation, you have to know how to speak.

To speak, you have to know the language.

The Four Terms

Of course, on week one, I didn’t tell them all of that. We started with a du’a, did introductions (one new girl this year), and then we jumped in. I gave them four terms. Some of them struggled with these at first, but I’m truly proud of how quickly they’ve internalized these and organically applied them in class.

An explanatory framework is like a hypothesis, a theory or a conjecture about how to make sense of the world we live in. An explanatory framework that is immune to evidence, that operates according to shifting rules, that resists a common language (and therefore is open to debate), and that creates unfair hierarchies around who can and can’t participate in the conversation isn’t much of an explanatory framework. It might actually be a conspiracy theory or magical thinking.

At first, this might not have made too much sense.

So I re-introduced this term to them through a question: Why is our government so uncritically supportive of the war on Gaza? If the answer we come up with is, “because America hates Arabs,” or “because America hates Muslims,” then I asked why America has criticized China for the Uyghur genocide, criticized Myanmar for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, or why America, under President Clinton, went to war with Serbia on behalf of Bosnian Muslims.

Who were also suffering a genocide. If you can’t back up an explanatory framework with evidence—well, then you have a problem.

Of course, explanatory frameworks can clash. We can and must debate them! But if we don’t have explanatory frameworks, we live in chaos—which doesn’t mean we’re free to do what we want. A world without shared language, without shared values, without shared faith, would mean a world where the strong exploit the weak without the weak having any recourse. That’s bad for the weak, of course.

It’s also bad for the strong—if we aren’t ever corrected, we accumulate sins until we die and then have to answer for them. There’s an aside here on how humans, being social animals, require social frameworks. Explanatory frameworks are fundamentally collective constructs, which doesn’t mean they don’t reference reality beyond ourselves. They just have to be something we can all share in.

Next, assumption.

An assumption in this case is something we rely on when we make an argument, or say create an explanatory framework, but which we need to prove in order for the explanatory framework to stand. If I say America suffers gun violence because more and more American kids grow up playing violent video games, there’s an assumption here. I’d have to prove a link between violent video games and actual violence.

Is there such a link? How do we know? Might there be another, better explanation? What about cases where there are violent video games but little violence? And would there be no real violence without playing at violence?

Then we talked about causation—what actually brings about an outcome. I twinned this with epiphenomena, events or processes or realities that don’t bring about an outcome (but might seem to be connected.) We can go back to video games here, or try something a little closer to everyday experience.

If your very little sibling is crying over the color of the new couch cushions at 9:30pm, we might be safe in assuming he’s exhausted and just needs to go to bed. In that case, your new purchase might be epiphenomenal—unrelated to the issue at hand, superficially connected, but ultimately meaningless, having no real explanatory force.

But if he napped or ordinarily sleeps late, then there may be a causal link between his crying and the couch cushions.

Some folks of a more materialist persuasion present religion as epiphenomenal: People don’t actually act on beliefs about God and the sacred. These beliefs mask desires for power, fears of change, or other, ultimately material forces, which suffice to explain the reasons things are the way they are.

Think Marxism (religion is the opiate of the masses).

Some folks make material causes, in turn, epiphenomenal—larger prejudices, biases, or beliefs somehow unchanged or unaffected by changing material conditions suffice to explain the world we live in. We get ethnic nationalism, racism, and religious supremacism out of those kinds of explanatory frameworks.

Such rigid frameworks make it impossible to articulate ways we might intervene to bring about better outcomes in addition to actually bringing about bad outcomes. What I mean to say is, explanatory frameworks can be accurate or inaccurate. They can also be empowering and moral, or immoral and paralyzing.

As you can tell, there’s a lot here.

Certainly enough for an entire year’s worth of halaqas. But that doesn’t mean every week’s class has to be planned out in advance, that if we miss one step on the curriculum, the entire thing falls to pieces.

The Weeks Ahead

I don’t believe we should crudely compartmentalize halaqas—the skills we learn should make us better students, better citizens, better neighbors, better people. We should equally be able to apply our professional insights into our religious life, where appropriate. (If I run a business according to professional standards, shouldn’t the masjid accounts be held to an equally if not more rigorous metric?)

I want my students to develop critical thinking skills that’ll help them sniff out nonsense a mile away, whether that’s a religious leader selling spiritual snake oil or a candidate making offensive excuses for a vile foreign policy. These same critical thinking skills are equally necessary if we want to be constructively creative, becoming more meaningfully religious individually and together.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share how we built on these terms to understand our faith’s historic trajectory (for example, why do we have madhhabs?), appreciate why organized religion is necessary (an ethical framework that can’t be shared can’t also be a resource for resistance, criticism, and progress), how we talk about Islam in mainstream spaces—and because I’m giving them a project.

In collaboration with a major Muslim philanthropy, they’re going to work over the coming weeks and months to identify the greatest challenge (or opportunity!) facing American Muslims. Working in groups, they’re going to design a campaign, advertise a campaign, and run a campaign to raise money (over Ramadan) to support this cause. Because they should learn how to build in this way.

They should enter college knowing how to debate priorities, think through possibilities, and follow through with policies and practices. I don’t want them to just know what an explanatory framework is, after all. I want them to understand how our beliefs can translate into actions, how actions can help us modify perspectives and strategies, and to know how to do this collaboratively.

With the added caveat that, because there will be two groups of boys and two groups of girls, unanimity is not and cannot be a requirement. At the very least, they should be able to handle diversity. They should also begin to see how competing approaches might also amplify our values and bring about better collective outcomes.

Elsewhere and Otherwise

New York magazine published a powerful essay about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book, The Message. On arriving in Israel, Coates was immediately struck by the obvious parallels between Jim Crow and the occupation, ethnic hierarchy, and apartheid Israel has required from its inception. You cannot after all build a country on someone else’s land without an explanatory framework that justifies, excuses, and obfuscates.

I encourage you all to pre-order the book, as I did; I would also encourage you to likewise advance order Peter Beinart’s next book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. I admire that moral courage and hope we share it; for my part, I’ve tried to write clearly and honestly about the ways in which Muslims excuse oppression and injustice (and sometimes through Islam!)

All people do. Explanatory frameworks are inevitably subverted by those with base intention or, absent criticism, can subvert us. Indeed, the explanatory framework I provide my students, rooted in years of learning and studying Islam, is intended to guard against such outcomes, when we pursue injustice because we believe our needs exceed the rights and dignity of others.

We as Muslims must never believe our practice of the faith is equal to the faith; our religion is bigger than us, none of us can ever equal the blessed Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and through sincere and intelligent engagement with revelation and tradition, we can and must check ourselves. We may not always agree—and through that our faith is stronger. Not to mention that is how God designed our faith.

And that is what we answer for.

If you’d like to learn more about how this framework shapes American Muslims, and how American Muslim life affects what I’m teaching, you have a chance to do so in-person on Thursday, October 3rd. At 4pm that afternoon, I’ll be speaking at Indiana University (Bloomington campus). E Pluribus Unum will be a conversation about American Islam that’s free and open to the public.

There will also be events reserved for IU students. Find out more here—and come through if you can, it’d be great to see you!