After I moved here, I resolved to make myself useful. I wanted to get to know people, especially the people my new family knew. I wanted to channel my interests. I thought it was the right thing to do. And I’d lacked for a community in New York. But it occurred to me, after talking to local folks, that it was presumptuous of me to propose X, Y, or Z ways to help, even if I could do X, Y, or Z well.
Wouldn’t it be more respectful and more thoughtful to ask what, if anything, the community needed?
As if to test my resolve, I received this response to my queries from the leadership of the local masjid, the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati:
“Can you give a khutbah?” (That’s the Friday sermon.)
The problem was, I’d sworn off giving khutbahs long since. Sure, I’d done them, years before (and for years), but that was because there were so few folks available back then; in the interim, I’d grown increasingly uncomfortable with the role. I didn’t like that giving khutbahs led people to think of me as a religious authority. Which I wasn’t.
But then my wife—when marrying, look for someone who lovingly speaks truthfully to you—pointed out that maybe I was being unnecessarily rigid. The community knew what it needed, after all, and not me, who’d been here all of less than a year. If you want to help, she said, and then they tell you how to help, well—listen.
And since the halaqa was already on my mind, and specifically the five whys from last week, I thought that maybe I should give a khutbah—and the khutbah that resulted, that follows, is the halaqa’s first lesson, on the importance of knowledge, the need for each of us to pursue knowledge, and the unexpected ways that knowledge protects us.
I will say, of all the khutbahs I’ve given, this one meant the most.
The khutbah begins at 06:55.
N.B. Near the end, I mention the advice and insight of a new friend, who described what confidence meant to him. Just some days back, this friend’s father, Dr. Rasheed Ghani, passed away. Among his many legacies includes this wonderful Muslim community. Please pray the Ghani family have strength and comfort in this difficult time, for Dr. Ghani to have ease now, and for all of them to be reunited in paradise.
With respect to the khutbah itself, my wife attended, along with Ammi-in-law and Abu-in-law, as well as Z and R, but F had club soccer and couldn’t make it. Wonderfully, though, later that day she gave me a gift in honor of the occasion, which turned out to be the toy from a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Marvin the Martian, specifically. Space Jam. It’s the thought that counts.1
Sunday Schooled You
I’ll be speaking at Seattle’s eLimmud 2022—that’s a virtual event—on Sunday, January 16th, on a topic inspired by Sunday Schooled: Faith, Family, Flyover Country. You’ll have to register to watch; considering their impressive lineup, that’s a great idea.2
The book tour is starting to come together, too! I’ll be in Philadelphia—in-person, God willing—on Thurs., May 19th, 2022, at the Free Public Library. Specifics will be shared shortly, so watch this space.
If you’d like to organize an event in your area, let me know.3
Sharing is Caring
Before leaving you this week, I wanted to pass along some articles, resources, and other items I found uplifting, intriguing, engaging, or outright urgent. There’s lots here to think about and build into the work we’re all doing. Starting with a point I made in the khutbah above.
Namely, this new generation of Americans is the least traditionally religious we’ve ever seen. As if to underscore the point, Pew reports that the decline of American Christianity continues apace. Whether you think that’s a good or bad thing, it’s still a significant change in the world our kids are inheriting.4
Elsewhere…
Daniel Cox—check out his American Storylines on Substack—presents “the ten most compelling charts and figures in American life in 2021.” These include the finding that an astonishing fifteen percent of American men say they have zero close friends, or that, although the more educated are less likely to believe in God, they’re also more likely to belong to a church than those with less formal education.
Is being raised evangelical “a uniquely terrible tribulation”?
Journalist Gary Rosenblatt (he’s on Substack, too!) shares a fascinating resource for (Jewish) grandparents to build (Jewish) connections with their (Jewish) grandchildren. Since many Muslims (spoiler alert: this one too) live in multi-generational households, and many more Muslims are living longer and longer, this is a wonderful project.
I hope someone builds a Muslim iteration, if someone hasn’t already. (Do tell.)
Think your kid is badly behaved? Instead of berating yourself, Melinda Moyer suggests thinking about things differently. They’re acting out not because you failed as a parent, she contends—but because you succeeded.
Sometime soon, I want to watch The Book of Eli with F and Z. Yeah, it’s NSFW—check out Common Sense Media for more (and check them out generally)—but it’s another great instance of religion in popular culture. (If you don’t know it by now, I see faith, piety, and spirituality everywhere.5)
And since it is break, and we’re looking for things to do, may I recommend Netflix’s three-season reboot of Lost in Space? It’s honestly one of the few mainstream offerings we felt was appropriate and interesting for all three (aged nine through fifteen).
If you’re looking for things to read for yourself, here’s a few recommendations:
Did Don Quixote long for Muslim Spain?
In Girl Meets God, Lauren Winner describes her journey from Judaism to Christianity. It’s a finely composed, often elegant, frequently thoughtful but never overwhelming read. The book has been out for years, though sadly I had not heard of it until receiving Dr. Claire Sufrin’s recommendation; she assigns it on her syllabus. (Alongside, I am touched to say, my memoir, How to be a Muslim: An American Story.)
On the other hand, Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, and Bliss is decidedly not the traditional page-turner. But it’s such an important work. If you’re at all philosophically or theologically inclined, or are yourself or know someone who is struggling substantively with belief, I cannot recommend a more concise, profound, stirring, and penetrating account of the nature of God, of our belief in Him, and His hand in the cosmos.
If I could give it six stars, I would.
They Said It Better
That brings us to gambling. Like debt, it was frowned upon and mostly banned. It was widely and correctly assumed that gambling led to criminality and was thus a social pathology to be avoided. But of course, it was also regarded in a long-standing Christian tradition as wrong in itself: money should not beget money. We could benefit from revisiting that perspective…
You are basically encouraging the poor to spend money in expectation of wealth, whereas the wealthy, even if they did choose to spend the same amount of money, would not feel the loss… British workers who perhaps have never been inside a theater or an opera or a ballet in their life are now subsidizing out of their proclivity for gambling the cultural activities of a tiny elite whose tax burden has been accordingly reduced.
Yet well within living memory the opposite applied: in the social democratic days of the 1940s and 1950s, it was the wealthy and the middle class who were taxed to ensure the availability of libraries and museums for everyone…
- Tony Judt, Thinking the Twentieth Century
Or, in the original Islamic: “Actions are by intentions.” (A Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.)
Is there any Muslim conference as ecumenical, broad-minded, open-ended, and thoughtful as Limmud? Please do tell.
Rumor has it, I give khutbahs.
What causes this is complicated—some of it is assuredly the result of external forces. Some of it must be ascribed to self-inflicted wounds. Whether, further, this is a positive or negative development (or both) depends, of course, on how you perceive organized faith. I am of the opinion that religiosity broadly can be of benefit; more narcissistically, that which afflicts one tradition will inevitably impinge upon others, including my own. And since religion can’t survive absent communities—well, there you have it.
Better than seeing dead people everywhere.
I like a lot the idea that people capable to speak to general public about Islam through lectures, books etc take in the same time the role of the person who gives hutbas. Hope you keep giving hutbas whenever you have something important to say to your local community and virtually to a larger community and help to extend that example in other muslim communities.