Article Five:
The Academy of American Islamic Literature and History
A needed project to assist in the preservation of Islam and Islamic history in America is an archival program. One such program is the one started by Sister Aminah McCloud (professor of Islamic Studies at Chicago's DePaul University). Having this archives is a necessary part of this program.
A necessary part of this documenting of our history is the preservation of early literature. I have done this by editing the papers of Muhammed Alexander Russell Webb. He was an early pioneer of the Islamic Movement in this country and was responsible for some of the first literature written by a convert to Islam, in English, explaining the faith. A biography of the founder of the American Islamic Nationalist Movement (the Moorish Science Temple) Noble Drew Ali is due to be published shortly and has also contributed to this documenting and preserving of our history.
Earlier writers need to be studied and have their life histories, writings and influences documented also. Allan Austin with his African Muslims in Antebellum America provided a great step in this direction. This early literature includes materials in Arabic and English. The material in Arabic varies from excerpts from the Qur'an to letters to autobiographies. Photos, material on Islam in other nations where persons immigrated from and oral family histories are other sources of documenting this history.
A more needed and important part of establishing an Islamic identity in America is that of the establishment of English as a medium to express ourselves Islamically. We can do this by: Islamization of the vocabulary of English; writing poetry, short stories and novels in English; and, by documenting our presence in America.
Besides the gathering of this history and development of an Islamized English literature, we also need to Islamisize our education system and a work on bi-lingual Islamic education was prepared recently for discussion of this issue. (see bibliography for details.) This work which you hold in your hands is a manual to aid Muslim journalists and writers who choose to use the English language medium to express themselves and to describe Islam. Our Muslim journalists and writers forced this writers hand into doing a work such as this even though so many of our Muslim writers claim proficiency in the English Language. These writers are extremely careless in their use of words (they use words incorrectly in both English and Arabic), they frequently misspell, their language is not as clear and concise as need be. Thus they do not put forth the message they seek to convey. Our writers also need to check the accuracy of their writing (dates, sources, etc.) and to use correct illustrations with their works.
The first goal of this project was to teach the correct use of Islamic terms (i.e. Muslim not Moslem and Bosnian not Yugoslavian). Another goal is to teach our Muslim youth where Muslim exist around the world and what their problems and difficulties are and to provide for the lessening of the ethnic blocks among Muslims.
As Muslims our first priority should perfection. Perfection in everything we do. When we write we should write clearly, straight forwardly, with purpose. We should not write in circles and our work should have both goal and purpose and have insight both in to the past and future and be relevant to the present situation.
Instead of focusing on the development of a Muslim community in this country we focus on the development of an immigrant community. Yet this immigrant community is not bi-lingual and most of the second and third generation tend to totally assimilate. We do not focus on the future. We focus on side issues such as the development of an American Madhhab. There is no such thing, nor is there a need for forsaking the madhhabs. This leads to confusion and opinions based on thin air. We need to use our experience from the past. We need to look at what our forefathers, here and overseas, wrote and said and use it as a guide for the future. If we talk about the development of Islamic law here, we have do so professionally and Islamically. We can not half-step nor can we sit around smoking water pipes and discussing politics. We can not make up fatwas out of thin air. Our work has to be exact and properly documented. Footnotes and bibliographies need to be through and accurate. They need to be double checked to make sure all books and articles are cited correctly down to the correct date and page numbers. When you write in English, you should write in English not in Pakistani English or Arabian English. As said above English can be Islamicized through writing on Islam in English, collecting writing of early Muslim American writers. Next we need to develop a program to study this genre. This will insure that the study of American and English Islamic Literature will be done in a systematic and Islamic manner and with a planned methodology.
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