It was my shrink who posed the question: where are the Imams? We can do things, he felt—install more video cameras, get better surveillance, collect intelligence better—but look, that’ll never be enough. These two kids—who everyone describes as polite, outgoing, typical young adults—couldn’t have been more Americanized. So why aren’t the Imams saying this: anyone who kills an innocent bystander is not Muslim, he has violated the religion, he is out of the church.
Well, that was something to think about, on the bus on the way home. And interesting to reflect on the people I had seen, since the tragedy unfolded. There were the family members: the mother fiercely defending her sons; the father, incredulous and also insisting on the innocence of his children; both uncles, one who voluntarily came forward, the other who had deferred to (presumably) the elder. There were the neighbors: the woman who heard Tamerlan’s angry wife shout at him late on summer nights; the car mechanic who asked how much Dzhokhar’s fancy shoes cost. There were former classmates and teachers, as well as boxing and wrestling coaches. In short, anybody who had passed one of these brothers on the street and said hello was getting up and telling the world about it.
So who didn’t phone in?
The Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC).
Who is not, according to him, a coward. Instead, he’s a six-foot-five-inch guy named Suhaib Webb who started life out Christian, lost his faith and joined a gang, got tangled up in a drive-by shooting, and emerged Muslim from it all in 1992. So he gave up being a DJ, went to the University of Oklahoma, got a degree in Education. Then, from 2004-2010, he studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo. He has been the Imam of the ISBCC since 2011.
And there’s stuff to like about him. He joined, in 2010, a group of Imams who went to Auschwitz and then denounced those who refused to believe the existence of the Holocaust. He raised 20,000$ for widows and children of firefighters after September 11.
There’s something else. In a YouTube clip about “Yes, There can be an American Islam,” he seems to come out as a centrist, not an extremist. It should be about synthesis, he tells his kids, it should be about being in the center. And certainly he comes across that way on a “Face the Nation” clip that I watched, also on YouTube. There, he appears with three or four religious leaders, and he’s quick to establish his credentials—his love of the Celtics, his Oklahoma roots. Then he throws in a little nugget—his is the fastest growing faith in the US, with 2 million members, 65% of whom are young. That’s as big as the Episcopalians.
Right—so am I being fair to this guy, when I make the charge that every clerk who sold a pair of sneakers to one of the brothers was on TV last week: where was the (presumed) spiritual leader of at least the elder brother?
Well, I’m a son of a newspaper guy…I had to balance this out.
And today, in fact, I read his “No Room for Radicals” post on his website, SuhaibWebb.com. Originally published in the New York Times, it is not much, despite its title, of a condemnation of the Tsarnaev brothers actions. Webb’s point is that there is no need, as Peter T. King, the Republican Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence is asking for, for increased scrutiny of the Muslim community. Why? Because the younger Tsarnaev apparently never stepped foot in a mosque, and the older found the moderate views expressed there “unpalatable.” In short, the mosque didn’t “radicalize” the brothers; blame the Internet.
It’s a point of view.
And there’s more. You know, of course, that I had to check out the guest post entitled “Gay Muslims: The Elephants in the (Prayer) Room.”
Well, it’s painful to read—no, not because it’s hateful or even condemnatory. It is, in fact, a plea for tolerance by a man, still in the closet, who has clearly struggled with being gay and Muslim, and who (sorry to drop the news here) is not quite out of the woods. “The number of times I have wished I weren’t gay…” he writes, and I remembered a time when I myself would have written the sentence.
About 30 years ago….
So I applaud Webb for taking it on, for addressing the issue. The question does rise to the surface, though—has American Islam made the progress that the Episcopal Church has on the issue? Do we have gay Imams, as we have gay bishops? (By the way, I am capitalizing “Imam” following the style of Webb’s website—why am I not capitalizing “bishop” in the same sentence?)
And I also could applaud the Imam’s reluctance to give Tamerlan Tsarnaev a proper burial; check out this quote from an article in the Christian Science Monitor:
Adds Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, in an interview with CNN: “I don't care who or what [the alleged] criminals claim to be, but I can never recognize [them] as part of my city or my faith community.”
In fact, at least one Boston cleric, Imam Talal Eid, has refused to bury the elder Tsarnaev according to Islamic rites. “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him," he told The Huffington Post. "This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.”
Hey—good words! And to answer a question raised by my shrink, there is no excommunication in Islam; it is theologically impossible for a group of Imams to get together and decide when to kick out an errant member out of the faith.
Another point—it might not be possible for a group of Imams to get together and speak out. Here’s what one website had to say about Islam:
There is no formal clergy, no ordaining body, and no hierarchy. The relationship between the individual and God is a direct one. No one besides God can declare what is lawful and what is sinful. No created being can bless another. Each individual is directly accountable to his or her Lord and Creator.
Right—so where are we left?
Not, to me, in a particularly good place. Even if the Tsarnaev brothers had no or minimal contact with the ICBCC, Webb is still the preeminent Muslim in the city. He’s perfectly justified in distancing himself and his organization from the brothers—in fact, that’s exactly what I want him to do.
There’s something else, and I’m gonna say it. Readers of this blog know that I am a very bad Buddhist, and also that I am as tone deaf to spiritual matters as my brother was to the trombone. So what do I know?
Right—here goes.
Each day, I take my walk, in the middle of which I come to the end of the path. To my right, the centuries-old walls to the city of San Juan soar up, to my left the mouth of the harbor is receiving cruise and cargo ships. In front of me is the ocean, which is battering the rocks, hurling spumes of white, frothy water to splatter on the blue sky. Mozart or Monteverdi or Mahler is filling my ears and brain. I stop for several minutes, I ponder, I contemplate. Mostly, I just…am.
I turn around and walk home again.
That’s as close as I can get.
The problem?
I look at the videos below, and I feel nothing of the peace, the serenity, the awe, and the joy of water leaping against a sky, of a breeze whispering across my skin, or of a mind meeting and melting into a trumpet.
