I hope you are well. With little doubt your analysis is colored by realism I have seen this reality in touring the country (US) and having intimate interaction with the community.

Honestly, speaking this is predominately an indigenous problem, which plagues a certain segment of the community and has its sources in an array of reasons too numerous to enumerate in this brief comment. Too more specific the problem is one that is tearing the African American community apart and can be seen in those Latinos that are entering Islam and are possessed of a street culture. It is true to add that children of migrants are demonstrating signs or symptoms of problems they are facing psychological and behavioral problems. But to their fortune their family structure is in greater tact. Indigenous Muslims are facing the same problems other American children confront. American society overall is facing a crisis of serious nature, which is of both social and moral color.

The question here that we ought be asking is one related to service, and leadership this problem you describe has been roughly the same in the American community since the time of El-Hajj Malik ash-Shabaaz (r) and it has only increased in gravity, today. The American community in the inner cities has collapsed its leadership. Here I must ask when will it build a real leadership capable of dealing with real issues like family breakdown and low economic status? The Warith Deen Community, all matters of contention aside has showed signs of great personal and social transformation. The problem you mention plague many poor Sunnis living in crime and drug infected environments.

We need to be honest people are trying to deal with their problems this is why they look and are looking to various trends and circles for guidance. A key problem is that we mirror social life and our various groups mirror our reality. Yes there is a layer of American youth that have increased in knowledge but they have not been transformed by their knowledge, it has not been translated to practice. And this is the case which many of the Muslims in America.

Frankly, we have not shaped the environment we inhabited but rather it has shaped us for various reasons. 15 years ago we found signs of what can be termed Muslim neighborhoods in America’s inner cities from Detroit to New York (when the Black Nationalists entered Islam and others joined Tablighi Jamaat). Unfortunately, there was no continuity there was no growth and this is what pushed many into the Salafi da’wah and from there some went Sufi (traditional). Today we find those very environments that exhibited signs of hope, their worst elements have dominated over the Muslims. Part of the problem has been poverty and lack of social engagement and a commitment to Islam that has not been mature. It was not enough to demand for civil rights but there was also a need to give and build and preserve what has been achieved by civil rights. The effort carried out by “Malcolm X” and others fell to the wayside because leadership did not grw to such an extent that it was capable of meeting the new challenges. If the Nation took and transformed people we need to ask why are the Sunnis doing such after all the Prophet Muhammad (saw) did exactly this in the Arabian peninsula.

For those who can get out suffocating environments and find a better environment safer climate then we ought to push for that. The basis for this is can be found in the hadith of the man who killed 99 men. We learn from that hadith that part of self transformation is also having an environment that supports such. This is reaffirmed in the Islamic notion of tauba part of tauba is staying away from destructive opportunity or opportunities for self destruction and tauba is a lesson in itself for radical change. Environmental change is good on the condition that people focus on personal change and empowerment, socially and politically via education and economics and spiritual training. Change of economic class is a start and to be blunt a very good one.

As for those who will stay behind then we have to ask how are we capable of being models and a support system particularly when much of our community is embroiled in useless debate that is unsupported by action. Change comes with individuals and those individuals must be a coalition of the willing “qualified” to lead and humble enough to learn. For at the end of the day each is responsible for his deeds and Iman increases or decreases with deeds and production or destruction follows with deeds.

Please pray for me too. Pray that Allah accepts my efforts in trying to get my community to wake up.