Immigrant = Al-Muhajiroon

This whole discussion although is intresting, I find the lack of cross referencing of the problems at hand to life of Muhammad (s.a.w.s.) or the Quran.

Be bothers and do not fall for the old “divide and rule” trick. First Sufis vs. Salafis…now Indigenous vs. Immigrant!

Laa hawla wa laa quwwata illaa billaah

Shakib, you raise some interesting points, very interesting. If I may introject and push your position further and speak of the world system. When we look at Modernity and the West it is impossible to be without Islam nor with what preceded like the Ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians etc. So, here we can argue that the West is the achievement of mankind but claimed by Europe and it is definitely a product of the Ottoman world and Islamic scholarship (see: Eurocentrism: Amin, Samir)

Also, we find that there seems to be a problem with admiting Islam's presence in the West and hence Islam is as Western as Chrisitianity or Judaism except that the Catholics outted the Muslims with the sword or under threat of death. So much for the current Pope's position cause at the end of the day there is no doubt Catholicism spread by the sword and the horse and disease and this is unfortunate. Islam was indigenous to the West but ousted like other indigenous!

islam can be argued as both indigenous as pointed out by Sheikh Abul-Hussein and western, depending on what account of development are we subjecting it to. there are those models of keynesian economies that look into hard facts of comparative advantage and stages theories to arrive at one system 'better' than the other. ofcourse in this system you use a lens of oppression. then there are those who view alternative models of developments by looking into 'qualitative' difference between pre-capitalist and post-capitalist economies and arrive at a negotiated development based on the 'historicity' of development. recently indigenous or ethnographical studies based on participatory action research are gainfully used to challenge the dominant methodologies that have come to form some of our notions of what is real knowledge and what is not.

islam reached parts of russia atleast 300 years before christianity did and most certainly left the earliest written accounts of scandinavian, persian and african exchanges in the late byzantine period. islam's influence in giving europeans a political identity (as the 'europenses', first coined during Charlemagne) and precipitating its theological schism through the iconoclast movement (Fred, 2004) into two roman empires give credence to Islam's acendency as a western power. however west is not a geographical boundary as much it is a frame of mind, collaboratively created through a systemic understanding of knowledge (Hensh, 2005). thus its dispersion in the much of the old and new as mentioned by Sheikh Abul Hussein can also be argued as a process of 'nativitizing' an economic system of capitalist slavery. one of the economic forms of oppression that industrialization brought to its full was that of distribution of labour. imperial britains ability to create markets of unfree labour and resale commodities back to the competing metropoles came from its ability to see the comparative advantage (Ricardian model) of efficient labour in an era of industrialization. Efficiency of labour was maintained by regulating the lives in plantation economy in a way that needed a new form of racial theory of superiority backed up with legislative and political change. this form of capitalist system was different from pre-capitalist societies in China and Egypt where a small amount of oligarchs rapidly owned huge lands and people requiring the estate to ensure specialized labour to create value for the society McNally, 2002).

MT your right and this is the point Shakib made in his latest post. We could argue that Islam is indigenous to America as you know this position was fostered by many Muslim Black Americans sometime ago. Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick contends that there are some historical artifacts and other forms of evidence to support this notion. Some have argued that Islam came to the Americas some time ago pre-slavery. To date many of the arguments for Islam in America(s) pre-slavery have not been tightly cast and “seem” untenable. But this tenor of thought needs to be explored. Possibly the lack of solid argumentation and evidence is the reason Dr. Jackson in Islam and the Black American somewhat neglects this type of discourse. Allahu Al'am

On the other hand, Islam was definitely here before the Muslim immigrant wave and in this sense is indigenous. This in any event does not do much to affect the way the word indigenous is used in the humanities and this is the problem that Anessa ran into. In any case, there is a bias against Islam in academia and Edward Said's Orientalism gives a good clarification of that. Associated with the indigenous peoples, so to speak, and their ways is not highly regarded in academia as indigenous as a notion and set of practices is not considered “western”

Allahu Al'am

Given your definition of including African practices as indigenous, I guess a case could be made for Islam in the sense that it was brought over to the New World by African slaves? I guess it would be a question of contiuation but I have seen works of how Islam affected practices today in the Carribean.

Anessa, I hope you are well. Indigenous religion in Western scholarship usually refers to Native American practices or African practices etc. but Islam is considered a world religion. Now I do not know what you framed Islam as or what you where referring to when you stated Islam is an indigenous religion. Can your clarify your position a bit?

These are all good ideas brother Jeremiah and brother Yus. I hope this type of thinking continues and we look for ways to build community.