The Problem with White Converts

[Guest L'étrangère]

You’d think that two white American guys embracing Buddhism and Islam in the age of colonialism could have become awesome champions of antiracism and solidarity with oppressed peoples. But no. Unfortunately, they treated their new religious affiliations like other white men of their time treated entire nations: they marched in and immediately claimed to own them.

 

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) is regarded as America’s first convert to Buddhism. Alexander Russell Webb (1846–1916) wasn’t the first American convert to Islam, but he was America’s earliest Muslim convert to publicly promote Islam in a meaningful way. Both men were believers in Theosophy, which advocated a comparative study of religious traditions with the assumption that beneath all of the surface-level differences, these traditions shared an esoteric unity. The assumption that all religions teach essentially the same thing may sound cool and pluralist, but this means that you understand every religion’s truest, innermost essence. And then it becomes just another way to place your own voice at the center and ignore the tradition as it’s actually lived—which is exactly what these two white guys did.

 

Many Theosophists held that the hidden truth that existed in all religions could be most easily retrieved from Buddhism. They imagined Buddhism as basically everything that 19th-century Western Protestant liberals wanted religion to be: rational, philosophical, compatible with modern science, free of dogmas and ritualism, and opposed to priesthoods. Olcott thus took part in a Euro-American reinvention of the Buddha as a modern empiricist philosopher and argued that the Buddha’s teachings were based on science, rather than supernatural claims, and that Buddhism opposed rituals, ceremonies, idolatry, and belief in miracles. This was not a Buddhism based on Olcott’s encounters with Buddhist tradition as people actually lived it in the world, but only the “true Buddhism” that he found in the Buddha’s original message. Olcott’s “true Buddhism” was necessarily contrasted with what he saw as the superstitions and corruptions of uneducated, uncivilized Buddhist masses. In other words, Olcott converted to Buddhism and then claimed to understand the Buddha better than every other Buddhist on the planet.

 

While they often fawned over Buddhism, Theosophists were less enthusiastic about Islam, which they perceived as more rigid and intolerant. Webb, however, found Islam to be not only a worthy expression of Theosophical ideals, but, in fact, the best candidate for a universal modern religion. He reinvented Muhammad as a rationalist philosopher and even made an unsupportable claim that Islam “requires no belief in the supernatural.” Science and reason represented Islam’s “true spirit” as Webb understood it, but as in the case of Olcott, Webb needed to detach Islam’s “true spirit” from the Islam of everyday Muslims. Webb lamented that while Islam was “the most perfect system of spiritual development the world has ever known,” the effects of “climate and racial influence” left Muslims that he had observed in South Asia unable to comprehend what Muhammad had taught. Webb argued that South Asian Muslims, whom he sometimes called “niggers” in his journals, were so caught up in “ignorance and superstition” that they understood Islam no better than cows or horses.

 

Olcott and Webb (who were actually friends for a time) both read their adopted traditions through not only a Theosophical lens, but also the reigning prejudices of their time. They believed that Buddhists and Muslims had contaminated their originally “pure” religions with lowly culture, but Olcott and Webb could not see the ways in which their own cultures directed their readings of Buddhism and Islam. They both projected 19th-century liberal Protestantism and scientific rationalism onto premodern scriptures without ever doubting that they were on “objective” and “scientific” searches for truth. Additionally, they read with the assumed authority of white men, taking scriptures seriously, but not the brown people who believed in them. In the case of Olcott and Webb, the idea that all religions shared esoteric truths meant that the vast majority of people had missed the point, and thus needed outsiders to train them in the proper understandings of their own traditions.

 

Over a hundred years later, it’s still a problem. When people assume that “religion” and “culture” exist as two separate categories, culture is then seen as an obstacle to knowing religion. In this view, what born-and-raised members of a religious tradition possess cannot be the religion in its pure, text-based essence, but only a mixture of that essence with local customs and innovated traditions. The convert (especially the white convert, who claims universality, supreme objectivity, and isolation from history, unlike the black convert, whose conversion is read as a response to history), imagined as coming from a place outside culture, becomes privileged as the owner of truth and authenticity. People forget that these white guys aren’t simply extracting “true” meaning from the text, but bringing their own cultural baggage and injecting it into the words. When a white guy wears the hats of brown guys and talks about “reviving the Islamic spirit,” it might be time to run fast.

 

Michael Muhammad Knight (@MM_Knight)

 

The Problem with White Converts | VICE United States

[Guest L'étrangère]

Pardon, j'ai mis le lien comme titre..

 

Il y a un mouvement populiste qui est créé en Occident, un Islam sans foi et sans religion réelle. Au gré de ses envies, SubhanAllah Taala c'est très difficile. Cela ma fait un peu rire ceux qui ne parlent qu'en se basant sur le net et ses vidéos ou la télé, personne ne demande ce qui se passe sur le réel terrain de la vie.

 

Ce qui est plus intéressant que l'article c'est les différents commentaires.

[Guest L'étrangère]

Voici quelques com.

 

 

Kevin Miller · Loyola University New Orleans

This coming from a white convert who allows room for feminism, gay rights,and "experimental" readings of the Qur'an in his understanding of Islam (not that I'm not for these things, but I'm pretty sure these things were not intended in the Qur'an or Hadith). Yes these guys are assholes but if you think people have to follow traditional Islam if they want to follow it at all then you are they type of person you are writing against. Even if you were to say that you're not a Muslim you're a Five Percenter, all you're doing is following a version of Islam created by African-Americans who put their own need and self-interests into Islam, which isn't much different than what Webb did.

 

Elena Porcelli · Top Commenter · Amman, Jordan

As a female WHITE muslim convert I can tell you without passion or injecting anyone's "culture" into it that Islam most definitely is a feminist ideology; rather than the idea of freedom having only one definition therefore leaving only one way to express it, Islam simply takes the other side of the issue. Like the most popular issue of the hijab (whether it be simply modest dress or further with the headscarf) if freedom for women is often defined as the ability to show everything i.e. her body, why is not the other side of being able to NOT show everything also represented as a freedom and therefore championed and feminist in the West?

Reply · 16 · · March 14 at 6:25am

 

Altamash Markar · Fremont, California

This is why white people will never understand..you guys need to create a culture first then maybe you can move onto religion..

Reply · 4 · · March 16 at 10:03am

 

Mark Hudson · Top Commenter · Dallas, Texas

That word (revert)... I don't think it means what you think it means.

Reply · 4 · · March 12 at 5:07pm

 

Ather Ahmed · Valparaiso University

What I've noticed in my community, can't possibly speak for other mosques but I'm sure parallels exist, is that white (male) converts are overly celebrated more so than any other race. I'm in America, btw. I believe it is for the reason Knight speculated i.e. existing "outside the culture". A white man is perceived to have some higher understanding of the religion because they willfully left the monoculture to embrace "The Truth", though in reality they haven't left the hegemony at all. When a white convert walks down the street, his Islam is optional. No one can tell he's a Muslim unless he tips them off himself (with dress, presumably). That's privilege. My brown skin and browner name are non-choices I have to deal with that immediately peg me as Muslim and all the perceptions that come along with that, when in reality I'm quite disenchanted with the state of Muslims today.

 

Anwar Bilal · Edison, New Jersey

I agree, as one of the "brown people", especially as one who has left Islam, I have noticed this phenomenon of the "privileged white convert" for a long time. Due to the racial suggestions, it becomes too easy for people (mostly "whites" again) to dismiss it as some racist view; that dismissal of course is no more than the "cultural baggage" that the author points out here.

 

As one of the "Brownies", I do not wish to theorize on what the attitude or baggage of 'White converts" are as I have no way of knowing this. However, I will comment on how the "white converts" are viewed by much of the community of "born-Muslims", especially by those from the Indian subcontinent.

 

Much as the author states, the convert is always portrayed as the inheritor of the (imagined) monolithic intellectual tradition of West, who with their (imagine...See More

[Guest L'étrangère]

De ce que j'ai remarqué ce qui est appelé conversion n'est en fait que la mixité, prônée partout comme ultime voie moderne "la métisse attitude".

 

Les conversions sont un mouvement de l'occident, c'est lui qui est mis en avant. Tout le monde s'en fout de mamadou vivant au foyer sonacotra et s'étant converti.

 

Les peoples sont mis en avant, Diam's la rappeuse, beaucoup de rappeurs se sont convertis et comme le dit un comique "pastis et religion", les footballeurs (nous avons tous entendu parlé de Benzima et Ribéry)

 

Les gens aujourd'hui croient convertir. Le Coran dit bien "Innaka la tahdi men ahbebta wa lakin Allahu yahdi men yashaa". A plusieurs reprise nous apprenons que la guidée vient d'Allah Taala. Aujourd'hui avec le vide spirituel justement, le manque de religion, les beurs et les beures convertissent après quelques années passées dans le haram. Je ne veux pas entrer dans les détails.

 

La religion ne donne plus de limite mais c'est eux qui donnent les nouvelles règles religieuses et le net et la télé diffuse ce nouvel Islam comme étant l'ultime référence de notre époque.

 

Très peu réfléchissent, très peu connaissent leur religion, très peu se soumettent réellement.

 

La vrai guidance et guidée ne vient que d'Allah Taala et non pas des hommes.

 

Vous avez choisi et Allah Taala a choisi.

[Carsanilm 80]

Sérieusement tu t'es attendait à quoi?

La religion a toujours été façonné par la culture de ses nouveaux croyants, et l'islam comme tout les autres religions reste vague et imprécis sur plusieurs point ce qui laisse la porte ouverte à l'expression de la culture et fantasme de ses croyants.

[Guest L'étrangère]

Sérieusement tu t'es attendait à quoi?

La religion a toujours été façonné par la culture de ses nouveaux croyants, et l'islam comme tout les autres religions reste vague et imprécis sur plusieurs point ce qui laisse la porte ouverte à l'expression de la culture et fantasme de ses croyants.

 

 

C'est faux. Al HamduliLlah el Islam est clair et ces limites sont clairs, c'est les hommes et leurs penchants qui ne sont pas clairs.

 

AlHamduliLLah il y a et il y a eut des personnes bien guidées. Par contre nous devons faire face à pas mal d'innovation et d'un islam sans islam, pro gays et lesbiennes, féministes, les relations haram sont mis en avant, la foi n'est plus nécessaire, c'est devenu juste un nom et une pensée.

 

Les blog de convertis fleurissent sur le net, certains savants pro occident, certains pays arabes pro occident, le mélange chrétienté et islam, le mélange kaffer et croyant.

 

Nous sommes dans une chakchouka pas possible.

 

Personnellement je me suis séparée de tout cela, de tous les nouveaux et nouveautés.

 

Nous avons nos premières générations la lumière se trouve la-bas, c'est eux qui ont le savoir pas l'Occident.

[Guest Serena1]

Too long Etrangere can you please summarise it...

 

 

I've seen black converts and I have to say that they're much better than the arabs themselves...very strict....their prayers on time...their hijab is better than mine...

[Guest L'étrangère]

Too long Etrangere can you please summarise it...

 

 

I've seen black converts and I have to say that they're much better than the arabs themselves...very strict....their prayers on time...their hijab is better than mine...

 

Nooo, i don't want to.. Voila ça résume l'idée de l'article

The convert (especially the white convert, who claims universality, supreme objectivity, and isolation from history, unlike the black convert, whose conversion is read as a response to history), imagined as coming from a place outside culture, becomes privileged as the owner of truth and authenticity

 

On ne peut absolument pas parler des conversions au cas par cas et alhmadulillah il y a des personnes réelles et investits parmi eux.

 

Il y a aussi une vague plus générale et on rejoint plutôt les hadiths de la fin des temps. Il faut rester ferme sur la religion authentique et pas d'arrangement possible. Cela ne concerne pas uniquement les convertis mais les musulmans d'aujourd'hui en général.

 

On ne peut pas rendre haram/halal parce que nous voulons que telle chose soit licite.

 

La mixité a pas mal de liens avec les conversions d'occident, ensuite vient le mélange chrétienté/islam... Nous n'avons plus vraiment de guide, il se passe beaucoup de chose.

 

Le meilleur des conseils, tout en faisant le bien autour de soi

 

Al Imâm Jalâl Ud Dîn As Suyûtî (qu'Allâh lui fasse miséricorde) rapporta dans son Jâmi' Us Saghîr que Sayyidunâ Rasûlu Llâh (que Le Salut et La Paix d'Allâh soient sur lui) a dit : « Si tu vois que les engagements pris sont violés, que la ferveur religieuse diminue, que la probité se perd et que les gens finissent par être comme ceci (il entrelaça alors ses doigts pour mieux illustrer comment les gens seront entremêlés dans la confusion qui gagnerait d'avantage leur pratique religieuse), alors reste chez toi, retiens ta langue, mets en pratique ce que tu as appris de la religion tout en t'abstenant de tout ce que tu dénonces chez les autres comme étant contraire à la Sharî'ah. Occupe-toi de tes propres affaires tout en restant conforme à la Sharî'ah et ne te mêle pas des affaires du commun des gens. »

[Guest Serena1]

The convert (especially the white convert, who claims universality, supreme objectivity, and isolation from history, unlike the black convert, whose conversion is read as a response to history), imagined as coming from a place outside culture, becomes privileged as the owner of truth and authenticity

 

A muslim is a muslim PERIOD.

 

I don't know what's the purpose of the article:rolleyes:....creating division?...a new one I should say.....;)

[Guest Serena1]

peut-être au US mais en France, les convertis, il me semble et je peux me tromper, sont soient des pauvres filles-gars paumés, soit des gars qui veulent serrer une musulmane. Évidemment c'est trop généraliste pour qu'on puisse s'approcher d' une quelconque vérité...en revanche, ces types de cas ne sont pas rares

ce que je déteste ce sont certains comportements : la (le) new muslim, qui bouffait du porc la veille et qui veut t'apprendre à toi c'est quoi l'islam....un islam fait la plupart du temps de peur, de contraintes : ils ont une approche très chrétienne de la religion musulmane : chez les chrétiens, la notion de contraintes, de souffrance est très immportante, pas chez les musulmans

 

Pourquoi cette difference??? Le racisme? Il existe partout envers les gens de couleur....

[Guest L'étrangère]

A muslim is a muslim PERIOD.

 

I don't know what's the purpose of the article:rolleyes:....creating division?...a new one I should say.....;)

 

Indeed my dear.. Par contre il faut protéger l'Islam, inahu dinu Llah Taala, on ne peut pas faire comme les religions qui nous ont précédé, le nombre n'a pas d'importance mais la qualité de la foi si.

 

If a muslim is a muslim why are you rejecting shii'a, soufiyah, 'alouiya, druzes, salafiya...

 

Je dirai plutôt islam is islam, si on vous apporte une religion appelée Islam sans islam, le suivrez-vous ? Non

 

Dans ce cas pourquoi laisser les autres s'égarer.