We all hear and oft repeat the words “Islam is a way of life.” It is a declaration I did not fully understand until I finally submerged myself in motherhood 18 months ago, shedding the distractions and superficial gratification of a job and post-modernity’s part-time social activism. In my case, my job was social activism. It took some years to realize that I was just another cog in the wheel of the very system perpetuating the problems that I thought I was working against. And it took a child to teach me that motherhood, on the other hand—although stripped of all but political fodder value by modernity—is in fact true social activism. Rather, it is better. It is social, family and personal activism wrapped in one.

how the generational dynamics have weakened the Muslim community in America and made it harder to raise our families

by Amer Haleem

The Past Before Us

in case you missed it, presidential phenom and forerunner Barrak Obama is NOT a Muslim. Not now. Not then. Not never. Not no how. No. No. No. And most of our “leading” Islamic organizations and burgeoning Muslim umbrella convention personalities assure us that this is as it should be, because, they say, religion doesn’t matter. This is politics. And we ought to get behind the big O—at least to serve our own interests…which is the exact same thing they told us in 2000 about another presidential contender.

If this reminder doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence about the wisdom of many of those ageing community figures who have managed to keep themselves at the forefront of our meandering Muslim parade through America these past 40 years, then you should be heartened to know that they have now been joined there in the limelight by a new generation of younger Muslims, mostly in their 30s and 40s—Obama’s own generation—who have jauntily leaped their feeble fifty-ish predecessors to fulfill their rendezvous with destiny at the head of this motley procession.