The Responsibilities of the Responsible Muslim Parent
A Muslim Son’s Reflections on Radicalism Among Muslim Youth
Most of the public discourse on Islam and Muslims has focused on the macro-structural issues of Islamic theology, politics, and history. Although I have also written on these topics as they are certainly relevant to the discussion, just as necessary to consider is the micro issue that is the Muslim family itself. In my opinion, failures both active and passive within the Muslim family have been a major factor in the rise of politically radicalized Muslim youth.
I am driven to write this particular piece not just because of the radicalization that has occurred among too many Muslim youths, but also because of a denialist and apologist discourse that declares that those that commit violence in the name of Islam are “not really Muslim.” Such declarations not only ignore the larger theological issues within Islam, but they also divorce those individuals that commit violence from the communities and families they arose out of, communities and families that are, indeed, Muslim. It is a truly absurd notion that up until the moment a Muslim commits an act of violence they would be, by default, a “true Muslim” but the moment that violent act is unleashed, they are instantaneously “not really Muslim.” Beyond just the intellectual structures and grand arcs of history that form what is “Islamic”, we must discuss how socialization and family interactions form what is “Muslim.”
As a Muslim-American who has loved his country, the attacks of 9/11 were emotionally devastating for this writer. I grew up mostly around Jews and Christians and was raised in a liberal and pluralist Muslim tradition. Thus, seeing my country attacked and my people hurt and killed on 9/11 by extremist Muslims was crushing. Yet withstanding how I was raised by my mother and how she, of all people, would “know” my disposition on things, my mother still chose to have a certain conversation with me after 9/11. This conversation demonstrated not only her understanding of the broader dynamics of Muslim perceptions of the West, but also that she was not taking anything for granted, even with her own beloved son.
It was not long after 9/11 when my mother sat me down. “How are you feeling?” she asked me, to which I replied that I had mostly been feeling nauseous since the attacks. “And how do you feel about the reasons these people are giving as to why they committed the attacks?” The question caught me somewhat off guard, because I honestly had not given a damn what reasons or justifications anyone could give for such heinous acts. “The reasons? Like how they always talk about Western intervention, oppression, colonialism? History is history, Mom,” I replied, “and having your heritage I understand full well what Western colonialism and intervention have done to some people, but that does not justify the willful targeting of ordinary people that had nothing to do with that history.”
My mother’s face immediately conveyed a feeling of relief and affection and then she said, “Good, that is all I needed to hear. You are an American and all the blessings you have in your life come from that and do not ever forget it. I want you to know that if the complex nature of your heritage and identity ever becomes a problem for yourself or in terms of how people treat you in life in the coming years, I want you to express and take out that anger and frustration on me, not on anybody else. After all, I am the one who brought you into this world. Remember that.”
Not only did my mother choose to address what is undoubtedly a difficult subject for any Muslim parent, but in being concerned with my personal state of mind and emotional processing of events, she already did in 2001 what many Muslim parents are still not doing today. She addressed the psychological and social factors that have given rise to successive waves of “self-radicalized lone-wolf” extremists. The common profile among lone-wolves is that ironically most are not steeped in elite Islamic intellectualism nor are they particularly religious in practice, often living hedonistic lives. I would argue that this breakdown in a healthy balance between a grounded but modest religiosity and a modern life of worldly pleasures among Muslim youth begins in the family.
Especially among Muslim parents in the West who consider themselves to be responsible people, it is not enough anymore to simply not be an extremist and not teach their children extremist views. The hands-off approach and culture of avoiding the difficult subjects within many Muslim families is a serious problem. A hands-off approach to Islam is just as dangerous as an extremist approach to Islam. Muslim parents must be shepherds for their children, teaching them how to have a healthy religiosity but one that is necessarily pragmatic for dealing with modern life and its problems, most notably issues regarding alienation and disillusionment among Western Muslim youth.
Like my mother, Muslim parents must be proactive in engaging the issues certainly when their children show signs of politicization and grievance and especially if they are not showing those signs. Muslim parents in the West must talk to their children about what it means to live in a country different from one’s ethno-religious heritage. These parents must explain and remind their children why they left the mother country in the first place with the hope of new opportunities. The popular idealistic myth of the Islamic Ummah as a unified, inherently decent, and perpetually Western-oppressed place must also face a reality check from Muslim parents. Muslim youth detached from their ethno-national cultures use a naïve idealization of the Ummah as a way of expressing their individual psychological and social frustrations through a politicized Islam that appropriates the suffering of faraway peoples as cover for problems closer to home. There are many Muslim parents who wish to be responsible. However, unless they are dealing with their children’s frustrations and also taking responsibility for circumstantially causing them because of migration, they are not fulfilling their duties as Muslim parents in the current political, social, and ideological climate.
The construction of what it means to be “Muslim”, then, is not just about scripture and its interpretation. It is also about how amorphous notions of identity, tradition, modernity, and the messy space between play out in migration, personal development, everyday circumstances, and in responses to world events large and small. How Muslims learn to respond to the everyday begins with their families and with their parents, so Muslim parents must take greater responsibility for themselves and their progeny and deal with these difficult issues head on. This is no time to be complacent.
