Creative Remedies to Post-Convention Depression (Revised version of earlier article: “Conventions Don’t Save Souls”)
Published by Saad Omar May 5th, 2007 in Islam(Salam-I didn’t realize haseeb had posted the rougher version of this article. And btw, just to be clear, I love big Islamic conventions, this article is focusing on how to make the benefits of those type of programs more long lasting, not undermining the importance of those conventions)
By Saad Omar
A wise Prophet once warned us of the coming of a day in which holding on to one’s religion would be like clinching a piece of burning coal. For Muslims in the West (and possibly worldwide), that day has come.
It is no wonder that American Muslims striving to preserve their religion have developed a soldier’s mentality. Eyes are constantly on the guard for temptation and distraction; hearts and minds never feel safe from the Godless elements of society that menace the believer’s soul. This long waging warfare has unfortunately blurred clear decision making amongst American Muslim leadership and it is now of the utmost necessity that the Muslim community take a moment of respite and re-analyze its greater vision.
For the past four decades, great Muslim activists and thinkers throughout the West have been designing programs to take Muslims away from the ‘belly of the beast’ for a few days at a time. They have worked tirelessly to create perfect religious environments for believers to take refuge; great speakers inspire awe-stricken audiences, bazaars lines with goods, and most importantly, there is an uncanny feeling of love between Believers.
These programs provide tremendous short-termed benefit to its participants. The aura is ideal, the message idealistic. Speakers paint beautiful images of the Prophet’s life and city. Inspiring lectures boast the greatness of a golden past and encourage the audience to take pride in their religion, and at the same time warning against the evils of society, consumer culture, and the entertainment industry. The main topics of discussion are consistently: theoretical principles of the religion, the practice of basic pillars of worship, and the ‘haram’ that is to be avoided. Although important in their own right, these themes are grossly insufficient.
The giddy conference participant returns to the “real world.” Prayer is sweeter for a few days and resolutions are made to cut down on music and television. However, in the end, ‘ISNA heaven’ contrasts too sharply with public school and American workplace hell. Ten hours of lecture are no match for the endless hours of MTV and blockbuster entertainment which immediately hijack the temporarily charged Muslim. This leads to the very common psychological backlash of “post-convention depression.” Islam filled a fun-packed weekend and the Devil was given the rest of the year.
Some activists respond with more conventions and seminars, other with intensified spiritual retreats. They are all off the mark (and Allah 
ta’la knows best).
The solution to this problem is not a higher dosage of short-term medicine. Greater creativity is required. For a few, the iman-high absorbed from these programs may suffice, but for the majority, they are just artificial breaks from life as usual. The attendee is not able to transition the benefits of these programs to their daily schedule because the program itself was so separated from their daily schedule. One is living in a hotel room, in a city away from home, with a group of people that they will not see again until the next annual-convention. It’s too different and too abnormal to provide a graceful stepping transition back to the attendee’s daily life.
This religion is a breath by breath affair. The five prayers mark the day for the believer from dawn to dusk and the Prophet’s daily invocations mark each moment in between. This principle of consistency contrasts starkly with the current American Muslim culture that is made up of annual conventions, monthly seminars, and other large programs spaced periodically throughout the year. We must develop ideas that will help create a ‘Culture of Islam’ in the daily life of Muslims. The conventions, seminars, and larger events wil then become helpful tools to periodically re-iterate what is being practiced daily.
To make my points more concrete I have drafted fifty practical initiatives that could remedy the situation that I have described above. For the sake of brevity I have included five below. The larger point are not my specific examples, however, and I would implore everyone to think about this issue with the attention it deserves and dig deep into your creative imagination to develop innovation means of solving this issue.
May Allah bless the pioneers of Islam in the West and their great work, but allow us to not be constrained by vision that they set in place.
Five practical action items:
- Career direction: We don’t go to ISNA conventions every day, but adults do wake up and spend between 8-12 hours in their career of choice, approximately 200 days out of the year. We need to start talking about which careers add inspiration to one’s religious life and provide guidance for young people. It’s like we want to keep young people religious throughout their childhood and college life and then send them loose into the work-market where they will spend the next 50 years of their lives.
- Geographic proximity: We move for our jobs. We move for our kids can go to school in the best district. Now its time for us to move to live close to like-minded Muslims. I am against the idea of creating isolated “Muslim Ghettos” but having 4-5 like-minded Muslims in your neighbourhood or an adjacent neighbourhood is like having a MYNA camp daily. They will play, socialize, and pray together. The best part is, you don’t need to write elaborate programs or drive to another state to get this benefit. (of course this will not mitigate the need for the larger Camps)
- Culture/Music/Art: Music, television, and other forms of entertainment are part of the “daily schedules” of Muslims. It could be argued that these forms of entertainment are inherently evil and should be avoided. However, until people get to the spiritual states that they can effectively replace music with Quran and blockbuster movies with Islamic lecture DVDs, we have to provide better alternatives. These alternatives must be innovative and entertaining, not simplistic and educational. (Obviously they have to be spiritually nurturing)
- Jummah prayer reformation: The Jummah prayer must be thought of as an experience and not just a poorly constructed sermon and prayer. This is one of the most neglected cultural institutions in the Muslim community.
- Book clubs: Small local book clubs that encourage daily reading and weekly discussion and a feeling of friendship and commitment to the group. Discussions take place at comfortable coffee clubs and are a mix of discussion and socializing. These clubs can also have daily Quran reading schedules.
14 Responses to “Creative Remedies to Post-Convention Depression (Revised version of earlier article: “Conventions Don’t Save Souls”)”
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from: United States us
Pingback on May 5th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
good point and very well stated but there is an inharent issue that was somewhat ignored, conventions work because people go to them. There is a lack of motivation in the Muslim ummah and this lack of motivation in combination with all the other issues (disorganization, “Muslim bubble syndrome” etc) on the part of individuals makes organizing anything very very difficult.
I agree that these conventions are lacking and they aren’t a lifeline, they’re a tool. The problem is that in some peoples lives, they are being used as a life line, the only Iman boaster that people get.
Though your solutions are great on paper, its going to take a lot to implement them which isn’t impossible. Its an amazing idea and very necessary. But the approach to take isn’t that conventions aren’t doing enough because they weren’t meant too. And untill other ideas are implemented and working, conventions are all we’ve got to hold on to.
Assalaam-u-alaikum awa rahmatullahi wa rabakatuhu
so basically what you’re saying is that that we don’t keep up with the iman after those conventions and gain much compare to otehr halaqas and stuff ?
wasalaam
Assalaam-u-alaikum awa rahmatullahi wa rabakatuhu
so basically what you’re saying is that that we don’t keep up with the iman after those conventions and gain much compare to otehr halaqas and stuff ?
wasalaam
Honestly, i love Islamic conventions. But if these conventions want to do more than just help participants in the short term they should use the convention as a tool to connect Muslims to avenues that can benefit them in the long term. For example, (in connection to the Career Direction idea) in a convention there should be a program that allows Muslim professionals to network. That way Muslims could help each other become more successful in the professional world.
good ideas bro saad, i especially like the geographic proximity idea.
I don’t think anyone claims that these conventions save souls. But I do know people have been inspired at least to fix their lives and I know I have benefited greatly from the speeches. Plus, they are great for networking and showing our presence in the West. Mind you, ISNA sometimes gets media coverage and they’ve had the speeches on c-span before. The conventions are excellent, but like you said, we do need more and I think your suggestions are excellent. In fact, you’ve inspired me to have a book club through my blog. Thanks! May God revard you.
Salam guys
thanks for the great comments…you guys were commenting on the old version of the article, i didn’t realize that haseeb had posted up that version…he so quick mashallah
but yeah, i love isna conventions and the like, never missed one in my life! the point of this article is how to make the effects of these conventions last throughout the year..
and danya, i agree with every word of your comment, i’m a huge supporter of ISNA conventions… but yeah, like i said before, how do we make this great experience, more than just a drop in the year, and have more consistant, daily, local activities that affect our day to day culture..
-saad
Salaam ‘Alaikum
//Jummah prayer reformation: The Jummah prayer must be thought of as an experience and not just a poorly constructed sermon and prayer. This is one of the most neglected cultural institutions in the Muslim community.//
That can’t happen until the way the communities are run changes. Until we stop turning over our community affairs to doctors and engineers who hire Imams that don’t speak English and don’t understand the US, the khutbah disasters aren’t going to stop. Heck, a first step would be to have those engineers and doctors realize that they’re most often not qualified to give the khutbah themselves (although, oddly, having a degree in these things seems to make people think they’re better qualified to expound upon the diyn than others).
Also, aren’t most of the people who attend ISNA et al the type of Muslims who are already interested in Islam, tend to be praying, etc? I mean, I know plenty of Muslim people who are completely disconnected from the conventions and their organizations. What do we do about inspiring a living Islam in their lives? Or is the point to work on those who are already active in the community — strengthening that aspect of the Muslim American community before going out to the Muslims who don’t regularly pray, drink, etc.?
walaikum salam
well the issue is of course very complicated. i think one VERY important thing to remember is that the engineers and doctors who have been leadign the Muslim community for so many decades have been doing very important work. i know there are certain brothers and sisters who are like “we need traditional scholars doing this, why are doctors and engineers doing it,” but where are these scholars? the reality is, this whole traditional scholars going overseas and coming back is a recent phenomenom, so people have been doign with what they have. anyways, i don’t want to get too deep in this but some of these issues will improve with the next generation, i guess some will not.
as far as the second point, i believe what Dr. Umar Faruq Abd’Allah
says when he writes that we need to create a large enough cultural matrix that we every type of Muslim can find a place and develop their spirituality and relationship to Allah 
.
anyways, i don’t want to go on any tangents cuz i really want to see what we can do in a practical sense, so i won’t write anymore
Assalaamua’laikum,
Brother I AGREE WITH YOU ALL THE WAY!!!!!!!!! You want to move to my community?????? Inshallah can you please send me your 50 points, I would love to read it. MHADI8@gmail.com
Jazakhallah Khayran
Salams
JazakAllah khayran for the article!! I couldn’t agree more with your points
I’ll have to remember that term- “Post Convention Depression”!
You’ve got some great ideas, especially with the geographic proximity .. I only know about 2 muslim families within a mile of my house, let alone any muslims on my street. I’ve always wanted to be around more muslims, but I’ve never really made an effort to find out if there are families I just didn’t know about in my area!
We need to create a “Muslim Family Finder” of some sort to link communities because its hard to find Muslims even down the street because there aren’t sometimes any institutions in some areas where Muslims can run into each other and find out how close they live. Further, the mosque doesn’t suffice as the glue in some communities and therefore its hard not only to keep people together, but to bring in the marginalized Muslims so for our generation, it looks like we will need to continue the “legacy building” of our forefathers and mothers and construct recreation centers, community centers, spiritual lodges, etc. to provide Muslims a cultural and spiritual space that will be utilized by future generations who can figure this cultural production and identity thing out insha’Allah
.
And I say spiritual space because many mosques cater to such diverse communities that people almost can’t talk about religion in the mosque for fear of offending or upsetting someone or some group. Also, It’s hard to find somewhere to do art exhibits, poetry readings, music, etc. that is within a sacralized environment or space. Hmmmm….
very good point jordan…
as always your points are more perceptive than mine…how bout this, i stop writing articles for this blog and you take over haha.
Thank you sooooo much!