Way of Doing Business

Business organization is necessary for any project larger than one person to function. Within some Muslim American communities this poses a challenge. The challenge comes in the manner in which business is conducted. I have two predominant scenarios. The first is where you have a situation where masjids are formed from people from a specific location (ex. Somalia, Bosnia, Pakistan,....etc). In these situations the masjids and most of their functions are conducted like they would in the country where they come from.

The second scenario is where you have a multicultural setting like an Islamic Center. Here the community is more culturally diverse, but there is normally a power struggle within the community to run it the right way, which usually equates to doing things the way that it was done in their homeland.

The problem with both of these scenarios is that they aren't the Islamic way of doing things. Unfortunately, in many cases nepotism rules the day. As I understand it, by Islam the best qualified person is the person that is chosen. Not the best man or woman from the Libyan or Bangladesh community.

Also, often reverts are treated as being spiritually or Islamicly infantile by those from who where born Muslims or from predominantly Muslim nations. In reality, new Muslims especially new Muslims in the west have the blessing of understanding Islam without all of the unislamic cultural additives that can be found in most predominant Muslim countries and their communities abroad.

In essence I am saying leave the cultural pollution out of the masjid. See beyond the blatant tribalism and create the Ummah that the Prophet (PBUH) established!