Editorial

This issue goes to press as we reach the half-way mark of another month
of fasting, the blessed month of Ramadan. A month when Muslims abstain
from food and drink between sunrise and sunset is bound to bring to the fore
questions of identity, especially for Muslims living in non-Muslim societies.
I marveled as two of my non-Muslim students blithely ate their fruit before
our morning class while the Muslim students and I could only eye their food
with envy – the pungent smell of orange peel only heightened by the fast.
That the students seemed totally oblivious only increased my wonder. It is,
perhaps, an odd example to mention, but as we proceeded to have a heated
discussion of the position of women in Islam, it reminded me of the daily
complexities of maintaining an Islamic identity in the West.

This question of identity and what it means to be Muslim has, perhaps,
never been so under the spotlight or so hotly debated. That is why acade-
mic analysis, done under the constraints of the noble ideals of academia (a
search for as dispassionate and objective meaning about the human condi-
tion as is humanly possible) is more pressing than ever. The fate of
Muslims in the West depends on it, and on the dissemination of good aca-
demic thought through the media into popular culture. The week of writ-
ing this editorial saw the arrest of a young man alleged to be behind hate
literature left under the doors of the Arab and Muslim Student
Associations at a university in Toronto. Under a photograph of a white
male, a caption reads: “Those who follow the Islam faith [sic] need to be
killed in the worst possible way imaginable.” These are some of the results
of Bush’s “war on terror,” which, though meant to make the world safer
for freedom, democracy, and tolerance, is, in fact, polarizing the globe and
fuelling an ethnic and racial particularism that has been growing during
the past decade.

As with this year’s other issues, the articles in this issue deal with
these perennially important questions of identity, ethnicity, the state,
media, and war. Two of the three relate to the current predicament of
Muslims and the West, and the third looks at related questions in a histor-
ical and intra-Muslim context – the role of Arab tribes in the eighth centu ry
`Abbasid revolution.



The issue opens with Kersten’s study of Muslims in southern Thailand.
Cognizant of the importance of understanding the past in order to under-
stand the present, Kersten’s analysis of Muslims in southern Thailand starts
with a look at the formation of Thailand as a nation-state. This allows him
to develop a nuanced portrayal of the Muslim community, which gives a
deeper, and perhaps more empathetic, understanding of the politics of the
region under the present global discourse of the “war on terror.” As Kersten
concludes “the complexity of Thailand’s ‘Malay-Muslim question’ …
makes an oversimplified and ill-defined image of some multi-tentacled
Islamist conspiracy menacing Southeast Asia untenable.”

Unfortunately for Thailand’s Muslim community, the Bangkok gov-
ernment has once again launched military operations against it. According
to Asia News, on October 27, 2004:

... at least 84 Muslim protesters died, mostly from suffocation so severe
their eyes bled, after being arrested and locked in army trucks following
clashes with security forces in the south, officials said yesterday. … The
deaths occurred on Monday after security forces fired live ammunition,
tear gas and water cannons at more than 2,000 angry people in nearby
Narathiwat province, including some who stormed the Tak Bai district
police station. …The clashes began when about 2,000 protesters
demanded the release of six Muslim men who were jailed on suspicion
of stealing weapons from pro-government volunteers.

Closely linked to Kersten’s article is that of Ahmed Yousif’s study of
Islamic revivalism in Malaysia. Yousif takes a slightly different approach to
try and make a similar point: Islamic revivialism does not need to be con-
strued as a threat to or enemy of the West. Yousif looks at the rise of Islamic
revisialism in Malayisa since the 1970s and the impact of this rise on
(Muslim and non-Muslim) public consciousness. The last part of his article
attempts to address and allay concerns raised by non-Muslims in Malyaisa
that growing Islamization will disadvantage them. To this end, he is critical
of the Malay tradition of tying religious profession to ethnicity – that a
Muslim is a Malay. This links his article up with that of Kersten (Muslim
Thais were not authentically Thai), and with Marín-Guzmán’s study of
Arab tribes and the role of tribal solidarity in the `Abbasid revolution. 

Marín-Guzmán, whose fine scholarship on early Arab history has
recently graced the pages of AJISS, has contributed another superb tradi-
tionalistic analysis of the role of tribal feuds and rivalry during the forma-
tive period of Islamic history. His use of Arabic sources makes his work of

ii The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:4



great interest for those readers unable to access the information in the orig-
inal language. Like the other essays in this volume, he explores the roles of
ethnicity and identity in state-craft and state building. Understanding how
these issues played themselves out historically in Muslim communities is
important for those of us Muslims who grow up or embrace Islam having
only vague notions about the glorious Islamic past – it helps us to under-
stand the rifts in our ummah today.

And to end on a sad note. Sharifa Alkhateeb, a former AJISS managing
editor, passed away on Wednesday, October 20. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi
raji`un. (From Him we come to Him we return.) May Allah forgive her sins
and grant her Paradise. We present excerpts from two obituaries to show just
how much of a difference this committed woman made to society:

The Washington Post:
Mrs. Alkhateeb embraced both American and Islamic ways in her lifelong
effort to bridge gaps between the two cultures. Often quoted in news
reports about Muslim matters, particularly pertaining to women, she also
advised schools, police departments, corporate directors, governmental
agencies and textbook publishers on the nature of Islamic life. ...

After graduating from Penn, Mrs. Alkhateeb received a master’s degree
in comparative religion from Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., then
edited the Marmaduke Pickthall translation of the Koran, published in
1977. From 1978 to 1987, she lived in Saudi Arabia, where her husband,
an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen, was working. She taught in private schools and
at a Saudi university and worked as a journalist for the English-language
Saudi Gazette, sometimes receiving warnings for reporting on women
and other sensitive issues. ...

She was co-author of the Arab World Notebook, which is used in public
schools nationwide, and was managing editor of the American Journal of
Islamic Social Sciences. She founded the Peaceful Families Project, a
nationwide program sponsored by the Department of Justice to examine
violence in the Muslim community.

Islamic Horizons:

Sharifa Alkhateeb was among the first two young women to join the
Muslim Students Association of the US & Canada (MSA) soon after its
founding in 1963, was an outspoken advocate of women rights.
Alkhateeb, founder of the North American Council for Muslim Women,
was also a relentless educator and worker in the field of healing families,

Editorial iii



working against domestic violence. In 1993, her North American Council
for Muslim Women became the first national Muslim organization of any
kind to discuss abuse and violence against women and children during a
national convention.

On Labor Day weekend 2004, Sharifa became the first woman to receive
the Mahboob Khan Community Service Award, which recognizes out-
standing service to the Muslim community in North America. … The
citation noted that for the past 40 years, Alkhateeb – among the first two
women to join the MSA at its founding – has been a tireless worker for
the Muslim community in North America and overseas. As founder and
president of the North American Council of Muslim Women, basheer of
the Muslim Women’s Delegation to the Beijing Conference on Women,
founder and director of the Peaceful Families Project at the Faith Trust
Institute, and member of the Board of Advisors for KARAMAH :
Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, she built a reputation as a
staunch advocate for women’s rights and a outspoken opponent of domes-
tic violence.

May Allah reward her and accept her strivings for His Cause. Ameen.

Katherine Bullock

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