Colonial fields around white converts

The powerful and political institutions of whiteness, which move through us all to a hopefully diminishing extent, must be scrutinised, resisted and superseded. What better situation to think this through with than in the deployment of whiteness in religious activity?

It is apparent that many brown people would prefer a white convert Muslim to teach them their religion, or to speak on their behalf, or even script the language around what they mobilise.

• What's the salafi fascination with Abdul Hakim Green?
• Whats with ISB's infantile obsession with appearing white at every given opportunity?
• Does anybody else feel perterbed by the insidious and creeping emelisation?
• HOW THE HELL has it come to the point where people are selling 'traditional islam' back to consumerised asians in the UK? Its like the selling sand to the arabs cliche. Ooops.
• How can groups like British Muslims for Secular Democracy even exist?

This is related to what underlies the fascination of finding scientific meanings in the Revelation (petty tafsir), accumulating badges of white institutional honour (social mobility) and using human rights as a vocabulary of virtue (secularised subjectivity). In addition to being closer to home (or TV)  there's something potent about the yearning for a childlike innocence that meddles with your judgement and betrays a misunderstanding of His Forgiveness.

I'm not arguing for quotas for converts or decolonial-diversity mosque subcommittees, but for a more judicious consideration of racial and class politics in the Millat, because it buggers up the animation of ummahtic mojo.

See also: I've lost a lot of good friends to Dubai (c)

This colonial convert field has expanded as more organisations deploy whiteness as an attempt to buffer and to complicate things for their adversaries, both inside the muslim envelope and externally.

Its demonstrating itself to be a self defeating dawah/pr tactic and we are reaping the whirlwind as we speak. I do not think this is doing justice to anyone in the scenario, not least the collective intelligence and sensemaking capacity of the Millat.

Micheal Muhammad Knight's books relay what I suppose must be his experiences of white privilege in the brown millat in the US. Its really quite vivid and sexual. Eventually somebody from soas will write a book on this.

It is an important research topic i think you'll agree.