Why Is the Islamic Dawah in America Failing?

By Muhammad James Sutton

Although we have witnessed a large increase of people entering into Islam from various levels of
society, we cannot fool ourselves into believing that the quality of Muslims living in the West is
improving. In contrast to what people believe, the quality of people becoming Muslim has
gotten so bad that I would dare say that the best of Muslims today would have been an average
Muslim twenty years ago. There are multiple reasons for the decline in the quality of Muslims in
the West, however, with little time; I will shed the spotlight on the major causes.
Before I begin explaining my thesis, I would like to make one important point clear for all. When
I analyze the state of Muslims, I am not referring to the level of knowledge possessed by
Muslims. Without a doubt, Muslims are more knowledgeable of Islam today than they were in
the past. I have seen, in recent years, Tablighees from America learning Arabic and quoting
Hadiths in Arabic. I did not witness this in the past. In fact, I would say that the Tablighees were
the least concerned sect of Islam with gaining knowledge. That aside, what I will be referring to
throughout this essay is the action of Muslims. I want to focus on the Muslim’s ability to struggle
and strive to spread this religion through vast levels of difficulties. I also want to focus on the
lack of definitive leadership and why this quality is nearly extinct in the Muslims of today.
First, I would like to start by detailing the contrasts in the attitudes of the Muslims of the past
and the present in the West. The Muslims in the past were fed up with a society that abandoned
them long before they decided to accept Islam. Islam was, in most cases, a last resort to obtain
some form of quality of life. Throughout the 80’s and early 90’s the ghettoes in America were
infested with drugs and violence. Murder was a very common occurrence throughout these two
decades. People were becoming disappointed with the government’s lack of concern for all the
atrocities that were taking place daily in the ghettoes of America.
In an attempt to improve the situation in their neighborhoods, people began to flock to Islam
and begin a fight against the immoral behavior that had become the norm. We started to
witness Muslims in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta,
and other major cities start to patrol the streets to begin a real war on drugs. People like Siraj
Wahhaj in New York and Jamil Al-Amin in Atlanta began to accept responsibility for the
betterment of their neighborhoods. This selfless attitude on the part of these individuals began
to have an impact on the common folks suffering daily in hell.
In the West End of Atlanta, during the days of Jamil Al-Amin, it was virtually impossible to
witness a person selling any form of hard drugs openly. I do not agree with some of the methods
applied to rid the neighborhood of drug dealers, but I do have to admit that their methods were
effective. Moreover, I have to give them credit for taking the responsibility that a purposefully
inattentive government refused to take. I have personally witnessed brothers in Atlanta
confronting drug dealers, and I can say that those drug dealers respected Muslims with the
highest level of reverence because of the precedent that Jamil and his community set.
I have also witnessed the result of years of fighting drug dealers on the streets of Los Angeles. I
arrived in L.A. in a neighborhood that was a known Blood stronghold back in the 80’s. However,
when the Muslims moved in, they, through a hard struggle, were able to change the
demographics of the neighborhood around the Masjid. Even to this day, it is very rare that you
will witness a person wearing red or selling drugs around the Masjid. However, you will witness
children outside playing in the yard in peace, and you will witness brothers wearing Islamic garbs
chatting in the street with no fear.
As time went on, and the older Muslims that founded these communities began to pass the
torch to the next generation, they quickly found that the next generation was not ready to bear
the responsibilities of their predecessors. The Muslims then became the gang bangers and drug
dealers in many of these communities. The first youngsters to run around in Los Angeles
throwing up Blood hand signs were the sons of the founders of the Masjid. They had not been
around to witness the struggles their fathers had to go through so they could worship Allah in
peace, and therefore, began to backtrack to the point of becoming similar to, or in some cases,
worse than the enemy that was driven out.
The young Muslims in Atlanta began to replace the crack dealers that were dead and gone. They
saw an opportunity to invest in a lucrative trade in the absence of any competition. Moreover,
with the influence of the rap culture overtaking the Muslim youth, they saw an opportunity to
set a new street standard, however ignorant that standard was. All this began to happen during
the absence of any real leadership in the community.
Once the streets became clean from the infestation of drugs, gangs and violence, the attention
and focus of Muslims began to shift. We started to become more concerned with the Masjid
and less concerned with the society around the Masjid. This attitude prompted the isolation of
Muslims away from the non-Muslims that lived in the community, which in turn, caused the
denigration of the Muslims in the eyes of the people. We began to take the approach that the
Christians took in the propagation of their religion, and by following that approach; we began to
lose influence over the people in the slums.
Furthermore, our beautiful Muslim children became less and less competent in the ways of the
world. The children began to shed their Islamic morals as a snake sheds its skin. Only in the case
of the snake, the skin returns with vigor, but in the case of our children, their morals were
replaced with complete immorality and foolish behavior. Our children became more and more
entranced by the dunya and its vices, and this caused them to be less prepared to carry on the
struggle that dawah requires. Neither did they become leaders nor were they motivated to
follow. What a predicament!
The second generation of Muslims in these communities took it upon themselves to accept the
responsibility of leaving the country to study the religion. The sole intention behind this act was
to gain knowledge and return to teach the people. This way the dawah of the predecessors will
enter into the next stage of progression. By having learned scholarly individuals in the
community, we could begin to set up centers for learning. We can truly set about educating the
masses. Our leaders, who had reached the highest levels of leadership, would then take on the
responsibility for preparing the learned generation to lead.
However, this did not happen. The learned generation returned after studying a few years
overseas and went about attacking the older generation for their lack of knowledge. “A little bit
of knowledge is a dangerous thing.” These students returned to America with their chests
puffed out and went on the attack. With no respect for their elders, they began to warn against
the very people who struggled to establish the community they came out of. This started rifts to
form in the Muslim communities around the West. This new generation of learned Muslims was
picking apart all the work their elders had done. This is what happens when people get
knowledge without learning wisdom. There is no benefit in having knowledge if you do not know
what to do with it.
Back in the 90’s, we were all united, and it was unimaginable to go into the Masjid and not give a
brother salaam because of some rift that occurred. Nowadays, it is quite normal to see whole
groups of people refusing to acknowledge the existence of another group. If they see them, they
do not give them salaam. If they have a get together, they do not think to invite their brothers.
In some extreme scenarios, a brother might die, and a group of Muslims will refuse to go to his
funeral and pray over him. Because this generation gained a very minute bit of knowledge, they
expected the others in the community to bow down to them. Furthermore, any type of
ignorance from the common man became a sin punishable by ostracism.
Our job, returning to our communities, was to teach the people. Instead, we spent our time
driving the people away from the Masjids and splitting our communities. We never thought that
the people were not accepting what we learned because of the way we packaged it and
presented it to them. We did not follow in the footsteps of Ibrahim in the respectful way that he
dealt with his father, nor did we follow the footsteps of Musa when he returned to his people
and spoke soft kind words to the biggest enemy of Allah, Farawn. Nay, we treated our elders as
if they were enemies of Islam and waged a war on them and their ideology of ignorance.