The Colour of God by Chaudhry Ayesha S.;

Author:Chaudhry, Ayesha S.; [Chaudhry, Ayesha S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 6508177
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2021-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

By the time I got to university, I had bought into the clash of civilisations narrative hook, line and sinker; especially so because it was validated for me by the white man himself. The white man, in this case, was an American convert to Islam who became a popular Muslim preacher. His name was, well, let’s just call him John Doe. Whatever his birth name, when he converted to Islam, Doe took Arabic first and last names. One of those names was ‘Yusuf’. Yusuf is the Arabic name for the prophet Joseph, who is known in Islam as the most beautiful man to have ever existed. When the women of Egypt whispered judgemental gossip about the noblewoman Zulaykha trying to seduce Yusuf, who was her servant at the time, her defence was simply to let them see him. She knew that once they saw him, the women would understand that they would have done the same, given the opportunity. To set the scene, she invited the women over, set tables piled high with fruit and gave each of them a knife, supposedly for cutting the fruit. Then she asked Yusuf to walk through the room, you know, super casual. When they saw him, the women were so taken by his beauty, they cut their own hands instead of the fruit; so distracted were they by his gorgeousness, they didn’t feel the knives cutting into their own flesh, spilling their own blood. ‘Yusuf’ is a remarkably popular name among white male converts who adopt an Arabic name to signify their conversion to Islam, turning their conversion into a kind of birth. It is one thing for a mother to look at her newborn child and think, You are so beautiful, I will name you Yusuf. It’s quite another for a grown man to think, I am so hot, I must be a Yusuf.

To emphasise his authority and transformation, John Doe appropriated an ‘Islamic’ identity to go with his new name. Doe understood ‘Muslim’ as ‘Arab’ and dressed himself like the Arabs of his imagination, wearing long, flowing white robes and an imama wrapped around his head. He even spoke with a hint of an Arab accent, and peppered his sentences with over-pronounced Arabic words, really playing up the ‘ayns and qafs and khas. His performance of ‘Muslimness’ worked, because he was one of the few people allowed into our home, which is how my parents thought of TV. Watching people on TV, through videos or DVDs or regular programming, was like inviting them into your living room. My parents were extremely selective about whose lectures we could listen to, and Doe made the cut, mostly because his views aligned with the ideology of Tanzeem. His message wasn’t threatening; in fact, he confirmed almost everything Israr Ahmed preached.

There were a lot of similarities between Doe and Israr Ahmed. Israr Ahmed was trained as a medical doctor, and Doe was trained as a nurse. Like Israr Ahmed, Doe considered himself an Islamic scholar without having formal seminary training.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.