- Muslims left the age of faith and entered into the age of doubt. #
Suburban Capitalist girls love to shop at fancy malls with designer labels, don’t exclude Muslims from that!
For them, and the discerning Suburban Capitalist Muslim man, there are new designer fashions and catwalks to watch. Give them press, coverage, and a spot on the Today Show. American as apple pie.
““Sexy Rediscovered”: Meet the team behind Muslim fashion line, Eva Khurshid”
Tackling yet another field in which Muslims have not – yet – dominated are Nyla Hashmi and Fatima Monkush, the creative forces behind the most buzzed-about fashion line for Muslims, Eva Khurshid…Q: How did your backgrounds prepare you for your career and hands-on involvement (with both the Muslim and American communities)?
A: Because of our mixed heritages, we grew up in non-traditional yet conservative homes. Having American mothers has definitely shaped both of us and helped us take ownership in our American identity. Our Muslim upbringing is a huge part of our lives where it has served us with a strong foundation on how we live our day-to-day lives and conduct our business.Q: Do you think fashion is an area Muslims need to explore and work in?
A: We really encourage Muslims going into the arts; there are not enough of us in this field. If we don’t represent ourselves, who will? It’s so important for Muslims to branch out into non-traditional fields like fashion, even working with other Muslim artists in collaboration to help one another and giving support.”
Soon to appear on your Shop Rite checkout counter
For Muslim fashion designers, the market potential is enormous
Ausma Khan, chief editor for Muslim Girl, a young women’s lifestyle magazine that was started last year in the United States, believes that dedicated brands would have added appeal for many Muslim consumers. “The potential to design Muslim fashion for women and girls and to market to this audience is enormous,” Khan said. “Imagine the clothes you see in most contemporary and popular fashion outlets – Muslim girls and women are buying them and then creatively filling in the gaps. But they would absolutely buy the same clothes with higher necklines, longer hemlines, a more voluminous fit and so on,” she said.
Even in fashion sportswear and activewear, start-up companies like Hasema from Turkey and Ahiida from Australia have tickled market observers with the advent of functional Islamic swimwear. Aheda Zanetti, Ahiida’s founder, trademarked her designs as the “Burqini,” playing off the words bikini and burqa to describe her two-piece loose-fitting tracksuit.
“I think the Islamic fashion market is going to explode in the coming years. There are signs of it already,” said Gulsen Aydemir, editor of Modest Flair, a U.S.-based Web site that sources style trends and news for its Muslim readers.
America.gov shares this video about “American Islam” – Brooke Samad – . A graduate of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Brooke and her business, Marabo Fashion, were featured in Muslim Girl Magazine in April 2008.
While fashion shows etc are all Western inventions, they aren’t limited to the Americas. Cultural Hegemony predicts we’d find them all across the globe:
Spiked hair or long hair, dramatic camera stares, lots of spinning around, pointing, music videos, lip synching, concerts and ticketmaster assimilation. Suburban Capitalist Islam brought us the Muslim boy bands and pop stars.
SEVEN8SIX (786) – The group performed as SEVEN8SIX for the first time at the 2002 ISNA convention in Washington, DC. Most of the group’s subsequent public appearances have been at large concert events organized by Muslim groups, including major events co-sponsored in part by the Islamic Society of North America and other community organizations around the United States… This group is working far and wide to please Allah (SWT). As Shahaab says, “We are using SEVEN8SIX as a tool for propagating Allah’s message. (from their website)
Native Deen – Native Deen came about through M.Y.N.A. or Muslim Youth of North America. The project was a gathering of amateur recording artists who’ve written their own work and MYNA featured these artists on the MYNA RAPs’ album.
Dawud Wharnsby – From his FAQ “What Is Dawud’s Reigion? Islam? Christianity? Buddhism? Bahai? Sufism?…. In 1993 Dawud was impacted by the words of Al Qur’an (The Recitation) and has made the best effort, since that time, to privately study and act upon their teachings. Dawud does not however, accept all of what has become connected to Al Qur’an through cultural and traditional interpretations of it. Though Dawud respects the efforts, lives and opinions of religious scholars (those who have studied the Torah, Talmud, Bible, Qur’an, Hadith, etc) he is not devoted to any specific institution of learning, religious school of thought, group, religious movement, teacher, guru, sheikh or saint — nor does Dawud accept a universal system of man-governed religious law derived from any one scripture.”
Outlandish – Outlandish did their first U.S. tour in Summer 2008 with the “Voices for Change” tour hosted by the Muslim American Society – Youth
Sami Yusuf
Girls can get into it also, heartbreak song – Liza Garza and Gritz & JellyButter “Swift’s Song”, featured at the IMAN concert at the Apollo (ISNA’s Mattson and Imam Zaid Shakir’s family were in attendance):
I said here:
“The principles of Islam, when applied in a thorough fashion, led people to a thriving, principally independent, culture from the west. We see in history, when Islam was applied and Islamic societies emerged, that Islamic art was not just ghetto art used now for Arabic calligraphy. Islamic music was not harmonizing boy-bands singing about the Prophet (S). Islamic family lifestyle was not the American dream. Islamic governance was not democracy. Muslim children weren’t raised with a Muslim muppet on TV.”
Then I saw a new muppet kids show…
Examine the character, the personae, the behavior towards sacred words and concepts and draw your own conclusions. Consider the change of secular American children’s programming over the past 30 years (and the rise of ADD). Adam’s baby toilet humor, potentially obscene for its time, is starting to look old fashioned and nostalgic.
Delving further into the theories and precepts of modern ‘American Islam’ and its fundamental list of principles and beliefs, we begin to see a list of beliefs concentrating and culminating on ‘ilm’.
3 ) Since Islam is a filter of good and bad, one needs to obtain ‘ilm’ (religious knowledge) in order to learn how to behave. Studying ‘ilm’ is paramount in Islam, and most ‘ilm’ is in Arabic.
4 ) What is taught by people in classes at seminars and ‘events’ is a translation and summarization of what is considered ‘ilm’.
5 ) Your status is defined by how much of this seminar-event-based ‘ilm’ you know.
6 ) Your source of English-’ilm’ is infinitely better than other peoples source of English-’ilm’.
7 ) If you learn Arabic yourself you will one day know exactly without a doubt that #6 is true.
8 ) ‘Ilm’ can be expensive.
As earlier stated, Suburban Capitalist Islam is inherently an American cultural product. What most Muslims in the West experience as the Islamic message is actually American culture filtered through certain Islamic injunctions. Under this paradigm, Muslims are able to argue day in and day out over details as to which particular filters/knowledge/’ilm’ they should apply in their lives, while ignoring the overarching logical breakdown and inconsistency between their belief system and their actual lifestyle, filled with TV, video games and shopping.
Since it is a fundamental aspect of the ‘modern Muslim ideal’ that life remains ‘Islamic’ as long as one abstains from certain aspects of Western society (drinking, gambling, clubbing), there is a psychological gap that needs to be filled. What are these cultural concepts replaced with? What are the youth to do with themselves while they are struggling in being ardent abstainers from these aspects of Western society? Surely, Islam must provide some alternative?
Largely this gap has been filled with the pursuit of ‘knowledge’. The message has been that through knowledge you are empowered to controlling your own Islamic future. While knowledge has been important to Muslims since the time of the Holy Prophet (S), it is only now that we see studying being associated so directly with piety and spiritual progress. ‘Knowledge’ has been set up as this idealized form of certainty and conviction. The more knowledge you get/purchase/sit in, the more everything about Islam makes sense, the more easier it becomes to justify the abstaining from the few ‘bad’ things surrounding us and also rationalizing our largely Western lifestyle as being halaal. And doesn’t everyone want self-justification and doesn’t everyone desire for it all to make sense?
If one notices, every one of the points that are held by Suburban Capitalist Muslims regarding knowledge are relating to the self. Self-esteem, self-certainty, self-motivation. On the other hand, historically, knowledge such as this was thrust onto people by their parents, curriculum, or just osmosis from the culture which surrounded them. There used to be very little ‘self’ to think about when it came to learning *facts* about the religion. This allowed the ego to be removed from the equation when it came to applying such facts.
The consequence? People were as proud of their ‘tajweed’ as today’s college graduates are of their basic pronunciation of English. In other words, it was hardly given a second thought, it was just done.
In fact, the entire realm of knowledge that institutes sell today was largely that which was taught to children. From Tajweed, to the Arabic language, the sunnahs of wudu, only a few really sincere people were studying these subjects well into adulthood in times of Islamic Empire, and if they did so, they were studying intricate details and they did it under guidance and permission of high teachers. But now the masses are doing so, through their own decisions, with a variety of levels of sincerity and ego.
American Muslims, proud in their knowledge, seem to actually be stamping ‘infantile’ on our foreheads.
Most of these ilm-sessions are set up as the Islamic equivalent to very secular self-help seminars. This cultural stand-in has allowed for competing institutes and community programs to emerge, each giving their own message of specific information-based knowledge. And it should be carefully noted that what is being peddled is information-based knowledge versus knowledge of the self or other forms of tacit knowledge which was how much of Islam was implemented in Muslim lifestyles.
It is also interesting to note that although they technically compete on the ‘message’ they deliver (with some specific differences on where they place their feet in ritual prayer or on what type of functions they allow in their Masjids), the lifestyle the people reach under varying programs is quite similar.
A primary consequence of this Western approach towards Islam is the productization of ‘Ilm’, religious knowledge. What does Western society bring if not the concept of marketing? Catchy slogans, professional videos ads, hype-machines and superstar personalities have been built up to bring ‘Islamic knowledge’ into our lives. No one could deny, if given the opportunity , ‘American Muslim Institutes’ would be clamoring for some sort of witty ad selling their wares during Superbowl commercials.
Frankly, if given the opportunity, they would want their own team and hijab-laden cheerleaders.
In this way ‘modern ilm’ has begun to have more in common with Doritos than the sacred, sober and ecstatic people that claimed it a hundred years ago. Since we are customers of ‘ilm’, it needs to be made appealing and worthwhile to us. We are the consumer so we dictate what we want to hear. And therefore we are largely changing the messages to suit what meets our needs. Controlling student egos is hard to do when they are paying the bills and the goal is trying to fill up the hall as much as possible.
yursil on 
Ranu on 
Frank Talk on 
Zeynep on 
isah musa ibrahim on 
Alija on 