Why I’m A Progressive Muslim

By Abu Fatoush

1. Because I wasn’t baptized (bless my atheist sociologist father for that one), so I guess I never got pushed out of my original Muslim-ness. Go figure.

2. Hussein Ibish.*

3. The genius of Tarek Fatah. Because anyone with the cajones to give it to the muzzies on a daily basis is tops in my book, as well as an inspiration.

4. Mohja Kahf, Rawan, Frodo, et al. Because I can dig the fact that a little role play is good for any relationship.

5. McMuslim bad girls in Victoria’s Secret. Because once you take me to your leader, things are gonna be fine, for me anyway. Party on. Save the capitalist critique for the spring seminar.

6. Conservative Muslim women. You can rock the hijab thing, but please don’t assume that those who don’t are any further away from righteousness than you are. Even prostitutes have donned the hijab, and I hear they charge higher prices.

7. My penis. As the owner of a penis I can assure those without one that my penis confers no significant religious insight upon me its owner. Nil. Nada. I will go out on a limb and assume that my penis is somewhat similar in thinking ability to others’. I extrapolate from that similarity that a woman leading a prayer is perfectly fine since a penis cannot think.

8. Islamic traditions. I love them too. But this is America so things aren’t gonna be the way they were back in the old country for too many generations without a lot of therapy and a healthy dose of schizophrenia. Which is why the progressive Muslims are fashioning a new way of being Muslim sans the baggage. They don’t call this the New World for nothing.

9. Astaghfirullah, I mean Brokeback, Mountain. Because who are we kidding? Gay Muslims, unlike unicorns, do exist. It’s time for the Ummah to get a grip and say Ahlan to the 21st Century.

10. Big words like patriarchy, misogyny, hegemonic power. Because thankfully progressive Muslims don’t need any of them to get their point across. Sure they could bore you with talk of the need to create a counter discourse to the received orthodoxy inherent within the socio-, political economy of the faith as constructed and understood both subjectively and implicitly; that this has been and continues to be based on certain constraints that are arguably social and not religious in the strictest sense; that their enterprise is merely an attempt to marry Islam as praxis to external experience so as to negate the disconnect between the temporal and spiritual, and that such an endeavor presupposes a certain dynamism that runs counter to the current orthodoxy. But who in the world would want to listen to that?

11. MWU. Because Ahmed and Jawad kick ass.

*C’mon that was obviously a joke.