Class date: Tuesday, September 8
Guest summarizer: Sadra Bowie
We spent today’s class discussing the scholar strike and the ways that it applies to our study of Islam. Oppression of black Muslims has been a part of the United States since before it was the United States. Why has it stayed so long and what can we do to change it? We talked a lot about how tired we all are and how hard it is to keep that activist passion and fire burning when we are constantly seeing tragedies that feel like they should be avoidable, when we see videos of inhumane murders and we watch those people go unpunished time and again. How can we push for dramatic and radical change when it becomes so exhausting so quickly? Here are some of our ideas: we need to get feeling back and become more involved so that we can have these conversations, we need to focus more on specificity, and more than anything, we need to apply the concept of loving your neighbor. Everyone in the world is going through something, and even though those struggles are often going to be different from our own we can care about them and have compassion for their struggles. Sometimes all we can do is be radically kind. Maybe we can’t fix everything we want to or be heroes but we can be kind to each other. And maybe that’s a way to resist burnout too? Because maybe we can’t be heroes but we certainly can be good.
By
2 thoughts on “More on the #ScholarStrike Discussion”
William
I feel that a lot of what we discussed was used back in the civil rights movement, like the idea of loving your neighbor and being radically kind. These beliefs helped the Civil Rights movement succeed just as much as protests and organizations.
Joely
I’ve been thinking about these ideas a lot recently. My high school was a big “Be Kind” school. But I never found that kindness was actually represented well in my peers. For instance, so many students had the “Be Kind” bumper sticker, but these same students were the ones being rude to others. I often wonder if instead of saying “Be Kind” we should say “stand up for what’s right” and/or “don’t be afraid to be a shit stirrer” because often times this is what creates real change. I don’t know, just food for thought!