The Virginian Muslim Adventurers - Whose Responsibility?

The recent arrest in Pakistan of five young Muslims from Virginia has forced Muslim community leaders to "look inward", according to a news story. Community activists are quoted as lamenting the lack of connection of young Muslims with the Muslim community. They are afraid that websites on the Internet are luring the young to unsavory ideologies. They surmise that they need to provide more activities for the young in Islamic centers, and even offer more on the Internet to attract their attention to wholesome websites.

All that may be good and useful, but the community leaders' attention has not yet been directed to where it should be: the parents of the five young adventurous Muslim Virginians.

It is time to ask the hard questions. Do the parents have some responsibility for their children's behavior? What kind of relationship did they have with their children? Why do community leaders think that they can do a better job of raising young people than their parents can? Why are they betraying a sense of collective guilt?

Granted that these young people were adults, and are responsible for their own actions. Neither the parents nor the community are technically responsible. Yet, we are all affected by the negative consequences of their actions. Could anyone have prevented this from happening and can anyone do something to prevent it from happening in the future?

This is where I want to disassociate myself from the community's collective sense of guilt or the community's heroic efforts to prevent young people going astray. Instead we should examine the parents' actions and help other parents - not young people themselves - figure put ways to relate to their own children. The community will never be able to offer enough of this or enough of that to keep all young people in the fold. Only parents can do that by developing a relationship with their children that does not permit substitution by strangers, human or electronic.

We do not know if the attitudes of the parents themselves propelled these young Virginians. Giving them the benefit of the doubt and with full recognition of their being innocent, we need to ask what the parents' role was in this saga. Maybe we will learn what the parents could have done differently. Maybe other parents will learn how to be pro-active in preventing their children from looking for role models in shady places.

Bottom line for community leaders: Hold the guilt trip; debrief the parents.

Iqbal Unus

Next: What communities should do if they want to do anything at all.

Among 2009 "Best Books"

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6711352.html?q=Esposito

A "good Muslim" story

I received this is an email. It needs to be spread around.
Initial Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmoCjjSNAus&feature=related
Follow Up Story http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/12/03/convenience.store.compassion/index.html