Disowning Altruism

Reading Newsweek's recent article about young American Muslims (or was it
young Muslims in America?) was disturbing, if not deeply perplexing. This
piece is a statement of my most fundamental question about the 'new'
Islam among the young Muslims of America.

In my own intellectual and spiritual journey, time and again I have
reached the conclusion that at the core of the Muslim ethos (and at the
center of Islam's message, too) there is a strong element of sacrificing
oneself for the community, of giving away as much of oneself as possible
towards the betterment of others. That is what seems to have been one of
the most important personality traits of the Prophet and of other
spiritual figures right through the history of Islam. In fact, the
familiar picture of the Muslim spiritual figure which often comes to mind
is of someone who has no material possessions, to say the least.

If this is true, then how possible is it for someone whose life depends on
the ruthless survival instinct which prevails in Silicon Valley and Wall
Street to follow Islam beyond the basic ritual level of namaaz, roza, etc.
I am disturbed by the apparent contradiction inherent in saying that young
highly educated Muslims in America (typified by their Juma prayers in
conference rooms at Oracle Corporation and Intel) find an intellectual and
spiritual haven in the ideology of Islam. Does the ideology of Islam
really allow you to be the implacable instrument of self-interest which
the rabidly capitalistic ethic of Silicon Valley forces you to be. Is any
feeling for the interests and good of others compatible with the
world-view forced on you by the 2-year entry program at Goldman Sachs (the
training ground for life at Goldman) which weeds out something like four
out of five candidates at the end of 2 years and allows entry to the
blessed one. There is very little people are not willing to do to the
other four to be that blessed one out of five, whatever the ideological
teachings of Islam may suggest. Or is it that you can follow the rituals
as a sort of base level homage to the religion and then cloak it with the
intellectual ethic du jour. Isn't there a fundamental contradiction
between the Islamic ethos and the capitalistic ethic?

If there is a solid sense of identity or a clear definition of difference
from the rest of America brought to young American Muslims by virtue of
following Islam's rituals, particularly by sporting the hijab, then we
should recognize it as that. Mislabelling it as an answer to the
admittedly difficult existential problems one faces as a cog in some
corporate machine leaves us neither here, the land of plenty, nor there
where we're having to re-examine huqooq-ul-ibaad with neighbors like the
Taliban.