Of all there is to lament about popular discourse in the Muslim community, the most glaring is perhaps its predictability. As a friend once offered during a moment of near lyric poignancy, “If you can get down the ‘3 M’s’; music, moons, and meat, you’ve encompassed two-thirds of what Muslims discuss within their community forums! Of course, he was being facetious; nevertheless, his assessment was accurate. A good deal of our collective mental energies are expended on a handful of shopworn, hackneyed arguments. In an admittedly somewhat cynical move, I’ve actually adopted a bit of a ‘controversy calendar.’ It begins in the earlier part of the year with the Eid Milād an-Nabī (The Celebration of the Prophet’s birthday), surges to mid-year with the commencement of Ramadān and Shawwāl, and ends with the celebration of holidays. Ironically, as the conversation at the grassroots remains suspended in a painful rendition of ‘Groundhog Day’, our community also boasts a burgeoning group of creative and intellectually exciting academicians, classically trained scholars, and other thought-leaders. The perennial problems, however, have been accessibility and relevance. With that in mind, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a jazzy swing-inspired musical track, Jay-Z’s normal mixture of nouveau-riche boast/social commentary and a group of young chic Muslim women could do something the traditional appurtenances of intellectual life—books, articles, and lectures—couldn’t: Instigate some fresh conversations among Muslims.
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