Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.
Recently, I had an opportunity to read Sherman [Abdul-Hakim] Jackson's essay, "Islam and Affirmative Action" (Journal of Law and Religion 14 (2), (1999-2000), pp.405-431.)
Jackson explores a number of issues in the article including the concept of equality and its relative importance in the classical Islamic jurisprudential tradition (fiqh), the link between fitnah (crudely, "trial", "tribulation") and domination, the difference between abstract/formal justice and concrete/contextual justice ('adl), and the relevance of the Qur'anic narrative of the engagement between Musa/Moses and Fir'awn/Pharaoh for affirmative action in the US context.
I intend to explore the implications of some of these issues in another article. Here, I will confine myself to reproducing verbatim some of his observations on what might be described as the "permeable membrane of whiteness", a phenomenon that has also been explored by Charles W. Mills in The Racial Contract (1997).
According to Jackson,
the southernmost border of whiteness is a porous edifice through which other non-whites might reasonably entertain the hope of entering or participating in whiteness, as happened, e.g. with the Jews, the Irish, the Armenians and others.
One wonders how much this contributes to Arab and Asian silence about white supremacy, particularly in light of their legal status in America as white versus their social status as non-white. While there is much talk among Arab and Asian Muslims about "the West", rare, if ever, is whiteness or white supremacy spoken of. (p.412)
Peace
