Dr. Nyang and Hamza Yusuf on the Need for a New Muslim Publication

Anas Coburn for Dar al Islam: We're writing an annual publication which can, to some degree, give a view of the state of Islam in the United States. It cannot be comprehensive, and it will not be from everyone's point of view, but it will be a view of what was important in the last year and where we are now and what we need to do.
Dr. Sulayman Nyang: Let me give you my ideas about this. One of the points which is developing in the United States with regard to social organization and self documentation of these non governmental organizations is to come up with these state-of-the-world or state-of-the-nation kind of reports. We don't have anything like that for the Muslims. If we are going to create a publication to address this need of the Muslims, then there are certain steps that must be taken to bring this about. First of all, you have to develop a categorization of things to be included in such a state-of-the-nation report for the Muslims. For example, you would like to know what the Muslim organizations are. What are these organizations, and what are the areas of responsibility they may be classified into: national organizations...what can you tell the people they are doing. You have their web-sites, you can monitor them, and at the end of the year come up with your own assessment of what they are doing.

You would like to know the relationship between the Muslims in the United States and the various institutions, for example there is certain legislation passed by the congress...for example, how does the legislation around health policy affect the Muslims, how does legislation on schools affect Muslims. People will be coming to you to find out how Muslims are responding to American society because you are the one who is spending time monitoring what they are doing. If you have a national state-of-the Muslim-in-America, you will have to develop the data for people who are interested in the Muslim response to legislation. Labor Unions for example, they are all interested in legislation dealing with labor, hospitals are interested in legislation dealing with them...thats why they have lobbies.
I talk about the twelve tribes of Washington, and monitoring those tribes. And the Muslims must have mawalis in these tribes. Muslims have to really be present in those. If you are going to have a report like that, you will have a category like the political situation of Muslims in America. If you monitor, you will know what the President has said about Muslims during the course of the year, if he has attended any events, you can document it. In five to ten pages, you can summarize what happened, so people will know that there is a place to get this. Right now, there is no such place. It would take someone a long time to document this using the internet after the fact. But if you have someone doing it on an ongoing basis, it will be easy, just cut and paste. You get the report from the Washington Post, read it and make a short digest, including a short footnote. Use the formats already developed. You document the twelve tribes, from the President right on down to the shoeshine boys. You may inspire some Muslims even to write their dissertation on what you are doing. They can begin to write about the prominent Senators based on what is in your book. Someone living in Massachusetts could write a book on Kennedy and the Muslims based on what you have gathered. Recently John Dean, the Chairman of the Democratic Party met with Muslims here. It was in the newspapers. A report of the meeting would be in such a book as yours. This is a new thing for the Muslims ... a Muslim Year-in-Review.