WASHINGTON – In America, `Eid celebrations are colorful, multicultural, and fattening. We commemorate the end of Ramadan by attending the `Eid prayer. Afterwards, we storm the local diners and cafes where we binge on American style pancakes and drown ourselves in coffee. By mid afternoon, some of us will be well on our way to inducing a carb and/or caffeine coma.

Paying homage to the multiplicity of cultural traditions, mostly revolving around food, we push through it for no other reason than to make one singular and very important point-We are blessed and we know it!!

In my local midwestern community of twenty thousand or so Muslim residents we have no less than three `Eid prayer venues.

From convention centers to hotel lobbies our fixation with unity at any cost was costing us our sanity. The consolidation of our collective resources has finally given way to a new psychology of abundance. We are a rapidly expanding community with greater need for space and that is something to celebrate not begrudge. Hip hip hooray. A shift in perception has become a shift in reality. It can be done, because most of the obstacles that American Muslims face are mental not practical.

We are a community with resources trying to become more resourceful. We are learning the hard way that the only way to truly observe our faith is to stop observing one another. We can no longer afford to quibble over slipping headscarves and shortage of parking spaces. Ladies and gentleman- It’s time to pray!

Put away your segregationist politics, your Sunni-Shiite identity complexes and all other foreign bred cultural obsessions being passed off as religious edicts because they hold no sway in this sacred space.

We are all in this together, which in ‘American’ translates to mutual respect for one another widely varying spiritual impulses. We can’t afford to confuse psychology with spirituality anymore. God is watching us and so are six billion people around the world. They all want to know what we are going to do with all this American social currency. Are we going to push past the xenophobic, misogynistic programming or are we going to exploit this grand experiment in diversity.

Our diversity is not only our strength, it is who we are. Diversity is the organizing principle of the American Muslim identity.

Midwestern born and raised Hanan Abdullah confirms these observations when describing her emotions about the American Muslim `Eid experience.

“…… Celebrating `Eid as an American Muslim is the most beautiful experience. We see people we have never seen before, who speak languages we will mostly likely never learn… `Eid as an American Muslim is the celebration of Islam and how diverse it is..”

Yes diversity is our trademark and I am proud of that, but I must confess it’s been difficult to get into `Eid mode this year.  We live in a globalized emotional economy that doesn’t recognize our amnesia as a legitimate diagnosis.  We cannot forget the madness currently taking root in other parts of the world. Parts where `Eid is not only impossible to celebrate but painful to even acknowledge.

Professor Ahmed Younis, international ambassador for Global Ethics and Social Justice at The Paulo Freire Democratic project at Chapman University, wrote an especially powerful post that has given me some perspective:

Dear Muslim,

I know you are confused. I know it is incomprehensible that people who kill innocents in Dhaka, Istanbul, Baghdad, and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah can be deemed Muslim or that their movement can be called Islamic.

But, this is the reality we have been presented with. Our primary focus cannot be continuing to proclaim that they are not Muslim and their state is not Islamic – despite that being very true. Surely, that is a posture meant for our own healing and to bring coherence to this incoherent reality.

The Islamic posture today in the midst of this ugliness should not be one of self defense but communal offense. We, as individual Muslims, must lead the process of cutting these cancerous ideas from our midst. Some of their symptoms relate to the place of women, the denigration of Shittes, the peddling of conspiracy theories, the “othering” of those who do not conform to dominant modes of identity, the simplistic relegation of each person’s critical thinking capacity to “holy men,” and the abdication of this present moment and life in search of a fictional and mythical golden age of pristine Puritanism. Surely, these ideas do not bomb – but they incubate ecosystems that breed the confusion that gives rise to those who do.

To be Muslim, or to be Islamic in these times of great ugliness and tragedy – a look inward is a necessary prerequisite to healing. We are in need of reflexivity at the individual and communal levels- not because we are terrorists – but because the culprits come from among us in our vast diversity of difference.

The Prophet Muhammad’s mosque that has been bombed. The calmest, kindest, most beautiful place of Islam. What more do we need to shake ourselves awake and engage this reality? As we’ve seen – nations are unable and unwilling.

We are the only hope. If you want to change the world – we must change ourselves.