9781422281147

M USLIMS IN A MERICA

Anbara Zaidi

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on file at the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-1-4222-3676-5 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-4222-8114-7 (ebook)

Understanding Islam series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3670-3

Table of Contents

I NTRODUCTION ....................................................................5 D R . Camille Pecastaing, Ph.D. 1. W HAT A MERICANS K NOW A BOUT I SLAM ..........................9 2. T HE I SLAMIC F AITH ......................................................17 3. M USLIMS D URING THE E RA OF S LAVERY ........................37 4. I MMIGRANTS , C ONVERTS , AND C OMMUNITIES ................43 5. A FRICAN A MERICANS AND I SLAM ....................................57 6. A MERICAN M USLIM L IFE ..............................................67 7. F AMILY , S OCIETY , AND C ULTURE ....................................83 8. C HALLENGES F ACING A MERICAN M USLIMS ....................99 C HRONOLOGY ..................................................................110 S ERIES G LOSSARY ............................................................112 F URTHER R EADING ..........................................................113 I NTERNET R ESOURCES ......................................................114 I NDEX ..............................................................................115 P ICTURE C REDIT ..............................................................119 C ONTRIBUTORS ..............................................................120

Islam: Core Beliefs and Practices Ideas & Daily Life in the MuslimWorld Today Islamism & Fundamentalism in the Modern World The Monotheistic Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Muslim Heroes and Holy Places Muslims in America An Overview: Who are the Muslims? The Struggle for Identity: Islam and the West

Introduction by Camille Pecastaing, Ph.D.

I slam needs no introduction. Everyone around the world old enough is likely to have a formed opinion of Islam and Muslims. The cause of this wide recognition is, sadly, the recur- rent eruptions of violence that have marred the recent—and not so recent—history of the Muslim world. A violence that has also selectively followed Muslim immigrants to foreign lands, and placed Islam at the front and center of global issues. Notoriety is why Islam needs no simple introduction, but far more than that. Islam needs a correction, an exposition, a full dis- cussion of its origins, its principles, its history, and of course of what it means to the 1.5 to 2 billion contemporaries associated with it, whether by origins, tradition, practice or belief. The challenge is that Islam has a long history, spread over fourteen centuries. Its principles have been contested from the beginning, the religion has known schism after schism, and politi- co-theological issues instructed all sorts of violent conflict. The history of Islam is epic, leaving Islam today as a mosaic of diverse sects and practices: Sunnism, Shi’ism, Sufism, Salafism, Wahhabism, and of course, Jihadism. The familiarity of those terms often masks ignorance of the distinctions between them.

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Islam is many things to many people, and while violent radi- cals occupy the headlines, what a Muslim is in the 21st century is practically indefinable. Islam is present on every continent; the religion of billionaires and of the poorest people in the world, the religion of kings and revolutionaries, of illiterate pastoralists and nuclear scientists, of fundamentalist theologians and avant-garde artists. Arabic is the language of Islam, the language of the Qur’an, but most Muslims only speak other tongues. Many Muslims indulge in moderate consumption of alcohol without feeling that they have renounced their faith. Boiled down to its simplest expression, being Muslim in the 21st century is an appre- ciation for one’s origins and a reluctance to eat pork. It is not only non-Muslims who have a partial view of Islam. Muslims, too, have a point of view limited by their own experi- ence. This tunnel vision is often blamed for the radicalization that takes place at the margins of Islam. It is because they do not fully apprehend the diversity and complexity of their faith that some follow the extremist views of preachers of doom and violence. Among those, many are converts, or secularized Muslims who knew and cared little about religion until they embraced radical- ism. Conversely, the foundation of deradicalization programs is education: teaching former militants about the complexity of the Islamic tradition, in particular the respect for the law and toler- ance of diversity that Prophet Muhammad showed when he was the ruler of Medinah. Islam in the 21st century is a political religion. There are four Islamic republics, and other states that have made Islam their offi- cial religion, bringing Islamic law (Shari’a) in varying degrees into their legal systems. Wherever multiparty elections are held, from Morocco to Indonesia, there are parties representing political Islam. Some blame Islam’s political claims for the relative decline of the Muslim world. Once a center of wealth and power and knowledge, it now lags behind its European and East Asian neigh- bors, still struggling to transition from a rural, agrarian way of life to the urban, now post-industrial age. But for others, only Islam

I NTRODUCTION

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will deliver a successful and indigenous modernization. Islam is also an economic actor. Shari’a instructs the practices of what is known as Islamic finance, a sector of the international financial system that oversees two trillion dollars worth of assets. For decades now, Islamist organizations have palliated the defi- ciencies of regional states in the provision of social services, from education to healthcare, counseling, emergency relief, and assis- tance to find employment. It is the reach of Islamist grassroots net- works that has insured the recent electoral success of Islamic par- ties. Where the Arab Spring brought liberalization and democrati- zation, Islam was given more space in society, not less. It should be clear to all by now that modernity, and post- modernity, is not absolute convergence toward a single model— call it the Western, secular, democratic model. Islam is not a lega- cy from a backward past that refuses to die, it is also a claim to shape the future in a new way. Post-communist China is making a similar claim, and there may be others to come, although today none is as forcefully and sometimes as brutally articulated as Islam’s. That only would justify the urgency to learn about Islam, deconstruct simplistic stereotypes and educate oneself to the diver- sity of the world.

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T he last light of the setting sun washes over an expansive, domed hall dotted with people. Some sit, silent and cross- legged, beside the great pillars that sustain the ceiling; others are bowed down with their foreheads pressed against the ornate car- pet; and still others chat softly and laugh together along the periph- ery and in the rear of the great room. Speaking in Arabic, a bearded man offers a casual greeting to a newcomer who removes his shoes at the entrance and deposits them in a cubby on the back wall. Dressed in an austere, floor-length robe and a scarf tightly wrapped around her head, a mother bearing an infant moves toward the back where a group of women has converged. She exchanges greetings and kisses with the others. Then, cradling her child in her arms, she faces for- ward, lips moving in silent prayer, and begins to bend and bow. The crowd, scattered about, produces a soft murmur, punctuated by the occasional cough or laugh, which echoes in the hall. Then, cutting the silence, a voice sounds over the loudspeaker in Arabic, and the hap- hazard crowd forms into neat rows—men in the front, women What Americans Know About Islam

Opposite: Muslims in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, gather outside their mosque after Sunday prayers. The Muslim community in Cedar Rapids dates to the early 20th century.

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behind. At the head of the congregation, a man raises his hands to his shoulders, folds them across his chest, and begins a melodic Arabic recitation. This scene, of a typical evening prayer at a mosque , could well be taking place in the Middle East. But it is not. In this case, the worshippers are in a quiet town in the American Midwest. The U.S. census does not collect data on religious affiliation, so it is difficult to say with precision how many Muslims live in the United States. Estimates vary widely, from 3 million to 8 mil- lion, depending on the source. In 2016, the Pew Research Center estimated that Muslims made up just under 1 percent of the total U.S. population, meaning that there were about 3.3 million Muslims of all ages living in the United States that year. Some of these people are immigrants, and some are American-born converts from other religions, but a growing number are born and raised as Muslims in the United States. American Muslims make up the third-largest religious community in the United States, after Christianity and Judaism. Despite this growing population of Muslims in the United States, many Americans know little about Islam. Many think that it represents a very different way of life. They are unaware that Islam has the same roots as Judaism and Christianity—that all three religions trace their origins to Abraham, that all three origi- nated in the region currently referred to as the Middle East, and that all three consider Jerusalem to be a holy site. More important than common history, all three of these major world religions share a similar system of values. colonialism— the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. mosque— a Muslim place of worship. Words to Understand in This Chapter

W HAT A MERICANS K NOW A BOUT I SLAM

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If many Jewish and Christian Americans don’t know much about Islam, many Muslims are themselves trying to figure out how they fit into American life. Should they blend in with “main- stream” society and risk losing their Islamic identity, or should they keep to themselves and perhaps be misunderstood by other Americans? What Muslims have discovered over the years is that neither blending in nor isolating themselves is an effective way to promote understanding—blending in makes Islam invisible and isolation makes it seem strange to others. Because of the diversity of backgrounds and approaches in the Muslim community, find- ing a middle ground has been challenging. However, over the last three decades, Muslims have made it a priority to develop a way

There is no inherent contradiction between being a devout follower of Islam and being a patriotic American. However, over the past two decades Muslim Americans have reported facing discrimination and sometimes even physical attacks due to their religious beliefs. This is because some non-Muslim Americans have come to equate Islam with terrorism due to the actions of extremists affiliated with groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or with terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. These Muslims participated in a march during Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2016, which began at the site where a Muslim had been assaulted a few weeks earlier in Brooklyn.

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of life that allows them to wear their Islamic and American iden- tities at the same time.

How Americans See Islam For centuries, Western scholars have portrayed Islam and Muslims as mysterious, barbaric, inferior, and sometimes even evil. Attitudes such as these made it easier for Europeans to take over Muslim lands during the colonial period—and to justify colonialism as a means of bringing enlightenment and civilization to Muslims. European colonialism colored the relationship of Islam and the West, forever placing them at odds in the minds of Muslims and westerners alike. As more Europeans settled in the United States, these Orientalist ideas came with them and became a part of the American worldview. Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb, who embraced Islam during his time as the U.S. consul in the Philippines, was the first known Anglo-American to convert to Islam. He spoke about the Western perception of Islam in 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. I am an American of the Americans. I carried with me for years the same errors that thousands of Americans carry with them today. Those errors have grown into history, false history has influenced your opinion of Islam. It influ- enced my opinion of Islam and when I began, ten years ago, to study the Oriental religions, I threw Islam aside as altogether too corrupt for consid- eration. But when I came beneath the surface, to know what Islam really is, to know who and what the prophet of Arabia was, I changed my belief very materially, and am proud to say that I am now a Mussulman [Muslim]. Upon seeing Muslims praying at the same event, a newspaper columnist wrote, “A lot a fellers was blacker than a pair o’ shoes on Sunday morning. . . . You can’t tell whether they’re at prayer or a dog fight, but I suppose it’s all the same in Arabia.” His understanding that the followers of Islam were a non-white, Arabian community was common among Americans at the time and still exists today.

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Many Americans continue to see Islam as the “them” in an “us versus them” struggle. The notion that Islam is a violent religion and a threat to the United States has been especially prevalent since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The hijackers who crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were members of an Islamic organization, al-Qaeda, which justi- fied their actions by framing them as part of a jihad against the United States. Negative attitudes and stereotypes about Islam have been fueled by other terrorist attacks around the world since then, including the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, and the November 2015 mass shootings and suicide bombings that killed more than 135 people in Paris. The organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has repulsed many people due to its murders of non-Muslims in lands it has gained control over in the Middle East, particularly Iraq and Syria. Yet, as many moderate Muslim leaders and scholars have pointed out, the terrorist attacks and executions committed by ISIL actually violate Islamic teachings as the majority of the world’s Muslims understand them. The Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, instructs Muslims to fight only if they are being unjustly oppressed or attacked. Islamic tradition also forbids Muslims to attack or injure civilians, women, and children. Even the term jihad itself is widely misunderstood in the West. The word—which is often mistranslated in the mass media as “holy war,” and used to denote violence perpetrated by Muslims in the name of their religion—simply means “effort” or “strug- gle.” And in the sense most often used in the Qur’an, jihad actu- ally refers to the inner struggle that each person makes to improve his or her character and spiritual state. Physical struggles that involve human violence have a separate term, qital . Islam in America Positive or negative, there has definitely been a surge in interest about Islam and Muslims in recent years. While once there was a

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These children attending a Sunday Arabic class in Cedar Rapids are among the estimated 3 to 8 million Muslims living in the United States.

shortage of English-language material on Islam, now there are hundreds of books on the subject. Americans can go to any book- store or library and find copies of the Qur’an as well as books with a variety of opinions on Islam. Though some promote nega- tive views, many make an honest attempt to illuminate more about the people and the religion. Not only are Americans inquir- ing about the worldwide Islamic community, they are also more curious about their own Muslim neighbors. What they are dis- covering is that Muslims are like everyone else—they are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters. They may be doctors or lawyers, teachers or students, business managers or laborers. For recreation, they might go to a concert or a movie or a basketball game. And, like many Americans, they strive to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

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