Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 4 | Muslims in America: Identity Develops as a Community Grows, page 3

A rising interest in politics was not alone as an important development in Muslim life in the 1990s. During that decade, Islam became more visible on the American religious landscape, as building campaigns increased the number of mosques. In 2000, "The Mosque Study Project," a survey sponsored by four major Islamic organizations, counted 1,209 Islamic houses of worship, up from 962 in 1994, an increase of 25 percent.

As Muslims became more visible, so too did some local leaders embark on efforts at interreligious dialogue, entering into discussions with Protestant, Catholic and Jewish counterparts.

And, in a development that would seem likely to add to the growth of an American Muslim identity, the mosque-building trend relied on money raised locally, rather than from governments or organizations overseas, which had contributed to some previous work. "They decided, 'We can do it,"' Haddad says, referring to American Muslims.

At the same time, greater opportunity began to open for women within Islamic organizations, a change reflected in the experience of Mattson, who is also a professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

The Islamic Society, a membership organization dedicated to helping establish Muslim community centers and schools, elected her its vice president in the summer of 2001. The move, she said, starkly contrasted with the situation that prevailed in the organization in the mid-1980s. "I remember 15 years ago, being at a meeting when women weren't allowed to speak on stage," she says. Instead, they wrote their questions or comments on sheets of paper, then passed them forward for men to read aloud.

But some of this momentum toward change has also produced drawbacks. The rising interest in political activism, for example, has highlighted an important, long-existing division between immigrant and native-born Muslims.

In 2000, four Muslim organizations joined forces to found the American Muslim Political Coordination Council, to rally an Islamic vote behind one of the presidential candidates. Shortly before Election Day, it endorsed George W. Bush, who had met with American Muslim representatives early in the campaign and had also spoken out against so-called "secret evidence" provisions of recent immigration laws that allow for the detention of non-citizens without full disclosure of the evidence against them.

When Mr. Bush won the election as narrowly as he did, Muslims who voted for him could claim a vital role in his victory. But the committee's decision also exacerbated an old rift. Many African American Muslims felt they had not been consulted about the endorsement, a lack of recognition that rankled, given the high proportion of blacks within the overall Muslim population.

Partisan politics, Mattson says, can reinforce class and ethnic distinctions. "Some of the African Americans would see the immigrants as falling into supporting an economic order that is inherently oppressive to African Americans, so that can exacerbate conflicts," she says, adding that politics "forces you into categories that you don't have to have in a religious community."

Aamir A. Rehman, director of outreach at the Islamic Society of Boston, also ponders some of the conflicts that can be created by different cultural and ethnic groups' experiences and expectations about the practice of Islam in the U.S. "In America," he says, "Muslims often worship side by side with people from all over the Muslim world. Exposure to this rich diversity of cultures can be stimulating but also confusing for some. But this uniquely American situation also presents an opportunity to focus on the study and practice of Islam-on what Islam is all about-rather than on the cultural features that attend Islam in any particular country or region."

Islam carries an ideal of a universal community. Belonging to the ummah, the community of the faith, should trump race, class and ethnicity. That vision of equality becomes visible during the pilgrimage to Mecca, itself one of Islam's Five Pillars of religious practice. Muslims are required, if they are able, to make the journey once in their lifetimes. In Mecca, the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims follow the same rituals, and the men among them dress alike, each wearing a simple garment of two large pieces of unstitched and seamless cloth.

The ideal of unity has never been far from American Muslim consciousness, perhaps a recognition of the unprecedented task of bringing together such a wide-ranging group. In annual meetings, Mattson says, Muslim organizations have prominently displayed a passage from the Qur'an as a theme for discussion: "É surely we have created you of a male and a female, and made you tribes and families that you may know each other."

The emphasis on unity is also often reflected at the local level, which is really the scene of much action in American Islamic life.

The All-Dulles Area Muslim Society in Herndon, Virginia, familiarly known by its acronym, ADAMS, offers one example. The mosque is among the most prominent on the East Coast and its constituency is decidedly multi-ethnic, with immigrants from Asia and Africa, as well as African American, Latino and white converts.

In an interview, Imam Mohamed Magid, the tall, broad-shouldered and bearded spiritual leader, emphasized the symbolic value of the mosque's having had four different speakers at last year's Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that concludes the dawn-to-dusk fast at the end of the lunar month of Ramadan. Two speakers, he said, were African American, the third a Yemeni immigrant and the fourth himself, a native of Sudan. "That shows the acceptance of the community," Imam Magid said, referring to the mosque. "We don't have an ethnic community dominating."

The mosque stands out in another way, too, as one of those Muslim institutions that will alter its local religious landscape. Last fall, the mosque broke ground for a new building, a $4.5 million project to house a congregation now so large that it must worship in shifts.

Next page: Imam Magid looks to the next generation of American Muslims to shape an Islamic identity in this country.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4