A Quiet Revolution (31 page)

El Fadl’s books certainly deepened the rift between him and the dom- inant Muslim organizations of America, but they did not draw the strong public response from American Muslim organizations that Sheikh Hisham Kabbani’s attack would provoke. Kabbani was the representative in Amer- ica of a Sufi order based in Cyprus, the Naqshbandi-Haqqani. He headed, at the time, a relatively small organization based in Flint, Michigan.

Testifying at an Open Forum at the State Department in
1999
, Kab-

bani complained that there were Muslim organizations that had “hi- jacked the mike” and were claiming to be speaking on behalf of the Muslim community. Those organizations, he said (not naming any but implying a reference to ISNA and the MSA), were not the moderates but the extremists. Those “advising the media or advising the government are not the moderate Muslims,” he said. He continued: “Those whose opin- ion the government asks are the extremists themselves. Those that have been quoted in newspapers, in the magazines, [on] the television, in the media, are the extremists themselves. You are not hearing the authentic voice of Muslims, of moderate Muslims, but you are hearing the ex- tremist voice of Muslims.”
33

Attributing the rise of extremism to the spread of Wahhabism, an ideology that, as Kabbani noted, was fiercely opposed to Sufism, Kab- bani went on to say that this extremist ideology was spreading fast in the universities through the national organizations and associations that had

been established. Extremists had taken over, he said, “more than
80
per-

cent of the mosques.” Moreover, their organizations commonly raised funds ostensibly for charitable activities but in reality much of the money was used, said Kabbani, for other purposes, including “buying weapon arsenals.”

Kabbani’s comments drew swift response from a number of Mus- lim American organizations, among them ISNA and the MSA and CAIR, who issued a joint statement pointing out that Kabbani’s congressional testimony had “put the entire American Muslim community under un- justified suspicion. In effect Mr. Kabbani is telling government officials that the majority of American Muslims pose a danger to our society.”
34
Others would be critical of Kabbani as well, among them Robert Seiple,
‌

ambassador at large for religious liberty in the Clinton administration, who observed that Kabbani’s comments “about
80
percent of the lead- ership of Islam in America being extremists are irresponsible and terri-

bly unfortunate,” and that such a viewpoint “just plays into the hands of those who would demonize and create division, and those knee-jerk types who see Islam as a monolith.”
35

The criticisms and denunciations of Muslims and Islamists launched by pundits and journalists such as Pipes and Emerson and others, as well as the attacks that came from Muslims who did not share the views, goals, and understandings of Islam of Islamists and their organizations, and who resented their dominance in the American Muslim landscape,

would of course only grow fiercer and more intense in the wake of
9
/
11
,

as the American administration launched its war on terror.

Among the events that would have the greatest impact on the history of Islam in America in the
1990
s, according to GhaneaBassiri, was the Persian Gulf War of
1990
–
91
. Following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August
1990
, an invasion universally condemned, the U.S. immediately deployed its forces in the region to protect its allies. After attempting to bring about Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait through diplomatic channels, the United States, along with a coalition of Muslim- majority countries, launched an attack on Iraq known as Desert Storm. In an attempt to give his conduct an aura of legitimacy and to ap- peal to Arabs and Muslims, Saddam Hussein now added the phrase “Al- lahu Akbar” (God is greater) to the Iraqi flag, and, linking his cause to that of the Palestinians, he fired Scud missiles at Israel in the course of his war against the U.S.-led coalition. Most American Muslims, wrote GhaneaBassiri, “were not fooled” by Saddam’s manipulative tactics. Many were aware that Saddam had been an ally of the U.S., which had

supplied Iraq’s arsenal of war during the Iraq-Iran war of
1980
–
88
, and they viewed Desert Storm as “a U.S. attempt to tame a rogue ally and to control the oil supply in the region.”

Nevertheless, the overall sentiment among Muslim American or- ganizations and the Muslims who participated in them was one of deep opposition to the war. A statement issued by ISNA just before the U.S. attack began noted that “World Muslim sentiment rejects in principle the presence of foreign military forces in the birthplace of Islam”—with reference obviously to the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. ISNA’s statement is worth quoting in full for the connections it makes and the vision that it brings to bear on the impending American attack. Such an attack set a dangerous precedent, ISNA asserted,

sparking memories of colonialism, the lasting repercussions of which remain devastating to the life, liberty, and culture of the region and its ecology. It is more resenting since it is seen as emanating from a principal ally of the Israelis as well as a superpower that cannot readily be compelled to withdraw. A continuing policy of categorical support for the Israeli occu- pation, ambitions, and oppression of the Palestinian people, coupled with an overriding focus on controlling energy re- sources, opens a serious credibility gap between the American decision-makers and the Muslim and Arab peoples. Present concerted international measures [taken against Iraq] stand in clear contrast to actions taken against Israeli aggressions.
36

The war would be a turning point in the history of Muslim Amer- ican organizations, explains GhaneaBassiri. The Arab Gulf states, among them Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, major donors and supporters of Islamist organizations, were enthusiastic about the American-led war. They now asked American Muslim organizations also to endorse it. According to GhaneaBassiri, the only leader of a national Muslim American organi- zation to endorse the war was W. D. Mohammed.
37

Those who had refused to endorse Saudi Arabia’s willingness to have non-Muslim troops stationed on its soil “saw the flow of petrodol- lars to their organizations dry up.” The major issue discussed at an open

meeting at the ISNA convention meeting of
1991
was the matter of ISNA’s source of funding. “Members wanted to know,” writes Ghanea- Bassiri, “whether or not ISNA was under the influence of Arab states in the Persian Gulf since it received funds from them. One attendee was re- ported to have said, ‘Please make sure that you do not depend on those people because they are corrupted. We are more than happy to donate. Just organize yourself and ask for money. Believe me, you will get more than you need.’”

The major effect of this drying up of Gulf funds was that of push- ing the organizations toward greater financial independence. Petrodol- lars, remarks GhaneaBassiri, had become “toxic assets.” Even W. D. Mohammed would later declare that, as of the mid-nineties, he had ceased to accept funds from Saudi Arabia because “some strings” were at- tached.

As the war in Iraq ended in
1992
and sanctions were imposed on

Iraq, Islamist Americans—in keeping with their long tradition of ac- tivism in support of those in need—began organizing a Humanitarian Fund to help Iraqi refugees and orphans. They also called on the U.S. government to end the sanctions against Iraq. The sanctions caused “undue hardship on the people,” they said, “particularly the children of Iraq, without weakening the Saddam regime.”

Charity booths were a prominent and lively element of the ISNA conventions when I first began attending these in the late
1990
s. They lined the main lobby of the convention center and spilled over into the generally loud and colorful bazaar, with its stalls of books, music, and

Quran-chanting, often all playing simultaneously, each growing louder or more muted as one moved along the stalls. Other stalls sold jewelry and clothes and carpets—and even fresh dates. The charity booths were typically bright with posters and running videotapes of the people for whom they were raising funds—Bosnians, Palestinians, Kashmiris, Iraqis, Guajaratis, wherever the distress and crisis of the day was. Their tables were laden also with books, fliers, and pamphlets.

It was at such booths that I first came across the work of Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney, including his
Impact of Sanctions on Iraq: The Children Are Dying
and
War Crimes: A Report on U.S. War Crimes Against Iraq.
I also encountered Paul Findley’s books, among them
Silent

No More: Confronting America’s False Images of Islam
and
They Dare to Speak Out: Confronting Israel’s Lobby.
Findley, who also spoke at one of the early ISNA conventions I attended, was a former U.S. congressman from Illinois.

I formed the strong impression in the course of my several years of observation at ISNA that the majority of people attending the conven- tion, who often came in large family groups, were there above all for per- sonal reasons—to catch up with and socialize with family, friends, and other Muslims, and to search for matrimonial partners for themselves or their children. Still, the presence of these booths and conversations would doubtless have made ISNA conventiongoers more conscious as a group as to Muslim suffering in other parts of the world.

After
9
/
11
and the beginning of the U.S. “war on terror,” the char-

ity booths at ISNA, which had flourished in the late
1990
s, would steadily dwindle to, by
2007
, a handful of booths at the most. As part of the war on terror a number of Muslim charities were closed down by the U.S. government, and some Muslim Americans found themselves in trouble simply because they had, usually unknowingly, donated to charities that would come under suspicion as being fronts for terrorist organizations. Consequently, many Muslims were now fearful of making charitable do- nations, and so funds for charities had dried up. Many conscientious Muslims for whom making donations to charity was a religious obliga- tion found themselves now in a quandary over how to fulfill this obliga- tion.

This chapter, bringing us to the end of the
1990
s and to the eve of the tragedy of
9
/
11
, also brings Part I of this book—in which I have fol- lowed the rise of Islamism, along with the veil’s resurgence from its appearance in Egypt in the
1970
s to their establishment in America—to a close. The ensuing eventful first decade of the twenty-first century in America, and the turbulence around issues of Islam, Muslims, and women and Islam into which it plunged us, and the emergence of a new and dynamic Islamist feminism, form the subjects of Part II.

t
•
w
•
o
‌

After
9
/
11

New Pathways in America

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Prologue
‌
‌

A

s it proved, much of my research on Islam in America would be conducted in the context of one of the most eventful and volatile decades in modern history regarding relations be- tween Islam and the West, as the
9
/
11
terrorist attack (followed

by terrorist attacks by Muslims in Britain and in Spain) sparked new lev- els of fear and suspicion of Muslims in the Western world. In the wake of
9
/
11
the United States plunged into two wars, one after another, with

two Muslim-majority countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, wars that are on- going.

On the home front in America,
9
/
11
set in motion a variety of ac-

tions and responses that would directly touch many Muslim Americans

—and similar actions and reactions emerged elsewhere in the West. In the United States initially, that is, in the days and weeks following
9
/
11
, at the level of the citizenry there were eruptions of violence against Mus- lims, including several acts of murder committed against men believed to be Muslim. There was a rash of attacks too, some of them quite sav- age, on women in hijab.

The government took a clear stand against such violence, with Pres- ident George W. Bush speaking out firmly against such acts. In addition, new laws would be enacted, among them the Patriot Act, subjecting Muslims to new levels of scrutiny, and new Immigration and Natural- ization Service (INS) regulations would lead to the arrest of Muslims numbering in the thousands. Many Muslim charities were closed, and

the homes of people associated with them were raided. In addition to the people whose lives were directly affected by these events, women as well as men, many American Muslims were indirectly affected, if only by virtue of their being aware—even if simply through hearing or read- ing the news—of what was happening to some other Muslim Ameri- cans.
‌

In the arena of the public conversations on Islam there was now a new level of permissiveness as to the levels of open abuse that could be aired. A good proportion of these negative comments seemed to em- anate from the Christian Right. Franklin Graham, for example, Billy Gra- ham’s son, called Islam a “very wicked, evil religion,” and Jerry Falwell, another leader of the Christian Right, described the Prophet Muham- mad as a terrorist. In similar vein, Ann Coulter, speaking of Muslims, said, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
1
Similar trends were under way in Europe, most memorably encapsulated in the publication in Denmark of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The American media, mindful of the history of demeaning cartoons and representations of African Americans, re- frained from republishing the cartoons.