A Quiet Revolution (40 page)

Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic Party, also spoke at ISNA. Dean emphasized that “there is nothing more American and noth- ing more patriotic than speaking out.” It was important, he said, to keep leadership accountable. “We need to restore American moral leadership in the world.” Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur also spoke at ISNA, ex- plaining that as a Polish American she deeply identified with the strug- gles of Muslim Americans. “Every group and every generation,” she told the audience, “must win liberty anew.” Jesse Jackson recalled how he had been jailed in
1960
for trying to use a public library. “In
1963
, if you came from Texas to Florida you could not use a public toilet and could not buy ice cream.” Today he said, Muslims were the targets of Islamopho- bia, and immigrants, including Mexicans, as well as blacks were the tar- gets of racism. Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, gays—“We cannot survive alone,” he said. “We need each other to survive.”
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Another well-known American politician who spoke at ISNA was Keith Ellison, who is Muslim. Ellison spoke of the power of telling one’s own story, and he urged Muslims to tell their stories as Muslim Ameri- cans. He also referred to the problems that the proposed Arabic-language school in New York had encountered (the school that Almontaser had been nominated to head), declaring that “we need more people to learn Arabic” and deploring what was happening to the proposed school.

Other prominent speakers included Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism and leader of more than a million Amer- ican Jews. He addressed one of the plenary sessions. “How did it hap- pen,” he said, “that when a Muslim congressman takes his oath of office while holding the Koran, Dennis Prager suggests that the congressman

is more dangerous to America than the terrorists of
9
/
11
?” Even more

important, he continued, “How did it happen that law-abiding Muslims in this country can find themselves condemned for dual loyalty and blamed for the crimes of the terrorists they abhor?” The time had come, Yoffie went on, “for Americans to learn how far removed Islam is from the perverse distortions of the terrorists who too often dominate the media, subverting Islam’s image by professing to speak in its name. . . . The time has come to stand up to the opportunists in our midst—the media figures, religious leaders, and politicians who demonize Muslims and bash Islam, exploiting the fears of their fellow citizens for their own

purposes.” Yoffie said, “I know that our sacred texts, including the He- brew Bible, are filled with contradictory propositions, and these include passages that appear to promote violence and thus offend our ethical sensibilities. Such texts are to be found in all religions, including Chris- tianity and Islam. The overwhelming majority of Jews reject violence by interpreting these texts in a constructive way ... my Christian and Mus- lim friends tell me that precisely the same dynamic operates in their tra- ditions. It is therefore,” he concluded, “our collective task to strengthen and inspire one another as we fight the fanatics and work to promote the values of justice and love that are common to both our faiths.”
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Another prominent speaker was Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a leading figure in the Jewish Renewal movement. Rabbi Waskow emphasized, as he would again in an essay he published a few weeks later, that it was im- portant that “we brighten the threads of peace and justice and healing in
all
our traditions, while bleaching toward calm and caring the fiery blood-red threads of violence in all of them.” Waskow’s essay, in which he reflected warmly on his participation at the ISNA Convention, ap- peared in response to David Horowitz’s launching of his Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week. Waskow characterized the Horowitz event as a “slap in the face of the Living God we claim to celebrate.” Islamo-Fascist Aware- ness Week was also denounced by many interfaith groups.
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The presence over the years at ISNA conventions of such well- known figures as Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Marcy Kaptur, Amy Goodman, Rabbis Yoffie and Waskow, along with other non-Muslim activists, lawyers, academics, and public figures—David Cole, Richard Killmer, Jeanne Herrick-Stare, and many more—tremen- dously enriched the conversations under way at these conventions.

Their very presence there and the causes and concerns that many spoke out on—the Patriot Act, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the war in Iraq, issues of torture and of law and civil rights, the role of the media— conveyed a clear message of support and solidarity with Muslim Amer- icans and with their perspectives and concerns regarding the events of the day. These were
American
issues, their presence and words conveyed, and not just Muslim American ones.

The voices and perspectives of such people, whose concerns were strongly in resonance with and complemented each other, fostered an

atmosphere at ISNA in which the trials and tribulations of Muslim Americans could be understood as representing not merely hardships to be endured but rather moments of extraordinary opportunity. Muslim Americans now had the chance to stand at the forefront of the struggle for equal rights, the struggle that other Americans had taken up before them and whose efforts had been vital to the country’s progress toward a society of justice for all. Fighting for justice was the quintessential and defining American experience: Muslim Americans now had the oppor- tunity, in taking up this struggle, to become fully and truly American.
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Currents of Change

THE IMPACT OF THE “OPPRESSION OF WOMEN” THEME

As American Muslims struggle to locate their place on a de- mographic map of this country, American Muslims now find themselves playing a historical role in reviving the principles upon which this country was founded. The greatest mile- stones of our history—the abolition movement, the suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the peace movement

—have been achieved only by the courage of a minority of our population who were willing to stand up and point out the inconsistencies and contradictions of our policies. Today American Muslims are playing that role by standing at the forefront of the movement to awaken America’s collective conscience and to eliminate the violations and restore our role and credibility before the world.

—Hadia Mubarak, first female and first American-born

president of the MSA,
2004
21

Ingrid Mattson had been elected vice president of ISNA at the
2001
convention, which took place over the weekend of August
31
to Septem- ber
2
—a few days, that is, prior to
9
/
11
. Her election to this post there- fore was obviously not a consequence of the
9
/
11
backlash. But
9
/
11
certainly did have a perceptible impact on women at Muslim American organizations, as well as on the subject of women at these organizations.

Indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter,
9
/
11
and its aftermath had had very direct impact on Muslim American women in general and on women who wore hijab in particular.

Both organizers and attendees at these conventions were obviously well aware that women who wore hijab—preponderantly women who belonged to those Muslim communities who habitually attended mosque and Muslim American annual conventions—were at risk or felt them- selves to be at risk whenever they merely ventured outdoors. They were clearly well aware too of how the subject of the “oppression of Muslim women” was figuring in the media and in the administration’s rhetoric of war. Speaking at one of the inaugural plenary sessions at the ICNA

convention of
2002
, Yvonne Haddad observed that the war in Afghan-

istan had “become a virtuous war because we were going to liberate Afghanistan and we were going to liberate the women of the Muslim world.” It was more important than ever now, she stressed, for Muslim women in America to speak out on the subject and give voice to their own experiences and make clear “that no one is beating you up to make you wear a scarf.”
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At all of the
2002
conventions it was clear that convention organ-

izers also had seen the need to counter the theme of women’s oppression. Beginning in that year it appeared that more women were featured as panelists and even as plenary speakers than previously, and that more women were listed as advisory board members and officers of the or- ganizations. This does not mean that the presence of women serving in these capacities rose dramatically; nevertheless, the presence of just a couple of additional women on the podium when ISNA officers assem- bled palpably altered the experience of the convention, indicating new trends in ISNA’s and other organizations’ self-presentations.

There was also a distinct sense that new spaces were opening up at these conventions for direct criticism of the official stances and practices of the organizations—in relation specifically to women but also to other matters. These spaces seemed to have opened up as a consequence of Islam’s being under attack in the larger society. Such organizations, rep- resentatives broadly of conservative Islam, were thus on the defensive, having to graciously accept or at least remain silent in the face of criticism

—criticisms which in pre-
9
/
11
days they might have dismissed or si-

lenced. In the current climate, attempts by officials to dismiss criticisms regarding women’s position would have left them distinctly vulnerable to criticism and attack.

The younger members attending these conventions seemed partic- ularly eager to seize this opportunity to air their grievances. In
2002
, for example, ISNA officers held a plenary session at the convention entitled

“ISNA and You: Uniting the Muslim Community in North America,” a session dedicated to receiving comments, questions, and suggestions from the floor.
23
Listening to these comments I formed the strong impression that people, and in particular the young, had been chafing for some time under the weight of the rules and conditions created by their immigrant elders. Among the comments I set down in my notes was one from a young woman who said she was pleased to see that ISNA now had a woman vice president, and pleased that there were now several women members of the advisory board. Ideally, however, she went on, ISNA leadership should be fifty/fifty women and men. When, she wanted to know, might this goal be realized?
24

Although other issues came up, gender topics seemed to get the lion’s share of attention. One young man suggested that all men over the age of fifty should resign to make room for women and younger peo- ple.
25
Another young man complained about the way that ISNA insisted on gender segregation, maintaining that such divisions were hypocriti- cal. American Muslims lived their lives otherwise in a gender-integrated world, so it was absurd that at Muslim venues they had to observe these rules—rules that might have been relevant in their parents’ home coun- tries, he said, but were irrelevant here. Others complained about foreign policy issues, in particular that their parents seemed obsessed with po- litical matters affecting their home countries. But these issues, one young man said, were simply not their issues as young Americans, and it was time to leave them behind.
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Already, even in
2002
, there was a significantly more relaxed at-

mosphere with regard to veiling at ISNA’s convention—a trend that would steadily grow over the ensuing years. When I first attended an ISNA convention I had found it impossibly uncomfortable, as I de- scribed, not to wear a scarf myself, since every other female head there seemingly was covered. But in
2002
and thereafter, there were always a

few women who did not cover—and I personally never again felt the need to do so. My impression was not that women had changed their ordinary practice regarding dress, but rather that previously women who did not cover in their own lives, other than perhaps at their local mosques, had felt they had to do so while attending ISNA. After
2001
they seemed to feel free to be there simply as themselves. Even prior to
9
/
11
I had noticed that women whom I ran into at nearby restaurants often wore no veils, whereas inside the convention halls they appeared in their hijabs. In addition, several women I had spoken with at ISNA con- ventions prior to
2001
had told me that they did not normally wear hi- jabs and that they were irked by the hijab’s increasingly coming to be viewed as mandatory at their local mosques in recent years.
27
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Even the observance of segregated seating, exits, and entryways, while nominally still in place, was now far more laxly observed. These changes did quite palpably alter the experience of being at an ISNA con- vention. Previously conventions, as spectacle and theater, had projected a sense of male dominance and of gender hierarchy as a foundational value that was ostentatiously and unapologetically asserted. Now this sense was eroding and being challenged.

The sense of new spaces opening up at ISNA for the airing of dis- contents and differences among its members seemed to gradually allow for the inclusion of speakers whose perspectives were different from the more conservative views typical of ISNA speakers, including views that at least implicitly challenged ISNA’s notions of acceptable pieties. My impression that such a trend was under way was confirmed by Farid

Esack’s opening comments on a panel on which he spoke at the
2005

convention. Esack, a distinguished South African liberation theologian and activist well known for his work in relation, among other things, to HIV and AIDS, had been invited to speak at ISNA on a panel on the topic of “Islam, Activism, and Social Justice.”