A Quiet Revolution (42 page)

Judging by the great numbers of people attending these get-to- gethers, such events seemed to be exceedingly important dimensions of the convention and important draws for attendees.

Organizations like ICNA likewise had matrimonial departments. Memorably, at ICNA’s
2002
convention a middle-aged woman had an- grily complained in an open question-and-answer session that she had found ICNA’s matrimonial services most inadequate that year; since this

was the chief reason that she and many others were ICNA members, she said (presumably to find spouses for their children), this was most dis- appointing. The ICNA official’s response was no less telling: he said they were fully aware that this was among their most important functions for the community, and he was most apologetic regarding their shortcom- ings. It had been a difficult year, he said.

Other key features of the ISNA experience were the bazaar, already described, and, initially, the charity booths, with their videos and books

and pamphlets. These booths, as I said earlier, steadily diminished in number over the years. The figures for ISNA attendance have been steadily rising, from about
25
,
000
in
1999
to
45
,
000
in
2005
.

Reading Muslim WakeUp! I would discover that the changes that I had been pleased and surprised to see under way at ISNA after
9
/
11
—the more relaxed atmosphere surrounding veiling and segregated seating, the presence of panelists representing more liberal positions than I as- sociated with ISNA—were changes that, from the point of view of the younger membership of ISNA, were occurring all too slowly. One writer, for example, in Muslim WakeUp!—Ahmed Nassef, one of the cofounders of the site—reporting that Mike Knight, a young Muslim novelist, would be presenting his work at ISNA’s
2004
convention, also noted that he had been pleased to see the previous year that ISNA organizers had per- mitted the screening of the film
Nazra
“despite the film’s honest por- trayal of gender and sexuality issues.” He also was pleased to note that Asra Nomani also would be speaking. On the other hand, he continued, ISNA was still censoring speakers: they had refused to have Mohja Kahf, a professor, poet, and the editor of “Sex and the Umma,” read her poetry in the main hall.
36

Another writer for Muslim WakeUp! Umbreen Shah, reporting this time on ISNA’s
2005
convention, declared that ISNA was “run mostly by first generation immigrant Muslims with cultural baggage from their homelands,” and that consequently ISNA “management has been un- able to relate to their American-born Muslim constituency which is the future of Islam in America.” Shah also remarked that there was a ten- dency at ISNA “to enforce a particular religiously conservative philoso- phy without adapting to the people it serves.” For example, Shah went on, “women presenters at ISNA have been routinely asked to wear hijab during presentation even though they don’t normally wear the head- scarf. This has promoted either hypocrisy or contention when presenters have refused to wear it.”
37

Whereas I had been pleased simply to see some relaxation of hijab observance at least among ISNA attendees, it had not occurred to me that ISNA would tolerate their own officials or even panelists appearing without it, given the Islamist roots of the organization. But clearly for

some of the organization’s younger and more restive members—people presumably who had grown up attending ISNA and possibly also had been members of the MSA—all of this should have been accomplished by now. As the young novelist and convert to Islam Michael Muham- mad Knight would write in an essay in Muslim WakeUp! about the
2003
ISNA convention, “Maybe the ‘old guard’ still runs ISNA, and maybe the House of Saud still runs that old guard. But I saw a lot of young people there, and they are claiming their spots. The med-student who smoked weed, the NOFX kid, Farah the film-maker, Rima the poet, and even me, for whatever I am.” Knight is a novelist of growing prominence who offers interesting glimpses into the lives of young American Mus- lims today, including glimpses into the lively and not always obediently chaste mores and practices of ISNA’s more rebellious young. “My friend Sara,” he wrote, “told me that while ISNA usually has cool programs, it can often become a big hookup place for horny young Muslims. ‘I guess they’re not all there for speeches and stuff,’ she said.”
38
‌

By way of conveying an overview of women’s presence and activism at ISNA, as well as of suggesting something of the changes, evolutions, and continuities that are under way in women’s roles and participation, I offer in the remaining pages of this chapter brief biographical sketches of a number of notable ISNA women. I selected these women (who make up a far from inclusive list) either because of their prominence in the or- ganization, or because some facts and outlines regarding their personal journeys are available in published sources. Sometimes they have them- selves penned their stories or they have been the subjects of biographi- cal studies and interviews by others. I have, in addition, had the privilege of observing and often meeting almost all of the women mentioned here.

I begin with Ingrid Mattson. Mattson was in her late thirties when she was elected the first female president of ISNA, in
2006
. Mattson’s election represented a first not only with respect specifically to ISNA but

also with respect to other Islamist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt (with branches in many more countries), organ- izations with which ISNA had once had important connections.

As we saw earlier, Zainab al-Ghazali had been a figure of major im- portance to the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, but she had never

held any official position within the organization. To this day Islamist women who do important work for the organization in Egypt continue to find themselves marginalized and unrecognized.
39
Mattson’s election represents a development that has so far occurred only in the American context.
40

Raised a Catholic in Kitchener, Ontario, Mattson was a pious child until the age of about fifteen, when she found that she had “more and more questions,” questions for which the nuns who taught her “had fewer answers.” A priest “couldn’t satisfy her either,” and so “God dis- appeared.” Spending her senior year of college in Paris, Mattson became friends with Senegalese Muslims whom she admired, and, eager to learn more about them, she began reading the Quran. Certain of its verses “gripped her,” she wrote, “explaining God to her in new ways.” This led her back to religious belief and to Islam.
41
(Mattson’s sister is also a con- vert, in her case to Judaism.)

After graduating from college Mattson went to Pakistan in
1987
to

work as a volunteer in a camp for Afghan refugees. There she met her husband, a fellow volunteer from Egypt and an engineer. Later Mattson came to the United States to attend the University of Chicago, where she obtained a doctorate in Islamic studies.
42
She currently teaches at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and is the author, most recently, of
The Story of the Quran
(
2008
), a book that captures a wealth of material

regarding the Quran and its oral transmission, thereby offering a fresh and original perspective in English on the history of the Quran. Through- out her account she pays particular attention to the role of women in the history of the Quran’s transmission, and she also follows the story of a young American girl called Reem who loved to study the Quran and who traveled to Syria to obtain an
ijaza,
or certificate in Quranic recitation.

Even prior to Mattson’s election as vice president, female activists at ISNA had been pushing for women’s inclusion in the formal struc- ture of the organization. They had been pressing ISNA to recognize women’s ongoing contributions, both to ISNA and at the local level of work to mosque and community.
43
Among the causes that some ISNA women had been committed to was that of domestic violence. Some women, most notably Bonita McGee and Sharifa Alkhateeb, had for some time been urging ISNA to take a strong public stand on the mat-

ter. As a result, in the summer of
2001
ISNA scheduled a conference for March
2002
that would focus on community issues, including domestic violence.

Persuading ISNA to agree to this had been uphill work, I learned from McGee and Alkhateeb. ISNA and other Muslim American organ- izations had resisted taking up the issue of domestic violence chiefly, the women thought, because their officials were reluctant to draw attention to a problem that could all too easily be used to fan prejudice against Muslim men in the larger society.

McGee, Alkhateeb, and others had had to repeatedly underscore that such abuse occurred across all religious, cultural, and class groups. They pointed out that the community’s failure to address these issues, as well as to offer services and shelter for distressed Muslim women and their children, was extraordinarily costly to these women and children. McGee, a young African American whose mother had converted to Islam

in the
1960
s, was cofounder of Muslim Family Services, an organization

serving Muslim communities in the greater Columbus, Ohio, area.
44
In one presentation McGee stressed that the problem of domestic violence was unambiguously present in the community: “It is there and it is real,” she said. “We have to discuss what we can do about it starting today.” Having worked at a domestic violence shelter, she said, she had seen “mothers and daughters, children who hate Islam because of what they’ve seen.”
45

Sherifa Alkhateeb was fifty-eight years old when she was awarded ISNA’s Community Service Award at ISNA’s
2004
convention. Alkha- teeb, who died within weeks of receiving the award, was too ill to be pres- ent, so it was tearfully accepted on her behalf by her daughter, Maha.

Born in Philadelphia, Alkhateeb was the daughter of a Yemeni father and a Czech mother. She began attending the University of Pennsylvania when she was sixteen, at which point she joined the MSA and began wearing the headscarf.
46
“In many ways,” noted the
Washington Post
in its obituary, “Mrs. Alkhateeb lived a conventional Muslim life.” The mother of three daughters, and a woman who prayed five times a day, Alkhateeb also managed, “within the bounds of her faith,” the
Post
con- tinued, “to forge a strong, independent voice for herself and for other Islamic women.”
47
Typically wearing the headscarf along with “tailored

pantsuits,”
48
Alkhateeb—as the
New York Times
noted in its obituary— “wrote and lectured extensively” in an effort “to challenge stereotypes of Muslims, and particularly of Muslim women.”
49

In
2000
Alkhateeb created the Peaceful Families Project, which stud-

ied and raised awareness about domestic violence. After
9
/
11
, according to her daughter, Alkhateeb lived “in constant fear that someone would at- tack her.”
50
Nevertheless, she became very active in the interfaith com- munity, where she was greatly appreciated by fellow workers from other religions. Blu Greenberg, for instance, founder of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, noted that when her own son J. J. died in Israel, Shar- ifa called “with the most tender and loving message, which I kept on my answering machine for a long, long time.” Mary Hunt, co-director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER), attended Alkhateeb’s funeral. Alkhateeb, who had died around midnight on Wednesday, was buried Thursday at
3 p.m.
“on a grey, chilly, drizzly day” following prayers at her local mosque. There were about a hundred peo- ple at the cemetery, Hunt wrote, “including small children and many women with whom she had worked on countless projects. The body had been washed reverently and wrapped in a sheet. It was carried to the gravesite in an open wooden box with a beautiful black and yellow cloth over it. Several men, including her husband, climbed down into the grave to receive her body.... Then members of the family and close friends shoveled the dirt on top. We all watched as the cemetery workers fin- ished the job. We gathered for a short prayer and then family members received condolences outside, as was the custom.”
51

Sharifa’s daughter, Maha, continues her mother’s work, editing a book on domestic violence published in
2007
as part of the Peaceful Fam- ilies Project founded by her mother.
52

Khadija Haffajee is another prominent ISNA woman. Haffajee was the first woman elected to sit on ISNA’s Majlis Ash-Shura (Consultative Council) in
1997
. Haffajee later recalled that as her name was read out in a packed Hilton auditorium—“the first woman to be elected to this bas-

tion of males”—her heart was pounding so hard that she was unable to rise from her seat as she was supposed to do. She had traveled, she wrote “many lonely miles to be where I am today.”
53

Haffajee’s account of her life, published in the collection
Muslim

Women Activists in North America Speaking for Ourselves,
is illuminating as to the path taken by one woman, a path that would lead her to a po- sition of leadership at an organization such as ISNA. Haffajee was born to a conservative Muslim family in South Africa in the late
1930
s. While the older daughters in the family received no education, Haffajee was able to attend school with the help of her sisters.

Haffajee’s father, who died when she was very young, had been de- termined, wrote Haffajee, to educate his daughters. He was a
hafiz
— someone who had mastered the recitation of the Quran and whose voice, chanting it, formed one of her important childhood memories. Haffajee sees herself in her desire for knowledge and education as very much her father’s heir and as following in his footsteps.