Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (55 page)

Each ethnic group of Muslims in America has collective experiences that act as references points and root metaphors to reinforce fundamental lessons about Islam. For African-American Muslims these references often relate to aspects of their pre-Islamic past. For example, references are made to the negative effects of drinking alcohol or to women’s experiences when adopting immodest forms of dress. Overwhelmingly, the disruption of our African cultural heritage as enforced by North American slavery creates a particular identity reference. The American slave experience is the primary shared feature for all African- Americans, whether Muslim or not.

African-American Muslims are intimately linked with other Americans through the history of horrific racial slavery in the Americas and with the development pains of American pluralism in the period before the Civil War,

through the civil rights movement, and even up to present. As part of their collective heritage, slavery links all African-Americans, not just African- American Muslims, in a unique way and affects our identity and relationship to America. There is never an issue for African-Americans about being “American.” They never wanted to come here in the first place. Since immigrant Muslims do not share this experience, it sets them apart from the African- American experience. African-Americans read the history of Islam in America first through the slave trade: it has been estimated that as many as one-third of the slaves were from Islamic central Africa. This is part of the psychological claim to Islam among Muslim Americans of African origin. No such long running, painful, and unique “American” identity affi exists for immigrants, no matter how many generations they claim in America. Immigrant Muslims, who stress the origins of Islam in America with their own immigration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, overlook this important early feature of the American Islamic past.

In 1999, Oxford University Press published a book titled
Muslims on the Americanization Path
.
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The very title reveals the presupposition of the volume and further accords priority to immigrant American Muslims, for whom being

Muslim is presumed and Americanization must be an intentional operation. Such an articulation is impossibly prejudiced against African-American Muslim first- and second-generation converts, for whom being American is presumed and Islamization is the voluntary and intentional operation. True to the title, the contents primarily focus on immigrant Muslim concerns. One section of the book is titled “Americans towards Islamization”; all the chapters in this section focus on African-American identity. By implication, Islam is unconditionally granted to Muslim immigrants and a goal to be aspired to for Americans. Meanwhile being an American is normative for African-Americans and Islam is aspired towards. This is the crux of the contrast between African-American Muslims and immigrant American Muslims. “If African-American communities are to be included in the same text with other Muslim groups, then I believe more is needed to indicate how Black Muslims and those other groups interrelate.”
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Though outside the immigrant Muslim community in America, I speak from within my limited experience as a Muslim American and among other Muslims worldwide. I have also entered the domestic and cultural environments of Muslims in North and South Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. My observations are brief, subjective, and relative to the task: national-level discourse on inter-ethnic relations. I have felt welcomed in many homes and public halls when I have visited lands with large Muslim populations who enjoy a long heritage of Islam. Attention was lavished over me as a guest in the home

of extended families. I was comforted in many ways. This has led me to criticize my own African-American brothers and sisters as hosts in America. Perhaps we inherited a struggle for well-being in a culture that robbed us of our roots and heritage, leaving us displaced in this our new home. Our experiences of extended family have been ruptured since slavery. This has led us to form more diverse and complex community relations to facilitate our survival. It is not customary to put the visitor before us.

The private lives of African-American Muslims are sometimes closed to those who descend upon America, especially those who come to master a place of their own within it. Although this may seem a small matter, it bears upon our relationships with immigrants, who view America as a land of opportunity
among non-Muslim Americans
. Muslims who enter a substantial Muslim population in other countries do not expect to assume leadership or representation roles. Such deference and etiquette is neglected in the context of American Islam. It is as if Islam has no native presence, so outsiders must be its representatives at the national level. These observations have symbolic significance in the conflicts between indigenous and immigrant Muslims in America.
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Furthermore, many immigrant Muslims still see Islam as an ethnic identity. Collective experiences refer to or are drawn from back “home,” such that a crisis in identity for the children of immigrants is viewed as a need to send the child back home. Even after a few generations have passed, the necessity to connect with the cultures of their origins marks the immigrants’ foundational experience as something other than America. African-Americans look back only to past struggles in America. Immigrants have no such American identity affiliation. Thus, a kind of superficial Americanness is sometimes reflected. The claim to America is still recent and the past that calls is still other than America. They have yet to establish a lasting American legacy. For this reason, the general American population still identifies immigrant Muslims as foreigners. In the case of an international crisis, immigrant Muslims identify with foreign interests. In the case of a national crisis, they are clearly targeted for racial profiling and

negative stereotyping that violate public civil liberties. This has become most blatant since the crisis of September 11, 2001.
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Since most Americans garner their perception of Islam only from sensational television programs and local media coverage, which continue to “other” the native cultures of Muslim origins, they view affiliation with these cultures as problematic. Indeed, many Americans view immigrant Muslims as brothers and sisters of foreign terrorists and associate them with the perpetuation of extreme forms of gender inequality and abuse. In the recent September 11 crisis, the question of loyalty to America brought all those with foreign interests and connections under wider suspicion. Many immigrant Muslim leaders and spokespersons were quick to associate themselves with mainstream America to offset this perception.
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Others advocated the need to turn more attention

toward national interest as a form of salvation. President Bush was emphatic – “You are either with us or against us” – about the war on terrorism. Muslims were appalled at the blatant acts of terrorism in the U.S.A. and elsewhere, and many immigrant Muslims were quick to express their support for American patriotism, which itself quickly got out of control.

Meanwhile, African-Americans who have been raised with a basic suspicion of white American sincerity about non-white peoples and cultures have generally tended towards a higher degree of counter-cultural confrontation. After the September 11 crisis, immigrant Muslims were given a hefty taste of this double standard and could no longer assume that the civil liberties they had come to America to experience would always be extended towards them. In this way, they came closer to understanding the experiences of African-Americans than at any other time. This led to more efforts to forge cross-organizational alliances among Muslim groups and individuals of different ethnicities. Although more efforts are needed and must continue for the sake of intra-community coalition building, it is too easy to return to old patterns of ethnic exclusivism when conflicts of interests arise or when opportunities for national-level recognition are offered.

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A concerted effort is required now to heal past hurts between Muslims in America, hurts that tap into racial, ethnic, and class divisions. We need greater levels of objective dialogue, shared experiences, and collective practices. Within the greater context of progressive Islam, this means a need for discourse about inter-ethnic relations as part of our dialogue to engage the particularities of culture and history of all our communities. Only through engaging these particularities can we hope to reach a more pluralistic understanding of Islam. In the context of Islam and America, this means stressing the plurality that is inherent in both. By “plurality,” I mean acknowledging and engaging differences without an attempt to impose hegemony.

First, at a fundamental level, when Muslims in America identify themselves they should include their specific ethnic origins until such a time as the new American Muslim reality becomes racially balanced and inclusive. Just as African-American Muslims have been specified since the middle of the twentieth century, so should all other groups of Muslims clarify their ethnicity alongside their American citizenship and membership of Islam. Furthermore, the tendency thus far has been for some Muslims to identify themselves as Muslim Americans, then proceed to make statements that are specific to their own ethnic origins and exclusive particularly of African-American Muslims.

Muslims in America comprise African-American descendants of slaves, Asian Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Euro-Americans as well as immigrants

from Muslim countries in the past century from well over thirty countries. In discussion among us as well as presented to the non-Muslim public, more descriptive identification is called for under the umbrella term “American Muslim.” A Pakistani American Muslim or an American Muslim of Lebanese origin should describe themselves thus. While this does not limit their desire to be identified as American, it also has the advantage of highlighting their connection to the area from which they have emigrated. Such a self-designation is also less likely to be offensive to many in America, since many erroneously presume the term “American” refers only to whites. This would especially benefit those who have submerged their ethnicity under either the title “American” or “Muslim” when representing Islam in America and would reflect the true diversity of American Islam.

Within Muslim communities, an important dimension of racial healing must result from organized forums that specifically address inter-community and inter-ethnic relations. Only since September 11 has race become directly related to intra-community Muslim dynamics among national organizations at the public level. However, these urgent public conversations about racial dynamics have not been preceded by integrated discussion about race relations, particularly discussion aimed at repairing long-standing conflicts. By planning and participating in meetings focused on conflict resolution within the context of ethnic concerns, Muslims in America may be able to face some of the double standards that have prevailed. Only then can we move forward to develop strategies for comprehensively erasing them. Race and ethnicity need to be among the topics focused upon in papers, presentations, and panels at national- level conferences and conventions. The model of directly confronting our internal racial attitudes follows the patterns practiced in America following the civil rights movement. Such a model brought effective resolution to both attitudes and practices. Racial sensitivity programs were eventually developed and utilized in businesses and other companies in order to confront dormant racist attitudes with information and public censure.

In addition to more direct racial confrontation to ferret out latent attitudes of discrimination and prejudice, the Muslim communities should establish festive occasions or community gatherings to celebrate specific cultural diversity. For example, celebrations like a Palestine week or an Indonesian potluck would help us to nurture our diverse cultural heritages in particular and as a part of Islamic and American pluralism. It is equally important to recognize the need to share the specific heritage of our plural “nations and tribes” as part of the

Qur’anic mandate to establish
taqwa
as the basis of evaluation among us. Greater
taqwa
within our collective Islamic experiences should empower us to

confront one of the most divisive aspects of our American Islamic experience. Once this aspect has been properly focused upon and eradicated through the moral imperative of
taqwa
, we can move towards a greater collective contribution to America, and humanity as a whole.

endnotes

1. Malcolm X, quoted in
   Bearing Witness: Selections from African-American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century,
   ed. Louis Gates, Jr (New York: Pantheon, 1991), 144.
   

2. For example, Bassam Tibi,
   Islam between Culture and Politics
   (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
   

3. Quoted in Michelle Cottle, “Native Speakers – African-American Muslims, and Why Its Hard to Be Both,”
   New Republic
   , November 19, 2001,
   www.tnr.com/111901/cot
   - tle111901.html
   

4. Ibid.
   

5. Ibid.
   

6. Another essay in this volume, “Muslims, Pluralism, and Interfaith Diagolue” by Amir Hussain, specifically engages the need for pluralism in the North American Muslim community.
   

7. African-Americans form the single largest ethnic group of Muslims in America – some forty-two percent of the total population. See Fareed Nu‘man,
   The Muslim Population in the United States: A Brief Statement
   (Washington: American Muslim Council, 1992), 16.
   

8. New Republic
   , November 19, 2001.
   

9. One notable exception since September 11, 2001 was the public representation of Hamza Yusuf as a white American, who must have appealed to the general white non-Muslim American population by allowing them to share in his identity as neither foreign nor black.
   

10. Translation modified from Muhammad Asad,
    The Message of the Qur’an
    (Gibraltar: Dar al-Anadulus, 1980), 794.
    

11. Muhammad Asad includes a
    hadith
    from the Prophet in which he states, “Behold! God has removed from you the arrogance of pagan ignorance [
    jahiliyah
    ] with its boast of ancestral glories. Man [
    sic
    ] is but a God conscious believer or an unfortunate sinner. All people are children of Adam, and Adam was created out of dust.”
    

12. Fazlur Rahman,
    Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition
    (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 155.
    

13. Sylviane Diouf,
    Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas
    (New York: New York University Press 1998), 1.
    

14. Ibid, 4.
    

15. Aminah Beverly McCloud,
    African-American Islam
    (New York: Routledge, 1995), 9.
    

16. Fareed Nu‘man,
    The Muslim Population in the United States,
    23.
    

17. The Arab Defamation League (ADL) is a national organization addressing Muslim and non-Muslim concerns in America.
    

18. Some examples include: Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Islamic Medical Association (IMA), the Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers (AMSE), the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS), American Muslim Council (AMC), American Muslim Mission, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Center for American- Islamic Relations (CAIR), International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).
    

19. Malcolm X,
    The Autobiography of Malcolm X
    (New York: Ballantine, 1965), 340.
    

20. Richard Brett Turner,
    Islam in the African-American Experience
    (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 215
    .
    

21. See my descriptions of multiculturalism in Malaysia: “An Islamic Perspective on Civil Rights Issues,” in
    Religion, Race, and Justice in a Changing America,
    ed. Gary Orfield, (New York: Century Foundation, 1999), 159.
    

22. It should be noted that the most extensive grassroots organizations in Muslim communities are women’s organizations primarily started and run by African-American women, even though the African-American Muslim woman is highly marginalized in the overall leadership of American Muslims.
    

23. http://www.cair-net.org/mosquereport/
    

24. Linda S. Wallbridge in her review of another volume,
    Muslims in America
    edited by Haddad, noted that “Islam is a religion of a diverse population in America. It is not simply
    

    the religion of immigrants.” And “[T]o have indigenous communities discussed in the same . . . collection of articles with Arab and other immigrant communities can be confusing. One is not often sure whether the experiences spoken of are those of Black Muslims, Muslims in America, as a whole, or only certain groups of Muslims.”
    Journal of the American Oriental Society
    , 112, 1992, 721.
    

25. Ibid.
    

26. The term “indigenous Muslims” is used to represent Muslim converts, even though the word “convert” is erroneously applied to their descendants; and the term “immigrant Muslims” is used to designate those Muslims who immigrated in the last century, and continues to be erroneously applied to their descendants.
    

27. Women in the foreign-looking traditional
    hijab,
    even if African-American, were lumped into this profile.
    

28. For just one example, see the list of quotes on the website of the U.S. State Department, which brought together many statements by Muslim voices talking about the harmony – even identity – of the American political system and Islamic ideals:
    http://usinfo.state.gov/ products/pubs/muslimlife/speakup.htm. One quote, from Dr Muhammad Muqtedar Khan, Director of International Studies at Adrian College states, “The U.S. Constitution describes the perfect Islamic state. It protects life, liberty and property.”