The story of the Mosque in Morgantown is not a new one. Nor is the issue raised by Asra Nomani regarding women’s space in the Morgantown mosque unique. In fact, it reminded me very much of the mosque in my own community, the American Islamic Association (AIA). Comprised of mostly South Asian immigrant families, attendees of AIA stretch across the religious spectrum, including those labeled as “conservative” and as “progressive”. My parents and I have attended the AIA since our migration to the south suburbs of Chicago, when the mosque was still housed in an old airplane hanger. For years we waited & worked to collect enough money to construct a new building for our beloved mosque.
Finally, at the start of Ramadan in 2005, the new building for the AIA had been constructed — and of us all, my mother was most ecstatic. But upon returning from the mosque’s open house, I sensed my mother was disappointed. The women didn’t have a separate prayer space, she told me. Instead, the prayer sanctuary was one big hall, where men and women would both pray, men in the front rows and women taking up the back ones. But on Muslim holidays, when the number of congregants overflowed the space of main hall, the men would pray in the main hall upstairs and the women would pray in the community room, downstairs in the basement, like so many other mosques across the country. Feelings of disappointment and betrayal rang high amongst the “conservative” women who preferred a segregated space — while the more “progressive” women were excited about having an incorporated space for women in the main prayer hall.
The issue of women’s space in mosques is one that our Muslim American community is still grappling with. The real issue is not about where Muslim women pray, but rather what roles do they play in the space between the prayer hall and the parking lot? The women in the AIA have taken key leadership roles in our community since its inception. They played a lead in making many decisions — whether it was deciding on the Sunday school curricula, the architectural design of our current building, or organizing the annual food drive collected for the Chicago Food Depository. And women in mosques across America are playing similar roles. It is this story of the roles that Muslim American women play in their communities that defines our emerging Muslim American identity.
Dr. Umar F. Abd-Allah, one of America’s leading Muslim scholars and the Nawawi Foundation’s Scholar-in-Residence, addresses the topic of an indigenous Muslim American culture in his essay, Islam and the Cultural Imperative. He begins with a simple metaphor: Islam is a river, a river with crystal clear waters that takes on the color of the bedrock over which it flows. So, in India Islam looks and feels Indian. And in China Islam looks and feels Chinese. In America, this river flows over a mosaic made of many colors — indicative of the ethnic and cultural make up of the Muslims who live here. A recent Gallup report, Muslim Americans: A National Portrait, shows that the Muslim American community is the most racially and ethnically diverse religious community in the United States. With no dominant ethnic majority, the varieties of ritual and cultural practices of the Muslim American community are representative of its diversity.
So what happens when we engage this inherent diversity? Despite the many ethnic and cultural differences that exist within the Muslim American community, any intra-faith conversation will reveal the values shared by most Muslim Americans, indigenous and immigrant alike. Values like service, hospitality, compassion and mercy — all of which connect to our religious and ethnic inheritance, but also connect to our American ideals.
Over the last few decades, as Muslims in the United States have flourished, our mosques have transformed from places of worship into spaces of community. While our mosques have expanded to include Islamic schools, community centers, youth groups, health clinics and more, Muslim American culture has grown alongside those expansions. Despite our differences of where women pray, Muslim women have shouldered equal parts of creativity and responsibility in constructing our community. As we have engaged in our building our community, we have also engaged in building our Muslim American identity. We must continue to act on the values that we share within our mosques and beyond its walls, in our lives as citizens, as Americans, and as Muslims.
Jenan Mohajir is the program associate for the Outreach Education & Training program at the Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that brings together young people from different religious traditions through an emphasis on shared values. Jenan is a frequent speaker at college campuses nationally and trains youth leaders in organizing local interfaith youth service-learning events. Prior to joining IFYC, Jenan was a full-time teacher at the Universal Muslim Day School and worked with the Inner-city Muslim Action Network. She has also volunteered with the Nawawi Foundation since 2001. She is originally from India and grew up in Qatar and the United States.
Tags: American Islamic Association, American Muslim Identity, gender and Islam, pluralism, Umar F. Abd-Allah
American Muslim Identity
Response to The Mosque in Morgantown
by Ali S. Asani
“This is Islam for you; it is not Islam for us”
— Sajdia Nomani in
THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN
RELIGIONS ARE LIKE RECIPES. Each tradition has its own ingredients but since these ingredients can be combined in different ways, the result is a variety of recipes, each distinctive in its own way. Over the centuries, on account of the diverse historical, political, social and economic contexts in which they have lived, Muslims have come to interpret the core components of their faith in different ways to support a wide spectrum of worldviews. For example, the Quran, the scripture that lies at the heart of the Islamic tradition, has been interpreted by Muslims to champion tolerance and intolerance, peace and war, feminism and anti-feminism. Since understandings of religion are essentially human constructions, it is hardly surprising that descriptions and characterizations of Islam, like those of other faiths, are contested. THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN vividly captures some these contestations.
Intra-Islamic pluralism — that is, diversity of religious beliefs amongst Muslim communities — is a subject which most contemporary Muslims are uncomfortable discussing and which some even regard as taboo. There are several reasons for this, perhaps the most significant being that many Muslims, living in contexts in which Muslim identities and cultures are being threatened by non-Muslim (Western) hegemonies, mistakenly perceive that acknowledging and accepting a plurality of religious beliefs and practices amongst themselves is a sign of disunity and hence weakness. They, therefore, respond to questions concerning diversity of interpretation and practice within Islam by vehemently denying that it exists. Differences among Muslims are cultural, not religious, they proclaim; there is only one true Islam, frequently meaning the one in which they believe. The Swiss Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, points out that this conception of Islam as a uniform theological monolith, and the inability to recognize and engage with intra-Muslim religious diversity has resulted in the paradoxical situation in which Muslims, either as individuals or groups, will exclude one another, even go as far as to declare each other to be infidel, and yet claim to the outside world that “we are all brothers and sisters.”
Given deep historical wounds that have festered for centuries, the mutual demonization of groups, and the ongoing competition for religious and political hegemony, intra-Muslim dialogue may seem an impossibly difficult task. Dialogue with one’s nearest is emotionally fraught with many risks and fears. Grappling with points of view that are different from one’s own and respectfully agreeing to disagree can often be challenging, testing one’s patience and humility. But these obstacles should not, however, deter us from aggressively pursuing this as a worthwhile goal. As His Highness the Aga Khan, a Muslim leader who has dedicated his life to fostering dialogue between civilizations and religions, aptly puts it: “When our diversity divides us, the results can be tragic. But when we welcome diversity — and the debate and dissent that goes with it — we sow the seeds of stability and progress.”
According to a well-known saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, “Difference of opinion in my community is a blessing.” A rapidly globalizing world in which Muslims from diverse backgrounds are encountering each other in unprecedented ways requires a paradigm shift in the ways in which Muslims relate to their co-religionists. Key Muslim nation-states, particularly in the Middle East, have yet to recognize that the notion of a monoethnic, monolingual, monoreligious state is an idea that has outlived its usefulness, for it fails to come to terms with the fundamental aspect of humanity: its diversity. This failure poses a serious threat to the fabric of several Muslim societies, which are increasingly being torn by sectarian and ethnic conflicts. It is only by recognizing pluralism as an organizing principle that these societies will be able to embrace the religious and ethnic diversity among their Muslim (and non-Muslim) populations.
Among the world’s Muslim communities, Muslim Americans are uniquely poised to undertake the difficult task of engaging with pluralism. They are faced with an unusual set of challenges and opportunities, for no other country in the world has a Muslim population as culturally diverse as that of the United States. Belonging to over 60 different ethnicities and nationalities, Muslim Americans, in fact, mirror the diverse face of the United States itself. In addition, they are theologically diverse representing many different interpretations of Islam, ranging from ultra conservative to liberal. Thus, while in some Muslim American communities women assigned to pray at the back of the prayer hall, in others they pray side by side with the men. As we try to understand what it means to be a Muslim in the United States today, it is crucial that this plurality be recognized. We should also be careful not to make broad generalizations about Muslim Americans based solely on the interpretations of a minority that happen to catch the attention of the media.
As members of a religious minority, Muslim Americans are also engaged in the age-old struggle within the United States itself between those who want to define the nation in exclusivist (Christian) ways and those who want to uphold the pluralist ideals enshrined in the Constitution and in civic norms. Pluralism both within and outside their communities provides Muslim Americans with remarkable opportunities to think creatively and in innovative ways as they interpret their religious beliefs and practices within the framework of the American dream. No doubt in a couple of generations this engagement will lead to the emergence of distinctively American forms of Islam. Already, the imam or prayer leader is being increasingly referred to as a Muslim chaplain. And just as American forms of Catholicism and American forms of Judaism have had an enormous impact on their traditions globally, it is very likely that American forms of Islam will, in the future, be at the vanguard of dialogue on diversity in the greater Muslim world. In this sense, the United States is the crucible in which new principles of intra-Islamic pluralism are being forged, sometimes painfully, and one in which the Quranic injunction that God created diversity so that we may know each other is realized for all humans, regardless of religious affiliations.
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Ali S. Asani is Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures at Harvard. After completing his high school education in Kenya, he attended Harvard College, with a concentration in the Comparative Study of Religion. He continued his graduate work at Harvard in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, receiving his Ph.D. in 1984. He currently holds a joint appointment between the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Study of Religion. He also serves on the faculty of the Departments of Sanskrit and Indian Studies and African and African-American Studies. A specialist of Islam in South Asia, Professor Asani’s research focuses on Shia and Sufi devotional traditions. He is interested in popular or folk forms of Muslim devotional life, and Muslim communities in the West. He teaches a variety of courses on the Islamic tradition at Harvard.
Tags: Aga Khan, American Muslim Identity, pluralism, Tariq Ramadan
