Community Stories

A Muslim American Focus Group

by Chris Morrow

As a screenwriter working on a revision to my Islamically based screenplay, I’m constantly searching for perspective from the Muslim world.  Brittany Huckabee’s documentary THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN was my most recent chance to gain insight.  I sat down with a group of high school and college aged Muslims and their parents to discuss the issues in the film and gauge its relevance to their lives.  All live in the Dallas and Houston areas, and their nationalities range from Pakistani and Indian to Palestinian, Turkish and Lebanese.

The election of Dr. Hany Ammar as president was the most important problem for the youth.  “This is why I stopped going to the mosque,” one college-aged Muslima announced.  “We have a mullah just like him at the Islamic Center and once he was elected he cut out all the youth activities,” said Amna Hasan, the only high school student in the audience.  She continued by saying, “Going to mosque to watch movies and talk about the issues facing us like dating, wearing hijab and socializing with non-Muslims was important to us.  What are we supposed to think when that is taken away?”

The older generation took issue with the leaders at the Morgantown mosque.  A Muslim father questioned the initial dialogue, saying, “If Hazem Bata felt so strongly about Hany Ammar, why didn’t he call meetings protesting the election?”  Another Muslim elder said, “A silent activism never works.  As Muslims living in the post-9/11 world we strive to correct the false stereotypes associated with Muslims.  Why did it take Asra’s protests for the mosque in Morgantown to open their doors to the rest of the community?”

When asked what the audience thought about the Yusuf Estes confrontation and the MSA’s failure to have a question and answer session most were in support of Asra.  “I think the lack of Muslims in attendance speaks to what we think of Yusuf Estes,” said one Muslim parent.  “And if that girl thinks being smacked in the head with a newspaper doesn’t hurt she’s welcome to visit my house,” he added.

While most supported the heart of Nomani’s ideas, not all of her actions were supported by those I spoke with.  Most felt Asra was out of line when she visited the “progressive mosque” and demanded to pray along side the men.  “She’s a guest in their mosque, she has no right to be disrespectful regardless of how valid her point is,” said a grandmother.  When someone supported the claim that Asra’s actions were self promoting and used to increase her book sales, a debate broke out between “generations” over how to promote change.  One Muslim girl said, “Without Asra’s action’s we wouldn’t be here trying to fix our community.”

As the dialogue came to a close I asked for final thoughts on Brittany Huckabee’s film.  When asked if the film was positive for the Muslim community, everyone raised their hand.  One mother said that the documentary was a step in the right direction to move on from the stereotypes associated with 9/11.  “Since 9/11 the only issue associated with Muslims is terrorism.  Now people have an inside look of REAL issues we struggle with on a day to day basis.”  When asked to see a show of hands that wanted more documentaries and films like this one, not a single hand was left down.  “The only way we are going to make progress is if we bring these issues to the forefront.  Asra’s tactics may have been at times out of line but she got people talking and taking action,” a former leader in the Muslim community said.

 

Chris Morrow is a screenwriter based in Texas.

Tags: , , ,

American Muslim Identity

Building Muslim American Identity

by Jenan Mohajir

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: , , , ,

Reactions

Seeing the Film in Morgantown

by Parween Mascari

I am an Afghan-American woman born in Parkersburg, WV, and now living in Morgantown, WV.  Jokingly, I call myself a “halfghan.”

I went to the Morgantown screening of THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN with the hope of learning more about Islam, the religion of my father, and also gaining more of an understanding of Asra Nomani’s struggle here in Morgantown.  Aside from the religious issues, I was also interested in how our small town would be depicted in a film involving such national-scale conflict.

What I got was a better understanding of Islam and of Asra Nomani’s struggle — and I left with a dedication to do whatever I can to improve the condition of women in Afghanistan, the land of my paternal ancestry.

I left the screening with tremendous respect for Islam and its practices, its focus on family, its eloquence and its traditions.  For the first time I thought about its strength and the struggle to hold onto its identity and its traditions in the face of the tremendous pressure of American pop culture.  I also left with a better understanding of how our particular mosque in Morgantown faces even greater challenges because of the great diversity of cultures, backgrounds, ideologies, and even languages of its membership.  I also realized that I have something in common with many members of the mosque solely by virtue of my Afghan appearance.  I can relate to the fears expressed by the panel members as a result of perceptions and fear in our post-9/11 society.

I also left the screening with tremendous respect for Asra Nomani.  Personally I felt a great empathy for what she went through not only in Pakistan with the death of her friend Daniel Pearl, but also in returning “home” and finding herself a young mother unwelcome in her own house of worship.  Being from West Virginia, and loving to call West Virginia home, the one thing I can always count on is that welcoming feeling I get when I arrive home safe in the mountains of WV.  That is such a special feeling and I’m not sure others from outside of West Virginia can quite understand the magnitude of it.

I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for her to come back after her tremendous personal ordeal and be denied much-needed refuge and sanctuary in her beloved “Almost Heaven West Virginia.”  It was clear from the film that she expected to be welcome in the mosque her father had helped to found but was instead told to enter through the back door and pray in a separate room.  I cannot imagine the disappointment I would have felt coming back to Morgantown and feeling unwelcome and segregated in my own church.

Learning about Asra Nomani and her work and recently meeting several brave Afghan women has inspired me to work to improve the condition of women and children in Afghanistan.  In January, I had the opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. to help host a visiting delegation of Afghan Judges and lawyers.  We met with great American women leaders like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The Afghan women were so brave and inspiring.  Like Asra Nomani, they followed their beliefs and their conscience and sought to make change in their country, often at great personal risk.

The Afghan women judges and lawyers I met talked about the need for chairs in their schools because the children, too tired from standing, couldn’t learn.  I vowed to do what I could to help when I returned to West Virginia.  In March, I formed a company called Sultan’s Daughters, and I have been selling pashmina shawls to benefit construction and furnishing of schools in Afghanistan.  My company has already raised enough money to fund 10% of the construction and furnishing of one school in a village called Pagisam.

The Morgantown community, as it always does, has come out in support of this worthy cause and of helping others in need.  On June 26, 2009, a young professionals group here in the Morgantown community, Generation Morgantown, will host a fundraiser at a local restaurant, Cafe Bacchus, to benefit the school project in Pagisam village, by a nonprofit agency, the Nooristan Foundation.  That project will construct and maintain the village school in the Nooristan region of Afghanistan.  It will also raise awareness and hopefully make people want to be more involved in making a difference in Afghanistan’s future.

THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN inspired me in several ways.  First and foremost, the film is really about having the courage, drive, and strength of character to follow your conscience.  People can debate on Asra Nomani’s tactics — and I think rightfully so — and whether she went about things the right way.  They can debate about the merits of the respective positions about the logistics of the mosque services, and I heard valid points on both sides of that debate.

But the larger point is that she took a stand for what she believed in.  For that, Asra Nomani is a role model for myself and for my daughters.  I will teach my daughters to listen to their conscience and if they do that, like Asra’s parents in the movie, I will be behind them 100%.  I will teach them, as I have always taught them and as my parents taught me, that with hard work and perseverance they can achieve anything.  I will teach them not to let gender-based stereotypes or limitations get in the way of achieving their goals and that they deserve to be treated equally to men.

The movie also inspires me to learn more about Islam.  Growing up Catholic, the religion of my mother, and attending Catholic school I didn’t learn anything about Islam other than it existed, that it was one of the three monotheistic religions because of the belief in one God, Allah, and that we share the same old testament.  Although I am not Muslim, I am inspired by the film to educate myself about Islam.  I am also inspired to visit the mosque in Morgantown and actively try to meet Muslims living in this community.

One final point I will make is that this film is inspiring for what it says about the country we live in and the freedoms it affords all of us.  When people didn’t agree, Asra took a stand, the media was called, the media was granted access, there was controversy, there were demonstrations, elections, and even a trial.  Then a film was made and it has provoked open discussion in Morgantown and now a national debate on this website about sensitive issues where people can speak freely without fear of retribution.

When the film started the mosque was in its infancy.  Now the mosque has regular elections, a new constitution, and women in leadership position.  The controversy at the mosque wasn’t handled by physical violence or by guns or tanks in the streets but by dialogue with both sides zealously advocating their respective positions and the occasional shouting match.  This really is a beautiful country we live in where we are permitted to speak our minds and practice whatever religion we choose.

 

Parween Mascari is an attorney living in Morgantown, WV.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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: , , ,

Please wait