The Dynamics of Islamic Identity in North America

by Yvonne Yazbeck-Haddad and John L. Esposito

Introduction

The immigration of Muslims to Europe and North America during this century has ushered in a new era in the relationship between Islam and the West, conditioned in part by the Muslim experience of “the West” in the form of European colonialism until mid-century and “American neo-colonialism” since the 1950s. As a result the dynamic between the two is seen by Muslims as being that between conqueror and conquered, powerful and powerless, dominant and weak. This has also influenced the ways in which Muslims have formed questions of identity as they strive to negotiate a secure place for themselves and their children in Western societies.

This paper will attempt a preliminary exploration of the dynamics shaping Islamic identity in North America. It will look at the elements that formed the variety of identities prior to emigration, the immigrant experience in America, and the options immigrants find as they struggle to make their home in an environment that they as Muslims find hostile.

The American experience has provided the Muslims with a variety of encounters and challenges and presented them with a bewildering array of options as they struggle to adapt to life in the United States. At first glance their experience may be seen as similar to that of other immigrants, raising the familiar questions of what of the old identity should be salvaged, what given up, and what renegotiated or invented as the community seeks to find a niche for itself. A closer look shows that there are some profound differences. While some of what they experience can be ascribed to changing times or political considerations, increasingly many see their marginalized situation as deliberate and specific, the product of longstanding tendencies in American society to fear and distrust Islam. Thus, while Muslims may be facing the same problems earlier generations of immigrants had encountered - what language to teach their children or how to implant and perpetuate the faith of the forebears - they are also burdened with the question of whether their children and grandchildren will be accepted in the United States, and whether Islam can ever be recognized as a source of enlightenment, a positive force contributing to a multicultural, pluralistic America.



The Question of Muslim Identity

One of the most important characteristics of the Muslim community in North America is its diversity. 1 It includes immigrants who chose to move to the United States for economic, political, and religious reasons from over sixty nations of various ethnic, racial, linguistic, tribal, and national identities. 2 It also includes émigrés and refugees forced out of their homeland, who still retain allegiance to it and are reluctant to relinquish the intention of returning to it to help restore the order they left behind. 3 It also includes a large number of converts, both African American and white, who through the act of conversion have opted out of the dominant American cultural identity, 4 and a significant number of Muslims whose forebears immigrated between the 1870s and World War II and who are in varying degrees already integrated and assimilated. 5 The majority of Muslims in America today, however, are foreign born, socialized and educated overseas, and come from nation states whose identity has been fashioned by European colonialism.

Since the creation of the nation state, the question of identity has been part of nation building and has received a great deal of attention in Muslim states carved out of chunks of imploding and crumbling empires. Following the European model, these nation states focused their efforts on creating a loyal constituency out of the diverse populations that constituted the former empires with their different linguistic, tribal, ethnic, sectarian and religious allegiances. The intellectuals in these states believed that finding the proper vision, ideology, constitution, or constellation of ideas could initiate modernization and development, propelling these nation states into parity with the West. 6

These ideologies have varied, depending on prevailing circumstances, with each producing a generation committed to a different vision guaranteed to provide the salvation and modernization of their nation. The immigrants to the United States who came throughout this century, therefore, have not only reflected diverse national identities, but in many cases have also promoted allegiances to different ideologies that they believed held the key to revitalization of their home countries. At the turn of the century, the elites in various Muslim countries placed their trust in nationalist ideologies. They drew on an identity of shared history, language, and culture in order to create a shared vision and commitment to helping bring about independence from colonial hegemony. This gave way in the middle of the century to support for socialism as various regimes looked to its implementation for rapid development. Socialism transcended national identities and emphasized a specific economic and social doctrine. Beginning in the mid 1970s, the ideology that has been most attractive has been Islamism, an ideology based on the hope of restoring the transnational Islamic empire, grounded in Islamic history and law. Its vision is of a shared destiny to be initiated through representative government administered by Islamic elites committed to providing economic and social justice.

An interesting development in the mid-twentieth century is the increasing importance of the United States as a center for Muslim intellectual reflection and ferment. Having replaced Europe as the dominant power in the Third World, the United States began to attract to its universities a large number of students seeking technical and professional training. The American government, confident of the validity of the American way of life and seeking to fashion the leadership of the Third World, encouraged the education of foreign nationals in the benefits of capitalism and the evils of Marxism. Many of the graduates of American universities then decided to stay in the United States. In the process, American campuses as well as some of the mosques and Islamic centers associated with them became the locus for reflection on and experimentation with a variety of Islamic world views. In the United States, Muslim students from many nations have been able to forge links of friendship and common purpose, providing the nucleus for an international network of leaders committed to the creation of an Islamic state or an Islamic world order.

At the other end of the spectrum is a different set of American institutions that have become major centers of Muslim reflection and identity, namely the prisons of America, both state and federal facilities. They continue to be an important locus of the African-American conversion to Islam that began in the early decades of this century. While there are no statistics on the number of converts or the scope and effectiveness of conversion in the penal system, some scholars estimate that by the second decade of the twenty-first century the majority of African-American males will have converted to Islam. 7 While students from abroad living on American campuses often discover Islam and turn to the task of reshaping Islamic societies worldwide, prison alumni focus their efforts at home, helping reshape America from the bottom up. They seek the redemption of African-American society through the teaching of responsibility, family values, and accountability. In the process they are hoping to save their children from a future of violence and the drug-infested ghettos of America. 8

The earliest immigrants to found mosques before the Second World War and, for the most part, their children and grandchildren appear to have fitted comfortably into America. They tried both to fit into the new culture and to interpret it in ways that tended to emphasize the respect Islam had for Jesus and his mother Mary and to quote verses from the Qur’an emphasizing the commonalities between the two faiths. To the immigrants who have come since 1960, however, this kind of accommodation seems too high a price to pay. They are critical of their coreligionists who appear to have diluted the importance of Islamic traditions, rituals, and distinguishing characteristics, going so far as to refer to the mosque as “our church,” to the Qur’an as “our Bible,” and to the imam as “our minister.”

The more recent immigrants are neither poor nor uneducated; on the contrary, they represent the best-educated elite of the Muslim world who see themselves as helping develop America’s leadership in medicine, technology, and education. They have been influenced by a different socialization process, and while they appreciate, enjoy, and have helped create America’s technology, they want no part in what they see as its concomitant social and spiritual problems. Confident that Islam has a solution to America’s ills, they have no patience for the kind of accommodation that they see as compromising the true Islamic way. As the executive secretary of the Council of Masajid in North America put it:

In spite of the most spectacular progress in science and technology, man still finds himself in the wilderness of despair. One thing that has constantly eluded his grasp is happiness and peace of mind. Even technology, which is his creation, at times threatens to destroy him and to blot out all his works, as if he never lived on this earth .... Man finds himself in a “blind alley” and there are no exits in it. Should he abandon all hope and resign himself to perish in a nuclear-chemical-biological conflict? Islam’s answer is an emphatic NO! For a Muslim there can be no surrender to despair. 9

Muslim Identity in the American Context

Perceived by some Muslim leaders as “the mother of all issues” ( umm al-masa’il ), the question of Muslim identity and its meaning and ramifications in the context of the United States has been the focus of several national conferences sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America, as well as the topic of numerous lectures, sermons, and books by Muslims in North America (both immigrant and convert) and foreign intellectuals who choose to reflect on the subject. The quest for a relevant Muslim identity is part of the American experience, as each generation of immigrants has brought a certain sense of self which appears to undergo constant revision and redefinition in the context of the American melting (boiling?) pot. This identity is influenced by what the immigrants bring with them as well as their American experience: how America defines itself as well as American foreign policy in various Muslim countries, the place the immigrants choose to settle, how they are treated in their new environment, the diversity of the community with which they associate, their involvement in organized religion, their relations with older generations of immigrants and/or African-American Muslims, and involvement in interfaith activities. In the last decade and a half, it has also been profoundly influenced by what Muslims feel is a hostile American environment in which they are being held accountable for the activities of others overseas.

America, although a nation of immigrants, is nonetheless not particularly fond of them, no matter where they come from or what they believe in. It expects its social institutions, whether the workplace, the armed services, the schools, the churches, or the courts, to assimilate these strangers and forge them into Americans. Overall, those of European heritage have had a better chance of assimilation than people of Asian origin, who were entirely excluded from the mix until the repeal of the Asian Exclusion Act. 10 There is in any case a general American tendency to view the survival of immigrant foreign culture as a relic of the past that must inevitably give way to assimilation and modernization as defined by the Protestant ethos that is claimed to be the foundation of America.

Efforts in the nineteenth century to create an America which was Protestant by choice rather than by mandate made life particularly difficult for atheists, Jews, and Catholics. By the middle of the twentieth century, the United States found it convenient to reinvent itself as a triple melting pot, a mix of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews with no apparent place for other religions. In recent years, Americans increasingly have begun to use the term “Judeo-Christian” to define themselves, a “politically correct” term that for some appears to draw an obvious and tight line of religious acceptance around two major religions, regarding others as transient, permanently marginalized, or destined to disappear into the larger groups.

What is defined as the Judeo-Christian tradition can appear to those of other faiths as an exclusive club, the monopoly of two groups that regard others as outside the polity or subsume them only when they conform to the policies and desires of the dominant groups. It is part of America’s heritage as a country founded on the pious hope for a righteous society to see itself as being against those who it believes do not share that vision. Thus, throughout the history of America different groups have played the role of outsider, non-participant, even enemy, in response to which Americans can reaffirm their identity as a nation standing for the right and the good. Currently, Muslims appear to be the victims of the apparent need to create such an enemy, one that can be defined as the antithesis of the national character and a threat to the righteous order.

This reality plays an important role in the shaping of American Muslim identity. The identity of the community and the awareness that it constitutes a powerless minority are enhanced in the American milieu. Muslims believe that the professed separation of religion and state is violated every time a leader affirms that America is a Judeo-Christian country. They ask why it is acceptable for an American president to call for the implementation of Christian values while denouncing all efforts to build a moral and just Islamic society. And they wonder why America seems to support the concept of a “Jewish state” in Israel while Muslims are urged to be civilized and renounce their “extremist” hope for an “Islamic state.” Furthermore, Muslims are keenly aware that American social life is organized to a great degree around churches and other religious organizations. They watch the parade of religious programs on television which call for commitment to Christian values and wonder why Americans affirm the necessity of pluralism, of secularism, and of national identity only when they address Muslims.

At the same time the American principle of the separation of church and state is welcomed, since it provides for toleration of a variety of religious institutions and identities. Muslims as a minority find that the guarantee of freedom of religion provides opportunities for new experiments and developments in ideas, institution building, and propagation, unequaled in the countries from which they came. By the same token, those committed to an Islamist perception of reality, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their sympathizers, adhere to the belief that it is God’s intent that government should be regulated by the religious decrees of the Qur’an, that there should be no separation between religion and state, and that the only government sanctioned by God for such a task is one devoted to Islam. 11

Also influential in defining Islamic identity in North America have been the vicissitudes of American foreign policy towards Arab and Islamic countries during the last forty years, policies that continue to trouble and alienate the majority of Muslim citizens. The dramatic acceleration of interaction between American society and the Muslim world does not appear to have had any significant positive influence on policy makers, who continue to ignore Muslim sensibilities especially in regard to such things as American support for the state of Israel, despite the latter’s documented violation of the civil, political, and human rights of its Christian and Muslim citizens; American support for India, despite its record of violently suppressing the right of Kashmir’s population to self determination; and American reluctance to support what are perceived as the just causes of people in Azerbaijan, Bosnia, and Chechnya, among others. Proclamations by the State Department of its advocacy of human rights, pluralism, and minority rights as an important foundation of American policy in the world are increasingly viewed by Muslims as hypocritical.



“Target Islam”

12 There is a growing concern among Muslims both in America and overseas regarding American tolerance for negative depictions of Islam and Muslims. 13 Anti-Muslim sentiment generally increases in the wake of what Muslims believe to be the unbalanced coverage given events overseas by the American press. Media treatment of the hostage-taking in Iran in 1979 and the TWA hijacking in Lebanon in 1985, for example, seem to have brought out deep-seated prejudices in American society. More recently, the press had a heyday with the World Trade Center bombing and some in its corps insisted that the Oklahoma City bombing showed the modus operandi of Middle Eastern terrorists even after investigation proved it to be the work of Christian Americans. 14

As a consequence of such biased coverage, Muslims have reported a series of attacks on mosques and other Islamic institutions. In addition to the vengeful acts of some isolated Americans inflamed by media reports about Islam, Muslims fear the more organized hostile activities of certain groups. Most obvious, perhaps, is the Jewish Defense League (JDL), 15 an American urban terrorist organization which, according to FBI reports, is the second most violent group in the United States. The JDL threatened several American mosques and other Islamic targets in 1985, and is suspected of having bombed the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) offices on the West Coast which killed Alex Odeh. 16 More recent hate crimes by other groups include the bombing of a mosque in Texas and the burning of mosques in Indiana and California.

The negativism toward Islamists comes from various sources. Only one group, the Christian right, is motivated by religious conviction. Others engaged in negative propaganda include officials of the American government seeking support from various sectors of American society. What seems to be an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Islam wave sweeping across the United States accelerated beginning in 1980, encouraged by President Reagan’s confrontational style and his Manichaean world view. 17 Since then, some American leaders have increasingly described Muslims as outside the “national character” or the “shared American culture,” with the insinuation that their values are not mainstream. Questions are raised about whether their religious practices and cultural preferences are compatible with the American way of life, especially when it comes to dress, roles for women, sexuality, child rearing, use of free time and alcohol, attitudes toward gambling, education, private hygiene, occupation, and scruples about financial transactions that involve interest. Muslims protest that these attitudes not only deprive them of power and status but also deny them a voice and a presence.

Casting Islamists as the enemy of humanity, tolerance, and civilization is also a theme in the chorus repeated daily by officials of Arab governments seeking legitimacy and American support against opposition political groups in their own countries. These opposition groups are generally looking to democratize the authoritarian political regimes that rule in various Muslim states and to hold the corrupt officials accountable to the people. Often they are trying to implement a more equitable and just social and economic order that aims at ameliorating the conditions that exist in these states; they are concerned with the welfare of the people rather than the profit of the Western corporations. They believe that the kind of government they want cannot be created unless it is formed by those initiated into the Islamic consciousness and committed to implementing an Islamist world view.

Among those who see “Islamic extremism” as the enemy are members of the Israeli government and their American defenders. 18 Since the fall of the Soviet empire, Islamist literature has taken note of the intensified and sustained emphasis on the supposed threat of Islam in the speeches of Israeli leaders in their effort to portray Israel as the guardian of American and Western interests in the Middle East and to maintain the high subsidies given to it by the United States. 19 The Islamist press notes that Muslims have been depicted as a cancer that should be combated by the combined forces of the Clinton administration and Israel. 20 Also perpetuating the image of Islam as the enemy are so-called experts on foreign policy who need a threat in order to sell their expertise. Observing that the fall of the Soviet empire eliminated the enemy against which the United States could place itself, they eagerly pointed to the threat of Islam as filling that vacuum.

Americans, conditioned to respond to a world they feel is threatened by malevolent forces that they are somehow mandated to overcome, are quick to see Islam as the next challenge which must be met. For some, the opposition to Islam is subtler. Recent pieces on the editorial pages of our newspapers suggest that Americans should distinguish between good Muslims and bad Muslims, condemning the Islamists and cooperating with the moderates. The moderates are identified as people like Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie, both of whom are seen as apostates by many Muslims. While some may find this an improvement 21 over wholesale condemnation, it is nonetheless difficult for many to accept. As one Muslim put it: “It used to be that the only good Arab was a dead Arab; now it has shifted to the only good Muslim is the one who wants to assassinate his religion.”

While Muslims in America have ample reason to fear “Judeo-Christian” prejudice incited as a result of events overseas, they are also concerned about deliberate falsifications of Islam that are perpetrated by those who appear to have declared Islam to be an “enemy faith.” The community is also afraid of becoming a target of Christian missionary assaults by church groups who seek to in