CHAPTER 7
Influence of the Muslim Students
During the 1960's, many Muslim students entered the U.S. to study at universities. At their disposal were new Islamic materials taken from early sources that had not been translated into English prior to this decade. Distribution of educational materials has improved drastically in America and Canada since the founding of the Muslim Student Association in 1963. The Quincy group joined the MSA the same year it was founded.
The MSA publishes educational books and pamphlets written by Muslim scholars for the consumption of English speaking people. The Islamic Society of North America in Indianapolis, IN, currently an umbrella organization for many Muslim organizations in the U.S. and Canada, developed out of the MSA.
The Muslim students helped organize community events. ids were observed with the payment of zakat-ul-fitr (charity paid at the end of the holy month of Ramadan). Speeches in English and Arabic were given on subjects like the importance of prayer. The Mawlid an-Nabi (the Prophet Muhammad's birthday) was celebrated in the Arabic tradition and Arabic was taught to the children. All respondents agree that the Muslim students encouraged the small group of founders to learn more about Islam.
When the leadership advertised in local papers, at airports and hotels, Muslims flocked to the Center. The mosque membership tripled from 1964-1974. The community became a heterogeneous mixture of transient and permanent immigrants from many different countries (fifth wave of Muslim immigrants to the U.S., 1967 to present).
The Harvard Islamic Society was organized in 1958 by (Haj) Abu Nuri (Afro-American), Syed Nadwi (Pakistan), and Ahmed Osman (Sudan), all of whom became members of the Center in the 60's. Abu Nuri, a convert to Islam in 1940, is credited for initiating the relationship between Harvard and the mosque. He became a member of the Center in 1965 and served as Vice President of the Board in 1973. He served on the Board from 1978 to 1982 and was the editor of the newsletter for over seven years.
In his interview, Abu Nuri pointed out the diversity of the Muslim community in America. Because of the diversity, both ethnically, educationally, and religiously, and because of the cultural environment in which Islam is being practiced, he felt that Islam needs to be understood as the religion which shows the equality and universality of man. Some of the Muslim students he had met demonstrated a provincial interpretation of Islam, through the powerful influences of their country of origin.
In response to the specific question: Did the Muslim students influence founding members to build a mosque? One founding member and Board officer stressed that the students' most valuable contribution to the community was their ability to teach the Arabic prayers to adults and children by using phonetics. She stated:
"But they had very little influence. The idea to build a mosque came from us. The Muslim students benefitted from us just as we benefitted from them."
The current Religious Director of the Center was asked his opinion of the relationship between the Muslim students and the indigenous Muslim community in today's community. He felt that their religious background was an asset to the community and to the American society in general.
He discussed the difference between those Muslims who are living permanently in the U.S. and those living temporarily. As temporary residents, the Muslim students have a different perspective of daily life in a non-Muslim society. Based on this perspective, they can become critical of the indigenous Muslims for the practical choices they make in consequence of life in this society.
For example, a Muslim student living temporarily in Boston with his family felt that any "good" Muslim would never put their child in public school where it is understood that the high standards of ethics and morality are not being taught or guarded. While agreeing in principle with the student, the Religious Director's response was driven by practicality and reality: "Who can afford to send all their children to private schools?"
Re-Examining Fund Raising Activities
In 1967, the new immigrants took up positions on mosque committees. The building was expanded in 1968 to double the size of the prayer room and social hall. In this decade, the founding members were outnumbered by the recent immigrants (although not on the Board of Directors). As one founding member put it, they now envisioned a mosque for "all Muslims," not just for their children. It was at this time that the founding members were made acutely aware of the impropriety of some of their fund raising activities which included raffles, card games (whist), Chinese auctions, and the sale of liquor at the annual picnic (all forbidden in Islam).
Sam Hassan, then president, stated that there was tremendous pressure from the Muslim students and recent immigrants to stop these activities. In 1967, he "decreed" that all of the activities considered by the "new" community consensus (ijma) to be Islamically improper, would be discontinued.
Conformity to Islamic standards was a gradual process because the American born Muslims were an isolated community, lacking in Islamic education. The immigrant founding fathers, possessed of no formal Islamic education, had taught their children the importance of paying the zakah. But from the churches and synagogues, American Muslims incorporated the non-Islamic methods of raising money.
When the American born Muslims decided to build a mosque, the giving to charities overseas became the subject of heated debates between generations. The American born generation argued that if the community was ever going to build a mosque, then, "charity should begin at home." Imam Omar argued the pious thought that money used to build a mosque should come by clean Islamic ways.
When the debate ended in 1967 in a leap of faith, most everyone feared that fund raising would be impossible. Since the ladies had always participated in the efforts to raise money, they were asked to find new ways to raise money. Women of the American born generation reorganized the Ladies' Auxiliary. They played the most important role in establishing new fund raising activities which were Islamically appropriate. These included luncheons, dinner parties, banquets, mystery rides, bake sales, and an international food fair and bazaar.
Islam and Cultural Integration
When educated Muslims with greater knowledge of Islamic law joined the indigenous community, their influence sparked a reform in the community which ultimately led to greater unity. For centuries, since its advent, Islam spread to new regions or cultures where a community has had little or no Islamic knowledge. Through the impact of Islamic knowledge, the community undergoes reform (reforming activity) in order to redefine itself Islamically (the distinguishing activity).
Simultaneously, as the host culture is absorbing Islam (islamization activity), the Muslims are absorbing the indigenous host culture (indigenization). By studying Islamic history, scholars have been able to generalize about the process of Islam and integration. W. Montgomery Watt depicts four continuous and often simultaneous activities: the reforming activity, distinguishing activity, islamization and indigenization activity.
The reforming activity is a tradition in Islam which is centuries old. In this case, reforming the fund raising activities is a good example of how the community begins to distinguish itself as a separate religious community. The renewal of Islam ignites the whole cycle of integrative activities. Then, as a community continues to gain knowledge, it undergoes the islamization/indigenization activity. This means that it will adopt certain Islamic cultural usages and suppress others. It will modify certain indigenous customs and then adopt them, or reject them all together.
The role of Muslim women in the American Islamic community is an example of the indigenization activity. Since a mosque in a Muslim society traditionally does not involve women, women working in the administration of the mosque is indigenous to the host culture. Since it is likely to be supported by the government, a mosque in a Muslim country would not have to raise money. Fund raising and women working at it are two more examples of the indigenization activity.
The longer Muslims remain in a region, the more they absorb the host culture. To these Muslims, Islam becomes a synthetic of itself and the particular orientation, values, customs, and traditions of the host culture. When the community becomes satiated with knowledge and considers itself to have attained the identity of a "real Islamic community," complacency forges a regional or provincial interpretation of Islam which is passed on from generation to generation.
In my opinion, hundreds of years of integration, coupled with taqlid (imitative reasoning), produces an understanding of Islam which is inseparable from the host culture and is best described as: "Saudi Arabian Islam," or "Indian/Subcontinent Islam." Domination of the anthropological dimension of regional studies of Muslims tend to force the question: Which is the "real" Islam? Learning about "real" Islam is only possible, however, by returning to the study of original sources, the Qur'an and the Sunnah (teachings of the Prophet Muhammad). These sources must be universally understood as religious knowledge which has been purged of cultural accretions.
In the building of a Muslim community in America, there were many obstacles to unity confronting the American Muslim leadership. Their positive reception to the educated immigrants who had become a majority within the community was a crucial step toward unity because they acted on the need to establish a common Islamic identity. However, the issue of establishing an Islamic identity is also threatened by outside forces as well. For Muslims living as a minority in a non-Muslim society, pressures to conform to non-Muslim ways or to become absorbed entirely into the mainstream culture are often overwhelming.
All Muslims, and especially those coming from Muslim societies, are vulnerable to these pressures and are forced to respond. Theodore Pulcini, in the Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, focused his studies on the experience of immigrant Muslims coming from traditional Muslim cultures to live as a minority in a non-Muslim society. Because of the dominant cultural influences, a healthy minority identity is hard to maintain and transfer from generation to generation. Pulcini asks the question: "How will Islam define itself in a majority culture whose values, in crucial ways are diametrically opposed to those of traditional Muslim cultures?"
In the struggle against the threat of religious anomie, the Muslim might respond by seeking a measure of isolation, confrontation, integration, or assimilation in the non-Muslim society. Pulcini devised a continuum of measured "responses" he calls: the Subcultural, Counter-Cultural, Accommodationist, and the Assimilationist Response.
The subcultural response advocates a separate living style or withdrawal from the dominant culture. By isolation in ethnic or religious ghettos, the subculturalist can avoid or reduce the effect of non-Muslim influences. For example, a model Islamic community, the Dar-al-Islam (house of Islam) experiment, was built in the 80's in the isolated high desert of Abiquiu, New Mexico, populated by 60-70 Muslims, mostly immigrant.
Another example is the Muslim student mentioned earlier who believed that Muslim children could not be "Muslim" if they were integrated into the public school. By sending his child to an Islamic school, he feels he can best preserve a sense of being "Muslim."
Since the fund raising activities of the Quincy group prior to 1967 had been open to non-Muslims, the decision to stop inappropriate activities might be seen as a step toward isolating the Muslim community from social interaction with non-Muslims. This measure of isolation might be criticized as a subcultural response. On the other hand, it could be described, as mentioned earlier, as a distinguishing activity of the nascent Muslim community.
The counter-cultural response calls for, "safeguarding distinctiveness in the midst of the cultural mainstream." The counter-culturalist attends public school, for example, but dissents. He remains integrative in order to influence or reform mainstream thinking, but maintains the essentials of Islamic identity as "a clearly distinguishable, non-conforming subset," As one recent immigrant member of the Islamic Center said: "We must stay with the people, understand their problems, and try our best to change and reform them."
The accommodationist response is less confrontational. Those who prefer a less confrontational role in the society argue that by emphasizing distinctiveness (i.e. exotic names, wearing a head cover,etc.), children might be exposed to taunts or prejudice from their peers in school. A negative experience like this could result in the child resenting his religion and giving it up.
Like the counter-culturalist, they favor public school and interaction with non-Muslims. The difference between the accommodational and the counter-cultural response is that the tension of being different is reduced. Concerned over the future survival of Islam in a non-Muslim society, the accommodationist does not ask his children to stress separateness, but encourages them to emphasize their compatibility with the religious and cultural identities of others.
A criticism of this response would be the concern that such a high degree of integration might lead the Islamic community to lose its distinguishing features. But the accommodationist also teaches his children, "to hold that their Muslim identity is inviolable." This is accomplished by teaching their children to take pride in their religious heritage (supporting and being a part of the mosque community), and by providing some formal Islamic education for their children.
Another way to understand the accommodationist response is by a term sociologists call, "pluralistic integration," which means: "where a group continues to maintain itself as a unit on its own, but is nevertheless accepted by the majority as part of the society."
Since many of the Arab American Muslims from the original seven founding families had refused any Islamic instruction and withdrawn from the Muslim community, one might conclude that they had chosen to give up their Islamic identity in favor of total religio-cultural absorption. This is an example of the assimilationist response. Never forgetting their minority status, the assimilationist is sensitive to his children seeing the majority culture as the aspired norm and himself as belonging to a group that is inferior to that norm. Gaining acceptance from the American mainstream is weighed heavier than maintaining an Islamic identity. Defection from the community is certain.
According to Milton Gordon in his work, Assimilation in America, to avoid defection, it is important that the community maintain a cultural separateness and ingroup identity he refers to as, "structural pluralism." This is accomplished first and foremost by building institutions like mosques and schools where religious observances can be learned and practiced. Muhammad Anwar in his article entitled, "Religious Identity in Plural Societies: the Case of Britain," confirms the importance of establishing Muslim institutions in Britain as a way to ward off defection from the community and as "boundary maintaining mechanisms."
Although the assimilationist response is embraced by new immigrant Muslims as well as by their offspring, it is noted to be the response of the least amount of Muslims living in a non-Muslim society.
In order to describe the "Islamic identity" of mosques in America, scholars often try to apply terms such as "a liberal mosque" or "a conservative community." While labeling certain institutions has some obvious value, it is often misleading. Standard connotations of such terms applied to whole communities does not begin to assess the Muslim's range of responses (Pulcini) to life in a non-Muslim society. Nor does it take into consideration that the Muslim identity is linked to an ever-evolving understanding of Islam and the constant pursuit of knowledge. As one prominent Muslim leader stated of his diverse community:
"I resist the temptation to categorize a community. We are shaping Islam in America, working together, and learning from each other in an effort to find and fashion our own medium way. What makes it impossible to categorize a certain community as "liberal" or "conservative" is that Islam itself is socially liberal, as exemplified by its concern for the welfare of all defenseless societal members, while it is simultaneously morally conservative."
In conclusion, the sixties was a transitional period during which the identity of the community changed radically. It was a time when the expense of building and maintaining the mosque had overextended the small community of Arab Americans. Because of the influx of Muslim immigrants, the small, ethnic community became large and heterogeneous. Simultaneously, a co-dependence developed between the indigenous and immigrant Muslims.
"The growing transformation of Islamic consciousness means that small ethnic enclaves are in some cases learning how to share their institutions with more recent immigrants, in the process gradually dropping their ethnic particularities and
moving toward a more common Islamic identity."