This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank 2006 GENEIVE ABDOMECCA AND MAIN STREET Muslim Life in America After… [626196]

MECCA AND MAIN STREET

This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank

2006
GENEIVE ABDOMECCA
AND
MAIN STREET
Muslim Life in America After 9/11/ornament20 /ornament20

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that
further Oxford University’s objective of excellence
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Copyright © 2006 by Geneive Abdo
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abdo, Geneive, 1960–
Mecca and Main Street : Muslim life in America after 9/11 / Geneive Abdo.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-531171-6 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-19-531171-X (cloth)
1. Muslims—United States—Social conditions.
2. Muslims—United States—Attitudes.
3. Islam—United States.
4. United States—Ethnic relations.
5. United States—Race relations.
6. Social integration—United States.
I. Title.
E184.M88A22 2006
305.6'970973—dc22
2006015485
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

Contents
/ornament20
vAcknowledgments
vii
Prologue: Beginnings
1
1
Imams for a New Generation
11
2
The Child-Bride of the Dix Mosque
37

vi CONTENTS
3
The Roots of Islam in America
61
4
Taking It to the Streets
87
5
Muslim Voices
111
6
Women in the Changing Mosque
137
7
Heeding the Call
165
8
The Future of the Faith
187
Bibliography
203
Index
209

CONTENTS vii
Acknowledgments
/ornament20
am forever grateful to the main characters in this book. They shared
intimate details of their lives with me during a period of unease at home
and abroad. Many taught me not only what it is to be a Muslim in America,
but how their faith can help ease the difficulties of living in the contempo-
rary world.
From the beginning, Yusra Gomaa was my guide through the Islamic
community, my researcher, and a model for the young generation of Mus-lim Americans. Her intelligence, determination, and belief in the central
theme of this book were a great inspiration. Her life story appears later inthese pages.
In Chicago, many friends and acquaintances helped along the way. My
conversations over a few years with Dr. Umar Faruq Abdallah, Dr. ScottAlexander, and Dr. Abdul Malik Mujahid taught me to take note of the
many nuances of Muslim life that are documented throughout the book.
In Detroit, Saeed Khan and Patrick Cates were the first activists I metwho opened my eyes to the diversity of mosques. Through them, I met
Dr. Ihsan Bagby, whose admirable field research on this subject greatly
enhanced my own work.
There are also the life-long helpers, the people who have provided stimu-
lation and inspiration since I began writing about contemporary IslamI
vii

more than a decade ago. I am grateful to Dr. John Esposito for his unwa-
vering support. Cynthia Read, my editor at Oxford University Press, has
maintained faith in my work, even when my ideas have contradicted con-
ventional wisdom. She is a rare and gifted editor in American publishing.Jonathan Lyons, who edited and read every page, was an invaluable critic.
I am grateful to my agent, Laura Langlie, who lowered my stress level
and helped beyond the call of duty. The novelist Christina Baker-Klineimproved my narratives and storytelling.
This book was funded in part through a grant from the Earhart Foun-
dation. I owe the foundation many thanks for its continuous support.viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MECCA AND MAIN STREET

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1Prologue: Beginnings
/ornament20
Ifirst thought about writing this book, often with mixed emotions, dur-
ing the days following September 11, 2001. My ambivalence turned to
conviction one chilly afternoon in 2003 as I strolled through a San Fran-
cisco neighborhood with Maad Abu Ghazalah. Maad was running for a
seat in the U.S. Congress, and I had asked if I could campaign door-to-
door with him. I wanted to see how one of America’s most liberal citiesmight respond to a Muslim and an Arab seeking public office. I had never
been to San Francisco until that day, but I believed the stereotype of a city
with open-minded, tolerant citizens. Certainly this enlightened thinkingwould apply to Maad, especially because there are no immediate physical
clues that he is an Arab. With his light skin, green eyes, and sandy brown
hair, he could be Italian or Greek or French.
The neighborhood overlooked San Francisco Bay, giving homeowners
a spectacular view of the clear, deep blue water. When we walked up thehill to the first set of houses and rang the doorbells, no one seemed to beat home. But after a few minutes, we found our first couple willing to open
their door for a chat.
“Hello, my name is Maad Abu Ghazalah and I am running for Con-
gress in your district,” Maad told the couple, extending his hand past thefront-door screen to offer them his campaign literature.

2 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
There were a few moments of silence. Then the man blurted out, as if
Maad were nowhere in sight, “With this name, I would say this guy doesn’t
have a chance. M-a-a-ad Abu Ghazalah. Not a chance.”
While I tried to keep my jaw from dropping, Maad did not flinch. He was
apparently used to this kind of reaction. “I was born in Palestine. I live in
San Francisco and graduated from Notre Dame. I am running for Congress
because I’m concerned about our foreign policy,” he replied, deadpan.
The woman tried to take the edge off her husband’s remark. “We need
to know where you stand,” she told Maad, “because many people will just
see your name and think, ‘I don’t want to go down that road.’”
Where Maad stood was beside the point. He was against the Iraq war.
He favored bringing the troops home—views the couple said they shared.
But that was obviously not enough for them.
As we continued walking along the street, I wondered why Maad put
himself through such unnecessary humiliation. I couldn’t understand it.
Here was a successful lawyer who certainly did not need to subject himselfto bigotry and ignorance. We walked a bit more, but had little success
persuading voters that Maad was their man for Congress. Only one per-
son reacted favorably.
The cool breeze and the human chill from the San Franciscans, whom
I thought would be free thinkers, made me want to end the campaigning.
Maad agreed, somewhat reluctantly, after we had visited nearly every housealong the street. I was curious to know how he felt, but we had just met
that morning and I didn’t feel comfortable asking him personal questions.
I posed my question delicately: “So Maad, do you think you will continuecampaigning? Do you think you are doing the right thing?”
He grinned a bit. “I have one vote and one hundred thousand to go,” he
said, referring to the one positive response. “I am not running to win. I amrunning so the next generation of Muslims might have a chance.”
Later that day, on the plane out of San Francisco, I realized that the
contemporary Muslim American experience should be documented. Lifehad changed dramatically for the country’s six million Muslims . But be-
cause America was focused on Muslims living nearly everywhere else but
at home—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Pakistan—the story of theirchanging lives had been left untold.
For more than a century Muslims had lived in America in peace, blend-
ing into the ethnically diverse landscape. But suddenly, they were no longerin the shadows as an all but invisible minority. From now on, their every
word would be noted, their every action seized upon by a nation gripped

PROLOGUE: BEGINNINGS 3
with fear and inflamed by political manipulation. The event that launched
America’s “War on Terrorism”—a war that many Muslims at home and
abroad understand as directed at Islam itself—created for them a new
American reality. Like the couple who greeted Maad Abu Ghazalah, muchof America had embraced a black-and-white view: Muslims are terrorists;
Islam is a religion of violence; Muslims are backward; Muslims are venge-
ful toward the West.
Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America after 9/11 details the search
by a diverse group of Muslims to find a way to live with dignity in this
country. While many Muslims shared a growing desire to become more
involved and educated about their faith long before September 11, in the
wake of the attacks on Washington and New York, they felt an urgentneed to embrace their beliefs and establish an Islamic identity as a unified
community. A glance at the American horizon confirms this. A decade
ago, it was unusual to spot a minaret. But now they can be seen in most
major cities and many smaller ones, as well. Women in headscarves are an
increasingly common sight in the nation’s shopping malls, offices, schools
and even health clubs. Employers are now asked to allow Muslim workers
to take time off for daily prayers.
After living and working in the Islamic world for almost a decade as an
author and journalist, I became interested in the Muslim American com-
munity when I returned to the United States shortly before September11. I realized that some of the trends I had observed and documented in
the Islamic world were also apparent here, especially among younger
Muslims. After the attacks, it seemed vital for Americans to understand
the Muslims living in their midst. Yet, much of the information available
in the media has failed to inform or educate the public. My growing frus-
tration led me to write this book.
The narratives I present are possible only because many generous Mus-
lims were willing to tell me their stories. They welcomed me into their
schools, mosques, Islamic centers, weddings, radio stations, and homes, even
though I am an outsider to their community. Sometimes, telling me their
stories was a form of catharsis; I was there with an open mind, well versed in
their religion and culture, and willing to listen. Other times, they spoke out
of desperation to get the word out. They live in the heart of America, but
they are often defined solely by Americans’ perceptions of Muslims abroad,
whether they are insurgents in Iraq or Saudi oil tycoons in Riyadh. I have
tried to tell their stories through their eyes, but with my voice.

4 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
In my travels, from New York to California, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, and
Michigan, I discovered that September 11 has dramatically altered the
way Muslims live in this country. These changes largely defy decades of
history in a nation of immigrants, and they challenge the American idealof diverse cultures linked by a shared attachment to common goals and
dreams. Unlike other ethnic and religious groups who seek to become
fully Americanized, many Muslim Americans, particularly the expandingyounger generation of practicing Muslims, are involved in what their imams
are calling a rejectionist movement. While gaining economic prosperity
as members of the American workforce, they are trying to create theirown world where they can find comfort in their faith and their communi-
ties. They are combining a desire to embrace Islam with negotiating the
rigors of daily life in modern America.
Many Muslim Americans, the second generation in particular, are plac-
ing their Islamic identity first. (Throughout this book, I refer to second-
generation Muslims as those whose immigrant parents were the first
generation in their family to live in the United States.) Young Muslimsborn or raised in the United States are often more observant of Islamic
practice than their parents. Many young women are wearing headscarves,
even if their mothers didn’t cover. And, unlike their parents, they believetheir spiritual journey is also an intellectual one. This younger generation isnot interested in blindly following the teachings of an imam simply becausehe is a religious figure; they carefully study the Koran and the Sunnah, the
two sources of Islamic jurisprudence, to find rationality in religious prac-
tice. If an imam tells them, for example, that playing music is against Islamicteaching, they are likely to ask the imam to justify his opinion with a citationfrom the religious texts. These young Muslims are searching for purity in
the faith while tailoring religious practice to their lives in America.
Their experience differs from that of their parents. The older genera-
tion began arriving from Islamic countries in great numbers almost a halfcentury ago, after America’s restrictive immigration laws were eased in
the 1960s. But mentally these Muslims never left the Old Country be-
hind. When they joined mosques in America, they wanted to observe thefaith as they had back home, with aging imams citing Koranic verses thathad little relevance to daily life in America.
One summer afternoon in 2004 at a gathering of young Muslims in
Chicago, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, an imam who is leading this new genera-tion, accurately contrasted the past Muslim American experience with whatthe future should hold. His thinking had undergone many changes since
he studied Islamic science and theology in the Middle East where he will-

PROLOGUE: BEGINNINGS 5
ingly accepted traditional interpretations of Islamic doctrine despite their
lack of relevance to modern life. Once back in the United States, Sheikh
Hamza realized that these readings of the faith were counterproductive in
contemporary America. He shifted his ideas and refined the advice he gavehis followers. “We have a crisis in faith. I sit in a khutba [Friday sermon] that
violates the faith. . . . And I know we have to support the mosque, but if you
go to a mosque and it is impossible to be there, you need to find anotherone. . . . I cringe when I think about the things I said ten years ago.”
The men and women profiled in the following pages are all practicing
Muslims, mosque-goers, most born in America as the children of recentimmigrants. I chose these particular people not because they claim to rep-
resent all Muslim Americans but because they are the activists, journalists,
imams, and human rights advocates who are shaping both the broaderMuslim community’s standing in America and Americans’ views of the
Islamic world. Islam is spreading rapidly around the globe, and the United
States is no different; it is the fastest growing religion and, by some esti-mates, has already outpaced Judaism as the country’s second faith.
The impulse within the young generation toward a well-defined Is-
lamic identity is inspired by two developments. Devout Muslim Ameri-cans, much like their co-religionists across the Islamic world from Pakistan
to Egypt, are experiencing a spiritual awakening. Many of the trends indi-
cating an increase in piety among second-generation Muslim Americansare also visible in Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan and among young Muslims
in Western Europe, as well. Over the last thirty years, an Islamic resur-
gence has spread throughout much of the world.
Then there is September 11, and the fallout from this tragic day in
American history. After the attacks, a generation of believers who were
already becoming more spiritual than their parents rose up to defend theirfaith. They felt under siege, with FBI agents raiding their mosques and
homes, suspicious neighbors assuming every Muslim is suspect, and tele-
vision news programs portraying Muslims as the new enemy of the West.Part of their defense was to adopt Islamic symbols—the hijab, the headscarf
for women, and the kufi, the cap for men—in greater numbers. Many
Muslims told me they felt impelled to learn more about their religion inorder to explain the true Islam to America. Their future in this country
depended upon it. They also felt a need for comfort that was unavailable
in mainstream American society. They turned to their mosques, Islamiccenters, Muslim Students’ Associations on university campuses, and Is-
lamic schools to ease the pain of increasing bigotry, stereotyping, and hate

6 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
crimes. The role of the mosque was changing, and it changed even more
after September 11. As in much of the Islamic world, in the 1970s and
1980s the mosque in America had been strictly a house of worship. But as
Muslim Americans became more interested in developing their Islamicidentity, the mosque became the center of social activity for those who
prayed there.
After a brief period immediately following the attacks when Americans
expressed an outpouring of support and tolerance for Muslims and Islam,
surveys taken since September 11 show that public opinion has grown
increasingly negative toward them. Data compiled by the respected PewForum on Religion and Public Life in the summer of 2004 demonstrated
that almost half of Americans believe that Islam is more likely than other
religions to promote violence, up from one quarter of Americans two yearsearlier. Pew also found 37 percent of those surveyed had an unfavorable
view of Islam in 2004, an increase over the same period in 2003.
These feelings are acted out in ways small and large. Statistics compiled by
the largest Islamic organization in the country, the Council on American-
Islamic Relations , show an increase in anti-Muslim vandalism and other
hate crimes over the last four years. During the years I spent researchingthis book, I had countless experiences with Americans who held negative
opinions about Muslims, but who knew virtually nothing about Islam and
had never met a Muslim. Some people talked about Muslims as if theywere an alien species. Few Americans know the central tenets of Islam, its
emphasis on social justice, or its acceptance of the Jewish and Christian
prophets who came before the Prophet Muhammad. Few Americans knowthat world-class Muslim scientists, philosophers, and other scholars pro-
duced significant works during the Middle Ages, when Christian Europe
was shrouded in darkness, disease, and ignorance. And how many Ameri-cans stop to consider the continuing impact of centuries of Western colo-
nial occupation and domination on Muslim societies?
Most of the time, Americans’ negative views focus on Islamic militancy.
I am often asked: “If Islam does not promote violence, then why don’t
Muslims in this country condemn the September 11 attacks? Why don’t
they condemn the beheadings in Iraq? Why don’t they disavow the mili-tants acting in the name of Islam?” The truth is that nearly every Islamic
organization in America condemned the events of 9/11 and other forms of
violence, but the media rarely captures their voices and they go virtuallyunheard. Other times they are dismissed as disingenuous. And even as
Islamic organizations have become more visible in the years since Sep-

PROLOGUE: BEGINNINGS 7
tember 11, they have learned that visibility brings vulnerability. In effect, they
lose if they remain silent, and are still targeted if they try to defend their
true faith.
Much of the hostility toward Muslims reflects the lack of knowledge
about Islam that has persisted since the first Muslims arrived in America
more than three hundred years ago. As early as 1893, Muhammad Alexander
Russell Webb, a former newspaperman and one of the earliest white con-verts to Islam, bewailed his fellow Americans’ ignorance of the faith and
the Prophet Muhammad. Sadly, little has changed since then. Instead of
making an effort to understand Islam and the factors and history that haveshaped its many modern forms and expressions, America’s politicians and
the media remain obsessed with any and all signs of extremism. The over-
riding question has been, “Are there militants on American soil?” Over
the three years that I traveled to Islamic communities across America, I
found no evidence of militancy. Are there strident voices critical of U.S.
foreign policies? Without doubt. But these voices, at least for now, havenot made the leap, as some European Muslims have done, toward violent
radicalism.
Muslim Americans’ successful creation of a strong Islamic identity is a
departure from history. America had three historical encounters with Is-
lam, none of which led to the creation of a true Islamic identity. The first
Muslims to arrive in any number, beginning in the 1700s, were slavesfrom West Africa, and they never really had a chance. In the Deep South,
where most black Muslims were sold, their enslavement, their forced con-
versions to Christianity, and other obstacles to practicing the faith made itimpossible for them to create any real Islamic community.
The gradual collapse of the Ottoman Empire set off the next wave of
immigrants, dating from around 1870 to the start of World War I. Manywere Christians from Syria and Lebanon, like my own Maronite ancestors
who eventually settled in San Antonio, Texas. There was also a significant
number of Muslims, but they were more focused on preserving the reli-gious and ethnic traditions of their homelands than on unifying into one
Muslim American community. It was common for each ethnic group to
have its own mosque, and various ethnic groups tended to settle in iso-lated pockets around the country, particularly in the Midwest, and re-
mained cut off from each other.
The first attempt to carve out a national identity came from the African
American community, when Noble Drew Ali founded the Moorish Sci-
ence Temple in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913. Ali preached that African

8 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Americans were a “Moorish” people and historically Muslim in culture
and heritage. Two decades later, Wallace D. Fard, a silk peddler, claimed
God sent him from the Muslim holy city of Mecca to save black America.
His movement spawned the contemporary Nation of Islam, officially es-tablished in 1934 by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Like Nobel Drew
Ali’s Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam was rich in Islamic
symbols and terminology but offered little actual theology. The practice ofthe faith borrowed heavily from the services commonly conducted at black
churches. Members sat on benches, sang, and listened to sermons on reli-
gious and social themes that did not address any aspect of Islam. What’s
more, Elijah Muhammad embraced ideas that openly violated basic Islamic
principles. He declared that white people were the descendants of the Devil,and that he was a messenger of God, an idea heretical to Muslims who
believe that the Prophet Muhammad was God’s last messenger.
But, by putting Islam forward as an answer to racial oppression, the
Nation of Islam effectively appealed to blacks who were searching for so-
cial justice and a new identity that would elevate them from imposed deg-
radation. In the absence of a well-developed Islamic community with
experiences in the Muslim world, there was virtually no one with religious
authority to challenge such distortions of the faith. Eventually the chal-
lenge came from within the Nation itself.
Malcolm X, once the charismatic voice of the Nation of Islam, began
publicly to challenge the movement’s ideas after he returned in 1964 from
a life-transforming pilgrimage to Mecca. Already, he had begun to ques-
tion privately some aspects of the group’s teachings. Similarly, and nearly
at the same time, Elijah Muhammad’s son Wallace Deen Muhammad,
who was well versed in the Islamic holy texts, questioned his father’s racist
doctrine. In 1975, upon the death of his father, Wallace Deen began to
discredit many of the separatist ideas upon which the Nation was built.He formed an alternative to the Nation, an organization eventually called
the American Society of Muslims, but the results of Wallace Deen
Muhammad’s efforts were uneven.
Meanwhile, the liberalization of America’s immigration laws in 1965
eased restrictions against immigrants from the Muslim world. Almost im-
mediately, the face of Islam in America began to change. Now the immi-
grant community was growing alongside black Islam; in fact, immigrant
Muslims soon outnumbered converts among African Americans. At the
time, a global Islamic revival was taking root, sparked by the 1979 Islamic

PROLOGUE: BEGINNINGS 9
revolution in Iran and the Islamic triumph over Soviet rule in Afghani-
stan. These events influenced Muslims from Pakistan to Egypt, and many
of the immigrants who arrived in America from these countries beginning
in the 1970s wanted to practice their faith diligently. They began buildingmosques and Islamic schools across the country, though they were ini-
tially few in number.
A clash between the immigrant and African American Muslims was
bound to happen. African Americans saw immigrant Muslims as hijackers
of a faith in which they themselves had established roots more than two
hundred years earlier. The newly arrived Muslims raised a question thathas come to dominate Islamic history in the United States: who is a real
Muslim? In the eye of the immigrants, the Nation of Islam and the Ameri-
can Society of Muslims, which Wallace Deen was determined to bringinto conformity with mainstream Sunni Islam, were mere imitations of
the true faith.
By the 1990s, the Nation of Islam had lost its luster and Wallace Deen
had become disillusioned. He told me in 2003 that he was stepping down
as leader of the American Society of Muslims because many of his prayer
leaders in mosques around the country had refused to follow his exampleand master Arabic and embrace the teachings of the Koran. They were, he
said, too locked into the separatist message of his father, Elijah Muhammad.
Some prominent African American Muslims, such as the scholar ShermanA. Jackson, argue that the excessive focus on race among today’s African
American Muslims threatens to reduce their influence within the broader
community of believers.
With the decline of organized African American Islam, the post-1965
generation has stepped in to offer the best hope to resolve once and for all
what it means to be a Muslim in America. Many are working hard to cre-ate a multicultural Islamic community, one that is color blind. They are
inspiring African American youth to join their schools and organizations,
breaking with their parents’ tradition of praying, marrying, and associat-ing only with Muslims from their same ethnic background.
The creation of a distinct Muslim American identity has become more
urgent than it was in the past. After September 11, Muslims were put onthe defensive. Others were constantly defining their identity and their
religion. Many Muslims told me that September 11 was a wake-up call:
either embrace and explain the true faith or be lumped together with thesuicide bomber in the Gaza Strip or the insurgent in the rutted streets of
Baghdad.

10 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
As an Arab American who also woke up on September 11 to a new,
imposed identity that is more Arab and less American, this work is also a
personal journey. Mecca and Main Street takes a look at Muslim life, quite
different from the perceptions, stereotypes, and clichés that have capturedthe American imagination.
New York February 2006

11ONE
Imams for a New Generation
/ornament20
In a moment he had never imagined, in a house he had never admired,
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf was singing “God Bless America.” It was a mo-
mentous occasion, so important that he had altered nearly everything about
his appearance and demeanor. He had left his traditional tunics and skull-
caps at home in California and packed a bundle of neatly pressed dark
trousers and button-down white shirts. He had trimmed his minimalistgoatee and tamed his tongue, trading his intellectual, introspective rheto-
ric for the simplistic language of television sound bites. And to stress that
he was American, as well as Muslim, he introduced himself as Hamza YusufHanson, using the surname that was his before he converted to Islam.
The occasion demanded it; he was standing in the Oval Office, next to
President George W. Bush, under the glare of television lights, with cam-eras capturing his every move. It was September 20, 2001, nine days after
Muslim extremists had attacked the World Trade Center and the Penta-
gon. The president chose Sheikh Hamza to be the Muslim cleric photo-graphed at the White House to show the world that America was not at
war with Islam.
At the very moment that Sheikh Hamza was chatting with the presi-
dent, the FBI was banging on the front door of his house in California andwarning his wife, Umm Yahya, that he, and other well-known Muslims,

12 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
could become targets of retaliatory attacks from Americans wanting to
even the score. The agents were flabbergasted when Umm Yahya told
them that Sheikh Hamza was at the White House.
As he posed for the cameras, Sheikh Hamza was worrying about a dif-
ferent kind of backlash, not from mainstream Americans, but from his
own people. Some people in the Islamic community were angry that he
had accepted this invitation to Washington. It was clear to Muslims thatthe president’s intentions were less than sincere. Why, they wondered,
was Sheikh Hamza helping the White House in a propaganda campaign
designed to show America’s tolerance for Muslims? Hamza knew his crit-ics had a point, especially when he was asked to wear his Islamic cap, the
one he had pointedly left behind in California, to a dinner hosted by First
Lady Laura Bush that evening. The White House staff wanted to makesure the world would see a Muslim in the room when the cameras scanned
the crowd.
Sheikh Hamza had his own reasons for accepting President Bush’s in-
vitation, an offer he surely would have shunned just weeks before. He
knew that because of the events of September 11, life was going to be
different for Muslims in America, and Muslims everywhere. Until thismoment, he had been leading the scholarly life of an imam, speaking where
he was invited and making his religious lessons and commentaries avail-
able on cassettes and videotapes. But that was over now. He had a forty-five-minute chat with the president, which the White House had arranged
to avoid any impression that the retaliation America was planning against
the Islamic world was directed at Muslims in general. Sheikh Hamza pre-
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf. ( Courtesy of
Aaron Haroon Sellers )

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 13
sented George Bush with two books. One was the Koran; the other was
Thunder in the Sky: Secrets of the Acquisition and Use of Power , a collection of
Eastern wisdom. The first book, Hamza reasoned, would teach the presi-
dent about Islam’s goodness. The second would show him that even theworld’s most powerful emperors can show compassion for humanity.
Sheikh Hamza has never revealed the details of their conversation, aside
from saying that he tried to explain to the president that the terroristswere not true Muslims; when they hijacked the planes, they hijacked Is-
lam. But when these few words leaked out, they were enough to transform
his public persona from that of a contemplative scholar who offered pri-vate lessons to his students to a political imam whose every word would be
examined for years to come.
History and circumstance cloaked him in this role, and he wore it well.
He tried to protect the Muslim community from accusations of extrem-
ism. He toned down the sometimes-stinging public rhetoric that he had
previously employed when talking about U.S. foreign policy. He tried tocalm Muslim outrage against the United States by teaching the lessons of
tolerance that are engrained in the Koran. And he toyed with the imagery
used to stereotype Islam. If traditional Islamic tunics and caps were con-sidered the indelible symbols of extremism, when in public, he wore suits
and starched shirts. Hamza Yusuf, white-skinned with light brown hair
and a neat goatee, came to be what the public calls a moderate Muslim.
After observing Sheikh Hamza at many of his public appearances over
a few years and speaking with him briefly, I wanted a chance to sit with
him for some time in a quiet setting. I felt there was no way to gain insightinto his personality from a distance. Hamza Yusuf felt he had been mis-
quoted everywhere—in newspapers, on television, and on the Internet—
sometimes deliberately and other times simply as a result of the Westernmedia’s general ignorance about Islam. Now he was closely guarded, mak-
ing it nearly impossible for an outsider like myself to get near him. I knew
that could happen only by winning the trust of the broader Islamic com-munity. After more than two years spent gaining that confidence, I re-
ceived an invitation to Sheikh Hamza’s house near San Francisco one
morning in December 2005.
I walk nervously toward a stucco house at the end of a cul-de-sac hidden
behind a few trees, still green under a chilly winter sky. The neighbor-hood is suburban, but not the generic kind of suburbia found in many
American towns. The architecture of the houses, part Mediterranean and

14 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
part Spanish, and the trees remind me of neighborhoods outside major
European cities.
As I approach the wooden front door, I wonder if I should put on my
black headscarf. I give the matter much thought. In the Islamic world, itwould be unthinkable to visit a sheikh at his home without the scarf, but in
America there are divergent views. I want to show respect to Sheikh Hamza,
but on the other hand, he knows that I am not a Muslim. I do not wanthim to think I am somehow pretending to be a Muslim as a ploy to get
information.
I knock on the door and a young voice shouts from inside the house,
“She’s here!”
Hamza Yusuf gently opens the door and immediately notices the head-
scarf. “You don’t have to wear that,” he says in a cool, matter-of-fact tone.At that moment he seems like any other hip guy in northern California.
I take off the scarf and follow him into the living room toward two
folding black chairs facing each other, about ten feet apart on the floor.Sitting on the floor is customary in Islamic homes; there is no other furni-
ture in Sheikh Hamza’s living room.
Umm Yahya, his attractive wife whose name was Liliana Trujillo be-
fore she converted, appears out of an adjoining room and greets me, as
does one of their young sons. Then she disappears into the kitchen and
emerges a few minutes later with a delicious fruit salad and freshly bakedcroissants served in cobalt blue dishes.
Hamza Yusuf expresses exhaustion at being the public face of Islam. He
holds up a book just published in the Middle East in Arabic; its title inEnglish is This Is Islam . The cover claims Hamza Yusuf as the author of
the book, but he says he did not write it. The text contains inflammatory
rhetoric and it is written in ungrammatical Arabic that the cultured HamzaYusuf would never use.
“Do you see what I go through?” Sheikh Hamza asks me. “This is the
latest.”
His frustration is not just with having this book falsely attributed to
him or with all the other distorted information printed and circulated about
him on the Internet, but how public life has disrupted his work. “Thecenter of my being is interested in philosophy and theology much more
than politics. My public talks represent a small percent of my ideas,” he
tells me.
Sheikh Hamza is particularly concerned with how he is perceived by
other Muslims. Since September 11, when he began editing explicit criti-

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 15
cism of U.S. foreign policy out of his public speeches, some Muslims ac-
cused him of betrayal.
“I have done my best under the circumstances for the Muslim commu-
nity,” Hamza says. “If they disagreed with me and felt I was being duplici-tous for toning down the rhetoric, I was only speaking from my heart. If
you want to get Muslims riled up, it’s easy. But does that help their cause?
I don’t think so.” Historically, Islam has placed a great deal of importanceon safeguarding the broader community of Muslims. This is considered a
duty for Muslims and particularly for religious leaders. Whatever his crit-
ics might say, Sheikh Hamza is on solid theological ground.
The heart is as important to Sheikh Hamza as the mind. In his book,
Purification of the Heart, he notes that the Prophet Muhammad spoke of
the heart as “a repository of knowledge.” In many ways, Sheikh Hamza
lives by this credo, as did many great Islamic scholars throughout history.
This belief serves Sheikh Hamza well; he is an orator who speaks fluidly
without notes precisely because he speaks from the heart. When he gives
lectures, often thought provoking and passionate, his followers experi-
ence Islam in a new way.
The meeting ends after nearly two hours and I realize that Hamza’s
frustration illustrates a broader problem: in the eyes of most people, Sep-
tember 11 has transformed Islam from a faith into a political system, an
ideology. For imams such as Hamza Yusuf, Muslims and non-Muslims
must understand the difference between the political Islam of the extrem-
ists and the religion practiced by the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world.
Whatever his public and civic responsibilities might be, Sheikh Hamza
is most comfortable teaching young Muslims about the faith. This is his
natural environment, where he feels free to be himself . I wanted to hear
the substance and message of his teachings and see how his followers re-
sponded to him. I had heard that they often ask him intimate questionsabout their lives. So I asked his handlers if I could attend one of the inten-
sive religious sessions that he holds across the country. Soon, I was setting
off for San Jose, California, where hundreds of young Muslims were ex-
pected to gather.
Sheikh Hamza walks into the madrassa, literally a Muslim classroom, from
the men’s section in silence. With a purposeful stride and unflinching gaze,
he heads toward a stage in the back of the room. He steps onto an elevated
platform positioned near a mashrabiya screen, a traditional Arabic wood

16 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
carving often used for decoration. Hours earlier, with help from his fol-
lowers, Sheikh Hamza had created a Middle Eastern ambience in a few
sterile rooms in the Hyatt Hotel. A kilim of orange and red hues covers
the stage and an Oriental carpet hangs from the wall behind him under adim light. Wearing a robe, a maroon cap, and wire-framed glasses, Hamza
loosens his clothing and makes himself comfortable on the platform fac-
ing the students. In keeping with Islamic tradition, which frowns uponlooking directly into the eyes of women, Sheikh Hamza speaks directly to
the young men to his left, glancing only occasionally at the young women
to his right. His inner glow and passion permeate the room.
“Salam aleikum,” he says, in a calm but energetic voice.
His followers return the greeting. “Wa aleikumu salam.” [And peace be
upon you.]
The students shift in their portable chairs, anticipating a long lesson.
Sheikh Hamza peppers his rambling lectures with citations from the Ko-
ran, delivered in his impeccable Arabic. His rapid-fire pace, and the skirt-
ing in and out of two languages, intimidates his followers. Many have never
learned Arabic, a shameful hindrance on their new spiritual journey. Read-
ing the Koran in Arabic, the language of the holy book that the angel
Gabriel revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, is as essential for devout
Muslims as praying five times a day.
Before Sheikh Hamza arrived, the young Muslims were a bit nervous.
Brass oriental pots filled with red roses kept the front door ajar, as young
women in colorful headscarves moved in and out of the makeshift madrassa.
They hugged and kissed one another with great affection. It has been
months since they last saw one another. Discreetly, they eyed each other’s
outfits: pink and purple silk flowing tunics and matching headscarves from
Pakistan; Iraqi-style black abayas ; and the more eclectic American-influenced
Islamic dress that combines headscarves with long skirts hidden under-neath mod leather coats. The color and cut hardly matter as long as the
clothes disguise the curves of their breasts and hips, and cover their legs. As
they sit cross-legged in rows, balancing their computers on their laps, they
hear the young men chattering on the other side of the room. A large
mashrabiya screen separates the men and women.
The surroundings reflect the double life of many Muslim Americans.
The young doctors, lawyers, and teachers gathered at the madrassa often
chide themselves for not devoting enough time to their religion and for
focusing too much energy on their careers. They came to the madrassa to

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 17
experience an Islamic existence they have never lived and to absorb as
much knowledge as they can during a weekend.
Outside the Hyatt, the West beckons with all of its splendor and temp-
tation. It is fitting that the hotel lies in Silicon Valley, home to a differentkind of god. The atmosphere pales in comparison to the madrassas in the
Islamic world, many set in ancient buildings constructed around large court-
yards and fountains near a mosque. Because the United States lacks a his-tory of Islamic education, the madrassas that Hamza Yusuf creates are the
equivalent of mobile homes for Islamic learning. Several times a year, he
organizes religious sessions, importing Eastern and religious decor andturning modern hotels and restaurants in different parts of the country
into temporary madrassas.
Hamza Yusuf struggles to keep up with the demand for his mobile
madrassas. The need to create a well-defined Islamic identity is more ur-
gent now that Muslims live under a microscope in post-September 11
America. Young Muslims eagerly seek help in understanding who theyare in a new world that denounces them and their religion. A few times a
year, Sheikh Hamza teams up with at least two other imams to hold inten-
sive sessions of religious instruction. Young Muslim Americans desiring aclassical Islamic education set off on a pilgrimage, some traveling great
distances to learn how to be a Muslim in the West.
Often, before the start of religious lessons, Sheikh Hamza hosts a ban-
quet for his students. This time is no different. The night before his presen-
tation, Hamza and the other imams gathered the students at a local
Pakistani restaurant to welcome them, and to celebrate the founding ofthe Zaytuna Institute, a religious center and school he created. Decora-
tions transformed the restaurant’s two large dining rooms from American
suburbia to Eastern exoticism: green prayer mats were laid out on therose-colored carpet, and chiffon cascading from the light fixtures recalled
colorful Middle Eastern weddings.
After hours of speeches, the students indulged in a feast of chickpea
soup, stewed lamb, Indian naan bread, and chicken curry, all served on
silver trays placed on shiny, golden tablecloths. They returned for second
and third helpings. No one seemed to recall the warnings about overeat-ing that Sheikh Hamza often recited from a hadith, a sacred saying of the
Prophet Muhammad, which is not part of the Koran but believed to be
inspired by God. “In a true hadith , the Prophet Muhammad said: ‘The
worst vessel that the son of Adam can fill is his stomach.’ And he also said,
‘It is enough for the son of Adam to have just morsels that keep his back

18 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
upright with. But if you have to eat more than that, then one third for
food, one third for water and one third for air.’”
The next morning, the sleep-deprived young Muslims don’t let their
exhaustion dampen their enthusiasm. There will be at least three sheikhsor imams, depending upon how they choose to call themselves, giving
complex lectures during the next three days: Sheikh Hamza; Sheikh
Muhammad Yacoubi, an imam who lives in Damascus, Syria; and ImamZaid Shakir, an African American convert to Islam. The students ready
their notepads and laptops to begin their meticulous note taking.
Sheikh Hamza begins the lecture. “In the name of God, the Passionate,
the Merciful.”
He addresses the students as if he is at a pep rally.
“Everywhere I go, I see Muslims. Go to the gas station and the airport.
Muslims are present in the United States and that was not true twenty
years ago. There are more Muslims living outside dar al-Islam [Islamic
countries] than ever. So we have to be strategic in our thinking becausepeople who are our enemies are strategic in their thinking.”
After a short time, he knows his followers are eager to ask questions.
They need practical answers to all the dilemmas they face trying to prac-tice their faith in a secular society. “How can you go about your day when
you pray five times a day?” asked one young man.
“The ulama [religious scholars] differ on the most important prayers.
The ideal place to pray is the mosque,” Sheikh Hamza tells them. “There
is a sound hadith , ‘Whoever prays in the morning is a protected person.’
So this is an important time.” He cautions the students, however, againstbelieving that all prayers must be said in a mosque. While it is preferable
in the mosque, especially on Fridays, prayers can be said at work, school,
or at home, he says.
He then turns to one of his favorite topics, extremism in Islam. Since
September 11, Sheikh Hamza has become convinced that Islam’s world-
wide credibility depends upon the Muslim leadership’s condemnation ofreligious violence. When he opens a newspaper or turns on the television,
all he hears is that Islam is a violent religion. The more the non-Muslim
world can be taught that the nineteen hijackers do not represent Islam,the less Muslims will suffer. And the more Muslims are taught that such
violence violates Islamic teaching, the greater chance that further vio-
lence will be prevented. “If you cut off people’s heads,” he tells his stu-dents, referring to Islamic extremists beheading their perceived enemies,
“How do you expect Allah to show mercy on you?”

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 19
With these words, Sheikh Hamza exonerates his young followers and
himself. Still, Muslim Americans feel the hijackers’ influence. Everywhere
they turn—at work, in their apartment buildings, and at local supermarkets—
they are called upon to defend Islam, under assault as a perceived religionof hate. How can they explain that the hijackers’ Islam is incompatible
with the way they practice their Islam? For women wearing a headscarf, a
hijab, it is worse. There are sneers and rebukes and false assumptions. Nearly
every woman at the madrassa has a story to tell of the outrageous things
Americans have said to her. “Muslim women wear headscarves only be-
cause of pressure from their husbands, their fathers, or brothers.” “Theycover their hair so they don’t have to bother shampooing.” “They cover
because they are too unattractive not to.”
The fear and intimidation Muslim women experience lead Sheikh
Hamza to issue advice on wearing a headscarf. The day a Muslim woman
decides to wear a veil is a significant rite of passage. In the West, it is a
more difficult decision than in an Islamic country, where headscarves arethe norm. As Muslims in the West face increasing hostility within the
societies they live, imams and Islamic jurists have reached different opin-
ions about whether veiling is wise.
After September 11, Muslim women looked for theological guidance
to determine whether they must endure the harassment that comes with
wearing a headscarf, or if there are exceptions. Islamic law allows a womanto protect herself if she feels she is in danger. Using as his guide a fatwa
that was issued by one of his mentors, Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah, Sheikh
Hamza advises women who feel threatened not to leave their homes. Ifthey must go out, they should wear hats or not cover at all. This exception
is allowed, Sheikh Hamza tells his followers, because, “Islam is an intelli-
gent religion.”
This flexibility is key to the new movement among young Muslim
Americans, and it distinguishes them from their parents’ generation. Young
Muslim Americans don’t want to practice their faith blindly; they wantrational explanations for why behavior is acceptable or not. Almost alone
among prominent sheikhs in America, Hamza Yusuf meets this need. He
relies heavily on his classical education to ground his rulings and adviceabout contemporary issues in Islam’s great intellectual tradition, often
consulting the four established schools of Islamic jurisprudence called
madhabs . He is determined to counter the new tendency among many
Muslims to interpret the Koran for themselves in the absence of a legiti-
mate imam. Unlike Catholicism, with its well-structured hierarchy of

20 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
priests, bishops, cardinals, and pope, Islam places responsibility on the
individual Muslim to decide which religious scholars to follow. This has
become confusing in the modern age, as Islam has spread throughout the
world. Are the extremists who distort the meaning of the sacred texts com-petent to give sound religious guidance? And what about the self-appointed
sheikhs with no theological education?
“The Muslims of today are perhaps the most disunited and confused
generation of Muslims in Islam’s history,” Hamza Yusuf asserted in 2001.
Identifying and following the teachings of learned Islamic scholars is one
way out of the confusion, he wrote.
A Rising Star
Determining who is qualified to interpret the Koran and the hadiths has
been an important issue for Muslims throughout the ages. Scholars study
for years, cloistering themselves inside seminaries and poring over an-cient Islamic legal texts so they can give sound advice. They take their
duties seriously. Interpreting the Koran is not an easy undertaking. Some
verses clearly explain what is forbidden. But most of the holy book’s mean-ing depends upon the interpretations of clerics who try to understand God’s
will, not by reading the written page, but by studying the work of all the
theologians before them who analyzed the Koran and hadiths . Many verses
must be considered in the context of other verses appearing throughout
the book before an educated judgment can be made about their meaning.
And some contemporary scholars seek to place Koranic teachings in theirhistorical context before applying them to today’s world. From studies in
the Koran, many scholars move on to learning Islamic jurisprudence and
the other Islamic sciences.
In the United States, there are only a few seminaries where a budding
imam can receive a classical Islamic education. If an American-born Mus-
lim aspires to become an imam, he must first learn Arabic in order to readthe Koran and the original Islamic sources. The majority of the estimated
two hundred imams in America come from Islamic countries in the Middle
East and Africa and were educated at respected Arab institutions such as alAzhar, the ancient university and mosque complex in Cairo. Since its cre-
ation in
A.D. 970, al Azhar, which in Arabic means “most shining one,” has
been a beacon of light for students aspiring to become qualified scholars.There is nothing resembling al Azhar in the United States, and imams
such as Hamza Yusuf have urged Muslim leaders to build seminaries in

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 21
this country to train imams who will be able to offer real-world guidance
to Muslim Americans.
Many imams in the Islamic world question whether those few imams
trained in America are qualified to give sound religious advice. They mighthonor some of the five pillars of Islam, fundamental practices required of
every Muslim, such as going to the mosque on Fridays or paying zakat ,
the portion of a Muslim’s income that is set aside for charity, but theirknowledge is superficial. Only complete submersion and submission to
God can make a Muslim a good imam, they argue.
The American imams question whether a sheikh from Egypt can counsel
young Muslim Americans on how to deal with the social pressures in America
in ways that do not violate Islamic tradition. For example, in the Islamic
world, couples marry young, without much interaction before their union.But in America, Muslims marry later in life and want to get to know one
another before making a commitment. What can they do when physical
contact and even dating before marriage are against Islamic beliefs?
For nearly a decade, and particularly after September 11, Sheikh Hamza
and other American-born scholars at the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward,
California, near San Francisco have been working to come up with an-swers to this type of question. After all, young Muslims are part of America’s
ummah , the collective Muslim community, and caring for believers is en-
shrined in the five pillars of Islam.
From a stucco house surrounded by tall palm and olive trees, the Zaytuna
scholars craft a way of life for their followers. Their reach extends far
beyond California. Not only do they travel across the country to teachtheir followers, but scholars in other cities spread their ideas. In Chicago,
for example, Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, one of Sheikh Hamza’s men-
tors, heads the Nawawi Foundation. This institute, much like Zaytuna,teaches young Muslim Americans how to interpret the holy texts.
To apply Islamic doctrine to modern life, these scholars rely upon the
Koran and the Sunnah. In this way, they could be called the new tradi-tionalists. Their scholarship is based on the interpretations of respected
scholars who lived in the early Islamic period, shortly after the time of the
Prophet Muhammad’s death in
A.D. 642. They interpret the texts by en-
gaging in ijtihad, or independent reasoning . Ijtihad allows the imams to
reinterpret the faith for modern times while adhering to Islam’s funda-
mental principles. The sheikhs carefully distinguish among the vast col-lected sayings of the Prophet, the hadiths that were handed down over the
ages. The hadiths influenced the scholars who wrote the Islamic laws that

22 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
dictate what is forbidden and permitted for Muslims. It is known that some
of the hadiths were transmitted by reliable scholars, while others are con-
sidered “weak”; they were either handed down by unreliable interpreters
or there were too many interpreters.
Young Muslim Americans can no longer rely upon imams stuck in the
mentality of the Old Country, whom second-generation Muslims fondly
call “the uncles.” Every Friday, the uncles recite from verses in the Koranin the mosques. Few of their followers ever feel that the verses add mean-
ing to their lives in the twenty-first century. And when they are not put-
ting worshippers to sleep with verse, these imams are telling them thatmuch of American culture is haram, forbidden in Islam. As Muslim com-
munities expand in London, Hamburg, Paris, and San Francisco, the same
questions arise: How do Muslims remain loyal to their beliefs amid thecultural practices in the West, where a Hyatt hotel is the setting for a
madrassa? And who will be their spiritual guides?
There is a generation gap in America between the imams and many
believers. The younger Muslims reject the Islam their parents practiced
and the imams their parents admired, some of whom do not speak a word
of English. Their parents practiced a faith heavy with ritual, tradition, andfolklore, and lacked the time or interest to establish institutions, such as
Islamic schools, that would provide opportunities to acquire a formal reli-
gious education. But their children are seeking not only faith but religiousknowledge. While their parents never challenged an imam, who might
tell them, for example, that setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July is
forbidden in Islam, their children ask for religious proof in the Koran orthe hadiths . While their parents were content to follow an Islam dictated
by ethnic tradition rather than religious doctrine, the children make a
clear distinction between the two.
The younger generation, unlike their parents, is interested in the sym-
bols of belonging to an Islamic community, the hijab being perhaps the
most powerful expression of this identity. The beard, generally worn longand untrimmed, is also considered an important expression of Islamic iden-
tity for Muslim American men, but is adopted with more reluctance than
headscarves for women. There is more risk in growing a beard, becausenon-Muslims often interpret it as a sign of radicalism, not piety.
In the past, with the absence of religious authority in the United States,
the older generation often looked to sheikhs in Egypt or Saudi Arabia forreligious guidance. But Muslims who are now part of the new spiritual
movement instead rely on imams who understand their life in America.

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 23
The imams’ task should not be underestimated. Once the sheikhs in-
terpret from the Islamic texts the teachings God revealed through the
Prophet Muhammad, they must then apply these teachings to modern
Muslim life in the West. For instance, Muslims often ask if taking citizen-ship in America, a non-Muslim state, is forbidden. After conferring with
scholars whom they believe are learned and reliable, the Zaytuna sheikhs
give their answer. Their advice is based on a hadith in which a man comes
to the Prophet Muhammad and says that the people told him he must
make the hijra, migration, to a land of Muslims, or he will be destroyed.
The Prophet instructs the man to avoid evil and live wherever he findsgood. From this hadith the Zaytuna sheikhs determined that Muslims are
permitted to live in a non-Muslim land, as long as they can practice their
religion freely.
From the start of his religious career in the United States, Sheikh Hamza
portrayed himself as an antidote to the “uncles,” an imam of the future. In
just a few years, beginning in the late 1990s, he amassed a wide following,which is still growing. His influence extends across the United States to
Great Britain, Canada, and Europe, where young Muslims all want guid-
ance about living in the West. His taped lectures and books are also com-monplace in the Arab world. But just as his followers at home searched for
their place as Muslims in an increasingly hostile America, so has Sheikh
Hamza embarked on his own journey to determine the future he wouldchart for himself.
The sheikh quickly transformed after September 11 from a figure satis-
fied to defer to older and wiser imams to an international star. When heappears in public, especially in large conference halls and hotel lobbies, he
walks with an aura of importance. Sometimes, two bodyguards appear at his
side to shield him from the crowds. In California, where he often lectures inthe San Francisco Bay area, and in many other parts of the world, however,
he is more at ease. There, he is open to anyone who might approach him.
Hamza Yusuf can’t be placed in any one category. He is neither an
imam out of touch with the material world, nor a hypocrite dressed in
religious garb. He often tells his followers that he suffers from viewing
Islam through the filters he acquired at birth, as a boy born into a liberal,academic family. Born Mark Hanson in Walla Walla, Washington, to
Catholic and Greek Orthodox parents, he converted to Islam at eighteen
after a near-fatal car accident. The details are murky; Sheikh Hamza oftenshies away from discussing this part of his life, perhaps in keeping with
Muslim tradition that shuns anything that might smack of self-promotion

24 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
or public introspection. But his spiritual journey to Islam surely began the
day of his accident. He set off to study Islamic jurisprudence and philoso-
phy with independent scholars in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia,
Morocco, Algeria, and West Africa. His approach to Islamic education—he studied the formal Islamic sciences, including official Sufism—has made
him vulnerable now to being labeled a Sufi. Sufism is a strand of Islam that
is often associated negatively with mysticism even though it is in fact partof the broader Islamic tradition.
Some of the greatest Islamic masters were classical Sufis, including the
revered Iranian poet Rumi; the Muslim philosopher Averroes, who trans-
formed thought in the Middle Ages far beyond his home in Moorish Spain;
and Muhammad al-Ghazali, a renowned Muslim theologian and philoso-
pher who lived in the twelfth century. But, in contemporary times, the
meaning of Sufism has often been distorted. It is generally associated strictlywith mysticism. In the West, Sufism is perceived as gentle, touchy-feely
Islam practiced by “good” as opposed to “bad” Muslims. Many Sufi mys-
tics have described God’s love as akin to the overpowering love Dante
writes about in the Divine Comedy , “the love that moves the sun and stars.”
But in the East, some of the Sufis’ most strident critics can be found amongthe Salafists, a movement that claims to practice Islam in the same way the
first three generations of Muslims did, through literal interpretations of
the Koran and Sunnah. They argue that Sufis dilute Islamic law and doc-
trine. Scholars have often criticized Sufis for their mesmerizing prayer
services that renounce the material world and reduce Islam to a personalexperience between the believer and God.
In traditional Islamic society, Sufis helped spread the faith. As the re-
nowned philosopher and Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes, “In
Islam itself, Sufism has been over the centuries the hidden heart that has
renewed the religion intellectually, spiritually, and ethically and has played
the greatest role in its spread and its relation with other religions.”
Sheikh Hamza’s critics argue that his emphasis on the intellect as well
as the heart could lead young Muslims astray, a common criticism of the
Sufi tradition. If they become obsessed with their relationship with God
and ignore all other aspects of Islam, how will they develop a holistic Is-
lamic education and find harmony with the Western societies that are
now their homes?
As his popularity grew, Sheikh Hamza started to distance himself in
public from any association with Sufism, even though he continued to

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 25
uphold the tradition. During a speech on May 4, 1997, at Stanford Uni-
versity, he defended Sufism, saying misguided followers are giving Islam a
bad name by associating esoteric doctrines with Sufism.
Sheikh Hamza has also become a target for his public criticism of some
aspects of the contemporary Islamic community. In an interview with the
Manchester Guardian held in London a few days after the September 11
attacks, he issued a warning to British Muslims: “I would say to them thatif they [extremists] are going to rant and rave about the West, they should
emigrate to a Muslim country.”
His critics seized upon these words, giving him the title the Great White
Sheikh. Even though he was referring to extremists, his critics claimed he
was suggesting that all Muslims who criticize the West should leave forthe Islamic world. One critic claimed Sheikh Hamza appeared to be de-
fending “pick-up driving, flag-waving, good ole boys yelling, ‘America:
love it or leave it,’” said the popular Web site IslamOnline. To such crit-
ics, here was Sheikh Hamza, a white convert to Islam, denouncing the
dark-skinned Muslims of Arab and Pakistani descent who helped catapult
him to fame.
As his public speeches became more tempered, his critics threw him in
the same lot with other imams and activists who emerged onto the public
scene after September 11 to proclaim a simplistic message: Islam is a peace-
ful religion, but it has gotten bogged down with extremists. And MuslimAmericans, unlike their unseemly counterparts in the Middle East who
loathe the United States, should be grateful to live in a country where
they can practice their religion freely.
Some of these imams hosted interfaith gatherings at their mosques and
invited local rabbis and Christian clergy to open houses to see the real
Islam, a religion of tolerance. But Hamza Yusuf began to move in another
direction, strengthening his Islamic credentials. He clarified his earlieropinion given shortly after September 11 excusing women from wearing
headscarves and suggesting that they wear a hat or nothing at all to cover
their heads if they were being harassed. Few sheikhs anywhere in the Is-
lamic world agreed with Yusuf that devout women should not wear
headscarves, but Sheikh Hamza had issued the advice because of the tense
times after September 11. Sheikh Hamza also retreated from his blanket
condemnation of militant Muslims and began to place Islamic violence in
context, noting some of the causes for militancy. “The modern Muslim
has learned well the lessons of his counterpart,” he wrote in the journal

26 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
published by the Zaytuna Institute. “American military action rarely dis-
tinguishes between combatants and civilians. The Pentagon callously re-
fers to them as ‘secondary effects’ or ‘collateral damage.’”
As noon shadows fall on the Hyatt courtyard, the students leave the study
session. The winter sun has wrung the moisture from the air and the morn-
ing mist has evaporated. Walking in bare feet a few steps to two adjoiningrooms—one for women and another for men—where coffee, tea, and
Danish pastries are set out on a white tablecloth, the students find that the
adrenaline rush inspired by Sheikh Hamza’s lecture is fading into early
afternoon lethargy. There are no chairs in the rooms; the women sit cross-
legged and mingle on the red carpets. Expressions of anguish and regret
fill the room. Sheikh Hamza’s lecture has overwhelmed them. How can
they carry out his wishes to create positive images of Islam in the worldwhen there were so many negative opinions about their faith?
“We don’t want to practice watered-down Islam,” a middle-aged Afri-
can American woman blurts out, shattering the coffee klatsch chatter. “But
this is what many people want us to do. They think Muslims shouldn’t be
seen or heard.”
I ask her why she came to the madrassa. She is much older than many of
the students, and had once been a member of the Nation of Islam, the
black separatist movement considered heretical by mainstream Sunni
Muslims. I realize she must be pretty determined to reach a new under-
standing of Islam.
“I came here because there is no Power Point presentation,” she jokes.
“But seriously, Zaytuna presents Islam in its traditional clothing. They
are not trying to modernize Islam, but teach us what is permitted consid-
ering that we live in the modern world.”
Rejecting the Temptations of the West
Muhammad Yacoubi’s long straggly beard, compared with Sheikh Hamza’scarefully manicured goatee, is a small detail that speaks volumes about
their differences. Sheikh Muhammad, as the students fondly call him, hadarrived in San Jose the day before the session started from his home in
Damascus. He is not part of the Zaytuna Institute, but is often invited by
Sheikh Hamza to give lectures. For reasons unknown to him and other
Muslims, he was one of the few foreign imams the U.S. government al-

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 27
lowed into the country after September 11. His floor-length gallabiyya ,or
tunic, and white skullcap, along with his Syrian passport, would surely
raise suspicions at any airport. At times, he thought his pale white skin,
green eyes, and ginger-colored hair confused the zealous security officers,on the lookout for dark Middle Eastern men.
Sheikh Muhammad has just taken a nap to prepare for the long day
ahead. He has cultivated such a following in the United States that hestays up for days without sleep to privately counsel his followers during
his brief visits. When I met him a year earlier, he had not slept for two or
three days, a testament to his immense self-discipline. When he is called
upon, his advice ranges from cautioning young men to treat their wives
with respect to instructing women to maintain conservative Islamic tradi-tion by staying away from the mosque while they are menstruating.
As soon as he mounts the podium and squats on the floor, and even
before he begins his lesson, he announces the news: “Sister Miriam in our
community has just put on the hijab . Praise be to God.”
“Taqbir,” the crowd replies, using the Arabic word for extolling God’s
greatness.
Sheikh Muhammad has always touted his traditionalism. He was born
in Damascus to a family whose lineage can be traced to the Prophet
Muhammad and to Mawlay Idris al-Anwar, who built the imperial Mo-
roccan city of Fez. The sheikh often tells stories of his own life to inspirehis followers. Under the strict guidance of his father who was also his
teacher, Ibrahim al-Yacoubi, one of the greatest religious scholars in Syr-
ian history, Sheikh Muhammad began studying classical Islamic texts at
age four. By the time he was seven years old, he was teaching the Koran at
the Darwishiyya mosque in Damascus. At fourteen, he gave his first ser-
mon in a mosque. And when he turned twenty, the religious sermons he
gave on Fridays in the mosques were broadcast live on Syrian radio.
During the lesson in San Jose, Sheikh Muhammad ruminates about his
childhood devoted to serious study, and makes it clear that he expects the
same from his students. He reprimands them for devoting too little time
to Islamic education. Over twenty years, Sheikh Muhammad tells them he
has studied five hundred books, many of them complex theological texts.
Sheikh Muhammad makes no apologies for his approach, which is more
conservative than Sheikh Hamza’s. He doesn’t have to; there is a natural
affinity between him and the students. He is known for prescribing that
Muslims should reject the temptations of the West. Often he tells stories

28 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
about the life of the Prophet Muhammad to compare the perfection of the
past with the imperfection of the present.
Sin in the modern world riles Sheikh Muhammad. “The first success is
the success of the family,” he says to the young Muslims at the madrassa.“There is no greater reward than raising a Muslim child.” And he cautions
the young professionals, “There is no reason to delay in getting married
because there is so much temptation in the world. All you need to do toget married is change your bed from a single to a double.”
He tells the crowd that in Western society there is fitna, an Arabic term
meaning chaos borne from an imbalance in the social order. Some Mus-lim scholars believe sexual desire causes this chaos, and this drive can be
curtailed only through marriage. “Buying a house and getting married is a
Sunnah,” Sheikh Muhammad advises, referring to the text that is one ofthe sources of Islamic jurisprudence. “Some people come to the United
States and they can’t resist watching pornography, so it is important to get
married young.”
“If you go to bed at 11 p.m.—and this should be the maximum—you
should get up at 4. If you are sleeping seven to eight hours straight there is
something wrong with your mind and body.”
Once he has covered their personal lives, he moves on to their careers
and dietary habits. “It is dangerous to study in Western universities. They
teach what some Western scholars wrote doubting the virtues of Islam.And when you seek knowledge, don’t eat a lot. If you eat a lot, you sleep a
lot and you miss a lot.”
The students chuckle. Sheikh Muhammad’s charm lies in his ability to
mix strict religious teaching with a bit of comic relief. Even though he is
not much older than Sheikh Hamza, to the students he is more of a father
figure. Sheikh Hamza appears Americanized, despite his perfect Arabicand knowledge of the Koran. But Sheikh Muhammad has a Middle East-
ern mystique; he rarely tells the students what they expect or want to hear,
and this has made him a revered authority. As far as he is concerned, Mus-lim youth living in the West waste too much time. Not only do they de-
vote scant time to religious learning, but they watch too much television
and indulge in materialism.
“Americans spend thirteen years of their lifetime watching TV. If you
speak on the phone one hour per day, which is probably the least, with cell
phones everywhere, and each hour of activity requires one hour of rest, soif you live sixty years, you will spend five years of your lifetime on the
phone.”

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 29
“Allah has given you everything you want. Why are you not turning to
the deen [religion]? All you have to do is just study a little more and just try
a little bit harder.”
Nearly every phrase Sheikh Muhammad utters poses a challenge. The
main reason Muslims should live in America, or the West in general, is to
convey the message of Islam, not to adopt a Western lifestyle. Most cus-
toms and habits of American society should be rejected, for they under-mine Islamic principles. In other lectures, Sheikh Muhammad has
contrasted the Muslims’ desire to spread the word of Islam with the U.S.
government’s determination to impose its idea of democracy around theworld. The Muslims’ effort is based on the divine, he said. But the U.S.
government’s will is motivated by greed and the drive for power. His ideas
resonate with many of his followers. As Americans, they were angered bythe U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the United States’ new
agenda to impose its values on some countries in the Islamic world.
A shared rejection of America’s foreign policy in the Islamic world is
the foundation of the bond that forms among the students at the madrassa.
They have traveled to San Jose not only to seek knowledge but to gain
strength in their resolve to live as Muslims in America, not as Americanswho happen to be Muslim. Some who were raised in religious families
rejected Islam as adolescents, but then returned to the fold when they
entered universities and began friendships with devout Muslim students.Once they were ready to embrace their faith, they needed a different ap-
proach from that of their parents. Their Islam would be free of national
and ethnic identification. They wouldn’t consider themselves PalestinianMuslims or Pakistani Muslims, but simply Muslims. These sentiments are
so common that the Zaytuna sheikhs call these young Muslims the
rejectionist generation.
This was why Rehan Seyam has come to the madrassa. With her large
dark eyes and arched eyebrows, her milky-white face, and slim five-foot
nine-inch frame, Rehan stands out in the crowd. Before she became apracticing Muslim, Rehan thought she led a depraved life. Her Egyptian
parents from Cairo wanted their daughter to lead a strictly religious life,
even though there were temptations all around. Her family lived in Islip,Long Island, and Rehan’s public school friends indulged in drinking, drugs,
and premarital sex. At different times as a teenager, she drifted further
from Islam than her parents would have liked.
But her desire to become a devout Muslim lingered, as she watched her
mother become more observant. Her mother started wearing a hijab when

30 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
she was thirty-four, a bold decision at a time when few Muslim women in
America were wearing headscarves. It was the late 1980s, and she was im-
pressed by her close relatives in Egypt who were joining the Islamic re-
vival. One sign of Egypt’s increasing religiosity was all the women whobegan wearing the hijab for the first time.
Rehan was six years old, and her mother’s hijab made a big impression.
The day her mother first put on the headscarf, she took Rehan and hercousins to a water park on Long Island. “I will remember this day forever
because I thought, wow my mother can wear a hijab and still have fun,
even though her hijab is getting all wet.”
The image stayed with Rehan, but it was not strong enough to per-
suade her to start wearing the hijab when she reached adolescence, as many
Muslims girls do. She watched her mother read from the Koran, but the
shopping mall, the teenage parties, and fashionable clothing were also call-
ing her. The more her parents banned parties and the prom, the more
Rehan rejected Islam.
By the time Rehan entered Stony Brook University on Long Island, a
forty-five-minute drive from her house, she was torn between her deep
devotion to Islam and her desire to acquire some of the freedom her par-
ents denied her in high school. She protested her parents’ decision forcing
her to live at home, rather than in a campus dormitory, but it did little to
change their minds. Still, underneath all her defeat and frustration, shewas changing.
“I still had love for Islam in my heart,” Rehan recalls, sitting in the
lobby of the Hyatt hotel during a break in the study sessions. “My closest
friends were four Muslim girls that weren’t necessarily practicing. I wasn’t
too comfortable with them because of the guilt I felt from straying from
my religion.”
Rehan’s older sister decided to start wearing the hijab shortly after Sep-
tember 11, as an expression of Muslim solidarity in the face of the wide-
spread criticism of Islam in the United States. Suddenly, Rehan realized
that she was a minority in America, a feeling she had not experienced
before. Her sister tried to draw Rehan into her new world. “She told me,
‘Your clothes are too tight.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’”
But the message did have an effect, and Rehan became more conflicted.
She began attending mosque prayers on Fridays and lectures at the nearby
Islamic center at night. In February 2003, when a close college friend put
on a headscarf, Rehan decided she should do the same. After two years of

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 31
feeling the spotlight was on her as a Muslim in America, Rehan wanted to
defend her religion.
“After I covered, I changed. I didn’t want to hang out with the night
people anymore. I felt I wanted to give people a good impression of Islam.I wanted people to know how happy I am to be a Muslim.”
Doing her part to change the image of Islam was harder than Rehan
had imagined. Once she covered her hair, she laid herself bare to publicopinion. “One day, I went to a supermarket and I was buying a tomato.
The man next to me in the vegetable section said, ‘You’d be so much more
beautiful without that thing on your head. It’s demeaning to women.”
The supermarket incident, and many similar ones, made Rehan feel
she needed to learn more about her faith. She decided to go wherever she
could to become more educated. One of her first stops was a Muslim lead-ership conference in Princeton, New Jersey. Rehan felt proud to be part
of the new religious revival, and she confidently sat in the front row of the
women’s section. She didn’t know it at the time, but an Egyptian optom-etrist was eyeing her from across the room. Staring at a member of the
opposite sex is considered taboo among practicing Muslims. Instead of
flirting with her, the young man, Ramy, pursued her the Islamic way. Heasked his sister to contact Rehan’s sister to find out Rehan’s e-mail ad-
dress. For three weeks, they exchanged messages.
“I knew from the first e-mail that I would marry him. I had been so
turned off by the men outside the Muslim community. They were so ag-
gressive and bold. But the e-mails Ramy wrote were so modest and humble.
His first comment was that he liked the way I interacted with my friends atthe convention. He didn’t mention anything about my looks until much
later, and that really impressed me.”
After three weeks, Ramy visited Rehan’s family’s house in East Islip.
Rehan quivered with nervousness. After building such huge expectations,
there was always the chance she wouldn’t be attracted to Ramy, once they
met face-to-face.
But when she saw Ramy, tall, dark-skinned, and muscular, she had to
fight her feelings. “We were so attracted to each other, but we decided
not to touch until our wedding day.”
At a ceremony, called the katbil kitab , literally the writing of the book, a
couple makes a promise to one another before a sheikh and their families.
The katbil kitab is the actual marriage contract and is normal practice in
the Islamic world. In America, however, it is becoming popular for an-
other reason: couples are signing the contract but waiting to consummate

32 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
the marriage in order to date and get to know one another before a sec-
ond, final ceremony. In the Islamic world, the two ceremonies often occur
on the same day, but in America the two ceremonies can happen as far as
a year or two apart. If problems arise after the katbil kitab , the couple can
break off the marriage. Though this is considered a divorce, the woman
has a better chance of finding another husband if she is still a virgin.
Rehan wore a flowing champagne-colored gown to the ceremony held
at a mosque in a Long Island suburb. In keeping with tradition, the sheikh
had a private meeting with Rehan’s father and Ramy to explain the reli-
gious and social commitments of marriage. As something of a test, he askedRamy to explain the duties of a husband to his wife. The sheikh then de-
scribed his idea of marriage, as Ramy and Rehan stood facing one another.
Young Muslim couples are convincing their parents, who never had a
katbil kitab, to allow it in order to prevent them from sinning. These couples
are reaching back into history and resurrecting an old tradition, created
when the Prophet Muhammad married his third wife, Aisha. She was con-siderably younger than the Prophet, and the katbil kitbab seemed a more
proper way to ease into marriage. For young Muslims in America, torn
between human urges and the Islamic tradition, this old approach is slightlynew again.
“If a woman wearing a hijab is out alone with a man and she hasn’t had
the katbil kitab , it looks bad. But as long as the couple has made a promise
in the mosque, it is okay,” Rehan explained.
Rehan wouldn’t allow her newfound religiosity to slip. She wanted the
Zaytuna sheikhs to teach her how to cope with her new existence as apracticing Muslim. She and Ramy had looked forward to attending the
madrassa in San Jose for months. They had listened to Sheikh Hamza’s
dozens of taped lessons, sold across the world, as they commuted betweenRamy’s home in New Jersey and Rehan’s on Long Island. Like many other
students at the madrassa, Rehan’s religious identity was suddenly the most
important aspect of her life. What does Islam or the ulama, the religious
scholars, say about whether a woman should make dinner every night for
her husband? What does Islam say about the time a woman should devote
to her husband if she has a career?
Sheikh Muhammad Yacoubi wants nothing more than to prescribe a
set of rules for Muslims like Rehan, torn between their devotion to Islam
and their need to integrate to some degree into American society. Thefirst step is to change the false perception some Muslims have about an
ancient idea that divides the world into two spheres— dar al-Islam , the

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 33
house of Islam or the house of peace, and dar al-harb , the non-Muslim
world, literally in Arabic, the house of war. Islamic scholars are in great
disagreement over what constitutes this house of war. Some say it is when
the ruling government is not Islamic. Others say, if Muslims are safe andprotected in a country then it is not part of the house of war. In recent
years, extremists have tried to recruit young Muslims living in the West
by convincing them that the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain,and the Netherlands are part of the house of war and are therefore legiti-
mate targets of attack.
The Zaytuna sheikhs oppose this extreme view and offer their follow-
ers another path. There is a third, forgotten universe, they advise, called
dar al-ahd, the house of treaty. Abu Abd Allah ash-Shafi, a scholar whose
book Risalah , published in 817, earned him the title “father of Muslim
jurisprudence,” developed this idea. The house of treaty is a place where
an agreement allows Muslims to practice their faith without making com-
promises that violate Islamic tradition. In return, Muslims do their best toabide by the laws of their adopted land. The sheikhs refer to a saying of
the Prophet Muhammad: “Do not enter the house of Christians nor eat
any of their fruits except with their permission.”
During his lecture at the makeshift madrassa, Sheikh Yacoubi’s guide
to living in America is strict and specific. Be a serious student; keep away
from other activities. Don’t socialize too much. “If you want to be pro-moted at work, don’t attend parties,” he lectures. “Don’t use credit cards
excessively to the point of humiliating yourself. People in America want
to have everything. There is greed in every home and soul. Don’t fall intothis trap.”
The point of this exacting talk is to caution young Muslims about
America’s cultural and social norms. A practicing Muslim must be fullyengaged with the religion, Sheikh Yacoubi insists, not just on a weekend
retreat or on Fridays at the mosque. That kind of part-time religiosity
should be left to other faiths.
In Sheikh Muhammad and Hamza Yusuf, the students at the madrassa
seemed to find a way to fill in the missing pieces of their spiritual journey.They had an authoritative imam, descending on his flock from a remote
corner in the Middle East, and a modern imam, who, like them, had
struggled as a typical American to discover the faith. Imam Zaid Shakirrepresented the third face of Islam in America, one most of the young
Muslims at the madrassa had not encountered before. Imam Zaid was not

34 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
blessed with Hamza Yusuf ’s family wealth. Nor does he enjoy Sheikh
Muhammad’s family pedigree. Like many black Americans seeking the so-
cial mobility often denied them, Imam Zaid turned first to the military and
then to higher education. He joined the United States Air Force in 1976,and later became a student at American University in Washington, D.C.
Imam Zaid pulled himself out of the ghetto, but his past influenced his
future. When he looked for religious guidance, he discovered Malcolm X,an influential member of the Nation of Islam. Like Malcolm X, Imam
Zaid believed Islam was the solution to ending racism against blacks in
America. But unlike Malcolm X, and perhaps other African American lead-ers who converted to Islam, Imam Zaid moved beyond viewing Islam
through the prism of black oppression. He didn’t share the resentment
felt by some African American Muslims who believe that immigrant Mus-lims from the Islamic world have stolen the identity “Muslim American”
from them, the first Muslims in America. Sheikh Hamza described him
once as an imam who has transcended his blackness to a colorless Islam.
A tall, soft-spoken man, an artist and a published poet, he adds a differ-
ent dimension to the new movement among young Muslim Americans.
While Hamza Yusuf plays the role of the intellectual, Imam Zaid is anactivist. While Shiekh Hamza speaks without notes, Imam Zaid is a mea-
sured and less passionate speaker. As I followed his appearances across the
Imam Zaid Shakir. ( Courtesy of
Aaron Haroon Sellers )

IMAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION 35
country, I noticed that he has a more entertaining speaking style with
younger audiences and a more sober one with older groups. Over time, I
asked his followers how they distinguish him from Sheikh Hamza. The
answers I received were positive, yet extremely different, reflecting thedifferent aspects of his personality. One university student said:
“Imam Zaid touches your heart too, but in a different way. You won’t
necessarily cry when he is speaking, like you probably will when SheikhHamza speaks, but just the overall vibe he emits, this feeling of serenity,
peace, wisdom, that Islam is simple, not hard like we want to make it. It
really touches your heart. I just love him and I never like talking about oursheikhs because I never do justice to their greatness.”
As I followed him around the country, I noticed that only when he talks
about U.S. foreign policy does he get a bit edgy. At times he said thegovernment “doesn’t care about babies dying in Palestine,” and the gov-
ernment “cares about one thing, holding on to power, even it means rap-
ing the entire world.” After September 11, Imam Zaid gave frequent publiclectures about how the attacks hurt ordinary Muslims. The attacks called
into question whether Islam has humanitarian qualities, he preached. Some
Americans used September 11 to reaffirm the existing perception that someIslamic states and Muslim groups care very little for human rights, par-
ticularly those of women and minorities living in their midst.
But he didn’t place all the blame on Islam’s critics. He chastised the
Muslim community for its failure to effectively explain that human rights
exist within their faith. The Islamic community must speak a language the
West can understand, he asserted, rather than simply stating that humanrights exist in Islam because Muslims believe in God’s existence and God
requires human rights for all.
For Imam Zaid, it is just as important to educate Muslims about the
faith as it is to teach them how to correct misunderstandings about Islam
in the non-Muslim world. One necessary step is to correct the under-
standing of jihad, now part of the lexicon non-Muslims associate nega-tively with Islam. Popular wisdom has defined jihad as everything from a
Muslim’s perpetual, violent struggle against the non-Muslim world to a
crusade specifically against the United States. These definitions assumethat Muslims carry out jihad against the West even when there is no im-
minent threat. Imam Zaid, citing a litany of Koranic verses, makes the
point that the ninth chapter of the Koran, the “Verse of the Sword,” infersthat jihad is restricted to the fight against polytheists, not Christians or
Jews. He also likes to cite another Koranic passage:

36 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
God does not forbid you from being kind and equitable with those who have
not fought you about religion and have not driven you out of your homes.
God loves the equitable. (The Noble Quran, 60:8)
Before the students, Imam Zaid is unassuming. He adjusts his black tunic
as he takes his place and begins to talk about intellectual honesty in Islam.
To acquire this honesty, it is necessary to distinguish between the sayings
of the Prophet that are “weak,” or transmitted unreliably, and those thatare sound. Muslims get into trouble by believing that the Prophet said
something he probably never said.
The students take notes. Imam Zaid leaves an hour later. The madrassa
is ending. Soon, all the students will return to their homes across America.
They will report to their jobs, and tend to the practicalities of daily life,
but they know that something has changed. In the new America, they nowwear a new label, “Muslim.”

37TWO
The Child-Bride of the Dix Mosque
/ornament20
Shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Sherine’s parents decided she should
marry. She had no say in the matter. The time seemed right; a man
her family knew from northern Yemen was about to visit their small Mus-
lim enclave in Dearborn, Michigan. In their eyes, his arrival was a god-
send. They were concerned that Sherine * was growing too old for
traditional Yemeni suitors. In the Southend neighborhood, a young girl
was looked upon with suspicion if she were still unmarried when she reached
sixteen. The Muslim neighbors might start to gossip. They might think
that Sherine had lost her virginity, making her off limits to a Muslim man.Sherine’s parents wanted none of this shame.
On a warm afternoon, when the fog mixed with thick smoke rising high
above the Ford manufacturing plants, Sherine met Ahmad, who was ex-actly twice her age. She sat on the brown sofa in the family’s living room,
clinging to an armrest, as Ahmad studied her carefully, from head to toe.
Sherine refused to look directly at him. She preferred to get a glimpse ofhim from the corner of her dark almond-shaped eye. The thought of his
*Sherine is not her real name. Due to the sensitivity of family life in the Yemeni community of
Dearborn, she and those in her circle would only speak to me on the condition that I change
their names to protect their privacy.

38 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
scrawny frame next to her pubescent body repulsed her. She wondered
how a couple could marry with no love, and only a few spoken words
between them. She was troubled that life in Dearborn in the middle of
America was as restricted as if she were living back in Yemen. On mostdays, she was either helping with chores at home or praying at the Dix
mosque, a few blocks away.
It is easy to forget that the Dix mosque, formally known as the Ameri-
can Muslim Society, lies in a small corner of America. Hidden in the bow-
els of the manufacturing district in south Dearborn, the mosque’s green
minaret with a crescent atop stands out along the horizon. Five times a
day, the melodic muezzin’s call to prayer breaks the silence of the neigh-
borhood. Bearded men in gallabiyyas , white, ankle-length tunics, and white
skullcaps leave their houses nearby and walk to prayer. Such scenes are
commonplace in the Islamic world, where the mosque, often located near
a bazaar, forms the centerpiece of the neighborhood. But in America,
Muslims tend to live miles away from their mosques and attend commu-
nal prayers only on Fridays.
Worshippers at Dix enjoy a rare privilege. They can hear the muezzin’s
call. Local governments have banned the call in nearly every other Ameri-
can city. It’s considered too disruptive to the majority of non-Muslims
living nearby. In Manhattan, it is common to see a muezzin, cloaked in a
long white tunic, stepping out of the mosque onto the pavement and rais-ing a megaphone to his mouth to call the faithful, hoping to be heard
above the street noise. But in Dearborn the Yemenis bought all the houses,
some wood-frame others brick, within a few miles of the mosque. The
only people living around the mosque are Muslims.
Life in Dearborn wasn’t always this way. Most of the first Arab immi-
grants were Christians, a fact that greatly eased their assimilation into main-
stream America, and those immigrants who were born Muslims generallycame from elite secular families in their home countries. But during the last
twenty years of the twentieth century, more and more Muslim immigrants
to the Dearborn area hailed from the “peasant class.” Those who settled in
the Detroit area from Iraq and Yemen sought jobs in the auto and shipping
industries, planning to earn money and then return home.
Sherine wanted to be liberated from the Old World lifestyle of the
Southend. The struggle she faced as a Muslim girl in a traditional com-
munity reflected a greater tug-of-war within America’s Islamic commu-
nity: Who is a proper Muslim? The Muslims of the second generation, far

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 39
removed from their parents’ countries of origin? Or what Arab Americans
in Detroit call boaters, recent immigrants such as the Yemenis at Dix?
Sherine wasn’t interested in such questions; she merely wanted to enjoy
the full freedoms of living in America. “American girls lose their virginityat eleven or twelve, but we don’t. American girls do what they want, but
by the age of twelve, every Yemeni girl has to cook and clean,” Sherine
told her parents, protesting the marriage they had arranged for her.
It did no good. Ahmad and Sherine were married all the same. After their
wedding, Sherine, a terrified bride, did anything to escape her husband. She
slept in another room or at her parents’ house a few blocks away.
Sherine’s parents warned her not to leave him. Everyone in the com-
munity thought Sherine should remain married, despite her revulsion ofAhmad. She searched desperately for comfort. She thought she might find
it among her girlfriends, who secretly ridiculed the community’s tradi-
tions, which were usually justified under the banner of Islam. But they
were too afraid to rebel and simply did as they were told. The sheikh at
the Dix mosque, Imam Mohammad Musa, a burly man schooled in the
classical Islamic tradition in Cairo, advised Sherine against divorce, or talaq,
in Arabic. In Islam, divorce, though not a sin, is considered frowned upon
by God.
“In this community reputation is more important than life itself. They’d
rather have you dead than have a bad rep,” Sherine thought.
All the pressure made Sherine angry. For most of her adolescence, she
had avoided the wrath of neighborhood gossips by wearing her jilbab, a
long tunic Muslim women use to disguise their curves, to school. When
she reached her locker she would remove it until she left for home again.
Living that lie was the only way she could live at all.
Most of the time, Sherine was just sad. She had been handed an adult
life at fifteen, but was deprived of the freedom that usually comes withmaturity. Instead, she was a child-bride suffocating under the weight of
marriage to a man she didn’t love. Eight months into her marriage, she
left Ahmad, thinking, “I don’t want this anymore.” Of course it created a
scandal. She was one of the few girls in the community to ever say she
didn’t want a man and then act upon it.
Sherine’s divorce may have caused her family to lose face in the
Southend, but the fact that she had kept her virginity made her feel better.
Among traditional Muslims, divorce itself is not taboo, but because, in
most cases, a divorced woman is no longer a virgin, remarriage is difficult.

40 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Two years after she left Ahmad, Sherine remarried, this time to an-
other man chosen by her parents but one whom she liked more than Ahmad.
Hasan was only eighteen, a year older than she was. Sherine was by now
wise enough to know what was missing from her first marriage. Hasan hadcome to the United States a few years before they met to help his brother
run a liquor store in Manhattan. Hasan seemed more modern than Ahmad,
a trait Sherine thought might give her a greater chance to live like a Mus-lim in America, rather than a Muslim woman who might as well be living
in remote north Yemen.
Hasan paid the family twenty thousand dollars for Sherine, a small bride-
price in the Islamic world, but no paltry sum for the Southend. The whole
idea of paying for a bride was repugnant to Sherine. For many Muslim
women, the bride-price is akin to buying a slave. But Sherine decided notto complain. Her father used three thousand dollars to buy her a car. He
spent a bit more on furniture for her new apartment with Hasan, and kept
the rest for himself.
This time around, Sherine felt more comfortable with her arranged
marriage, down to the most important detail. On their wedding night, she
and Hasan disappeared into a private room to consummate their vows. Afew minutes later, she returned with the coveted goods for all to see, a
soiled bed sheet. Even if a traditional Muslim bride manages to convince
everyone she is a virgin, a spotless sheet can raise all sorts of doubts. Formany brides, the fear of a clean bed sheet on their wedding night is nearly
as great as their fear of sex.
Hasan and Sherine made a pact. She dutifully gave him a child, con-
ceived on her wedding night. Every night she made the home-cooked
meals her young husband craved: Arabic rice with lamb or beef. She dressed
in her finest clothes and sweet-smelling perfumes inside the small wood-frame house they rented in the heart of the Southend not far from her
parents. In return, she expected him to get a job at one of the local auto
plants, where Arab immigrants had found employment for decades.
She was soon disappointed. Hasan’s English was too elementary to pass
a basic written exam. In fact, much of the English he knew, Sherine had
taught him. Then she hatched a plan. One day she accompanied Hasan tothe exam and pretended she was applying for work, too. Before they had
completed their tests, Sherine and Hasan switched test papers. Soon, Hasan
had a low-level job at Ford, making minimum wage.
For a time, she tried to make it work. Then, days after her high school
graduation in 1997, she discovered that Hasan was planning to return to

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 41
Yemen to marry a wife even more conservative than the women of the
Southend. Traditional men in the Islamic world often marry more than
one wife. It is an accepted practice, as much as the women may dislike it,
as long as the men provide for each household equally, in keeping withKoranic doctrine. In order to assure equal treatment for all, the men al-
ternate sleeping with their wives, moving each night from one house to
the next.
Hasan went through with his plan to marry a second wife, and he found
her back home in Yemen. Sherine turned to an imam at the Dix mosque,
Sheikh Abdul Wahab, a small, sensitive man who was also a distant cousin.She pleaded with him to help her divorce Hasan. She could have filed for
divorce in civil court, like any other American wife. But, if Sherine ever
hoped to preserve some dignity in the Southend, a sheikh would have togive his approval. In many Islamic countries, it is very difficult for a woman
to initiate a divorce unless her husband has committed violence against
her or if he is unable to support her. This was essentially true in theSouthend; only a favorable verdict from a sheikh would give a woman the
right to leave her husband in the eyes of her fellow Muslims. Sheikh Wahab
never gave his approval, but Sherine left Hasan all the same.
Sherine wanted to live as a Muslim woman in America, not a woman
living in America bound by Yemeni custom. Her tight blue jeans, black
turtleneck sweaters that revealed the curves of her breasts, and black scarfshe tied tightly around her head, a style popular among African American
Muslim women, symbolized her determination to break with tradition.
Unable to support her child on the meager funds Hasan sent her way,
Sherine got a job at a local hospital working as a lab assistant from 5:30 in
the evening until 2:00 in the morning. This schedule immediately fueled
rumors throughout the community. Few women ever went out at night,and no woman she knew was permitted to work until the early morning
hours. Some people called her a whore because of her hours.
Ever since she was young, Sherine had been the subject of vicious gos-
sip. But the rumor mill reached a new crescendo when Sherine announced
her desire to marry Rasheed, a Muslim from Ghana whom she had met at
the hospital. This time it wasn’t just a few men chatting idly in theneighborhood’s Islamic food market. Her announcement infuriated the
entire community. In their minds, Sherine was marrying an obeed , a racist
Arabic term for a dark-skinned person. Muslims from the African conti-nent were not real Muslims in the eyes of the Yemenis at Dix; they were
just blacks.

42 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Sherine’s father had a similar response, even though she reminded him
that one of the earliest converts and the Prophet Muhammad’s first muez-
zin, Bilali, was a black man. When Rasheed came to the house to ask for
Sherine’s hand, her father quizzed him about Islam. Sherine again turnedto her cousin, Sheikh Abdul Wahab at the Dix Mosque for help. She sim-
ply said, “You have to marry us, no one else will.” But Abdul Wahab was
unwilling to take such a drastic step. He knew in his heart it was the rightthing to do, but aligning himself with Sherine meant siding against the
community.
The hostility seemed to come from all directions, with the exception of
the house across the street from Sherine’s parents. Leila Fattah, her sister,
mother, and brother dared to be different. They had lived in the Southendfor nearly two decades, since the day Mrs. Fattah divorced her husband,
an Oxford-educated physician. He settled in Florida, and she took their
three children to Dearborn, where she thought they could keep up their
Arabic, their religion, and Yemeni culture. Mrs. Fattah became very in-
volved in the activities at the mosque; she taught Arabic classes to children
and once a year organized an Islamic fashion show for the women and girls.
Yet, Mrs. Fattah disagreed with much of what went on in the mosque, from
the segregation of women to the Friday sermons that refused to address real
life for Muslims in the West. She even suggested to Sheikh Abdul Wahab
that he join a weekly discussion group with women in the mosque to talkabout women’s rights. He agreed, provided he could talk to them from be-
hind a curtain. Mrs. Fattah thought this defeated the purpose.
Mrs. Fattah stayed in the community, despite her disagreements with
the men at the mosque. She had bought a modest house for thirty thou-
sand dollars years before and now she couldn’t afford to move. To buy
another house, she would have to take out a loan from a bank and pay
interest. Paying interest to a bank, known as rebah in Islam, is considered
a violation of Islamic doctrine.
Mrs. Fattah’s eldest daughter, Leila, who was Sherine’s age, spent the
school year in Florida with her father and summers with her mother, until
she turned eighteen and moved to Dearborn permanently. She was even
more dismissive than her mother when it came to the mosque mentality.
Thin as a rail, Leila had no qualms about wearing low-cut shirts. Like
Sherine, she favored an unconventional headscarf, which she tied tightly
around her head like a bandana. “My mother raised me to know the real
Islam, not the one they preach at Dix,” Leila explained to me one day.

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 43
“Where does it say in the Koran that women have to be thrown in the
basement to pray? The purpose of the mosque is to practice your religion.
They have it all mixed up.”
The Fattahs’ conflicted relationship with the mosque made it easy for
them to sympathize with Sherine when she fell in love with Rasheed.
Sherine’s parents were shocked by her choice, and this time she knew she
might be crossing the line of no return. In June 2004, she left her parents’house and moved in with the Fattahs. Word quickly got out that the fam-
ily without a man running the household had taken in the wild girl who
planned to marry an obeed . The pressure was relentless.
“Two young neighbors came to our house one day,” Leila recalled.
“We never associated with them, but my mother, who always welcomeseveryone, let them in. They went down to the basement where Sherine
was staying and yelled at her, ‘Why are you marrying that nigger!’”
Six months later, Sherine convinced a sheikh living across the river in
Windsor, Canada, to marry her. Then she left the Dix community for
good.
At first glance, the neighborhood around the Dix mosque seems no differ-
ent from an Arab village. A half dozen Islamic grocery stores and cafés,
with signs written in Arabic, line two blocks of Dix Street. But there is an
unusual twist: in many Arab countries, outsiders are generally welcomedinto close-knit communities, but this is not true in the Southend. During
the years that I worked as a journalist in the Middle East and visited im-
poverished neighborhoods and pre-modern villages, I was always greeted
warmly. People were curious. But, because the Yemenis living in the Dix
community interact every day with mainstream America, outsiders are not
intriguing; they are necessary intruders. When I first visited the mosque,
it was difficult to convince the worshippers, particularly the men, to speakwith me. At La Friends, a dark, three-room restaurant and café with drawn
blinds, women do not dare enter. I didn’t know this at first. When I tried
to order a Coke there, the men sitting on the worn plastic chairs delivered
only deadly stares. Not surprisingly, my Coke never appeared. As I left
the restaurant, I could feel the same stares drilling holes into my back.
These men are experts at spending entire days in cafés; they lingered in
teahouses long before they ever came to the Southend. From Cairo to the
Yemeni capital Sanaa, drinking tea in a café is not merely a pastime for a
traditional man; it is the way he interacts with society. And, as in Middle

44 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Eastern cafés, no woman should disrupt the men’s tranquility. The in-
timidating atmosphere inside La Friends reflects perfectly the restrictive
society of the Old Country where the men of the Southend came from.
Whether in cafés or any other public place in the neighborhood, the
mosque sets the bar for what is considered acceptable social behavior. Only
men are allowed to climb the steps of the mosque’s entrance leading into
the main prayer hall. The women enter around the corner on WoodlawnStreet. A green-and-white sign, written in English and Arabic, hanging
near the alley proclaims, “sisters’ section.”
The barefooted men often gather in the main entrance amid the pile of
shoes that they’ve removed to keep the floor leading to the mosque clean.
At the mere sight of a woman, they shout in Arabic that the sisters’ section
is around the corner, and then peer out the door, and point in the direc-tion of the green-and-white sign. Women and girls known as hijabat —
those who wear the veil—stroll down the alley and enter the mosque
through a steel door. Once inside, they walk down a long hallway and upa flight of stairs that leads them to a prayer room that is closed off from
the men’s section.
Women never see the sheikh. They only hear his voice over a speaker
system. When they pray, they face a wall decorated with a mashrabiya , a
wooden, latticework screen. The semitransparent wall separates the women’s
prayer room from an empty section in the mosque, adjacent to the men’ssection. When women want to talk to men, they call them from their side of
the mashrabiya and speak through the openings in the latticework.
The men running the mosque believe that Islam requires the sexes to
be separated during prayers. But such strict separation is actually rare in
much of the Islamic world. Women in Arab countries, for instance, gen-
erally pray in rows behind men, in the same space. The Koran makes nomention of separating the sexes during prayers. In Mecca, during the an-
nual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, men and women pray together.
Many Dix women actually enjoy the separation because they feel it gives
them privacy. They are bothered less by the limited contact with men
than by the idea that Yemeni traditions are confused with Islamic practice.
Many accept the mosque’s decision to carry on these traditions in the heartof America. But they can’t accept calling them “Islam.”
The role of women in American mosque communities provides the cen-
tral battleground where the universalist message of Islam clashes with theforces of local culture and practice. In America, the struggle is felt so acutely
because believers must balance Islamic values with those of a mainstream

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 45
society many deplore. But the problem of how to find a balance between
local culture and Islamic doctrine is hardly confined to America. This ten-
sion has bedeviled Muslims throughout the ages, beginning with the found-
ing of the religion fourteen hundred years ago and accelerating with therapid spread of the faith across much of the known world. As Muslims
conquered non-Muslim territories, they allowed their new subjects to pre-
serve their beliefs and cultural traditions. Likewise, Muslim converts wereallowed to retain their diverse languages and habits as Islam moved from
Arabia to Africa and beyond. Ibn Batuta, the well-known fourteenth-century
world traveler, noted that Muslim societies from China to sub-SaharanAfrica were not forced to surrender their languages for Arabic nor per-
suaded that their cultural traditions violated Islamic doctrine.
Historically, Muslims have sought clarification from Islamic jurists and
theologians on the role that culture properly plays in religion. Most point
to the determination of the Prophet and his Companions not to declare
different cultures good or evil but to accept those that did not violate thecentral tenets of the new faith. The story of the sons of Arfida, as the
Ethiopians were known among the Arabs, is testament to the Prophet’s
notion of the place culture holds within the Islamic tradition. In the story,African converts celebrating an Islamic religious festival beat leather drums
and dance with spears to honor the Prophet. Umar ibn al-Khatib, one of
the Prophet’s most influential Companions, moves to stop them on reli-gious grounds. But the Prophet interrupts him and says the sons of Arfida
are not his people, and therefore, should be allowed such wild dancing. In
one account of this story, the Prophet encourages the Ethiopians to keepdancing, saying, “Play your games, sons of Arfida, so the Jews and Chris-
tians know there is latitude in our religion.”
“Everyone Was Born a Muslim”
Many young American Muslims I met are interested in developing their
Islamic identity as part of a broad religious community, whether it is with
other Muslims on their campuses, in their Islamic centers, or in the
mosques. This community provides a feeling of solidarity and offers a clearantidote to mainstream America, where they often feel uncomfortable.
Yet the Yemenis of Dix cling to tradition, and often they confuse those
traditions with Islamic doctrine. The first generation of Muslim immi-grants to America generally did not concern themselves with distinguish-
ing between tradition and religion. Their main goals were economic

46 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
survival and social mobility for them and their children. But the second
generation now faces a greater challenge: how to create a unified Islamic
community in the United States in face of the ethnic and racial barriers
that divide them.
Like Sherine and Rasheed, her Ghanaian husband, young American
Muslims are increasingly open to the possibility of marrying outside their
own ethnic group, as they work to create an indigenous Islamic identity thatis compatible with modern American society. For them, this does not mean
total assimilation into American culture, but rather a unified and strong
Islamic community that is not split along ethnic lines. But it is difficult, forexample, for an Arab woman to convince her parents that marrying a Paki-
stani man is permitted within the Islamic tradition. It most certainly is, but
this idea is foreign to the experience of their immigrant parents.
Islamic scholars sometimes harshly criticize Muslim Americans for the
importance they place on their ethnic identities. One such scholar is Dr.
Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, of the Nawawi Foundation, who has lectured andwritten extensively on how some mosques, Islamic centers, and Muslim
Students’ Associations on university campuses not only segregate Mus-
lims along ethnic lines but isolate them from broader American society.Many scholars agree that it is impossible for Islamic practice to be com-
pletely free from cultural influences, but they stress that Muslim Ameri-
cans must learn how to distinguish between the two.
Separating culture from religion is perhaps more difficult in Detroit
than it is in any other part of the United States, because the large number
of Arab Muslims provides a critical mass of ethnic and historical tradition.For the last thirty years, southeastern Michigan, including Detroit’s met-
ropolitan area, has had the highest concentration of Arabic speakers out-
side the Middle East. According to Detroit’s leading Arab Americanassociation, there are 490,000 Arabs in the metropolitan area, and Arabs
make up one-third of Dearborn’s total population. The majority of the
Arabs in the Southend are Yemeni and Iraqi immigrants, while the moreaffluent Lebanese have settled in other areas of Dearborn. An estimated
thirty thousand Yemenis live in the Detroit metropolitan area, and Iraqis
number around fifty thousand.
The story of the modern-day Dix mosque began when a Lebanese and a
Yemeni founded the American Muslim Society in 1937 in an old pool hall.It took them until 1952 to establish a more proper house of worship, erect-
ing a green dome and two small minarets on the roof. For many years, the

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 47
former pool hall was more a place for social gatherings than for worship.
The 1952 renovations extended the mosque from a few thousand square
feet to more than twelve thousand.
With the 1965 repeal of the national immigration quotas, the Yemeni
population of the Southend began to swell. Over time the newcomers
announced they wanted their conservative ideas to govern the entire local
Muslim community. They closed the mosque and declared they were tak-ing it over from Lebanese-Syrian immigrants who had once been the
majority. Soon, the Yemenis controlled Dix completely, and life was turned
upside down. The Yemeni takeover and the patriarchal community theycreated filled a deep need for a traditional mosque community. A few of
the Yemenis who led the effort were so proud of their new creation that
they kept parts of the original pool hall—mostly wooden doors and knobs—as souvenirs to make sure they never forget how far they have come.
The unique situation of Yemeni immigrants and their strong attach-
ment to the ways of the Old Country have shaped every aspect of life atthe Dix mosque. Yemeni arrivals are overwhelmingly young men who ar-
rive with little or no education or job skills. Few intend to settle in America
permanently, and many keep wives and families back home, visiting peri-odically and sending funds whenever possible. With no personal invest-
ment in a Western future, the Yemenis are strongly resistant to compromise
with contemporary American life. They often struggle to make a livingwage, with some estimates putting the median household income in the
Southend at $20,125, less than half the national average among Muslims.
Approximately one-third of the population has never learned English andmany first generation immigrant women are illiterate. Any concession to
a new identity, say that of Muslim American or even Yemeni American, is
often fiercely resisted. Daily life revolves around work, the traditionalteahouse or café, and the Dix mosque.
The pace of the Yemeni population growth in the Southend increased
after the uneasy unification in 1990 of formerly communist South Yemenand Islamist North Yemen, a process that effectively placed the entire
country in the hands of religious conservatives. The North had a long
history of theocratic control, extending formally until 1962. Islamic lawprovided the basis for all legislation. Polygamy was accepted practice and
men could divorce without their wives’ consent. With the departure of
British colonial forces in 1967, the North soon found itself in direct com-petition with its southern rivals, now aligned with the Soviet Union as the
Arab world’s first communist state.

48 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the North’s rulers
seized on the opportunity to embarrass the Communists in the eyes of the
Islamic world by actively supporting their Muslim brethren, the mujahideen
fighters, in their battle against the infidel invaders. Legions of Yemeni menjoined the ranks of the mujahideen and became among the most intrepid
Arab fighters against Soviet rule. North Yemen gave a heroes’ welcome to
the returning fighters after the defeat of Soviet forces ten years later. As inother Arab countries, these mujahideen fighters, now fired by the radical
Islamic ideology common to many of the so-called Afghan Arabs, quickly
spread their ideas within Yemeni society, contributing to an Islamic awak-
ening. The fighters’ power and influence was further enhanced in 1994,
when civil war erupted between secessionists in the south and the unifiedgovernment based in the north. After nine weeks, the north emerged victo-
rious with the help of the veterans of Afghanistan. Such is the world that has
shaped most Yemeni immigrants to the United States.
Many of the immigrants who stay in the United States still have their
eyes fixed on Yemen. They make frequent trips home, not only for them-
selves but to give their children an authentic taste of their culture and
religion. They fear the next generation will be corrupted in America and
will adopt behavior that is unacceptable for Muslims. As more Yemeni
men and women moved to the Southend, the community became more
conservative. Some of their imams, including Sherine’s cousin AbdulWahab, came to the Southend after studying in Saudi Arabia, where Is-
lamic scholarship is generally conservative.
As a result, the Yemenis of Dix are more isolated than most Muslim
enclaves in America. In fact, in America—unlike in Europe, where Mus-
lims often live in urban ghettos—more and more Muslims are moving to
the suburbs and fewer are settling in densely populated areas such as
Dearborn. Once in the suburbs, they build mosques, Islamic schools, andcommunity centers, and leave their old urban mosques behind. The tight-
knit community around Dix is something of an exception. Yemenis live so
close to one another that they can socialize simply by going from house to
house with friends or relatives they knew from their villages back home.
The new masters of the Dix mosque wasted no time establishing their
conservative agenda. The board invited a young, Saudi-trained Yemeni
imam to lead the worshippers. They opened the mosque every day, not
just once a week. The prayer area on the first floor was set aside for men
and the basement, once a social hall, became the designated prayer area

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 49
for women. All women were to wear headscarves and enter the mosque,
not through the main entrance, but the side door on Woodlawn Street.
They were told not to enter the mosque at all when they were menstruat-
ing, a common taboo among Muslims in the greater Islamic world. Wed-dings and social celebrations were no longer permitted at Dix. “There will
be no singing or dancing in this house of worship,” the new imam declared.
He also ended coed Islamic classes and segregated the sexes in all other
mosque activities. He advised the community not to have dogs as pets, in
keeping with an Islamic tradition dating back to the Prophet’s time that
declared dogs unclean . These changes were unusual for Dearborn at the
time, even though they reflected commonly held traditions in much of the
Islamic world. The Yemenis felt the mosque, for years run by Sunni Mus-lims who had been separated from their native Lebanon for two genera-
tions, had become too Americanized. Their detractors argued that the
Yemenis used Islam to justify their fears about sexuality, the role of women
in society, and the threats posed by life in a new country filled with many
temptations and social ills.
Faced with Yemeni supremacy at Dix, the Lebanese worshippers gradu-
ally drifted away, and by 1983 they had established their own religiouscommunity called the American Bekka Lebanese League, named for their
native Bekka Valley. They turned a building that had been a social hall in
the heart of Dearborn’s Lebanese district along Chase Street, about eight
miles from Dix, into a storefront house of worship. With time, the Bekka
League came to resemble a more traditional mosque. From the outside,the brown brick building with a low roof looks like it could be a funeral
home or a doctor’s office. But inside, the men’s prayer hall is bright, with
clean white walls and grey and green carpet. The women’s prayer hall,
segregated from that of the men, is a much smaller room down the hall.
Dix, meanwhile, flourished under its Yemeni leaders. At the time, Saudi
Arabia was pouring funds into mosque construction projects in the United
States and actively supporting Muslim Students’ Associations on the
nation’s university campuses. Eventually, the Dix mosque doubled in size
to twenty-four thousand square feet with help from the Saudis.
Each year during Ramadan when the donation basket is passed around,
the women at Dix give their gold bracelets and necklaces, their prized
possessions from Yemen, for the upkeep of the mosque. They never know
exactly how the money will be used, but they place their trust in the imams

50 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
and the men on the mosque’s governing board. So much gold was col-
lected that the men were able to renovate and expand the mosque yet
again in 2004.
A large chandelier with sparkling crystals and gold trim hangs in one of
the entrances. The walls of a spacious office, where Imam Aly Leila, the head
sheikh, and Abdul Wahab sit each day to counsel worshippers, are deco-
rated with large photographs of the grand mosque in Mecca. Green andbeige wall-to-wall carpet woven with designs of minarets covers the floor.
Dix worshippers had complained for years that time had stood still at
their mosque. Before the expansions, the sheikhs greeted the visitors or
worshippers who came for advice in a small, dark, dusty office that re-
sembled a storage room. Only a desk and a few chairs could fit inside.They wondered when their mosque would grow, particularly because dur-
ing Ramadan so many men came to Friday prayers that some had to stand
outside in the parking lot. They watched as other mosques in Dearborn
underwent facelifts: drab minarets were dotted with gold; the prayer
rooms benefited from clean carpets; the plain windows were replaced with
stained glass. For two years, the talk around Dearborn was about a $12
million Shiite mosque under construction about six miles from Dix. The
Shiites at the Islamic Center of America were trading in their modest
mosque, built in the 1950s and located in a commercial district, for an
ostentatious mosque of gold and Italian tiles, spectacularly visible fromthe well-traveled freeway.
Everyone in Dearborn could see the budding mosque as it sprouted
along the highway, one piece of gold at a time. The imam, Sheikh
Mohammad Qazwini, was a smooth talker with the polished manners char-
acteristic of the Shiite clerics of Iran, where he had received his theologi-
cal schooling. Qazwini could charm anyone. He did all the right things to
achieve prominence in the community, from organizing lavish fund-raisingdinners to appearing on religious television programs.
The Dix community, however, didn’t want a famous imam or an elabo-
rate mosque. The men simply wanted their house of God to be a little less
rundown; the women were happy just to have toilet paper in their wash-
room, the place they cleansed their hands before prayers. It took Septem-
ber 11 to propel the community into action. After the attacks, zealous
newspaper and television reporters descended upon the mosque in their
frenzied search for snapshots of “radical Muslims.” Anyone would do, pro-
vided they had the proper dress. The Dix men in their long gallabiyyas and

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 51
the women in dark headscarves and jilbabs , ankle-length dresses, fit the
stereotypes perfectly. Their pictures were splashed across the evening news
to incite fear that there were Muslim extremists on American soil. The
news stories created a bad reputation for the mosque, and the men in chargelaunched a public relations campaign to repair the community’s image.
A few years later, after thousands of worshippers had pooled their do-
nations, the mosque sparkled with new chandeliers, renovated classroomsfor children learning Arabic, and a community room for hosting dinners
and lunches. The mosque held two open houses after the renovations were
finished. The worshippers gave visitors what they call a dawah package,
from the Arabic word meaning the call to Islam. Manila folders were filled
with an introductory booklet about Islam and information about the his-tory of Dix.
Sheikh Abdul Wahab hoped the literature would not only give outsid-
ers an accurate picture of Islam, but draw some to the faith. “Everyone
was born a Muslim,” Wahab often says, repeating an idea held by some
conservative Muslims. The tradition can be traced back to the Prophet
Muhammad, who, it is said, was asked about the offspring of pagans. The
Prophet said, “No child is born but has the Islamic faith, but its parents
turn it into a Jew or a Christian.”
Imam Aly, a tall, handsome imam educated in the classical Islamic tra-
dition at al Azhar in Cairo, arrived at Dix just as the mosque’s latest faceliftwas getting underway. Sheikh Aly was approachable, true to the Egyptian
reputation for charm and lightheartedness. He was far more open than
the Yemeni imams who grew up in America. He looked women directly in
the eye, unlike many men in Dix who lowered their gaze. Sheikh Aly is not
afraid to express his view of the community. “Most of the people came
here twenty years ago and they are not so educated. They are not inte-
grated into American society. They speak weak English. I was invited to awedding and nearly all of the one hundred people there were from the
same tribe in Yemen,” Aly told me during one of the few times we met.
It took a newcomer like Sheikh Aly to talk openly about the difference
between culture and religion. “My ideology is to try to make a difference.
People have many questions. ‘How do you treat your husband or wife?
What does it mean to be a Muslim?’ How they raise kids back home doesn’t
fit here.” At least this was the message he espoused shortly after he ar-
rived. But Sheikh Aly gradually became less critical of the Dix commu-
nity; he realized, as imams had done before him, that his survival depended

52 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
upon the backing of the men running the mosque. The revolving door of
imams at Dix is well known. Imams come and go; most worshippers never
know why, and those who do, do not talk openly about the disagreements.
The presence of the Tablighi Jamat, literally the “proselytizing group,”
an archconservative Islamic group that originated in India, is a sign of this
diversity. The Dix mosque is one of their regular stops on their tour of
mosques across America. Dressed in white gallabiyyas and skullcaps, with
their long beards and aloof demeanor, the Tablighi Jamat seem daunting.
Inspired by the mysticism of Sufi Islam and the more rigid side of Sunni
Islam, the Tablighi are officially apolitical. Their stated mission is to spreadthe dawah, the Islamic message, which they believe anyone can do. Unlike
orthodox Sunni Muslims, the Tablighi dismiss religious scholarship and
believe anyone can preach, even those without a classical Islamic educa-tion. They advocate veiling for Muslim women, oppose coeducational
schools, and try to limit their contact with non-Muslims. While on tour,
they sleep in mosques around the country as part of their missionary zeal.They rarely speak to women, in keeping with conservative Islamic views
on interaction between the sexes.
One day in October 2003, the men at the mosque advised Abdullah, a
Tablighi member and an engineering professor at the local colleges of
Wayne State University, to speak to me about the community. The men
knew I was trying to learn about the Dix community, and Abdullah seemedlike the perfect person to represent them. He often gave non-Muslims
tours of the mosque, especially after September 11, when many people in
the Dearborn area became curious about the Muslims living in their midst.
Abdullah was reluctant at first; perhaps, I thought, he was uncomfort-
able at the prospect of being alone with a strange woman . But Faisal, a
member of the mosque’s board, worried I might be offended, and encour-aged Abdullah to make an exception. Abdullah, his body hidden beneath
his gallabiyya, escorted me into a room across from the mosque’s adminis-
tration office. It was a dark, cluttered storage area. Abdullah motioned forme to sit on a chair; he then sat down across from me, after making a point
of leaving the door ajar. At first, I expected him to talk in slogans the way
some conservative Muslims do in the Islamic world when they meet strang-ers. But I was pleasantly surprised. Abdullah’s intelligence and candor were
apparent from the moment we began talking.
“The most important thing is fear of God— taqwa. The more you take
this seriously, the more of a strict Muslim you are. On a taqwa scale of
zero to ten, some people try to be at five or six. The Prophet was at ten.”

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 53
Abdullah wasn’t always God-fearing. He was raised in an affluent De-
troit family. None of his family members made religion an important part
of their lives. But, as he got older, Abdullah wanted to find a new way: He
married a woman who converted to Islam, and he inspired her to go toDamascus to study the faith and learn Arabic. Abdullah stayed behind and
taught his children Arabic. Even in small ways, the family tried to recreate
the Arab tradition in their daily lives; they stopped eating at a table andinstead served their meals on the floor. The children were not allowed to
watch television. Developing a strong belief in Islam was important to
Abdullah, and he wanted the same for his children. He quoted from Umar
ibn al-Khatib, one of the prominent Companions of the Prophet, who
famously said that believers could never move from darkness to light until
they developed “the sweetness of the faith.”
Abdullah tells a story. There was once a French model. He read about
her in the newspapers. She had a brain tumor and gave up modeling and
started reading the Koran. Then the brain tumor disappeared. Anyone
can find a cure for their ills, says Abdullah, if they find Islam. And once
people find Islam, they grow more devout over time. “Repentance to Al-
lah is always open and available. What is happening now at places like Dixis that if Muslims find an Islamic environment, they become more Is-
lamic. The main thing in Islam is to work on people. In this country,
temptation is great.”
“Different Mentalities, Different Visions”
Under the Yemeni influence, a certain philosophy took hold of the Dixfollowers: the community consensus, not individuals or their families, de-
termined proper moral and religious behavior. This gave the mosque, the
center of life for the Yemenis, far more authority over people’s lives thanin other Islamic communities in America. This meant the imam at the
mosque had to reflect the general ideas in the community, or he wouldn’t
last there very long. And that’s why one imam was forced to leave.
Imam Mohammad Musa, the bubbly cleric who had once counseled
Sherine against divorce during her unhappy first marriage, left Dix aftertwenty years for a ritzy mosque in the affluent Detroit suburb of Bloomfield
Hills. Like Sheikh Aly, Musa received a classical Islamic education from
Cairo’s al Azhar. And, like many imams in the United States, he also stud-
ied in Saudi Arabia. As Dix grew more conservative, Imam Musa became

54 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
more controversial until his differences with the mosque’s board were
irreconcilable.
More than two years after leaving Dix, Musa is still reeling. He sits in
his well-appointed office, his dark-blue tunic perfectly pressed, with a boxof expensive chocolates on his desk. His lifestyle is clearly more luxurious
at his new mosque, but he is troubled by the war of ideas at Dix—a battle
he decidedly lost. Remembering his days in the Southend, Musa tells mestories . I ask him how the Yemenis took control of the mosque.
“Muslims in the United States live freely to practice their religion with-
out being bothered by anyone. But the men at Dix didn’t understand that.
They talked against America and put others down who didn’t. This hap-
pened even before September 11. I told them, ‘Don’t try to create hatredin the hearts of Muslims about others. Teach us about religion.’
“But the board came to lead the community, and they tried to control
the imams. But an imam has his own vision based on the Koran and the
Sunnah, and they are supposed to accept that. The men on the board
don’t even have Islamic degrees, but they still questioned me, ‘Why do
you say that and this?’ No imam would accept this.”
Musa was appalled that the men on the board dared to challenge his
religious authority. In Islam, a certified theologian who is an imam at a
mosque generally has final say over disputed religious issues. He is held in
such high regard that sometimes when a man addresses the imam, he placeshis hand over his chest to display reverence. Musa received little such
respect. The story he often tells to illustrate the cause of his outrage con-
cerns a disagreement over whether the mosque should invite Sheikh Omar
Abdul Rahman to give a lecture. It was in the early 1990s, before the sheikh
was sent to jail in New York for inspiring the Islamic radicals who at-
tacked the World Trade Center in 1993.
Sheikh Rahman was the spiritual guide of the Gamaa al-Islamiya, a
militant group in Egypt that tried, unsuccessfully, to overthrow the Egyp-
tian government. The U.S. government had been building a case against
Rahman but it was anything but solid. Yet Sheikh Musa felt Rahman’s
venom against U.S. policies in the Middle East would draw attention to
Dix. The mosque board overruled him, however, and the sheikh spoke
before hundreds of worshippers.
“Why did you object to Sheikh Rahman so vehemently?” I ask him.
“There is a hadith, the teachings of the Prophet,” he replies. “It teaches
me that because I am not an American citizen, I can’t fight America. Be-

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 55
cause I must respect the law of the country where I live. This is why I left
Dix. We have different mentalities, different visions.”
Musa didn’t realize it at the time, but the Yemeni triumph at Dix fore-
shadowed the Islamic revival that was coming to Dearborn and the rest ofthe United States. In the years that followed, the conservative takeover of
mosques became more widespread, as Muslims became more involved in
their faith and increasingly influenced by Islamic practice in the broaderMuslim world.
Around Dix, the stories about Sheikh Musa’s differences with the mosque
board are still alive. Depending upon who is talking, he is either a savioror a misguided soul. The young women have fond memories of him as the
imam who tried, but failed, to persuade their parents to give them more
freedom. Enjoying the luxury of his new, upscale mosque, Musa clearlyhas traded in the conservatism at Dix for what he calls modernity.
When we meet, he explains that he is taking his new mosque in a differ-
ent direction. Women hold seats on the governing board, and the com-munity decides if non-Muslim women visiting the mosque should wear
headscarves.
“Last week we discussed if women come to the mosque for open house,
do they need to wear the hijab ? I said, ‘let’s place some hijabs in a basket for
them to wear and let them decide.’ Even in a mosque, you shouldn’t force
non-Muslims to wear a hijab . We can’t force someone to practice some-
thing they don’t believe.”
Musa’s words were shocking; in nearly every mosque in America and
the Islamic world, all women, even non-Muslims, are required to wearheadscarves. “Many ladies decide in America to wear hijab after many years
without it. One husband tried to convince me to tell his wife to take off
her hijab . But I told him that it is her choice.” The hijab , says Musa, is a
sign of civilization. “Humans used to live like animals. But then they cov-
ered their private parts with leaves. The more civilized they became, the
more they covered.”
Young women at Dix were the ones most saddened by Musa’s ouster.
Muslim American life is not as clear cut for the children of Dix as it is for
their elders. With one foot in Yemen and another in America, practicingtheir faith is not so simple. Even for those who prefer minimal exposure to
American life, the public schools force them to confront American values.
The young women felt that Musa helped them straddle these two worlds.After he was gone, they were on their own. They think the advice from
their parents and the Dix imams is too conservative, so some of the girls

56 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
and young women formed a halaqa , Arabic for “study group,” that meets
in the mosque each Sunday at one o’clock. They sit in a circle, and their
teachers, who are older members of the mosque, alternate on different
Sundays to lead the lesson .
One Sunday in the dead of winter in 2004 some girls have difficulty trav-
eling to the mosque. The streets running behind the mosque, home tomany Dix worshippers, are covered with deep snow. Drivers trying to inch
out of the neighborhood form a long line at the stop sign. Snowplows
seem to work in Detroit, and even in Dearborn, but not around the Dixmosque. The Muslims say the city has no interest in plowing the streets
where they live, and there seems to be truth in that. Still, several young
women manage to reach the mosque to attend the halaqa .
As is true on most Sundays, the lesson is about one theme: faith and
behavior. Why should Muslim girls wear headscarves? Why shouldn’t
Muslim girls talk with boys? Why should Muslim girls obey their parents,even if they disagree with them? The topics reflect the difficult questions
the mosque has faced over the last half century, as imams came and went
and a younger generation grew up in America. Many have been coming tothe halaqa for years. It is their safe haven from a world outside that chal-
lenges their beliefs. During the study session, the girls don’t talk directly
about their lives or their families. But once the halaqa ends and the teacher
leaves, they sit together cross-legged on the carpet, unaware of their grace
and beauty.
Speaking with me is a bit difficult for them. I had been to the halaqa
several times, and only when I became a familiar face were a few young
women willing to take a chance. Their memories of the aggressive jour-
nalists who came to Dix after September 11 still linger, and discussingwith an outsider what they truly feel about the imams and the traditions in
the community seems like a betrayal. But, finding safety in numbers, three
young women decide it is better to talk to me than risk leaving me withthe wrong impression. They begin revealing bits and pieces of their lives.
Hayat, a twenty-five-year-old psychologist, is the sister of Afrah, a
strong-willed teacher who often leads the Sunday halaqa . Afrah has left
her mark on the girls. Although she wears a long headscarf and full-length
skirt covered by a tunic, her conservative dress does not mean that she is a
submissive Muslim woman. Her ideas and goals are no different from thoseof a liberated non-Muslim woman in America. She juggles motherhood, a
full-time job as a schoolteacher, and her mosque activities.

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 57
Hayat and Afrah’s parents have several things in common with the other
Dix families. They moved to the community in the 1980s from North
Yemen. Their mother was illiterate in Arabic and English; their father
worked at the Chrysler plant. Afrah veiled in the tenth grade, in 1985,when there were few Muslims at her public high school. For Hayat, ten
years younger, veiling was easier because she had far more Muslim peers
by the time she reached high school. But their parents stood out from theother Dix families in one important way: “It was always normal for fe-
males to go back to Yemen to marry and not to go to college,” Hayat says.
“It is Yemeni tradition to oppose girls going to college, but this isn’t Is-lam. My father, thank God, was different. He swore he would provide his
children with the life he never had.”
When Hayat was a student at the University of Michigan in Dearborn,
she joined the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA). It was the first time
she was surrounded by Muslims who dared to show they were proud of
their religion in a non-Muslim setting.
Ismahan, sitting to the left of Hayat, is a thin and unemotional com-
puter scientist. She believes the MSA on campuses should segregate the
women from the men in keeping with Islamic tradition. When Ismahanwent to elementary school in the Southend, she felt pressured to fit in and
show that she was like everyone else. But, as an adult, she is more deter-
mined to display her Muslim identity.
“Now, I know my rights and I know I don’t have to fit in. I don’t think
Muslims have to assimilate. We are not treated like Americans. At work, I
get up from my desk and go to pray. I thought I would face oppositionfrom my boss. Even before I realized he didn’t mind, I thought, ‘I have a
right to be a Muslim and I don’t have to assimilate.’”
Telling her coworkers that she is a Muslim shields her from exposure
to language and behavior that might make her uncomfortable. “Now, they
know me well at work and know what bothers me. Just two days ago, some-
one cracked a dirty joke and said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ It’s not because I’moppressed that I don’t like dirty jokes. I find them offensive.”
Fatma, a twenty-three-year-old third-grade schoolteacher, becomes
vivacious and talkative once the others lead the way. Her father, one ofthe Dix founders, came to the United States in the 1970s. He spent two
years in California before moving to Michigan. Like many Yemenis, he
knew about Dix from his relatives and wanted to raise his children there,so his daughters would wear headscarves and memorize the Koran. “Some
Muslims do anything to fit in. They drink. They date. My biggest fear is

58 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
that I might assimilate into the American lifestyle so much that my mod-
esty goes out the window,” says Fatma.
All the girls want to marry and have children. But unlike other Muslim
women in other parts of the United States, the Dix girls want to stay con-nected to the mosque in order to raise their children there. They worry
that attending university and developing their careers have made them
too old for marriage. They also hint that time will take care of the oldermen at Dix, and the mosque will be easier for their children. “Even if I am
married and have my own family, I would want to have that feeling in my
heart to come to the mosque,” says Fatma. “What made me sane duringyears of public high school was coming to the halaqa every Sunday.”
Some outsiders who pray at the mosque do not share the comfort these
women from the Southend feel there. Muslim women who didn’t grow upin the community try to blend in. Some give up right away, after climbing
the big steps at the front entrance, not knowing that the women’s section
is around the corner, and hearing the men’s alarmist shouts in Arabic.
But Aliciajewell Bayi, a vivacious woman in her twenties, stuck it out
longer than most. An African American born to a Baptist minister father,
religion was nothing new to her. By the time she became a student at theUniversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she was searching for a new faith.
When she met her future husband, Omani, a Muslim, she found Islam.
When the two finished their studies, they moved to Detroit and discov-ered Dix.
Aliciajewell was excited about becoming a member of the Dix family. It
was her first mosque, and the place where she made shahada , the profes-
sion of faith that makes one a Muslim: “There is no god but God, and
Mohammad is his Prophet.” She was drawn to its insular nature; she
thought it was a place where she could make a difference. She startedattending the Sunday halaqa and met Fatma, Ismahan, and Hayat. She
joined the outreach committee, the group created after September 11 to
improve the mosque’s public image. When she attended the first meeting,she was shocked and disappointed. The members, all men, sat in a U-
shape in a drab room inside the mosque. They talked to her only while
looking into space to avoid eye contact. “I started refusing to answer whenthey did this. I said, ‘He is not talking to me if he is facing the opposite
direction.’”
Then she tried to join the mosque governing board, but women were
not allowed. “No woman ever complained about it because they were afraid
they’d get a bad reputation. The women don’t want to become active in

THE CHILD-BRIDE OF THE DIX MOSQUE 59
the mosque because their parents might find out they attend meetings
with men in the room,” she says.
Aliciajewell soon found herself cut off from almost everyone at Dix,
including the women in the halaqa. Sherine was among the few friends she
made. For her, Sherine was living proof that even a woman who grew up
in the Southend might not ever be happy there.
A year after Aliciajewell and her husband found Dix, she sat in a chic
modern condominium in downtown Detroit, taking care of her young
son, Mohammad. The dark clouds outside threatened to dampen the cheer
created by the apartment’s blue walls and large windows. Aliciajewell andher husband bought the apartment in an up-and-coming section of down-
town, but it was at least fifteen miles from Dix. The mosque now was too
far for them to travel for prayers. But like Sherine, she no longer had areason to go to Dix. She would find another mosque closer to home.
Aliciajewell’s idealized image of what it is to be a Muslim was shattered.
As I met her periodically over a year, she became hardened, more cynicalas time went on. She had chosen the wrong mosque to begin her Islamic
journey, she thought.
The men at Dix probably were not aware of the effect their words and
actions had on outsiders, and even on the members of their own commu-
nity. In their hearts they wanted to attract newcomers like Aliciajewell to
the faith. They wanted to make all the worshippers in the community,including the women who grew up there, feel comfortable. But the con-
victions driving them to recreate the life they had left behind in North
Yemen were at cross-purposes with their desire to preserve the mosquefor the next generation.

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61THREE
The Roots of Islam in America
/ornament20
On October 3, 1965, the White House advance men had every reason
to be pleased. They had carefully positioned President Lyndon B.
Johnson on Liberty Island in New York City’s harbor, in the lee of a
single American flag. Beyond, the towering Statue of Liberty provided
an irresistible backdrop for a photo-op, just as they knew it would.
Busloads of grateful immigrants, including a group of thirty-five Slavsshipped in from nearby New Jersey, cheered the proceedings. One of
their number, Adam Lech, of Somerset, gushed to a reporter minutes
after shaking the president’s hand, “What a country!” A crowd of othersfrom around the globe, including some recent arrivals to America’s shores,
scrambled for one of the many presidential pens used to sign the first
major liberalization of the nation’s immigration laws in more than fourdecades.
Plenty of overheated rhetoric was used to commemorate the occasion.
“Today we can all believe that the lamp of this grand old lady is brighterand the golden door she guards gleams more brilliantly in the light of an
increased liberty for people from all countries,” said President Johnson, in
a nod to the Statue of Liberty behind him. The president and first ladythen left the island by helicopter and flew to Manhattan for a dinner at the
Waldorf Astoria.

62 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Despite the hoopla of that day, most supporters of the new immigra-
tion rules, including the president himself, saw them as little more than a
useful if unremarkable building block in the administration’s Great Soci-
ety legislation. Advancing civil rights was the order of the day, and immi-gration reform was simply part of the package. Cold War symbolism also
played its part. Supporters argued that America could not retain its place
as the head of the free world if it continued to determine who it took inand who it turned away on the basis of national origin. “The bill that we
will sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” LBJ told the crowd on Liberty
Island. “It does not affect the lives of millions, it will not reshape the struc-
ture of our daily lives or add importantly to our wealth and power.”
Nor, he might have added, was it particularly controversial. Three past
presidents—one Republican and two Democrats—had all pressed for elimi-
nation of restrictive immigration quotas based on national origin, essen-
tially unchanged since their enactment in 1921. LBJ signaled his own
determination to open up immigration more than a year earlier, calling
for reform in his 1964 State of the Union address. With the economy
roaring along, organized labor and African American leaders had dropped
their earlier opposition to this potential new source of economic and so-
cial competition. Most commentators predicted only a modest change in
immigration patterns, perhaps a slight shift in numbers from Western
Europe in favor of Asia and Latin America, with little or no real increasein the total number of new arrivals each year.
Even traditional defenders of the old immigration limits, including the
Daughters of the American Revolution and other so-called patriotic soci-
eties, put up only half-hearted and disorganized resistance. Like the bill’s
supporters, they largely accepted the experts’ predictions that the overall
number would change little. Bitter opposition among congressmen from
the Deep South, fresh from their dogged but doomed defense of Jim Crow,swayed no one. The Senate approved the bill by 76 votes to 18, while the
House voted 318 to 95.
The president’s signature, appended on that warm, sunny day on Lib-
erty Island, effectively abolished the 1921 National Origins Act and the
related Asiatic Barred Zone, an immigration regime designed to ensure
that America’s ethnic make-up remained essentially northern European,
particularly German, Irish, and British. Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Asians, and
Arabs, to name just some of the nationalities that had poured into the
country since the 1880s, were no longer welcome after 1921. Syrian im-

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 63
migrants, for example, who had once arrived at a rate of nine thousand or
more per year, were soon reduced to just a few hundred under the new
quota system. Public opinion surveys after World War II consistently sup-
ported the national quota system, and Congress reaffirmed the regime in1952, although it did lift an explicit ban on Asians at the time. Yet, within
little more than a dozen years, the entire system was abandoned.
A number of trends conspired to distort the stated goals of the new
policy from the very outset. First, a series of upheavals around the world
created a huge pool of would-be immigrants, abetted by increased mobil-
ity and more efficient global transportation links. Worldwide estimates
put the number of migrants at 75 million in 1960, a figure that would
reach 175 million by 2000. The U.S. share of this mobile populationdwarfed that of other countries, with an estimated immigrant population
of 35 million at the end of these four decades. Second, the crafters of the
immigration reform had sought clues to the road ahead by looking in the
rearview mirror, relying on the past as a measure of what the future would
bring. They were in no position to make accurate predictions about how
the world’s increasingly mobile population might respond to changes in
American law. A rich and prosperous Western Europe was no longer a
steady source of would-be immigrants. Meanwhile, family reunification,
central to the new U.S. policy and today the primary driver of the swelling
number of foreign-born residents, was hardly a factor in the decades be-fore the 1965 reforms.
It should come as no surprise that the demographic and social effects of
immigration reform shaped largely by such disparate forces as America’s
civil rights movement and the Cold War bore little or no resemblance to
the original intent of its backers—or even to the darkest fears of its most
strident opponents. Both sides in the political battle over the 1965 reforms
failed utterly to envision the America of today that they helped create. Norcould they have foreseen perhaps the single most profound change set in
motion by the new immigration regime: the permanent introduction of Is-
lam, the third great monotheistic tradition, into American daily life.
Forty years on, America features a flourishing Muslim community, es-
timated to be six million strong and representing at least eighty different
countries of origin. Only the annual hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, brings
together more Muslims from more countries than live in America today.
A recent survey by researchers at Georgetown University found that about
two-thirds of Muslim Americans were born outside the United States. Of

64 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
these immigrants, 34 percent came from South Asia, 26 percent were Ar-
abs, and 7 percent were Africans. Meanwhile, African American Muslims,
both converts and those raised as Muslims, represent about one-fifth of
the total Muslim American population. The Georgetown survey also foundthat the American Muslim community was better educated, better off, and
younger than the nation as a whole. Muslims tend to graduate from col-
lege at a rate more than double the national average, with half enjoying anannual household income of at least fifty thousand dollars. Three-quarters
of adult Muslims are less than fifty years old.
Mosque life in America has grown along with the steady increase in
population. The Mosque Study Project 2000, the largest such survey ever
conducted in the United States, found regular attendance at Friday com-munal prayers almost doubled between 1994 and 2000, with the number
of Muslim Americans actively associated with mosques up four-fold to
two million during the same period. Like the population at large, the con-
gregations at America’s mosques are ethnically diverse; 90 percent of
mosques feature mixed congregations of Arabs, South Asians, and African
Americans, and only 7 percent are attended by just one ethnic group.
Conversion rates among nonimmigrants held steady for the period, whilethe ranks of immigrants continued to swell. As a result, American Islam
increasingly reflects the immigrant population, at the expense of African
Americans, Latinos, and other native-born believers.
From about the eighth century, the great Muslim empires and states of
the Old World, from China to the Iberian Peninsula, produced great sci-
ence. Even as Christian Europe descended into the chaos, ignorance, and
intellectual torpor of the Middle Ages, the Muslim world took classical
learning to new heights. Muslim scholars made huge advances in as-
tronomy, mathematics, and geography, as well as in their more practicalstepchildren, navigation, engineering, and cartography. By the time the
Muslim and Christian forces clashed during the First Crusade, in 1096,
the Islamic soldiers were aghast at their new foes’ barbarism and lack of
even basic science and technology.
One byproduct of the Islamic intellectual revolution was an impulse
toward naval exploration, now abetted by such navigational devices as the
astrolabe and increasingly sophisticated maps and charts, and backed by
growing military and mercantile power. Classical Muslim geographers and
historians, including the renowned twelfth-century Arab authority al-

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 65
Idrissi, recount their co-religionists’ exploits crossing “the Sea of Dark-
ness and Fog,” a contemporary reference to the Atlantic Ocean. More
than a century earlier, the scholar al-Masudi noted the adventures of
Khashkhash ibn Saeed ibn Aswad, of Córdoba, who returned home in
A.D. 889, after crossing the Atlantic. Al-Masudi’s map of the world includes
a large, unidentified landmass in the Sea of Darkness and Fog. This great
sea, he reported, was believed to be “the source of all oceans and in itthere have been many strange happenings.”
Arab explorers were, of course, not the only ones drawn to this vast
ocean and the rumored riches that lay on its opposite shore. The glory of
claiming to be the first voyager to the New World has also been advanced
on behalf of the king of the gold-rich Muslim empire of Mali, who is saidto have sailed there in the early fourteenth century. Chinese imperial fleets,
under the Muslim admiral Zheng He, may have successfully crossed the
Atlantic seven decades ahead of Columbus. Some have sought to buttress
these accounts with linguistic and cultural evidence of pre-Columbian
contact between the Americas and the established Muslim world, but
modern experts remain deeply divided on the question.
There can, however, be no doubt about the next wave of Muslims to
reach American shores—these Muslims were caught in the brutal slave
trade that linked West Africa and the new colonies, by way of the dread
Middle Passage across the Sea of Darkness and Fog. Islam had taken rootin northern Senegal and Mali, carried across the Sahara by Arab and Berber
merchants from the north, well before the first slaves were shipped to the
New World, in 1501. The faith, popularized by local rulers, clerics, and
traders, spread to the shores of Lake Chad and into northern Nigeria.
West African Muslims soon became active participants in the global com-
munity of believers, establishing commercial, cultural, and diplomatic ties
that reached into North Africa and beyond. African pilgrims on the an-nual hajj to Mecca, one of the five obligations of the faith for any able-
bodied believer, further strengthened the region’s bond to traditional
centers of Islamic learning, as did the exchange of scholars, jurists, and
clerics.
By the time European slavers had set up their bases of operations in the
so-called Senegambia supply zone, the area had a large Muslim presence;
those who were not themselves Muslims were at least familiar with Islam,
its teachings, culture, and values. Among those values was an emphasis on
literacy, study, and scholarship. The Prophet Muhammed once said of the

66 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
pursuit of knowledge, “Seek for science, even in China.” And the Koran is
explicit about the need to study the teachings of the Holy Book. Educa-
tion was highly prized in West Africa, and local Muslim rulers built nu-
merous schools, many open to women and girls. In this vast area with nowritten language of its own, Arabic became the language of education as
well as the language of faith. Some local languages were later written in
Arabic script.
The inclusion of a significant number of Muslims among the slaves
bound for America was not simply an accident of geography—the tragic
intersection of European traders with a region undergoing profound reli-
gious conversion on a large scale. The rapid spread of the faith since its
revelation in the seventh century led to severe social and political disloca-tion among West Africa’s rival empires and kingdoms. Slavery in West
Africa was a frequent consequence of defeat in battle, a phenomenon ac-
celerated by the upsurge in war and violence that accompanied the rise of
militant Muslim states. One contemporary Western account notes the
disbelief and horror the local Africans expressed when told that Europe’s
battles generally ended in the deaths of thousands of soldiers, rather than
in the mass surrender to a life of enslavement by the victors. These tumul-
tuous times produced a ready supply of African captives, many of whom
were sold off to European slavers for transit to the labor-hungry planta-
tions of the New World. Islam’s emphasis on learning and religious knowl-edge also produced in West Africa a local class of mobile scholars, who
were easily caught up in the chaos of war and unrest and thus easy targets
for capture and sale to European slave traders.
Estimates of the number of Muslim slaves, sketchy at best and based on
the total number of slaves sent to America from those regions of West
Africa with at least some experience of Islam, run into “tens of thousands.”
While always a distinct minority among the early American slave popula-tion, the signs of this Muslim presence were everywhere—if one knows
where to look. Runaway slave notices, a regular feature of newspapers in
the Deep South, read like a Who’s Who of traditional Muslim names,
although the derivations may have escaped many of the slave owners:
Bullaly (Bilali, the first black follower of the Prophet and Islam’s first
muezzin); Boccarey (Abu Bakr, the first Muslim caliph); Mamado
(Mahmud); Mahomet (Muhammad); Walley (Wali, a legal guardian or
protector under Islamic law); and Sambo (or “second son” in the language
of the Muslim Fulbe people).

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 67
Fellow slaves, owners, missionaries, and other observers also recorded
behavior that was clearly Islamic, although they may not have recognized it
as such. Anecdotal evidence, for example, mentions slaves who would not
eat pork, forbidden under Islam. A slave narrative from 1837 written byCharles Ball, a non-Muslim, tells of one resolute captive who manages to
observe Islam’s five daily prayers despite his bondage: “In the evening, as
we returned home, we were joined by the man who prayed five times aday, and at the going down of the sun, he stopped and prayed aloud in our
hearing, in a language I did not understand.” Ball noted that he had seen
others throughout his long life on the southern plantations “who musthave been, from what I have since learned, Mohammedans, though at that
time I had not heard of the religion of Mohammad.” Others described
slaves who bowed in a particular direction, presumably toward Mecca,women who covered their heads and hair, and men who wore skullcaps
and manipulated prayer beads when making their devotions. Few seemed
to know the significance of what they had seen.
The presence of Muslims, particularly literate, well-educated ones,
among the American slave population posed some serious challenges to
an institution that cloaked its economic interests in morality and religion.After all, Africans were considered morally and intellectually inferior to
whites, an understanding used to legitimize their enslavement. This as-
sumption was hard to maintain when faced with a West African Muslimwho could read and write Arabic, could quote from the Koran, and was
versed in religious law and other learned disciplines. Second, converting
the slaves to Christianity, although initially frowned upon in some of thecolonies, was generally extolled because evangelization was part and par-
cel of the whites’ justification for the slave trade. Converting Muslims,
whose faith and religious training made them both familiar with the gen-eral outlines of Christian doctrine and well armed to resist any appeal it
might offer, was problematic. For Muslims, Muhammad was “the seal of
the prophets”—literally the last in a long line of holy figures that includedMoses and Jesus—and Islam had addressed once and for all the shortcom-
ings of the other monotheistic faiths.
Omar ibn Said, captured in 1807 in present-day Senegal, embodied
these challenges to the Christian world to which he was so abruptly de-
ported. He was born into a wealthy West African family around 1765, and
lived the life of a scholar for twenty-five years, making the pilgrimage toMecca in keeping with his faith and his exalted station in life. Omar be-
came a teacher and a merchant, but he later found himself on the losing

68 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
side of a religious war fought against a large non-Muslim army and was
sold into slavery. He arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, after a passage
of six weeks. Four years later, Omar attracted considerable local attention
in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he had been jailed as a runawayslave after taking refuge in a church. Townspeople were astounded that
this middle-aged slave could write petitions for his freedom on the walls
of his cell in Arabic, and they were impressed by his bearing and dignity.Omar was auctioned off to a prominent local family, headed by General
Jim Owen, to pay for his jailhouse upkeep, but his new masters demanded
only relatively light duties as a house servant and gardener.
It was during his time with the Owens family that Omar agreed to pro-
duce a brief autobiography and other documents, the earliest known ex-amples of Arabic text written in America. Fourteen of his twenty-one works,
all in Arabic, have survived to this day. Rediscovered in an old trunk in
Virginia in 1995 and bought at auction by a prominent collector, Omar’s
original autobiographical sketch reveals much about the way his classical
Muslim education and religious outlook served him during his hard life in
a strange and hostile land.
Christian missionaries translated his work during his lifetime, and they
were eager to see signs that Omar ibn Said—commonly known in white
society as Moro, a corruption of his first name—had renounced Islam for
Christianity. Omar may well have intended to give that impression, forhis well-being was in the hands of his Christian masters. And there was
always the possibility that he might win his freedom and secure passage
back to Africa, as some other high-born Christian converts had done. Thus,
in his writings, the author at times presents a modest portrait of his talents
and abilities, apologizing that he has “forgotten much of my talk as well as
the talk of the Maghreb,” that is, the Arabic language.
Yet, a modern reading of the rediscovered manuscript paints a picture
of a man who has retained his religious and intellectual essence, a man
who is able to resist the culture and values of his captors, if only on the
spiritual plane. He also clearly has a command of Arabic, which he uses
subtly and with apparent ease. In one passage, Said seeks to ease the pain-
ful distinction between slave and master by invoking a famous verse from
the Koran that reminds his readers that all men, even his captors, are ulti-
mately slaves to God. Elsewhere, Said offers another telling verse, this
time a declaration that Allah does not demand too much of Muslims living
among nonbelievers. In all his writings, Omar opens with the traditional

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 69
Muslim invocation of Allah. Although baptized in 1821, he later openly
declares his attachment to Islam. “I am Omar, I love to read the book, the
Great Koran.” Such sentiments prompted one Christian translator to note
some years after Omar’s death, in 1864, “It is a little startling to find thatUncle Moro still retained a little weakness for Mohammed.”
Omar never did regain his freedom. But because of his learning he was
granted special treatment, and he gained a certain celebrity through breath-less newspaper and magazine articles about his life. Like other educated
Muslim slaves who caught the public eye, Omar ibn Said was generally
viewed not so much as an African but as a Moor, or simply a “Moham-
medan.” White newspaper readers were fascinated by tales of exotic Afri-
can “princes” who had been sold into slavery, at times to be rescued bytheir exalted station and returned home, or at least treated as curiosities.
Such fantastic stories skirted the inconvenient fact that there were Africans—
black Africans—who clearly did not fit slaver owners’ conception of them
as uneducated beings suited only to manual labor and requiring the moral
and physical protection of whites.
While Islam had equipped Omar ibn Said and many of his fellow Mus-
lims with the spiritual means to resist some of the worst deprivations of
their enslavement in the New World, it did not succeed in putting down
permanent roots in antebellum America. There were simply too many
obstacles to the establishment of the faith under slavery. The vast major-ity of slaves were males, and the common practice of selling off spouses
and children made anything like family life, in which religious tradition
could be passed along to the next generation, almost impossible. Condi-
tions were harsh and few slaves lived a long or healthy life. Fertility was
low and infant mortality was high.
For Muslims, the challenges were even more daunting. The odds that a
Muslim male would find a Muslim wife were small. Islam requires time topray, to study, and to learn Arabic. Copies of the Koran or other books in
Arabic were not available. In a faith that effectively bars images and reli-
gious iconography, such as statues or church windows, the written word is
crucial. Muslim slaves—often isolated from their co-religionists—were
surrounded by the Christian culture of their masters. By 1830, conversion
of the slave population to Christianity was almost complete. The final end
of the trans-Atlantic slave trade three decades later cut off the supply of
new African-born Muslims who could keep the faith alive. It is little won-
der that only scant hints of this early Islamic tradition remain, such as the

70 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
distribution of special sweets on certain days of the year in remote parts of
Georgia or perhaps the practice of circumambulating the pulpit counter-
clockwise in some black churches.
Ross, North Dakota, was little more than a lonesome railway siding when
Hassen Juma arrived from his native Syria in 1899. Sam Omar joined him,
and within a few years there were about two dozen families, all from twovillages in a distant corner of the dying Ottoman Empire. The newcomers
farmed the prairie like the other nearby settlers, primarily Scandinavians,
but they also prayed five times a day and gathered for communal prayers
on Fridays in one another’s homes. Hassen Juma, Sam Omar, and his Syr-
ian neighbors were all Muslims, part of the America’s next significant en-counter with the faith.
U.S. immigration and census records have never really kept pace with
either the changing nature of immigration or with America’s changing
notions of ethnicity and race. Nor are they much use in determining the
religious make-up of America at any given time. This is certainly true of a
wave of immigration, running from around 1875 until 1912, from the part
of the Ottoman Empire including modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and
Palestine. The vast majority of Arabs fleeing their troubled homeland for
the New World were Christians. Yet among them were pockets of Sunni
and Shi’ite Muslims, as well as members of the smaller Alawite and Druzesects. Whatever their religion, most of the new arrivals were eager to avoid
the stigma often attached to Muslim “Turks” and simply called them-
selves Syrians. Official U.S. immigration records list them as people from
“Turkey in Asia,” or “Other Asian,” making it impossible to quantify with
any precision the number of Arab Muslims entering the country.
Members of this early wave often had little or no education. Some,
such as Hassen Juma and his neighbors in North Dakota, took to home-steading. Others found work as unskilled laborers; some worked as ped-
dlers before accumulating enough capital and enough local knowledge to
become small shopkeepers or even successful large merchants. One color-
ful figure, known in America as Hi Jolly—a corruption of Hajji Ali, an
honorific denoting completion of the pilgrimage to Mecca or a relatedhonor—came from Syria as part of a short-lived U.S. Army program to
deploy camels as military beasts of burden in the southwestern states, newly
acquired from Mexico. He died in Quartzsite, Arizona, prospecting for
gold. A commemorative plaque, put up by the state highway department

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 71
in 1935, reads: “The last camp of Hi Jolly, born somewhere in Syria around
1828, died at Quartzsite December 16, 1902. Came to this country in
February 10, 1856. Camel-driver – packer – scout – over thirty years a
faithful aid to the U.S. government.”
Many Muslim immigrants settled in the rural Midwest, where they
formed some of the nation’s first Islamic communities, although only some
have survived until today. Detroit’s fledgling automobile industry, withits demand for unskilled labor, gave rise to what became the large Arab
and Muslim stronghold in Dearborn. Toledo and Chicago took their share.
A cluster of Albanian Muslims settled in Maine to work at the mills, while
Muslims from Lebanon moved to Quincy, Massachusetts, as early as 1875
to work in the shipyards.
In 1929, the believers of Ross, North Dakota, erected what is widely
thought to be the first purpose-built mosque in the United States. Before
that, America’s Muslims had generally held communal prayers in private
homes or rented halls and other public spaces. The North Dakota mosque
was set into a shallow trench in the earth, more of a basement for a future
structure than a finished work of religious architecture. It was used until
the 1960s but never really completed, falling victim first to the Great
Depression and then to the steady social and economic pressures felt by
Muslims in the overwhelmingly Christian nation. This little community
of prairie Muslims proved too small and too isolated to sustain itself; in-termarriage and conversion to Christianity finally finished it off. By the
time the North Dakota Historical Society got around to identifying
America’s first mosque as a site worthy of preservation, the building had
been torn down. The old Muslim cemetery remains; its gate marked by a
crescent and star.
Other communities fared somewhat better. An Islamic center was cre-
ated in Michigan City, Indiana, in 1914 to serve local Lebanese and Syr-ian merchants. It later expanded as it attracted more and more Muslims
and was renamed the Modern Age Arabian Islamic Society. Muslim ped-
dlers and traders in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, held their Friday prayers in a
rented hall until 1934, when they built what is now the oldest American
mosque in continuous use. Forty-six years later, a minaret was added to
the structure, a white-framed building with a green dome often referred
to as the Mother Mosque of America.
Despite their successes, many of these early immigrant communities
found themselves cut off from fellow Muslims and isolated in small cities

72 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
and towns in the American heartland. They often lacked the financial re-
sources and social cohesion to build the mosques, Islamic centers, and
religious schools necessary to sustain and propagate the faith. The chaos
of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire that had ruled overmuch of the Arab world for centuries touched off a surge in immigration
from Muslim lands, but that was effectively halted by passage of the Na-
tional Origins Act in 1921. With the supply of fresh Muslim arrivals cutoff, the long-term survival of many of these nascent immigrant communi-
ties was increasingly in doubt. Those that did survive, and even flourish,
did so not as part of a global or even American community of believers,
but as independent entities in which tribal or ethnic affiliation or place of
origin was more important than any universal Muslim identity. Islam had
again failed to take real hold on American soil.
Toward the Nation of Islam
The effective closing of America’s borders to all but northern Europeans
after World War I coincided with a great internal migration of African
Americans heading for the industrialized northern states to work in the
region’s factories, steel mills, auto plants, and slaughterhouses. Opportu-
nities in the South, site of their former enslavement, and now home to the
so-called Jim Crow laws, were limited, and many sought the promise ofbetter jobs and a better life in the North. The loss of familiar settings and
culture, however hostile, were deeply wrenching. Cut off from their south-
ern roots, including the ever-present black churches, many African Ameri-
cans struggled to find a new identity and sense of belonging in the alien
surroundings. For some, this vacuum was filled by the rise of new social,
intellectual, and spiritual movements. The leader of one such movement,
which came to be known as the Black Islamizers, was Noble Drew Ali, wholike his followers had recently made his way north from the rural South.
Born Timothy Drew in North Carolina in 1886, he took the name
Noble Drew Ali and began to preach a message that African Americans
were a “Moorish” people, historically Muslim by culture and heritage.
Unlike Marcus Garvey before him, whose back-to-Africa movement haddecidedly Christian overtones, Ali invoked the language of Islam to foster
a sense of pride and focus blacks’ attention on what they could achieve in
their families, communities, and American society at large. His Moorish
Science taught that African Americans had to free themselves of their slave

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 73
names and slave identities and revel in their great “Asiatic” culture. It is
said Noble Drew Ali used to preach in a vacant lot in Newark, New Jersey,
standing on a milk crate to attract attention: “Come all ye Asiatics, come
learn the truth about yourself, that you are not Negroes, Black People,Colored Folks, Ethiopians and so called African-Americans.” His follow-
ers were each provided with an official membership card. Men commonly
adopted the fez and sported beards, giving them a distinct identity withinthe local black community. In one photograph, Ali, apparently at a con-
ference of non-white activists in Havana, Cuba, a Moroccan flag draped
over one shoulder and an American flag over the other.
Noble Drew Ali went further than simply preaching racial pride, per-
sonal betterment, and community development, all wrapped up in Islamic
rhetoric. He praised Marcus Garvey for making blacks receptive to hisown, divinely inspired message. He expropriated Islamic symbols for his
own use, claimed he was a prophet of Allah (heresy for any true Muslim,
for whom Muhammad was the final messenger of God), and produced ascripture that he called The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of
America , an amalgam of scattered teachings from Islam, Christianity,
Free masonry, and other belief systems. He told his followers he had a
mandate from the king of Morocco to instruct African Americans in the
one true faith.
Ali founded the first Moorish Science Temple in Newark, in 1913, be-
fore moving his base of operations to Chicago, a hotbed of American spiri-
tuality. Moorish Science Temples were soon established in Detroit,
Pittsburgh, and other major industrial cities, and the movement held itsfirst national convention in 1928. Noble Drew Ali died one year later un-
der mysterious circumstances, possibly the result of a police beating dur-
ing an investigation into the fatal stabbing of one of his Moorish Sciencerivals. The movement continues to this day, but without its charismatic
founder and leader it was unable to retain its early influence in the black
community.
It is not clear where Noble Drew Ali first encountered Islam, although
during his lifetime Islamic teachings and symbols had begun to gain some
currency in urban America. This was partly the work of a white Americanconvert, Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb, who became a Muslim in
1888 and actively propagated the faith in Chicago, New York, and other
cities and towns across the country. A former newspaperman and laterU.S. consul in Manila, Webb converted to Islam while in the East. He
returned home to open a religious publishing house, establish an Islamic

74 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
mission and mosque in New York City, and extol Islam’s message of racial
equality and social harmony. Webb, one of the first white Americans to
convert, was something of a sensation at the World’s Parliament of Reli-
gions, part of the 1893 World’s Fair held in Chicago, where he presented
what was for many their earliest introduction to the faith.
Chicago’s civic and business leaders fought hard for the honor, and
potential profit, of hosting the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition to
commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’sarrival in the New World. They raised five million dollars in seed money,
and promised the U.S. Congress they would double that if chosen to host
the fair. To their relief, the city was selected on the eighth ballot, and
work began at once on the daunting enterprise, scheduled to open May 1.
The Chicago World’s Fair was a hit. More than fifty nations presentedexhibits, and total admissions over its six-month run topped 27 million,
equivalent to almost one quarter of the U.S. population. The fair also saw
the introduction of such classic Americana as the Ferris Wheel, the carni-
val midway, Crackerjack, and Shredded Wheat cereal. Profits from the
entertainment district—featuring the Orientalist fantasy, the “snake
charmer’s dance”—kept the entire thing solvent.
The exposition’s leaders also organized a series of conferences to present
the world’s greatest thinkers on “the wonderful achievements of the new
age in science, literature, education, government, jurisprudence, morals,
charity, religion, and other departments of human activity, as the most
effective means of increasing the fraternity, progress, prosperity, and peace
of mankind.” Of these, the largest was the World’s Parliament of Religions,a revolutionary forerunner to today’s interfaith movement. The gathering
opened in September and ran for sixteen days. John Henry Bar rows, a Uni-
tarian who chaired the World’s Fair religion committee, edited an illus-
trated volume to commemorate the Parliament. In a preface that captures
the high-minded and optimistic goals of the time, he wrote:
The faces of living men of all Faiths, the Temples wherein they worship, the
record of their highest achievements, the reasons for their deepest convic-tions, and the story of their earliest meeting together in loving conference, arefor the first time presented in one comprehensive work. The Western Citywhich was deemed the home of the crudest materialism has placed a goldenmilestone in Man’s pathway toward the spiritual Millennium.
Despite concerted opposition from the archbishop of Canterbury, the
Muslim sultan of Turkey, and the Catholic leadership in Europe, the event

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 75
drew a remarkable range of religious figures from ten of the world’s most
prominent faiths. The role of representing Islam fell not to an established
religious authority from the Muslim world but to the convert Muhammad
Alexander Russell Webb. His appearance at the World’s Parliament, wherehe delivered papers entitled “The Influence of Islam upon Social Condi-
tions” and “The Spirit of Islam,” marked the high point in a vocation that
never found much resonance with his fellow white, middle-class Ameri-cans during his lifetime.
Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb remains an important, if fleeting,
figure in the history of Islam in America. In one of his writings, a text thatin many ways still rings true today, Webb lamented the lowly state of
Americans’ knowledge of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.
Since my return to my native country I have been greatly surprised, not only
at the general ignorance prevalent among so-called learned people regardingthe life, character and teachings of the Arabian Prophet but also at the self-
confident readiness and facility with which some of these same people express
their opinions of Mohammed and the Islamic system.
Webb ascribed this ignorance to centuries of Christian hatred of Islam
that dated back to the time of the crusades, as well as to the general inac-cessibility of the Holy Book and other Islamic texts to those who could
not read Arabic. But he also acknowledged a general distaste among his
fellow Muslims for translating their sacred texts into an alien, Westerntongue. “Therefore,” he concluded, “the first purpose of this little book is
to give to the English-speaking world a brief but accurate and reliable
description of the character and purpose of Mohammed, and a generaloutline of the Islamic system.”
After his conversion Webb traveled to India, where he became ac-
quainted with the missionary movement the Ahmadiyya Association for thePropagation of Islam. The movement published the first English-language
interpretation of the Koran aimed at the United States, and soon Ah-
madiyya literature, including English commentaries on the Holy Book,was available in a number of American cities. Ahmadiyya missionaries,
whose unorthodox views eventually caused them to be dismissed by most
of the Muslim world as heretics, enjoyed some early success among theyoung African American communities now taking shape in the great north-
ern cities, particularly in Chicago and New York. Webb’s own books, lec-
ture tours, and other religious work and his contacts with the Ahmadiyyamade him something of a bridge between the Muslim world and his native
land. He failed, however, to spread the faith among America’s white middle

76 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
class, and today his name is familiar only to scholars and some Muslim
activists.
Noble Drew Ali was not the only disciple of Marcus Garvey to strike a
chord among the new black communities of the North. Elijah Poole, aformer autoworker and the son of an itinerant Baptist preacher, went on,
as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, to head the Lost-Found Nation of
Islam in the Wilderness of North America, later shortened to the Nationof Islam. Like Noble Drew Ali, whose work later influenced him, Elijah
Muhammad made his way north from the Deep South, first to Detroit,
where he worked at a Chevrolet plant. He eventually settled in Chicagoand in 1934 took over the Nation of Islam from its enigmatic founder,
Wallace D. Fard.
Fard’s origins remain something of a puzzle, as do the earliest days of
his movement. A government file released under the Freedom of Infor-
mation Act by the FBI, which for decades had targeted the Nation of Is-
lam, says Fard was born in New Zealand in 1891 to a British father and aPolynesian mother. An anonymous FBI functionary could not resist a bit
of bureau humor at Fard’s expense, writing in a memo dated November 9,
1943, that the man known by his early followers as Allah and “the livingGod” had “proved to be very much of a human being because he has an
arrest record in the Identification Division of the FBI.” Fard disappeared
from Detroit in 1934 and was never heard from again.
Nation of Islam teachings, like those of the Moorish Science Temple
before it, borrowed heavily from Islamic symbolism, terminology, and
history, while much of its actual religious practice resembled the tradi-tions of black churches. Members sat on benches, sang, and listened to
sermons on religious and topical themes of the day. At the same time, the
Nation of Islam drew on a number of Islam’s practical guidelines for vir-tuous living. Followers were enjoined to pray five times a day. Gambling,
pork, alcohol, and drugs were all banned. There was a heavy emphasis on
education and self-improvement, and Nation members were expected togive alms and support the movement with a portion of their income. These
guidelines were all in keeping with established Muslim practice.
Elijah Muhammad, however, also established some decidedly un-Islamic
notions, ideas that ultimately proved fatal for his vision of the Nation of
Islam. He declared that white people were descendents of the Devil; W. D.
Fard was a divine figure sent to usher in the Day of Judgment; he was amessenger of Allah; and blacks were the divinely chosen people, the long-
lost tribe of Shabazz, discoverers of Mecca. Such teachings were anath-

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 77
ema to orthodox Muslims. The shahada, the profession of faith that liter-
ally defines what it means to be a Muslim, proclaims, “There is no god but
God, and Muhammad is His Prophet.” For a human being to claim divine
status, as Wallace D. Fard apparently did, was a sin of the highest order,and Elijah Muhammad’s assertion that he was the last messenger of God
also violated the most basic tenet of the faith. Moreover, the Koran and
Islamic tradition stress that all races are equal in the eyes of God, a teach-ing that lay at the heart of Islam’s phenomenal early success in creating a
large, multiethnic community of believers that reached across much of
the known world.
By invoking Islam and its culture, Moorish Science and later the Na-
tion of Islam appealed effectively to their target audience, displaced urban
blacks cut adrift from their southern roots. Here was an Eastern faith andculture that had evolved outside the now-dominant world of white Euro-
peans. Its language was Arabic, a non-Western tongue written in a non-
Western script. Arabs, Africans, and other people of color founded thegrand Muslim empires. And it offered a simple and straightforward mes-
sage of universal equality, as well as a social conservatism that matched
many of the values of the traditional black churches. In other words, theIslam of Noble Drew Ali and Elijah Muhammad met the needs of the new
converts, addressing their hopes and fears, explaining their present, and
offering them a better future.
At its height, the Nation of Islam operated seventy-five temples and
claimed one million members. It also maintained a strong presence in
America’s prison system, dating back at least to the 1940s, when ElijahMuhammad served time in Michigan for sedition, treason, and conspiracy
after calling on Nation members not to fight in World War II, which he
opposed on religious grounds. Zealous government investigators exploredwhether the movement had ties to America’s wartime enemy Japan. Al-
most a decade earlier, Muhammad had been jailed for rejecting the public
school system and demanding that his members’ children have access toan education that reflected their religious and social values. These and
similar experiences heightened the feeling among Nation of Islam follow-
ers that the white judicial system was out to get them. It also strengthenedtheir standing within the urban black community.
Islam’s historical lack of a centralized religious authority and its weak
roots in America made it ripe for exploitation by Noble Drew Ali, ElijahMuhammad, and other Black Islamizers; there was simply no one in a
position to challenge their reading of the faith, no matter how much they

78 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
may have strayed. Only a challenge from within could shake the teachings
of the Nation of Islam, and it came in time from two of the movement’s
luminaries: Malcolm X, once heir apparent to the leadership, and Wallace
Deen Muhammad, the scholarly seventh son of Elijah Muhammad.
Malcolm X’s world changed forever when he made his pilgrimage to
Mecca, in 1964. Already, the charismatic public face of the Nation of Is-
lam had privately begun to question some aspects of the group’s teach-ings. Rumors of Elijah Muhammad’s sexual improprieties only added to
his disenchantment. The two men had clashed increasingly, most recently
over the Vietnam War and the Kennedy assassination, which Malcolmsuggested was a direct and natural byproduct of America’s violent culture.
Critics of the Nation took this to mean that Malcolm was sanctioning the
assassination, and Elijah Muhammad banned his one-time protégé fromspeaking in public for ninety days. Soon Malcolm was removed as minis-
ter of New York City’s prominent Temple Number Seven. At the same
time, Wallace Deen Muhammad, whose mastery of Arabic allowed him toconsult traditional Islamic sources, began to question central elements of
his father’s racist and separatist doctrines. Wallace was excommunicated
in part for his increasing association with Malcolm, with whom he shared
his doubts.
Malcolm set off on the hajj in a state of spiritual agitation and personal
turmoil. After seventeen years in the Nation of Islam, he was completely
unprepared for his first real encounter with the Muslim world. To his
chagrin, Malcolm realized he knew virtually nothing of Islamic life, not
even the basic prayers. In a brief letter home to his sister Ella, the former
minister of New York’s Temple Number Seven emphasized the need forproper knowledge of the faith: “Please give my best love and wishes for
success to the believers there. All of them should learn the correct way
that Muslims pray, and should learn the prayer in Arabic. It is a must,
otherwise they will always be embarrassed at prayer time.”
More profoundly, Malcolm’s ritual walk seven times around the Kaaba
opened his eyes to a new world, one defined by universal Muslim fellow-
ship, not by race, skin color, or ethnicity. As Malcolm wrote in his famous“Letter from Mecca,”
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were
of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skin Africans. But we were allparticipating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhoodthat my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist be-tween the white and non-white . . . You may be shocked by these words com-

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 79
ing from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has
forced me to re-arrange much of my thought patterns previously held, and to
toss aside some of my previous conclusions.
He signed the letter El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz—a new name that reflected
his new Islamic outlook.
Malcolm’s trip to Mecca sealed his break with the Nation of Islam, an
organization that had defined his life for almost two decades. He returnedto America on May 21, 1964, with a new message of tolerance, one that
repudiated the views of his mentor, Elijah Muhammad.
In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I will
never be guilty of that again—as I know now that some white people are truly
sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a Black man.
The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people isas wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against Blacks.
Malcolm’s relations with the Nation of Islam went from bad to worse, and
at least one member of his own family publicly denounced his turn awayfrom the Nation’s teachings. Malcolm’s house was firebombed on Febru-
ary 14, 1965, although no one was injured. Seven days later, the man now
known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was gunned down while giving a speechin New York City’s Audubon Ballroom. Three members of the Nation of
Islam were convicted of the murder, although it later became clear that
only one of them was involved; suspicions that the movement’s leadershipordered the assassination have never been confirmed.
Malcolm was not the only influential voice from within the heart of the
movement to question the Nation of Islam’s doctrine. Wallace DeenMuhammad made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1967; the experience helped
prepare him to make the delicate but determined overhaul of the Nation
that eventually turned the movement toward orthodox Islam. Wallace’schance to reform the Nation came in 1975, when he was declared the new
supreme minister after the death of Elijah Muhammad. Perhaps mindful
of the fate of his friend and spiritual companion Malcolm X, Wallace be-gan his reforms with a series of cautious steps aimed at dismantling much
of the Nation’s ideology. He praised his father’s leadership of the move-
ment but also made it clear that Wallace D. Fard, the Nation’s guidinglight, was not divine. This in turn reduced the status of his “messenger,”
Elijah Muhammad, to that of an ordinary, fallible mortal. Wallace dis-
mantled the Fruit of Islam, the Nation’s security force, which posed thegreatest threat of organized resistance to his new direction. He disen-
tangled the Nation’s varied business enterprises from its religious works.

80 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
These moves allowed for a more radical transformation of the Nation’s
core beliefs: whites were no longer seen as devils and were even invited to
join the movement; black racial superiority and the call for a separatist
state were no longer emphasized; and Wallace’s former comrade, MalcolmX, was posthumously reinstated in the organization’s good graces.
Although the Nation was now splintered into rival camps, Wallace
took other steps toward what he hoped would be a final shift to Islamicorthodoxy. He changed the organization’s name several times in quick
succession —from the Nation of Islam to the World Community of Islam
in the West to the American Muslim Mission—before proclaiming in 1985
that his followers no longer needed a separate, distinct identity. From this
point forward, he said, they were simply members of the ummah, the world-
wide community of believers. Along the way, Wallace Deen Muhammad
changed his own identity as well, assuming the name Warith Deen
Muhammad, literally “the inheritor of the religion of Muhammad.” Mean-
while, Wallace’s rival for leadership of the movement, Louis Farrakhan,
sought to resurrect the legacy of Elijah Muhammad and keep the Nation
of Islam alive. In recent years he, too, has overseen a tentative movement
toward some measure of authentic Islamic practice. However, many or-
thodox African American Muslims, as well as their co-religionists here
and abroad, remain deeply skeptical of Farrakhan, despite his movement’s
good works combating drugs, AIDS, and innercity crime.
Farrakhan is not the only threat to Warith Deen Muhammad’s power
and influence. Many imams in his own organization, now broadly decen-
tralized into more of a loose network, are affiliated to him in name only,
and they often ignore his guidance to pursue their own visions. The result
is a fragmented movement subject to attack on the one hand from Nation
loyalists seeking to maintain its separatist mission, and on the other from
orthodox African American Muslims demanding a faith grounded moreprecisely in traditional Islamic texts.
Warith Deen Muhammad has also come under attack for what some in
the community see as his wholesale embrace of mainstream American so-
ciety, in contrast to his father’s aim to establish a separate state in the
name of black rights and social and economic power. While Elijah
Muhammad was once jailed for calling on his members to refuse to fight
in World War II, W. D. Muhammad—himself a conscientious objector
on religious grounds during Vietnam—decreed civic participation, such
as voting and military service, acceptable. Although he is undoubtedly an

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 81
elder statesman with no real equal on the scene today and up to fifty thou-
sand followers, Warith Deen Muhammad exercises little direct control
over the almost two hundred mosques tied to his network .
The phenomenon of black Islam, as expressed by the Moorish Science
Temple and the Nation, had little to do with either Islam or Africa. It was,
as the prominent scholar Sherman L. Jackson, an orthodox Muslim, points
out, a product of America’s racial politics and the failure of the blackchurches to meet the needs of southern black workers newly arrived in the
industrial North. The early Islamizers, he writes, “were not so much in-
terpreting Islam as they were appropriating it. . . . In fact, there is little
evidence that Noble Drew Ali or Elijah Muhammad knew much at all
about Islamic doctrine.” Jackson also notes the complete absence among
black Americans of any of the defining elements of African Islam—including
its strong mystical tradition and its distinct school of Islamic law—and thelack of familiarity with its chief intellectual or religious figures.
It is often said that the experience of black Islam, whatever its theologi-
cal deficiencies, helped pave the way for the eventual conversion of large
numbers of African Americans to traditional Sunni Islam. Yet, as Malcolm
X found to his dismay in 1964, black Islam was a self-contained, whollyAmerican phenomenon with little or nothing to offer the broader Muslim
world. There were few black Muslim religious scholars, no jurists, and no
clerics capable of establishing their place in the worldwide ummah. Nor
could black Islam really claim to have created an American Muslim iden-
tity, for its adherents were clearly blacks first and Muslims second—a re-versal of the Islamic tradition that holds all believers as equals in the eyes
of God and one another. As a result, African American Muslims were ill
equipped for their first mass encounter with Islamic orthodoxy when re-
newed immigration from the Middle East and Asia began in 1965 with the
collapse of America’s long-standing immigration regime.
Muslim American Immigrants Today
Unlike the fleeting nature of American Islam under slavery, the tenuoushold of the prairie Muslims, or the theological ambiguity of Moorish Sci-ence Temple and the Nation, the new immigrant Islam had all the tools
necessary to compete in the America’s social, economic, and theological
marketplace. Its followers were generally middle-class professionals—part
of a “brain drain” that has plagued the developing world—seeking higher

82 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
education and economic advancement in the West. The new arrivals had the
financial resources and organizational skills they needed to pursue and per-
petuate the faith. They opened mosques and Islamic centers, imported
their prayer leaders and Koran readers from home, formed religious and Mus-lim professional associations, and generally set about re-creating much of
the life they had left behind.
In theological terms, the new immigrants instantly became the reli-
gious authorities for the American ummah. Although African American
Muslims challenged their knowledge, their beliefs and practice had a solid
theological foundation. Unlike black Islam, which had sought first andforemost to defend its members from persecution by whites, the immi-
grant faith hinged on the traditional concerns of Muslims in the Middle
East and Indian subcontinent. These concerns included the struggle againstnonbelievers, the defense of religious and family purity, and the pursuit of
distinctive, local cultural practices in the guise of universal Muslim reli-
gious observance. Even orthodox African American Muslims soon saw theirconcerns and influence pushed to the background by the commanding
presence of the newcomers.
The 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East; lingering effects of the
partition of India, including strife in Pakistan and the creation of
Bangladesh; the Iranian revolution; the Lebanese civil war; and the perse-
cution of Arabs and Asians in East Africa set in motion huge swathes ofhumanity seeking improved opportunities and a respite from violence.
Many saw the changes in U.S. immigration laws as the opportunity of a
lifetime. The biggest groups of new Muslim arrivals were Arabs, Iranians,and immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, the last being the largest
and fastest growing segment of all. The changing face of U.S. immigra-
tion was remarkable. Government figures show that Europeans made up86 percent of all immigrants in the years 1901 to 1920. Asia provided just
4 percent of all immigrants during the same period, and Latin America 3
percent. However, from 1980 to 1993, Asia accounted for 39 percent oflegal immigration. European immigration declined to just 13 percent. Many
of these immigrants from Asia and the Middle East were Muslims.
Any portrait of Muslim immigration in America today must remain an
incomplete mosaic. The Census Bureau is prohibited by law from asking
about religious affiliation in its regular surveys of the American populace,
forcing researchers to rely on a variety of techniques to approximate thenumbers of adherents to different faiths. Identity politics and the com-
petitive bid for political and social influence have also colored the effort.

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 83
However, most demographers accept a total of around six million Mus-
lims, a figure that comes in well above that offered by several studies backed
by Jewish organizations but below those of some Muslim advocacy groups.
A series of studies undertaken by Georgetown University sidestepped
the question of the total Muslim population and focused instead on the
specific makeup and social, political, and religious attitudes of the Muslim
American community. Religion represents a significant element in the dailylives of America’s Muslims. Georgetown researchers found that half of all
Muslim Americans make the five daily prayers regularly, while another
fifth make some of the five prayers each day, with women more likely than
men to make all the prayers. Of those surveyed, 82 percent said both the
role of Islam and spirituality in general were “very important” to theirlives, with another 12 percent saying they were “somewhat important.”
The latest survey, conducted in 2004, also found that American Mus-
lims had reacted to September 11 and its aftermath by asserting their own
unique social and political identity. Almost 70 percent told the research-
ers that being a Muslim was an important factor in their voting decisions,
and 86 percent said it was important for Muslims to participate in politics.
Beforehand, the majority of Muslims had generally preferred to maintain
a low profile, seeking to blend into the diverse demographic landscape of
contemporary American life. This shift was a direct response to sharp in-
creases in discrimination, harassment by law enforcement, and racist rheto-ric against Muslims in America sparked by the so-called War on Terrorism.
Among the most important factors in crystallizing the rise in Muslim
American pride and collective identity was the passage, and selective en-
forcement, of the 2001 USA Patriot Act—an acronym for the Orwellian
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Re-
quired to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism—rushed to Congress by the
Bush administration in the weeks after September 11. It was approvedwith little debate by lawmakers, many of whom later acknowledged they
had not even bothered to read a bill that greatly expanded the powers of
law enforcement to intrude on the daily lives of American citizens and
legal residents. Among its most alarming provisions were the broad ex-
pansion of the definition of “domestic terrorism” to include some college
protest groups; increased access by law enforcement to medical, library,
financial, and sales records without a demonstration of probable cause;
and the so-called sneak-and-peak authority to search someone’s home
without a warrant or even timely notification to the owner or resident.

84 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Almost immediately, Muslims in America found themselves targets of
law enforcement operations in the name of homeland security. Thousands
of Arab and Muslim men were questioned and at least twelve hundred
people—U.S. officials stopped reporting the figure after reaching thisnumber due to what it called statistical confusion—were rounded up and
detained under the new provisions of the USA Patriot Act, ostensibly for
suspected visa violations. Reports by Human Rights Watch found that themen were held in what amounted to “preventive detention,” something
generally barred by U.S. criminal law. What’s more, the detainees were
held without charge, denied bond, and barred from contacting their fami-lies or legal representatives. The inspector general for the Department of
Justice later noted many of the detainees were subjected to physical and
verbal abuse while in custody. The roundup produced virtually no chargesof involvement in terrorism, and most of the suspects were either deported
or eventually released.
Suspected “illegals” were not the only ones to feel the sting of the Pa-
triot Act. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a born-again Christian who
led prayers in his government office and ordered that bare-breasted stat-
ues in the Department of Justice building be covered with curtains, di-rected the FBI to interview five thousand legal immigrants from Muslim
countries, even though the authorities acknowledged that they had no
evidence that any of those sought for questioning had any connection toterrorist activity or any knowledge that would aid their investigations.
Federal agents fanned out to mosques, schools, Islamic centers, and pri-
vate homes—often guided by nothing more than an anonymous tip orgeneral racial stereotype. Ashcroft also ordered the special registration
and fingerprinting of young males from twenty-five countries—with the
exception of North Korea, they were all Muslim or Arab states.
In the months after September 11, Ashcroft or other senior U.S. offi-
cials regularly held press conferences to announce with great fanfare the
latest terrorism related arrests. Virtually all these high-profile cases havesince ended in quiet dismissal or reduction to simple immigration viola-
tions. A few select cases have found federal prosecutors stymied by an
increasingly skeptical judicial system, wary that the executive branch hasover-stepped its authority in the War on Terrorism. Meanwhile, Muslim
Americans have no doubts that they are now the targets of vicious racial
and ethnic profiling at the hands of their adopted homeland.
The atmosphere of official fear and hostility toward Islam created fer-
tile ground for vigilante attacks and general hate crimes against Muslims

THE ROOTS OF ISLAM IN AMERICA 85
and Islamic institutions. The FBI’s Hate Crimes Unit recorded an aston-
ishing rise in attacks on Muslims in the immediate aftermath of Septem-
ber 11, from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. In the nine months after September
11, the Council on American-Islamic Relations noted more than 1,715incidents of hate crimes, discrimination, and racial profiling, including
303 reports of actual violence against members of the Muslim commu-
nity. One of the first deadly cases of anti-Muslim violence involved a manproclaiming to be an American patriot shooting a dark-skinned business-
man wearing a turban in Mesa, Arizona. The victim was Balbir Singh Sodhi,
whose traditional Sikh headdress, authorities say, led the shooter to mis-
take him for a Muslim. Other anti-Muslim murders were also reported in
Los Angeles and Dallas.
At times, the violence against Muslims has been rhetorical, often led by
allies of President George W. Bush. Reverend Jerry Falwell, whose evan-
gelical zeal, money, and influence have greatly benefited the Republican
establishment over the years, famously declared the Prophet Muhammad
“a terrorist” on the CBS program 60 Minutes , a little more than one year
after September 11. Reverend Franklin Graham, son of the conservative
icon Billy Graham, decreed Islam “wicked, violent, and not of the same
God.” And Lieutenant General William Boykin, who served George W.
Bush as undersecretary of defense, only confirmed Muslims’ fears when
he defined the War on Terrorism as a war against Islam. Addressing Chris-tian evangelicals, the uniformed general recalled taking solace in his faith
during a firefight with a Muslim Somali warlord in 1993. “I knew that my
God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was
an idol.” Boykin, the man charged by the administration with tracking
down Osama bin Laden, told another audience, “We in the army of God,
in the house of God, kingdom of God, have been raised for such a time as
this.” President Bush has never publicly disavowed any of these comments,and he himself famously declared a “crusade” against terrorism five days
after September 11. After howls of protest from the Muslim world, all too
aware of the lingering effects of the Christian crusades against Islam, the
White House “clarified” his remarks.
Perhaps surprisingly, given the events of the last five years, a majority
of those surveyed by Georgetown University say it is a good time to be a
Muslim in America , despite their general unease with the country’s for-
eign policy, the growing domestic pressure on them and their fellow be-
lievers, and their dismay at how their faith is treated by the media, in

86 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Hollywood, and by mainstream society in general. Of course, any opinion
survey offers little more than a simple snapshot, frozen in time.
My own travels through Muslim America have revealed a dynamic, ac-
tive community determined to define itself in its own terms. This is par-ticularly the case with the post-1965 generation, the children of the
sweeping Muslim immigration that began four decades ago. They are seek-
ing to understand the faith in both intellectual and emotional terms inorder to apply its tenets to their daily lives. And they have largely broken
free of the Old World practice of distinguishing one Muslim from an-
other by race, skin color, place of origin, or even sectarian affiliation. While“slave Islam” was too brittle, the “prairie Muslims” too isolated, and black
Islam too focused on race, the Muslims of contemporary America have
finally managed to carve out their own identity, one that will shape thenational landscape in new and challenging ways for the foreseeable future.

87FOUR
Taking It to the Streets
/ornament20
Rami Nashashibi wears his trademark baggy blue jeans, blue skullcap,
and loose T-shirt to make the call heard throughout “the Hood.”
He clutches a small black microphone, raising and lowering his melodious
voice to the rhythm of rap music blaring from a stereo system. From a
makeshift stage, a two-foot-high platform Rami planted in the middle of a
vacant parking lot, he scans the neighborhood inch by inch as far as hisdark eyes can see. The midmorning scene gives him little hope. He won-
ders if the young black man, a pack of cigarettes in hand, strolling out of a
corner grocery store across the street will answer his call and take a seat onone of the folding chairs set up in front of the platform. The two-lane street
is otherwise deserted. The summer Chicago sun and high humidity alone
are enough to keep people away. A few teenaged African American boys aregathering in front of the stage. Rami glances instead at some Muslim broth-
ers unloading musical equipment from a truck and a sister nervously pacing
the pavement, her cell phone glued to her ear. Bringing the microphone upto the tip of his round chin, he shouts as if speaking to a large crowd, “Listen
up, brothers. There’s going to be a big star here in under an hour.”
Like the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, Rami hopes to awaken
the South Chicago neighborhood to his distinct vision of Islam. Days be-fore this muggy Saturday, Rami hung posters on telephone poles and on

88 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
bulletin boards in neighborhood stores announcing the arrival of Napo-
leon, a star from California who raps about his Muslim identity. Part so-
cial activist, part spiritual guide, and sometimes just an ordinary brother,
Rami speaks the slang of the street, a bit removed from his other life acrosstown as a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Chicago. There,
he spends much of his time analyzing the role of Islam in the inner city.
With his lanky build and even his walk, the way he plants one of his big
Timberland boots in front of the other, giving his stride a bit of bounce,
Rami has become a symbol of hope in the neighborhood. His double life
allows thirty-two-year-old Rami to traverse two very different worlds, and
it has helped make him a familiar leader in Islamic circles across the coun-
try. Rami has a unique American Dream: the creation of a network ofMuslim artists, scholars, and activists who will create a multiethnic and
unified Muslim community. Fifteen hundred years ago, the Prophet
Muhammad taught that Islam must form a collective community of be-
lievers, or ummah, composed of Muslims from many ethnicities. But this
ummah, the dream of Muslims across a wide spectrum, has even now yet
to be realized.
Rami thinks that Napoleon, a musician from the West Coast with the
popular band Tupac’s Legendary Outlawz, can inspire the youth. A Mus-
lim recently returned to his faith, Napoleon flew in from Los Angeles to
devote some time to Chicago’s ghetto. He hopes to change the fortunes ofthe youth the way he changed his own, from drug addict and petty crimi-
nal to pious Muslim, from gangster rapper to socially conscious Islamic
hip-hop artist and spiritual mentor.
It is rare for any kind of celebrity to venture to South Chicago, where
last night’s shooting is the subject of the daily chatter. Many of the Mus-
lims born here never return once they rise to the middle class and have
fled with their families to new homes in the suburbs southwest of Chi-cago. It isn’t just the poverty or the vibrations of a dying society that keep
them away. They simply don’t like the ethnic mix. Once they retreat to
the suburbs, the Pakistanis go to the Pakistani mosque, the Arabs to an-
other mosque, and the Bosnians to yet another. The order created by these
separate ethnic universes makes everyone feel comfortable.
History and fate determined South Chicago’s ethnic landscape. It wasn’t
anyone’s choice. After World War II, Arab immigrants trickled into the
neighborhood, which was fast becoming white, working class, and at odds
with the blacks who were migrating across Chicago’s South Side. But, by

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 89
the 1970s, the Palestinians outnumbered all others. The community was
by then famous as the site of the race riots of the late 1960s and early
1970s. Marquette Park, the only green visible in the neighborhood, had
been the scene of a violent attack on Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966.With the rising racial tension, the few whites still living in the area fled to
the Chicago suburbs and the economy deteriorated. Now, neglect is vis-
ible all around: boarded-up windows, gaping potholes, and garbage-strewnalleyways.
Rami is honored that Napoleon has agreed to spend a few hours here.
He is just the kind of role model who could inspire the youth with the
vitality of Islam. At one point, Napoleon was just like them: a lost soul in
search of something—drugs, crime, religion—to ease the pain of ghettolife. Standing alone in the parking lot dotted with potholes, Rami tries to
remain optimistic. Over the last decade, he has seen locals turn to Islam
under his guidance as leader of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network
(IMAN).
Rami moved to America shortly after the end of the Persian Gulf War. He
became an activist at DePaul University, the Catholic college in Chicago
where he was an undergraduate. He joined the local chapter of the Pales-
tinian Solidarity Committee, but he soon concluded he could have little
influence trying to solve a conflict a world away. Instead, he devoted histime and his heart to the fight for civil rights for African Americans and
Latinos. He led demonstrations on the campus and helped raise money
for ghetto youth.
At the time, Rami was not a practicing Muslim. Just like the nonobservant
African American and Latino youth he would later introduce to Islam,
Rami was raised in a family where religion had no role. His father was a
Palestinian from Jerusalem who attended graduate school in Californiaand later became a Jordanian diplomat. Like many Muslims of his genera-
tion who had lived for a time in the United States, he resented American
policies in the Middle East. Islam was nowhere in his psyche. Rami’s mother
identified mostly with American values and culture, right down to her
love for peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. His parents divorced when
Rami was ten, and later as a high school student he roamed the world from
Saudi Arabia to Italy. He shunned institutionalized religion, believing it
was for weak souls, those seeking conformity in order to feel a little less
lost in the alienation of the modern world.

90 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
From his own experience, Rami understood the youth he and IMAN
were trying to educate about Islam, youngsters who either had never
thought about religion or viewed it exclusively from an ethnic and cultural
perspective. To reach them, he drew upon resources and ideas from hisother life, the one rooted in the ivory tower. Over a decade, Rami worked
to build a community in South Chicago with its own mosque, health clinic,
after-school tutoring program, and even recreational events. Initially, othermosques and Islamic organizations in Chicago supported Rami’s efforts
with only meager donations. For all their talk about Muslim brotherhood,
they left Rami out in the cold because his work was in the ghetto, not
middle-class America. Over the years, Rami came to depend on the guid-
ance of a few African American professors and the federal funding he some-times received. But most of the time, he relied upon the good will of Muslim
friends who were able to donate to his cause. But as time went on, and
IMAN’s credibility grew, some mosques and other wealthy Muslims be-
gan to contribute to his efforts.
Day by day, Rami set out to draw African Americans, Southeast Asians,
and Latinos together with their Arab neighbors toward his particular vi-
sion of Islam. Rami’s work tapped into the new urgency that arose after
the attacks on September 11, 2001. When a growing number of Muslims
became targets of everyone from the neighbor who confused the peaceful
Muslim with the militant to the FBI and local police, they searched forsympathy among African Americans. With their shared experience of dis-
crimination in America, some Muslims thought they could find common
cause with African American Muslims. Relations between the two groups
had been strained for decades, if not a century. African American Muslims
reacted to the sudden interest in them among Muslims from the Islamic
world with great suspicion. There was too much history dividing them,
too many wounds. In its glory years, the Nation of Islam had had a magi-cal appeal. By presenting Islam to African Americans, the Nation pro-
vided an alternative way of being black in America. African Americans in
the Nation were expected to adopt Muslim names and ban pork from their
diets. But, perhaps more significantly, the Nation eased the pains of ghetto
life. In densely populated urban areas, such as Brooklyn and Chicago, the
Nation offered social services and counseling about drug use, teenage preg-
nancy, and crime. Most of this activism had faded by the 1990s.
With the arrival of great numbers of Muslim immigrants from the Is-
lamic world, beginning in 1965, the notion of Islam in America began to

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 91
change for African Americans. African Americans were no longer the own-
ers of American Islam; instead, the religion they practiced was overtaken
by Islam defined in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Palestine. Sud-
denly, as Sherman A. Jackson noted in his latest book, Islam and the
Blackamerican , black Muslims discovered they had moved from “the back
of the bus to the back of the camel.”
Traditional Sunni Muslims easily displaced African American Muslims
because they never had a solid base in Islamic doctrine from the begin-
ning. They devoted little or no attention to how Muslim communities
outside the United States interpreted the most basic Islamic texts. Thenew wave of immigrants to the United States soon established their ideas
of “true” Islam. Suddenly, there were authorities on Sunni practice chal-
lenging the prism through which African American Muslims viewed thefaith. The Islam created in the United States could now be compared to a
more authentic practice, putting African American Muslims at a disadvan-
tage. When it was once easy for African American Muslims to ignore as-pects of their culture that violated Islamic principles, by the 1970s these
behaviors were publicly deemed un-Islamic. By the time Rami began work-
ing to create a multicultural Islamic community in Chicago, African Ameri-can Islam had become further diluted through its own decline. Louis
Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam had lost its thunder, leaving as few as 200,000
to 500,000 members in the movement. Warith Deen Muhammad’s Ameri-can Society of Muslims, the movement he created after he split from the
Nation of Islam, was also losing its luster.
September 11 solidified America’s image of the modern Muslim—that
of an Arab from the Middle East. This effectively obliterated any linger-
ing awareness of African American Muslims. Deprived of their own group
identity and lacking an effective, well-structured organization, AfricanAmerican Muslims were forced to search for an Islamic alternative, in or-
der to avoid being overwhelmed by the immigrant wave. Yet, the failure
of their movement cannot simply be blamed on the arrival of newcomersfrom the Middle East and South Asia. Sherman Jackson writes,
As America strides toward its ever-elusive dream of eradicating the negative
significance of race, or as national concerns such as the catastrophe of Sep-tember 11, 2001, force race and related matters to the margins of the nationaldiscourse, Blackamerican Sunnis are likely to find themselves increasingly ir-relevant to American public life.
Louis Farrakhan failed to spell out how African American Muslims should
practice the faith in America. And although Wallace Deen Muhammad

92 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
was among the first ever to articulate the need for a Muslim American
identity, he was ahead of his time. It would take the second generation,
the children of Wallace Deen’s original followers, to try to find a way to
be both black and a bona fide Sunni Muslim.
Rami is the perfect person to build a multicultural Muslim society. As a
civil rights activist, while he was a university student, he worked for social
justice for African Americans. As a Palestinian, he can relate to the Arabsin the neighborhood. He speaks their language; he shares their political
views about the need for liberation for Palestinians living under Israeli
oppression.
Rami teaches by example. On that day in June 2004, he saw in Napo-
leon an ideal success story to put on display for the community; here wasa man who had returned to the faith, after years of straying, to find peace
in his music and in the Koran. Napoleon believes that the courage he
found to replace the marijuana he once carried around in his pocket with
a miniature Koran is proof of God’s existence. But once he made the tran-
sition, Napoleon didn’t retreat into the self-satisfied superiority of a reli-
gious fanatic. Instead, he fused his personal history with his newfound
virtues, reflected in the title of an album he made when he returned toIslam, Scriptures from a Thug’s Point of View. Rami thought Napoleon’s
blend of gangster rap and Muslim cool would appeal directly to the neigh-
borhood kids.
Napoleon’s music is a strong part of his attraction. His CDs belong to
the new genre of hip-hop, tunes that sound like African American rapmusic with lyrics that either allude to Islam or speak directly about being
Muslim. Islamic hip-hop has been on the rise only since the late 1990s, as
more African Americans have converted. The music is becoming so popu-
lar that bands such as Native Deen, a group of twenty-something African
Americans from Maryland, are even debuting on commercial radio sta-tions in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
As Napoleon’s arrival draws near, Rami’s call grows more insistent. He
gestures with upturned palms, motioning to the crowd in the parking lot
that has now grown to about a dozen young boys to come closer to the
stage. His face shines with sweat. He smiles a half smile, showing the large
white teeth that soften his expression. His voice grows louder to compete
with the sounds from the street, now awakened from the Saturday morn-
ing torpor.

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 93
“We are encouraging everybody who is walking by to participate. It is a
rare opportunity to get an autograph from Napoleon. He’ll be here in a
few minutes. It’s a rare opportunity on the South Side of Chicago to meet
a very well and established brother who is about to drop another CD.When Napoleon comes, the few of us here, I want to show him we have a
lot of love from South Chicago. So give him a lot of love when he comes.”
While those in the crowd take their seats, a few warm-up acts appear on
the makeshift stage. Brother Big Move, an African American rapper in his
twenties, reminisces about his childhood when the neighborhood was a
safer place. “Back in the day, the kids wrestled on mattresses and chased
the ice-cream truck for a fifty-cent cone.” Rami interrupts the music to
give the crowd a progress report: Napoleon has called in. He is on his way,“inshallah,” God willing. His words are far from reassuring. Even those
who don’t speak Arabic know what inshallah means: Napoleon could ap-
pear in the next ten minutes or the next ten hours.
Still, Rami starts preparing the African American teenagers, their bod-
ies hidden beneath big cotton shorts, baseball caps, and oversized T-shirts.
When Napoleon arrives, each boy and teenager is to sign a summer pledge,
a promise to stay away from violence, “stupid” violence, Rami tells them,
that leads to prison, to getting shot, to death. Once they get an autograph
from Napoleon, they must sign the peace pledge. There is an unstated
pledge, too; once they shun violence, they should turn to God.
Napoleon finally arrives, more than an hour later, and takes a seat on a
beige metal folding chair positioned behind a small table. With his slight
stature—the inspiration for the nickname Napoleon, given by his fellow
musicians—he appears formidable only because some of the boys stand-
ing in line in front of the table are quite young. But for the most part, he
looks like everyone else in the crowd with his close-cropped hair, jeans,
and billowing T-shirt.
One by one the kids approach, get his autograph, and happily sign the
pledge. But Napoleon knows his signature alone can’t possibly convince
the kids to turn away from the crime they have been exposed to their
entire lives. Some of their fathers are in prison, their mothers on crack.
To expect them to take the next step and open their hearts to Islam seems
unrealistic. They have to be inspired, and there is no better way to do that
than to tell them about his life.
“This is my third time here, man. Came about a year ago and met Brother
Rami. The Brother Rami told me he did a lot for the community and

94 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
wanted to get me back here. I was born in New Jersey, man, by Muslim
parents and at the age of three my father and mother were murdered in
front of me. I got shot in the foot. My grandparents adopted me. My
grandparents are Christian people, beautiful people. It doesn’t matter whatreligion you are. I got caught up with selling drugs. At the age of sixteen,
I met a guy named Khadafy. He took me, he embraced me in his home in
Atlanta. The brother had a good heart. He took me out of the Hood. Butwe were living the fast life. He got murdered in Las Vegas. He was out
there raising me and then I was on my own again. I was searching. I was in
a studio and I met a Muslim brother. I told him I was a Muslim, but I had
a drink in one hand and a weed in another. But the brother never judged
me and eventually I went to the mosque. I never felt that kind of peace inmy life. There is nothing like putting your head on the ground and pray-
ing to God.
“Have Mercy is coming out on a major label, inshallah. It’s positive.
There are no cuss words. Sometimes I might say ‘nigger,’ but sometimes
you act like niggers. So that’s it, man. That’s my life.”
There is silence. The beat of the neighborhood, the car horns and the
pop music pulsating out of car windows, appears to come to a stop. The
dozen or so kids expected Napoleon to perform his music. But instead
they only got to hear him rap about his life and his CDs. They wiggle in
the folding chairs, waiting for something to happen. They look at oneanother and then at Rami.
Rami steps up to the microphone. “Let’s give it up for Napoleon,” coax-
ing a round of applause from the audience.
“If you haven’t gotten your autograph from Napoleon, we want your
signature on the pledge for peace, and turn it into something positive, like
spirituality. Before we listen to more of the CD, does anyone have a ques-
tion for Napoleon?”
“Yeah,” calls out a small voice from the back rows of folding chairs.
“Can we break dance with him?”
Rami turns on Napoleon’s CD just loud enough to be heard. At that
moment, blaring music would be out of step with the dramatic end to
Napoleon’s monologue.
It is easy to see that any inch of progress Rami Nashashibi has achieved
over the last decade in bringing Islam to the South Side is an extraordi-
nary accomplishment. Many of the kids in the district have no interest in
attending school or learning about anything—much less about Islam. Still,

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 95
Rami has succeeded in helping an unknown number of kids in South Chi-
cago become educated about Islam. He shows them how Islam—often a
religion stifled under the weight of Friday sermons delivered by the aging
imams in the mosques—can do good deeds, whether it is through an af-ternoon concert or by providing health care for the needy.
Rami, the college-educated visionary, might seem an odd match with
Napoleon, the streetwise Muslim from the ghetto. Ten years before they
appeared together on that stage in South Chicago, Napoleon the drug
addict and Rami the budding intellectual and student activist had little in
common. Rami’s journey to Islam was an intellectual one, while Napo-
leon found his inspiration in the street.
When a record producer named Mikal Kamil—the “Muslim brother”
mentioned in his talk that afternoon in South Chicago—first laid eyes on
Napoleon, the young man had a Colt 45 malt liquor in one hand and a
marijuana joint in the other. Napoleon told him his real name, Mutah
Wasin Shabazz Beale, given to him by his Muslim parents, and Kamil
vowed to bring Napoleon back into the faith. Turning Napoleon, who
openly admitted he was evil, into a devout Muslim seemed like a huge
undertaking. But, in 2001, when Napoleon made his first pilgrimage to
Saudi Arabia, one of the five obligations devout Muslims must perform at
least once in their lives, everything changed. He soon gave up drugs andalcohol and began praying five times a day, often in a Los Angeles mosque.
He also ditched the obscenities in his rap lyrics.
Napoleon’s appearance with Rami that day on Kedzie Street reflected
the two men’s hopes, and those of many Muslims, for the future of Islam
in the United States. The goal is to make Islam a religion in which African
Americans, Latinos, and Arabs can share the same stage and the same
mosque. There would be no difference between the Muslim from the ghettoand the one from the Ivy League. An inclusive approach is the key to
spreading the faith, growing the number of Muslims in America, and mak-
ing Islam a formidable force in society.
Rami had every reason to hope that the young break-dancers, seem-
ingly unimpressed by his speech and Napoleon’s inspirational stories of
being born-again, would one day be praying in a mosque.
Napoleon left South Chicago that day a satisfied man. A few young
boys followed him to the van that would take him to the airport. They
watched some burly men load a big black case filled with speakers and

96 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
CDs into the trunk. Before Napoleon climbed into the passenger’s seat,
the boys reached out to him, hoping to clutch his hand so he might stay a
bit longer. Napoleon gave them his signature handshake and promised to
return. “As soon as the Brother Rami invites me, I’ll be on the next plane.”
Faith and Action:
The Inner-City Muslim Action Network
Within Muslim circles, Rami is open, charismatic, and even self-effacing.
But at times when he deals with the outside world, particularly journalists,he becomes suspicious, overly sensitive, and guarded. His instincts tell
him that anything written about him or the Inner-City Muslim Action
Network is likely to be incorrect, oversimplified, and devoid of culturaland religious sensitivity. He also worries, almost to the point of obsession,
about the public perception of IMAN. Like many other Muslims, Rami
has had conflicts with journalists and other types of writers. But unlikeother Muslims, who are often satisfied when an outsider comes to them
with good references from within the Islamic community, Rami makes his
own judgments about people wanting to know even the smallest detail ofhis life. He gets to know them before deciding whether to work with them.
This is what he told me when I first approached him in 2003. I ex-
plained that I was writing a book and thought IMAN provided an impor-tant illustration of the new direction young Muslims were taking in
America. It wasn’t easy to persuade him. Rami is the real thing, an authen-
tic Muslim voice, which makes his views and his work so important. Whilehe has reached out to exchange ideas with other faiths, he dislikes public
recognition or publicity, even at times to his own detriment.
Several months passed, and I wasn’t making any headway in persuading
him to allow me to spend time with him and members of IMAN. Finally,
one evening out of frustration I wrote him a letter as if I were applying for
a job. In my most persuasive tone, I argued that he should agree to let meprofile his organization. He finally consented. “Okay. But I need to get
the approval of the staff. I will take your letter to the next staff meeting.”
The outcome was mostly in my favor. Rami would talk and his acquain-
tances and friends would talk.
Even before he began transforming this patch of South Chicago, Rami
Nashashibi transformed himself, as many other Muslims one day would,
by returning to the faith. When Rami was a student at DePaul University

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 97
in the early 1990s, he felt more comfortable with Latinos and Black Pan-
thers than with Muslims. Then, Rami realized that some of the Black Pan-
thers were drawn to Islam. One friend, Jaleel Abdul-Adil, an African American
Ph.D. candidate, had already converted to Islam. Jaleel demonstrated thefusion of two worlds—black nationalism and Islam—that Rami had never
fully encountered but had always assumed were mutually exclusive.
Even though African Americans had been converting to Islam in sig-
nificant numbers since the 1970s, for Rami, this was an awakening. He
soon began to view Islam in a different light. For years, he had believed
his faith was stagnant; he thought it amounted to imams preaching versesof the Koran with no relevance to modern life. Like some Muslims living
in Western society, Rami had chosen to minimize the role of faith in his
life. But for Muslims the persistent pull of Islam is never far away. Even anonbeliever remains in touch with the faith through occasional mosque
attendance for social events and contact with other Muslims. Through his
friendship with Jaleel, Rami came to see Islam as a religion that could turnthe fight for equal rights and social justice into action. Rami realized he
should embrace Islam, instead of trying to ignore his Muslim identity.
“When I met Jaleel and others who had made a spiritual transforma-
tion to Islam, they had adopted a spiritual discipline. When they asked me
what I was, I was forced to say I was a Muslim. They were challenging me
and it forced me to think. I asked myself, ‘Will I answer that I am a Mus-lim? Am I going to disavow my faith?’ After that, I started reading the
Koran to refute Islam.
“I debated Jaleel for years. I remember I was much more attracted to
black nationalism than Islam, but when I met black nationalists and they
said, No, ‘Islam has a much more emancipatory framework,’ I started to
reconsider. I confronted Jaleel about this and he was the first person I everreally had a serious conversation with about Islam.
“It wasn’t an epiphany. It was a long process.”
For Rami, becoming a devout Muslim meant significantly altering his
life. At the time, he lived near Hyde Park, a middle-class area of trendy
bars and restaurants and fifty-year-old brownstones. Like many typical
young men, he thrived on the crude lyrics of rap music that was popularamong his African American friends. But once he decided to get back in
touch with his religion, he interrupted his daily routine for prayer five
times a day, and drifted away from his non-Muslim friends.
The egalitarian idea of unifying Muslims of different races and ethnic
and socioeconomic backgrounds first came to Rami when he was a student

98 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
at DePaul and beginning to learn about the Prophet Muhammad’s vision.
He helped establish DePaul’s Muslim Students’ Association, a social and
political organization that then joined forces with the Concerned Black
Students. Together they staged a sit-in on campus in April 1995 and shutdown the student newspaper, The DePaulia , over coverage they believed
was racist. The student protest, reported on Chicago television stations
and in city newspapers, was a dress rehearsal for Rami. He discovered thebenefits of Muslims working with African Americans to fight injustice.
After he had become more involved in the Muslim Students’ Association—
named UMMA, like ummah, the Arabic word for the Muslim community
of believers—Rami received a call from the Arab American Community
Center on Kedzie Street in South Chicago. He was aware of the decades-
long Arab presence in the neighborhood; his mother grew up there, andsome of his Arab friends at DePaul lived in South Chicago. An organizer
asked him if he wanted to help the young, poor kids in the area.
Rami agreed at once, but he wouldn’t do it alone. He soon included
other Muslim activists from UMMA. So began Rami’s journey. He and
the other DePaul students started tutoring kids on the South Side during
the summer. They worked out of the Arab American Community Center,home to a staunchly secular group of Palestinian activists. The students
from DePaul and the Arab community organizers had one profound dis-
agreement; although their ethnic backgrounds were similar, if not identi-cal, the DePaul students wanted their social work to expose the good deeds
possible within Islam and draw non-Muslims and Muslims who were not
practicing to the faith.
Rami recognized that the presence of an Islamic organization in South
Chicago would be a departure from recent history. Like other Arab com-
munity groups, the Arab American Community Center, founded in the1960s, had downplayed Islam and emphasized its Palestinian identity.
Politics had displaced religion. The center raised money for Palestinians
in the West Bank and Gaza City. Historically, Muslim identity in SouthChicago was overshadowed by ethnic affiliations. Muslims were not Mus-
lims so much as they were Palestinians, Syrians, Pakistanis, or Egyptians.
Rami did not realize it at the time, but, in introducing Islam to the non-Muslim youth in the community and teaching the young Muslims living
there to tie their faith more closely to the concerns of the modern world,
he was helping to break the enduring link between culture and tradition.
For Rami, Palestinian activism was a prime example of how Islam be-
came confused with politics and culture. Unlike the secularists at the Arab

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 99
American Community Center, Rami did not believe the Palestinian struggle
for a homeland should be the central rallying cry for American Muslims.
But this was a minority view in South Chicago, home to 10 to 15 percent
of all Palestinian immigrants who have come to the United States since1965. “The mosques and centers were so consumed in the political reality
of Palestine that it was hard for the kids to see anything coming out of
there as a pure expression of this new identity around a faith as opposed tothe extension of a political movement. When it comes down to it, even the
storeowner selling liquor that is forbidden under the faith would rather
have his son learning about Islam than the politics of Palestine.”
After less than a year of working in the community, Rami and a few
friends decided to launch a new organization. With a handful of fellow
students who had founded DePaul University’s Muslim Students’ Asso-ciation, Rami opened a modest ground-floor office on Sixty-third Street.
He called the new organization IMAN, the word for “faith” in Arabic and
an acronym for the Inner-City Muslim Action Network. Instead of limit-ing prayers to Fridays in the half-dozen storefront mosques, where Arab
imams refused to utter one word of English, IMAN would be different.
The organization would bring former and future Muslims into the Islamicfold through good deeds, such as after-school tutoring programs, com-
puter lessons, and health care. No other Muslim organization in the United
States performed such a role, even though in the Islamic world it is com-mon for Muslim groups to provide social services, including insurance,
hospital care, and loans to fund houses, cars, and even weddings.
Just as Rami started to see his vision come to life, he received a scholar-
ship from the prestigious and politically charged Beir Zeit University in
the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In 1996, he left Chicago to spend a year
there, and placed IMAN’s fortunes in the hands of Mona el-Gindy, a fel-low Muslim student at DePaul who was from Egypt. Mona was reluctant
to take charge of IMAN. She feared she could not measure up to Rami’s
leadership skills and charisma. And, because IMAN had just been estab-lished, she knew it was a critical year for the organization. Mona, who
went on that year to organize a large fundraising event for IMAN, was
determined to show Muslims and non-Muslims in South Chicago thatpracticing Islam is different from being an Arab and from being involved
in Palestinian politics.
“We wanted to separate ourselves from the very secular movement that
existed, but we didn’t want to alienate people,” recalled Mona, who later
became a teacher at an Islamic school in a Chicago suburb. “We wanted to

100 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
work with different groups in the community but we also wanted people
to know why we had come—to do things under the banner of Islam. Some
people in the community at the time thought everyone who was a Muslim
had to be an Arab.”
The South Side was ripe territory for bridging the divide among Afri-
can Americans, Latinos, and Arabs under the banner of Islam. Even those
who knew next to nothing about the religion perceived Islam as a faith forthe disenfranchised, such as the African Americans and Latinos living in
South Chicago. And the Arabs, some of whom were recent immigrants,
were attuned to the Islamic revival, either having witnessed it firsthand intheir native countries or having heard about it from their relatives. This
made them more receptive to the Islamic call.
The African Americans in South Chicago were also drawn to IMAN’s
Islamic message because they had grown up with at least a vague idea of
the faith. Chicago had long been a hotbed of spirituality and religious
foment. More than one hundred years ago, it hosted the World’s Parlia-ment of Religions, which first introduced Islam to many Americans, and it
was once home to an early Muslim missionary movement from India. The
Nation of Islam was headquartered in the city.
Some African Americans of Rami’s generation who were seeking to
convert tried to join the Nation, but they were discouraged by its radical
ideas. And immigrant Muslims felt they were not welcomed because oftheir race. By the 1990s, the Nation and its leader Louis Farrakhan had
mellowed; there was no more talk about whites being the Devil. But the
movement was still more focused on African American rights and the plightof the ghetto than on religion.
African American youth growing up in the 1980s had at least heard
about the Nation and Warith Deen’s breakaway movement. Their great-est hero, though, was Malcolm X. Malcolm X’s legacy differed greatly
from his image during his lifetime. For the younger generation, Malcolm
was a hybrid of Farrakhan and Warith Deen Muhammad—someone whosought to practice Islam within the tradition of orthodox Sunni Islam but
who also championed African American rights.
Among the Arabs of South Chicago, the community gradually shifted
from one that was decidedly Arabic to one that had a more general Islamic
identity. Changes in the types of immigrants who came to the area con-
tributed to this transition. Toward the end of the nineteenth century,Turkish, Syrian, and Lebanese immigrants began settling in Chicago.
According to the 1910 census, there were 772 people of Arab descent liv-

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 101
ing in Chicago. Immigration laws enacted in the early 1920s barred Mus-
lims from entering the country, separating those who had settled a bit
earlier from their families.
In Chicago, the new immigrants used their economic and social power
to establish some of the first mosques in the city and surrounding suburbs.
Proof of their Islamic awareness can be found in the organizations that
emerged. The national Federation of Islamic Associations was created in1953. The first ever Muslim Students’ Association was founded in Illinois
in 1963. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Muslims who arrived in Chicago
established one of the most dynamic Muslim communities in the country.Islamic schools and mosques were built in the 1980s and 1990s. There are
seven full-time Islamic schools, as well as specialized hifz schools, where
memorization of the Koran is taught. The number of mosques, rangingfrom large formal houses of worship to mosques in homes, is estimated at
one hundred.
When I first visited South Chicago, I couldn’t help noticing its unusual
ethnic blend. About 250,000 African Americans, Latinos, and Arabs live
side by side in wood-frame houses. Sixty-third, one of the main streetsrunning through the neighborhood, is lined with Arab groceries that are
carbon copies of those in Cairo, Syria, and Palestine. The sweet smells of
cardamom and other Eastern spices fill the air. But there is one importantdifference between the Arab stores on Kedzie Street, the main avenue
that runs through the community, and those in the Middle East: next to
the Arab groceries selling falafel and hummus is a taco stand or a hairsalon selling African American hair-straightening products or a Hispanic
supermarket offering specials on tamales. The police station on Sixty-third
is perhaps the most prominent building in the area: dozens of white-and-blue police cars fill the parking lot each day. The station gives residents
some comfort; it offers some protection from the Arab and African Ameri-
can gangs that occupy the streets at night, when the multicolored neonsigns plastered on Mexican restaurants mix with the street lamps to distort
what light there is.
The IMAN office on Sixty-third, known in the neighborhood simply as
the markez, the Arabic word for “center,” has a homey feel. On any given
day, Rami might shuffle in, his backpack slung over his black T-shirt, and
end up wrestling on the floor with young kids who are hanging out at thecenter. More studious young boys sit at the computers lined against a wall
near the glass door. Some attend the computer classes IMAN provides.

102 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Others drop in just to read their e-mail because they can’t afford their own
computers. It is clear that IMAN is an Islamic organization. Young women
with headscarves meander in and out; posters with sayings from the Prophet
hang on the lilac-tinted walls. Others spell out the principles of the faith:“What Do Muslims Believe?” and “What Are the Five Pillars of Islam?”
The six-member staff works out of two rooms in the back. Several people
share two desks in the small space, their lives organized only by the plasticmailboxes hanging on the walls with nametags for each employee.
While Rami is a steady presence in the IMAN office, the office’s main
gatekeeper, Adalberto, guarantees Rami’s privacy: Adalberto knows thatreligious leaders from other faiths, with whom Rami has worked closely,
are allowed direct contact with Rami, but others have to pass muster. Since
September 11, 2001, Rami and most other Islamic activists are more re-luctant to talk to outsiders.
Rami’s skepticism about the media is different from that of the leaders
of other Islamic organizations. He has no fear that the spotlight mighttrigger an FBI investigation of IMAN, or uncover alleged terrorist con-
nections and result in his name being splashed all over the evening news.
There is certainly nothing suspicious about IMAN’s operations. Thegroup’s modest funding comes from private donations, and federal and
city grants, not from Islamic radicals in Saudi Arabia or other Islamic coun-
tries that might spark a federal investigation. Rami worries instead aboutspin, the false images outsiders might attach to IMAN simply because it is
an Islamic organization.
Creating a Multicultural Islam
Adalberto, exhibit A in the long line of IMAN successes, was the perfect
liaison between IMAN and the outsiders phoning or dropping by the of-
fice. Like many whom Rami and a core group of young Muslims have
inspired to join their faith, Adalberto discovered Islam through IMAN.He was quickly drawn to Islam and in a short time recited the shahada —
“There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger.” This reci-
tation is all that is required to convert to Islam. Becoming a Muslim doesnot require extensive study in a theological school; learning the ins and
outs of the religion often comes later.
In many ways, Adalberto, a burly, easygoing twenty-five-year-old, was a
prime candidate for conversion. He was born into a religious family, but

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 103
struggled for many years to find the religion that was right for him. His
spiritual search reflected an anti-authoritarian streak, as he rebelled against
his Catholic family, a Mormon missionary, and an elder in the Jehovah’s
Witnesses in Mexico, all of whom tried to define his relationship withGod. Having a taste of so many strands of Christianity, each proclaiming
a monopoly on religious truth, Adalberto was left with an unmoving belief
only in himself and his relationship with God.
Growing up in Autlan, the Mexican town that is home to the pop su-
perstar Carlos Santana, with a Catholic father and a mother who was a
Jehovah’s Witness, Adalberto adopted his mother’s faith. He followed anelder in the Jehovah’s Witnesses who meant more to him than his father.
The elder was the head of the town’s small congregation and he taught
Adalberto to proselytize. At fourteen, he was already counseling adultsand giving sermons to the congregation. Adolescence had passed him by;
he was living like an adult, even down to his white shirt and ties.
Then one day, he turned on the television news and learned that the
elder, the mentor he had relied upon for spiritual and moral guidance, was
having an affair with a young girl.
“I called this guy all the time, all day. I couldn’t believe that he was
sleeping with a young girl. He was married. He was thirty-six and the girl
was too young. After the problem was on the news, when I knocked on
people’s doors to tell them about the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they shut thedoor in my face.”
Adalberto began searching for a new source of inspiration. He started
reading about the Mormons and began to infuse Mormon thought intohis lectures when he spoke to his Autlan congregation. After the elders
found out, he was excommunicated from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and cut
off from nearly all the friends and family he had in town. To be excommu-nicated meant that no Jehovah’s Witness could speak to him, not even
members of his family.
A few years after he was excommunicated, Adalberto decided to move
to Chicago to live with his sister on the South Side. Eager to make money,
he landed a job at a plastics-making factory. He inhaled plastic dust for
five dollars an hour, all day long. Still searching for spiritual guidance, hesaw a notice: the Mormons would pay him nine thousand dollars to be-
come a missionary. After a year as an itinerant missionary traveling around
the country and trying to convert people, Adalberto ended up back inSouth Chicago. One day he passed the IMAN office and saw signs out
front with Arabic inscriptions. He decided to go inside to ask if the center

104 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
offered Arabic lessons. In addition to his native Spanish he had learned
English since coming to the United States, and Arabic seemed like a greater
challenge.
When he entered the lilac-walled office, he met Reza, a soft-spoken
Palestinian and recent graduate of DePaul University. There were no
classes, Reza told him, but he could learn Arabic by reading the Koran.
He gave Adalberto a Koran translated into Spanish and for four daysstraight he read it like no other book he had ever read. “I read it and never
stopped. It wasn’t like the Bible or the other books. It answered all my
questions.”
On the fifth day, Adalberto returned to the IMAN office to find Reza
in time for the noon prayer, and Reza asked him if he wanted to walk
across the street to pray in the Al Qasm mosque. It is the kind of mosqueRami says, dismissively, that’s run by the “uncles,” the aging imams who
try to recreate in the United States the mosque community as it existed in
their native Arab villages. In addition to the daily prayers, Koran recita-tions are the preferred activity; women have a small role in the mosque
community; and the Friday sermons are in Arabic, not English.
Reza showed Adalberto how to make wadu, to wash his hands thor-
oughly before the prayer, a practice required in Islam to cleanse the faith-
ful before their encounter with God. After the prayer, Reza asked Adalberto
if he wanted to become a Muslim. Without hesitation, Adalberto recitedthe shahada . Sheikh Hassan performed a small ritual that to Adalberto’s
recollection happened with great ease.
The difficulty came when he had to break the news to his sister. He
told her when they were working together at a car wash in South Chicago.
“One day, my sister said, ‘Why don’t you go to church anymore?’ I said,
‘Because I became a Muslim.’ Then she said, ‘Why do you want to be withthese people? They have more than one wife. They kill people.’”
Adalberto ignored his sister’s remarks. He had found his spirituality,
the gem he had searched for among at least three faiths and in two coun-tries. Soon, he would begin his life’s work. He started to bring Islam to
other Latinos whom IMAN touched: kids from the neighborhood who
happened to stroll into the IMAN office. When I last saw Adalberto hehad organized a system to find jobs for Hispanic illegal immigrants. He
called it “the day laborers’ campaign.” Every Saturday, he gathered Latinos
in South Chicago and took them to paint houses or spruce up lawns.Adalberto’s desire to convert Latinos to Islam was not part of IMAN’s
plan; it was his idea.

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 105
Adalberto’s conversion and his attempts to spread the faith, however,
reflect IMAN’s goals, understood, but never articulated to outsiders.
Adalberto’s experience was representative of others who have either con-
verted to Islam or were Muslims who rediscovered the faith through IMAN.For them, Islam was the answer to an emptiness in their lives that they
never even realized existed until they visited a mosque or began spending
time with Muslims.
Rami made no secret of his conviction that Islam could thwart the drugs,
crime, and immorality of the inner city: if young boys devoted their ener-
gies to learning about Islam, they would shun the pervasive world of drugsand gang violence. Once they began reading the holy texts, they would
understand the harmfulness of such behavior. That was the reason he
formed a separate organization in South Chicago, apart from the secularArab community groups that had existed for decades. But to suggest that
IMAN’s only purpose was to draw non-Muslims to Islam is to simplify the
vision. Yet, that was often how outsiders saw it.
IMAN’s efforts to create multicultural Islam first in South Chicago and
then in other major cities, had many more dimensions than the narrow
approach Adalberto had once employed as an elder in the Jehovah’s Wit-nesses, or those a typical missionary uses to win over nonbelievers. Islam
for IMAN was not just belief in a faith; it was a way of life, an answer to the
social injustice suffered by those of different races and creeds. For de-cades, Islamists abroad, such as those in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,
have lived by this goal. One of IMAN’s founders told me how the exten-
sive writings of an Islamic thinker of the 1940s and 1950s had guided himto become a more devout Muslim.
The first time IMAN made public its desire for a unified Muslim com-
munity was in June 1997, when the group hosted an Islamic festival called“Taking It to the Streets.” At Marquette Park, historically a hangout for
drug addicts and the homeless, IMAN organizers spread their message by
selling T-shirts that read, “What do you choose—God or Evil? Islam, away of life.” Perched on a stage, one IMAN leader explained the reason
for the festival and IMAN’s existence: “Islam encompasses many cultures.
That is what we celebrate and mark here. In a moment when you see uspray together, you will see African Americans, Latinos, Arabs, and Indo-
Pakistanis standing side by side.”
By the summer of 2005, “Taking It to the Streets,” now an event held
every other year, lit up Marquette Park; IMAN’s maturity and popularity
were clear. Hip-hop artists took to the stage that was set up in the park.

106 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
The large, lively crowd drifted through several white tents spread out along
several blocks of green grass. When they were not chanting along with
the lyrics of the music, they were huddled inside the tents, discussing ways
to create a Muslim American identity and to unify immigrant and AfricanAmerican Muslims.
At the time of the 2005 festival, Rami was applying for new state and
federal grants to replace the expired ones that had kept the organizationafloat. Rami and the other IMAM leaders had established a mosque in a
neighborhood about ten miles from the IMAN office. They turned the
front of a mom-and-pop grocery store along Justine—a small, tree-lined
street with wood-frame houses reminiscent of the Deep South—into a
community center, and converted the back of the store into their mosque.
On Sunday mornings at eleven, IMAN holds a food pantry at the new
community center. As neighborhood kids play pool in the middle of the
room, their parents or older siblings approach a wooden counter to ask for
their groceries: brown bags filled to the brim with bread, cereal, powered
milk, and other nonperishables. IMAN buys the food from the Chicago
Food Depository, run by the city. Often, a city representative hands out
the food alongside a member of IMAN. But the image that makes a bigimpression on the people of the neighborhood is the various women in
headscarves who arrive each week to distribute the grocery bags. Next to
the counter where they work is a poster similar to those in the IMAN
office on Kedzie: “What Is Islam and Who Are Muslims?” Below the head-
line is an explanation.
Each week after all the food is distributed, Mona Martinez, an IMAN
leader and graduate of DePaul University, gathers young girls from the
neighborhood in a fenced area outside the building for a lesson in every-
thing from nutrition to the basics of Islam.
One Sunday, dressed in shorts and colorful stretch pants, six African Ameri-
can girls ranging in ages from four to fourteen jump rope, their braided
hair bouncing on their small shoulders. The girls assume the Sunday gath-
ering is simply a play session; many had learned about it from Mona, who
stands in front of the food pantry door and encourages anyone she sees to
come by later in the morning.
That afternoon, Mona, a twenty-eight-year-old with a soothing de-
meanor and a full-length navy blue veil that made her look like a nun,
brought a box of dates and unsalted almonds with her. She tries to encour-

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 107
age the reluctant girls to nibble on the unfamiliar snacks and gives a brief
history of their popularity in the Middle East. The girls are restless; they
bounce up and down on the hard chairs, and their eyes dart across the
yard. “Have you ever seen dates before?” Mona asks. “No,” one girl an-swers. “But they look funny.” Then Mona begins to tell them a few things
about Islam. Their blank expressions say it all.
The next Sunday, Mona and her shy daughter, Amina, sit on a picnic
bench and wait for the young girls to arrive. After thirty minutes, no one
appears and she searches for the reason. Mona had sent a letter to the
girls’ parents the week before asking permission to take their daughters to
a museum downtown. The letter also explained Mona’s objectives; she
wanted to educate the girls and expose them to Islam.
“Maybe that’s why they didn’t come today. I scared them off,” Mona
says, with a defeated look in her eyes that had not been there before. Were
the young girls open to new ideas? Would they ever be open to learning
about Islam?
“We are starting from the very bottom. Sometimes I think they don’t
understand anything. Most of these kids don’t even go to school. When
they come here on Sundays, they ask for hamburgers, steaks, and pizzas,
you know, real meals. Most kids would ask for potato chips, but these kids
ask for full meals because they don’t get them at their own house.”
Mona was clearly frustrated that her efforts to educate the young girls
about proper nutrition and other life necessities were likely being ignored.
She did not want to state the obvious; the girls’ parents were willing to
send their daughters to the Sunday gatherings for a free meal or even for
an hour or two of free babysitting. But, once they realized Mona hoped to
teach them about Islam, they were no longer interested.
Many months later, Mona’s initial frustrations were a distant memory.
The mothers in the neighborhood had grown accustomed to the Sundayritual of picking up supplies at the IMAN food pantry, and bringing their
daughters for lessons with Mona. Lessons about dates turned to elemen-
tary teachings about the Koran and Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of
fasting.
The mosque IMAN created is also beginning to attract worshippers
living nearby. It is the size of an average living room. Red carpet lines the
floor and a small brown podium serves as the minbar , the place where an
imam delivers the Friday sermons. A large chandelier hangs from the
stained white ceiling. A white curtain separates the men’s section in front

108 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
near the minbar from the women’s area in back of the room—a sign of a
traditional mosque. Yet, IMAN establishes the mosque to offer believers a
more modern interpretation of the faith.
One Friday at the mosque about fifteen minutes before the 1:20 p.m.
Friday prayer, someone pulls back the white curtain so the women would
be able to see the imam in front with the men. It is a test of one of the most
hotly debated issues in American mosques. At many mosques, women arefighting to remove the curtains or other barriers separating them from
the men. The separation had become a tradition among Muslim Ameri-
cans. After a few minutes at the IMAN mosque, the women begin to ar-
rive and squat on the red carpet. Before the prayer began, one of them
steps forward and draws the curtain. The imam and the men are no longerin sight.
The voice on the other side of the curtain giving the Friday sermon is
that of Abdel Malik, one of the IMAN founders. Abdel, a lawyer who
often preaches at the Friday sermons, is not a learned theologian. Even
though he may not be formally versed in the Koran and other holy texts,
he does his best to offer guidance to the worshippers.
A Muslim convert who grew up Catholic in the middle-class Chicago
neighborhood of Oak Park, he had little exposure to Islam before he met
Rami at DePaul University in the 1990s. Before then, he had tried to join
the Nation of Islam, but felt rebuffed because he was white. After he metthe Muslim students who later formed IMAN, Abdel began reading the
works of Islamic thinkers who have inspired moderate and radical Islamic
movements for more than half a century. Abdel, like many young Mus-
lims, turned to books from the Islamic world because there were no promi-
nent Islamic thinkers in the United States.
“I was influenced about how you could change the world from a posi-
tion of social justice,” Abdel told me.
That day in the mosque, Abdel Malik, his thin body covered in a long
tunic and balloon-shaped trousers, leans against the minbar and preaches
that God expects the faithful to die in a state of submission.
When the sermon ends, two African American women step outside into
the bright sunlight. They had traveled at least ten miles from their homes
across town, passing several other mosques along the way to pray here.
They know little about IMAN but have heard that the mosque offers a
more modern approach to practicing their faith. At their traditional mosque
downtown, women are forbidden from bringing their children into the

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS 109
mosque. They are told to stay away while they were menstruating, and to
enter the mosque through a different entrance than the men. No matter
the distance, they plan to pray on Justine Street every Friday.
Before driving away in a rundown Chevrolet, one of the women vows to
return. “This is the first mosque we have been to where there is no discrimi-
nation because we are women or because we dare to pray with Arabs or
because we wear our headscarves tightly tied to our heads,” she says.

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111FIVE
Muslim Voices
/ornament20
As Rami became better known in South Chicago, he began to realize
he could expand his sights far beyond the neighborhood. There was
one guaranteed way to attract youth interested in Islam from a greater
swath of the city: Islamic hip-hop. If Napoleon could woo a small crowd
of young boys to the middle of a parking lot, older music fans would attend
an intimate concert in a café. The only problem was finding the right venue.There were no cafés around Sixty-third Street, at least none suitable for
what Rami had in mind. But, just as the idea began to take shape, he learned
that a few friends were opening a café called Ndiga, meaning “root” inSwahili, on Sixty-third—not far from the glow of the police station.
On opening night in December 2003, the crowd numbers a few dozen.
Most are from the neighborhood, but a few non-Muslim university stu-
dents have ventured across town out of curiosity. Although Islamic hip-
hop’s popularity is growing steadily in large cities, such as Chicago, it isjust becoming fashionable among Muslim youth and is still barely known
among non-Muslims.
As I enter the café, I am struck by the diversity of the crowd: Puerto
Ricans, Palestinians, African Americans, and whites. The people congre-gate around a dilapidated beige sofa. Hamburgers, brownies, Cokes, and

112 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
herbal teas are being served from a bar, but no alcohol. Ndiga is painted in
psychedelic colors, perhaps more suited to Berkeley, California, in the
1960s than the African American and Latino culture of South Chicago.
When the concert begins, the crowd gravitates toward a stage on the
opposite side of the café. Instinctively, the women choose the beige fold-
ing chairs on one side of the room and the men sit on the other side. They
are so accustomed to being segregated in mixed company at Islamic gath-erings, that they separate themselves automatically. David Kelly, an Afri-
can American convert to Islam, a musician, and a lawyer, is hosting the
show, the first of many in which he will serve as the master of ceremonies.
“Thank you all for coming out. This is the first community café. We’re
going to have a few bands tonight and then open mike. Anybody can come
on up to the stage.”
A thin man with a soothing voice and creamy light brown skin, David
Kelly came to Islam through hip-hop, the way Rami hopes the youth in
South Chicago will. David’s parents raised him Catholic in one of Chicago’saffluent southern suburbs and he attended Catholic schools. But Catholi-
cism was always problematic for him. He didn’t think Jesus was the Son of
God, and he didn’t like organized religion in general.
When he entered Morehouse College, the country’s largest all male,
traditionally black university, friends in his book club were reading an
autobiography of Malcolm X, memorizing every aspect of his life. Davidwasn’t as interested in Malcolm’s political views as he was in his take on
social justice during his years in the Nation of Islam. David was inspired
by Malcolm’s spiritual awakening after his pilgrimage to Mecca, and howhe combined spirituality with politics. David decided to follow in Malcolm’s
footsteps and bought a Koran. But he knew Islam required discipline, the
same kind of discipline needed to be a practicing Catholic. Over the nextdecade, David stopped reading the Koran but continued listening to Pub-
lic Enemy, a hip-hop band that sang the virtues of the Nation of Islam.
Years went by. David met his wife, Zeenat Khan, a Pakistani Muslim
from Birmingham, England. She encouraged him to pick up the Koran
again. One day in 2000 he visited a mosque near the University of Chi-
cago with the sole intention of finding out if music was banned in Islam.He had never been to a mosque before this day. He met a mosque leader
who told him he must stop playing his music because a verse in the Koran
says the human voice can be seductive. This was a major stumbling block;David had been playing for more than a decade in a hip-hop band he’d
formed called All Natural.

MUSLIM VOICES 113
David had discovered one of the greatest challenges facing young Mus-
lim living not only in America but also those in the wider Western world.
The absence of Islamic scholars educated and raised in Western countries
has produced two choices: either young Muslims follow the religious guid-ance of the available imams, knowing it might not apply to their modern
lives, or they interpret the holy texts for themselves, with the risk that
their conclusions may distort Islamic doctrine.
David didn’t agree with the mosque leader’s interpretation of the
Koranic verse referring to music. But he did not have another source for
more reliable religious guidance. He was willing to give up his music inorder to convert. He proclaimed the shahada , the rite of passage, and be-
came a Muslim.
Several months later, David met Rami while he was having a conversa-
tion with a fellow Muslim. He asked Rami if playing music was against
Islamic teaching, and Rami delicately told him it was an open question
and suggested that David research the topic.
Not long after David met him, in June 2001, Rami held the Taking It
to the Streets festival and asked David and All Natural to perform there. It
was the first time David had appeared before an all-Muslim crowd. They
were so receptive, and Rami was so welcoming that David started to think
that playing music couldn’t possibly be harmful.
Still, he remained conflicted about whether he could perform his music
and remain a good Muslim . At first he put the issue aside. He had entered
the University of Illinois law school in September and wanted to concen-
trate on his studies. But almost immediately, the attacks of September 11
turned his indecision into action. David felt that music had to become a
voice of expression for Muslims, who in his words had overnight becomeAmerica’s new “bogeyman.” Hip-hop could become a first line of defense.
David had already used his music for political commentary; one of his
band’s early albums, Insomnia, sharply criticized U.S. foreign policy and
American society. In the tune, “Culture of Terrorism,” the band sings:
I’m strictly off limits to the cotton-soft scented type
who tip-toe and tread light and dread the sight
of a kufi-wearing kid who’s kicking science
picking mental padlocks . . .
The American economy’s surviving off arms
third world debtclosing down farmspromoting conflict and violent behavior

114 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
then using convicts 4 cheap slave labor
extending patents on the X Y chromosome
pushing drugs from crack down to methadone
drones to the metronome march along to the rhythmof the free trade and forced patriotism
David’s latest and perhaps most important transition from recent Mus-
lim convert to outspoken Muslim musician was just one of the many per-
sonal transformations that were taking shape across the country in thewake of September 11. Suddenly, the nation’s hidden Muslims found them-
selves and their beliefs in the crosshairs of every radio commentator, news-
paper pundit, and politician whose refrain became: “Who are these people?And why do they hate us?” Such questions—framed in ignorance, bigotry,
and most of all fear—hammered the Muslim community from all sides.
Gone was the general sense of benign neglect that had largely shaped theMuslim American experience for decades. Overnight, mainstream America
had imposed a stark choice on Muslim believers everywhere: disavow key
aspects of your faith and culture, or risk being lumped together with theSeptember 11 militants.
In the days and weeks that followed, many Muslim American leaders
who interacted with non-Muslim society took to the airwaves to assuretheir fellow citizens that Islam was not a religion of violence and America
was not a breeding ground for Islamic extremists. Ordinary Muslims took
a less defensive approach. They began to realize it was up to them to de-
fine what it means to be a Muslim in the modern world, and more specifi-
cally, what it means in the new America.
Rami and David certainly weren’t the first to use hip-hop for Islamic
expression, or what is known as dawah, spreading the faith. Hip-hop, now
estimated to be a $1.8 billion industry in the United States, first appeared
in the 1970s. Since that time, this unique brand of music, which has been
used to fuse the racial politics of African Americans with the religious andcultural forces of Latinos, Arabs, and South Asians, has inspired the rise of
Islam among disenfranchised youth in America’s inner cities. It is not pri-
marily poverty that draws them to Islam; it’s what Islam has to offer. Many
Westerners assume that desperation born from impoverishment inspires
people to turn to Islam. But for some, Islam is a refuge from consumer-ism, immorality, and the intoxicating lure of Western culture. Since Sep-
tember 11, a new dimension has entered this movement—opposition to
U.S. policies around the world. The result is a powerful movement that
unifies black nationalism and Islam through hip-hop.

MUSLIM VOICES 115
The first well-known religious organization to use rap-style lyrics was
the Five Percenters. This sectarian, offshoot group split from the Nation
of Islam in the late 1960s. The movement’s founder, Clarence 13X “Pud-
ding,” known to his followers as Father Allah, differed with the Nation ofIslam in one fundamental way: the Nation taught that God had appeared
in Detroit in 1930 in the form of Farad Muhammad who passed on his
teachings to Elijah Muhammad. But Father Allah believed that the blackman collectively is God. His movement taught that 85 percent of mass
society was ignorant and incapable of seeking truth. Ten percent realized
the truth but used it to co-opt the 85 percent; and only 5 percent of hu-manity knew “the divine nature of the black man who is God or Allah.”
The Five Percenters began preaching in the 1960s; they used African-
American slang to create rhymes and attract urban youth on the streets of
and around New York City. For mainstream Sunni Muslims, however,
the notion that God’s divinity is embodied in the collective identity of
black men is blasphemy. Such thinking contradicts a basic principle of
Islamic doctrine, tawhid , or the unity of God.
Despite their unorthodox theology, affiliates of the Five Percenters went
on to inspire rap groups and were recruited by some bands that emerged
in the 1970s. The rap bands from the 1970s, with their Afrocentric music,
eventually contributed to the evolution of Islamic hip-hop in the 1990s.
The message changed dramatically as the musical genre took root withinsome Sunni Muslim circles, and Islam became central to the music. Just as
rap has empowered African Americans, Islamic hip-hop is inspiring young
Muslim Americans. The ethnic diversity of these bands gives them even
more historical importance, and allows them to appeal to Muslims of all
backgrounds.
Recent groups, including Native Deen, MPAC, and Sons of Hagar,
have left behind early lyrics about drugs, sex, and violence. Instead, they
praise the Koran and the Sunnah. Native Deen, consisting of three Afri-
can American rappers, promotes positive religious messages while appeal-
ing to Muslims of diverse ethnic backgrounds . In one song called “What
We Go Through,” Deen sings:
One billion strong, all year long,
Prayers to Allah even in Hong Kong.
Can never be wrong if we read the Koran,Cause it’s never been changed since day one.Others may brag, say that we lag,But they don’t know all the power we had.

116 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
The power we had, the power we have.
So Muslimoon don’t you ever be sad.
Take many looks, go read their books,
You’ll see all the facts that your friends overlook.“So always be proud, you can say it out loud,I am proud to be down with the Muslim crowd!”
M-U-S-L-I-M
I’m so blessed to be with them . . .
M-U-S-L-I-M
I’m so blessed to be with them . . .
On their Web site, Native Deen made it clear that they saw themselves
as members of the ummah, the worldwide community of believers.
Although we are Black, we are not part of the Nation of Islam or the Five
Percenters. Not all Black Muslims follow Farrakhan. In fact, over a third of allMuslims in America are African-Americans who belong to the internationalcommunity of Muslims. Some call this mainstream Islam, and it is this Islamthat Native Deen follows.
In the lyrics of another band, the Sons of Hagar, two Arabs, one
Irishman, and Korean convert to Islam portray Muslims around the world
as a subjugated minority. The multiethnic nature of this group illustrates
the growing cultural convergence between African American Muslims andtheir immigrant co-religionists who seem to have agreed, particularly since
September 11, to place their Muslim identity first.
MPAC, or Muslim Produced Athletic Company, was created in 2001
by two African Americans and four Arabs, all of whom lived in Bridgeview,
a predominately Arab Chicago suburb. The band quickly caught on, play-ing at large Islamic conventions and on college campuses. On a recent
single, “Muslim American,” MPAC sings:
How would you deal with being labeled as evil
To such an extreme pointYou’re no longer being labeled as people
These thoughts are lethal injections
Affecting cerebral connections, through media feeding projectionsIt weakens your brotherTurning Muslims undercover like sleeping through fajr (morning prayer)We need to stand and stop being viewed as children crawlingWe believe in peace not pieces of building falling
Its constant presence
They say we all strap bombs and arms to measureOur commitment to our lord but Islam’s a treasureA religion based on truth. No room for terror to push themTake a step into the world of the American Muslim

MUSLIM VOICES 117
In explaining the lyrics of many of their songs, two MPAC musicians,
Luqman Rashad and Jameel Karim, say their words are catharsis, a way of
telling the world what Muslims are experiencing after September 11 and
various conflicts around the world, from Bosnia to Palestine to Iraq.
A shared feeling of betrayal, of hurt, reflected in hip-hop lyrics is break-
ing down the ethnic divide among second-generation Muslim Americans.
This sentiment convinced Rami that his community cafés would be a hit.After the first few concerts at Ndiga, the crowds became so large that Rami
had to move the performances across town to the Spoken Word Café, a
larger, more upscale venue near the University of Chicago. On the last Fri-day night of each month, David Kelly’s voice projects from the stage. Bands
from MPAC to Native Deen pump up the crowd. Even all-female bands,
who would be discouraged from performing at many Islamic events simplybecause they are women, have become regulars—so much so that the crowd
has memorized their lyrics. This new generation of Muslim entertainers
has chosen the path of dawah , spreading the faith, but of all the words spo-
ken during these evenings, no one has ever called it that.
Your Muslim Neighbor Is Your Friend
The Chicago traffic is more congested than usual one afternoon in Sep-tember 2004 as I listen to a message on my voicemail, one hand on thewheel, the other grasping my cell phone . An afternoon rain is beating
hard on my windshield, making the soft, serene voice on the message nearly
inaudible. I struggle to listen to the lightly accented voice. It’s Abdul MalikMujahid, an imam, acquaintance, activist, and scholar.
By now I have to come to know the Islamic community in Chicago and
in other parts of the country. I feel their frustrations of living in post–September 11 America. I share their determination to try to educate the
public about their religion, however difficult that might be. If anyone can
change the tide of this vast sea of nationwide ignorance, it is Abdul Malik.A poised, slender man, always impeccably dressed, he has the smooth,
conciliatory skills of a diplomat, and the serenity of a theologian. He dis-
agrees with anyone who might suggest that Muslims are the “other” inAmerican society. Yet, he works to encourage a distinctive Islamic iden-
tity for all Muslims.
I struggle to hear his message, while trying not to lurch into the car ahead
of me in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. “Hello, this is Abdul Malik. I am
calling to let you know that Radio Islam will be on the air in a few days.”

118 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
A few days? He is giving me short notice to convince my editors at the
Chicago Tribune to let me write a story. The first daily Islamic radio show
in the United States is certainly not front-page news. There are Hamas
bombings, and the Bush administration’s threats of “regime change” inIran. There are the usual home-team sports sagas, which I ignore but which
are more important to the Tribune than the war in Iraq. Each time I watched
the newspaper deploy numerous reporters to cover the Chicago Cubs—after all, the newspaper owns the team—I wondered why Americans don’t
have more substantive ways to occupy their lives and why newspapers don’t
have more enlightening subjects to fill their pages. Radio Islam woulddefinitely be a hard sell for all these reasons, not to mention that it would
be a positive story about Muslims.
Such pieces rarely generate much interest among the high-ranking
Tribune editors, who worry out loud in editorial meetings that the paper
would look foolish if favorable stories about Muslims appeared on the front-
page along with stories about Islamic militants beheading Americans in
Iraq. In their eyes, one Muslim is no different from the next. But some-how this logic is never applied to other faiths. Otherwise, the Tribune would
have to suspend its fawning coverage of Catholics—written to appease thecity’s large Catholic population—every time the Irish Republican Army
set off a bomb in central London. Even so, I am determined to write the
story, even though I know it will end up buried inside the “Metro” sec-tion, a repository for articles more suited to small-town newspapers fillingspace with reports on Sunday night bingo.
Abdul Malik’s spontaneity is typical of Muslim Americans and Muslims
everywhere. I had asked him to give me plenty of warning about RadioIslam’s debut. It was unlikely a national newspaper would cover it, and theChicago Tribune was probably the best hope for any publicity. But self-
promotion is as taboo to Muslims as forgetting to offer a houseguest food
and drink. It is not only a cultural taboo, but a religious one.
That Abdul Malik is launching a radio station on a public frequency
accessible to non-Muslim listeners is already a significant departure from
the Muslim tradition of public reticence. But as he tells me, since Septem-
ber 11, Muslims are tired of everyone speaking for them and about them.It is time for Muslim Americans to speak for themselves. Islam does notcondone terrorism; Islam is not at war with the West; and your Muslim
neighbor is your friend. This is Abdul Malik’s message.
The night the radio program hits the airwaves, I am having trouble find-
ing the building that houses the station. The entrance to the building at

MUSLIM VOICES 119
the address Abdul Malik has given me is confusing. The front door with a
sign that reads “Kasper Dance Studio” is located on a small street off a
busy thoroughfare running through Chicago’s Polish neighborhood. When
I reach the door to the studio, I look around for evidence of the radiostation, WCEV, which has agreed to sell Radio Islam an hour of airtime
each evening from six to seven. I finally spot a half-hidden sign, “WCEV,
We’re Chicago’s Ethnic Voice.” Ethnic is the key word. For two genera-tions, the Migala family, hardcore Chicagoans, have devoted themselves
to giving a voice to minorities who were otherwise excluded from com-
mercial stations. WCEV airs programming in Polish, Arabic, Bosnian,and a host of other foreign languages, including Gaelic. Now the time has
come to add Chicago’s vibrant Muslim community to the mix.
I ring the bell and pass through a door leading into the studio. Inside,
Abdul Malik is supervising every detail of the preparations for the show.
The studio is in a time warp, which gives it a special charm. A red light
hanging from the ceiling outside the control room reads, “On Air.” Ev-erything else is brown: the carpet, the wood paneling, the curtains. The
1950s atmosphere seems particularly incongruous once the host takes his
seat in the control room and begins the show.
Dressed in a long, white Islamic tunic, Altaf Kaiseruddin, a doctor and
friend of Abdul Malik, sits in front of a large black microphone ready to
greet his guests and callers. When the show begins, a loud, prerecordedmale voice sounds a confident and purposeful chord. “Everyone is talking
about Isl-a-a-am and Muslims. It’s time you talk,” he says, with the slight
lilt of an African American rap musician.
The premodern equipment only allows one caller to hang on the line at
a time; some callers abruptly hear a dial tone when they think they are on
hold. But it doesn’t matter because the callers are friends who have beenasked to phone in. Who else could possibly know that the station is on the
air? There has been little or no advance promotion, and most listeners
only know to tune in by word of mouth.
Abdul Malik, the hosts, and producers struggle through the hour until
the last guest is set to call in. “Hello, hello,” says Kaiseruddin. For a few
anxious seconds, there is silence. Has the line gone dead?
Then the guest, a comedian named Preacher Moss, sounds a loud “Sa-
laam aleikum!” (Peace be upon you!)
Kaiseruddin breathes a sigh of relief through the microphone. The line
isn’t lost.
“So tell us about your national tour, ‘Allah Made Me Funny.’”

120 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
“It is a thirty-day tour. It’s a comedy,” Moss says, before delivering the
punch line. “I am only five-foot-five-inches tall. Allah made me funny
because he didn’t make me tall.”
This remark is exactly what Abdul Malik envisioned when he first con-
sidered producing Radio Islam. He wanted the show to prove to non-
Muslim listeners that Muslims are just like them, that their lives are not
consumed with religious activities. They joke, and are even capable ofmaking fun of themselves.
Abdul Malik’s view about how Muslims should be perceived in America
is just one among many diverse opinions within the nation’s Islamic
community. Many Muslims feel they are caught between competing de-
mands: If they try to convince Americans that they are just like them, arethey not apologizing for being Muslim and de-emphasizing the glorious
qualities of their religion? But on the other hand, if they stress the differ-
ences between Muslims and non-Muslims, are they not encouraging some
people’s efforts to alienate them from mainstream American society?
Some Muslims deal with this dilemma through a bit of self-denial. They
want to believe that Americans can distinguish between the Islamic mili-
tant profiled on Fox News and the peaceful Muslim living next door. They
recall the time a neighbor did them a good deed, or when, after Septem-
ber 11, non-Muslims in different parts of the country linked arms around
mosques to protect them from vandalism. But they minimize empiricaland anecdotal evidence showing that for the most part , Americans have
grown increasingly hostile toward Islam and Muslims.
There is yet another Muslim voice, one that has turned Islam into a com-
modity to be marketed shamelessly to non-Muslim America. After Septem-
ber 11, the community saw the emergence of the “professional Muslim.”
Suddenly there were lucrative opportunities to tell America what it wanted
to hear about Islam, rather than challenging the nationwide consensus.
Irshad Manji, the author of The Trouble with Islam, is one of the most
damaging voices for the Islamic community. Of all the professional Mus-
lims to emerge after September 11, Manji won most attention from the
non-Muslim world. Her book was an international bestseller; she became
a television pundit, and an essayist on the editorial pages of the world’s
most influential newspapers. She earns thousands of dollars for speaking
engagements on college campuses.
Muslims, as well as non-Muslim experts, around the world—particularly
in Canada, Manji’s home and where she hosted a radio talk show—con demn

MUSLIM VOICES 121
her. First, most don’t consider her a Muslim, even though she was born as
such. She identifies herself as a lesbian, and homosexuality is considered a
violation of the faith. Her political views are the antithesis of Muslim feel-
ing about nearly everything, from her favorable attitudes toward Israel inits conflict with the Palestinians to her support of U.S. policy in the Arab
and Islamic world. A scholar of Islamic studies who is a friend of mine calls
her a Muslim Zionist, a label Manji would no doubt accept. My own en-counter with Manji was not encouraging; her opinions about Islam, she
offered when I interviewed her in 2004 for the Tribune, had no basis in the
teachings of the faith. As a result of her unorthodox views, many Muslims
believe she claims to be a Muslim only to sell books; a Muslim denouncing
the faith is a marketer’s dream.
To many non-Muslims, however, she is the voice of “progressive” Is-
lam. Why progressive? Because Manji’s prescription for correcting the
“troubles with Islam” is for the faith to conform to the ideas of Western
philosophy. Essentially, Islam would cease to be Islam. Manji is neither a
scholar nor a theologian. Yet, she portrays herself as a savior and calls for
reforming the faith. Her market-driven campaign has become a problem
for Muslim reformers who now have difficulty convincing Muslim society
that their ideas for altering Islam are not the kind of reform Manji is pre-
scribing. Manji quickly became the darling of the non-Muslim world be-
cause she reinforced what they already believed about Islam. She oftenclaims, for example, that the Koran condones violence against non-Muslims.
Muslims sometimes blame themselves for her fame; her voice stands out
in the absence of other Muslim voices willing to debate her views in the
national media.
The question of who is the authentic Islamic voice in America has al-
ways been a divisive issue among Muslims, but the debate became even
more heated after September 11. Who should it be? The Arab voice, thePakistani voice, or that of the African American believer?
Abdul Malik was sensitive to this debate, having spent so much time in
Chicago, in many ways the home of African American Islam. He was aware
that many African American Muslims resented the fact that the public
perception of Islam in America was shaped by the image of Muslims as
either Arab or Pakistani, but not African American.
When inviting Muslims to explain Islam, organizations across the coun-
try often approach Arabs, Pakistanis, and Indians, but rarely African Ameri-
cans. Most Islamic leaders, such as Abdul Malik, believe that after September

122 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
11 Muslims must unify. And, although great tensions remain, September 11
did inspire at least some immigrant and African American Muslims to begin
chipping away at an icy relationship that dates back decades.
Abdul Malik wanted Radio Islam to illustrate the diversity of the Is-
lamic community, so he arranged for Muslim hosts of all ethnicities, in-
cluding African Americans. Finding content for the radio program that
would neither further divide Muslims from each other nor dilute theiridentity was the next challenge. In choosing the name Radio Islam, Abdul
Malik considered this conundrum. Would listeners think it was a platform
for proselytizing? In the end, he decided that the program should havetwo purposes. It should offer Muslims a chance to set the record straight
about Islam, but should also host discussions about everything from the
death of Pope John Paul II to the Cinderella story of the Boston Red Sox’s2004 World Series victory.
In practice, Radio Islam focuses most of the time on issues of particular
concern to Muslims. One night in October 2005, Robert Grant, the newdirector of the FBI’s Chicago office, was a guest. It was the holy month of
Ramadan and the question posed to Grant was appropriate considering
the time of year: how can Muslims be assured that when they donate tocharities, they won’t be hunted down by the U.S. government and ac-
Abdul Malik Mujahid. ( Photograph by
Janaan Hashim )

MUSLIM VOICES 123
cused of raising money for Islamic militants? During Ramadan, it is espe-
cially important for Muslims to give to charity.
“Our investigations make a distinction,” Grant said, between Muslims
donating to charities and those donating to illegal causes.
“But how is this possible?” asked a caller. She wanted to know how the
U.S. government could claim to know which charities, if any, might be
fronts for Islamic radicals, and which were not.
Grant couldn’t answer. Instead he tried to change the subject from
fundraising for Muslim extremists to fundraising for the Irish Republican
Army. The United States was not just singling out Muslims in its crack-down on fundraising, he suggested. Rather, agencies such as the FBI were
scrutinizing all ethnic or religious groups that might give money to radicals.
“The IRA, a deadly organization, was funded through fundraising in
the United States,” he said.
In shows like this one, the conversation between Muslims and their
neighbors, as Abdul Malik would say, was at cross-purposes. The Muslimswanted the truth, but, in this case, Grant’s failing effort to improve rela-
tions was transparent. It was easy to hear the caution in his voice as he
carefully constructed each halting phrase. The Muslim callers were un-able to convince Grant that fighting terrorism was one thing, but violat-
ing their civil liberties was another. And Grant failed to persuade them
that the new laws enacted after September 11, which made it difficult forMuslims to carry out their religious duties, were not aimed specifically at
Muslims.
The host that evening, Frederick al Deen, could easily have pressured
Grant to answer the caller’s question. Al Deen was certainly not afraid to
speak truth to power. For many years, he had been an imam at mosques
belonging to the American Society of Muslims, the movement WallaceDeen Muhammad created after he split from the Nation of Islam. Al Deen,
himself African American, was a seasoned activist, one seemingly unlikely
to tolerate half-truths from an FBI agent.
But inside the studio, al Deen’s face remained stoic, as he concentrated
on taking callers’ questions. He showed respect for Grant, and allowed
him a graceful exit off the air. This was the Radio Islam way. Let thecallers pressure the guests and let the hosts remain above the fray.
Al Deen’s behavior was in keeping with Abdul Malik’s idea of what
Radio Islam should be. At heart, Abdul Malik never wanted to believe hownegative public opinion was toward Muslims and Islam, and he didn’t want
the program to become a battleground between Muslims and everyone

124 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
else. His early years in America helped shape his perspective. When he ar-
rived at the University of Chicago in 1981 to study political science, he
immediately joined a small community of Muslim intellectuals who made
him feel at home. Fazlur Rahman, a world-renowned scholar of Islamicstudies, taught there, and he became Abdul Malik’s good friend and spiri-
tual guide. He often led about ten Muslims, all from overseas, in Friday
prayers held in the university chapel. At the time, there were no MuslimAmericans at the university; all were foreigners. Abdul Malik’s roommate,
a Muslim from Malaysia, was the national president of the Muslim Stu-
dents’ Association. Associations like the MSA, which became more com-mon on university campuses in the 1990s, and even more so after September
11, were at first created to foster a comfortable environment for Muslims
from abroad.
Abdul Malik had intended to stay in the United States for two years and
then move back to Pakistan. But, like many elites of his generation from
developing countries, he never returned home. This was common not onlyamong Pakistanis, but also Egyptians whose wealthy families could afford
to send them to America for higher education. Unlike most, Abdul Malik
didn’t stay because he thought he could make more money in America.He worried, even during the 1980s, about the future relationship between
America and Islam. He thought that if Muslims living in America could
develop a healthy relationship with mainstream society, this would beimportant for Muslims across the world. America’s acceptance and knowl-
edge of Islam would be good for world peace. There would be a ripple
effect; understanding at home would mean tolerance abroad.
Abdul Malik’s visionary spirit did not change after he left the Univer-
sity of Chicago. In the 1980s on the Eid al-Adha, the feast day in the
Muslim calendar that marks Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son forGod, Malik told a Chicago congregation that they should encourage their
children to become journalists in order to correct public perceptions about
Islam. Following his own advice, in 1988 he enrolled in a vocational schoolto learn how to become a broadcaster. Two years later, he finished a fea-
sibility study and determined that it would cost $1.2 million to start even
a modest radio station. It was money he didn’t have. He had decided togive up the idea, when he came face-to-face with the type of ignorance he
had hoped to change through just such a radio station. In 1990, when he
went looking for a house, his real estate agent asked him, “What churchdo you belong to?” Abdul Malik said he didn’t belong to a church, but
attended a mosque. “What’s a mosque?” the agent wanted to know.

MUSLIM VOICES 125
Abdul Malik realized his calling: he would educate Muslims and non-
Muslims about Islam. In 1988, he had started a company called Sound
Vision, now the largest Islamic multimedia company in the United States.
Sound Vision produces Muslim-based educational tapes, CD-ROMs, andvideos, on topics ranging from reading the Koran to learning Arabic. A
video series for children, modeled after the PBS programs Sesame Street
and Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood , made Sound Vision famous. It’s called Adam’s
World , and centers around a Kufi-wearing puppet. Adam has a friend, Anisa,
and neither of them knows much about Islam or the West. But during the
series they learn about pluralism and different cultures. In North America,
live performances by the characters from Adam’s World can draw a mostly
Muslim crowd of up to ten thousand.
After Sound Vision became lucrative, Abdul Malik decided in 1990 to
produce RadioIslam.com. With some inexpensive software and a high-
speed Internet connection, Abdul Malik placed Radio Islam on the World
Wide Web. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a beginning. It took him years to
find a commercial station willing to sell airtime to Radio Islam. Mean-
while Sound Vision became a media empire and, by the time Abdul Malik
made a deal with WCEV in 2004, he was able to fund the show with prof-
its from Sound Vision.
Eight months into the show, however, Abdul Malik needed fresh funds
to keep the program alive. They were still airing only a few commercials,one possible way to raise money. So he did what is common within the
Muslim American community: he held a fundraiser. Generally, fundraisers
are used for the upkeep or expansion of a mosque, or to meet the imams’
salaries and other expenses. In recent years, Islamic communities across
the country have also collected vast sums for earthquake and hurricane
victims. No matter the cause, the scene at fundraisers is usually the same:
a large dining room in a five-star hotel, circular tables, no alcohol, andtypical American banquet fare, such as salmon or baked chicken.
The Radio Islam day for giving is a bit different. It is held at a restau-
rant, not a hotel. And although the restaurant is located in a suburb,
Bridgeview, it isn’t a white-picket-fence suburb; it is home to, perhaps,
the largest Muslim population around Chicago. There is also a PowerPoint
presentation, not the usual parade of speakers.
Dressed in a modest, dark blue pantsuit, Janaan Hashim, a lawyer, takes
the stage to make the case for donating money. Janaan, who invited me to
attend, easily refutes the stereotype of a submissive Muslim woman. Like

126 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
the demanding schoolteacher she once was, Janaan commands the po-
dium with her five-foot-three-inch frame. Muslims are familiar with giv-
ing money to mosques, but donating to Muslim media is something new
to them. In many of their countries of origin, there are only government-run media outlets, not a commercially driven, independent press as there
is in the United States. Those who understand the free expression of ideas
are skeptical that a program on an ethnic radio station in Chicago canpossibly counter the continuous assaults on Islam on mainstream televi-
sion, radio, and in the newspapers.
The way to soften this crowd, like any other, is to tell a few jokes. But
Janaan expects the guests to do more, to laugh at themselves as well. She
shows the first images in her PowerPoint presentation, revealing on a big
white screen a few remarks from callers who have phoned Radio Islam. “Ididn’t know Muslims had such good American accents,” says one caller.
And, “Where do you get those people who talk in such a normal way?”
remarks another.
“We were born in America!” Janaan replies, turning away from the
screen and facing the crowd. Her warm-up seems to be effective. The
audience laughs in a way that suggests that such awkward moments arefamiliar.
Abdul Malik, executive director of Radio Islam and on this night chief
fundraiser , takes the stage.
“Who is going to give ten thousand dollars to Radio Islam?
“This is your station. It’s the only daily Islamic station in the country. It
can’t stay on the air without your support. If you can’t afford it alone,team up with others to make the donation. I’m looking for a show of hands.”
As I glance around the room, I see no hands, only blank stares. Many
guests in the room, well-dressed doctors, lawyers, and professors, can af-ford to donate ten thousand dollars. I have seen them at so many other
fundraisers for Islamic causes, and they have surely made generous contri-
butions in the past.
“Okay,” says Abdul Malik. “Five thousand dollars. Who is going to give
five thousand dollars to your favorite radio station?”
Still, no hands. Janaan is sitting next to me and becoming more frus-
trated with each passing minute. Between helping to organize the event
and arranging the presentation, she is exhausted. “I knew this would hap-
pen,” she mumbles under her breath.
The inertia and indecision within the Islamic community often frus-
trate Janaan. Of the hundreds of Muslims I have met across the country,

MUSLIM VOICES 127
few match her energy and assertiveness, which serve her well as she at-
tends law school at night and raises three children by day with her hus-
band, Raid. Janaan feels that some Muslims have a tendency to let life
happen to them, as if every event were predetermined and human inter-vention couldn’t make a bit of difference. This tendency is rooted in the
Islamic world, where the rhythm of life is much slower than in the United
States. It is so common that they laugh about it among themselves.
Azhar Usman, a Muslim comedian who has become internationally
known for his stories about Muslim life and Western reactions to it, tells a
joke during his acts around the world that sums up the Muslim tempo.
“When the Oklahoma City bombing happened, the first reporter on the
scene said, ‘This bombing has Middle Eastern characteristics written allover it.’ What does that mean?” asks Usman, who with his intimidating
long black beard and husky frame bears a strong resemblance to an over-
weight Osama bin Laden. “That the bombers were supposed to show up
at three o’clock and came at six?” The punch line refers to the Arab pen-
chant for arriving everywhere hours late; in my own Maronite household
we called this Lebanese Standard Time.
On this night, however, it is more than passivity that prevents the Mus-
lims from rising in their chairs to Abdul Malik’s call. They can’t make the
cultural leap of faith from funding their local mosques or religious schools
to keeping their local radio station on the air. On the surface, the idea issimple enough; here is a rare chance to control both the medium and the
message. Muslims for once can choose for themselves how to portray their
community to one another and to their non-Muslim friends and neighbors.
As I sit at the dinner, I recall an encounter I once had with a wealthy
Iranian woman during my time in Tehran. Her father had bequeathed a
large sum to a rural religious school for orphans, and the local cleric told
her at the dedication ceremony that the children would pray for her everyday of her life in return for her father’s gift. Such an exchange is a normal
part of life for many affluent Muslims, but where is the heavenly reward
for keeping Radio Islam on the air? The doctors, lawyers, accountants,
and other professionals around me understand that the media, any media,
is a force of nature. But, for them, it is something with which they have
almost no experience and little access. They are beginning to adjust but it
will take time. Abdul Malik’s grand idea is indeed ahead of its day. More
than a year later, in January 2006, Radio Islam has raised more than
$170,000.

128 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Making Their Voices Heard
To understand why Muslim Americans need their own media, take a look
inside the newsroom of nearly any American newspaper. The Islamiccommunity’s relationship with the Chicago Tribune , by far the largest news-
paper in the Midwest, is a good example of the difficulties they face in
trying to correct misguided and inaccurate stories written about them. Ofcourse, it is important not to over-generalize the media’s portrayal of Is-
lam. Television news is far more biased than print media. But I offer the
Tribune as a good example of how attitudes about Muslims and Islam are
institutionalized within some media circles.
In the spring of 2004, some of the people who attended the Radio Islam
fundraiser paid a visit to the Chicago Tribune . A group of about twenty,
including a doctor, a schoolteacher, and the president of the board at the
Bridgeview mosque, came to complain about an article the newspaper
published concerning the mosque. The Tribune had unleashed a team of
ambitious, hungry reporters on the mosque, having decided after Sep-
tember 11 to launch a series of articles they called “The Struggle for the
Soul of Islam.”
When I joined the Tribune as the religion writer in August 2003, re-
porting and research for the series had been underway for nearly two years.
At first, the editors asked me to serve as something of a consultant to makesure the terminology and contemporary Islamic history in the series were
correct. I quickly realized that the reporters and editors had neglected to
educate themselves about Islam. The project had been underway for manymonths, yet the editors and reporters were still trying to figure out basic
information, such as the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, or
the bare-bones history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the singlemost important Islamic movement of the twentieth century.
The stated purpose of this series was to educate readers about Islam
around the world. But, behind closed doors, it was clear there was anothermotivation: to write primarily about the extremists, the militants misrep-
resenting the tenets of the religion and giving Islam a bad name. The
Tribune editors and reporters on this particular project were not inter-
ested in enlightening readers about how the majority of Muslims prac-
ticed their faith. They wanted only to make sensational headlines by writing
about the fringe. One reporter on the team, in fact, was an ambitiousMuslim who despised those Muslims she perceived to be too conservative.
The Muslims she interviewed later told me countless stories of how she

MUSLIM VOICES 129
deceived them to gain entrance to their homes and mosques. Their first
impulse was to trust her; she wears a headscarf and they thought a Muslim
reporter would accurately represent their lives and views. But, for this
reporter, the series of articles on Islam allowed her two interests to con-verge. Through her work on the story, she would please the paper’s top
editors, and, as part of her personal crusade, she could condemn Muslim
traditionalists. From the paper’s point of view, her presence on the teamserved an important purpose; she gave the newspaper cover. Surely, a
Muslim involved in the project would give the stories credibility, no mat-
ter what was written. After September 11, in fact, the Tribune displayed
posters of her around Chicago, a marketing gimmick designed to con-
vince readers of the paper’s authority on the subject.
The Tribune’ s zeal was also motivated by hopes the series would garner
a big prize for the paper, which labors under an abiding sense of inferior-
ity before more decorated newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times and
the New York Times . A careful, thoughtful explication of Islam worldwide,
with all its nuances, or so went the thinking in the executive suites, would
not bring the Tribune any glory. Instead, it had to uncover a story that
would reaffirm readers’ impressions of the faith after September 11. An
exposé on homegrown Muslim extremists in the American heartland would
definitely fit the bill.
The reporters’ original aim in writing about the Bridgeview mosque
was to show how Muslim moderates had been chased out of the commu-
nity, after Islamic extremists took over the mosque. The paper also hoped
to prove that these extremists used donations worshippers gave the mosque
to help Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, carry out militant attacks
against Israel. But, after two years, they still hadn’t discovered the in-
crimi nating evidence they were convinced they would find. Instead, they
published a story about radicals’ takeover of the mosque and merely im-plied that these radicals raised money for terrorist organizations. “Hard-
liners Won Battle for Bridgeview Mosque,” read the headline on Sunday’s
front-page.
When the article hit the newsstands in February 2004, the Islamic com-
munity in Chicago was dismayed, and angry. They disagreed with the
article’s premise that radical Muslims had succeeded in their hostile take-
over of the mosque. The Tribune claimed they were radical Muslims be-
cause the women wore headscarves and the imam preached against the
policies of the U.S. government and Israel. The story asserted,

130 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Among the leaders at the Bridgeview mosque are men who have condemned
Western culture, praised Palestinian suicide bombers and encouraged mem-
bers to view society in stark terms: Muslims against the world. Federal au-
thorities for years have investigated some mosque officials for possible links toterrorism financing, but no criminal charges have been filed.
This paragraph, appearing at the beginning of the long piece, begged
an obvious question. If the U.S. government had probed the lives of mosque
leaders for years and come up dry, what right did the Tribune have to try
to convince its readers that the mosque is a breeding ground for radical-
ism? In August 2004, months after the article was published, the U.S. gov-
ernment did charge Muhammad Salah, a man who worshipped at theBridgeview mosque, with laundering and disbursing more than one mil-
lion dollars to support Hamas. But no one within the mosque leadership
was named in the case.
The Tribune story also angered the community for another of its as-
sumptions, one that is common in the American media and public opin-
ion. The Tribune suggested that the Muslims fell into two categories. “Bad”
Muslims are practicing Muslims; they attend prayers on Fridays; the women
wear headscarves and their role in the family is different from that of women
in Western secular societies. “Good” Muslims are the so-called secularMuslims. They live like most Americans. “Many women believe that not
even three hairs should show beneath a headscarf,” wrote the Tribune,
attempting to demonstrate the radical takeover of the mosque. “Men and
women are often separated at weddings.” The Tribune failed to tell its
readers that a headscarf covering a woman’s hair is the preferred form of
dress among many Muslims around the world, and at weddings from Cairo
to Amman and Karachi women and men are separated.
Unfamiliar with the workings of the media, the Muslim community in
Bridgeview and greater Chicago did not know how to respond. If they
wrote letters to the public editor, how could one letter of a few paragraphspossibly counter the thousands of words that began on the front-page and
continued inside the paper? But they knew they had to do something.
They feared that the mosque community, like many in America, would
come under attack again. The day after September 11, a pro-American
demonstration in a neighboring district suddenly turned on the Bridgeviewmosque, and the police were called to keep protestors away. So, the mosque
leaders did what they had never done in the past. They demanded a meet-
ing with the Tribune ’s top editors, hoping a retraction would be published
once they made their case.

MUSLIM VOICES 131
The editors agreed to the meeting and asked other reporters to attend.
I never understood why I was invited to the meeting. Perhaps the editors
wanted the Muslims to see the familiar face of at least one journalist with
whom they had a positive relationship.
The day the meeting was held, the editors escorted the Muslim leaders
into a conference room, where they sat on one side of the large circular
wooden table. After pleasantries were exchanged, a young female teacherwearing a headscarf tried to explain that all practicing Muslim women,
not only radicals, wear headscarves. While this might seem like an ex-
treme practice in the United States, veiling is part of Islamic tradition andMuslim women all over the world cover their hair to maintain modest
dress, she told them. “This doesn’t mean a Muslim woman is radical,” she
said. She went on to explain that many Muslims across the world considerveiling a duty in Islam.
One editor, who had directed the series, was visibly hostile, as was the
Muslim woman who helped report the story. At times they sneered attheir critics. Another editor played the diplomat. He tried to make the
Muslims feel their comments were being heard. But his disingenuous tone
and the snickering faces of the other editors annoyed the head of theBridgeview mosque.
“This story was biased and the idea was preconceived from the start,”
he blurted out, shattering the false harmony of the moment.
When the meeting ended, after about two hours, I wanted to assess the
editors’ reactions. I approached the editor who played the diplomat, not
revealing my opinion about the discussion.
“So, what did you think?”
“These Muslims. They came to complain but they can’t even agree
among themselves what there is to complain about,” he remarked, chuck-ling to himself before disappearing into his glass-walled office.
The editors seemed pleased with themselves. They had pacified the
Muslims, who were fortunate to have been granted two hours with impor-tant editors from a large newspaper . What other newspaper would have
given them such an audience, they thought? There would be no retractions,
no corrections, and the Islam series would continue to run in occasionalSunday installments throughout the year. The paper continued to reject
complaints sent in regarding the series, even after a group of renowned
scholars of Islamic studies noted a number of historical misrepresentations.
Bridgeview’s Islamic leaders asked the public editor, Don Wycliff, for
permission to refute the story on the editorial pages reserved for readers’

132 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
comments. Wycliff, an African American and former New York Times re-
porter, was the conscience of the Tribune . More sophisticated, educated,
and open-minded than any other editor at the Tribune, he was displeased
with the way the paper covered Islamic issues. On one occasion, when Ihad a particularly heated battle with my editors over a story about the
Islamic community, I turned to Wycliff for advice. He spoke cautiously.
As the public editor, the newspaper’s liaison with its readers, he had nopower to control directly the fate of each story. And, like most public
editors, he had to phrase his comments carefully when he offered feed-
back to readers about the stories the newspaper published. Even if hedid not agree with editorial decisions made near his office, Wycliff could
not risk the wrath of the Tribune’s management by raising formal objec-
tions about the Islam series or the paper’s day-to-day coverage of Is-lamic issues.
Wycliff did publish one letter sent in for his consideration. Mohammed
Sahloul a physician in the Bridgeview community and a member of themosque governing board, had attended the meeting with the Tribune edi-
tors. Sahloul wrote:
In the article titled “Hard-liners Won Battle for Bridgeview Mosque,” the
writers followed the same lines of misinformed accusations against the Mosque
Foundation and the Muslim community in the southwest Chicago area. These
accusations reinforce the stereotyping against Muslims, label any immigrantAmerican-Muslim who sends donations to his or her family in the land of
origin as “terrorist,” or “aiding” the terrorists, and brand this community of
American-Muslims as practicing a “strict version of Islam.”
Your article represents another media effort to link the Mosque Founda-
tion, its leaders, its imam, its worshipers and the whole Muslim community in
the U.S. to extremism and terrorism. . . . It strikes me as another step to dis-credit all Muslim institutions including houses of worship, schools, charitableorganizations, financial institutions, political and social organizations, and to
discredit prominent Muslim leaders and activists. It casts doubt on even the
most basic activities of American Muslims, like holding prayer in proper Islamic
way and abiding by the Islamic rules of modesty and Islamic attire. . . .
We collect funds for worthy causes because this is an essential part of our
religion and all religions. For example, we collected funds for Iranian earth-
quake victims, Turkish earthquake victims . . .
My three children are scared to go to their schools and to the mosque
because of your article. The sense of hopelessness and disappointment hasintensified in this targeted community of peace-loving Muslims to a level Ihave never seen since the terrorist action of Sept. 11, 2001.
Sahloul had said it all. His sentiments echoed the feelings of many
Muslims in Bridgeview, and those living across the United States. Shortly

MUSLIM VOICES 133
after the letter was published, I visited him in his office in Bridgeview,
about a forty-five-minute drive from downtown Chicago. I did not go
there to interview him; I simply wanted to understand what he and the oth-
ers were experiencing. Sahloul, a Syrian from Damascus, is a soft-spoken,intelligent man. His weightless voice belies his determination to fight for
his rights as an American. We talked about what could be done. I felt as
hopeless as he did; individual reporters and editors at the Tribune were on
a mission, and the only thing I could do as the religion writer was to pub-
lish stories to counter their distorted ones. Perhaps more thoughtful read-
ers might come to realize there was a different vision of Islam than the onethe newspaper was promoting in its series, “The Struggle for the Soul of
Islam.”
A few months later, Sahloul invited me to give a talk on a Saturday
night before a packed audience at Bridgeview. I explained to the large
Muslim crowd how the media operates in the United States and what steps
they might take to get their point across. After the town meeting ended,near midnight, I realized that for the Bridgeview Muslims, mostly Arabs
who have lived for many years in the United States, the media was as
foreign as the streets of Damascus are to most Americans. They had fewideas about how to make their voices heard.
Long after I left the newspaper, I asked Wycliff what he thought in
retrospect. He was more candid than I expected. “I think one of the thingswe write about worst in newspapers, and this newspaper is no different, is
religion. We write about Islam worse than we write about other religions.
The ignorance shows.”
He also acknowledged that the Tribune’ s coverage of the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict is unfair, an obvious point to regular, objective readers. He
recalled a trip he had taken to the Bridgeview mosque, where one Muslimworshipper talked about the paper’s slanted coverage. “I think most Ameri-
can newspapers don’t portray the situation fairly. Very seldom do you get
the story in the Middle East from the Palestinian or Arab viewpoint,”Wycliff said.
“I went with a group to the mosque in Bridgeview and one person said
emotionally, ‘You have been writing about the Israeli withdrawal from Gazaand it is always a painful step by Israeli government and you never talk about
the pain for a Palestinian having his house destroyed.’ He’s right.”
Two months after our conversation, Wycliff resigned from the Tri-
bune. But before his resignation was made public, he wrote a column, which
in my mind reflected the opinions he held all along. His column raised

134 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
questions about the U.S. government’s case against Muhammad Salah,
the man who worshipped at the Bridgeview mosque. “What troubled me
about the Salah case from the beginning was the secrecy of it all,” Wycliff
wrote in a column published on February 2, 2006.
He and a couple of colleagues were arrested by Israeli military authorities
during a trip to the occupied territories back in 1993. They were held incom-
municado from the beginning, and the U.S. government seemed strangelylackadaisical about the whole business. In January 1995, after secret deten-
tion, secret interrogation (except, oddly, for a special command performancebefore the ubiquitous Judith Miller of the New York Times ) and a non-public,
military trial, Salah was found guilty of, as the Tribune ’s story at the time put
it, “being a Hamas member and distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars
within the organization.”
Only six years later, in August 2004, did the government get around to
indicting Salah and two other men on the conspiracy charges for which theynow await trial. So what does any of this have to do with journalism, and inparticular, the Tribune’s journalism?
The premise of the court case against Salah is that aiding Hamas is illegal.
The premise of the laws and decrees that make Hamas illegal is that it is bad.Sixty percent of the Palestinian voters in last week’s election voted for Hamas.
Is it possible that they see something in Hamas that American policymakers
do not?
Part of the reason we felt blindsided by Hamas’ victory is that we don’t see
or hear things from the Palestinian perspective very often.
On Sunday, for example, the Tribune’s Commentary page carried two ar-
ticles on Hamas’ victory. One was by “an American-Israeli peace activist” fromOak Park, the other by the executive director of the publication of the Jewish
United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.
At the end of the column, Wycliff wrote: “I’m not sure what this has
to do with Muhammad Salah and my conscience. Maybe what I feel is
the anxiety that comes from knowing that, in this case anyway, ignoranceisn’t bliss.”
There is a lesson, repeated over and over, that Muslims are learning from
their interaction with mainstream America. As long as others interpret
their lives and their faith, Islam will be judged strictly from a Western
perspective. No matter how limited the audience and how meager themeans, Muslims have come to know that their voices must be heard if
there is any hope for them to be accepted into American society. Often, a
single episode that is hard to ignore compels them to voice their views.Such was the case for Suleiman Khan, a young law student who, in 2004,
launched the literary journal Muslim Stories.

MUSLIM VOICES 135
For most of his childhood, Suleiman was glad his father’s work had
brought the family from Doncaster, England, to Boston. The move took
place when Suleiman was almost seven years old and about to enter the
first grade. It had meant leaving behind most of the relatives on his father’sside of the family, all of whom had come to England from Pakistan. As
soon as the family arrived in Boston, Suleiman felt America was more
tolerant of Muslims than Britain had been. When he left class to pray,bringing his prayer rug, students looked at him with great interest, not
bigoted anger.
His father was offered a new job, and in July 1998 the family moved to
Chicago and then later to one of the city’s most affluent suburbs, Lake
Forest. When he started attending Lake Forest College in the fall of 2000,
Suleiman came to believe that his identity as a Muslim was important tohis success. As president of several campus organizations, ranging from
the Muslim Students’ Association to the prelaw society, he was widely
respected by his peers. He took pride in coming to college dressed in hiskufi, skullcap, and shalwar kameez , the leggings and long tunic that consti-
tute Pakistani traditional dress.
Religion professors invited him to speak to their classes about Islam.
And after September 11, Suleiman was often called upon to explain Islam
not only to students in universities but at local high schools. As he spoke
to large audiences after the attacks, he knew that life for Muslims in Americawas changing. The curiosity Americans once had about his faith had turned
to suspicion. The change became clear when a teacher at one high school
invited him to speak to four hundred students about Islam. After Suleiman’slecture, a question from an audience member deeply troubled him. An
elderly woman, whom he learned was also a teacher at the school, raised
her hand and asked the question, “Do Muslim women really pray?”
To the crowd, it seemed like an innocent question. But Suleiman was
appalled. Did Americans think Muslim women are so oppressed that they
don’t leave the house, even to pray in the mosque? America, he thought,was far more ignorant of Islamic practice than he had ever imagined.
Suleiman decided he must do something to enlighten mainstream soci-
ety. He wrote poetry as a hobby and he and a few friends thought thatpublishing a literary journal of poetry and essays expressing Muslim views
about living in America would be one way to spread the word. The literary
journal would not employ the blunt language of Islamic hip-hop. Its mes-sage would be subtle and evocative. The writings would be introspective
and aimed at intellectual readers. Over the course of about a year, Suleiman

136 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
created a Web site and posted a notice that he was accepting submissions.
At first he received only a few essays and poems, many of them anony-
mous. Muslims weren’t comfortable pouring their hearts out in public.
But, by the end of 2005, he had a few hundred writing samples. One,called “Solace,” was written by Abdur-Rahman Syed.
When your scalding tears can’t put out
The ten thousand fires raging round,When your rubber thighs can’t placeFoot in front of foot on the ground,When you feel your insides fall away
And just can’t smile to play the part,
When a warm shoulder turns cold
And a horrid silence grips your heart,Look back to why you chose this path,Find those who see what you’ve seen—And while you wait with a wet gaze
For the day we meet upon the green,
Turn to the one behind the blink
Of an eye, closer than you think.
I asked Suleiman in 2005 to send me a few writing samples to help me
gain insight into the feelings of young, literary Muslims. Of all the piecesSuleiman sent me, I thought this one best expressed their frustrations. In
the old world of just twenty years ago, Muslim immigrants from the Is-
lamic world were able to remain unnoticed by playing the part of an as-similated American. But, now, their children would never be invisible in
America. Now, they were forced to play their part. In creating a Muslim
voice, whether through music, the media, or poetry, they are sorting outwhat they want to be, and hoping America will learn along with them.

137SIX
Women in the Changing Mosque
/ornament20
Ingrid Mattson sits gracefully on a hard white plastic chair, her hair
covered in a flowing black scarf, her plaid skirt touching the tops of her
ankles. Her large eyes, round face, and white skin give her features a clas-
sical appeal. Ingrid’s modest demeanor belies her fierce intelligence; she
has spent years in libraries, writing a dissertation, even a book. She will
need all this brainpower not just to impress, but to galvanize her audience.She is lecturing a group of imams from different mosques across America.
These men have volunteered to spend a day learning how to show respect
for women in the mosque.
Ingrid scans the room. If she feels hesitant about what she is about to
do, she doesn’t show it.
“I want all the men to take their chairs and move down the hall. You won’t
be there for long,” she says softly, and convincingly. An assistant appears in
the doorway to help. The men have no idea what’s in store, but they show no
inkling of protest; they sheepishly move the portable chairs and disappear.
A few female imams remain in the room with Ingrid, as if nothing has
happened. She asks them: “What kind of contribution do you make to themasjid [the mosque] in your community?”
The women reply with enthusiasm, relieved the men are no longer there.
Then a faint male voice is heard from afar, “We can’t hear you!”

138 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Ingrid is silent and the chatting stops. A few minutes pass.
“Okay, you can come back into the room now,” she says, ending their
exile.
As they reenter the classroom, a bit confused, one imam blurts out,
“What happened?”
It is a rhetorical question. Everyone understands the point of Ingrid’s
exercise. There’s no need for an explanation, so she states the obvious:“Sometimes you can’t understand someone’s situation until you live it
yourself.”
The scene is all too familiar, only Ingrid has cleverly reversed the sex
roles. For years, Muslim American women have complained about being
secluded in a separate room, if not the basement, of a mosque during prayer
time. Women in a mosque, at times, neither hear the imam’s sermon di-rectly nor see him. Often, they strain to make out his words coming through
an old, scratchy speaker system. No matter where the mosque is located
or whether it is old or new, it seems the quality of the speaker system is thesame. It is as if someone planted old electronic equipment in all the mosques
in America as part of a conspiracy to make it difficult for women to hear
the imam. And even in those mosques where the speaker system workswell, the children’s chatter rises above all other voices. Children are usu-
ally the women’s responsibility; an infant’s cry is almost never heard in the
men’s prayer room.
Ingrid knows she is on slippery ground. Where a woman sits in a mosque
is a sensitive subject. For some women, securing the seat of their choice is
no small triumph; it defines their place in Islam. But, for many men, awoman in the same prayer hall is the end of society. This is why the whole
issue has become so controversial, as Muslims sort out how to practice
their faith in America. Women in American mosques are generally re-quired to pray either at the back of the prayer hall behind men or on a
second-floor balcony, where they can see and hear the imam. In conserva-
tive mosques, they pray in a separate room. In Islamic tradition, womenare advised to pray in the back of the mosque so that when they prostrate
themselves, their knees on the floor with their backs pointed upward, they
will be out of the male line of vision. Islamic law says only men, not women,are obligated to pray in the mosque on Fridays, and nowhere in the holy
texts does it say that women should pray in a separate room.
When I toured mosques across the country, some imams were eager to
show me the space where women prayed, if it was in the main hall. They
considered it a litmus test of the mosque’s degree of modernity. They

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 139
thought that, as a non-Muslim and a woman, I would surely conclude that
if women prayed behind the men—not in a basement or a separate room—
it must mean their worshippers were living a progressive life in America.When other, more conservative imams escorted me to separate prayer
rooms for women, they made a point of noting the comforts there. Maybe
the carpet was a bright color or there were large windows letting in thesunlight. With each visit, I tried to figure out how the separation got started.
No one seemed to know for certain, but it appears there has never been a
national consensus about where women should pray. Like most practicesamong Muslim Americans, it has evolved over time.
Many mosque leaders think the segregation of the sexes in American
mosques dates back to the 1980s, when large numbers of immigrants be-gan to arrive from Muslim countries. Before that time, most mosques en-
forced no such separation. But immigrants from South Asia brought their
ideas and traditions with them. Some were influenced by the Islamic ideo-logue Mawlana Mawdudi, who established the Jamaat-i-Islami party, first
in India and later in Pakistan. In his prolific writings, Mawdudi criticizedIngrid Mattson. ( Photograph by Dr. Abdalla M. Al. Courtesy of Islamic Horizons
magazine )

140 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
the West, but his primary aim was to present an uncompromising
worldview that would mobilize Muslims into forming a unified commu-
nity. The strict separation of men and women in mosques was but a small
detail in Mawdudi’s vision for a worldwide ummah . When immigrants from
the subcontinent arrived in the United States, they brought Mawdudi’s
views with them, including their experience of women either praying at
home instead of the mosque, or being separated from men in prayer. Atthe same time, imams affiliated with American mosques were returning
from religious studies in Saudi Arabia, and the conservative Saudi govern-
ment was sending charismatic personalities to U.S. college campuses toorganize Muslim Students’ Associations. In Saudi Arabia in the 1980s as
today, a rigid interpretation of Islam prevailed, particularly in religious
schools; this interpretation included separating women from men in themosque as well as in public. The Saudi students who became involved in
the MSAs held strong views and were able to intimidate other Muslims,
some of whom fled the MSAs, leaving the organizations vulnerable to Saudiinfluence.
In American mosques today, the form of separation depends upon the
ethnic makeup of the worshippers and whether they have imported thetraditions from their homeland to the United States. In many American
mosques dominated by Muslims from India and Pakistan, women are ei-
ther required to pray in a separate room or in a space in the main prayerroom segregated by a curtain or other type of barrier. In India and Paki-
stan, it is rare for women to pray in a mosque. In some Turkish mosques,
a barrier made of thick straw separates the men from the women. It allowsthe women to see out but prevents the men from seeing inside the women’s
section. By contrast, in most of the Arab world, for example in Egypt,
women simply pray behind the men.
Some women, including Ingrid, believe in separation, as long as the
conditions allow women to participate fully in the imam’s sermons. Such
women consider themselves Islamic feminists and view the place wherewomen pray in the mosque as part of their struggle to gain more rights.
They belong to a global movement of women in the West and East who
believe the Koran and the Sunnah call for the equality of all human beingswhile recognizing the differences between men and women. These Is-
lamic feminists are working to recapture the gender equality explicit in
the Koran that has been lost over the ages as Islamic societies becameincreasingly patriarchal. This feminist movement emerged a decade and a
half ago in parts of Africa and Asia, as well as in North America. In South

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 141
Africa, women who had participated in the postapartheid restructuring of
their society fought for gender equality as part of their struggle for social
justice, according to Margot Badran, a scholar specializing in Islamic femi-
nism. South African Muslims were conscious of public space—having beendenied access to such space in the apartheid era—and the women’s struggle
for rights inspired Muslim women to demand equal space in the mosque,
according to Badran. This is where the mosque movement began.
The mosque struggle in America has intensified during the last few
years for somewhat different reasons. For many decades, the mosque was
considered simply as a place of worship. But as Muslim Americans becamemore interested in their Islamic identity, the mosque expanded literally
and figuratively. Half of the several thousands of mosques now existing in
the United States were founded after 1980, according to The Mosque in
America, a 2001 study conducted by the Council on American-Islamic
Relations. The increase after 1980 reflects the influx of immigrants and a
renewed interest in practicing the faith. Rooms have been added for socialactivities. It is common in most mosques for worshippers to share meals
together, especially during the holy month of Ramadan when the day-
long fast is broken each evening at sunset. Young Muslims organize allsorts of activities on the mosque grounds, from basketball games to youth
counseling.
The fight for women’s rights is perhaps more fierce in America than in
the Muslim world because when Muslim American women participate in
activities at the mosque they expect to be treated in the same way they are
at their jobs and schools. But, when they enter the mosque community,these rights are redefined by the Muslim men who generally control
mosque life. This is not to say that all imams and mosque leaders are in-
sensitive to women’s concerns. But, in many mosques, women feel restric-tions are placed upon them in the name of religion. There is little they can
do to defend themselves because they lack the religious education that
would make them authorities on Islamic law.
Later in the day, Ingrid Mattson tells the men a story that she hopes will
inspire a change of heart. She was invited to speak at a conservative mosquein New Jersey, where the women are required to pray in a dark basement.
“I assumed I would have to give the lecture in the women’s section. But
when I arrived, the imam announced on the loudspeaker, ‘I’d like all thesisters to go upstairs and the men downstairs,’” Ingrid tells the imams.
“And the men said, ‘It’s so dark. We can’t hear anything.’

142 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
“It was interesting. When you are in an environment and the light is
coming in, it lifts your spirit. But that’s not the feeling you get when you
are in the basement.”
The imams appear convinced. There will not be any more women pray-
ing in the basement, at least not in the basements of their mosques.
Ingrid is one of the few Muslim women with enough power to persuade
a few imams that, no matter where women pray in the mosque, they shouldbe able to hear and see the imam. As a professor of Islamic studies at Hart-
ford Seminary in Connecticut and vice president of the largest Muslim
American organization, the Islamic Society of North America, she navi-
gates many worlds at once. Her blend of scholarly knowledge and real-life
experience has made her an important voice for women as well as men.
She appeals to second-generation Muslim women with her idealized
vision of Islam. As a young fine arts and philosophy student living in Paris
in the summer of 1986, Ingrid met the first Muslims she ever knew; they
were living in dilapidated apartments on the outskirts of the city. She calls
this period “the summer I met Muslims.” Their generosity toward one
another as well as strangers made a big impression. Even now, she writes
and talks about their well-mannered behavior, which reflects the Prophet’s
teachings.
She returned to Waterloo, Canada, where she was studying, and worked
for about four months planting trees in northern Ontario and British Co-lumbia, living in a tent and working from dawn to sunset. At the time, she
knew she was drawing closer to Islam; when she went to bed each night
under the northern lights, listening to the sounds of the wild, she played
recitations of the Koran on a cassette player. Islam was slowly becoming
the perfect answer to the soul searching that had begun for her as a young
child growing up Catholic in Canada. The nuns in her school had taught
her about social justice and women’s rights to become leaders in theirspiritual lives, but Catholicism never captured her heart. She left the church,
and in college she became interested in art as a way to fulfill her spiritual
needs. But the act of art appreciation felt like a solitary experience.
By the end of that year, Ingrid had converted to Islam. She applied to
graduate school but felt she needed a break from her studies, and decided
to find a way to do relief work. Her new religion, as well as her interest in
the developing world, led her to a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan,
near the border with Afghanistan, during that country’s occupation by the
Soviet Union.

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 143
As the flood of Afghan refugees poured across the border, Ingrid expe-
rienced the dynamics of a patriarchal Muslim society, but also Muslim
etiquette toward outsiders. She married a fellow refugee worker, Amer
Aatek, an Egyptian engineer, and left the dusty camp for a few days. Whenshe returned, the refugees wanted to know all the intimate details of her
marriage ceremony. They were quickly disappointed. Ingrid showed them
her modest gold ring and the simple dress she had borrowed for the wed-
ding. The women refugees had been driven from their homes; they had
sold their possessions to buy food; and they had lost their husbands in the
Afghan war. But when they heard Ingrid’s story, they were aghast. Theybrought her a wedding outfit—bright blue satin pants stitched with gold
embroidery, a red velveteen dress decorated with colorful pompoms, and
a matching blue scarf trimmed with shiny fabric.
Ingrid’s compelling personal history and her conversion to Islam have
given her an elevated status among Muslim Americans. Acceptance of con-
verts within the Muslim community varies. Generally, the reaction is oneof either skepticism of converts who know little about the faith or admira-
tion of those who are well versed in Arabic and Islamic history. Ingrid
earned her reputation through her work as a scholar and activist. Whenshe tells imams that the Koran does not say women should pray in a dark
basement, they listen. When she tells women not to listen to their hus-
bands if they forbid them from going to the mosque for prayers , they
follow her advice. And even in the non-Muslim world, which is often skep-
tical of a Muslim woman wearing hijab , Ingrid has influence. She gives the
lie to the conventional wisdom that a woman wears a headscarf and loose-fitting skirt only if she suffers under the weight of male oppression.
Ingrid’s best tool in her struggle to rebuild women’s rights is her knowl-
edge of Islamic history and her ability to cite early interpretations of Is-lamic law. The fight for women’s rights from inside the Islamic tradition
makes Ingrid and many other devout women part of a new movement.
For them, women’s rights were established in early Islam, but then takenaway over the years. In the Prophet’s mosque, women could see him and
hear him speak. Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, recorded many of her husband’s
sayings to create a vital historical and theological record. She also arguedthat women should be allowed to travel alone, as long as they avoid fitna,
temptation that leads to chaos in society. These journeys should be al-
lowed no matter the reason, not just to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, theonly time traveling alone was allowed in her day. Many jurists disagreed
with Aisha, and even now in some countries women are not allowed to

144 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
travel without their husbands’ permission. In Iran, men are the guardians
of women’s passports.
One Koranic verse Ingrid often cities is:
For Muslim men and Muslim women, for believing men and believing women,
for devout men and devout women, for true men and true women, for men
and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble
themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women whofast (and deny themselves), for men and women who guard their chastity, andfor men and women who engage much in Allah’s praise, for them has Allahprepared forgiveness and great reward.
Other scholars point to another Koranic verse they believe shows that
in Islam men and women are considered equal: “I shall never cause the
deeds of any of you to be lost, male or female, you are of each other.”
Ingrid and those who share her views, however, are at odds with a mi-
nority of Muslims who consider themselves “progressive.” (It is virtually
impossible to determine their numbers, but most Muslim leaders believethey are only a small minority.) While Ingrid refers to Islamic history and
the holy texts to support her position, “progressive” Muslims say the holy
texts should be adapted to modern times, and Muslims should not be wed-ded to literal interpretations of the Prophet’s teachings. Not only should
women pray in the same space as men, they argue, but women should lead
the prayers just as men do.
A standoff between these two sides erupted in New York City in the
spring of 2005 when Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies, led
Friday prayers before a mixed congregation. The incident provoked
condemnation from Islamic jurists, scholars, and Muslim believers around
the world. It was a rare moment when international Islamic scholars be-
came directly involved with the Muslim American community. Sheikh
Yussef al-Qaradawi, a respected scholar now living in Qatar, denounced
Wadud’s actions. He issued a fatwa, a religious decree, explaining his opin-ions. All four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, he said, are unanimous:
Women do not lead men in performing religious duties. Women may
lead prayers only before other women. “One wishes our sisters who are
enthusiastic about women’s rights would revive the practice of women
leading women in prayers, instead of coming up with the heresy of womenleading men in prayers,” he wrote in his fatwa.
Many Muslims expressed outrage on Islamic Web sites. “We need not
judge Amina Wadud only by what she is doing this Friday,” wrote one writer
on the site of Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language cable television network.

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 145
We need to judge her by the pending issues on the agenda of her sponsors
and supporters. To us, they have crossed all limits. To them, they have just
taken the first step towards transforming Islam into a “progressive” and “mod-
erate” form according to the wishes of the enemies of Islam. . . . EmbracingIslam means Muslims have to submit themselves to the will of Allah, obey theKoran and follow the Sunnah. In this perspective, there is absolutely nothingin the Koran or the life of the Prophet Muhammad which can change the
invalidity and impermissibility of women leading men in prayers, regardless of
the wisdom behind it.
The progressive Muslims want their audience to believe that millions of
Muslim women want to be emancipated and that believing in the totality ofthe Koran is something that makes Muslims “Islamists,” “extremists,” “radi-cal,” and ultimately terrorists.
The writer clearly identified one of the great challenges in creating a
Muslim American identity: should Muslims interpret the holy texts in a
non-Muslim society the way they would in the Islamic world? It was pretty
clear Amina Wadud would never have tested the limits of Islamic tradi-
tion had she been living in Cairo or Lahore, Pakistan. Even in America, it
is unlikely that an immigrant Muslim would have led the prayer. But Wadud
is African American, and her ideas and approach as an Islamic feministstem from her experience as an activist in the civil rights movement. Many
within the broader Islamic community were unhappy with Wadud, in part,
because of her approach. Louay Safi, a senior official at the Islamic Soci-
ety of North America, summarized this sentiment in an article.
Several feminist Muslims, supported by a network of progressive activists, have
been pushing the pendulum to the other extreme. . . . It is unfortunate that
Muslim feminists are following in the footsteps of other secularist precursors,
breaking all traditions, and engaging in experimentations that break with for-mative principles and values.
When I discussed the Wadud incident with several Muslim women,
they were puzzled as to why she had created such a public spectacle. Irealized there was a subtle reason they felt offended. Her brazen action
was similar to the way a Western feminist might approach the problem.
As an African American influenced by the civil rights movement, Wadud
had used the tactics of an activist. The Muslim way of debating issues in
public is far less confrontational. When Wadud led the prayer in NewYork, her action had the same spirit as the sit-ins for African American
rights that took place in the 1960s. No matter how much disagreement
there might be within the Muslim American community, it is considered
taboo for Muslims to play out these differences in public.

146 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Questions of concern to Muslim women such as Ingrid Mattson, as
well as to the others, the self-declared progressives, come down to deter-
mining what it is to be a Muslim in the modern world: How should a
Muslim interpret the Islamic sources in contemporary life? Should a Mus-lim distinguish the universal principles of Islam from cultural practices
that are relevant only in a specific time and place? The progressives want
to reinterpret Islamic texts based on the conditions of postmodern America.For them, the fact that women did not lead prayers in Islamic history does
not mean women should not lead prayers in modern America; common
sense should prevail. Women such as Ingrid Mattson, however, use the
past rulings of scholars and theologians as their guide: women leading
prayer is deemed forbidden in Islam. Ingrid believes that acts of worshipare distinct from other areas of Islamic law, a differentiation also made in
the sharia. She believes that the traditions established long ago regarding
worship are sacred and should not be reformed; they have held Muslims
together through all the centuries of change. But when it comes to other
traditional legal interpretations of the holy texts, Ingrid believes distor-
tions have occurred over time.
Amina Wadud believes that Islam in America should be an alternative
to Islam as it has been understood in the past. She places interpretations
of women in the Koran in three categories: traditional, reactive, and ho-
listic. She believes her views fall in the last category, and she subscribes tothe method of Koranic interpretation proposed by Fazlur Rahman, the
twentieth-century reformer who taught at the University of Chicago. He
says that all Koranic passages were revealed relative to the context of the
time and can be reinterpreted to take into account changed circumstance.
Wadud has written that to restrict Koranic interpretation to a single per-
spective that existed at the time of the Prophet limits its application and
contradicts its stated universal purpose. For example, the United Statesoffers Muslims civil liberties and freedoms that are not available in some
Islamic countries, and these liberties should be adopted, even if they are
alien to the Islamic tradition. Women may be segregated in mosques in
the Islamic world, but this practice should not apply in the United States,
where the role of women in society is different.
Ingrid Mattson and women like her do not view Islam through such a
prism of relativism, and perhaps this is their fundamental difference with
the “progressive” minority. Ingrid believes women should assert their rights
for greater influence in mosque life and equal rights at home with their

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 147
husbands. But she makes a distinction between this equality and the rights
women were accorded in the Islamic texts.
The Muslim minority who describe themselves as “progressive,” how-
ever, would ban all forms of separation. An Islamic Web site, MuslimWakeup, which presents the views of progressive Muslims, condemned
Mattson for public comments she made shortly after the Wadud incident.
Mattson said simply that most Muslim American women prefer some de-gree of separation in the mosque. It was surely an accurate statement, one
that I heard repeated in countless meetings and interviews I had with
Muslim women. But, in a commentary, Muslim Wakeup dismissed herremarks as the “latest disappointing quote by Ingrid Mattson.”
A fleeting organization called the Muslim Progressive Union (MPU)
had endorsed the Wadud prayer in public and on Islamic Web sites. Theleaders of the organization, which included Muslim American scholars
and activists, said their purpose in helping to organize the prayer service
was not to be provocative, but to initiate a serious discussion in the UnitedStates among Muslims wedded to the idea that prayers must be led exclu-
sively by men. Some members of the Progressive Union attempted to re-
fute the very basis of the ban on women leading men in prayer. In the past,jurists determined that a woman should not lead the prayer before a mixed
congregation because she lacked the intellect to do so and she could spark
sexual thoughts among men and create fitna. These conditions no longer
apply in modern America, the progressives argued.
The MPU dissolved largely because their members failed to agree on a
number of controversial issues. They enjoyed little popular support amongMuslim Americans. Yet the group received a flurry of press attention out
of all proportion to its numbers and influence within the Muslim commu-
nity. Television networks and major U.S. newspapers reported on theWadud prayer service. The progressives also managed to get coverage of
some of their other events, including protests at mosques they felt re-
stricted women’s rights. They understood how to manipulate the main-stream media’s interest in Islam: provide readers with a steady diet of stories
that confirm their preconceived ideas of Muslims. The topic of women in
Islam was the perfect choice.
The East-West Divide
In North America and Europe, politicians and the media today point to
the lot of Muslim women to validate the Western consensus about Islam,

148 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
namely that it is a backward, oppressive, and violent faith that must adapt
itself to the values of the modern Western world. In the immediate after-
math of September 11, the White House successfully exploited Western
anxieties and fears by casting its invasion of Afghanistan as a mission withan extra benefit—to free women from the depredations of the ultracon-
servative Taliban clerics, particularly their forced veiling of women in
public. There were countless news reports about the U.S. liberation ofAfghan women from their burkas , the traditional all-encompassing silk
veil. On November 17, 2001, not long after U.S. and British bombs began
falling on Afghan cities, towns, and villages, First Lady Laura Bush tookto the airwaves to cast the war as a fight for women’s rights. In a rare
White House radio address made by a first lady, Laura Bush, not other-
wise known for her feminist leanings, declared: “The fight against terror-ism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” President Bush
and other administration dignitaries posed for photo-ops with Afghanistan’s
new minister of women’s affairs, Dr. Massouda Jalal, and the U.S. StateDepartment promoted her as a “founding mother” of the new pro-American
Afghan state.
For Afghan women in general, the burka was never their primary griev-
ance against the Taliban; rather, this extremist movement had distorted
Islamic doctrine to deprive them of their most basic civic rights. Yet, this
was hardly the first time that the hijab was deployed to great effect in the
West’s running cultural war with Islam. George and Laura Bush and their
White House handlers were merely following in the footsteps of Lord
Cromer, Britain’s one-time imperial proconsul in Egypt, who once ap-provingly quoted the following contemporary assessment of women and
Islam: “The degradation of women in the East is a canker that begins its
destructive work early in childhood, and has eaten into the whole systemof Islam.” Perhaps as might be expected, Lord Cromer was himself a vig-
orous campaigner against women’s rights back home in England.
Leila Ahmad, a professor at Harvard and a leading scholar of women
and veiling, points out that such Western attitudes toward Muslim women
were used not only to justify the political domination of Muslims, but also
to provide Christian missionaries with the basis for their general assaulton Islamic culture itself. Muslim marriage, the missionaries declared, was
“not founded on love but on sensuality.” Women were “buried alive be-
hind the veil,” reduced to mere property in contrast to the Victorian idealof wife as companion and partner, albeit of lesser status than her husband.
Women, whose role in raising good Muslim children was central to the

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 149
continuity of religious life, were explicitly targeted for conversion; mis-
sionaries encouraged many to throw off their veils in the name of moder-
nity and civilization.
It is telling, Ahmad notes, that the alleged oppression of women under
Islam only emerged as the central theme in Western thought in the nine-
teenth century when supposed concern for Muslim women became the
ideological handmaiden to colonial occupation of Muslim lands. This “con-cern” paved the way for the West’s armed civilizing mission to the East, a
mission that justified, even demanded, the forced spread of the benefits of
European culture. Before the nineteenth century, Western notions of Is-lam and Islamic life were often vague and based on imperfect understand-
ings of Arabic texts and the often-exaggerated accounts of a few intrepid
travelers and diarists. Many impressions still lingered from the West’sinitial, adversarial contact with Islam during the crusades, almost nine
hundred years earlier.
Against this backdrop, it was almost inevitable that battle lines would
be drawn over the practices of “modest dress” and women’s seclusion.
“Veiling—to Western eyes, the most visible marker of the differences and
inferiority of Islamic societies—became the symbol now of both the op-pression of women (or, in the language of the day, Islam’s degradation of
women) and the backwardness of Islam, and it became the open target of
colonial attack and the spearhead of the assault on Muslim societies,” wroteLeila Ahmad in her book Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a
Modern Debate.
Although I had lived and worked for a number of years in Egypt, where
an Islamic awakening, beginning in the 1970s, had inspired a renewed
interest in veiling among younger Muslim women, nothing prepared me
for the vehemence of the veiling wars I encountered upon moving to Iranin 1998. But I did have a brief foretaste. Before I moved there, I flew to
Tehran to cover a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference; I
slipped into the airplane’s bathroom to pull on my new black chador, whichI had had tailored for me in Cairo’s central bazaar. The long black gar-
ment, stretching from head to toe, was cleverly fitted with clasps and hid-
den sleeves, providing the perfect “modest dress” while still allowing methe freedom to juggle notebooks, my tape recorder, and laptop. The style
differed from the typical, sleeveless Iranian chador that keeps a woman’s
hands busy holding it together.
As I emerged from the lavatory, a pained howl went up from the as-
sembled Western press corps flying in from Cairo. “Take that thing off,”

150 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
taunted one man, a correspondent from a major American newspaper.
Journalists often dream of being a fly-on-the-wall at important news events,
but apparently any real concession to Muslim sensibilities that would al-
low them to blend in with their surroundings and make their hosts feelcomfortable enough to open their hearts to strangers was a step too far.
Implicit in all the stories about women in Iran was this message: the United
States should take punitive action against the Islamic Republic of Iran tosave its female population.
Undeterred by my colleagues’ consensus, I adopted my handmade
chador after moving to Iran in the summer of 1998; it not only became a
sort of trademark during my three years of reporting from the Islamic
Republic, but it also helped open doors into the discreet, hidden world ofIran’s most conservative clerics and politicians. To my interlocutors, many
of whom had never spoken to a Western woman before, it was a reassur-
ing sign that I was prepared to leave my own world behind and enter theirs.
Such was not the case for the small army of visiting foreign correspon-
dents who regularly breezed into Tehran to observe the phenomenon of
President Mohammad Khatami and his bid to introduce the notion of
civil society into Iranian political life. No matter the publication and no
matter the correspondent, I knew that soon enough the story would turn
to the Iranian regime’s treatment of women. The chador was always the
central image used to illustrate this phenomenon. Few reporters everstopped to consider that the majority of Iranian women feel comfortable
wearing a headscarf; most Iranian women I knew believed they would re-
tain the veil even if the authorities stopped mandating it.
Like much Western reporting of the Muslim world, and the develop-
ing world in general, such stories tell the readers far more about the cor-
respondents and their own concerns and culture than they do about the
society about which they are writing. This practice of reporting on thestatus of Iranian women became so common that I started calling it lip-
stick journalism. Reporters who came to Tehran to take the temperature
of the Iranian reform movement would focus on the amount of makeup
upper-middle-class women sported and how much hair might be showing
beneath their veils. More lipstick, eyeliner, fingernail polish, or visible
hair meant more personal liberty and ultimately better prospects for fun-
damental democratic change.
In earlier times since the 1979 Islamic revolution, such sartorial defi-
ance was often met by arrest, fines, and even beatings at the hands of the

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 151
so-called morality police, and only the brave or foolhardy would venture
out without honoring the strict dress code. In a bit of slapstick comedy, an
overzealous police officer once detained me on a reporting trip because
the top of my foot was showing through my sandals. Officials of the pressdepartment and the foreign ministry soon sprung me, offering profuse
apologies. By the late 1990s such incidents were more and more infre-
quent, at least in Tehran. In fact, the lipstick index was not only silly; itwas often downright misleading. At least during my tenure in Iran, from
1998 until early 2001, the loosening of social rules generally accompanied
periods when the conservative political and clerical establishment felt most
confident. Periodic crackdowns came when the regime felt threatened. As
a result, the prevalence of lipstick acted as a contrarian indicator, and itdid not, as readers were told in often-breathless terms, indicate a coming
Tehran Spring.
Media coverage mirrors the U.S. government’s persistent misunder-
standing of what Muslim women want. Even now, after the United States
has maintained an armed presence in the heart of the Islamic world, old
habits die hard. In September 2005, Karen P. Hughes, charged with spread-
ing the American message in the Muslim world, was embarrassed on trips
to Turkey and Saudi Arabia after Muslim women told her she didn’t un-
derstand them. In Saudi Arabia, she expressed hope that women there
would one day be allowed to drive cars—the cliché the West often pointsto when making the argument that Islam oppresses women. The women’s
response shattered the rhetoric of Hughes’s scripted visit; they told her
that just because they are not allowed to drive, it did not mean they were
unhappy. They also told her that Muslim women do not aspire to live as
women do in the United States.
The East-West divide over women’s rights in Islam has obscured the
fact that these same issues are being debated internally among Muslimsacross the world. Many Muslim are aware that women suffer discrimina-
tion at work and at home, and action is being taken in many countries
where Islamic feminists are demanding their rights. In Iran, a reexamina-
tion of the sharia texts occurred in the 1990s, resulting in changes in the
law. Bans on women studying topics such as mining and agriculture and
on serving as judges were lifted. Even more important to women, divorce
laws were also rewritten. A man’s right to repudiate his wife ( talaq) was
curtailed, and a monetary value was placed on women’s housework, enti-
tling them to domestic wages.

152 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Ingrid Mattson is the ideal for many Muslim women living in the East
or the West. She is a complicated figure, too subtle to be widely under-
stood. Even she struggles to find a category for her ideas. When I was at a
loss for a description, fearing I would label her incorrectly, she told meshe might call herself “a religious conservative” but a “legal modernist.”
Either way, she could never be a subject of “lipstick” journalism, nor could
she be labeled an oppressed traditionalist. She appears to be a bundle ofcontradictions: She is a college professor who wears a headscarf. She was
able to earn a Ph.D. because her husband, Amer, took responsibility for
raising their two children during that time. She is an advocate for women’s
rights, yet she supports only those rights clearly permitted in the Islamic
sources. But Ingrid’s profile is becoming more common among Islamic
feminists in the United States and Europe, particularly second-generation
women. And like her, many Muslim American women are taking action toeducate the next generation.
Portrait of a Devout Muslim Girl
Every Sunday, Rabab Gomaa visits a different mosque in a different Chi-cago suburb. She packs her books, her Koran, and sometimes her two
teenage sons into the family’s Suburban. Though she often arrives at the
mosque late, there is always a crowd of boys and girls waiting for her.They look forward to their Sunday halaqa with the nurturing forty-seven-
year-old from Egypt who could easily be their mother. With her bright
headscarves, nicely tailored overcoats, and impassioned lectures about Is-
lam, she transports the young Muslims to another life for an hour or two.
Rabab began her lectures in the mid-1990s after noticing that some
Muslim women who were recent converts at the Bridgeview mosque were
becoming disillusioned. They were trying to learn about Islam; many hadmarried Muslims. But each time they came to the mosque, the sermons
were in Arabic, the preferred language of the many worshippers at
Bridgeview who are from Palestine or the Levant. Rabab began translat-
ing for them, and teaching them Koranic verse. The verse she chose was
Surat Mariam, which teaches the distinctions between Islam and Chris-tianity. Soon, the women invited her to their homes to give private les-
sons. So many women attended the lessons that Rabab began holding the
sessions in the community rooms of mosques in the area. She felt she had
taken on a large responsibility in trying to educate women about Islam.

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 153
She had no formal training in Islamic sciences or law; she had earned a
degree in architecture from the University of Houston.
With no Islamic school in Chicago, she turned to the teachings of a
sheikh she knew in Egypt, where she was born and raised. SheikhMohammad Mutawil-Sharawi was perhaps the most popular imam in the
country at the time. In the 1990s, he gave religious lectures on Egyptian
television on Fridays that were watched by millions because of the simpleway he explained Islamic principles. He spoke colloquial Arabic, even
though the language of the ulama , the religious authority, was classical
Arabic. Although he had a large following among the masses, some femi-nists criticized him for his conservative views.
Rabab Gomaa also turned to the Islamic American University, one of
the few Islamic colleges in the United States. The college is located inSouthfield, Michigan, far from her home in South Barrington, Illinois.
Rabab enrolled in an online program, and began studying for a degree in
Islamic law.
When she told me how she prepared herself for the years of teaching
that followed, I became curious about this university, one of the few in the
United States that trains a Muslim to become an imam. I arranged a tripthere to meet Sheikh Abdul Warith, Rabab’s teacher and mentor.
As I arrive at the college, I notice immediately that it looks like a modern
office building; the outside of the building offers no hint that it houses an
Islamic college. As soon as I open the glass doors I meet Azeeza Mohamed,
the patient and friendly voice I have come to know over the telephone asI made arrangements to meet Sheikh Warith. Azeeza, a Muslim convert,
offers me an orange drink and some dates. At first I decline because it is
Ramadan and I feel uncomfortable drinking or eating in the presence ofMuslims who are fasting. But she insists, so I drink a bit once she leaves
the room to let Sheikh Warith know I have arrived.
When the sheikh enters the room, he is accompanied by his wife, who
with her stocky build covered with a long green jilbab resembles many
women I used to know in Egypt. She and Sheikh Warith are from Cairo
and she speaks only Arabic. She sits on a chair and Sheikh Warith joins meat a dining table nearby. He begins by explaining that the college wants to
teach Muslims and non-Muslims how to understand the real Islam. He
emphasizes “real”—not the uninformed Islam many Muslim Americanspractice or the radical Islam of the extremists. He criticizes Muslim Ameri-
cans for not knowing Arabic, the language of the Koran. The imams at the

154 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
university, he says, were educated at al Azhar but are fluent in English,
even though their first language is Arabic. “So why can’t Americans learn
Arabic?” he asks me. “People don’t think of Islam in the right way. They
don’t think of it as a way of life, which it is. In order to do this, you mustknow Arabic to read the sources. Americans don’t take Islam seriously.
They might pay zakat [alms], but it is not just about paying zakat. It is a
holistic way of life.”
Then he tests my Arabic by asking me the meaning of a few phrases.
My translation is imprecise, and he shows his disappointment, making me
feel like an embarrassed schoolgirl.
He excuses himself for a few minutes and walks to an adjoining room to
pray. When he returns, he explains the university curriculum. It is very
structured, he tells me. There are two programs: one for Islamic studiesand the other for Arabic. The courses are geared toward imams; teachers,
like Rabab; and khatibs, those who give Islamic lectures before Friday prayer.
“It is good for imams who will teach Americans to be educated in America,”he says. “This way they understand the environment here.”
This comment makes me realize that he has come to the United States
from Cairo out of a sense of duty to help create a generation of Americanimams with a classical Islamic education. It is an admirable mission, par-
ticularly because it seems obvious he would rather be back home.
When I returned to Chicago, I wanted to attend one of Rabab Gomaa’s
lectures to see the fruits of Sheikh Warith’s labor.
One Sunday during Ramadan, she is lecturing at masjid al-Hoda, a mod-
ern brick building in an affluent suburb. She leads the boys and girls into
a social room inside the mosque. The walls are bright white and the only
furniture is some beige folding chairs and tables. The room still smells ofthe food left over from the previous night’s iftar, the daily meal at sunset
ending the Ramadan fast. Rabab takes a folding chair and faces the young
Muslims.
“Oh, Allah, we seek refuge from fitna,” she says, beginning the lecture.
In many of Rabab’s lectures, she cautions against fitna from too much
interaction between the sexes, fitna from a lack of morals in American
society, and fitna from too little dedication to Islam. She feels it is her duty
to counsel adolescents so they will stay clear of drinking, drugs, and pre-
marital sex.
This day, she decides to tailor her talk around Ramadan. She wants to
take the youngsters back 1,400 years when the Angel Gabriel revealed the

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 155
Koran to the Prophet Muhammad. No one really knows exactly when
that was, but Muslims mark this most important and sacred event as Laila
al Qadr, “The Night of Power.” It is a time spent reading the Koran and
saying additional prayers. The Prophet said of this night: “Whoever es-tablishes the prayers on this night of Qadr out of sincere faith and hoping
to attain Allah’s rewards, then all his past sins will be forgiven.”
Like a professional storyteller with a vivid imagination, Rabab, or Mrs.
Gomaa, as she is known to her students, relives that night for her students.
“I hope you are with me and are ready for these nights, the Laila al Qadr.
It’s not just a night where you relax. You have to show Allah that you are
working to reach that night. It is something we work for. Laila al Qadr
was the night the Koran began.
“I’d like to give you a feel of the first night 1,400 years ago. The Prophet
was in a cave, a deep dark cave. Subhan Allah. Praise be to God. The dark
cave is embedded inside a mountain. This is where he meets the Angel
Gabriel. Subhan Allah . The Prophet sees the Angel and he thinks, ‘This is
death.’
“The Angel says, ‘Read!’ But the Prophet says, ‘I can’t read.’ The Angel
hugs the Prophet and says, ‘Read!’”
The young Muslims are captivated by the story; they seem transfixed.
They vow they will go to the mosque on Laila al Qadr.
When the lecture ends, a few students who noticed I was taking notes
ask me what I am doing. When I tell them I am writing a book, they are
eager to tell stories about how Mrs. Gomaa educated them about Islam.
One young woman says she started wearing a headscarf simply because
Mrs. Gomaa advised her to be modest.
Of all the young lives Mrs. Gomaa touched, the one she influenced
most profoundly was her daughter’s. Yusra Gomaa’s relationship with her
mother is hard to fathom in the twenty-first-century West.
When I first met Yusra, she was one of many students sitting around a
large wooden table in an aging but still grand dining hall at the University
of Chicago. I had gone to the university to interview students who were
members of the Muslim Students’ Association. Yusra seemed to be the
shyest in the group. At the time, I was looking for a researcher and a guide,
someone who could be my mental shadow and give me insight into the
Muslim community that could only come from an insider. When I left the
meeting, I considered all the students there, but I thought Yusra might be
too introverted; she was a freshman at the time. On a hunch, I called her a

156 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
few weeks later. She was so eager to work on the project that I decided to
give it a try.
I quickly learned that her relationship with her mother was perhaps the
most important one in her life . She traced nearly every major decision she
had ever made back to her mother’s determination to raise a devout Mus-
lim girl untainted by American values. The story of Yusra and Rabab isone Muslims can admire. They want their children to follow the faith
strictly, no matter how difficult it might be to resist the temptations of
growing up in America. Many Muslim parents I met struggled as theyraised their daughters: Should they send them to an Islamic school to shield
them from the decadence in public schools? Or are Islamic schools too
sheltered, so much so that they will be unprepared for the real world oncethey graduate? Yusra was living proof that Rabab Gomaa seemed to have
found all the answers.
When Yusra was in seventh grade at a public school in South Barrington,
an upscale suburb outside Chicago where virtually no Muslims lived, Rabab
noticed that she was becoming too interested in the adolescent adventures
of her classmates. Rabab enrolled Yusra in the Islamic Foundation Schoolin Villa Park, Illinois. The school was a new experience for Yusra; the
majority of students were from the subcontinent. Before that, the only
Muslims Yusra knew were her relatives from Egypt.
“I remember my first day. We had so many choices of Muslim friends.
I had never seen Muslims from Pakistan before, but they quickly becameYusra Gomaa.

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 157
my friends,” Yusra told me one day. “The environment was Muslim friendly
and I loved it because I was able to connect to Muslims on a spiritual
level.”
Although it is one of the oldest Islamic schools in the United States,
Islamic Foundation was only a few years old when Yusra enrolled, and, as
a pioneer, she helped start a basketball team and reading club. Everything
seemed possible, especially because she had her mother’s support. Mrs.Gomaa was very involved in making sure the curriculum at the school
maintained high academic standards. She knew Yusra was a bright student
and feared her daughter might suffer from being in an Islamic school.
Yusra entered Islamic Foundation when she was twelve years old, and
she soon reached puberty, the time when practicing Muslim girls contem-
plate wearing a headscarf. When women wear headscarves they becomeambassadors of the faith. But being an ambassador can be trying at times
in a non-Muslim country. Some girls at Yusra’s school dealt with this di-
lemma by wearing headscarves to school, required as part of the schooluniform, and then taking them off once they boarded the bus to go home.
But Yusra did not want to settle for half measures; she would either wear
the hijab all the time or not at all. Rabab had started wearing the hijab
seven years earlier, when she was in her early thirties. Yusra knew her
mother wanted her oldest daughter to start veiling. Between her mother’s
example and her new Islamic school, she took the step she knew she must.
Exactly three weeks after she reached puberty, she dined with her fam-
ily and a few friends at a chain restaurant. She wore her hijab, prompting
one of her friends to ask accusingly, “Are you muhajabat ?,” Arabic for “one
who wears the veil.” Placed on the spot, Yusra said she was, even though
her friend implied that cool girls do not wear veils. Making a public decla-
ration was her vow to wear the headscarf whenever she was in public.
“My parents were so happy I said ‘Yes,’” Yusra recalled one day, “even
though my father quickly said, ‘I had nothing to do with this.’ Once I
started wearing the headscarf it influenced me. It tells the world you are aMuslim.”
Yusra remained at the Islamic Foundation until she began her fresh-
man year at the University of Chicago. After six years in an Islamic school,she felt grounded. “That school really instilled my Islamic identity and
made me content with it. When my class graduated, we were proud to be
Muslims.” But when she first entered the university, she realized life wasnot as black-and-white as it had been in an Islamic school. Being in an
environment where Muslims were by far the minority drove her to do the

158 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
obvious: she joined the Muslim Students’ Association, an extension to what
she had left behind.
Since the 1990s and particularly after September 11, the number of
Muslim Students’ Associations at universities across the country has grown.Many of the MSAs function more as social, than religious, organizations.
The events that the MSAs organize, such as inviting speakers or hosting
iftars during Ramadan, pertain to religion. But daily interaction among
the Muslim students more commonly revolves around personal life . Like
Yusra, many young Muslims at universities search for comfort from other
Muslims, having left their families and close-knit mosque communities in
their hometowns.
As I watched Yusra grow from a shy freshman into a self-assured junior—
she completed college in three years—I realized that she had made a de-
liberate decision to be Muslim in America. She remained close to her family
and to the Muslim students she met at the university. After a year of living
in a dormitory, Yusra convinced her mother to allow her to live in an
apartment near campus. It was a difficult decision for the Gomaa family;
Rabab felt the dormitory would shield Yusra from the temptations of in-
dependent living. Then Yusra chose a Muslim who had attended an Is-
lamic school as her roommate. That was enough to win the day.
Soon it was time to declare a major at the university. Yusra’s parents
wanted her to become a doctor, a common ambition among immigrantparents. Her father, a surgeon, wanted to guarantee his daughter’s future
financial security. And, like many Muslim parents, he believed that be-
coming a doctor signaled success in America. But Yusra wanted to devote
herself to helping Muslims. She thought about psychiatry, social work,
and then settled on law. She wanted to help Muslims juggle the laws per-
taining to family proscribed in the sharia, Islamic law, with the laws in the
American civil courts.
“I feel that I have a social responsibility to the Muslim community. A
lot of Muslims get confused. They might ask the sheikh at the mosque for
permission to get divorced or get custody of their children. But they don’t
understand that this is not legal in American law. Everyone wants to do
things the Islamic way, but legally, we have to be protected by the courts.
I see myself working closely with the mosques to help people when these
issues arise.”
When I talked with her about Muslim integration in America, she made
a point of explaining that Muslims like herself have no grievance with

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 159
non-Muslims nor do Muslims want to be isolated from mainstream soci-
ety. But she felt it was important to stay close to Muslims.
We compared her feelings with those of my own family. The first gen-
eration of Lebanese immigrants who arrived in the United States chosenot to integrate into American society. Like many immigrants, they were
focused on making a living. Their children integrated a bit more, and by
the time I came along, as a member of the third generation, I had fewLebanese friends. As I grew older, though, and my views diverged from
the common American perception of the Middle East, I felt most com-
fortable with other Arabs. This is different, however, from the experi-
ences of second-generation Muslims such as Yusra. They are building
institutions, such as the Muslim Students’ Associations, even at a youngage, to enhance their Islamic identity. Yusra’s feelings are perhaps more
common among Muslim women than men because their hijab is a public
symbol that sets them apart. In this way, they have already made a declara-
tion of their difference.
Yusra was finishing her last year at the University of Chicago and pre-
paring for law school just before I left the city for good. She had been
accepted into many law schools and offered generous scholarships. Yet,
her modesty, one hallmark of her personality, prevented any feelings of
cockiness or arrogance. She talked about her new challenge ahead; she
had heard so many stories about the difficulties of being a law student. ButI was confident she would succeed in becoming a lawyer and giving back
to the Islamic community what she had gained. By that time, she had taught
me so much about Muslim life, without even trying. Her life reflected the
dreams of many Muslim women in the new generation.
Recognizing women as equal partners has been a public issue over the
last thirty years within Islamic communities in the East and West. Often
specific events propel the issue to the forefront of public debate; reforms arethen made or laws are adjusted, and the topic recedes again for some time.
Such a scenario unfolded after the Amina Wadud prayer service in March
2005. While there was a backlash among conservatives who used the inci-
dent to reinforce their argument that the struggle for women’s rights had
gone too far, some Islamic organizations seized upon the moment. Muslim
leaders who had tried before to draw attention to women’s lack of inclusion
in mosque life used the Wadud incident to take swift action.
A few women’s groups and the Council on American-Islamic Relations
distributed guidelines for treating women based on a study of 416 mosques

160 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
in the United States. The pamphlet noted the difficulty of achieving equal-
ity, even in Western societies. “Living in a non-Muslim society and strug-
gling to maintain our Muslim identity and values and to further instill
them in our children requires spiritual and communal support. Muslimwomen are therefore seeking a dignified place in their masjid, ” [mosque] the
pamphlet said. The survey showed that, on average, 75 percent of regular
mosque participants are men. Although 54 percent of mosques reported
regular activities for women, a sizeable portion—27 percent—re ported only
occasional activity, and 19 percent said they did not offer any programs
for women. As many as 31 percent prevented women from serving ongoverning boards, and 19 percent said they allowed women to serve, but
had not had women on the board for the past five years. The number of
women praying behind a curtain or another form of partition had increasedfrom 52 percent in 1994 to 66 percent in 2000.
The study, distributed among Muslim Americans, described current
conditions in some mosques. Women are told to use fire exits rather thanenter with men through the front doors. Sometimes, when imams deliver
Friday sermons about women’s issues, their comments are directed at older,
more traditional women, not the younger generation. Younger women inparticular are anxious to use their talents to improve mosque programs
and activities, but are often discouraged from doing so. And the lack of
participation from and visibility of women discourages women who mightwant to convert to Islam from going to the mosque, although the rate of
conversion to Islam is higher among women than men.
It is not only the women who are exercising their rights; some Muslim
men help along the way. Some imams, though they are still few in num-
ber, are teaching worshippers about women’s rights through study ses-
sions and other events in the mosques and by allowing women to participatein mosque governance.
Sheikh Ali Suleiman Ali, an affable man from Ghana who wears tradi-
tional African tunics and colorful caps, had been an imam at the Dix mosquein Dearborn’s Southend from 1982 to 1987. He later served at a few other
mosques before coming to lead a community in Canton, Michigan. Like
other imams who had been at Dix, he left because he did not agree with theconservative ideas of the Yemeni worshippers. Sheikh Ali studied in Saudi
Arabia and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor,
experiences that provided him a view of Islam from the East and the West.
The mosque in Canton, which is about one hour from Dearborn, is a
relatively new mosque attended by Pakistani immigrants and is known

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 161
officially as the Muslim Community of the Western Suburbs of Detroit.
When he arrived there, Sheikh Ali wanted to foster a welcoming environ-
ment for women. The Pakistanis at the mosque had been living in Lavonia,
a neighboring suburb, and they moved to Canton after raising six milliondollars to build an Islamic school. There was no space for a school for
their children at their Lavonia mosque.
At Canton, the women cooked to raise money for the mosque. But
Sheikh Ali had more ambitious ideas. He asked the women to be members
of the ruling mosque board. When I met him in the fall of 2005, there
were two women on the eight-member board, rare for an American
mosque. Sheikh Ali also started giving a halaqa to women every Wednes-
day to educate them about their rights in Islam, and on Friday evenings heinvited well-known female speakers to talk about women’s rights within
the faith . His mission was not restricted to the mosque; by day, he worked
as an adviser to Muslim Family Services, a nonprofit organization in De-
troit that counsels Muslim women about whether their husbands are treat-
ing them well, their health concerns, and raising their children.
Of all Sheikh Ali’s projects, one in particular shocked some of the wor-
shippers. He removed the curtain separating men from women in the main
prayer hall. “I’ve had to fight here for certain things,” he told me. “I took
down the barrier, but a majority overruled me and I had to put it back. A
small number of women want the curtain, and about 20 percent of themen want it. There was little I could do.”
Sheikh Ali certainly is the exception. But other imams have made simi-
lar efforts. Abdul Malik Mujahid, the executive producer of Radio Islam,
is often invited to give the khutba, or Friday sermon, at various mosques in
Chicago. He relayed this story to his friends and acquaintances: One day,
he was set to give a sermon on a vague topic about Muslim life. When he
had completed the notes he would use to deliver the sermon, he receivedan e-mail for an Islamic event for “brothers only.” He had been annoyed
about women’s treatment in mosques long before he received this notice.
The week before, when he had given a sermon in a new Chicago mosque,
he overheard a few Muslim women speaking in the elevator. He asked
them what was wrong. They explained that they could only see the imam
through a television system in the women’s section. One woman quipped,
“If I wanted to watch television, I’d stay at home.” At this same mosque,
the leaders had assured Abdul Malik that they were encouraging women
to become more involved in mosque life. This did not seem to be true.

162 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Abdul Malik decided it was time to devote his khutba to women, whether
the mosque leaders ever invited him again or not. He stood in the front
section of the prayer hall that can accommodate about one thousand male
worshipers. A few dozen women gathered in a small corner of the hallseparated from the main space by a curtain. He preached that women in
early Islamic history were not only mothers and wives, but participated in
politics, the creation of Islamic law, and trade and commerce. When hissermon ended, a stream of worshippers thanked him, expressing far more
praise than he normally receives. The feedback gave Abdul Malik hope
that at least some Muslims are ready for change.
As I interviewed more imams, I learned the sheikhs at the Zaytuna In-
stitute were hosting “An Evening of Gratitude, Honoring the Contribu-
tions of Muslim Women.” I thought it would be interesting to comparethe views of the Zaytuna sheikhs with the attitudes typical of the majority
of imams. The idea of hosting an evening to honor women was in keeping
with what the Zaytuna sheikhs had been teaching for years. Imam ZaidShakir, the African American convert with Zaytuna, was known among
Muslim Americans as a woman-friendly sheikh. In April 2004, he pub-
lished a widely read essay offering evidence from the Koran about genderequality. Imam Zaid wanted to confront the perpetual line of attack against
Islam—that women are treated as inferiors. Shakir wrote:
The Koran emphasizes that men and women are equal in their essential physi-
cal and metaphysical nature. We read in this regard, “We have surely en-nobled the descendants of Adam.” This ennoblement of the human beingprecludes any claims to gender superiority, or any feelings of inferiority basedon physical, or metaphysical composition. Such feelings underlie schemes of
gender-based oppression, and have no place in Islam.
After a long day of travel, I enter the same Pakistani restaurant in San Jose
where I had gone for my first Zaytuna event the year before. But this
evening, there are fewer guests and less noise. The audience is mostly
Muslim women, some of whom I have met at other places. I glance at theprogram and realize that Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is the last speaker, which
means he may not emerge before 11 p.m. or midnight. Speaking at the
end of the program is classic Sheikh Hamza; he would not want to stealanyone’s thunder by appearing before them. And by being last on the
agenda he will inspire the guests to stay through the entire program.
Wearing a long grey tunic with a white shirt and grey trousers, Sheikh
Hamza rises from the head table to the podium. As I expected, it is near
midnight.

WOMEN IN THE CHANGING MOSQUE 163
“We fail in our homes to honor women,” he says.
“It starts with assuming that the wife will take care of kids, clean, and do
all the things women are expected to do. I was raised by a single mother.
She divorced early and she had seven children . . . Much of how I view lifeis through my mother . . . The lives of women really infuse our religion
with vitality . . . I think the women in houses are not getting the accolades
they deserve. These women can do something higher.”
He begins announcing the women being honored one by one. As he
calls each name, his young son approaches the stage and takes a gold plaque
inscribed with a Koranic verse, and then dashes across the banquet hall todeliver it to the designated woman. One goes to his mother, Yahya. She
smiles, embarrassed by the public accolade. “My father was disappointed
when I became a Muslim,” says Sheikh Hamza over the microphone, as Yahyasmiles from across the room. “I want to thank my wife for all she does.”
Before he finishes calling out the names, he is interrupted. A shy Afri-
can American woman approaches the stage with two other Muslim women.“We are breaking for an important announcement,” he says, turning to-
ward the women. “A sister wants to take the shahada . Welcome to Islam.”
That night, the women leave the Pakistani restaurant satisfied that the
men with authority have recognized their talents. For some, it is no great
surprise. But for others, it is a miracle from God.

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165SEVEN
Heeding the Call
/ornament20
Why, Chris Irwin wondered, would a Muslim volunteer to fight with
American soldiers in Iraq? He had asked himself this ques-
tion many times: at his military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia, when a few
men in his unit asked him, “Are you with us or against us?”; in Kuwait, as
he drank sugary tea and watched television news with local Arabs enraged
over the impending war; and back home in San Antonio, Texas, when hefirst talked with his friends, just after September 11, about joining the
military. At that time, Chris had just converted to Islam and was weighing
his options. He could either work at a place like McDonald’s or join themilitary to pay for his college tuition.
Now, he was compressed inside a Humvee, crossing the long stretch of
no-man’s-land between Kuwait and Iraq. With the sand from the desertpeppering his dry skin and parched lips, he asked himself, “Could I, a
Muslim, kill my brother?” He was too tired to find the answer. He and the
ten men in his unit took turns dozing. If they were lucky, they got fivehours of sleep a night, and those were interrupted by the powerful thrusts
of gusty desert winds that shook the Humvee. They ate their MREs, ready-
made military rations served in small plastic packages, to stay awake.
They approached Baghdad in March 2003. The war had been escalat-
ing for a few weeks, turning Chris’s sleep deprivation into an adrenaline

166 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
rush. The prospect of being in the middle of battle filled Chris with fear
and excitement. On the outskirts of the city, their Humvee had narrowly
escaped an artillery attack that struck across the street. Suddenly, Chris
was face-to-face with the question that from afar he had managed to evade.He stared into the eyes of Iraqis, his Muslim brothers. He hoped no harm
would come to them, even though such an idea seemed absurd during
wartime. He wanted to go to a local mosque to ask God for guidance andto bury his head in the comforts of his faith. He wanted to cleanse himself
of all the voices he had heard along the way. An officer in Kuwait made a
joke in the briefing room about blowing up a mosque once the war began.His fellow soldiers raised doubts about his loyalty to America. A lieuten-
ant in Kuwait scolded him for getting friendly with Kuwaitis by greeting
them with “marhaba,” a simple “hello” in Arabic.
Chris had gone to the war seeking truth about America’s mission in
Iraq. He wanted to know, was it a war against Islam? Was Saddam evil
enough to justify the invasion? He looked everywhere to find answers,even in the most difficult places, including those hiding spots where Saddam
Hussein might have kept all those weapons of mass destruction he suppos-
edly had. Chris found a bit of truth, surprisingly, coming from a quietvoice in an unsuspected place. One day, when he was manning a U.S.
Army military checkpoint in Baghdad, a crowd of children gathered around,
as they often did when they saw American soldiers. They begged for money,food, even military memorabilia.
One precocious young boy stood back from the small hands reaching
out toward Chris and asked innocently:
“Why are you invading Muslims if you are a Muslim?”
Chris smiled gently, “To help Iraqis.”
It was the only answer he could give, whether he believed it or not.
During his short time in Iraq, Chris watched as Americans rallied around
their flag and the cultural bonds that united them against the country they
had invaded. But Iraqis greeted Chris with “salaam aleikum,” even as hisglaring difference with them stared them in the face—in the guise of his
camouflage military uniform.
By the time he left Iraq three months later, his answer to the question
the Iraqi boy had asked him had become much more complicated. At first,
Chris had been convinced that the American invasion and occupation, no
matter how much violence it bred, must continue in order to prevent whathe calls “an authoritarian Islamic republic.” But as he watched it unfold,
he was torn: Saddam was evil, he thought, but so many innocent Iraqis

HEEDING THE CALL 167
were being killed in the war. Surely, there could have been a better way.
Chris had gone to Iraq as an idealist; he left as a cynic.
I met Chris one Sunday in December 2005 at an Islamic center used for
prayer and social activities in San Antonio, where I was born and raised. Ihad gone there to get to know Muslim converts in an effort to learn why a
dramatic number of Americans had been drawn to Islam since September
11. The trend was the opposite of what one might expect: in a countrywhere public opinion is increasingly hostile toward Muslims and Islam,
more and more Americans are becoming Muslims. Imam Ali, the head of
the local Shiite mosque, knew many Muslims in San Antonio. He helpedme arrange several interviews by phone before I traveled to Texas, and he
gave me Chris’s phone number.
Chris arrives at the Islamic center for our noon appointment while Sheikh
Ali is giving a religious lesson. The sheikh urges us to talk privately in an
enclosed room. Chris and I sit on a newly carpeted floor; as in many Islamiccenters, there is no furniture. As soon as he begins telling me his story, I can
tell that his mind is still in Iraq. He had gone to the Middle East believing
that the war was justified. But after he returned home and the sectarianviolence had spun out of control, his feelings became more complicated and
he found it more difficult to defend his position around other Muslims. But
even if he acknowledged the war was going badly, he still could not acceptstinging condemnations of the United States. “In order to bring Islam to
people, Muslims should stop insulting America. If you see the government
doing something bad, don’t focus on it,” he tells me with great conviction.“You must embrace American culture. You are in a binding contract.”
His ideas reflect a current of thought among some contemporary Mus-
lim theologians, who say Islam does not permit believers in a non-Muslimcountry to rebel against the values of their host nation. At times, Chris
tries to convince other Muslims that Saddam Hussein was training Mus-
lim extremists in Iraq, and that this alone was justification for war. But hefound this argument hard to make once it became well established that, in
fact, Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
His views are unlike those of the majority of Muslims I have met; most
openly criticize the U.S. invasion and the rise of Islamic militancy it has
caused across the Muslim world. They did not support Saddam Hussein’s
tyranny, but do not find American colonialism to be much of an improve-ment. Many Muslims think the occupation could have been avoided if the
United States had allowed sanctions to continue pressuring Hussein’s

168 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
government. They wonder if Muslims have become the target of the occu-
pation, as the war has dragged on. But, as a convert, Chris views the United
States and many things about Islam differently than those born into the
faith. In Chris’s case, going to Iraq was a true test of where his loyalties stood.He is torn between his American identity and his new one as a Muslim.
Chris’s choice of Islam as his new religion was a great leap of faith. As a
child, he had no religion; his parents discouraged him from going to church.This was especially unusual because half of his family is from Guatemala,
a part of the world where Catholicism is strong. “I knew almost instinc-
tively that there was one God, but I felt that He never helped me in any-thing. Rather, he kept me humble by causing me to fail at everything,”
Chris explained. He did not know what religion was right for him, or what
he wanted to become. In elementary school, he thought he was an atheist.He had no god to pray to so he used good luck charms to try to influence
his fate.
As a high school student, Chris met a young girl who, in his eyes, was a
good Christian, which led him to try her faith. He began to study Chris-
tian and Jewish teachings. He read the Old Testament, but he was con-
fused and frustrated. He prayed to God for guidance, but he just becamemore depressed.
One day he picked up a few books off his grandfather’s shelf. One was
about the early Islamic period. It explained in detail how the Angel Gabrielrevealed the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad. At first Chris was skepti-
cal; he had thought Islam was a religion of the Devil. Still, he kept read-
ing. He learned that the Prophet had received the revelation with greathumility. He read more from his grandfather’s books, and then delved
into material he found on the Internet about anything Islamic. He found
information about Saudi Arabia’s royal family and a book about Islamichistory, a work he later realized distorted history. He had so many ques-
tions, so he used the Internet as his guide. Every day he found new litera-
ture; he discovered that Islam is compatible with science and modernknowledge. For Chris, it was no longer a religion for devils or mystics.
At the time, he was a freshman at San Antonio College and, while he
still did not know even one Muslim, he started to feel like a Muslim. Hecalled God “Allah,” and fasted secretly during Ramadan. He was afraid his
family and friends would frown upon his interest in Islam. “At this time in
my life it was revolutionary to do this. I had been conditioned by societyand the television to hate Muslims . . . to believe Muslims are evil. Later,
I realized society had deceived me.”

HEEDING THE CALL 169
The next logical step for Chris was to recite the shahada, the proclama-
tion of the faith. Chris called a number he found on an Islamic Web site.
A woman answered and arranged to drive him across town to one of thefew mosques in San Antonio. “I was scared,” Chris recalled. “Satan tried
his best to prevent me from becoming a Muslim, but I was brave and re-
sisted.”
As he took his vows, he was confused about Muslims. It seemed all the
Web sites were about Islamic extremism. He loved his country and he
came to love the true Islam. “What could he do?” he wondered. Chrispromised himself he would try to change Muslim relations with America.
“There are a lot of people in the country who try to root out Muslims
because they think they are evil people. Likewise, conservatives in Islamcomplain about the media being biased against them. Islam is a religion to
show people how to be really good human beings. This is why I converted.”
Memories of al-Andalus
Latinos like Chris are converting to Islam in growing numbers. National
Islamic organizations estimate there are tens of thousands—perhaps as
many as seventy-five thousand—Latino converts in America, many ofChris Irwin. ( Courtesy of Chris Irwin )

170 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
whom only discovered Islam recently. This is out of an estimated 33 mil-
lion Americans who identity themselves as Latino, according to the 2000
Census. Not surprisingly, the largest Latino Muslim communities are in
those cities with large Hispanic populations: San Antonio, Chicago, NewYork, and Miami.
Few studies have been published about Latino Muslims because their
conversion is such a new phenomenon. In one study conducted bySamantha Sanchez, a scholar at the New School for Social Research, 25
percent of those surveyed said they had actively sought a new faith and
had considered other religions before choosing Islam. Unlike Chris, manyLatinos took three to twelve years to convert. Her survey found that 73
percent were former Catholics.
When I asked Latinos why they chose Islam over other religions, many
described the Muslim experience as an intellectual one. They felt that
other religions demanded blind faith, but Islam required analyzing the
holy texts. Former Catholics, in particular, said they left the church forthe mosque because they were frustrated with the Vatican’s demand for
unquestioning acceptance of religious doctrine and church teachings in
the absence of educating the faithful. This might be an oversimplificationof the Catholic Church, but many Latinos clearly were negatively affected
by the scandal in the church involving homosexual priests who sexually
abused young boys. This scandal appeared to color their views of the churchin general. They expressed skepticism, for example, of Christian doctrine
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Islam’s belief that Jesus is one in a
string of revered prophets, but not the Son of God, seemed more believ-able to them. Islam’s concept of tawhid , the oneness of God, seemed more
intuitive, especially when set against the complexity of the Holy Trinity.
Latino converts also told me they didn’t believe in the infallibility of
the pope and appreciated Islam’s tradition of individual interpretation of
the holy texts. Most mainstream Muslims believe Islam calls for them to
interpret the Koran and the Sunnah for themselves, with the help of learnedscholars. And because Islam does not have a hierarchy like the Catholic
Church, the faith may appear less absolutist to them than Catholicism.
Islam’s glorious history in medieval Spain, known to Muslims as al-
Andalus, where Muslims built a world-class civilization—the accomplish-
ments of which in science, mathematics, philosophy, and the arts dwarfed
those of neighboring Christendom—also influences Latinos to convert.Some assume their own ancestors were born Muslim and they are merely
“reverting” back to Islam, rather than converting. Some Muslims born

HEEDING THE CALL 171
into the faith would also describe the transformation of those who are new
to the faith as “reversion,” rather than “conversion,” because they believe
everyone is born a Muslim.
When Islam first began to spread during the time of the Prophet
Muhammad, there was certainly reason to believe this was true. Conver-
sions were numerous, so much so that a surah , one chapter in the Koran,
states : “And you saw people entering Allah’s religion in throngs.”
At first, Latinos’ regular references to the past riches of al-Andalus—its
great city Córdoba was once known as the Ornament of the World for the
countless cultural wonders that later helped fuel the Renaissance—came
as something of a surprise to the non-Muslims they encountered. In the
Western imagination, the wildfire spread of Islam from its birthplace inthe Arabian Peninsula in the early seventh century to Iberia, Sicily, North
Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and beyond was a matter of forced con-
version by marauding Arab armies. In practice, “conversion by the sword,”
when applied at all, was reserved for idol worshippers, not the fellow People
of the Book. The victorious Muslims generally permitted their fellow
monotheists—Jews, Christians, and often Zoroastrians and Mandaeans—
to live pretty much as they had before, as “protected peoples.” Like the
Muslims, the other People of the Book believed in one god, they followed
revealed texts, shared some fundamental beliefs, and recognized many of
the same prophets. However, these so-called dhimmis, non-Muslims liv-
ing in a state governed by Islamic law, were required to pay a special tax
and were relegated to second-class status in the new social and political
order under Muslim rule.
The Muslims first came to the Iberian Peninsula in 711, when Arab and
Berber forces crossed over from North Africa under the command of
General Tariq ibn Zayid. His landing spot, known as Mount Tariq, or
Jabal Tariq in Arabic, which gives us its present-day name, Gibraltar. Soon,the Visigoth Christian masters of Spain were overthrown, and the oppres-
sion of the local Jews gave way to a more tolerant approach under the
Muslims. Native Christians and Jews could, and often did, thrive in al-
Andalus, and some obtained positions of considerable power and influ-
ence. However, social advancement could only be ensured by conversion
to Islam, a process that also freed the new believer from the burdens of
poll tax and from a series of legal and social restrictions placed on the
recognized non-Muslim communities. By the mid-tenth century, accord-
ing to some scholars, as much as 80 percent of the indigenous population

172 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
had converted to Islam, although it took at least another two centuries for
these new Muslims to be accepted by the ethnic Arab elite.
Over the next 750 years, the Christians gradually pushed their Muslim
rivals from the Iberian Peninsula, essentially completing the Reconquistain 1492 with the fall of the last Islamic stronghold, Grenada, to Ferdinand
and Isabella. The so-called Catholic Kings, best known in America for
their patronage of Christopher Columbus in that same year, soon issuedtheir infamous expulsion order directing all Jews to convert or leave the
kingdom within four months. The Catholics ordered the forced conver-
sion of the Muslims, in violation of the terms of Grenada’s surrender in
1502, and a period of often-violent ethnic cleansing and suppression be-
gan. A little more than one hundred years later, those Iberians of Muslim
origin were expelled under a decree that enjoyed wide public support among
the dominant Christians but was also economically disastrous. An esti-mated three hundred thousand “Moriscos” headed for North Africa, the
New World, and points beyond.
Once American Latinos discover this historic connection to Islam, for
many becoming Muslim has an even greater appeal. The Latino experi-
ence thus bears some similarities to Islam’s attraction among AfricanAmericans, who also feel connected to the faith’s long history in Africa.
Latinos and English speakers also have a linguistic affiliation with Arabic;
Islam’s long stay in Spain has bequeathed the West countless Arabic words
and concepts, familiar to speakers of both Spanish and English—from
“adobe” to “zenith.” Finally, many Latinos feel Islam is compatible withtheir cultural practices, particularly their emphasis on family life.
The Draw of Modern Life
Several contemporary conditions lead Latinos to convert. Those who settlein large American cities become exposed to Islam in one of two ways: they
live near mosques, or they have African American neighbors who are fa-
miliar with the Nation of Islam. The two populations find common ground,
for both often feel disenfranchised in America and seek comfort in the
personal relationships they form in mosque communities. It is clear that
many African Americans have converted because they believe Islam will
correct the social injustice in America. Whether they joined the Nation of
Islam or mainstream Sunni mosques, as the scholar Sulayman Nyang writes,
“Islam was used as an ideological weapon against racial discrimination.”

HEEDING THE CALL 173
Intermarriage is another important impetus for Latino conversions,
particularly when Hispanic women marry Muslim men. It is perfectly ac-
ceptable for Muslim men to marry women from outside the faith; verses
in the Koran give men permission to marry women among the People ofthe Book. Typically, these women convert when they marry a Muslim.
After September 11, Latinos, like many other Americans, began search-
ing for more information about Islam. Some found it in mosques in theircommunities, where organizations were distributing pamphlets, books, and
tapes to dispel misconceptions about Islam and educate Americans about
the true face of their religion. The Council on American-Islamic Rela-tions (CAIR) sponsored eight thousand reading corners in mosques and
Islamic centers, which are filled with books and other religious literature.
The vast education campaign led Latinos, as well as others, to convert.Nihad Awad, the chairman of CAIR, told a Saudi newspaper three months
after September 11 that thirty-four thousand Americans had converted to
Islam after the attacks. Generally, the converts were students, single moth-ers, or women who married Muslim men. According to a November 2001
study conducted at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding, a majority of converts—38 percent—were moved towardtheir decision by literature about Islam. Fellow Muslims influenced 22
percent to convert, 13 percent married a Muslim, and a variety of other
reasons accounted for the remaining 24 percent.
Similar trends can be seen in Europe. The French newspaper Le Figaro ,
citing French intelligence sources, reported that between thirty thousand
and fifty thousand conversions to Islam took place in France in 2004. Manywere French women who married Muslim men. In France, at least in the
eyes of state security sources, male converts were generally disaffected
young men from unstable backgrounds. In the United States, however,this profile does not apply to male converts.
The rise in conversions has caught American mosques and Islamic cen-
ters by surprise. Some mosques, including the Dix mosque in Dearborn,began hosting open houses or organizing study sessions for outsiders in-
terested in converting. Some of the new classes I attended for converts
were very basic. In some cases, the sessions amounted to little more thanpeople narrating their life histories.
Most of the time, however, while mosque leaders might boast of the
large numbers taking the shahada in their mosques, converts are often left
out in the cold from that day on. Some turn to the numerous sites on the
Internet listing testimonials from fellow converts. Others find sympathetic

174 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
worshippers willing to teach them about the faith. Even after September
11, when tens of thousands were said to have converted, most mosque
leaders failed to create ways to educate their new fellow Muslims.
In Dearborn and Detroit, where there is a high concentration of mosques
and Muslims, the problem of educating new converts became so troubling
that Cherine Abdulah created the Ummah Project in 2004. Her own ex-
periences had inspired her to help converts. She was born into a secular,nonpracticing Muslim family, but when she reached her twenties she
wanted to learn about the faith. She called a few imams in Dearborn, but
no one was willing to help her. The organization Cherine now runs pro-vides a series of classes to teach converts everything from the basics, such
as how to pray, to the theological tenets of the faith. Cherine says many
mosque communities do little to show acceptance toward new convertsand, as a result, she estimates that 50 percent of those who adopt Islam
eventually leave it. The greatest problem new Muslims face today is emo-
tional and psychological isolation. Once they give up certain activities thatdraw people together, such as attending events at which alcohol is served
or that pose obstacles to practicing their new faith, they need a new social
life. For Muslim immigrants, that social life revolves around the mosque.But, if converts are not made to feel welcome there, they have no support
group to replace the one they left behind.
The counseling they receive from imams or mosque leaders, Cherine
told me, often creates more frustration. If a new convert is having trouble
with her non-Muslim husband, for example, an imam might advise her to
get a divorce, rather than lead her toward a solution. In some mosques,female converts are pressured to immediately start wearing the hijab or
jilbab , and for many women this requires a complete change in lifestyle.
Cherine believes all these pressures lead to what she calls “new Muslimburnout,” causing immigrant Muslim communities to lose an opportunity
to tap into the growing interest in Islam among non-Muslims.
Such disinterest toward converts is surprising considering that some of
the most influential Muslim leaders in America were not born into the
faith: Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, the influential sheikhs
at the Zaytuna Institute; Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, one of SheikhHamza’s mentors; and the prominent Muslim activist Ingrid Mattson.
Their popularity among immigrant Muslims might seem to contradict
the usual reaction to converts. However, during my travels it became clearthat immigrant Muslims born into Islam make a distinction between con-
verts who are well educated about the faith and those who are not.

HEEDING THE CALL 175
The lack of acceptance of converts among imams in mosques goes against
one of the fundamental principles in Islam, called dawah, literally to invite
one to Islam. Since the time of the Prophet Muhammad, dawah has been
the avenue through which Islam has expanded to now include 1.5 billionMuslims worldwide. In the Koran, dawah generally refers to God’s invita-
tion to live according to his will. In contemporary times, dawah is used to
encourage Muslims to be pious in all aspects of their lives.
In the United States, the obstacles to accepting converts generally re-
flects the historical ethnic segregation in most mosques—the same segre-
gation Rami Nashashibi and other young Muslim activists are now workingto eradicate. The converts represent to some degree the “other”; they do
not fit neatly into particular mosque communities, many of which are di-
vided along ethnic lines. In a study conducted by Ihsan Bagby, The Mosque
in America: A National Portrait , the congregations of 64 percent of mosques
were composed of one dominant ethnic group, generally either African
American or South Asian.
The size of the Latino Muslim population remains small and the con-
version rate in no way compares to that of African Americans over recent
decades. According to a CAIR study published in April 2001, 64 percentof Muslim converts were African American, 27 percent were white, 6 per-
cent were Hispanic, and 3 percent fell into the “other” category. Accord-
ing to the same study, 44 percent of mosques reported one to fiveconversions per year, while 23 percent reported eleven to forty-nine con-
versions per year. There has been no definitive study since then on the
numbers of conversions, but imams say they have seen a dramatic rise attheir mosques since September 11.
African Americans make up the overwhelming majority of all converts,
and their numbers have increased significantly over the last century. Therise in their numbers can be traced in part to Sheikh Daud Faisal, an Afri-
can American musician. Faisal and his wife, who is an African American
with a Pakistani father, played a key role in spreading the faith amongblacks in the New York and New Jersey area. According to Sulayman
Nyang, the Nation of Islam also circulated their ideas of Islamic doctrine
in the same region of the northeast in the 1930s. Nyang goes as far as tosay that Elijah Muhammad did more to multiply the numbers of Muslims
in America than any other leader or group in the country.
Despite the far greater number of African American converts, I have
chosen to write about the conversions of Latinos. I think the reasons they
are converting—their attraction to the intellectual nature of Islam and

176 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
their disillusionment with religions they feel are guided by blind faith—
reflect powerful global trends that will continue, and even accelerate, in
the foreseeable future. African Americans, on the other hand, have con-
verted for reasons that are particular to their history in America, often asrecourse against their discrimination at the hands of white society. For
decades, African American conversions have been most prevalent among
prisoners. A 2004 U.S. Department of Justice study found that 6 percentof the country’s 150,000 federal inmates are Muslims, and 85 percent of
these Muslims converted in prison. Islamic organizations of many stripes
have worked for decades to spread the dawah to the black prison popula-
tion, which is ripe for conversion to Islam. Yet, there are still few Muslim
chaplains; of more than two hundred chaplains in the U.S. Federal Bureau
of Prisons, less than a dozen are Muslim.
A 1972 publication called Ijtahad described how Muslim Students’ Asso-
ciations were soliciting support in the 1960s and 1970s to convert inmates.
An increasing number of inmates in various correctional facilities are now
accepting Islam as their only salvation in this life and thereafter. Most of themhave accepted Islam after they have been in contact with sincere Muslims atthe prison. The unity of God, justice, brotherhood, equality of mankind, at-
tracted most of them to become Muslims. With all the rigid regulations of the
prison facilities, the new Muslims are still able to study and practice Islam . . .
The MSA committee for Correctional Facilities, therefore, solicits the sup-port and cooperation of all the MSA local chapters and Muslim communities
to provide them with dedicated Muslim teachers knowledgeable in Islam for
the effective rehabilitation of the sincere inmates.
After Malcolm X found Islam in prison through the Nation of Islam,
he expressed thoughts similar to those of many black converts over the
decades:
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases
from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world,
I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have
been considered white, but the white attitude was removed from their mindsby the religion of Islam.
The tradition of spreading Islam in prisons continues to this day as
Muslim chaplains deliver Friday sermons, distribute Korans and other lit-erature, and give religious study lessons. Inmates are particularly attracted
to Islam because of its lack of hierarchy. A prisoner does not need a cleric,
priest, or even a mosque to practice the faith. Islam places great impor-
tance on self-reformation without the intervention of a third party. Often

HEEDING THE CALL 177
denied regular contact with a religious authority, inmates can teach them-
selves about Islam and still feel they are diligently practicing the faith.
For decades, the conversions have happened with ease. But only about
25 percent of prison converts pursue their new faith once they are freed.Faced with the demands of finding a job and making the effort required to
find a local mosque or Islamic community center, a great majority never
makes it to a mosque. There is no longer a national organization equiva-lent to the Nation leading converts to the faith, or charismatic leaders like
Malcolm X who can stand as reminders of how their prison conversions
transformed their lives.
“So Many Muslim Sisters”
After talking with Chris at the Islamic Center, I met Amira, a twenty-six-
year-old Latina convert who grew up along the Mexican border in Ama-
rillo, a Texas town more often associated with the old southwest than withthe rise of a new religious trend. Amira immediately stood out in the crowd
when she entered the main room where Sheikh Ali was giving his reli-
gious lesson. Some of the women in the class did not wear headscarves,and others from South Asia or Southeast Asia placed them delicately on
the crowns of the heads, exposing some of their hair. But Amira, a tall,
slender woman with a soft face, was wearing a long black chador similar tothe floor-length veil I had worn during my years in Iran. Her dark eyes,
accented with black mascara and liner, made her look nearly entirely black.
I had never seen a convert in America dressed so conservatively, althoughthis type of veil is common in many countries, particularly in the Persian
Gulf. Some Muslims had told me that converts sometimes try to compen-
sate for not being born into the faith by taking extreme measures, such aswearing conservative veils, in order to prove their commitment.
Amira guides me outside the center, into the bright sunlight. She says
she prefers to talk at her apartment nearby, where her small son and daugh-ter can play. I hop into the front seat of her Chevy Suburban, where they
are waiting in the back seat. As Amira drives, we pass all the shopping
malls and streets I remember from my own childhood in San Antonio.Back then, it seemed there were no Muslims living in the city and cer-
tainly no recognizable mosques. San Antonians generally had very little
knowledge about the Middle East or the Muslim world. When I was astudent in an all-girls Catholic school, most of my classmates thought I
was Mexican because of my dark features. When I told them my family

178 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
was Lebanese, they had no idea that there was a country called Lebanon.
As I think about how Islam has spread, even in this unexpected corner of
the country, Mariah, Amira’s six-year-old daughter, proudly recites the
opening verses of the Koran, something I never heard in this city twenty-five years ago. “Show this lady what you learned in your Islamic school,”
Amira tells Mariah. Soon, she is proudly reciting the letters of the Arabic
alphabet.
As Mariah sings in the back seat, Amira tells me her story. A tragedy
and a Muslim husband led her to Islam. She was raising her two children
in San Antonio alone, having divorced her first husband, a Catholic from
Mexico. She could not afford a babysitter so she left the children alone
during the day while she attended a vocational school near their apart-ment. A neighbor reported her to Child Protective Services. Amira knew
it was wrong to leave her two small children alone in the apartment, but
she felt she had no choice if she wanted to get an education and a good-
paying job. Officials from the agency were unsympathetic; they took her
children away and placed them in a foster home for a year and three months.
Amira was heartbroken. At first, she was allowed to visit them only two
hours a month.
Two months after her children were taken away, she converted to Is-
lam at one of the city’s central mosques. She had come to know several
Muslims in town and was briefly married to a Palestinian man. She startedreading literature about the faith, including books and tapes from Sheikh
Hamza Yusuf. Through all this, she felt convinced she had made the right
decision, even when her marriage ended after only two months.
“There is acceptance in the Islamic community that you don’t find any-
where else,” she tells me. “I have so many Muslim sisters and I never had so
many friends.” By this point in our conversation we had arrived at her
somewhat Spartan apartment. I sat on her living room sofa as she fetchedsome peanut butter and jelly from the cupboard for her children.
Knowing Muslims brings stability to her life. The Islamic community
has started giving her support. It helps her to pay the rent for her apart-
ment, which has allowed her to quit her part-time job at a dry cleaners so
she can continue studying at a local college to become an X-ray techni-
cian. “I am organized and I function much better now,” Amira explains,
slapping the gooey peanut butter on slices of white bread. “When you
become a Muslim, you have much more control over your life. On Satur-
days, I go to a study session for converts at the mosque, and they teach us

HEEDING THE CALL 179
how to pray correctly, they teach us about the Prophet, and how to raise
your kids to be good Muslims.”
The Saturday study sessions are typical of the ways many converts across
the country become educated about Islam. About six years ago, when moreand more Muslims started attending the Islamic Center of San Antonio, a
couple from Jordan began giving halaqas , or study sessions. After about a
year, they returned to the Middle East, and the community asked one oftheir students, Jameelah Ohl, to become the new teacher. Jameelah, born
into a Christian family, converted to Islam in 1996 in what she calls a
“stop ’n’ go” mosque in the city. She had tried several religions, but choseIslam after meeting Palestinians and Lebanese who told her a bit about
the Koran. Aside from the Islamic conferences she has attended in nearby
Houston, Dallas, and Austin, Jameelah has no formal Islamic education.What she knows about the Koran and the hadiths she mostly taught her-
self and picked up from her husband, a Muslim from Uganda. Yet, each
Saturday the number of students in her “Classes for Sisters” grew, and,about forty Muslims, mostly converts like Amira, diligently attended each
week. Many of the women had converted because they had married Mus-
lim men. Finding a Muslim husband was important to the women whowere unmarried, a common desire among female converts. In Dearborn,
some converts scan matchmaking sites on the Internet for available Mus-
lim men from the Middle East, and then travel to countries such as Yemento marry.
Amira longed to find a Muslim husband. “Marriage is so important. I
want to marry a very religious man because it is good for raising children.”
I ask her about her life back in Amarillo, but she is not interested in
talking about her distant past. She was born Catholic, but became disillu-
sioned with the church and became a Jehovah’s Witness. That is about allshe says. Although she gives no details, I get the impression that she does
not communicate much with her family.
What did they think about her marriage to a Muslim?“When I married the Palestinian man, they told me, ‘He is going to
take you to his country and kill you.’ They don’t understand much about
the world.”
Straight to God
On a hot September Sunday morning in 1999, Marta Felicitas Ramirez de
Galedary and four other Muslim women gathered in a room at the Islamic

180 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Center of Southern California. They first met out of frustration; they could
never fully understand the imam’s sermons or much else at their local
mosque, located in the heart of a predominately Hispanic Los Angeles
neighborhood. Some did not know English well and none knew Arabic,the language used on occasion at the mosque. They felt the language bar-
rier prevented the mosque leadership, who was generally open-minded,
from reaching the few Latino Muslims who worshipped there. So, theydecided to help one another.
First, they had to map out their strategy: They needed books about
Islam written in Spanish, but how could they find them? There certainly
was no demand for Spanish books about Islam in the United States, and,
in Mexico, there were too few Muslims for the publishing industry to trans-late English books into Spanish. But Marta was familiar with one book,
Reading the Muslim Mind, written by Hassan Hathout, a scholar living in
California. Somehow, Marta had discovered a Spanish translation. This
book and a Spanish biography of the Prophet Muhammad that Marta found
on the Internet were the extent of their library. They chose various themes
relevant to Latinos, and each person volunteered to give a presentation
each week summarizing the topic. Eventually, Hassan Hathout agreed to
lecture to the group on the last Sunday of each month. So began their
study sessions. Each Sunday, the women met for lessons and eventually
expanded their circle.
Marta was used to routine and discipline. She was born into a tradi-
tional Catholic family in Mexico in the state of Guerrero. Her father was
a rancher and was as demanding of his eleven daughters—Marta was the
youngest—as he was with his cattle. His daughters attended a strict Catholic
school to get a good education and develop moral values. During Holy
Week, a sacred time for Catholics before Easter Sunday, when Jesus Christ
is believed to have risen from the dead, Marta was not permitted to go tothe movies or eat meat. She was expected only to pray. When Marta com-
pleted secondary school, she convinced her father to let her attend a good
college in Mexico City. He agreed and she and two of her sisters rented an
apartment so Marta could attend el Colegio Hispano Americano, where
she studied Western literature, psychology, art, and existentialism. From
her studies in Marxism and philosophy, Marta seriously began to question
Catholicism for the first time in her life. “I was lost, confused and living an
extremely conflicted and painful life,” Marta wrote in an essay, describing
her feelings at the time.

HEEDING THE CALL 181
In the midst of her soul searching she married and had a son. But she
continued studying and enrolled in English classes at an institute created
by the British Embassy in Mexico City. She was so inspired by her lessons
that she arranged to enroll in an English-language exchange program inBath, a small city west of London, which in the late Middle Ages was a
center for the study of Arabic texts. Her stay there changed her life. She
met three classmates: Hassan, Ismael, and Kitar, all Muslims from Brunei.Marta did not know what a Muslim was. Still her friends almost never
talked to her about Islam, aside from assuring her that she was born a
Muslim.
She returned to Mexico City after her summer studies had ended, and
felt like a different woman. She had just divorced her husband, and she
missed her Muslim friends. Something about their personalities and whatlittle they told her about Islam stayed with her. She wanted to be part of it.
She wrote to them diligently, but she needed human contact with other
Muslims. At the same time, she wanted to keep improving her English, soshe moved to the United States as part of an exchange program. Once
there, she met more Muslims, including her English teacher—a Jew who
had converted to Islam. Her renewed contacts with Muslims inspired herto say the shahada .
Marta Felicitas Ramirez de Galedary. ( Photograph by Chris Martinez. Courtesy of La
Opinion newspaper )

182 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
“I was in tears during my first prayers. Finally, I had found peace in my
heart. I knew that Allah was with me, and I knew what was my role in the
world and the reason for my existence. I have returned to the one God and
I will never be lost again.” These were the words Marta wrote in her essayto document her life at that time.
While she felt satisfied that her long search had ended, her family was
displeased with her decision. Islam was little known in her native Mexico.One of her sisters, a nun, blamed herself for not teaching Marta enough
about Catholicism when she was a young girl. Her grieving mother called
the local priest for comfort. She wanted to know how to convince her
daughter to return to the Catholic Church. Much to her surprise the priest
told her Islam was not a new religion and that Marta was on the right path.
I met Marta many years after her conversion, in December 2005, at a
café in Santa Monica. I had tried desperately to get the phone numbers of
Latino Muslims in Los Angeles by calling Latinos I knew in San Antonio
and Chicago. But I quickly discovered that there is no national organiza-
tion or network connecting Latino believers. When I finally got Marta’s
e-mail address, she responded quickly, with the same efficiency with which
she had started her study circle in Los Angeles back in 1999.
I asked her if her feelings have changed since those passionate days in
Mexico when she left her country and her family to pursue her faith. She
told me her commitment to Islam had become even stronger, but that shehad tried over the years to practice Islam in ways that suit her personality.
For instance, she wore a headscarf for only a few weeks before realizing
that she felt more comfortable without it. As she told me this story, it was
clear that Marta’s youthful independent streak had stayed with her. This
became even clearer when she compared Islam to Catholicism.
“Latinos are attracted to Islam because they like the fact that you pray
straight to God and you don’t have to tell anyone your sins, especially to aperson who is probably more sinful than you are. And no one is trying to
intimidate you or manipulate your brain. In Islam, you are forced to use
your intellect. For many of us, Islam has given us the meaning of life, why
we are in this world.”
Marta did her best to create a national Latino Muslim organization
that would cooperate with well-established mosques and Islamic groups.
She was in touch with Latinos in Chicago, San Antonio, and New York,
but they had reservations about forming an organization identified strictly
as Hispanic. They want to be considered part of the broader Muslim

HEEDING THE CALL 183
American community, without an ethnic marker. But Marta suggested
that, as more Latinos convert to Islam, some of their differences with other
Muslims are becoming more apparent. In deciding not to wear the hijab,
for example, Marta’s views are at odds with many other practicing Muslimwomen.
There are also cultural traditions among Latinos that set them apart
from other Muslims. Latino Muslims believe it is important for people,men and women alike, to shake hands when they first meet. But many
traditional Muslim men, the vast majority in the Islamic world, feel un-
comfortable shaking a woman’s hand. “Being Latino means expressing
yourself. We kiss one another and shake hands and I don’t understand
how this can be considered un-Islamic,” Marta said. “We give seminars
every year because we have some Latinos who say you can’t celebrate
Thanksgiving or birthdays anymore. We tell them they can keep theirculture. You just have to change certain habits. Don’t go to bars and drink
alcohol.”
“Ricardo, the Muslim”
Ricardo Pena was once a full-fledged Catholic in Chicago, a Catholic town.He went to catechism class and he made his first communion. His Puerto
Rican mother and Mexican father were not particularly religious but theyencouraged Ricardo to fulfill his spiritual obligations.
By the time he was a young teenager his interest in the church had
waned. He asked himself why he should go through the trouble of praying
when he didn’t have the energy to do his homework. He tried not to think
about God and ignored anyone who wanted to talk to him about orga-
nized religion. His visceral rejection of religion made him realize one thing:
his anger was based on fear of the afterlife. From this realization came anew way of thinking about religion. Ricardo considered other faiths; he
shopped around for the perfect fit that paired his spiritual needs with the
fundamentals of a faith.
Years passed, and when Ricardo was twenty years old he developed a
close friendship with Danny, whose family had moved next door to RicardoPena’s family in Roger’s Park, a working-class Chicago neighborhood.
Danny had converted to Islam in high school, about four years before he
moved to Roger’s Park, after his Muslim classmates convinced him to
embrace the faith. It was not an easy transformation; Danny had resisted,

184 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
but his Muslim friends with whom he had formed a close bond by playing
sports together and going to Cubs games at the stadium near their homes,
persuaded him over a few years.
Danny then turned to Ricardo, his lost neighbor, to try to teach him
about Islam. He told Ricardo that God sent Muhammad, the last prophet,
to Earth. This was news to Ricardo who had no idea about Islam.
“What Danny told me broke my heart,” Ricardo explained, when I met
him at a Chicago coffee shop.
“I started intensively studying and comparing Christianity with Islam. I
did this for seven months and every night I asked God to show me the way.
“I realized over time that if I stuck with Catholicism it would be be-
cause of an attachment, not because I had a rational argument. When Iwas a Catholic everything was based on emotion. But in Islam, they ask
you to use your brain.”
During the months he studied Islam, Ricardo turned to his brother for
support.
“I told Danny and my brother that I wanted to convert and they im-
plied that I was too emotional, that people were not supposed to become
Muslims out of emotion. I realized later that they wanted me to be sure I
really wanted to embrace Islam. They knew how serious it would be for
me to become a Muslim and then decide to leave the faith.”
Shortly thereafter, in September 1995, Ricardo and his brother took
the shahada together at the Muslim Community Center, one of Chicago’s
most established mosques. He was twenty-one years old. “Once it became
public, I didn’t know what to do. The sheikh came in and said a few words
and there were witnesses.”
So Ricardo began to change his lifestyle. First, he stopped his occa-
sional drinking. “It took awhile for me to begin to drift away from my
friends and drift more towards Muslims. I didn’t know many Muslims andit wasn’t until later that I became connected to them that I knew I needed
a support structure.”
Of all the negative reactions Ricardo and his brother experienced after
publicly declaring their new faith, the worst came from their parents. “We
broke the news to our parents and it was a fight that started at eight in the
evening and we didn’t get to bed until four in the morning. My parents
were so upset. It turned into a big drama. It was a shock. It is the fear of
the unknown. And when they asked why, we got into things they didn’t
want to hear. They didn’t know what we were getting into.

HEEDING THE CALL 185
“But after my parents realized there was nothing they could do, they let
it be. They thought at least our new religion had some moral standard.
They knew we were adults, not kids and could make our own decisions.
“But my sister remained hostile to the idea of Islam and was very hos-
tile toward the fact that Islam was in her life. She would say, ‘I don’t want
to hear about it.’ I would say, ‘Okay, it is fine.’ Then she had a daughter
out of wedlock when she was seventeen and that changed everything.”
She got married and started thinking more about religion. She started
going to mass on Sundays at the local Catholic Church. When things both-
ered her, she turned to the Bible, but she was sinking deeper into depres-
sion. “Then one day she was sitting in a library studying and she started
crying,” Ricardo explained. “At that moment, she put her head in her handand when she turned she saw writing on the wall written in orange marker
and it said, ‘Jesus is not God and is not the son of God. Jesus is the messen-
ger of God.’”
That day she decided to become a Muslim. “She was finally able to
overcome all the things she thought were barriers to becoming a Muslim,
like wearing hijab. She was ready, no matter the difficulties.”
When I met Ricardo, he had been a Muslim for ten years and had a
network of Muslim friends. His wife, Diana, was a Latina convert from
Puerto Rico, and they had settled in Chicago with their two children. Yet,
while he seemed to have all the support he had hoped for, he still feltdisconnected to the broader Islamic community. Part of the problem was
the amount of time he devoted to his career. As a computer software de-
veloper at the Chicago operations of the Chicago Federal Home Loan
Bank, he spent much of his free time outside work reading literature to try
and keep up with rapidly changing technological trends. When he wasn’t
working on computers, he attended night school to become a certified
public accountant. With little time left for attending prayers at the mosqueor starting a group for Latino Muslims, one of his dreams, he felt a bit
lost. He wanted desperately to create a national Latino Muslim organiza-
tion, but he needed funding, and raising money was time consuming.
Most people at work and other places thought of him as “Ricardo, the
Hispanic,” not “Ricardo, the Muslim.” On Fridays, he did not ask permis-
sion from his boss to leave for prayers in the mosque, as some Muslims
do. Instead, Ricardo asked a Shi’ite Muslim who owned a photo shop
down stairs from his office if he could pray there. Even the mere idea of
working at a federal bank troubled him. He feared that working for the

186 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
U.S. government was a betrayal to Islam considering the U.S. invasion of
two Islamic countries—Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I have a hard time,” Ricardo told me. “I feel like a Muslim in the closet
the way gays used to be in the closet. I don’t wear a kufi. I don’t look the
part. If I went for a job interview, no one would be biased because they
wouldn’t know I am a Muslim. They would just see Ricardo, the Latino.”
Like many converts I met, Ricardo faced different obstacles and dilem-
mas than those Muslims born into the faith. Whether thousands of new
converts will remain Muslim could depend upon to what degree the broader
Islamic community steps in to help them deal with their new lives inAmerica.

187EIGHT
The Future of the Faith
/ornament20
Farhan Latif always knew it was only a matter of time before the slow-
burning anger would erupt. His conservative Muslim enemies had
made their intentions clear to him. They had sent threatening e-mails and
left menacing messages on his cell phone. In their eyes, Farhan’s ideas
were criminal. The Western world might call him a moderate Muslim,
but his foes thought he was an apostate, luring young Muslims away fromthe faith.
The day Farhan feared came in September 2004. As he was about to
enter his modern apartment in Dearborn, about one mile from his univer-sity, three young men jumped him and pushed him to the ground. They
beat and kicked him without saying a word. Farhan recognized one of his
attackers; the guy did not bother to hide his face under a mask.
“Why are you doing this?” Farhan cried, trying to shield his face from
their blows.
The attackers did not reply. Within minutes, they got back into their
car and tried to run Farhan over before they sped away. He managed to
avoid the oncoming wheels by rolling away just in time.
As he rested in the hospital, nursing a swollen head, several cracked
ribs, and a broken arm, Farhan was depressed more than shocked over thebeating. It was one thing to endure the daily blows from the non-Muslims

188 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
who criticized Islam. But now he was in a battle with his fellow believers.
“I fight against everything people say against my religion every day, on
television, on the radio, everywhere,” Farhan remarked, reflecting on the
incident later. “I was not so much scared when this happened but sad thatfellow Muslims would do this.”
Months before the attack, in the spring of 2004, Farhan was elected
president of the Muslim Students’ Association at the University ofMichigan’s Dearborn campus. In a short time, he revolutionized the asso-
ciation, making it more attractive to a majority of Muslim students on
campus, many of whom had refused to join when the conservatives were
in charge. Farhan and the new leaders decided there would no longer be
radical imams unleashing hate speech at Friday prayers. All lecturers wouldbe required to follow certain rules. They lifted the ban that prevented
women without headscarves from joining the association. All Muslims
would be welcome, no matter their political ideas or their sect; minority
Shi’ites, often scorned for their separate ways and different approach to
the faith, were just as acceptable as the Sunni student majority. Farhan
organized events to show how the three monotheistic faiths have much in
common. A drama called “Children of Abraham” made its debut before
the Muslim association.
None of this sat well with members of Dearborn’s Muslim Students’
Association who were either radical Salafis or affiliated with the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, the Islamic Party of Liberation. The movement, a clan-
destine, radical Sunni Islamic group that is banned in several countries
around the world, advocates the replacement of individual Muslim gov-
ernments with a single caliphate governed under a strict reading of the
sharia. The students who are members of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami share a
common creed that calls for strict adherence to the Koran and the rejec-
tion of applying human reason and logic when interpreting the Islamicholy texts.
The movement traces back to the early 1950s, when a Muslim judge in
Jerusalem founded it in order to campaign for a return of the community
of believers to an Islamic lifestyle within a single, shared religious space,
the dar al-Islam . After its initial success in recruiting members in Saudi
Arabia and Jordan, Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami soon established a foothold
throughout the Muslim world, where it has often been violently suppressed
and its members have been jailed and even killed. Based these days prima-
rily in Western Europe, it has recently concentrated on establishing a

THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH 189
presence in the repressive Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union,
particularly Uzbekistan. Regional leaders, alarmed by the threat the groups
pose to their own unpopular rule, regularly denounce Hizb ut-Tahrir al-
Islami members as violent terrorists, as does the Russian security service,which fears the group’s influence in the state’s restive Muslim regions,
including Chechnya. Neither the U.S. government nor independent ex-
perts have linked the group to armed extremist activities.
Before Farhan had arrived on the campus, radical students had turned
the Muslim Students’ Association into a virtual training camp for conser-
vative ideologues. Under the influence and guidance of an imam at a
Dearborn mosque, the students believed their fellow Muslims were stray-
ing dangerously from the faith. In their eyes, being a dedicated Muslimmeant that men should work to pressure the U.S. government to change
its policies in the Islamic world, Muslim women should wear headscarves,
and Muslims should have little to do with Jews and Christians. This was
the crux of the ideological battle the Salafi students and those belonging
to the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami were determined to win against Farhan
and his friends and allies.
Farhan’s parents pleaded with him to stop his activism on campus.
Farhan usually listened to them. He had come to the United States alone
in 2000 hoping to attend medical school. A cousin in Dearborn offered to
help him, so Farhan left his parents at their current home in Qatar. Foryears, his family had traveled from country to country, as his father pur-
sued a career as a Pakistani diplomat and later a lawyer. They were often
strangers in a new land, and the bond among them remained strong even
as Farhan became more independent. Farhan’s father’s expertise in sharia
law offered Farhan a scholarly and enlightened view of the Islamic tradi-
tion, putting him at odds with the students from the Hizb ut-Tahrir, who
blindly followed the ideas of a radical imam.
Other students, if beaten for their beliefs, might have given up. But
Farhan and his close group of friends inside the student association wanted
to press on with their ideas, no matter the cost. Together, they had been
the leaders of the MSA at a nearby college for two years before enrolling
at the University of Michigan in Dearborn. During that time, they watched
literally from across the street, the distance from their university to the
University of Michigan, as the radical students drove more measured
Muslims away from the MSA there. Farhan and his friends worked on a
strategy for transforming the organization from a distance, even before

190 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
they were elected to lead it. They believed they had the support of a ma-
jority of Muslim students and others on campus, and they were not going
to surrender to violence or intimidation.
They were strong willed. Patrick Cates was a Muslim convert and ac-
tivist who spent years studying the intricacies of Islam until he knew far
more than many born into the faith. These young students were dedicated
Muslims, but had different beliefs from those in Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami.During one of my first trips to Dearborn in the summer of 2003, I met
Patrick and Farhan through a friend, Saeed Khan. Saeed asked Farhan
and Patrick to give me a tour of the mosques in the area.
For hours that Saturday, they drove me around town, from one mosque
to another, trying to make introductions so that I could later return to the
mosques on my own to begin my research. Sometimes, we were turnedaway, if the worshippers or leaders were fearful of outsiders. I was sur-
prised that anyone in America would spend an entire day helping a com-
plete stranger. As I came to know Farhan and Patrick, I quickly realizedthey were committed to educating people about Islam and Muslims in
America, no matter the amount of time or effort it might take.
The vehemence of the debate among young Muslims in America, as
captured in Farhan’s own violent experience, highlights the central role
Muslim Students’ Associations are playing in charting a new Muslim Ameri-
can identity after September 11. Though association members rarely re-sort to violence, many young Muslims are tangled in debate and
disagreement, particularly as the associations’ membership grows. As the
Muslim community of believers becomes more established and more vis-ible across America, the stakes in this debate have increased exponentially.
No longer content—or even able—to exist in their own segregated uni-
verse, out of sight and out of mind of mainstream society, today’s youngMuslims are coming together in student associations, mosques, and Islamic
centers to work out for themselves just what it means to be a Muslim in
contemporary America. Adherents of what the sheikhs at the Zaytuna Insti-tute in California call a new rejectionist tendency, many are seeking neither
to assimilate into the national melting pot nor to live “separate but equal,”
like their parents. Rather, they are determined to put their Islamic identityfirst, but within an American context; it is, they say, their country, too.
For many educated, upwardly mobile young Muslims, the student asso-
ciations are defining how to live as a devout Muslim in a secular and oftenhostile society. The racial politics at the core of black Islam and the isolation-
ism of the early-twentieth-century prairie Muslims both ended in failure—

THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH 191
a fate today’s believers are determined to avoid. As this second generation
of Muslims becomes more attached to their distinct religious identity, the
student associations are rapidly becoming the main platform for debating
religious and social issues, ranging from whether women should be veiled tohow much contact Muslim Americans should have with non-Muslims. The
battle is being waged not only by schools of thought at either extreme of the
ideological spectrum, but also among students who would not define them-selves as either progressive or conservative Muslims.
Since September 11, Muslim Students’ Associations have become more
visible and more active across the United States. Their ranks are increas-ing from all directions: young Muslims who grew up in secular families
are becoming members in order to learn about their faith and to surround
themselves with other Muslims; conservative students join because theywant their ideas to dominate the organizations; and non-Muslims are en-
tering those MSAs that will make room for them because they are curious
about a religion and way of life that is capturing the daily headlines.
In the two and a half years since Farhan graduated, the Dearborn chap-
ter has grown significantly, from around two hundred students to six hun-
dred. This includes about one hundred non-Muslims, an unusually largenumber for a Muslim Students’ Association on any American campus.
Farhan’s commitment to making the organization more inclusive and to
eliminate the rules and practices that alienated not only non-Muslims butalso many Muslims has clearly paid off.
Part of the allure of the associations is simply that they are no longer
invisible. At one time they were relegated to the basements of studentunion halls and forced to compete with more glamorous, mainstream stu-
dent activities for scarce resources. Now, however, universities have be-
gun to realize that the MSAs have a powerful role to play, not just incampus life but in broader society. Some MSAs seek funding from their
universities, just like any other campus group. But, in most cases, the asso-
ciations are defined as religious organizations, and are thus barred fromreceiving such money by state and federal laws protecting the separation
of church and state.
Since September 11, Muslim student leaders have found themselves in
great demand; they are often called upon to explain the basics of Islam to
campus audiences of hundreds of students. With the spotlight unexpect-
edly focused on what was a closed, sectarian world, when asked to explainpublicly what it is to be Muslim in the modern world, many young student
leaders have risen to the occasion.

192 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
“Magic Muslim”
One star of the September 11 generation is Hadia Mubarak, a petite woman
with a girlish smile and fresh complexion, who does nearly everythingfaster than most people; she talks fast, and she finished college in three
years. She was the first woman president of the MSA national organiza-
tion, the umbrella group for all such associations in the United States andCanada. She was also one of the first girls daring enough to play high
school sports wearing a hijab. The sight of her headscarf blowing in the
wind as she dribbled a soccer ball down the field brought Hadia a bit offame among the two thousand students at her public high school in Florida.
Her teammates called her Magic Muslim, a reference to the retired bas-
ketball star, Erwin “Magic” Johnson.
This reputation as a groundbreaker followed her years later. She truly
seemed to have a magical appeal, speaking to Muslim youth across the
country, lecturing to the U.S. Congress, and writing opinion pieces andcolumns in newspapers. Hadia is best known for helping defeat a discrimi-
natory bill in the Florida House of Representatives that would have used
national origin as a criteria to eliminate state funding to students. Hadialed a statewide campaign, debating a sitting congressman on television.
When she was the president of her MSA at Florida State University,
she articulated what second-generation Muslims were feeling but were
Hadia Mubarak. (Photograph
by Dr. Abdalla M. Ali. Courtesy of
Islamic Horizons magazine)

THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH 193
generally too timid to say out loud. “Walking into an airport at Mobile,
Alabama, I am watched as if I were the object of examination,” Hadia
wrote in the Tallahassee Democrat , a local newspaper.
Accustomed to the curious stares, I disregard them and walk up to the ticket
counter, speaking to the agent in perfect English. Perhaps the surprised eyes
that glance up are asking the same question that a lady asked on Oprah’s “Is-
lam 101” talk show. “Why have you failed to assimilate,” she asked the Mus-lim girls sitting in the audience, their hair covered beneath a scarf, their bodieshidden beneath long-sleeved shirts, long dresses, shirts or pants. “Everyone inthis country has assimilated,” she continued, “except for Muslims.”
The column raises the central idea Hadia Mubarak is spreading across
America, one that has made her a heroine among many young Muslims. If
they choose, devout Muslims can have it all. They can display the symbolsof their faith, such as the headscarf. Like Hadia, they can enjoy sports,
achieve academic success, and pursue a professional career. One of Hadia’s
role models is Ingrid Mattson, the vice president of the Islamic Society ofNorth America who taught imams about women’s rights in Islam. While
Ingrid’s success and assertiveness are unusual for her generation—she is
about twenty years older than Hadia—young Muslim women are learningto express their views and pursue demanding careers, while also embrac-
ing Islam publicly and privately in ways their parents never did when they
first arrived in the United States. Hadia’s generation is breaking manytaboos that were once alive and well among Muslims everywhere, not just
in the United States. And those who are taking the lead are also serving as
a bridge between Muslims and non-Muslims. Hadia and a handful of other
young Muslims are often invited to speak when non-Muslim scholars, ex-
perts, and policymakers are examining contemporary Islamic issues. In
the past, when these issues were discussed and analyzed, no Muslims were
ever offered a seat at the table. Although this is still often the case, times
are changing in part because of articulate young Muslims who are notafraid to speak out.
As Hadia wrote later in the same newspaper column, many women from
the Middle East who had not worn headscarves in their home countries
started wearing them after visiting America. The attraction of displaying
the faith publicly for all to see, a mission among many second-generationMuslim Americans, was catching on even among Muslims from the Islamic
world. But, as Hadia often explained, being a proud Muslim is never easy.
As my hijab is mistakenly viewed as a failure to assimilate, I am reminded of
the obstacles that lie ahead as I struggle to validate my roots as a Muslim Arab

194 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
American. . . . I began to realize that people didn’t see me when they looked at
me, but rather saw an image they had formulated in their minds from Holly-
wood movies showing Arab fanatics hijacking a plane. . . . Before they’ve even
learned my name, heard my laughter or witnessed my tears, before they’veseen me kick a soccer ball or debate an argument, they have judged me andthink they know who I am.
The umbrella campus organization, the Muslim Students’ Association
of the United States and Canada, tapped Hadia to be its first female presi-
dent in 2004, prompting fierce debate among young Muslims. Some youngwomen feared a backlash; Hadia did not just have to be competent, she
had to be an extraordinary president. Otherwise, the male skeptics who
openly questioned whether a woman should ever hold such a post wouldwin the day. By the end of her year as the organization’s president, Hadia
had more than fulfilled everyone’s expectations. She had spread her con-
victions and ideas, honed over her years as a young student activist, toMuslim Students’ Associations across the country, strengthening the indi-
vidual chapters and championing women’s roles within the organizations.
Each campus’s MSA generally aims to provide basic religious services
to students at the university. A space for Muslims to pray now exists on
most campuses, ranging from full-fledged mosques to small rooms in base-
ments or student centers. The MSA also organizes lectures each week,
followed by discussions. On weekend evenings, the associations generally
host social events. While non-Muslim students might be living it up atfraternity parties, the Muslims students are getting to know one another
at alcohol-free concerts or dinners. At least once a year, the MSAs sponsor
“Islamic Awareness Week,” an event that is giving Muslim students vis-
ibility on campuses across the country. Events held during this week edu-
cate non-Muslims about Islam. On some campuses, the Muslim students
consider this a form of dawah, drawing non-Muslims into the faith.
Another big draw at MSAs is Islamic hip-hop music. Muslim associa-
tions often invite bands with a national following, such as Native Deen, to
attract non-Muslims and Muslims alike. The concerts are great icebreak-
ers; they unify Muslims from all political and religious persuasions and
show non-Muslim crowds that being a Muslim is not only about praying
and fasting.
In the post–September 11 world, Muslims hold a range of events for
Muslim students, and they bring more Muslim speakers to campuses. They
are also placing greater demands on university administrators on behalf of
the Muslim student body. These demands typically include larger prayer

THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH 195
spaces, the availability of religiously permitted zabiha foods in campus caf-
eterias, time off to attend Friday communal prayers, and recognition of
the two religious Eid holidays—the Feast of the Sacrifice and the end of
Ramadan. The MSAs encourage young Muslims to make Islam public, sothat the faith will not be privatized at home but active at all times in the
hearts and minds of every Muslim. These organizations fulfill the need of
many young Muslims to stand up and defend their faith.
The aim of the national MSA organization is reflected in a statement
on its Web site: “to serve the best interest of Islam and Muslims in the
United States and Canada so as to enable them to practice Islam as a com-
plete way of life ” on campuses. Making Islam inseparable from normal life
has had several effects. At some Muslim Student Associations I visited,young women told me they started wearing the hijab after they joined and
began to pray regularly on Fridays. They found the courage to be pious
once they were surrounded by like minds.
It is a fundamental aspect of Islam that it is a prescription for all facets
of life not simply a matter of visiting the mosque once a week the way
many Americans go to church on Sunday. This is what most sets it apart
from contemporary mainstream Western faiths. This difference is also
the source of the deeper conflict today between the Muslim world and the
West, where critics of contemporary Islam can often be heard demanding
a so-called reformation to dilute the influence of religious doctrine and toallow greater space for secular life and activities. With the exception of a
few high-profile “progressive” Muslims who have attracted considerable
U.S. media attention, there is no evidence that such a reformation is any
more welcome in America’s mosques, Islamic centers, and student asso-
ciations than it would be in Cairo, Karachi, or Kuala Lumpur.
These developments within the Muslim Students’ Associations are shap-
ing the future direction of Islam in America. By creating a unified, close-knit social and religious group on campus, Muslim students are forming
bonds that did not exist among Muslim Americans of earlier generations.
The associations instill confidence in the students as practicing Muslims.
These young Muslims then tend to become more assertive when they re-
turn to the mosques in their communities. Their influence can be seen in
the effort today among young Muslims to make the mosque more diverse
and dynamic. For example, activists are encouraging religious leaders at
mosques to talk about social ills such as drug and alcohol abuse among
young Muslims—behavior many imams pretend does not exist because it

196 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
suggests that Muslims have not been successful in warding off the nega-
tive influences of Western society.
At times, when enthusiastic Muslim students try to recreate campus life
back in their home mosques the result is a clash between the old and younggeneration. This was certainly true when Nedaa, an active member of the
Muslim Students’ Association at DePaul University in Chicago, organized
youth counseling sessions at her mosque in one of the city’s suburbs. Aftera series of discussions on drug and alcohol abuse, the mosque board de-
cided to close the youth center. Nedaa, an articulate, charismatic young
woman was enraged.
“The older generation lives in denial,” Nedaa told me one day, as we
sat together at an Arab youth center in South Chicago.
“There is a drug problem, people are getting pregnant before they marry.
The fact that we want to talk about this and confront it is causing huge
difficulty. The older generation has a different mentality. When I was
growing up, I was told ‘There is us and there is them,’ them meaning the
Americans. We Muslims don’t drink alcohol. We don’t have premarital
sex. Why? Because we are better. But now for some young Muslims, there
is little difference between Muhammad and Mike and we have to face this
new reality.
“The purpose of the youth center at our mosque was to deal with these
issues. We are now in a situation in America where the entire country isagainst us, the world is against us. We only have each other and if we don’t
face our problems, our community might break up.”
America’s Muslim student movement has done more than simply shake
up the way the community looks at the challenges of modern life. It has
also gone a long way toward creating a multicultural Islam among second-
generation Muslims. Students from diverse ethnic backgrounds join the
Muslim Students’ Associations and encounter, often for the first time,Muslims outside their own ethnic groups. Just as Rami Nashashibi has
worked for a decade to bring multicultural Islam to an impoverished cor-
ner of Chicago, the student associations are creating a color-blind faith
among educated, socially mobile young Muslims by drawing them to events
such as hip-hop concerts. Muslims sometimes meet their future spouses in
the student associations, in which a variety of ethnic groups are repre-
sented. This growing multiculturalism has in turn added considerable
momentum to the drive for a unique Muslim identity that can face the
challenges of post–September 11 America.

THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH 197
In many ways, the goals and aspirations of the young people in today’s
Muslim Students’ Associations have come full circle since the first North
American MSA was founded in the early 1960s. Surely, the times were
different compared with the post–September 11 world, but the members’ideas were similar to those of students now leading the associations. It
took almost forty years, however, for the Muslim students’ earlier vision
to be realized.
In the 1960s, Muslim students had a yearning to be Muslim “out loud”
and the first Muslim Students’ Association of the United States and Canada
was established in 1963 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.In contrast with today, the original MSA members were mostly foreign
students who planned to return home once they graduated. There were
few, if any, Muslims born in America on college campuses at this time.Although these visiting students created the association primarily as a com-
fort zone during their years in the United States, they had a lofty goal,
which is only now being realized; they wanted to institutionalize Islam inAmerica by creating a powerful movement of young Muslims.
In one of its earliest publications, the new national organization pro-
claimed that among its chief goals was the promotion among young Mus-lims of a “self definition [that] involves, initially, and fundamentally [an]
Islamic identity.” At the time, the founders and activists in this budding
student movement were driven by a desire to create conditions for pursu-ing a proper Islamic lifestyle during their time in America. Unlike stu-
dents today, they were not responding to widespread persecution nor did
they feel the need to carve out a permanent place in mainstream society.These sentiments were spelled out in Al Ittihad , a publication the MSA of
the United States and Canada started in its earliest days. An editorial in
the March 1968 issue entitled, “The Message of the MSA,” stated: “Theidea for working among Muslim students of different countries living in
this part of the world was that we are Muslims first, Muslims last, and
Muslims forever. We should live as Muslims, we should die as Muslims.”
Over time, the Muslim student movement began a series of steps to
help institutionalize elements of Islam and the Islamic lifestyle in America,
primarily through education. Soon the MSA began to distribute booksabout Islam and Islamic practice to Muslims and non-Muslims on college
and university campuses. The group’s journal Al Ittihad , which members
refer to as its “mouthpiece,” was filled with articles about contemporaryIslamic issues. For the first time, Muslims in America began to discuss
leading problems in the Islamic world, including the role of women in

198 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
Islam and the population explosions in some of the students’ home coun-
tries. The journal also began to call for the creation of Islamic schools in
the United States, with one article on a proposed Islamic boarding school
published in 1973. At the time, virtually no such schools existed.
As part of its educational campaign, the Muslim Students’ Association
began to publish brochures and books and to translate the works of promi-
nent Islamic thinkers into English. By 1966, the MSA of the United Statesand Canada launched the Islamic Book Service, a clearinghouse for books
and periodicals. The list of titles was often featured in Al Ittihad so stu-
dents could place their orders. The association’s work continued through-out the 1970s, with the establishment of a fiqh (legal) council for North
America. The council issued legal opinions on issues facing Muslims liv-
ing in a secular society. At first, the council offered opinions on relativelylimited concerns, such as the proper starting point of Ramadan, based on
the first sighting of the crescent moon. But by 1988, its role had broad-
ened to issuing decrees on a wide range of social and religious topics.
Emblematic of the student movement’s increasingly influential role
among Muslims across America was the creation in 1982 of the Islamic
Society of North America (ISNA), an offshoot of the student associationsled by former members now pursuing professional careers. Founded in
part with funding from Saudi Arabia, which went toward building its head-
quarters in the middle of farmland in Plainfield, Indiana, ISNA has sincebecome a prominent advocate for Muslim Americans. Although former
students in the MSA created the organization, its purpose was to be a
voice for all Muslims. In recent years, its annual conventions held in Chi-cago draw an estimated thirty thousand Muslims from across North
America to discuss their religious and political concerns.
With the rise of the Islamic Society of North America, the MSA of the
United States and Canada narrowed its focus to Muslim students. The
organization promoted unity among students by integrating those from
different ethnic groups at religious events, created prayer rooms on cam-pus, and published articles in various magazines about recent conversions
to Islam , and created sexually segregated summer youth camps that con-
tinue today.
The Way Ahead
As young Muslims lead the way toward creating a well-defined Muslim
American identity, non-Muslim America often asks: “Will the outcome

THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH 199
be a segregated community? Will the young Muslim Americans embrac-
ing their faith also become radicalized like their peers in Europe?” Each
time I lecture at conferences hosted by think tanks in Washington and
attended by policy makers, these are the issues of greatest concern.
On the surface, there are many outward signs that might suggest young
Muslim Americans have much in common with Muslims in Europe. More
women in America are wearing headscarves, just as in Europe. Islam ismore institutionalized in American and European societies than ever be-
fore, as social and political organizations and Islamic schools develop. And
perhaps more significant, young Muslims are proving that they are notchoosing to integrate into Western societies in the ways typical of other
religious and ethnic minorities in the past. While it is common for the
second generations of religious and ethnic groups to distance themselvesfrom the culture, religion, and language of their ancestors, young Mus-
lims are taking the opposite approach. They are learning Arabic, attend-
ing Islamic schools, adopting Islamic symbolism, and joining organizations,such as the MSAs, to form a more unified Muslim community.
Today, there is a new Europe. Countries that were once largely homo-
geneous now have significant Muslim populations who have introducednew languages, cultures, and beliefs, and who consider Islam central to
their lives. This poses a great challenge to secular countries, such as Ger-
many, France, and Denmark, where there is little place for religion in thenational identity. Although Muslims are still very much in the minority in
the European Union—they comprise only 5 percent or between 15 and
20 million of the total population of 425 million people—Muslims livingin Europe have three times as many children as their non-Muslim neigh-
bors. As early as 2020, Muslims could comprise 10 percent of the popula-
tion in the EU, according to some surveys. Unlike the United States, acountry built of immigrants, in Western Europe, immigrants, for the most
part, are a post–World War II phenomenon. And, unlike in the United
States, Muslims in countries such as France, the Netherlands, Germany,and Belgium, comprise the largest of the immigrant populations.
Second-generation Muslims in some European countries are vulner-
able to the recruitment campaigns of extremist Islamic organizations, whichhave stepped up their efforts since September 11 and the invasion of Iraq.
The numbers of young Muslim recruits vary greatly, but they are esti-
mated to be in the hundreds, according to European intelligence reports,and increasingly include women and Muslim converts. After September
11, al-Qaeda and other groups searched for recruits with clean records

200 MECCA AND MAIN STREET
and who could travel within Europe and abroad without scrutiny. Women
and converts, some of whom do not have dark features, are proving suitable
for this purpose.
So far, there are no real signs that Europe’s non-Muslim majority is
prepared to make any concessions to this increasingly large and visible
segment in their societies. In France, lawmakers fearful of what they saw
as rising sectarian tensions in public schools have banned students fromwearing or displaying what they called “religious symbols.” These include
Christian crosses, the Jewish skullcap or kippah , and veils for Muslim women
and girls. Needless to say, the intent of the law backfired. While there isno doctrinal requirement that Christians wear the cross, many devout
Muslims believe that God has commanded the veil. In other words, the
state was openly interfering with their ability to practice their faith, exac-erbating suspicions among many pious Muslims that Western society is
out to destroy them and their beliefs.
This same approach could be seen in 2006, when newspaper editors in
Europe, Canada, and New Zealand—all majority Christian countries—
insisted on republishing a series of inflammatory Danish editorial car-
toons that insulted the Prophet Muhammad, including one that portrayedhim as a terrorist. The newspaper editors and their allies asserted their
actions were not only within their rights but also necessary to defend the
principle of free speech. Setting aside the fact that free speech was neverseriously under attack in Jutland, Denmark, where the cartoons originated
in 2005, the entire affair still smacked of a gratuitous assault on the beliefs
and values of the world’s Muslims. Besides, argued the Islamic world, thesame Danish newspaper had earlier rejected a cartoon that poked fun at
Jesus, while laws in France, Germany, and Austria specifically limit free
speech by making it illegal to deny the Holocaust.
The bond of the ummah, the collective Islamic community, draws to-
gether second-generation Muslims in America and those in Europe. Each
landmark event—September 11, the invasion of Afghanistan, the occupa-tion of Iraq, the French government’s ban on headscarves, and even the
decision of some European news organizations to publish the insulting
cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad—gives this collective community areason to unite to protect Islam from attack by the Western world. Faith
has now become the bond among young Muslims that transcends ethnicity
and tribes , if not yet the historical Sunni-Shi’ite divide.
Will this growing religiosity radicalize young Muslims in America? So
far, there is little evidence to suggest that second-generation Muslims are

THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH 201
answering the call of extremist groups. One of the most intriguing charac-
teristics of America’s young Muslims is their ability to pick and choose
those aspects of American values and culture they want to adopt and those
they wish to reject. Hadia Mubarak , the Magic Muslim of the soccer field,
has every intention of becoming a successful lawyer or an academic, but
this does not mean she will stop wearing the hijab , or end her regular
prayers at the mosque, or halt her activism to create a strong, close-knitMuslim community.
The young Muslims I have profiled might consider their Islamic iden-
tity more important than their American one, but that does not mean theyreject what America has to offer. Rather, young Muslim Americans could
be the first Islamic community in the world to reconcile what has become
a perceived conflict between the Muslim world and the West. They couldbe the first to take advantage of the historical commonalities of two civili-
zations that were intimately intertwined for centuries until the modern
age. They could be the first to disprove the misguided notion advanced bymany scholars and pundits that Islam must undergo a reformation in or-
der to become “modern.”
When there are bombings in London or Madrid or when the conserva-
tive establishment in the United States makes unsubstantiated declara-
tions about al-Qaeda cells on American soil, I am reminded that the goal
of the young generation of Muslim Americans sets them apart from someof their more radical European peers. I am reminded each time Yusra
Gomaa, the devout Muslim and future lawyer, sends me an e-mail, always
ending with this saying from the Prophet Muhammad: “None of you trulybelieves until he likes for his brother what he likes for himself.”

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Yusuf, Hamza. Purification of the Heart . Chicago: Starlatch, 2004.

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209Index
/ornament20
Aatek, Amer, 143
Abd-Allah, Umar Faruq, 21, 46, 174
Abdul-Adil, Jaleel, 97
Abdulah, Cherine, 174
Abraham, 124
Abu Ghazalah, Maad, 1–3
Adalberto, 102–3
conversion of, 104–5
Adam’s World (video series), 125
Afghanistan
Islamic triumph in, 9
Soviet invasion of, 48
U.S. invasion of, 29, 148
African Americans. See also Nation of Islam
conversion of, 175
as Muslims, 34, 64
as Sunni, 81, 91
Ahmad, Leila, 148Ahmadiyya Association for the Propagation
of Islam, 75
Aisha (wife of Prophet Muhammad), 143
Alawite, 70
Alcohol, 76
Ali, Ali Suleiman, 160, 161
Ali, Noble Drew, 7, 72, 73, 76, 77
death of, 73Islamic doctrine and, 81
All Natural, 112, 113Allah
praise to, 155repentance and, 53
American Bekka Lebanese League, 49American Muslim Mission, 80
American Muslim Society, 38
founding of, 46
American Society of Muslims, 8, 9, 91
Al-Andalus, 170
Al-Anwar, Mawlay Idris, 27
Arab American Community Center, 98–99
Arabic language, 20
Americans and, 153–54teaching of, 53
Ashcroft, John, 83
Ash-Shafi, Abu Abd Allah, 33
Asiatic Barred Zone, 62
Aswad, Khashkhash ibn Saeed ibn, 65
Averroes, 24
Al Azhar, 20, 53
Badran, Margot, 141
Bagby, Ihsan, 175
Ball, Charles, 67
Barrows, John Henry, 74
Bayi, Aliciajewell, 58
Bayyah, Abdallah bin, 19
Beale, Mutah Wasin Shabazz, 95
Beards, 22
Beir Zeit University, 99
Bigotry, 5
Bin Laden, Osama, 127
Black Islamizers, 72, 77
Black Panthers, 97
Boykin, William, 85
Bridgeview mosque, 129, 130, 132, 134

210 INDEX
Brother Big Move, 93
Burkas, 148
Bush, George W., 11, 85, 148Bush, Laura, 12, 148
CAIR. See Council on American-Islamic
Relations
Camels, 70
Cates, Patrick, 190
Catholicism, 170, 180, 182, 184Census Bureau, 82
Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding, 173
Chador, 149, 150
Chaos. See Fitna
Charity. See Zakat
Chechnya, 189
Chicago Food Depository, 106
Chicago Tribune, 128–34
Chicago World’s Fair, 74
Child Protective Services, 178
Christianity
evangelism of, 67
vs. Islam, 152
in Spain, 171–72
Clarence 13X “Pudding,” 115
Collateral damage, 26
Columbus, Christopher, 65, 74, 172
Concerned Black Students, 98
Conversion(s). See also Shahada
of African Americans, 175
to Islam, 167of Muslims, 67
in prisons, 176
Prophet Muhammad and, 171
of Said, 68
since September 11th, 167
of Yusuf, 23–24
Córdoba, 171Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), 6, 85, 141, 159, 173
“Culture of Terrorism” (All Natural), 113
Dar al-ahd, 33
Dar al-harb, 33
Dar al-Islam, 18, 32, 188
Dark-skinned. See Obeed
Daughters of the American Revolution, 62
Dawah, 51, 52, 114, 174
in prisons, 176
Decree. See Fatwa
Al Deen, Frederick, 123
DePaul University, 98
Dhimmis, 171
Discrimination, 83
Divine Comedy (Dante), 24
Divorce, 39
in Iran, 151
in Yemen, 47
Dix mosque
aversion to, 59
conservatism of, 160
as tour stop, 52
Yemenis at, 43Drew, Timothy. See Ali, Noble Drew
Drugs, 76
Napolean and, 92
Druze, 70
Eid al-Adha, 124
Ethiopians, 45
“An Evening of Gratitude, Honoring the
Contributions of Muslim Women,” 162
Extremism. See Terrorism
Faisal, Daud, 175
Falwell, Jerry, 85
Family. See also Marriage
importance of, 28
Fard, Wallace D., 8, 77, 79
Nation of Islam and, 76
Farrakhan, Louis, 80, 91Father Allah, 115
Fatwa, 144
FBI
Hate Crimes Unit of, 85
Nation of Islam and, 76
Fear of God. See Taqwa
Feast of the Sacrifice, 195
Federation of Islamic Associations, 101
Feminism
Mattson and, 146
Mubarak and, 192–94
Ferdinand (King of Spain), 172Fiqh, 198
First Crusade, 64
Fitna, 28, 143, 147, 154
Five Percenters, 115
Food. See Pork; Zabiha
France, 173
Freedom of Information Act, 76
Friday sermon. See Khutba
Fruit of Islam, 79
Fundraising, 123
Gabriel (Angel), 154–55, 168
Galedary, Marta Felicitas Ramirez de, 179–
80, 181
Gallabiyyas, 27, 38, 50, 52Gamaa al-Islamiya, 54
Gambling, 76
Garvey, Marcus, 72, 73, 76
Genders
equality of, 144, 162interaction between, 154
separation of, 44, 138, 175
Al-Ghazali, Muhammad, 24
Gibraltar, 171
El-Gindy, Mona, 99, 106–7
Gomaa, Rabab, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156
Gomaa, Yusra, 155–58, 201Graham, Franklin, 85
Grant, Robert, 122–23
Great White Sheikh, 25Greed, 33
Hadith, 17, 18, 21, 54, 179
Hajj, 63, 65
by Malcolm X, 78

INDEX 211
Halaqas, 56, 152, 161, 179
Hamas, 118, 129, 134
Hanson, Hamza Yusuf. See Yusuf, Hamza
Hanson, Mark. See Yusuf, Hamza
Haram, 22
Harassment, 83
Hartford Seminary, 142
Hashim, Janaan, 125–27
Hate crimes, 6
Hate Crimes Unit, 85Hathout, Hassan, 180
Havana, Cuba, 73
Headscarf. See Hijab
Hifz schools, 101
Hijab, 5, 22, 29–30, 55, 143, 148, 157, 193
converts and, 174
problems with, 19
Hijabat, 44
Hijra, 23
Hip-hop, 88, 92, 112
unification through, 114
Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, 188, 189, 190Al-Hoda mosque, 154
The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple
of America (Ali), 73
House of treaty, 33
Hughes, Karen P., 151
Human rights
of minorities, 35
of women, 35
Human Rights Watch, 84
Hussein, Saddam, 166, 167
Iconography, 69
Al-Idrissi, 64–65
Iftar, 154, 158
Ijitahad, 176
Ijtihad, 21
Imam, authority of, 54IMAN. See Inner-City Muslim Action
Network
Immigration, 82
effects of, 63
goals of, 45–46liberalization of, 8
reform with, 61–62
Syrians and, 62–63
Inner-City Muslim Action Network
(IMAN), 89, 90, 96, 99, 101–2, 104, 105
Chicago Food Depository and, 106
mosque of, 108
Inshallah, 93
Insomnia (All Natural), 113
Intermarriage, 173
Introductory packet. See Dawah
Iran
Islamic revolution in, 8–9
morality police in, 150–51
regime change in, 118
sharia and, 151
women and, 150
Iraq, invasion of, 29
Irwin, Chris, 169
cynicism of, 167as Muslim, 165
as soldier, 166
Isabella (Queen of Spain), 172Islam. See also Alawite; Druze; Muslims;
Shi’ite; Sufism; Sunni
Americans’ view of, 6
vs. Christianity, 152
conversion to, 167
expansion of, 175
five pillars of, 21in France, 173
generation gap in, 22
in media, 85–86
militancy of, 6
as political system, 15progressive, 121
seminaries for, 20
spread of, 5
as wicked, 85
women in, 197–98
Islam and the Blackamerican (Jackson), 91
Islamic American University, 153“Islamic Awareness Week,” 194
Islamic Book Service, 198
Islamic Center of Southern California, 179–
80
Islamic Foundation School, 156Islamic law. See Sharia
Islamic Republic of Iran. See Iran
Islamic Resistance Movement, 129
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA),
142, 145, 193, 198
ISNA. See Islamic Society of North America
Israel
attacks against, 129
vs. Palestine, 133
Al Ittihad (Muslim Students’ Association),
197
Jackson, Sherman A., 9, 81, 91
Jalal, Massouda, 148
Jamaat-i-Islami, 139
Al-Jazeera, 144
Jehovah’s Witness, 102, 105, 179Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago,
134
Jewish United Fund, 134
Jews, in Spain, 171
Jihad, 35
Jilbabs, 39, 51, 153
converts and, 174
Jim Crow laws, 72
Johnson, Lyndon B., 61–62
Jolly, Hi, 70–71
Juma, Hassen, 70
Kaaba, 78
Kaiseruddin, Altaf, 119
Kamil, Mikal, 95
Karim, Jameel, 117
Katbil kitab, 31–32
Kelly, David, 112
music and, 113–14
Khan, Saeed, 190

212 INDEX
Khan, Suleiman, 134–36
Khan, Zeenat, 112
Khatami, Mohammad, 150Al-Khatib, Umar ibn, 45, 53
Khatibs, 154
Khutba, 5, 161–62
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 89
Kippah, 200
Koran, 21
English translation of, 75equality in, 140
interpretation of, 19, 146, 170
lessons of, 13
literal interpretation of, 24
memorization of, 101youth and, 4
Kufi, 5, 134, 186
Laila al Qadr, 155
Latif, Farhan, 187–91
Latinos, as Muslims, 169–72, 177–86
Lebanese Standard Time, 127Lech, Adam, 61
Legal. See Fiqh
Leila, Aly, 50, 51, 53
Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the
Wilderness of North America, 76
Madhabs, 19
Majid. See Mosques
Malcolm X, 8, 78, 112
assassination of, 79Nation of Islam and, 79
prison and, 176
Shakir and, 34
Manji, Irshad, 120–21
Marriage, 31–32. See also Polygamy
Mashrabiya screen, 15, 44
Masjid, 137, 160Al-Masudi, 65
Mattson, Ingrid, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142,
152, 174
feminism and, 146
as role model, 193
Mawdudi, Mawlana, 139–40
Mecca. See also Hajj
grand mosque in, 50
Migration. See Hijra
Militancy, 25–26
Miller, Judith, 134
Minbar, 107–8Modern Age Arabian Islamic Society, 71
Mohamed, Azeeza, 153
Moorish Science Temple, 7, 72–73, 81
teachings of, 76
Morality police, 150–51Morehouse College, 112
Mormons, 102
The Mosque in America (Council on Islamic-
American Relations), 141
The Mosque in America: A National Portrait
(Bagby), 175
Mosques
Bridgeview, 129, 130, 132, 134construction of, 49, 50
Dix, 43, 52, 59, 160
Al-Hoda, 154of Inner-City Muslim Action Network,
108
of Mecca, 50
Mother Mosque of America, 71
Al Qasm, 104
Turkish, 140
women in, 138
Mother Mosque of America, 71
MPAC. See Muslim Produced Athletic
Company (MPAC)
MPU. See Muslim Progressive Union
MSA. See Muslim Students’ Association
Mubarak, Hadia, 192, 192–94, 201
Muhajabat, 157
Muhammad (Prophet), 23, 77, 88, 174
biography of, 180
cartoons of, 200
conversions and, 171
Koran and, 154–55, 168
sayings of, 17
as terrorist, 85
wife of, 143
Muhammad, Elijah, 8, 76, 77, 115
death of, 79influence of, 175
Islamic doctrine and, 81
Muhammad, Farad, 115
Muhammad, Wallace Deen, 8, 9, 77, 91–92,
100, 123
as conscientious objector, 80
as Nation of Islam leader, 79
Muhammad, Warith Deen. See Muhammad,
Wallace Deen
Mujahid, Abdul Malik, 108, 121, 122, 124,
127
as activist, 117khutba and, 161–62
Radio Islam and, 118–19
Mujahideen, 48
Musa, Mohammad, 53–54, 55
“Muslim American” (MPAC), 116Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, 105, 128
Muslim community. See Ummah
Muslim Community of the Western Suburbs
of Detroit, 161
Muslim Produced Athletic Company
(MPAC), 115, 116–17
Muslim Progressive Union (MPU), 147Muslim Stories (literary journal), 134
Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), 5, 46,
49, 57, 124, 140, 155, 158, 194–98
at DePaul, 98
founding of, 101headquarters of, 194
Al Ittihad and, 197
at Lake Forest College, 135
since September 11th, 191
at University of Michigan, 188
Muslim Wakeup, 147
Muslims
African Americans as, 34, 64

INDEX 213
assimilation of, 57–58
confusion of, 20
conversion of, 67Erwin as, 165
in Europe, 199
family and, 28
Latinos as, 169–72, 177–86
in prison, 176
professional, 120
scholarship of, 64–65as slaves, 7, 66–67
terrorism and, 3
Mutawil-Sharawi, Mohammad, 153
Napolean. See also Beale, Mutah Wasin
Shabazz
autographs by, 93
drugs and, 92
as rapper, 88
Nashashibi, Rami, 87
Inner-City Muslim Action Network and,
89, 175, 196
Napolean and, 88
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, 24
Nation of Islam, 8, 9, 26, 81, 90, 112, 172
dissent within, 80
Farrakhan and, 91
FBI and, 76
Fruit of Islam and, 79
headquarters of, 100
height of, 77
Malcolm X and, 79in prisons, 77
National Origins Act, 62
passage of, 71
Native Deen, 92, 115–16, 194
Nawawi Foundation, 21, 46
“The Night of Power,” 155
North Dakota Historical Society, 71Nyang, Sulayman, 172, 175
Obeed, 41, 43
Ohl, Jameelah, 179
Omar, Sam, 70Organization of Islamic Conference, 149
Ornament of the World, 171
Orwellian Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism. See Patriot Act
Ottoman Empire, 70, 72
collapse of, 7
Owen, Jim, 68
Palestine, vs. Israel, 133
Palestinian Solidarity Committee, 89Patriot Act, 83, 84
Pena, Ricardo, 183–86
People of the Book, 171, 173
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 6
Pilgrimage. See Hajj
Polygamy, 40–41
in Yemen, 47
Poole, Elijah. See Muhammad, ElijahPork, 76, 90
Preacher Moss, 119–20
Preventive detention, 84Public Enemy, 112
Purification of the Heart (Yusuf), 15
Al-Qaeda, 199, 201
Al-Qaradawi, Yussef, 144
Al Qasm mosque, 104
Qazwini, Mohammad, 50
Radio Islam, 117–18, 119, 125, 127, 161
diversity and, 122
RadioIslam.com, 125
Rahman, Fazlur, 124, 146Rahman, Omar Abdul, 54
Ramadan, 49, 107, 195
charity and, 122–23
meals during, 141, 154
starting point for, 198
Rashad, Luqman, 117
Reading the Muslim Mind (Hathout), 180
Rebah, 42
Rejectionist movement, 4
Religious scholars. See Ulama
Ross, North Dakota, 70, 71
Rumi, 24
Sacred sayings. See Hadith
Safi, Louay, 145
Sahloul, Mohammed, 132–33
Said, Omar ibn, 69
autobiography of, 68
conversion of, 68
enslavement of, 67
Salafists, 24
Salah, Muhammad, 130, 134
Sanchez, Samantha, 170
Saudi Arabia. See also Mecca
study in, 53
Scriptures from a Thug’s Point of View
(Napolean), 92
Sea of Darkness and Fog, 65
Seminaries, 20
September 11th
American Muslims’ reaction to, 83
effects of, 4
hijackers of, 18
Islamic conversions since, 167
MSA and, 191
Sexes. See Genders
Seyam, Rehan, 29–32
El-Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik, 79
Shabazz, tribe of, 76
Shahada, 58, 77, 104, 113, 163, 169, 173,
181
Shakir, Zaid, 18, 33–36, 34, 162, 174
activism of, 34
Shalwar kameez, 135
Sharia, 146, 158, 188
Iran and, 151
Shi’ite, 70, 188
vs. Sunni, 128

214 INDEX
Skullcap. See Kippah; Kufi
Sodhi, Balbir Singh, 85
“Solace” (Syed), 136Sons of Arfida, 45
Sons of Hagar, 115, 116
Sound Vision, 125
South Africa, 140–41
Spain, 171–72
Stereotypes, 5
Study sessions. See Halaqas
Subhan Allah, 155
Sufism, 24, 52
Sunnah, 21
equality in, 140
interpretation of, 170literal interpretation of, 24
youth and, 4
Sunni, 52, 70, 100, 188
African Americans and, 81, 91
vs. Shi’ite, 128
Surah, 171
Surat Miriam, 152Syed, Abdur-Rahman, 136
Tablighi Jamat, 52
Taking It to the Streets, 105, 113
Talaq. See Divorce
Taliban, 148
Taqwa, 52
Tawhid, 115, 170
Tea, 43–44
Temple Number Seven, 78Terrorism
Muslims and, 3
redefinition of, 83
war on, 3, 83
This Is Islam (Yusuf), 14
Thunder in the Sky: Secrets of the Acquisition
and Use of Power, 13
The Trouble with Islam (Manji), 120
Trujillo, Liliana. See Yahya, Umm
Tunic. See Jilbabs
Tupac’s Legendary Outlawz, 88
Ulama, 18, 32, 153
Umah Project, 174
UMMA, 98
Ummah, 21, 80, 82, 88, 116, 140
Usman, Azhar, 127
Uzbekistan, 189
Veils, 19, 44, 52, 149, 200. See also Burkas;
HijabatVerse of the Sword, 35
Virginity, 37, 40
Wadu, 104
Wadud, Amina, 144, 145, 146, 159
Wahab, Abdul, 41, 42, 48, 50, 51
War on Terrorism. See also Terrorism
as war on Islam, 85
Warith, Abdul, 153
WCEV, 119, 125Webb, Muhammad Alexander Russell, 7,
73–74, 75
Western lifestyle, rejection of, 29
“What We Go Through” (Native Deen),
115–16
Women. See also Feminism; Genders; Veils
in Afghanistan, 148
headscarves and, 55
in Iran, 150
in Islam, 197–98
Islamic views about, 52
in mosques, 138
new roles for, 55
oppression of, 148–49
rights of, 35, 42, 161
Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of
a Modern Debate (Ahmad), 149
World Community of Islam in the West, 80
World’s Columbian Exposition, 74
World’s Parliament of Religions, 74, 100
Wycliff, Don, 131–32, 133–34
Al-Yacoubi, Ibrahim, 27
Yacoubi, Muhammad, 18, 26, 32–33
Yahya, Umm, 11
Yemen, unification of, 47
Yemenis
at Dix mosque, 46–59
as mujahideen, 48
Yusuf, Hamza, 4–5, 11, 12, 15, 162–63, 174
conversion of, 23–24
as Great White Sheikh, 25
intellectualism of, 34
Sufism and, 25
tapes of, 178
at White House, 11–13
Zabiha, 195
Zakat, 21, 154
Zayid, Tariq Ibn, 171
Zaytuna Institute, 21, 26, 162, 174, 190
Zheng He, 65