Shi'ism in America

Liyakat Nathani Takim

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780814783283
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Shi'ism in America provides the first general overview of the Shi'i community in America, tracing its history, its current composition, and how Shi'a have negotiated their identity in the American context.

There are over two million Shi'is, who differ from Sunni Muslims in their understandings of the early line of succession after Muhammad, in the United States. With community roots going back sometimes close to one hundred years, Shi'is can be found in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and Dearborn, Michigan. Early in the century, Shi'is and Sunnis sometimes arrived at the same time, worshipped together, shared similar experiences, and confronted the same challenges despite their sectarian differences.

Both tracing the early history and illuminating the more recent past with surveys and interviews, Takim explores the experiences of this community. Filling an important scholarly gap, he also demonstrates how living in the West has impelled the Shi'i community to grapple with the ways in which Islamic law may respond to the challenges of modernity. Shi'ism in America provides a much-needed overview of the history of this United States religious community, from religious, cultural, and political institutions to inter-group relations, to the experience of African American Shi'is.

1
The Origins and Early History of the American Shi‘i Community

The origins and experience of the early Shi‘i settlers in America must be contextualized within the broader framework of the presence of the early Sunni Muslims in America. Shi‘is and Sunnis arrived at about the same time, worshiped together, shared similar experiences, and encountered the same challenges. In fact, as we will see when we discuss Sunni-Shi‘i relations in America in chapter three, the symbiosis between these two communities meant that many early Muslim settlers were not even aware of the sectarian differences that distinguished them.

Scholars of Islam in America have amply documented the presence of early Muslims in America. Some have argued that Muslims arrived here almost two centuries before Christopher Columbus. These Muslims are reported to have come from Spain and the northwestern coast of Africa and landed in both South and North America.¹ Other Muslims, like the Mandikos, apparently explored many parts of North America and left behind writings and engravings.² Some scholars have further argued that Muslim explorers from Africa intermarried with Native Americans and introduced some arts and crafts to the Americas.³ However, a word of caution is in order. Evidence to support such claims, cited from artifacts, inscriptions, and eyewitness accounts, is circumstantial at best and, at this point, inconclusive. Further research work is necessary to corroborate them. The earliest available record of Muslims in America dates back to the sixteenth century. Estevan, a black Moroccan guide and interpreter, is said to have arrived in America with a Spanish expedition in 1527.⁴

The early American Muslim community was composed primarily of slaves who were brought here during the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There is no evidence to indicate that there were any Shi‘is among the early slaves because, until fairly recently, Shi‘ism had not spread to the West African coast. Some scholars have claimed that Arab immigration to Latin America, in response to King Philip II’s royal decree in 1609 ordering the expulsion of 300,000 Moriscos from Spain, started in the earliest parts of the seventeenth century.⁵ Large scale migration began in the 1870s in a series of distinguishable periods or waves.⁶

The first significant wave of Muslims arrived between 1875 and 1912. They came from rural areas of what was then called Greater Syria, living under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.⁷ Since most immigrants were relatively uneducated men, they worked in factories and mines or as peddlers. Many of these immigrants who came from the Middle East were Christians, but a small percentage was comprised of Sunnis, ‘Alawis, and Druzes.⁸ Among the early immigrants were Shi‘is who accompanied other immigrants from the Middle East. Many migrated to flee conscription into the Turkish army, which, in their view, was an occupying force and not connected to their national identities. Other Muslims were emulating Christians who returned from the United States with considerable wealth. Another reason for the migration in this period was the onset of World War I, which had brought economic and political destruction to Greater Syria. Due to this factor, many chose to flee their homelands. These early immigrants settled in different parts of the States. Some went to Ross, North Dakota, in 1899.⁹ In all probability, there were some Shi‘is already present among the early Lebanese who settled in Ross.¹⁰ Other Shi‘is settled in Michigan City, Indiana.

The Shi‘i Community of Michigan City

Most scholars of Islam in America have focused on Dearborn, Michigan, as the first city where the Shi‘is settled. But the story of another area of Shi‘i settlement, Michigan City, Indiana, remains largely untold. In the early twentieth century, the small communities close to the large urban areas of Detroit and Chicago were important areas of settlement for Shi‘i immigrants. The nascent Shi‘i community in Michigan City, made up primarily of Lebanese and Syrian merchants, built one of the first mosques in America in 1924.¹¹

An early migrant to Michigan City was Hussein Hussein Ayad, who was born in Mazra’at al-Jazirat, on the banks of the Litany River in Lebanon in 1890.¹² He chose to come to Michigan City in 1902 due to the presence there of a number of Syrian immigrants. Like many others, he worked for a train company laying tracks and later worked in a steel factory. According to Ayad, the first Muslim society was formed in 1914 in Michigan City. Called “al-Badr al-Munir,” it was headed by Hussein Aboudheeb. Hussein Hakim, a current resident of Michigan City, claims that this was the first Muslim organization to be registered in America.

According to Ayad, there were more than two hundred families in Michigan City in 1924, when Asser El Jadeed, another local institute, was formed and the first mosque built. The migration and settlement of Shi‘is in Michigan City at the beginning of the twentieth century is further corroborated by anecdotal accounts from their descendents. Julia Harajali was born in Michigan City in 1920. Her father had settled there in 1907. According to Julia, many of the early Shi‘i migrants settled in Michigan City, Indiana, rather than in Detroit, so that they could work in the Pullman car factory. She attests that there was a vibrant Shi‘i community in Michigan City in the 1920s and 1930s, though many left for Dearborn when better employment opportunities arose there.¹³

Ron Amen, who works at the Arab American Nation Museum in Detroit, remembers that his father was born in Michigan City in 1918. Similarly, Eddie Bedoun, a current board member of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, recalls that his grandfather came to Michigan City in the early 1900s. Bedoun’s father, Hussein, was born in the city in 1912. Hussein Hakim’s father migrated to America in the early 1900s and was drafted in the U.S. Army in 1913. Hakim recalls that virtually all of the Shi‘is in Michigan City were from Lebanon. He also remembers that a few Shi‘i families lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan.¹⁴

Among the migrants to Michigan City in the early 1900s was a passenger on board the Titanic, which sank in April 1912. The ship carried at least three Shi‘is, Fatima Masselmany and her two cousins, Mustafa Nasr and Yousif Wazli. Fatima was born in Tibnin in Lebanon; her cousins, who drowned when the ship sank, came from Bint Jbeil. All of them had planned to settle in Michigan City. An article by Henry Lange of the News Dispatch of April 15, 1980, shows a photograph of Fatima Masselmany, who survived the disaster. She related her story to many in Michigan City and later to the residents of Dearborn. Fatima was seventeen years old when she arrived in Michigan City a few days after the tragedy and lived with her brother, Allie Masselmany, on Wabash Street. Fatima, well known in the Michigan City community, later moved to Dearborn, where she died in 1971.

As the number of Shi‘is in Michigan City increased, there was a need for a scholar who could provide religious guidance to the community members. The famous Lebanese Shi‘i religious leader, imam Muhammad Jawad Chirri (d. 1994), who had migrated to Detroit in 1949, spent two years in Michigan City in the early 1950s after a dispute arose within the Shi‘i community in Detroit.

The Shi‘is of Dearborn

The history of the Shi‘i community in Dearborn has been amply documented by Lynda Walbridge. I will touch only on some aspects of it here. The Muslim presence in metropolitan Detroit dates to the last decade of the nineteenth century, when residents of the Lebanese Bekaa valley left an Ottoman province. Some of the inhabitants left Bekaa due to the increase in population, the decline of its silk and vineyard sectors, and instability remaining from mid-century civil wars pitting Mount Lebanon’s Maronite Christians against its Druze inhabitants. Muslim peddlers and traders followed a larger number of Lebanese Christians who had already emigrated to America.

By the end of the nineteenth century, there was a small yet burgeoning Shi‘i community in Detroit as more Shi‘is arrived to join their relatives who had settled here. Between 1900 and 1914 several hundred settlers comprising diverse religious communities migrated from the Middle East.¹⁵ Most of these early immigrants came from the Mount Lebanon area of what was then called the Ottoman Empire. Soon, a larger community of Shi‘is started to crystallize in 1922 as other Shi‘is arrived from areas like India and Iran.

The early Shi‘is came primarily from the lower strata of society. Many were peddlers, laborers, and small business owners who were drawn to Detroit because of the presence of the Ford Motor Company in Highland Park, a neighborhood within the borders of Detroit.¹⁶ Detroit became a very attractive destination for immigrants in 1913, when Henry Ford began to offer generous five-dollar daily wages for workers at his Highland Park assembly line. This was almost twice the prevailing daily wage of $2.34. Furthermore, workers had to work for eight rather than nine hours. Due to the relatively favorable economic opportunities in Detroit, some Shi‘i residents of Michigan City, Indiana, relocated there.

During the second wave of Muslim immigration to America, between 1918 and 1922, immigrants from Arab countries poured into the Detroit area, as did people from different parts of the world. Not only had World War I devastated the Middle East, years of drought, various epidemics, and plagues of locusts followed on the heels of the war. The Ottoman Empire was dismantled, and the Western colonial powers, France and England, came to occupy its place. Hence, many Muslims preferred migration over the political turmoil and economic hardships in their home countries.¹⁷ According to the Detroit Monthly, entire villages in Lebanon were transplanted, over time, to the Detroit area.¹⁸

By the 1940s, about two hundred Sunni and Shi‘i families had settled in Detroit.¹⁹ Khalil Alwan, a current member of the Dearborn Shi‘i community in Michigan, was born in the United States in 1930. He recalls that his maternal grandfather came from Lebanon in 1898. His mother was born in Michigan City in 1912, further corroborating my observation that many Shi‘i families had settled in Michigan City in the early 1900s. Khalil also recalls that his father migrated to South America and then went to work in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In 1914, his father worked in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. By the time Khalil’s father moved to Detroit in the 1920s, many Shi‘is had settled in that area. Khalil remembers that in the 1930s, Sunnis and Shi‘is would arrange joint religious and social gatherings.²⁰

Marium ‘Uthman, who also lives in Dearborn, was born in Michigan. She went back to Lebanon before returning to America in 1947. She recalls being told that her mother was born in Michigan at the beginning of the twentieth century and that her grandfather had migrated to the States toward the end of the nineteenth century, possibly because his brothers and cousins were already well established in Michigan.²¹

Marium ‘Uthman also remembers that there was a steady influx of her Lebanese neighbors and friends after she and her family had moved to Dearborn. The steady stream of Lebanese migrants in that city led to the establishment of Shi‘i institutions and places of worship. Khalil Alwan recalls that the community purchased a bank and converted it to a meeting place in 1940. The Hashemite hall, as it was then called, served as an important religious and social center for the Shi‘i community until the early 1960s when a permanent mosque was built. Most of the gatherings at the hall were social rather than religious. Alwan also remembers that there were mock sword fights to raise funds for the center.

For various reasons, Detroit was an attractive place for Muslims of different schools of thought and background. For example, the charismatic Ahmadi proselyte, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, moved the central operations of the American Ahmadiyya movement to the Detroit suburb of Highland Park soon after he arrived in 1920. This was the location of the Karoub House, one of the earliest mosques built in the United States.²² In 1922, Muhammad Sadiq moved to Chicago where another sizable Muslim community had assembled.²³

The early American Shi‘is faced great pressure to conform to American mores and assimilate to American culture. When she came here, Marium ‘Uthman remembers that neither Islam nor Muslims were widely known. She also recalls that when she arrived from Lebanon, her mother asked her to remove her hijab (headscarf) as it was not deemed appropriate to wear it in America. According to her, there was no halal meat available in Detroit until 1947, two years after she arrived. Assimilation into American culture was felt at various levels. Even at Shi‘i gathering places like the Hashemite hall, many Shi‘is report that mix-gendered parties were often held, in contrast to Islamic norms. Occasionally at such events, participants would even dance to celebrate marriages and other festivities.²⁴ According to Khalil Alwan’s brother Eid, local Shi‘is labeled such events as Jahiliyya in nature.²⁵ Moreover, in order to better conform to American customs, the Muslim community held religious services on Sundays instead of Fridays. Such was the sense of alienation from Islam that most of the people I spoke with in Detroit concurred that Muharram commemorations were held in Dearborn only after the Islamic Center of America was founded in 1963.²⁶

When the early Shi‘is arrived in Detroit, they tried to uphold their beliefs in an alien context, often with little institutional or religious support. The religious training available to their children and grandchildren was limited to Sunday services or religious classes. Neither schools nor businesses had facilities for daily prayers. Shi‘is who wanted to fast during the month of Ramadan could expect no help or time off from their work. It was under such difficult circumstances that the Shi‘is struggled to maintain their beliefs and distinct cultural and religious identities.

Practicing Islam as it had been done “back home” was proving to be difficult for these pioneer Shi‘is. Imam Muhammad Jawad Chirri was one of the earliest Shi‘i scholars to settle in America in 1949. Marium ‘Uthman remembers that he did not force women to wear hijab. Instead, some women just wore hats in the mosque. She remembers that although imam Chirri did not approve of this practice, he did not enforce the hijab for fear that he might alienate women. He was more concerned that they remain true to their faith than insisting on their Islamic mode of dressing. As Marium states, “Today, one who does not wear hijab feels out of place, in the past, it was the opposite. Today, most women wear the hijab even outside the mosque, not just inside it.”

Even after the Islamic Center of America (ICA) opened in 1963, it hosted social parties an...