Islam in America

Jonathan Curiel

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781848855984
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857738103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: North American History

Islam is a hidden ingredient in the melting pot of America. Though there are between 2 and 8 million Muslims in the USA, Islam has traditionally had little political clout compared to other minority faiths. Nonetheless it is believed to be the country's fastest-growing religion, with a vibrant culture of theological debate, particularly regarding the role of women preachers. In Islam in America, Jonathan Curiel traces the story of America's Muslims from the seventeenth-century slave trade to the eighteenth-century immigration wave to the Nation of Islam. Drawing on interviews in communities from industrial Michigan to rural California, Curiel portrays the diversity of practices, cultures and observances that make up Muslim America. He profiles the leading personalities and institutions representing the community, and explores their relationship to the wider politics of America, particularly after 9/11. Islam in America offers an indispensable guide to the social life of modern Islam and the diversity of contemporary America.

ISLAM IN...

Series Editor: Malise Ruthven

The ‘Islam in...’ series explores the different cultural political and social manifestations of Islam in different contexts. Each volume represents both an investigation into Muslim life in that country, and a contribution to our understanding of the wider questions surrounding the relationships between Islam and politics, global and local influences, and minorities and the state.

Books in the series:

Islam in America, Jonathan Curiel

Islam in Saudi Arabia, David Commins

Jonathan Curiel is a former staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, whose work has also appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Salon.com and the LA Times. He is the author of Al’ America: Travels through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots (2008).

‘Finally, an ethically disinterested observer’s clear, concise, and comprehensive survey of the American Muslim community. Islam in America is a fascinating and long overdue book about the faith and its followers that have been part of the tapestry of America from its inception.’

Hamza Yusuf, President & Co-Founder, Zaytuna College, Berkeley, CA

‘So many years after 9/11, the gulf between Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States remains depressingly wide. We still need a much better and more nuanced understanding of Islam, especially after the tragic events in Paris. Jonathan Curiel is therefore to be commended for giving us this closely-argued and highly readable book which - as both labor of love and much needed antidote to prejudice and misunderstanding - is intended to close the gap.’

Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and Professor of International Relations, American University, Washington, DC, and formerly Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London

‘Islam in America offers a remarkably original and readable narrative of the history of Islam and Muslims in America. Jonathan Curiel here reveals a side of American Muslim culture that is as old as America itself.’

Jamal Dajani, independent journalist-host, Arab Talk Radio

Islam in

America

Jonathan Curiel

Foreword by Malise Ruthven

Published in 2015 by

I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd

London • New York

www.ibtauris.com

Copyright © 2015 Jonathan Curiel

The right of Jonathan Curiel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing

ISBN: HB 978 1 84885 598 4

PB 978 1 84885 599 1

eISBN: 978 0 85773 810 3

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset in 12/15pt Adobe garamond Pro by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk

Contents

Foreword by Malise Ruthven

Preface: Islam’s Growing Presence in America

1 Slavery and the Struggle to Maintain Belief: American Islam, 1619–1865

2 ‘White Muslims’ Change the Face of a Faith: American Islam, 1890–1910

3 Islam Becomes a Religion of the Nation: American Islam, 1920–1965

4 Islam Establishes an Identity Far Beyond the Mosque: American Islam, 1965–2010

5 The Shock of 9/11: Crisis and Confidence for Muslim-Americans

6 The Diversity of American Muslims: A Religious, Ethnic, and Cultural Profile

7 Who’s Who in Muslim America

8 Gender and Religion: How ‘Feminist Islam’ Has Taken Root and Flourished in America

9 In Politics, Muslim-Americans Progress One Step at a Time

10 Conflicts and Co-Existence: The American Dream in the Twenty-First Century

Notes

Select Bibliography

Foreword

Despite the atrocity of 11 September 2001, when the Muslim terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington inflicted the heaviest death toll on the American mainland since the end of the Civil War, Islam is alive and prospering in the United States. As Newsweek magazine commented in 2007, ‘Muslim Americans represent the most affluent, integrated, politically engaged Muslim community in the Western world.’1 Muslim success is closely related to the upward mobility of migrants from East and South Asia who arrived in the United States after 1965, when President Johnson passed the Hart–Celler Act, repealing immigration quotas based on national diversity within the US. By 1990, immigrants from South Asia were well ahead of other groups in terms of income and educational attainments, with the highest proportion of newcomers working in management and professions such as medicine. Though Muslims from South Asia may not have exceeded the numbers of immigrants with Hindu or Sikh backgrounds, the anthropologist Karen Leonard suggests that the general ethos was such as to make them seem a ‘particularly privileged group’ with a reputation for being ‘model immigrants’, making them ‘conspicuous and powerful in Muslim American discourse and politics’.2 Often classified as ‘white’ rather than Asian-Americans or Muslim-Americans, they fared better than immigrants from Arab countries, who were more likely to be victims of prejudice.

This generally rosy picture, of course, does not apply to everyone. At the lower end of the social scale it is estimated that some 15 percent of prisoners incarcerated in US correctional institutions (350,000 out of approximately 2.3 million) are Muslims, a percentage that is vastly disproportionate to the Muslim-American population, even going by the largest of the available estimates. (In their 2007 survey the Pew Organization placed Islam behind Judaism and Buddhism as the third largest US religion after Christianity, with 0.6 percent of the population). The incarceration figure for federal prisons generally is roughly consistent with that for the state of New York, where anthropologist Robert Dannin found that Muslims – most of them converts – represented more than 16 percent of a prison population of 70,000, and almost one-third of the African-Americans incarcerated by the state.3

Dannin, who devoted many months to researching in New York’s prisons, found that Islam had a remarkably mitigating effect as an alternative to the brutal culture of incarceration. ‘Prison’, he explained, ‘is a bizarre and violent “university” for those who reach maturity behind bars’, where the brutality and corruption of the streets in the downtown ghettos are vastly concentrated. Far from teaching the skills that will enable an inmate to lead a law-abiding life after his release, prison effectively destroys his sense of personal integrity by methods that include ‘physical brutality, psychological manipulation and frequent homosexual rape’.4

Conversion to Islam, Dannin found, allowed the prisoner to use his right to freedom of worship to ‘circumscribe ...

Table of contents

• Author bio