One Islam, Three Muslims and a Half
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Adversity has a way of sorting out great civilizations from those that are not. When they face a challenge, great civilizations rise to the occasion, renew themselves, and emerge stronger and more resilient. Lesser ones, recoil from within and disappear.
Faith is the differentiator between a great civilization and one that is not. Faith fosters renewal. It sustains a civilization in adversity and propels it to new heights after each challenge. Where there is no faith there is no civilization. The Qur'an declares: “Travel through the earth and see what was the end of those who had no faith”.
Islam is a great civilization. Over the last 1400 years, it has faced major challenges from within and from without. The Crusades (1096-1272), the Mongol invasions (1219-1302), the Spanish Inquisition (1492-1609) and European colonialism (1700-1947) are recognizable milestones in the onward march of Islamic civilization. The world of Islam withstood the Crusader onslaught, converted the Mongols and emerged bruised but alive from two hundred fifty years of colonial rule.
Today, the Islamic world is faced with unprecedented challenges across a broad spectrum of ideological, cultural, political and military issues. The pressures faced by American Muslims are a microcosm of those faced by the global Islamic community.
Contemporary social discourse sometimes seeks to identify an Islamic core and its periphery. If there is a physical Islamic core, it is conspicuous by its absence. Instead, the flow of the great Islamic civilization is like that of a mighty river, divided into many branches, flowing through a vast, fertile delta before it merges into the expanse of the blue ocean.
The Islamic core is spiritual and existential, not physical. It is based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet. It becomes manifest in the realm of faith but is submerged by the sheer diversity of cultural, historical and political divides in an all too imperfect world. Another analogy is that it is like a subterranean stream that is unseen but makes its presence felt by the sustenance it provides a fertile land. In the language of the Qur’an, it is like “…..the Gardens under which flow streams (of Divine Grace)”.
Not since the period of Omar Ibn Al-Khattab (r) (634-644) has the global Islamic community stood as a monolithic whole. Subsequent attempts at consolidation have met only with partial success. Instead, a narrative of Islamic history is necessarily punctuated with descriptions of dynasties and kingdoms, some mighty, others feeble and transient. Thus history becomes not so much an exposition of an Islamic core but a process to find that core. This diversity in the Islamic body politic is at once the source of its strength and its weakness. It imparts resilience to a civilization that faces myriad challenges in a host of social and political surroundings. At the same time, it impedes the process of centration which is required for economic and political mobilization.
Historical analogies are useful but they take us only so far. The experience of the American Muslim community is exceptional within the broader context of American exceptionalism. This small, nascent community which constitutes less than one percent of the American population, is a melting pot of cultures. It is ethnically diverse, about one-third African-American, a third South Asian and a third Arab with strands of Persian, Turkish, European and Malay immigrants. It comes together on a common platform of faith but is otherwise heterogeneous. It faces extremism from within and is hammered by Islamophobia from without. The endless raging conflicts in West Asia provide the fuel for both.
Notwithstanding its protestations and its unequivocal condemnation of terror, the American Muslim community has witnessed an alarming increase in prejudice, distrust, fear and hate. According to some polls, 55% of Americans have a negative view of Islam and fully a third would support civil restrictions on Muslims. Islamophobic rhetoric has formed the main subject of presidential debates for one of the two major political parties.
The response of the American Muslim community to this unprecedented rise in prejudice and fear is characteristically diffuse and fragmented. It reflects the historical evolution of the community as well as its ideological and ethnic divides. At least three major response groups are emerging in the community.
The Defiant Orthodox Response
“We will not change our ways”, thunders an invited khateeb at a major masjid in New Jersey. The Khateeb, a graduate of al Azhar University and a scholar, is imposing in his long beard, skull cap and jalaba and is sincere in his declaration. “Do you think”, he asks the attentive audience, “discarding the hijab and shaving off our beards will make a difference to Islamophobia?”
Whether it is California or New York, one hears similar views from the orthodox circles from coast to coast. “Islam is against terror”, they argue, quoting extensively from the scriptures. “And we will stand against terror but we will not compromise on our ways”. This group is not swayed by the increasing attacks on hijab-wearing Muslim women or innocent turbaned Sikhs nor is it willing to engage in a rational discourse about the ground realities of hate in main street America. Indeed, one sees in a section of this group a quiet resignation to the prospect of detention camps as the price for their unyielding rigidity.
The Revolving Door
“There will come a time” says a well-known Hadith, “when a man will be a Muslim in the morning and will renounce it by the end of the day”. There are those who ask if that day has arrived. The relentless pressure on Muslims has increased the traffic through the revolving door. While there is still a trickle of Americans who take the shahada and accept Islam, the egress from the community has picked up momentum. Those walking away from the faith are doing so in significant numbers. This is not surprising considering the historical experience of immigrant groups in America. The magnetic pull of a dazzling, enticing, secular, materialist culture is too intense for many to resist. Nor is this a uniquely Muslim experience. There are similar pressures in the Jewish community in America to assimilate. You hear from learned rabbis that fully a third of Jewish youth are opting out of faith through intermarriage or migration to Eastern spiritual traditions. What is different about the Muslim experience is that it is driven by Islamophobia. In the absence of quantitative data, it is hard to assess how many Muslims are walking away from Islam to escape the political heat of Islamophobia. This is an important issue that needs further research.
The Silent Majority
By far the largest segment of American Muslims are not involved in the turbulence that engulfs their community. These are the hard working professionals who toil ceaselessly, like most Americans, from dawn till dusk, making a living, pursuing their careers and chasing the American dream. This is the group that constitutes the backbone of the community. They enrich America, serving the country as doctors, engineers, architects, accountants, policemen and soldiers. Politics is far from their consciousness. They have grown their roots in America. They buy their homes in middle class neighborhoods so their children can attend good public schools. They are generous with their donations that sustain Islamic centers and neighborhood civic organizations. Busy as they are, this group is not oblivious of their heritage of faith. They wake up during weekends and out of a genuine concern for the religious upbringing of their children, take their children to a Sunday school in the neighborhood mosque. This large professional group is concerned about the increasing tide of Islamophobia but lack the stamina to participate in the political processes and influence them in any significant way. If the Islamophobic rhetoric spills over into the streets, the affluent among this group will migrate as did the Jews in Germany in the early 1930s but the great majority will stay put and endure.
The Renewal Generation
Islam is a God-centered, living civilization, tough and resilient, with an innate capacity to renew itself in the face of adversity. It is a lamp that cannot be extinguished by the passing winds of ignorance and fear. In the evolving matrix of Muslim response to the rising tide of Islamophobia, there is emerging a band of believers who look at the situation with mature emotive intelligence and use reason to guide the ship of Islam to safer shores. Consisting of younger, second and third generation immigrants, native born American Muslims and a few notable scholars, this band of believers strives to implement the commandment of God, “You are the most noble of ummahs, commanding what is noble, forbidding what is evil and believing in God”. They are seekers of knowledge on the ladders of ascent to Divine presence. They look upon the current challenge as a God-given opportunity to renew their faith from within. They want to know the Islamic perspective on the purpose of creation and they are impelled by a vision to shape the emerging dimensions of the Islamic experience in a fast moving world. It is in the quest of these young men and women that one has to seek the future of Islam in America.
(Dr Nazeer Ahmed is Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, California; Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
