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Author Paul Barrett: “American Muslims have bought into the American dream”

Author Paul Barrett: “American Muslims have bought into the American dream”

Last updated on: February 20, 2007 at 11:00 pm by zahedamanullah

Author Paul Barrett: “American Muslims have bought into the American dream” 2007-02-20T23:00:00-04:00 zahedamanullah

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American Muslims, before the terrorist attacks of September 2001, were largely an ignored group within American society. Yet even though American Muslims had nothing to do with those terrible events, they were later looked upon with intense scrutiny. Slowly, a picture was painted of them that resembled the worst of stereotypes from across the Muslim world – though in reality, most Americans would be hardpressed to identify Muslims from among themselves. As years went by and tensions became more visible in Europe, fears of terrorism were supplemented with those of domestic unrest and separatism. Even then, very few comprehensive studies of the American Muslim landscape were made available to understand exactly who this community was. Some statistics revealed a prosperous, well educated group that is decidedly more secular than Muslims in Europe. Yet despite this, an influential American Islam has emerged – as has been seen through noted convert scholars like Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and others – that appears to be stripped of traditional cultural influences from the Muslim world. Is the American Muslim experience largely a happy coincidence? Is it fostered by the lack of a single dominant immigrant identity? Or is it a result of the structure of American society itself? Paul Barrett, an editor at BusinessWeek, spent much of 2004 researching the American face of Islam through detailed interviews with seven of its adherents from various walks of life who explain their stories and journeys in great detail. The result is his new book, American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In it, he finds a generation secure in its identity as Americans and Muslims, confronting the problems they find with confidence, and determined to find – despite their diverse demography – an equilibrium that will bring about the best that their religion has to offer. It’s a situation often envied by others in Europe, prompting British MP Shahid Malik, of Dewsbury, England, to comment recently, “America doesn’t know how good it’s got it.” alt.muslim’s Zahed Amanullah recently spoke to Paul about his book and the conclusions he reached.

What prompted you to research and write this book? Did you have your own preconceptions before you started?

Curiosity and ignorance. After editing many articles about Muslims and Islam abroad after 9/11, I realized I knew very little about Muslims in America. I began reporting and writing articles on the topic, and those articles grew into my new book.

Many in the US are afraid that the tensions that have occurred in Europe on a wide scale will happen in America and are desperate to prevent it. Have you found any evidence that this will happen for any reason, even with anger over Iraq and threats to civil liberties?

The degree of alienation and radicalism seen in the insular Muslim communities of Europe are less likely to occur here because American Muslims are already, as a whole, much better assimilated into American society. American Muslims, as a group, are better educated and more prosperous than Americans generally. American Muslims even register to vote at higher rates than Americans generally. In other words, most American Muslims have bought into the American dream. The same cannot be said about Muslims in Europe. I don’t even know whether there is a “European Dream.”

Still, Americans — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — should address the alienation and tension that do exist among American Muslims. We shouldn’t ignore potential problems. All Americans deserve to feel included in the larger society. And, on the dark side, it only takes a few people, energized by dangerous ideology, to cause tremendous harm.

You describe Islam as practiced in America as “decentralised to the extreme.” Is it just the standard of living afforded in America that keeps this decentralisation from turning into sectarianism, as we are witnessing in Iraq?

Islam as a religion is decentralized in the sense of there not being a clerical hierarchy that all or even most Muslims look to worldwide. In this country, there aren’t Muslim denominations neatly equivalent to Christian denominations. There isn’t a Muslim leadership here or abroad to which the majority of American Muslims defer.

But decentralization doesn’t inevitably lead to sectarianism and violence. While there is tension at times between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the U.S., that animosity is diluted in the deep pool of pluralism that characterizes American society. Many Muslims here recognize that they have much in common, even across sectarian lines. Many immigrants have taken the ambitious step of crossing continents and oceans because they want to escape old world antagonisms, to pursue education, economic betterment, and a more hopeful life for their children. All these factors tend to diminish the ferocity of sectarian antipathies.

How “American” did you find American Muslims generally? Is American culture so enveloping and attractive that Muslims eventually take it as their own, as other immigrants have done for generations?

Let me start with an anecdote. Altaf Husain, the former national president of the Muslim Students Association, kindly participated in a panel discussion I organized recently in New York. He hoped to draw a group of Muslim college and graduate students to the event. Over dinner beforehand, he apologized, because he had failed to recruit this group. Why? They had told him: “Altaf, are you crazy? The panel is on Sunday night, and that’s the Super Bowl!”

These were MSA members for whom religion and heritage presumably are central aspects of their lives. But they are also Americans, and an invitation on Super Bowl Sunday was a non-starter. We had an audience — a highly mixed audience — of more than 200, nevertheless!

I have found that Muslims in America are melding their faith, ethnic background, and the folkways of their adopted land in many different ways. There is no one formula, just as there hasn’t been a formula for past immigrant groups. I’ve noticed that 2nd generation Muslims often embrace the faith with more enthusiasm than their parents, who may have played down their religious attachments. I don’t have a clear sense how all this will play out over the decades. But I’m confident there won’t be one story about how Muslims assimilate. There will be many stories.

Do you feel that the demographic diversity of Muslims themselves in the US – theologically, economically, and culturally – is part of what has prevented the societal disconnect that has occurred in Britain and other European countries? Or is it the other way around, where a dominant historical culture in Europe has excluded Muslims compared to the American model – a nation of immigrants?

You put your finger on an important point here. America is a nation of immigrants, and once immigrants begin to succeed — materially, educationally — Americans tend to begin to drop their prejudices and accept the “newcomers” as fellow achievers — the American Dream of success. The fact that so many Americans are the children of immigrants has helped ease the adjustment of Muslims. In France, a Muslim immigrant will probably never be fully accepted as a Frenchmen. In the U.S., if you do well, the neighbors tend respect that and before long, the immigrant is at minimum a Something-American.

Do you think that the people that you interviewed represented an accurate cross section of Muslim America?

My subjects reflect the variety of American Islam. The seven main chapters offer seven stories of individuals, families, and local communities. Readers meet the devout and secular, immigrant and American-born, assimilated and alienated. The major subgroups of American Muslims are represented, although not necessarily in a precise statistical sense. My book is not intended as an academic study, but as a series of portraits of individuals, from whose lives the reader might gain insight into Muslim life in America. Both the particular and the aggregate have lessons to teach.

Is your intent to capture the spirit of the average Muslim, as opposed to the ones that make the news? If so, why spend so much time with high-profile Muslims such as Siraj Wahhaj and Asra Nomani?

I chose subjects whose lives illuminate important issues in a compelling way – the distinctive history of African-American Islam, for example, or the controversy over women’s literal and figurative place in the mosque. I don’t suggest that these lives are ordinary. They are suggestive, provocative, and stimulating. They will spur readers to think, and, I hope, they will make for good reading. The tensions and flux that surround my subjects also play a role in the lives of many “average Muslims.”

Mustafa Saied’s story was very moving – how his extremism was “deprogrammed” by an ideological challenge by “more mature and open-minded Muslims.” Did this surprise you?

Very much so! I am still wondering how often this kind of round-trip journey to the ideological fringe and back again occurs. I’d love to hear from your readers whether Mustafa Saied’s story is one-of-a-kind or less rare. His tale also suggests to me that extreme ideologies are not necessarily hard-wired. That’s an important insight. People can be talked down from the ledge, so to speak, persuaded to rethink alarming ideas.

There seems to be a tendency, by both Muslims and non-Muslims, to characterise people in black and white, where a Muslim is labelled an extremist because of a political statement or a non-Muslim is characterised as an Islamophobe for having understandable fears. What do you feel can be done explicitly to counter this?

Well, the self-serving answer, of course, is read my book! I try to portray people in three dimensions and as evolving characters over time. As you suggest, few people are “black” or “white.” To counter the natural human tendency to categorize and pigeonhole, we might all make more of an effort to meet “the other.” Non-Muslims who actually know a Muslim are much less likely to hold prejudices against Muslims, according to polling by the Gallup Organization. Muslims who know Jews are much less likely to view all Jews as the enemy – and the same is true for Jews who know a Muslim – according to my personal experience.

Do you see an “American Islam” emerging, with values and practices particular to life in the US? Or do you see a multitude of “American Islams”, each suited for their particular sub-community?

I am quite confident that in a country as large and varied as the U.S., there will never be a monolithic American Islam. There will be varying approaches to the religion. Many paths to the same goal, as spiritualists of various faiths sometimes put it.

You spent a lot of time in your book interviewing Muslim leaders and airing commentary about them. How well-served do you think American Muslims are by their religious and community leadership?

Well, first I’ll quibble with your premise. I made a point of not basing my book on the press releases and staged demonstrations of national organizations such as CAIR and ISNA. I worked hard to meet people all around the country, regardless of organizational affiliation. In those instances when I focus on prominent people, such as Khaled Abou El Fadl or Siraj Wahhaj, I also took care to introduce people around them, to give a richer sense of their experience as Muslims.

In answer to your question, I would say that in many cases, Muslims haven’t been all that well served by their leaders, whether you’re talking about the imam at the local mosque or the officers of a national group. These leaders often haven’t been very skilled in expressing the complicated views and concerns of their constituencies.

In the case of imams, it’s my impression that many clerics have offered the public and the media a much more religiously conservative and insular perspective than that of their own worshipers. That failure may help explain why many Muslims, including those who consider themselves observant, tend to avoid the mosque. One issue Muslims are beginning to address is the training of imams in the U.S., in hopes that native-born clergy will have a better understanding of American society and more skill in relating to non-Muslims. That seems like a worthwhile initiative.

Zahed Amanullah is associate editor of altmuslim.com. He is based in London, England.

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