Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (53 page)

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AMERIC AN MUSLIM IDENTITY:

RACE AND ETHNICITY IN PROGRESSIVE ISLAM

Amina Wadud

Four hundred years of black blood and sweat invested in America, and the white man still has the black man begging for what every immigrant fresh off the ship can take for granted the minute he walks down the gangplank.
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Imagine a banner draped across the port of arrival to the United States’ shores: “America: love it or leave it.” Then imagine these new arrivals came on slave ships from Africa.

At the heart of highly political, sensitive, racist, or even the most casual discussions about American citizenship and identity is at least some notion about “choice.” Overwhelmingly, Americans are composed of immigrants who came to America’s shores by choice. While identifying with their previous cultural heritages, they want something here in America. They relish the possibilities of establishing a new identity within the complexity of American pluralism. This new identity integrates the dual components of previous culture and American citizenship. While Muslim immigrants to America occasionally reference their previous cultures using the hyphenated designation, the term “Muslim-American” poses a rupture in the clarity of this identity formula. Being Muslim does not represent belonging to one monolithic culture. For example: “Egyptian-American,” “African-American,” “Jordanian-American” all name a cultural background plus the new American identity. The designation “Muslim-American” appears to include all Muslims despite the variety of cultural heritages among them.

In the case of American Islam, the hyphenated formula might eventually become a symbol of unity. At the present, however, it obscures profound and

unreconciled differences across ethnic and racial backgrounds. It refers to an Islam that Muslims in America have in common, while simultaneously erasing latent and overt ethnic and cultural prejudices that have led to communication breakdowns and the hegemony of immigrant Muslim leadership and representation in the American Muslim context. These latent prejudices have yet to be directly addressed in community discourse, and this has resulted in further division. This essay looks at the issue of diversity in Muslim-American identities and particular concerns about the random ways that African-American Muslims are included and excluded.

I enter this discussion as an African-American Muslim woman whose experience with Islam and Muslims has not been limited to living in America. Gender, race, and class dynamics interface with matters of Islam and personal identification or empowerment in distinctive ways within each of the countries where I have resided. In the relationships between Muslims at the communal level, these dynamics create schisms incongruent with the pluralism idealized about Islam. In the larger context of progressive Islamic discourse, my concern has been focused on social justice. Some issues of social justice receive more attention than others in mainstream progressive discussions. Most often, the matter of gender hegemony is referred to, although not integrated and certainly not resolved, as part of progressive Islam. Matters of class or racial hegemony receive less direct attention. While references to Islam and culture abound, these are not focused on the relationships between the cultural identities of Muslims. Culture is one way to distinguish between essentialist articulations of

Islam and its multi-variant manifestations throughout history and in various cultures.
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In the context of a progressive American Islamic discourse, attention to matters of race relations will not only need to address the power dynamics but also the problems of cultural assumptions and the lack of communication between immigrant and African-American Muslims. Ordinary communication problems at the level of exchanges between Muslims of different ethnicities lead to extraordinary misperceptions about the relationships between them. Misperceptions about the active roles fulfilled by various Muslims severely underestimate the real terms of Muslims’ collective participation in establishing Islam in America. I have known many instances where immigrant Muslim women have handed over to their African-American sisters the organization of semi-public activities to benefit the community. While this implies some awareness of the more public role often played by African-American women, it simultaneously privileges immigrant women by shielding them from public scrutiny and censor. Furthermore, once the tasks have been initiated, African- American women are expected to hand over the fruits of their labor to male Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom will be immigrants.

Leadership roles, authority, and public representation rest overwhelmingly upon the shoulders of male immigrants. In some instances, these roles have been

won after the efforts of a wide cross-section of Muslim men and women, immigrant and African-American. However, those who participate at the grassroots level are marginalized when it comes to the establishment of authority. Immigrant Muslims privilege their own status as authorities on the basis of their centuries-long heritage of Islam. “I used to be around a lot of Eastern Muslims,” says Muhammad Abdul Rahman, a member of
Masjid ush-Shura
. “They would come over here and treat us like we babes in Islam. They thought they should be our leaders just because they could speak Arabic. They would come in our
masjids
and try to be our teachers.”
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It mattered little if the Islam these people inherited was one of mere cultural transference rather than personal religious devotion and study.

Coincidently, the immigrant Muslim hegemony over leadership roles is also related to financial resources or class. Immigrant Muslims use international contacts as a source of funding to start and maintain some of their organizations or to build mosques and community centers. Undoubtedly, many immigrant Muslim communities have an overall economic advantage over the majority of the African-American communities. Indeed, many affluent African-American Muslims will gravitate toward certain affluent community centers and mosques of immigrant origin on the basis of class. While all mosques of some affluence are inclusive of members from lower income groups, affluent immigrant Muslims will not participate with the same fervor in grassroots mosques established by economically struggling African-Americans. “They come over here with their money and degrees and with an insular view of Islam,” says Frederick Thaufeer al-Deen.
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“For a people long considered second-class citizens within their own country, being treated like second-class citizens within their own religion is a sore point.”
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Administrative styles also differ between immigrant and African-American Muslims in mosques, Islamic centers, and other community-based organizations. Most governing bodies and
ad hoc
committees retain for themselves the power of consultative counsel. In immigrant communities, the consultative bodies are fixed and formed by major financial contributors to the mosque establishment. Immigrant Muslim communities will more often exclude women except in supportive roles. Most are wives of other well-to-do men, and few will challenge the
status quo
or mainstream opinions on major issues. In African-American mosques, the imam himself is the head of the community. Should he refer to a consultative body, its membership is not fixed but organized on an ad-hoc basis relative to the issues that need to be resolved. Coincidently, African-American Muslim consultative bodies are more inclusive of women, allowing them the power to contribute, vote, and challenge major decisions concerning community activities. Indeed, African-American Muslim women are often the ones to initiate the construction of a consultative body to address specific community needs. While the imam of most African-American mosques must maintain full- time employment elsewhere, immigrant communities hire foreigners (usually)

to serve exclusively as imams. The imported imam is often unfamiliar with current U.S. and local circumstances. More often than not, this also means that he is not well equipped to participate in and contribute to interfaith dialogues.
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The imam is also not empowered to make decisions over the community, since he is an employee of those who hired him.

Between these two organizational styles, the question of representation is rarely confronted directly. I know of no Muslim community that intentionally organizes its leadership to reflect its membership with the express purpose of representing the actual demographics of the Muslim population in attendance at that mosque. The members most underrepresented at the administrative level are African-Americans. Consequently, their voice is marginalized in pluralist contexts outside of the mosques as well. Disagreements within the community may lead to the full departure of a body of African-Americans followed by the establishment of another Islamic center or mosque with very limited financial resources. Although this is a successful strategy for the proliferation of Islamic community organizations and mosques, it depletes the resources of an already less privileged body of citizens in the larger U.S. context. It also tends to produce greater fragmentation in the regional make-up of the Muslim community. This fragmentation is further represented in the degree to which regional Muslims form networks for coordinating symbolic occasions like ‘
Id
celebration as well as for lobbying over shared political concerns in America.

Finally, these fragments result in contending claims over authority when the need arises for regional and national leadership representation. In no way are African-American Muslims represented in direct proportion to their percentage among Muslim Americans.
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“‘When folk want to know about Islam, they have always gone to the immigrant community,’ gripes [Dr Aminah] McCloud. It is telling, she says, that after September 11, ‘who came to the White House to represent Islam? The immigrant community. The African-American community felt very dismayed.’”
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This was blatant after the catastrophes on September 11 and the resulting national character of Islam in America as portrayed to the general American public was overwhelmingly male and immigrant. Many African-American representatives were silenced or marginalized. In some cases, this was done specifically because they were Americans and therefore could not assist in the nagging questions about the loyalty of Muslims in America to American interests over and above foreign interests.
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The enmity within the Muslim communities in America over issues of race and ethnicity seems to thrive on the casual neglect of direct confrontations and critical interrogation of the root causes and multiple manifestations of these problems. Although a theoretical interrogation is insufficient to effect a full resolution of the problems, it can act as a catalyst for seeking pragmatic approaches and real strategies toward resolutions. More importantly, a resolution may result when the goal of theoretical consideration is intimately connected to the practical. After all, no Muslim voluntarily confesses to racism, classism, or

ethnocentrism. All parties view these attitudes as inherent contradictions of Islam as based on its primary source, the Qur’an. Yet, Muslims in America engage in so many forms of ethnocentrism that these tendencies belittle the genuine integrity of Islam.

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The Qur’an is the major source of inspiration in the development of ideas and practices in Islam. An important two-part claim might best describe the Qur’anic precedent. The Qur’an supports and acknowledges difference between peoples but does not use those differences as a standard of judgment for human worth. Surat al-Hujurat 49:11–13 states

Oh you who have attained to faith! No men shall deride (other men) . . . and no women [shall deride other] women: it may well be that those [whom they deride] are better than themselves. Be conscious of God. Oh humankind! Behold, We have created you all from one male and one female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily the most noble of you in the sight of God is the one who is the most deeply conscious of God.
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In the first part of these verses, the Qur’an supports the idea of unity by exhorting the human family to respect and safeguard the dignity of one another.
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This is followed by the second claim, to affirm distinctions between peoples using the collective terms “nations” and “tribes.” It is important that the human collective is divided into categories as explicitly mentioned here. These divisions also determine certain aspects of behavior and identity. Since the Qur’an recognizes these aspects of identity, they are significant to human beings’ social purpose and well-being. Human beings belong both to the larger collective and to smaller collectives. In acknowledging this, the Qur’an affirms that these are appropriate features of identity formation. More importantly, this verse uses these groups as part of the basis for an interconnection or “knowing one another.” Overall, however, the Qur’an asserts a single evaluative standard:
taqwa
. “Verily the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is [
atqa-kum
] the one who is the most deeply conscious of Him.” It does not support the notion that group membership is the standard of evaluation for nobility and worth.

Despite direct affirmation of distinctions between groups, the ultimate evaluative criterion for a person’s worth is
taqwa
, moral consciousness of Allah, involving both an internal and an external component.
Taqwa
as defined by Fazlur Rahman is “a mental state of responsibility from which an agent’s actions proceed but which recognizes that the criterion of judgment upon them lies outside.”
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In both its consciousness and action aspects,
taqwa
is part of responsible morality and agency within the larger framework of Islam, which neither limits nor excludes particular group membership. Hence, in the earlier