Muslim Commitment in North America: Assimilation or Transformation? Kathleen M. Moore The purpose of this paper is to examine the curtent debates within the American Muslim community regatding the expression of Muslim reli- gious commitment in American life. The size of the community is now estimated to exceed four million (Stone 1991), and the numlxx of Muslim immigrants entering the United Stab has more than doubled since 1960. During the same period, the number of American converts to Islam has also risen. Both the growth of the Muslim community in mxent yeas, in the United Stab and worldwide, and the increasing number of Muslims in "diaspora" as Muslim labor migration continues, which has resulted in a heightened sense of "minority" status among Muslims (Haddad 1991), have raised many crucial questions concerning religious expression: Should Muslims remain marginal to secular power relations in accordance with the teachings of classical Islam or adopt a strategy of assimilation which, in the American context, includes the p d t of claims to equal protection under civil law? What happens to a religious community, such as the Muslim community, as it develops the institutional organization it needs to preserve its identity in a non-Islamic society? Can it still remain open to the sowe of inspiration and spiritual guidance located in the fold of the Islamic world? Or does the locus of authority shift? Changing circumstances require adaptation, and yet that adaptation involves the risk of losing the connection to the heatt of the original insight and cultm. Conflicting tesponses to these and related questions raise issues of self-representation and l ifwle. The resulting theological and ideological debates within the Muslim community itself provide and refine various models for Muslim minority life in a non-Islamic envimnment. They also illustrate the tension between alienation and integration. Kathleen M. Moo= is a research associate at the University of Rhode Island, Kh@cm, R h d Island. 224 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11:2 This paper pmeeds in three parts. The fitst pmvides a description of the American Muslim population. This is followed by an examination of the influences of American legal institutiom on Muslim corpomte life. The third part presents research in progress on the contemporary dis- cussion of models for Muslim minority life and draws upon Muslim periodical literahue and books devoted to this topic. A growing body of litemture has been developing over the past two decades, one that challenges the "Anglo-conformity" of American culture manifested in its official literaq traditions and cultural symbols (i.e., Takaki 1979, 1987). Recently, there has been a concerted effort to re- configure the teaching of American social history to include a bmader m g e of materials reflecting diverse cultural perspectives and individual points of view. The thrust has been to expand the focus beyond our European heritage in order to comprehend our Native American, African, Asian, and Hispanic antecedents as well. This results, in part, fmm a fun- damental shift in our views of race, class, and gender, the impetus of which was apparent in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These changing social values have had a dramatic impact not only on our understanding of who we are, but also on our expectations about rights and entitlement. A heightened consciousness about racial reality and, perhaps less centdly, religious freedom, as well as expextations about the utility and pmtection of the law, have influenced the ongoing debates about civil liberties, tolerance, and law in a manner that both suggests and inhibits behavior (Scheingold 1974; Merry 1986; Macaulay 1987). They have, in no small part, also affected the emergence of a contemporary minority consciousness ammg Muslim in the United States and a transformation of their self-identification. The fitst part of this paper will extend the discussion of American "multiculturalism" by pmviding a general historical account of the Mus- lim ptesence in the United States. From its earliest beginnings, North America has been multiethnic and multiracial, yet we are only beginning to explore the extent to which we are culturally plural. Articulating the Muslim experience helps to show not only the cultural but also the legal complexity of American society, and the salience of legal pluralism, by pointing to the interactions between a significant religious minority- having its own normative code (Islamic law) as a potential alternative to the American juristic model-and the legal institutions of the state. The fact that this alternative normative order is itself rich in historical, cul- tural, and linguistic variations and has been shaped by centuries of con- quests and migration adds to the complex texture of this experience as Muslims seek to live out their faith in the American context. By looking at the interactions between the Muslims and the legal institutions of the state, we can begin to see the multiple layers of legal Moore: Muslim Commitment in North America 225 organization, or multiple legal spheres (a concept discussed in Merry 1988), operative in American society. In short, this paper draws upon the experience of a particular liminal group to illustrate the interplay of local, national, and international factors in constituting a pluralistic national identity that is both internally and externally differentiated. American Muslims' decisions whether and how to A t a h a cor- porate life in a non-Muslim society have been viewed differently by Muslims over time and through different types of contacts with American institutions. The second part of the paper deals with the influence of the dominant culhm's institutions in Constituting the claims of Muslims. The focus is on the gradual transformation of American Muslims' perceptions and self-identification coaxed by the ways civil law has penetrated and come to dominate their daily lives. In taking a historical perspective, this section relates, through specific examples, how lives are reinterpreted in the language of the courts. It illustrates the "culturally productive role" (Merry 1991) of law by showing how the normative ordering of Muslim life in the United States has teplicated certain aspects of the dominant legal order and whete legal mechanisms have been subverted by those at the margins who wish to maximize their religious freedom. In recent years, events in the Middle East have piqued the interest of people in the United States about Islam, its teachings, and the inter- national phenomenon called the "resurgence" or "revival" of Islam. It has also generated a renewed interest among Muslims living in the West, in- cluding the United States, in deepening their own faith, a development which has led to an increasing participation in religious activities in mosques, Islamic centers, and other types of Muslim associations. Where before many immigrants and their descendants identified themselves pri- marily on the basis of their occupations, national origins, or other variables, now an Islamic identity is becoming increasingly salient. The third section of this paper will set the framework for the future investigation of Muslim interpretations of Islam to address the conditions facing Muslims living in dispersed communities and as minorities. The objective is to show that what Muslims are writing about on the issues of identity, tolerance, pluralism, and rights in contexts that may seem remote to American society, does offer a basis for a dialectic and resistance within the American Muslim community. Muslims in the United States A divetse Bssotfment of faiths now claims a sizable number of American religious adherents. One source estimates consematively that the "non-conventional" faiths (i.e., Muslims as well as Orthodox Chris- tians, Buddhists, and Hindus) comprise 4 percent of the total American 226 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11:2 population, an increase from 1 percent in the 1950s (Roof and McKinney 1987). Among these, the Muslim community is growing the fastest, at a rak that is expected to make it the second largest aggregate religious community in the United States by the twenty-first century, when it will have nearly doubled its estimated 1980 size (Haddad 1986'). The rate of growth, combined with the recent wave of religious mmgence in the Muslim world and the popular association in the United States of Islamic revival with international terrorism, presents a challenge to the shape of American society and its commitment to the principle of tolerance. A prevailing misumception held by many in the West and sustained in the wesfem media is that Muslims and Arabs are synonymous. How- ever, American Muslims are not restricted to a particular national origin, for they repmient a micmcusm of the variated and multinational global community of Islam. An accurate pottrait would show that the Muslims in North America come from diverse national origins and cultqd back- grounds repteSenting the Arab world as well as South Asia (i.e., Afghani- stan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the Maldive Islands, and Sri Lath), Southeast Asia (i.e., the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia), as well as Europe, Africa, China, Iran, and Turkey. In 1980, moteover, indigenous African Amencan Muslims were estimated to comprise roughly 30 per- cent of the total Muslim population in the United States (Stone 1991)' Various scholars have shown that the f M Muslims in the United States were brought from Africa to serve as slave labor. After their arrival, many were forced to renounce their African/Islamic beliefs and names on pain of death (Kly 1989; Turner 1986; Austin 1984; Lincoln 1973; Men-Udom 1962; Davidson 1961). An estimated 30 percent of Africans enslaved in the United States were Muslim. A small number of enslaved Muslim Africans were taken to Canada (Kly 1989). Severed from their religious and cultutal origins, African Americans gradually lost their Islamic heritage, which would be "reconstituted" only in the 1930s as a result of developments in Black nationalist thought. The appeal of Islam in the African American community continued to grow and was strengthened during the 19&, a time that witnessed the flourishing of Black nationalism. The institution of slavery destroyed almost all vestiges of indigenous cultme, including Islamic cultute, among enslaved Africans in the United States. As Haddad (1986b) notes, this meant that it was primarily the task 'According to Haddad (1986@, if the American Muslim communi continues to grow at its present rate, it will exceed six million and become the largest religion- gnaller than Christianity but larger than Judaism-by the year 2015. 'Stcne (1991) states that "the total number of Muslims living in the United States in 1980 was estimated at 3.3 million, or roughly 1.5% of the 1980 U.S. population." Moore: Muslim Commitment in N d America 227 of early immigrants from the Muslim world, who began arriving in small but growing numbers by the late nineteenth centhy, to establish firmly the faith as an American phenomenon. The pattern of Muslim immigration ccmsists of five periods. From 1875 to 1912, most Muslim immigrants came from the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire: Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine (Haddad and Lummis 1987; Karpat 1985). For the most part, those who stayed in the United S t a b settled in urban communities, even though their backgmunds were primarily m l . The second and third periods, from 1918 to 1922 and 1930 to 1938, mpectively, consisted mainly of relatives, friends, and acquaintances of earlier arrivals. It also included a very small number of immigrants from other parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe (Haddad and Lummis 1987). Many who came from 1918 to 1922 had experienced the dismptive effects of World War I. Some were enticed to immigrate to the United S t a b by reports of opportunities from returning immigrants, letters from immigrants, or Americans (in- cluding missicmaries) visiting the Middle East and the Balkans? The fourth period, from 1947 to 1960, was more diverse as regards natioqal origins. It consisted of immigrants from the Middle East plus South Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and other parts of the Muslim world. Displaced by the upheavals of the post-World War II postcolonial era, many arrivals differed from their predecessors when it came to social class: they were less likely to be unskilled or rural, for they were the children of the indigenous ruling elites and had been westernized before they arrived in the United S t a b (ibid.). Some came as refugees, to pur- sue graduate study or advanced technical training, or for specialized work opportunities (ibid.; Askari and Cummings 1977). The fifth, and quantitatively the largest, period of immigration began in 1967 and confinues until the present. Its volume has been affected by the relaxation of immigration quotas and the demands of the labor mar- ket. Accoding to Carol Stone's (1991) study of immigration and census statistics, the number of Muslim immigrants has more than doubled in an eighteen-year period, "increasing from 4 percent of all immigrants in 1968 to 10.5 percent in 1986." Most of these arrivals share the socio- economic background (i.e. middle class, highly educated) of the fourth period. Many come from Pakistan and Iran. An 'increase in the number of Afghanis, due to the tecent war in their homeland, was also noted. Very few Muslims are immigrating to the United States from sub-Saharan Africa and Europe (ibid.). 'For details on the causes of chain migration of the Arabic-speaking Coanmunity, see Hooglund (1987) and Tumeh (1965). 228 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11:2 Effo~ts to preserve the faith and pass it along to their children led Muslim immigrants to create institutions as early as the turn of the century. Collectively, Muslims began to create their own linguistic and social organizations and places of worship primarily for the purpose of educating the second generation, the children of immigrants, in the languages and customs of the "old world." Small Muslim groups were founded to maintain social and cultural ties within the fledgling Muslim community: in Ross, North Dakota, as early as 1900 and in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the early 1920s. Islamic associations were established in High- land Park, Michigan, in 1919, and in Detroit in 1922. A Young Men's Islamic Association was founded in Brooklyn in 1923. Mosques were built for communal prayer in Highland Park, Michigan, in 1919 (disman- tled within five years); in Ross, North Dakota, in 1920; in Michigan City, Indiana, in 1924; and in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1934. However, many of these organs of collective life vanished as individuals involved were integrated into the dominant society or returned home. Eventually, these early Muslim communities dissipated (Karpat 1985). Interest in corporate life was revived among Muslims in the United States by the d m t i c growth in Muslim immigration following World War II. The majority of arrivals in recent years have university degrees and were attracted to the United States by professional career opportuni- ties. While economically integrated into the middle class, many have shown a different orientation toward Islam than their predecessors and have sought more active religious leadership and guidance on how to maintain an Islamic lifestyle in a nan-Islamic society (Haddad and Lum- mis 1987). In addition, a growing number of foreign students have come to American univemities and, in the coutse of their education, have estab- lished Islamic student organizations that help to renew the discussion among Muslims-both visitors and those who stay permanently-about developments in the Islamic world and contemporary trends in Islamic The pexeption shad by many recent immigrants is that Islam is a comprehensive ideology as well as a complete way of life with legal norms on a variety of issues including dress, diet, hygiene, sex, marriage, family, worship, work, and wealth and charity. The function of the mosque and Muslim associations, then, is seen as not being limited to meeting the needs of the Muslim community only, but as a means of out- Teach to create an ideal community. Spiritual growth, rather than cultural preservation, has become a high priority, and Islamic organizations have come to stress the responsibility of each individual to be involved in da'wah, defined as providing an Islamic witness or engaging in mission- ary activity to the nowMuslim community for the purpose of converting individuals to Islam. thought. Moore: Muslim Commitment in Noah America 229 A comparisOn of the credo of the f i s t umbrella national M u s h association, formed in 1953, the Federation of Islamic Associations of the United States and Canada-the Qur’anic injunction to “hold fast to the rope of God all together and do not disperse”-to that of the cutrent umbrella organization, the Islamic Society of North America-the Qur’anic injunction that “You are the best community raised up for humanity, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong”-illustt.ates the changing perception of the appropriate role of Muslims and their institutions in North American society. While the former reflects a concern for cultural survival, the latter prescribes an active role, promoting the Muslim community as an exemplar that takes seriously the Islamic ”mission” to offer the cure for the ills besetting American society. Parallel to the developments in the immigrant community, and for many years isolated from it, one portion of the African American com- munity constructed a particularistic Muslim identity. Conversion to Islam, especially within the African American community, has been primarily a twentieth-century phenomenon and is an important factor in the history of Black nationalism. During the postcolonial period, when several African nation-states achieved independence (including seventeen in 1960 alone), the popularity of indigenous American Black nationalism was invigorated. Africa became the symbol for liberation, a model for Black Americans’ efforts to deal with their own problems of daily existence in America. Islam, similarly, stood for African heritage. The possibility existed for every African American that he or she descended from Mus- lim roots truncated by slavery, and Islam thus became a source of Black pride and self-knowledge. Moreover, as it was taken up by such leaders as Noble Drew Ali, founder of the Moorish Science Temple in 1913, and Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam during the 193Os, Islam was a means of rejecting Christianity, which was perceived as a racist teligion belonging to white people and “as the mot of their oppression in its glorification of suffering and promise of redemption in the hereafter” (McCloud 1991). Both of these movements comtmcted what many immigrant Muslims have judged to be a “deviant” or nominal variety of Islamic faith based more on their leaders’ understandings of social justice than on an ortho- dox inteqmtation of Islam. What is important, however, is not their failure to conform to the basic doctrines of Islam, but the function Islam served as the negation of Christianity and the focal point for the development of a new identity. In essence, the Moorish Science Temple movement of Noble Drew Ali was a religious nationalism that stressed the “oriental” identity of Black Americans, calling them “Asiatic” or ”Moorish,” and claimed that 230 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11:2 Islam, the dominant religion in Momcm, is the original religion of the Black "race." The main objective of the Moorish movement was to provide a source of racial pride by destroying the dominant culture's claims about Black inferiority while emphasizing obedience to, and mem- bership in, the United States. The Moorish movement spread to several northern cities and survives today in such places as Philadelphia and Detroit. The Nation of Islam, the largest organidon to generate mass appeal based on its identification with Islam and Black nationalism, emerged out of the Depression of the 1930s as "a ptotest directed at the whole value- ccmstNct of the white Christian society-a society in which the Black Muslims feel themselves (as Blacks) an isolated and unappreciated a p pendage" (Lincoln 1973). Its founder and spiritual leader, Elijah Muham- mad, born Elijah Poole in Georgia in 1876, was inf luend by the current of Black nationalism repmented by Garveykm. A follower of a mys- terious figUte in Detroit called variously W. D. Fad, Wali Fard, Wallace Fard, W. F. Muhammad, and Fard Muhammad, by 1934 Elijah Muham- mad had emerged as the leader of "The --Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of North America" (a.k.a the Nation of Islam). He ex- pounded the unique body of doctrines and practices 8ssoci8ted with the movement until his death in 1975. Under his leade&p, Fad was deified and became idenmed as "Allah," and Elijah Muhammad became his Prophet or "the Messenger of Allah" (Lincoln 1973). Islam was declared the natural religion of the Black man. Muhammad's mission was to reveal the truth about white men, called "blue-eyed devils," to expose the "tricknology" by which the Black man continues to be subjugated, and to d t u t e the Black nation. The Nation's official newspaper, Muhum- mud Speaks, spread the leader's teachings to an expanding audience. While the Nation of Islam was never a "back to Africa" movement, Elijah Muhammad preached that "the white man's home is in Europe" and that "there will be no peace until every man is in his own country" (ibid.). Under his leadership the Nation sought self-determination in North America, not Africa. A sense of entitlement to a "natian within a nation" ceded from white America and the authority of the white man, earned through slavery, is evident. Blackness became the ideal, and self-tespect, economic independence, and ethical integrity were vaunted as essential goals and necessary pmxmditions for freedom. Elijah Muhammad was successful in creating a tightly-knit organiza- tion with established rituals and worship. The ritual requirements were defined as five daily prayers, proper ablutions before prayer, total abstinence from pork, tobacco, and alcohol, and attendance at the temple twice a week (ibid.). Over the next few decades, the Nation of Islam spread to all major American cities and found its greatest numbets in Moore: Muslim Commitment in Ncnth America 231 urban Black ghettoes. Its growth coincided with the enhanced popularity of Black nationalism as a whole in an era of African independence and civil rights struggles at home. Its success has been attributed to its promise of "a new identity, a feeling of 'somebodiness' denied by the dominant c u l ~ " (Mccloud 1991). In Lincoln's words, "the ultimate appeal of the movement . . . is in the chance to become identified with a power strong enough to overcome the domination of the white man- and perhaps even subrdinate him in return" (Lincoln 1973). Distinguished from the "otthodox" Islam of Muslim immigrants by their beliefs (i.e., that a Black man named Fad was God in the flesh, that Elijah Muhammad was His prophet, and that the white man is Satan), members of the Nation of Islam adhenid to doctrines about Black supremacy and suspicions of white America and its institutions at least until the death of their charismatic leader in 1975. Following Elijah Muhammad's death, however, the Nation's Black nationalist ideology was eclipsed partly as a d t of long-standing divisive intemal disputes. Mal- colm X, once a prot6gC of Elijah's and a vacal minister in the Nation of Islam until his expulsion in 1963, stood at the center of these disputes. First he revealed Elijah Muhammad's marital infidelity. Then shortly after his expulsion, ostensibly for saying about the John Kennedy assassination that "the chickens have come home to most,'' Malcolm X traveled to Makkah to perform the pilgrimage and was confronted with an interpreta- tion of Islam dramatically different from the one preached by Elijah Reflecting on what he learned in Makkah and on a subsequent trip to Cairo, Malcolm X ultimately eschewed the Nation's Black nationalist doctrines in favor of the ideas he had discovered through his exposue to a transnational, multiracial, and polyglot community of wo~hipers. He contested Elijah's teachings in public and introduced an altemative under- standing of Islam to the Black American community, one that paid greater attention to the canons, jurists, and theologians of the Muslim world. The effect was to challenge the highly personalistic authority of the Nation's leader by gravitating toward o h m whose authority claims rested on their knowledge of the orthodoxy of the religion and connection to the focal point of Islam. In 1965 Malcolm X was assasshted, allegedly by membes of the Nation of Islam, for his transformed religious beliefs. This event had seri- ous repercussions within the movement, and some members broke away. When Elijah Muhammad died ten years later one of his sons, Warith Deen Muhammad, who had been a close friend of Malcolm X and who also had been expelled from the movement but "rehabilitated" by his father, assumed the leadership of the Nation. He changed its name, f i s t to the American Bilalian Community, then to the World Community of Islam in the West (1976), and, finally, to the American Muslim Mission 232 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11:2 (1980) (Marsh 1984). He introduced several changes to the rituals and doctrines in order to bring the movement in line with the "mainstream of Islam" (Haddad 1986a). Racist doctrines were eschewed in favor of orthodox Islamic teachings. In 1985, the Amencan Muslim Mission was absorbed into the general Muslim community in the United States (ibid.), the formal structw was decentralized, and its members were no longer known as Black Muslims, but as Muslims. Warith Deen Muhammad, who had studied Arabic, the Qur'an, and Islamic law, sought to "renew" the faith in the United States. In accordance with the practices of the Muslim world, he adopted Arabic terms for Islamic institutions: ministers became imams and temples became musjids or mosques. He transformed the movement into some- thing "acceptable to the Muslim world" (Ahmed 1991), and international mqpition of the movement as a bonaJide Muslim organization, as well as relations with American Muslim immigrant groups, soon followed. The history of the Nation of Islam was revised so that the period of Elijah Muhammad's leadership, characterized by doct&es of separatism and Black supremacy, became known as a necessary transitional stage, the crucial period of the Nation's establishment and growth at a time when the African American was liberated from the mentality of subjugation (Muhammad 1982). Under Warith Deen's leadership, closure was brought to this period and a moderate accommodationist stance was developed. Less stress was placed on the movement's separatist aspects, and greater emphasis was placed on patriotism, including military service (Jones 1983; see also Muslim Journal, formerly American Muslim Journal). However, not all members of the movement agreed with the changes introduced after Elijah's death. A schism developed, and approximately ten thousand members left to follow Minister Louis Fanakhan, who con- tinues to preach Elijah Muhammad's doctrines and maintains an organi- zation called the Nation of Islam. But the popularity of Black separatism declined during the 197Os, when ideas about integration, promises of greater opportunities in education and employment, and the power of state law as a potential tool for creating social justice gained currency and decreased the Nation's appeal. The constituencies and approaches of Farrald.lan and Warith Deen Muhammad differ, and a significant schism continues to exist, The dynamics of the African American Muslim community's ideological and philosophical conversion, resulting in its conformity to more "orthodox" beliefs and practices after the death of its charismatic leader, a- complex. While much of the immigrant Muslim community is middle class, many Nation members are from the lower socioeconomic bracket. The "orthodox" Muslim groups in the United States, composed of immigmnts and their descendants, by and large ignored Black Muslims Moore: Muslim Commitment in Noah America 233 prior to 1975. 'Ibis rift has been mended, and beginning in 1985, immi- grant organizations have made greater efforts to embrace African Ameri- can Muslims. The Nation's acceptance as part of the global Muslim community, rather than as strictly a Black nationalist movement, was demonstrated in a dinner hosted by the Islamic Society of North America at the Muslim American Political Awareness Conference (Washington DC, 5 August 1989), which was held to honor the memory of Haj Malik a1 Shabazz (a.k.a. Malcolm X). While such mainstream Muslim organizations as the Islamic Society of North America have been instrumental in helping African American Muslims "integrate," by providing guidance and Islamic educational materials in English, the African American community has offered the immigrant community its own experience with American legal institu- tions. Based on their encounters with state law, which will be described in part below, the African American Muslim community became familiar with the intricacies of law and forms of power (Jacobs 1983; Irwin 1980). What the African American Muslims bring to the general Muslim com- munity in the United States is a particular knowledge of, and dialextic with, the American legal system characterized by their racial, as well as religious, minority status. Thus, while we can trace the transition of the Nation of Islam from "a revolutionary-oriented movement" (Jones, 1983) to one seeking greater ~ ~ ~ t ~ t e d n e s s with the global community of Mus- lim believers, called the ummah,4 we can also see in the same ptocess the introduction of a peculiarly Amencan legal consciousness into the broader Muslim community through the incorporation of what is sometimes called the "indigenous" Black Muslim experience. We shall examine the conse- quences of this development below, paying particular attention to the law's ideological role and its power to construct ways of thinking about rights. Muslims and American Law In 1984, a Philadelphia substitute teacher by the name of Alma Delotes Reardon filed a discrimination suit against the city's public school system because thtee school principals, on separate occasions, had told her she could not teach while wearing Islamic attire. A devout Mus- lim, Readon held the religious conviction that Muslim women should wear a concealing head scarf and a long, loose dress in public. She viewed keeping her body covered as a vital aspect of her religious obser- vance. After a bench trial, U.S. District Court Judge James Kelly ruled 4"Ummah" is the Arabic word for ''mnmuni ," but it has distinct religious motations and typically refers to the Unived OT g P obal Muslim community. 234 The American Journal of Islamic Social Scieaces 11:2 in her favor and against the school board and awarded her five thousand dollafs in b k pay. Six years later, in August 1990, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia overturned that decision based on an 1895 Pennsylvania law banning the wearing of religious clothing by teachers (the Pennsylvania Garb Statute). Judge Walter Stapleton ruled subsequently that a Muslim teacher cannot wear religious attire to school since it poses "a significant threat to the maintenance of religious neu- trality in the public school system" (U.S. v. Bd of Educ. of School Dis- trict of Philadelphia, 91 1 E2d 822 [3rd Cir. 19901 at 894). Since it might expose school administrators to the risk of criminal prosecution under the state's Garb Statute, "Bccofnmod8fing Ms. Reardon's des& to express her religious c d t m e n t through her attire would have imposed undue hard- ship on the School Board" (ibid. at 891). While this might appear to be a free exercise case, the legal issues were framed in terms of statutory, rather than constitutional, law. Legal action was bmught under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects employees from dismissal based on religion (ibid at 886). The appellate court's analysis of Title VII's definition of religion, though, points out that there is an explicit exception, which stab, in effect, that if an employer can prove his/her inability to accommodate a religious ob- servance or practice without undue hadship, then the observance or prac- tice at issue is not "religion" within the meaning of Title VII (ibid.). In light of this, as a Title W case, the dispute between Reardon and the school board turned on the question of whether the school board could show its inability to accommodate Reardon's religious attire without "un- due hardship." This was decided in favor of the school board. In effect, then, Reardon's exptssion of her conviction through her attire was not protected by law as religious in natm. Why wasn't this a constitutional issue? Again, in its legal analysis, the court opinion cites a similar case arising from an Oregon state law prohibiting public school teachers from wearing religious attire in the classroom, Cooper v. Eugene School District: which was based on a free exen5se clause challenge. In the Cooper case, the teacher was a Sikh rather than a Muslim. Cooper appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Court dismissed her appeal "for want of a substantial federal question" (ibid. at 888). Based on this summary disposition of Cooper's fitst amendment claim by the Supreme Court, the appeal court in Reardon's case concludes that the Court "could not have decided to dismiss for want of a substantial federal question without concluding that Cooper's free exelvise claim was without merit" (ibid. at 889). Since the Cooper case 9 1 Or. 358,723 P.2d 298 (1986)' appeal dismissed, 480 U.S. 942 (1987). Moore: Muslim Commitment in North America 235 is "factually indistinguishable" (ibid. at 887) from Readon's, what applies to Cooper is true also for Reardon. This explains, in Judge Stapleton's opinion, why the issues were not framed as a Fitst Amendment challenge. However, there is a substantial body of c8se law, arising from the p r i m e d rights movement of the early 1960s to the mid-l970s, that tmts specifically the issue of accom- modating Muslim practices and observances in public Wtutions, state and federal prisons. It is this law that set precedents for the free exetcise rights of Muslims and helped to cteate certain expectations within the Muslim community about what is permissible and fair. Such expecta6ons d a c e from time to time in comments in the Muslim press in the United States. For instance, commenting on the appellate court decision to over- turn the lower murt ruling in R d o n ' s case, the Muslim Media Watch wrde: "Free country, isn't it?" The emergence of an African American Muslim population in prison fitst raised the question, during the 196Os, of whether Islam is a religion worthy of constitutional protection in the federal courts. The fesponsive- ness of the courts, as well as the Muslims' use of the law, were shaped by a variety of factos that impinged not only on the changing role of the courts but also on the developing Muslim identity in North America. Specifically, the multiple historical contexts of the prisoners' and civil rights movements, evolving race relations, and the rise in Black national- ism had a bearing on the legal status of Islam and Muslims. I have examined the court m d of the Fitst Amendment cases launched by imprisoned Muslims to challenge prison policies elsewhere (Moore 1991) and therefore will provide only a brief summary here as a basis for discussion of the influence of social trends and ideas about "rights" on the litigants themselves; specifically, on the ways in which thinking about law and the language of the courts penetrates and testtuc- The 1960s are recognized as a wateshed decade in the development of prisonem' rights, which was "pat of a larger mosaic of social change" (Jacobs 1983). The issues raised by primers coincided with significant intervention by the federal judiciary in policy mattes and the extension of rights to an increasing number of marginal groups. Treatment of pri- sonets as legal subjects jettisoned the convenfional "hands off" doctrine maintained by the judiciary in matters of prison adminktra tion and brought the prisonets' rights movement into the courts, leading key actom to concentmte their efforts on affecting change through legal remedies. Conversely, it brought the federal mu& into the prisons, where court officials became involved in defining and applying certain standards in disputes over prison practices, policies, and conditions. The consequences of this were "pehps second in breadth and detail only to the courts' tuns strategies of tesistance. 236 The Americau Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11:2 earlier role in dismantling segregation in the nation's public schools fol- lowing the 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (Feeley and Hanson 1990). The Supreme Court's first "modem" prisoners' rights case, Cooper v. Pate: involved Muslim inmates. In this case, a Black Muslim prisoner in an Illinois state prison brought federal charges against his prison waden, alleging discrimination because he was not allowed to obtain religious literature from the Nation of Islam, consult with ministers of his faith, attend Muslim religious seMces and, further, was being punished because of the warden's hostility toward the Black Muslim movement. The Court recognized that prisoners have constitutional rights that prison officials cannot violate and that the federal courts are obligated to hear prisoners' allegations of religious discrimination. As Jacobs (1983) observes, "many legal victories followed after Cooper v. Pate . . . [and] each Contributed to the strength, self-confidence, and momentum of the prisoners' rights movement." The opportunity to purme grievances in court, and the encouragement of success, influenced the ideas of the pri- soners who litigated. Although judicial treatment of Muslim prisoners' claims under the free exercise clause has been far from consistent, a general trend toward recognition of these claims, when framed in the cantext of discrimination, emerged during the 1960s and early 1970s. The cow were asked to address allegations of discriminatory treatment by Muslim inmates, for Islamic practices were prohibited in prison settings while the practices of other religious denominations were not. When Muslim inmates were able to demonstrate that they had not received the same treatment as other religious groups in prison, the courts were generally, during this period, inclined to protect the prisoners' constitutional claims. The responsiveness of the courfs to Muslim inmates' claims for religious liberty tumed on a number of factors: the issue of equality of treatment of religious groups in prisons, the degree to which the inmates' challenges would undermine the state's fundamental intenxts (for example, prison security and admini- strative costs are often cited), and showing that Islam is similar to the Catholic, protestant, and Jewish faiths. But in more recent years, it has become clear that the judiciary has returned to the "hands off" doctrine by refiwing to substitute judicial supeMsion for the expert judgement of prison officials in matters of prison management, even when violations of constitutional rights are at issue. Some rulings indicate that freedom of religion may be curtailed by 6378 U.S. 546 (1964). The Cooper case held that Muslim r h e E have standing to challenge religious discmmat ion in prisons under Section 19h of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Moore: Muslim Commitment in North America 237 prison officials and that charges of discriminatory treatment, where d c t i o n s fall more harshly on Muslim inmates, were not overriding. As the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held in Thompson v. Kentucky' (1983): "The free exelcise clause guarantees a liberty intemt, a substan- tive right; that clause does not insure that all sects will be tmted alike in all respects" (712 F.2d at 1081). In a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case, O'hne v. Shubuzz,8 where Mus- lim inmates challenged New Jersey prison policies that prevented them from attending Friday services, the Rehnquist court held that "prison officials had acted in a reasonable manner by precluding Islamic inmates from attending weekly Friday religious services and prison regulations to that effect thus did not violate the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment" (107 S.Ct. at 2401-2042). The Court found that the reasonableness of the policies in question was supported by the fact that, while some Muslims prevented from attending Friday services due to prison work assignments, they do not deprive Muslim inmates of all forms of religious exercise. All Muslims who wish to may, at one time or another, participate in a number of Muslim religious ceremonies. Despite the fact that Friday prayer services are of paramount importance to the Islamic faith, which the Court acknowledged, it was still determined that "the very stringent requirements as to the time at which [Friday services] may be held may make it extmodinarily difficult for prison officials to assure that every Muslim prisoner is able to attend that service" (ibid. at 2406). However, in a dissenting opinion, Justice Bmman argued that the Friday services "cannot be regarded as one of several essentially fungible religious practices" (ibid. at 2410). The oppor- tunity to participate in other religious activities in prison does not compensate for the Muslims' forced absence at the central service in Islam. Brennan compared the situation of Muslims who were not allowed to attend the Friday services to that of a Catholic prisoner denied the right to attend Mass on Sunday: "Few would regatd [the latter] deprivation as anything but absolute, even if the prisoner were affoded other opportuni- ties to pray, to discuss the Catholic faith with others, and even to avoid eating meat on Friday if that were a preference" (ibid.). The fact that other types of religious worship are available in prison does not warrant the deprivation of the opportunity to participate in the central religious ritual of one's faith at a time when adherents "assert their identity as a community covenanted to God" (ibid., citing Brief for Imam Jamil Abdullah et al., as amid curiae, at 32). '712 F.2d 1078 (1983). '107 S.Ct. 2400 (1987). 238 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11 :2 What has been the outcome of Muslim prisoners' litigation? In short, prhaps the most interesting effect is the adoption of constitutional norms and language by Muslim inmates to change their environment and, ultimately, how this contributed to an overall transformation of their self- identification. The court record demonstrates that, through their use of the law to claim particular rights and asking the courts to intervene to resolve disputes with prison officials, Muslim inmates became engaged with a political system that they had condemned previously as a matter of dogma. Essentially, the pre-1975 separatist doctrines of the Nation of Islam eschewed integration and political participation, because such involvement was a validation of the racially biased power structure of American society. Yet, as a means to an end, Black Muslims in prison aspired to official recognition as a religious group, with the attendant rights and privileges in captive society, so as to futther their objectives in recruitment and liberating the Black nation. Key concepts of religious liberty, free exercise of religion, and minority group rights initially en- ticed Muslim inmates to build a legal strategy to gain legitimacy as a religious entity, an already established status within the prison system. The awareness of the availability of the courts as a legal forum through which inmates could challenge prison administration encouraged Muslim prisoners to reconceptualize themselves and their situation. It created the expectation that their grievances would be redressed by the legal system, and led many to take legal action. The tesult of moderate su- in litigation is that the prisoners became attentive to the courts as institutions that legitimately define and protect their rights in prison, in organizing important relationships within the captive community with such representatives of outside organizations as clerics, and with their keepers. The Muslims moved from total dis- engagement from the political system as an ideal to calling upon the law as a basis for their corporate rights. Moderate success in the courts also conditioned the way that Muslims outside prisons came to accept the law as a legitimate social control mechanism and its utility in creating "order" in everyday existence on both sides of the prison walls. As the Nation of Islam embarked on a c o w of reform after 1975, parallel changes were happening within the prison Muslim community. By 1979, a survey conducted by the Federal Bureau of Prisons indicated that while membedip in Islamic groups was growing in prisons at the end of the 197(xs, the tenor of the movement had changed. Norman A. Carlson, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said that Muslims were "no longer considered a threat to prison discipline," because they no longer taught racial hatred ("Federal Prisons" 1979). Moreover, he ad- mitted that "the image of the Black Muslims as a source of disruption was blown out of proportion" (ibid). Although the members of the Moore: Muslim Commitment m North America 239 Nation of Islam before 1975 pteached a hostile rhetoric that vilified white America, they actually precipitated little violence. The purpose here has been to provide a view of how Muslims, as religious individuals, seek to OOtlstNct meaningful lives thtough a com- mitment to regulative ends that, in effect, transform the very individuality of the Muslim participants involved. The language of legal practice has conditioned the complexity of negotiations currently underway. Expectations of equal treatment infused the out-of-prison Muslim population as well. This is apparent in a dispute in Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Middle Easterners in North America. In September 1979, neighbors of a mosque in the city's heavily Arab blue- collar southeastern section asked the co& to stop the mosque from broadcasting the Islamic call to prayer over outdoor speakers, on the grounds that it violated the city's noise ordinance. The mosque officials saw the complaint as an infringement of their constitutional guarantee to the free exercise of religion, citing the Constitution to protect a practice they consider "inviolable." The court decided to impose the same restric- tions on the mosque that were imposed on churches, requiring that prayer calls and church bells alike not exceed a certain decibel level. The result, then, of what seemed like a liberating pdigm-absolute freedom of As an outcome of imprisoned Muslims' litigation, and in reqonse to a surge in interest in Islam among African American inmates, federal prisons began hiring Muslim prison chaplains in 1984. To date, theE are eight full-time Muslim chaplains in the federal prison system. Such repre- sentation, though exceedingly small, provides an opening for the trans- mission of the Islamic message, reflecting an Islamic normative ordering and set of values, to a wider spectnun of the prison population. It pre- sents an opportunity for greater contact between differing "legal sensi- bilities" and for providing an interpretation of Islam relevant to life in American society as well as to the modem world, one fashioned from the dynamic relations between the American Muslim experience and the sources of authority and inteqmtation of the Islamic heritage located overseas. The dynamics of this intersection in the comtruction of a peculiarly American identity and distinctively American institutions of the faith community will be examined below. worship-turned out to be parity. Models of Minority Life: Directions for Future Research We have focused on the Muslims' recognition and adoption of law as a legitimate means of social control. However, there has been an underlying effort to temper an increasing attentiveness to North American 240 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11:2 legal institutions by strengthening a sense of cultural and religious "out- sidetfiood." The dynamics of this interplay repment an a m of fubure research. The global spread of Islam, represented by over nine hundred million adherents in regions as far flung as Eastern Europe and the Central Asian tepublics of the former Soviet Union (combined population estimated at over eighty-one million) to the Americas, results in a cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity that challenges the cohesion of the faith community, which is based on a commonly shared and actively expressed set of norms and values. The influences of varied environments present pres- sures that, in effect, mitigate Islamic identity and practices, especially in a m far from the fold of the Islamic world An investigation of Muslim literatwe on this topic shows a continuing effort to articulate options for maintaining Muslim life within the framework of diversity. In the American context, this raises interesting questions: Can a Muslim minority live as an integrated part of a pluralistic society or must it insist on exclusivity? Can the community maintain its diffemce while, at the same time, demanding that it be treated equally and be given equal access to resoutces? Interest in the condition of Muslim minorities has been growing in the last two decades. Two international Muslim organi- zations, the Muslim World League and the Organization of the Islamic conference, have expressed concern for the plight of these Muslims. Recently the Muslim World League established a Fiqh (Jurisprudence) Council, consistinig of representatives from all Islamic legal schools of jurisprudence, to serve as a tribunal for addressing a variety of issues facing the Muslim community, including those living in a non-Islamic environment. The council has advocated the development of what is being called jiqh a1 darcrah (jurisprudence of necessity) and jiqh a1 aqallijuh (jurisprudence of minority) to address issues Elated to Muslim minority life (Haddad 1991). Individual Muslim writers have also addressed the conditions and problems of d i s p e d Muslim communities. Much of what has been written is from the view of the "majoritarian" Muslim, or one who is living in a predominantly Muslim society, and is addressed to Muslim minority communities. Very little has been written by Muslims who have settled permanently in a non-Muslim setting. However, an increase in such literatwe has been noticeable. Writings of both perspectives are found in the journals of such institutes as the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences), as well as in books published by these institutes. The enduring debates within the global Muslim community about minority status and the appropriate model for living in a non-Muslim Moore: Muslim Commitment in N o ~ h America 241 society continue to move between accommodationism (i.e., seeking reli- gious equality and equal access to society's resources) and isolationism (i.e., s t k g the distinctivm~ of Islam and seeking to pmerve Islamic cultural modes of repnsentation). Those who approximate the isolation- ism paradigm have advocated maintaining a separate existence as a disctete, insular entity that can serve as an Islamic witness in the midst of an unenlightened society until a tetum to the Islamic world is possible. This model allows no cultural adaptations in a non-Islamic setting, as Islam alone, in its unadulterated form, stands as the governing norm for the religiously observant Muslim Islam is seen as a comprehensive and inherently superior and self-sufficient mode of existence that has been set forth for the global community of believers living within the "domain of Islam" and beyond. In the extreme, this position maintains that to give up the claim to exclusivity would guarantee the demise of the Muslim community. For instance, the Moroccan Islamist Ali Kettani (1986) argues for maintaining Islam's exclusive claim to ttuth: "Believing that all religions ate equally valid is the first sign of religious assimilation." However, the majority of Muslims in the United States have adopted the accommodationist model. Earlier generations of Muslim minorities have affirmed the Qur'anic injunction that "there is no compulsion in religion" as a foundation for a pluralistic society. This model is one in which relocation and settlement is permanent. What is required of the religiously observant Muslim is to "Islamize" the society in which he or she lives. It draws support from Qur'anic tefetence to illustrate that it is the obligation of Muslims in diaspora to create a just Society whetever they live. The tension between these two interpretations characterizes the debates within the Muslim community as it defines its identity and discusses future directions for corporate life in the United S t a b . Ideas advocated by visitors and scholars from ove- have a pmfound impact on the ideological formation of the American Muslim Community. How- ever, the experiences of Muslims in the United States ate slowly emerging as a powerful source of authority on what strategies, rights, and expectations ate possible. The flow of human migration has been a constant and recufient feature in history. The d t has been a cross-fertilization of ideas, cultures, and races. 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