Integration and Isolation A Comparative Study of Immigrant

Integration and Isolation: A Comparative Study of Immigrant Muslims in the United States and the United Kingdom Farhan A. Syed The Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania A THESIS Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts April 2006 Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Lynn Hollen Lees Reginald Jones Thesis Prize Nominee 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 4 MUSLIMS IN THE UNITED STATES: INTRODUCTION .......................................................... 8 OVERVIEW OF MUSLIM HISTORY IN THE US .................................................................... 9 First Wave: Slaves .......................................................................................................... 9 Second Wave: The Anglo-American Converts.............................................................. 11 Third Wave: Early Working-Class Muslim Immigrants ............................................... 12 Fourth Wave: The Twentieth Century African-American Experience.......................... 14 Fifth Wave: The Post-1965 Immigration Trend............................................................ 16 REACTION OF US SOCIETY TO THE GROWTH OF THE US MUSLIM COMMUNITY ......... 23 EVOLUTION OF THE COMMUNITY.................................................................................... 26 First Phase: Economic Survival ................................................................................... 26 Second Phase: Building of Infrastructure..................................................................... 28 Third Phase: Community Sustainment and Institution Building .................................. 36 MUSLIMS IN THE US: DISAGGREGATING CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS NORMS AND PRACTICES ........................................................................................................................ 49 MUSLIM COMMUNITY IN BRITAIN: INTRODUCTION ....................................................... 54 OVERVIEW OF MUSLIM HISTORY IN THE UK ................................................................. 55 First Wave: Early Wayfarers and Converts.................................................................. 55 Second Wave: Imperial Migration................................................................................ 56 Third “Wave”: A Community Struggles to Redefine Itself........................................... 59 REACTION OF BRITISH SOCIETY TO THE GROWTH OF THE UK MUSLIM POPULATION 63 EVOLUTION OF THE COMMUNITY.................................................................................... 70 First Phase: Economic Survival ................................................................................... 70 Second Phase: Building of Infrastructure..................................................................... 79 Third Phase: Community Sustainment and Institution Building .................................. 92 MUSLIMS IN THE UK: STRUGGLING WITH IDENTITY AND INTEGRATION ...................... 98 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 100 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................... 111 NOTES ............................................................................................................................. 115 2 3 Introduction The recent spat created by the Danish newspaper Jylland-Posten’s publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad elicited markedly different reactions in different parts of the world. Much discussion has been made of the protests in Muslim countries, including some violent activity. But little has been stated about the reactions of Muslims in the West, particularly in the UK and the US. In marked contrast to the aforementioned violence, Muslims in the West started with their own protests in front of the offices of offending newspapers, and then proceeded to engage editors in constructive conversation about following the printing of the caricatures with informative articles. They also began campaigns to teach the public about the Prophet Muhammad, and Islam in general. It is this contrasting reaction that this thesis will examine in more detail. In particular, I will examine the effects of a multi-decade effort to integrate Muslims into Western societies, and the impact this has had on the Muslim community as well as Islamic self-identity on an individual level. I will also examine various patterns of integration and differential levels of success in building a sustainable Western Muslim identity. Integration into any host society is affected by two factors. First, we have to look at the amenability of the host society to accepting new peoples. This is driven by the homogeneity of that society, as well as the strength of that society identifying with a certain religion, ethnicity, or political culture. An example might be France, where the secular culture has profoundly affected the ability of Jews and Muslims to thrive. Jews have often approached this situation through assimilation (e.g., not wearing yarmulkes in public). Muslims have reacted to the French secularization in diverse ways. Some have 4 influenced and been influenced by it, intermarrying with French non-Muslims and living “French” lives. Others have rejected secularization as a paradigm for their lifestyle. This rejection, often the result of geographic clustering and a history of underemployment and socio-economic repression, has resulted in unrest and poverty in the Beur communities. The second major factor in the success of a community’s integration is a set of internal drivers within the community itself. That is to say, how does a community strive to create the tools for integration for themselves and their children into the larger society? What institutions can we look for in a community’s development that can be seen as milestones towards successful integration without assimilation? Institution building involves not only community infrastructure, such as mosques and schools, but also organizations germane to interaction with the larger community. Such organizations include lobbying, civil rights and outreach groups. Beyond infrastructure, we also need to look at community governance vis-à-vis the larger community. I will examine the path towards creating a “successful” Western Islamic culture. Such measures include the existence of youth organizations and the symbols of Muslim practice such as beards, hijabs and establishment of and attendance at Friday prayers. I will also try to measure the existence of mechanisms to handle activities that, in a Muslim country, would normally have been handled by a government. Such activities include family disputes and moon sightings. Through these measures, I will try to paint a picture of Western Muslim communities. I will employ a framework for examining any immigrant community, what I call the assimilationist-culturalist-integrationist framework. Beyond survival, Muslims in the US and UK have, to varying degrees, preserved ethnicity-specific cultural norms 5 (whether immigrant or indigenous) and Islamic norms. At one end of the spectrum we see almost complete assimilation⎯culturally, religiously and linguistically⎯among firstgeneration descendants of immigrants. At the other extreme, going to places such as Devon Street in north Chicago or East London, one can find such descendants speaking primarily in Urdu or Bengali, dressing in traditional Indian and Pakistani garb and going to private Muslim schools, thus relegating their interaction with the larger American community to business transactions. In addition, it is quite possible to find families that have preserved cultural and linguistic values, while largely ignoring religious ones, and vice versa. In a brilliant analysis of Muslim American identity that addresses these phenomena, Sulayman Nyang talks about “assimilationists” and “simulationists.”1 Assimilationists make their way of life “Islamic” or “American” in totality. If they are converts, they see Islam as being superior to their previous life. Simulationists, on the other hand, embrace Islam for practical reasons. Nyang writes, “They see Islam as a political weapon, a strategy for physical and spiritual survival, and a way of life that can be effectively appropriated in their struggle for racial justice and ethnic freedom.” The simulationists try to Americanize their Islamic culture, thereby creating an identity that distinguishes them from other Muslims and, for converts, others of their ethnicity. I will take a different approach from Dr. Nyang in distinguishing Muslims’ adaptive techniques. Rather than distinguishing Muslims as assimilationists and simulationists of different types, I posit that the orthodox2 Muslim community can be divided into three categories: “assimilationists,” “culturalists” and “integrationists.” First, the “culturalists” make a point of holding onto cultural norms along with Islamic norms. For immigrants, this means that they preserve country-specific culture from back 6 home, irrespective of whether such culture fits with life in America and life as a Muslim. Second, in my definition “assimilationists” are those who, through intent or no intent, take pains to blend in with American society, either through involvement in the indigenous community and maintenance of Islam as a “political weapon,” as Nyang mentions earlier, or through hiding their ethnic and religious origins as is commonly seen among descendants of immigrants. Finally, the fastest-growing group, who will be the focus of this paper, are the “integrationists.” Integrationists attempt to take the best of both worlds, Islamic and Western, and embrace the idea that Islam is meant to be a faith for all times and places and should be seen as flexible enough to handle a new environment. Integrationists might embrace the approach espoused in a West African proverb that states: Islam is like a crystal clear river. It brings life to whatever lands it flows through. But as it brings life, it also changes to take on the color of whatever it flows over. So when it goes through a desert, it takes on the color of the sand. And when it flows over red rocks, it takes on the red color without itself being compromised. I will use the case studies of the San Francisco Bay Area and London to test the above framework. In England, at the level of the host society, there is an ongoing discussion of what it means to be “British.” In addition, the Muslim community is dominated by an attitude of culturalism as described above. On the other hand, in the US, although there are periodic bouts of xenophobia, in general there is an acceptance of immigrants of all backgrounds, because of the history of immigration of this country. Also, US Muslims, for a variety of reasons, have pursued an integrationist path to engagement with the larger community. For all of these reasons, I will show that, across a number of metrics, the Muslim community in the UK lags behind the US community in its development and integration into the host society. 7 In order to demonstrate the tools used by the integrationists in the US and culturalists in the UK in their adaptive strategies, I will broadly introduce the waves of Muslim immigration in the histories of each country, discussing why previous waves were unsuccessful in establishing a permanent presence. I will then explore the phases of institutions that the current wave in each country has established and some of the difficulties they have faced, particularly if the institutions were culturalist projects. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of where the US and UK Muslim communities stand right now and keys to success in going forward. Muslims in the United States: Introduction Although Muslims have arrived on American shores since the time of Columbus (and some would argue even earlier than that), they have never established a sustainable model for living in the American context. Two phenomena in the twentieth century radically changed the ability of US Muslim populations to survive and thrive. First, an indigenous community of Muslims emerged from among urban African-American populations. This new group of African-American Muslims integrated, to varying degrees, their new Islamic identity with their African-American identity. Second, in 1965 President Lyndon Johnson amended the Immigration Act to ease the ability of foreign nationals to enter the country for the purposes of education.3 This led to a massive inflow of educated people from developing countries. While many fully intended to return to their home countries after securing sufficient economic gain, circumstances changed once they realized that their children had adapted to life in the US. Struggling to define themselves in this new context, these immigrants realized that 8 they needed to establish tools to help them preserve Islam and integrate their Islamic beliefs and practices into American society. While African-American and immigrant experiences have generally not intersected (with the exception of reaction to news and events from the Muslim world), I will use this paper to demonstrate that, regardless of background, Muslims in the US have established themselves through a sophisticated disaggregation of country-specific cultural norms from Islamic orthodoxy and institutions, and a subsequent integration of American norms that fit with this newly essentialized4 Islamic orthodoxy. These integrationists have been a prominent part of the creation of a Muslim-American culture, one that has developed faster than any equivalent Muslim-British culture. Overview of Muslim History in the US First Wave: Slaves The first recorded Muslim presence on this continent is from African Muslim slaves. Many accounts of Muslims in America do not consider this wave in their analyses because little written evidence exists of the way these Muslims lived or the institutions they may have tried to establish to preserve their way of life. Sylviane Diouf and Allan Austin talk about the lives of Muslim slaves both individually and as a group.5 Both provide narratives of the lives of exceptional figures such as “Prince” Ibrahim ibn Abdur-Rahman and Salih Bilali. Abdur-Rahman was a military leader who was captured as a prisoner of war and sold to slave traders. He lived as a slave for 40 years in Natchez, Mississippi in the early nineteenth century. His noble demeanor, likely a result of both elite upbringing and a Muslim family, resulted in 9 his being named “Prince” by a slave owner. In a chance meeting, a man who had been assisted by Abdur-Rahman’s family in Africa 30 years earlier recognized him in a market in Mississippi. A subscription was raised for his freedom. The only reason AbdurRahman’s story has survived until today is the press he got for his attempts to emancipate his family. A well-publicized tour up the Mississippi River and then across land to New York was trumpeted by Northern papers and lambasted by Southern ones. Abolitionists met Abdur-Rahman at every stop and gave him more lip service than actual funds to free his American-born wife and children. Eventually, he was able to free his wife and some of his children. Tragically, he died before seeing his home village in Africa again. Scant evidence (other than his demeanor and name) remain linking Abdur-Rahman to his faith. Like most Muslim slaves, his faith was not passed on to his children. Most slaves could not transmit home cultures and faiths to their children for two reasons. First, they were often forcibly converted to the religion of the slave owner. Second, families were often separated, with children being sold off separately from their parents. As a result, the chains of transmission were broken, and a people were cut off from their history. Another notable story from Antebellum Muslim history is that of Salih Bilali and his community. Salih Bilali was enslaved on Sapelo Island, Georgia, in the period right before the Civil War. Narratives indicate that he quickly gained confidence among his slave owners and was given wide latitude to serve as a leader among the other slaves. Written fragments survive until today indicating that Bilali wrote out religious texts from memory to teach his followers. In fact, some scholars have indicated that Bilali and his followers even built a mosque structure on the plantation.6 This structure closely resembled West African mosques. Bilali’s followers were also known to have tracked 10 the lunar cycles to remember the month of Ramadan (for the purposes of prescribed fasting). These remarkable attempts to create Muslim institutions and space against an overwhelmingly difficulty situation demonstrate two things. First, they speak to the natural tendency of Muslims from earlier waves to try to create ways of surviving as a community. Second, they are a commentary on the difficulty of accomplishing this goal in earlier periods due to harsh social circumstances. It would be unfair for us to consider the Antebellum African Muslim experience to be a “project,” as the Muslims who comprised this group did not come here by choice nor were they given freedom to practice and preserve their chosen way of life. Even so, as demonstrated previously, individual cases exist of Muslims who strove on individual and community levels to protect their Islamic identity. However, with circumstances as brutal as they were, Nyang mentions that, “there is no evidence of any African Muslim slave family that survived slavery and maintained Islam as a way of life.”7 As such, we cannot derive from this experience any model for the successful preservation of Islam as a part of the American fabric. Second Wave: The Anglo-American Converts Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah has done extensive research on a small group of EuroAmerican converts who established a community around the turn of the century. Chief among such individuals was Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb, a career diplomat who learned about Islam while posted to the Philippines.8 Webb accepted Islam in 1888 while abroad and, with the encouragement of a group of Indian businessmen, set about establishing a Muslim mission in New York City. He represented Muslims at the World 11 Parliament of Religions in 1893 in Chicago and thereafter established a mosque in Manhattan. Webb created many institutions around his fledgling community (composed primarily of converts), such as a printing press and newsletter. Although Webb could be considered the first integrationist Muslim in America, his community did not survive for two reasons. First, he was dependent on foreign sources of funding to sustain his community. When the promised funding did not appear, his community had no alternatives and was forced to scale back its operations. Second, his community had not achieved critical mass to establish the institutions it needed to preserve and transmit the faith to the next generation. Webb was a visionary leader but was not able to develop the tools an integrationist needs to thrive as a Muslim in the United States. Although he had established a mosque and a means of communication with his community, the foreign funding and lack of critical mass were not conducive to the establishment of a permanent presence. Webb died in 1916 in Rutherford, New Jersey, and his pioneering efforts were largely forgotten until recently. Third Wave: Early Working-Class Muslim Immigrants Michael Suleiman mentions that, “whereas Arabs (including some Muslim Arabs) started coming to the United States in the late nineteenth century, by World War II the Arab American community had pretty much assimilated and stabilized. In fact, in some respects, its integration in American society was nearly total.”9 Early Muslim and Christian Arabs came from the Greater Syria region as temporary workers to support their families. Many of these individuals also came fleeing Ottoman conscription.10 Almost all of them came with the goal of returning in short 12 order. As such, this was almost exclusively a migration of young males, with very few families present. An interesting story of one such immigrant was that of Hajji Ali, known to his American associates as Hi Jolly.11 Ali was one of the earliest Muslim Arab immigrants, arriving in 1856 to help the US government set up an experimental Camel Corps in the Southwest deserts. With the beginning of the Civil War the plan was scrapped, but Ali decided to stay (unlike most immigrants of this wave) and married a Euro-American woman from Tucson. Little is known about his descendants; but being from a mixed marriage and living in that context, it is unlikely that they retained much of their father’s faith. While Hajji Ali’s story has many unique elements, one element of his life is probably a pattern repeated across this group. There were two types of immigrants in this wave. The vast majority were culturalists, intent on going home once their economic needs were met. As such, they saw little need to establish strong Islamic institutions such as mosques, nor did they have the economic means to do so. Most lived in immigrant ghettos and had minimal contact with the larger American society. Thus, education and incentives were not aligned with the establishment of a Muslim presence. There was probably also a small group of assimilationists (of the Hajji Ali mold) who decided to remain but left few traces of their presence. A few of these individuals took steps to establish a mosque (but no other types of institutions) once they started having children; but invariably either these mosques fell into disuse or their membership changed drastically (with the founders being replaced with Muslims from later waves).12 13 Therefore, one cannot see this wave as being a sustained model for the Muslim minority presence in the US. Fourth Wave: The Twentieth-Century African-American Experience The “wave” of African-American Islamic revival that revolutionized the Muslim experience in the US over the last 80 years can be subdivided into two somewhat overlapping periods. The first period is the era of “proto-Islamic” movements. The second is the ascendance of orthodoxy defined by traditional Islamic scholarship. ProtoIslamic movements were represented by Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple in New Jersey in the 1920s and the Nation of Islam from the 1940s onward. Noble Drew Ali learned about Islam during a visit to Morocco. Thereafter he established his movement in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913 as a movement dedicated to helping AfricanAmericans achieve self-sufficiency and a new, independent identity. The Great Migration from the South provided African-Americans with new communities, which made it easier for them to follow the path of self-discovery, a path that, in some cases, led to conversion to Islam.13 Ali, like Webb among Euro-Americans, tried to create all of the institutions that would help a community thrive and create an independent “Moorish” American identity among African-Americans. He borrowed liberally from Islamic concepts, proclaiming the shahada (testament of faith) in his speeches and writings. The Nation of Islam was by far the most successful African-American protoIslamic movement in American history. Like the Moors, the Nation “was fundamentally concerned with ‘nation building,’ with building in the context of a racist White America an African-American community that was free, strong, self-sufficient, and self-confident. 14 It rehabilitated the poor and down-trodden, worked towards economic independence, fostered positive social programs, and created a sense of Black self-esteem. Its doctrines were meant to empower Blacks psychologically and socially and provide them with a positive alternative.”14 These movements eventually served as transitions for many African-Americans into mainstream Islam. While the proto-Islamic movements were certainly heterodox, it is certain that Islamic themes in these movements resonated with African-Americans. The proto-Islamic organizations sparked orthodox movements such as Imam Daoud’s mosque in New York. The mainstreaming of these movements was further accelerated by the very public emergence of the first (and perhaps until now, only) nationally recognized Muslim leader, Malcolm X. Malcolm X and the early Islamic and protoIslamic African-American movements helped spark the rapid growth of Islam in urban inner city areas. Many authors have indicated that Muslims likened the United States to Medina, the city to which the Prophet Muhammad journeyed in 622 C.E. to establish the first Muslim community. The analogy captures Muslims’ optimistic hopes for the future of Islam in the United States.15 The hijra itself has significance for African-Americans who link it to the experiences of the Middle Passage, the Underground Railroad and the Great Migration to the North (1916-30). Karen Leonard describes the final dramatic shift over to orthodoxy as initiated by WD Muhammad. She writes, “it was Elijah Muhammad’s son, Wallace D. Mohammed, who aligned the Nation of Islam with mainstream Sunni teachings after his father’s death in 1975. He redefined beliefs about the divinity of W. D. Fard and the prophethood of Elijah Muhammad, enjoined his followers to pray five times daily, changed the Ramadan 15 fast from the Christian Advent season to the lunar month of Ramadan, and allowed whites to join the Nation. He renamed the NOI temples masjids, took the title of Imam instead of Minister…and disbanded the Fruit of Islam security force.” Suleyman Nyang would refer to the Moors and the Nation of Islam as simulationist movements, as they borrowed generously from Islamic practices and beliefs, but adapted them to an overarching program of African-American self improvement. As such, they developed the tools that an integrationist movement should have, but did not have the orthodox foundation upon which to build a true Muslim presence in the US. When Islamic orthodoxy was finally accepted, mainstream Islamic practices and the African-American experience combined to produce a stable, effective social force. This combination has had a profound impact on communities in major urban areas across the country, not only through the infusion of Islamic values, but also through the establishment of institutions such as schools, businesses and nightly citizen patrols in crime-infested areas. Such institutions are examples of integrationism, the application of the Islamic concepts of service and justice to the urban American experience. Fifth Wave: The Post-1965 Immigration Trend What led to integrationism in African-American and immigrant communities in the 1960s? The African-American Muslims had established a true integrationist community through the guidance of leaders like Malcolm X, melding an essentialist understanding of Islamic orthodoxy with a comfortable preservation of African-American 16 culture. Meanwhile, revolutionary changes were happening in the immigrant community. Michael Suleiman described the new immigration trend: Several factors…caused a substantive and major reversal in [the Muslim immigrant] situation. First the dismemberment of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arab/Muslim refugees, some of whom eventually found their way to the United States. Second, the struggle for independence in the Middle East and the attendant instability produced a new group of highly educated but disgruntled professionals ready and willing to seek a new and better life elsewhere. Thus, when the United States changed and liberalized its immigration laws in the mid-1960s, they took advantage of these opportunities and emigrated here.… The new Arab/Muslim immigrants were markedly different from the earlier arrivals. For one thing, they were much better educated, and many came as immigrants, not as sojourners. Muslims came in much larger numbers.16 The changes to the immigration laws that Suleiman refers to are the 1965 Immigration Act reforms in the Lyndon Johnson administration. The importance of these changes cannot be overemphasized, as a generation of elite, educated people streamed into the United States from all over the world. The immigrant Muslim community, previously composed primarily of working-class laborers and their descendants, was quickly overwhelmed by a large number of graduate and professional students. These new immigrants formed organizations that reinvigorated the immigrant Muslim community just as proto-Islamic and Islamic organizations reinvigorated the AfricanAmerican Muslim community. Formed in 1963, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) was the first organization (following the earlier Federation of Islamic Organizations, which was run primarily by pre-1965 Muslims) to concern itself with the establishment of a stable Muslim community in the US. MSA members began as quite culturalist, but quickly began evolving into an integrationist group for two reasons. First, they realized 17 that because their members came from so many different cultures, to establish a culturalist basis was to have to confront difficult questions about which culture would be adopted. An example is the struggle over giving the khutba (Friday sermon) in a language other than English. Eventually, it was realized that to reach the maximum number of audience members, and to attract non-Muslims to the audience, they needed to have an English khutba. The second factor driving the integrationist movement in the MSA was the realization that the descendants of these immigrants often had weak ties to their home countries. A significant effort was mounted to provide relevant answers to these children’s questions about Islam. These answers were grounded in traditional Islamic teaching but were framed in the American context, and were not necessarily based on fatawa (religious edicts) from the home countries. Before proceeding with a discussion of the forms that this integrationism took in the US among immigrants, it is useful to take a step back and understand the demographic breakdown of the immigrant community post-1965. The community was very heterogeneous in terms of time of arrival, country of origin, world events affecting immigration, and attachment to Islamic practice. Stewart Lawrence proposes a chronological differentiation among Arab immigrants. The first wave was the one mentioned earlier in this document, from the late nineteenth century to World War II. The second wave was from World War II to 1965; and the third, post-1965, wave has expanded to multiple nationalities.17 These waves correspond to different levels of Islamic practice. The first wave was assimilationist or culturalist and established few mosques. The second wave was more religiously 18 conscious and was more likely to be heavily culturalist. The final wave, the one that remains with us until today, was more integrationist, particularly as time went on. The presence of women and children, as mentioned earlier, helped spur this integrationism. Lawrence mentions that this wave also took place “in the midst of major international events: the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, an oil crisis in the Middle East, the fall of the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini’s triumph in Iran. These events increased religious consciousness and pressures toward orthodoxy among both new and old immigrants and also led to foreign sponsorship of activities in the United States.”18 These waves also varied in destination of immigration, with earlier waves going to New York City as urban labor and to rural areas as agricultural labor. Later waves were mostly to metropolitan areas for increasingly white-collar employment. Although South Asian Muslim immigration patterns followed a trajectory similar to Arab immigration, it is interesting to note that the post-1965 educated elite from this part of the world appear to have been highly conservative compared to the Arabs. They are less likely to assimilate and are also less likely (or at least, slower) to integrate, preferring home country-based culturalist modes of interaction with the American society around them. This difference can possibly be explained by the previous experience that South Asian Muslims had being a Muslim minority in India. As such, they had already developed a survival mechanism based on strongly inward-looking families and social circles. Of course, there are exceptions to these broad statements, but in general the difference between the two ethnicities seems striking. However, over the course of a generation, all ethnicities become more integrationist in their outlook, which has resulted in more mixed immigrant mosque communities. 19 World events have also increased the number of immigrants from various countries.19 The Afghani community came in large numbers after the Soviet invasion in 1979, particularly to the San Francisco Bay Area. Lebanese arrived after the start of the civil war in the 1970s and the Israeli invasion in 1982. The Iraqi Shi`a arrived after the Persian Gulf War of 1990. The later these immigrants came, the more likely they were to have religious affiliations rather than secular-nationalist ones. In fact, Cainkar remarks that changes in the negative stereotyping of Arabs to focus on the negative stereotyping of Muslims occurred in concert with changes among Arab populations in their own increasing self-identification with Islam.20 The infusion of religiously-centered populations into American mosques may be helping buoy integrationist efforts by forcing mosque communities to compromise on previously culturalist mores such as appointment of imams from only specific ethnicities. Attachment to religious practices is also a differentiating factor among certain subsets of the post-1965 immigration. Iranian and Turkish immigrants in particular are the most secular and identify least with Islam.21 This secularization is due in large part to the anti-Islamic modernization movements that were a large part of the twentieth-century history of these countries. These immigrants arrived with little incentive to preserve Islamic elements of their background. While they cannot be categorized as assimilationist, since they still maintain strong ties to their cultural roots, they have certainly remained off the map of the Muslim American community. When all is said and done, the chronological, political and religious trends that have brought post-1965 Muslim immigrants to US shores have no doubt resulted in a thriving community with institutions and a growing self-identification as American 20 Muslims. This has been particularly true in the San Francisco Bay Area, where a highly educated immigrant population and organized African-American Muslim mosques have independently melded with a progressive Bay Area society to create a successful model for Muslim integration. Breakdown of Muslim Population in the United States, 2002 (total: approx. 7 million)22 AM IC N ER A AF IC N RA 30 % SO T UH ASIA N 33% OT ER HS 5% EUO N R PEA 2% SO T EA UH ST ASIA N 2% AF IC N RA 3% ARBS A 25% 21 Breakdown of San Francisco Bay Area Traditionally Muslim Ethnicities23 Total Total Asian Total Total Total Sri Total Arab Population Indian* Pakistani Bangladeshi Lankan Population Afghan Iranian 1,443,741 46,294 2,639 n/a n/a 6,938 8,008 5,604 Alameda 948,816 12,716 1,002 n/a n/a 5,089 2,965 5,485 Contra Costa 247,289 1,673 n/a n/a n/a 1,468 n/a 1,908 Marin 124,279 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a Napa 776,733 5,948 877 n/a n/a 5,354 n/a 1,662 San Francisco 707,161 13,092 429 n/a n/a 8,464 n/a 3,743 San Mateo 1,682,585 68,159 3,276 491 403 8,919 813 13,467 Santa Clara 394,542 3,680 n/a n/a n/a 1,302 n/a 487 Solano 458,614 2,013 n/a n/a n/a 1,407 n/a 734 Sonoma 33,871,648 348,746 28,359 3,842 6,944 190,890 25,112 159,016 California N/A = the sub-group was too small to report without impacting confidentiality restrictions * the vast majority of this group are people of non-Muslim faiths San Francisco Bay Area Counties24 22 Reaction of US Society to the Growth of the US Muslim Community US immigration history is filled with swings between openness and protectionism. One need only look at the history of any single ethnic group, whether Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Indian or Mexican to see how those groups’ migration patterns have been disrupted by shifting immigration legislation. However, as mentioned earlier, as far as the most recent wave of Muslim immigrants is concerned, the country opened its doors and offered seemingly limitless opportunities, particular for those coming for higher education. While a significant percentage of the community came to work as laborers, Muslims have one of the highest percentages of college degrees and graduate degrees of any ethnic or religious group. Nearly 60% of Muslims in the US have a college degree, and over half earn more than $50,000 per year.25 Coming here for further education had two effects. First, it enriched the brainpower of the US economy (at the expense of developing countries) as these students stayed on. Second, it set the stage for the development of tools for integration into the larger community. As will be discussed below, unlike other immigrant communities, Muslims tend to stick quite strongly to their value systems. As such, one would expect the community to be on a collision course with the larger American society. Part of the reason why this looming “clash” has not occurred is because Muslims have learned to adapt their Islamic beliefs to the American context, as will be discussed later. Because of this integration, Muslims have lived relatively anonymously next to their neighbors. While unrest occurred in Muslim countries abroad, the US population, 23 by and large was unaffected. In short, the reaction of the US society to internal Muslim communities, with some exceptions, has been noticeably silent. However, one important set of factors external to our equation has had a profound effect on the way Americans see Islam. These factors are exogenous events on the world scene that have disrupted the trajectory of the development of the American Muslim community. Events such as the first Persian Gulf war, the Salman Rushdie crisis and, of course, the events of September 11 have forced US Muslims to stop and take stock of culturalist tendencies that may have been influencing the way they interacted with American society as a whole. For its part, a heretofore blissfully ignorant American society was suddenly and violently awakened to a foreign “threat,” which many could not help but associate with the religion of Islam. The actions of a few radical co-religionists suddenly cast the spotlight on the Muslim community. Several metrics can help us track the affect of this awareness. First, unfortunately, hate crimes against Muslims or those thought to be Muslim or Arab significantly increased in the aftermath of September 11. Anti-Muslim Discrimination Reports Filed with CAIR in the United States 1200 1000 800 600 400 284 200 0 1997/98 1998/99 1999/2000 2000/01 2001/02 2002 2003 1019 602 525 285 322 366 24 These data, collected by the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR),26 show a clear and disturbing upward trend in reported hate crimes. Some of this trend can be attributed to increased reporting by victims. But much of it is no doubt linked to real increases in crime. From all areas of the country, reports continue to come in to civil rights organizations on a daily basis of disturbing Islamophobic behavior. In February 2006, a tenured professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan State University in Lansing sent an email to representatives of the MSA on campus stating that, “I counsul [sic] you dissatisfied, agressive [sic], brutal and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile ‘protests.’ If you do not like the values of the West -- see the 1st Ammendment [sic] -- you are free to leave.”27 In April 2006, a Douglasville, Georgia, family’s van was torched and “Killers Go Home!” was spray-painted on the wall of their home.28 The San Francisco Bay Area saw an upward trend in incidences, but the political environment of the larger community, combined with higher-than-average education levels, prevented more of a disturbance. The second metric that we can use to show the effect of these exogenous events is the increase in interfaith and education outreach events. In the Bay Area, the Islamic Networks Group (ING) had been doing educational outreach to schools, places of worship and other social institutions for several years before the events of September 11. Their current reach is North America-wide, through 13 official affiliate bureaus. Their modus operandi consisted of responding to teacher requests for a speech by sending out trained volunteers to give talks about Islam and Muslims. The number of speech requests 25 they received increased by more than 50%, up to nearly 900 classrooms in the year after September 11. In short, while exogenous factors may be profoundly shaping the way the community reacts to its host society, if we control for the effects of these events by looking at the societal effects in uneventful periods of time, we see that the US has been a fairly ideal host country in terms of flexibly accepting the Muslim immigrant community. I do not want to downplay signs of discrimination such as the Patriot Act, use of secret evidence and individual hate crimes; but if we are looking at these relative to discrimination in the UK and across Europe, the US is a much more conducive environment. One qualitative way of measuring this relative openness, particularly in the Bay Area, is the lack of discussion around what it means to be “American” and whether or not that is compatible with Islamic values. Evolution of the Community First Phase: Economic Survival As with the waves that preceded them, the first post-1965 immigrants came with the express purpose of gaining skills and earning an income that could then be remitted to their families in their home countries. Most came on temporary visas to complete higher degrees or training programs (e.g., in medicine). It is no surprise then that the first major institution developed by this first generation was the MSA. In the Bay Area, the MSAs⎯particularly at UC-Berkeley, San Francisco State University and Stanford University (where it was known as the Islamic Society)⎯served as a means for students to meet their social and spiritual needs while in school. In sharp contrast to most MSAs 26 today, up until the 1980s they served primarily as a vehicle to deal with the internal needs of the community, composed primarily of students and their families. MSAs helped immigrants cope with the difficult circumstances of living as Muslims in a predominantly non-Muslim society, something many of them were not familiar with. Upon graduating from their universities, many of these individuals remained in the US to take advantage of optional training periods that their student visas permitted. At this point most were still intent on going back to their home countries. The implications of this were that, beyond MSA, few if any institutions were established at the national level, and minimal local institutions existed. However, as mentioned earlier, the turning point was the realization that their families had established roots in America and did not want to go back. This was particularly true of children who had already begun their schooling (and therefore their socialization) in America. So, whereas the first generation focused more on the struggle to transition in a new context, the second generation was more concerned with conflicts of identity in America as they bridged the divide between home-country-focused home life and American school life.29 An interesting area that needs to be explored further is the implication this difference between immigrants and their children had on education. Immigrants were heavily focused on secular education as a means to success, just as they themselves had achieved the American Dream by advancing their secular education in the US. But once they realized that the Islamization of their children would not happen by osmosis, as it had in their home countries, they became more concerned with the establishment of Islamic schools to couple secular education with Islamic knowledge. The hallmark of the 27 evolution to an integrationist community was the realization that, in order to make Islam relevant to their children, immigrants needed to Islamize not their children, but the knowledge itself, co-opting what their children learned as a part of Islamic knowledge, e.g., studying social sciences from a Muslim perspective, and tracing the Islamic contributions to math and science. It was important not to teach Islamic sciences as just a separate course, but rather to integrate secular knowledge into Islamic classes and vice versa. This will be discussed in more detail in the next section; but suffice it to say that a more integrated approach was necessary for Islam to remain relevant to future generations. In short, the economic survival phase, while not resulting in any true institutionbuilding, laid the foundation for American Muslims to transition to an integrationist, institution-building frame of mind. This set a course of action that ultimately ensured successful survival for Muslims living in metropolitan areas throughout the country, including the San Francisco Bay Area. Second Phase: Building of Infrastructure As Nyang mentions, second in importance only to the question of identity is the challenge to build Islamic institutions.30 While the question of identity is still being wrestled with nationally in the US Muslim community, institution-building began in earnest as the second generation started coming of age. Earlier Muslim groups were ill-equipped to move to the level of institutionbuilding, not only because they came as sojourners intent only upon economic gain, but also due to poor levels of education and financial resources. The MSA served as the first 28 institution that helped shape American Islam through a connection to traditional sources of knowledge and the establishment of pods of committed activists with knowledge both of Islam and of the American experience. At the same time, the transition of the Nation of Islam to orthodoxy was instrumental in the initiation of community-building among African-American Muslims because it opened its doors to non-African-Americans and created a ready-made organization equipped to deal with this task in concert with the immigrant-led MSA.31 Temples in San Francisco and Oakland became mosques; and new mosques opened in primarily African-American locations in East Oakland and East Palo Alto. As both the African-American and immigrant communities began seriously laying down foundations for a long-term presence in the US, two particular institutions became paramount: the mosque and the school. I will explore the development of each of these types of institutions. As Gulzar Haider notes, mosques in the United States began in houses and storefronts; and when they began to be purchased, their adherents initially wanted them to blend into the landscape.32 They did this by purchasing and converting private and business properties. This mosque evolution was driven largely by the growth of communities. Growth meant a need for more space but was also accompanied by an increasing confidence in the right that Muslims felt they had to manifest their faith in whatever way they felt was appropriate. Thus, by the end of the twentieth century, Muslims wanted their mosques to be statements of Islamic identity—for example, through architecturally striking minarets and domes. 29 The transition to architecturally recognizable mosques (according to a “national portrait” interfaith study, 26% of mosques are purpose-built) was a marked divergence from the approach taken by an older, successful Muslim minority, that in China. Before foreign money started funding the building of mosques in China 30 years ago, virtually all mosques were distinctly Chinese in architecture, e.g., the Great Mosque of Xian, which is over 1,300 years old. Also, the ancient Oxtail Street Mosque in Beijing is difficult to distinguish from other, surrounding classical Chinese architecture; and this has helped the Chinese Muslim community thrive and be respected by its neighbors. This reflects the fact that the Chinese were highly integrative and were very careful about essentializing Islam to preserve core beliefs while adapting to Chinese society. Effectively, Islam was made a Chinese religion, to the point where it was actually recognized as an official faith of the Empire and came to be known by writing two Chinese ideograms, “purity” and “truthfulness.” In the US it seems that architecturally distinct buildings are not in conflict with integrationism, perhaps a commentary on the homogeneity of Chinese society versus the American spirit of diversity. Nevertheless, following the national trend, in the Bay Area the majority of mosques are not readily distinguishable from their exteriors as mosques. It is interesting to note that distinguishable mosques in South San Francisco, Hayward and Fremont are run primarily by communities dominated by a single ethnic group, whether from Fiji, Pakistan or Afghanistan. The presence of a single ethnic group is generally a strong signal of a culturalist community; and sure enough, these communities are dominated by populations that speak a home-country language and focus less on outreach services for the greater 30 community. The more diverse communities seem to place a priority on services and programming over mosque architecture. It is also worth noting that Jane Smith mentions that, “while many of the structures designed as mosques follow a classical style of Islamic architecture, it appears that a new American style is gradually emerging, related to the particular locations of these edifices.”33 This emerging style seems to be a natural tendency towards the time-tested approach for integration developed in China (and India for that matter). The adaptation of mosque architecture to American architectural styles is a symbol of the permanence of Muslims in the US. The design and construction of any US mosque, regardless of architectural style, is the manifestation of a drive to establish a place of permanence in the US. US mosques have become social centers for local communities, hosting weddings, funeral prayers, fundraisers and lectures from visiting notables and even housing scout troops. The mosques were used as proxies for other, missing institutions, such as schools and hostels. It is for this reason that “mosques” have evolved into “Islamic centers” that help the integrationist community address multiple pressing needs. Even though mosques have served such a primal purpose in carving out “Islamic space” in America, it has often proven difficult to raise the funds necessary for their construction. This despite the growing economic prosperity of the Muslim community. Jane Smith explains that, Traditionally, members of Islamic societies do not pledge to the support of a religious institutions, as such support comes from the state. Muslims in other parts of the world attend the mosque according to their needs and interests but do no consider themselves “members.” In the American context, the situation differs markedly. Mosques and Islamic centers generally function as self-supporting units, often dependent on the 31 contributions of the local Muslim community and on fundraising activities for maintenance and continuation of services. Those who attend sometimes react with annoyance if expected to “pledge” to the support of the mosque, claiming that it is a Christian and not an Islamic custom.34 Communities have gradually realized that this perception must be overcome if US Muslims are to meet their growing needs. It’s a realization that marks a change from a culturalist view of mosque attendance and organization to an integrationist view based in an understanding that the American mosque, like the American church or synagogue is member-funded and -maintained. In recent years, this realization has been measured not only in increasing mosque infrastructure fundraising, but in increasing funding for programs and services. The Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara raises several hundred thousand dollars each year from its congregation. The lion’s share still goes to building and upgrading infrastructure, but an increasing amount is going towards human resources and programming budgets. Smith goes on to note that, “the matter of financing becomes even more complicated when foreign governments—Iran or Saudi Arabia, for example—offer support to communities in this country. While the infusion of monies may be welcome, the expectations that recipients assume certain social and political positions may not be.”35 This realization that foreign funding can have unwelcome strings attached to it also indicates a maturing of local mosques. More communities now are building an American Muslim-focused funding strategy that does not involve foreign government sources. This is a trend that reflects a focus on creating a Muslim community that is 32 integrated into American society financially and operationally. It also reflects a desire to create American Muslim spaces independent of outside influences. Though architecture and financing represent a previously initiated integrationist movement, a trend that is still in the making is the de-racialization of mosques. It should be noted that mosques draw upon geographically finite memberships and thus are naturally likely to be relatively racially homogeneous (particularly African-American mosques). However, some larger mosques are beginning to show more diversity. The Muslim Community Association in the Bay Area is an example of this diversity, with more than 30 nationalities represented. Other mosques in the East Bay tend to be more homogeneous, with South Asian and Afghani communities dominating their respective mosque administrations. The language of khutab (sermons) and lectures in these mosques often drives membership. Conversion to English khutab is helping racial and ethnic diversification. Nyang writes that, It should be pointed out that other American religions are still grappling with this racial problem. Muslim Americans are neither racially homogeneous nor ethnically monolithic. Because of this sociological fact, one challenge to Muslims is to attempt to build the bridges within the Muslim communities necessary to spare the Muslim Americans the racial divide that presently splits the other Abrahamic religions into multiple ethnic/racial islands.36 An initial step in this direction seems to be the growing number of descendants of immigrants who attend African-American mosques and bring African-American Muslim leaders on campuses to give MSA-sponsored lectures and khutab. It is interesting to note that these lecturers seem to resonate more with youth because they address issues of time and place that are relevant for Muslims who have grown up in the American context. 33 Once a mosque has been established, the second imperative is education. As mentioned earlier, Islamic and secular education and the relationship between them are at the forefront of most Muslim parents’ issues. Smith discusses how parents used to think about this issue: A few families, who are sufficiently concerned about American education, and with appropriate contacts and financial resources, choose to send their children abroad for their education. Other families, however, even though they may have concerns about American schools, argue for not removing children from the public arena. Worried that the isolation of private or home schooling will not prepare them for their eventual transition into American public life, these parents hope that proper Islamic training in the home and the mosque or Islamic center will sufficiently “arm” their children to make wise decisions.37 Traditionally, secular and Islamic education were still considered separately, even if children were sent to “Islamic” schools (where Islamic education classes were separate from secular education classes). Schools such as the Granada Islamic School (GIS) in the Bay Area have had to make a decision to pursue excellent academics rather than focus on traditional Islamic studies.38 Thus, we see a focus on science, math, English and standardized test reviews in Granada classrooms. However, more recently, Islamic organizations have encouraged parents to think of education as a fusion between spiritual and material. A pamphlet from the Council for Islamic Schools in North America states that, “parents should keep a copy of the Qur’an, Seerah and Hadith available. When the child is studying history, geography, science or social science, they should look up in the index of the Qur’an and the Hadith for comparable subject matter and show the parallel ideas from the Islamic point of view.”39 Beyond the Islamization of education, the importance of which was discussed above, American Muslims are beginning to think in a sophisticated fashion about two 34 elements of their children’s education experience that will further help them adjust to being Muslims in America. First, there is a growing realization that if young Muslims are to adjust to life in America, then they need to be exposed to that life at an appropriate time. As such, many mosque-based Islamic schools, including the few full-time schools in the Bay Area, are hesitating to add secondary school grades, not only to avoid taking on the financial burden of maintaining such facilities, but also to encourage parents to introduce their children into public or secular private schools to integrate them into the larger society in a timely manner. Parents are realizing that sheltering their children until they enroll in college does not always give them the social preparation they need to adapt to the university environment. Second, a positive externality of establishing an Islamic school is that Muslim children are introduced to Muslims of other backgrounds, thereby increasing their cultural fluency in the increasingly diverse and amalgamated Muslim public square. This exposure prepares Muslim students for their future interactions with American Muslims from a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as people of varying levels of religiousness. The Granada Islamic School and Silicon Valley Academy in the Bay Area are examples of this diversity in the student population. However, educational integration has yet to be seen between African-Americans and immigrants. Schools such as the Clara Muhammad School or the Masjid al-Islam School, both in Oakland, are predominantly African-American. I don’t expect this to change anytime soon, as a large confounding factor is the geographic separation between the two communities, making mixing of student populations unlikely in the short term. 35 Third, Muslim parents are learning that, just as important as Islamic law and history is impressing upon their children Islamic ethics and akhlaaq (manners and values). The spirit of Islam as embodied through these elements is often neglected in the race to provide the Islamic letter of the law. To truly pass on the spirit of Islam to the next generation requires a specific program of learning that wasn’t always necessary in home countries where social interaction often sufficed in passing on such lessons. Together, mosque-building and education constitute the first and most important steps in establishing an institutional presence for Islam in America. Since these projects have been ongoing among American Muslims for a few decades now, we have been able to chart their progress and gauge the success of Muslims in establishing permanent roots in the US as they enter the third phase of integration. Third Phase: Community Sustainment and Institution Building After building the physical infrastructure needed to fulfill the most basic needs of local congregations, Muslims in America have begun shifting to address other needs that had been heretofore put on the backburner or ignored. The mere acknowledgement of certain needs, such as the need for women’s shelters, indicates a quantum leap for Muslims in the US. It is a reflection that some US Muslims are finally leaving behind culturalist constraints on taboo subjects to address their real needs as they think about the long-term health of their community. I will focus on certain aspects of this community sustainment, namely, financial services, political institutions, traditional Islamic scholarship, women’s involvement, dawah (propagation of the faith), product offerings to US Muslims, and social services training. 36 Islamic law very specifically addresses riba (monetary interest) as an assault on social justice because it disproportionately affects the poor at the expense of the wealthy. Unfortunately, this edict makes problematic certain transactions that most Americans take for granted. A Muslim family that wants to take prohibitions on interest seriously will not take loans to pay college tuition, nor will they take a mortgage. Nyang, through his assimilationist-simulationist model described earlier, explains how different elements of the community will try to deal with this situation. He notes that assimilationists either will reject interest-based transactions, trying to remove themselves entirely from the interest-based economy, or will fully assimilate into the American system, accepting that interest-based transactions are a part of American life. Eventually, they will create justifications for dealing with banks that charge interest and with home-building companies that include interest in their mortgage rates.40 Simulationists, on the other hand, will attempt to promote economic independence but will eventually use this prohibition as a means to create Islamically acceptable, “just” economic institutions. I would concur that there are indeed members of the Muslim community who will, with varying degrees of guilt, accept the inevitability of interest-bearing transactions. However, I would categorize these as assimilationist tendencies as I define them. The integrationist perspective, now gaining more and more credence as US Muslims gain critical mass, is that alternative institutions can be created to deliver halal (permissible) loans for observant Muslims. For example, in the Bay Area, organizations such as the Ameen Housing Cooperative and Guidance Financial Corporation are providing shari`ah-compliant home financing. We also see that multinational financial corporations such as Citicorp and HSBC have noticed this niche (and it doesn’t hurt that 37 there are hundreds of millions of potential customers in the Muslim world) and are responding to it with appropriate products. I will discuss later some implications of products from outside the Muslim community being offered to Muslims. Another area of integration, political activism, stems from a growing understanding of the permanence of the Muslim presence in the US and thus an Islamic desire to address issues of the day. The concept of amr bil-ma`roof wa nahy `anilmunkar (enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong) drives the practicing Muslim to use the tools at his or her disposal in the struggle to accomplish that which is “just.” Most Muslims are fiscally liberal and concerned about foreign policy. Over 90% believe that the government should provide universal health care, funding for after-school programs and more generous assistance to the poor.41 Eighty-seven percent of Muslims believe that the US must deal with social, economic and political inequalities around the world to deal with terrorism. Over 80% of Muslims believe that the US should help establish a Palestinian state and should stop financially supporting Israel. A large majority believe the US should also stop supporting authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.42 At the same time as they support issues of political justice, they also hold firmly to conservative social values, or what might be termed “family values.” Thus, one sees what might at first be considered contradictory political affiliations, wherein Muslims join the Republican Party but support decidedly non-Republican causes such as bigger government and affirmative action.43 The 1967 Arab-Israeli War served as a wake-up call for an American Muslim community that had until then been politically inactive. Per the Islamic mandate of amr 38 bil ma`roof, Muslims began a difficult internal dialogue about the permissibility and methodology of American political involvement. Here it is difficult to draw the lines along culturalist and integrationist leanings. There were clear culturalists who eschewed political involvement altogether, such as members of tablighi jamaat, one of the largest global Islamic movements, dedicated entirely to encouraging Muslims to return to worship. There were also clear integrationists who believed strongly that Muslims needed to be involved in the American political process, that by the Islamic principle of maslaha (community benefit) they were, in fact, required Islamically to be active in this sphere. However, in between these two poles were other members of the American Muslim community, whom I would still categorize as integrationist, who did not believe that the right approach was political activism. Among them were socially active AfricanAmerican Muslim groups who believed, based on their experience, that they had seen that the political system was inherently unjust and set up to preserve the status quo and that Muslim energies and resources were better spent in community development and creating global unity to revive Islam as a global force. The Sabiqun Movement, with a local presence in East Oakland, espoused this viewpoint. Another group was hizb-uttahrir, an organization whose philosophy was to reestablish the Islamic caliphate, an element of Islamic law that had been lost since the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I. This internal struggle among US Muslims was evident in survey results that Karen Leonard quotes: “while most mosque representatives survey in 2000 felt that Muslims should participate in American institutions (77%) and the political process (72%), between 65 and 70 percent of all mosques agreed ‘somewhat’ or ‘strongly’ with the 39 statement that ‘America is immoral.’ African American mosques felt that most strongly.”44 In the Bay Area, the case against political involvement was often made in flyers, newsletters and emails distributed by local representatives of hizb-ut-tahrir. However, this movement has become less of a force as time has gone by and as the urgency for engagement at the political level has increased. It is also interesting to note that political action was one of the first sparks for the concerted action between African-Americans and immigrant Muslims. The communities have been fairly separate until recently, partially as a result of geographic separation (with most African-American mosques located in large urban centers, while immigrant mosques tend to be more dispersed in the suburbs). Though the two communities have not yet been successful in presenting a unified political platform, the strong campus connections made in places like San Francisco State and UC-Berkeley between members of both communities (particularly between immigrant students and African-American community leadership) is an indication that this unification may perhaps occur as shared issues become more common. One can argue that this unification is essential for making US Muslims a legitimate voting bloc in future elections, as African-American Muslims constitute at least one-third of the US Muslim population and are the fastest-growing segment. American Muslims look to the American Jewish model as an inspiration of how a minority can build a powerful lobbying and voting bloc. At the same time, political representatives who look favorably upon the desires of their Jewish constituencies and lobbying groups often do not hold the same favorable views of Muslim desires. Suleiman mentions that, 40 In a very real sense, American (and Western) negative stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs have the specific political purpose to (1) discredit certain political views as well as those groups or individuals who either hold or might hold (and particularly propagate) these views, and (2) keep out of the legitimate political arena these groups or individuals, and to dehumanize or demonize them. Until recently, some American politicians sought to explain some of their pro-Israeli and anti-Muslim/Arab stances by claiming the greater interest, activity and concern of Jewish Americans. To a great extent, that was and is true. However, as Muslim and Arab Americans began to get active in the political process, they found that some candidates actively sought to distance and dissociate themselves from any Muslims or Arabs, as if these Muslim/Arab Americans are not full-fledged members of American society and politics. Thus…money was returned [from candidates] because it was from “Arabs” or because the contributions were viewed as supportive of the PLO and thus allegedly supportive of terrorism.45 Despite these obstacles, in the wake of the Bosnian civil war and, more recently, September 11, Muslim Americans have shifted heavily in favor of political activism. Suleiman mentions that, “Lately, Muslim/Arab information activity in the United States has met with some success. Thus, there is more information and more accurate information about Muslims/Arabs available to the general public. Also, stories with clearly anti-Muslim/Arab focus are more likely to be answered in the media.”46 In any case, this healthy flexibility in the US Muslim body politic bodes well for its ability to adapt to future changes in the American social and political landscape and preserve not only their way of life but also continue to assist their brethren overseas where possible. It is the simultaneous flexibility and traditional rooting of the integrationist model that will provide a successful basis for adjusting to future circumstances. As an example, in 2000 the Muslim immigrant community voted in large numbers for Bush because of his stance against secret evidence and Vice President Gore’s strong support for the state of Israel.47 Once US Muslims realized that this single- 41 issue focus resulted in an outcome they found less than ideal (in the wake of Iraq, domestic anti-terrorism laws and Guantanamo), they realized that they needed to not only work more closely with the African-American community on future political coordination, but also consider relevant domestic issues. Faced with a diversity of constituents and a diversity of issues, Bay Area organizations such as the American Muslim Alliance are struggling to create a cohesive political strategy for Muslim Americans. Because this struggle is to some degree tied to the political conservatism of the immigrant generation, it appears that second-generation Muslims are more likely to be able to find common ground with the issues of their African-American brethren. Another area where clear progress is being made in a variety of US locales is in thinking about the development of local Islamic scholarship. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the most prominent example of this is the establishment of the Zaytuna Institute, whose mission is to transmit traditional Islamic knowledge to American Muslim students. The Institute has established a scholar-in-residence program, bringing traditional scholars from the Muslim world, as well as Americans who have trained under traditional scholars, to teach for periods of time. The stated goal of this educational model is to create a traditionally grounded Islamic scholarly discourse in the West to address the particular issues of Muslims in the West. Perhaps underappreciated is the internal struggle in the US Muslim society around women’s involvement, particularly in identifying and separating cultural trappings from Islamic law. US Islamic organizations are showing a growing cognizance of the increasing involvement of women in participation and leadership. But at the individual level, American-born women still face difficulty finding a comfortable place in the 42 American Muslim social landscape. In facing the larger American society, young Muslim women face increased pressures in the US because they stand out more than Muslim men. Because the hijab has become such a symbol of the difference between the Western and Muslim ideal of a woman, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to wear it in one’s regular interactions. In more culturalist mosque communities, young women struggle against cultural constraints on their social interactions. This struggle is an example of the essentialization that separates the second generation from the first. As the US Muslim society matures and descendants of immigrants take on more leadership, changes in the role of women have become more visible. Muslim American women are finding space that helps them balance the Islamic call towards modesty (for both women and men) and having their say in the Muslim public square, something unheard of in of the many countries their parents and grandparents came from. An example of the changes in the role of women in Muslim organizations was the election in 2001 of Dr. Ingrid Mattson as vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, one of the largest Muslim American organizations. On the local level, in the Bay Area, women have taken executive leadership roles at outreach organizations such as the Islamic Networks Group and as part of the outreach function at the Muslim Community Association. In addition, the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in America, is run by a female executive director and a staff composed exclusively of women. Dawah (calling people to Islam) and accepting and educating new Muslims has also been a hallmark of the development of American Islam. Conversion has been a part of the African-American experience for 80 years, with proto-Islamic movements 43 extending back even further than that. WD Muhammad’s leadership in bringing the majority of African-American Muslims to orthodox Islam came relatively easily and quickly because of the systems and processes that the African-American community had put into place to establish truly grass-roots social circles based around Nation of Islam temples (later converted to mosques). But it has taken the immigrant Muslim community numerous stops and starts to establish institutions for dawah and new Muslim education. Leonard mentions that, A case can be made…that non-Muslims are increasingly being invited, to varying degrees according to the community and the nature of the occasion, into Muslim spaces in the United States. Thus, friends from work or school or the neighborhood may attend a wedding, a funeral, or the celebration of a child’s bismillah or ameen, all of which are events marked to some extent by religious rituals and displays. Here the nonMuslim adapts to the conventions of the sponsors, perhaps removing shoes, covering the head (women), and observing gendered seating arrangements.48 A clear mission for the dawah was articulated by Dr. Ismail al-Faruqi in 1983. He states that, “the Islamic vision provides the immigrant with the criterion with which to understand, judge, and seek to transform the unfortunate realities of North America.”49 This vision has been increasingly adopted at outreach-oriented mosques throughout the United States. In the Bay Area, we see this vision in the increasing prevalence of mosque “open houses” and media and public relations committees to not only provide information to media outlets, but also train young people for potential careers in journalism. This vision for dawah has sparked some Muslims, particularly in urban AfricanAmerican communities, to address social ills in America such as alcohol and drugs, sexual exploitation and family breakdown. It was an awakening in the Muslim 44 community of a divine command to address not only the internal needs of the community (as discussed previously) but also the needs of their newly adopted home. Masjid alIslam has become famous in its East Oakland neighborhood for converting its building from a crack den to a center for Muslim worship and for generally making the area safer for all of its neighbors. US Muslims initially took distinctly different approaches to dawah, namely the “Elijahian” approach, which followed Elijah Muhammad’s teachings on the effective separation of races to focus on the needs of a particular people, and the “Webbian” approach, which took Muhammad Webb’s view of Islam as a color-blind religion that addresses all peoples simultaneously.50 Regardless of the approach, as the call to dawah has resonated with integrationist immigrants, people like Imam Muhammad Abdul-Rauf, of the Islamic Center of Washington DC, have begun thinking about its manifestation in the United States. The following summarizes his developing thoughts on dawah in America: This writer enthusiastically envisages [the Islamic community] as developing into a organic element of the multi-cultural American social fabric, dovetailing the major values expressed in the American constitution and the Declaration of Independence with our fundamental Islamic values to contribute toward a viable 21st century American society that can truly live under the divine protection of the One Mighty God, Allah, in Whom we trust.51 While dawah has been embraced and institutionalized, a relatively immature area is meeting the needs of new Muslims once they have converted. African-American mosques, such as Masjid al-Islam and Masjid Waritheen (both in Oakland), have created systems to help these new members of the community through financial assistance, shelter and social services such as counseling, marital assistance, educational programs 45 and substance-abuse assistance. The African-American community is more advanced in this sphere because of a legacy of self-improvement dating back to the proto-Islamic missions. Nevertheless, the immigrant community is beginning to realize that providing dawah without follow-up is not appropriate and is marshaling resources to create classes for new Muslims and addressing their other needs on an ad hoc basis. It is expected that if the integrationist thesis holds true, they will extend their relationship with the AfricanAmerican community into the new Muslim sphere and will prioritize the needs of new Muslims as a part of the mosque’s service agenda. Continuing the theme of interaction with the larger American society, we can extend into the realm of business to look at it as an agent for the introduction of Islam into the public sphere. Nyang mentions that, “At least three areas can be identified as of mutual interest to the entire Muslim community in the United States.”52 First, Muslims see business as a means of survival in the US, harkening back to the roots of the immigrant experience as well as the roots of the African-American self-sufficiency philosophy. This economic drive has ramifications for the interaction with the larger society, as Muslims who previously isolated themselves within their communities look for new ways to participate in the larger economy. Second, beyond the personal economic benefit they derive, Muslims have started using business to provide value to the Muslim community. For example, an entire cottage industry has grown out of the strong desire to transmit knowledge of Islam to American Muslim children. A walk through the bookstores associated with mosques in the Bay Area will reveal CDs, videos, board games, story books, text books, and software that are produced to meet the insatiable demand for products that would provide halal alternatives for Muslim children. Third, 46 we are seeing non-Muslims beginning to provide products to the Muslim market. This trend has two implications. It allows Islam to be recognized as a part of the American fabric in that it is a market segment in and of itself. It also means that Muslim entrepreneurs who had until now addressed a captive market face the challenge of competition from others outside of the community, which will result in greater quality products but also more difficulty for Muslims who have thrived on addressing this niche. An example of this is the entry into the Bay Area halal meat market of as-Safa, a Canadian company run by non-Muslim ownership. In any case, the business-related changes occurring in the Muslim community represent another step in cementing a stable American Muslim presence. A more recent example is the design by a Dutch designer of the “capster,” a “hip and trendy” hijab for women. The capster was the brainchild of Cindy van den Bremen while she was a graduate student at the Design Academy of Eindhoven. She read in the news about the Dutch Commission of Equal Treatment had recently ruled that high schools could prohibit Muslim girls from wearing head coverings in gym class. Van Den Bremen realized that she could marry her design skills with her sense of social justice to create a scarf that would allow Muslim girls to cover their hair in physical education class. The capster has received positive reviews from Muslims and non-Muslims alike.53 These products have also started a healthy discussion about Muslim culture creation in the West. One young Muslim woman notes, “it just seems like they're trying to get acceptance from the non-Muslim population by making things more acceptable to them in their eyes.” Another mentions, For me, I guess this speaks to the bigger of issue of does American Islam develop by adapting to the culture as it is right now or by making our various backgrounds 47 more a part of the American fabric? I would say it needs to be a bit of both, but perhaps more the latter. In the conservative/professional world, perhaps the former is more effective. But American pop culture and trendy styles have already popularized many foreign [elements] (henna, long shirts with Indo-Pak designs, shoes that look like they're straight from India/Pakistan, remixed music). Beyond business and products from outside the Muslim community, Muslims have also started thinking about what services need to be offered within the community. An emerging phenomenon among US and UK Muslims is that of professionalized human resources. A measure of the growing influence of the integrationist drive is the desire, expressed through sermons and writings, to create a community that is well-adjusted to the American experience. In practice, we see this trend manifested in the increasing demand that imams be capable of addressing the specific issues of American Muslims, particularly youth. Fluency in English and experience with youth mentoring are required in almost every Islamic magazine advertisement for an open imam position. Leonard mentions that, “The role of an imam, similar to the role of other clergy, has taken on a ‘pastoral’ role, that spans a wide range of functions.”54 Institutions such as the Zaytuna Institute in the Bay Area, the Graduate School of Islamic Sciences in Virginia and even the multi-denominational Hartford Seminary are offering programs to train culturally competent imams who are equipped to deal with the spiritual, social and political needs of their communities. In addition to imams, other professionals are emerging to serve Muslim community needs. As long-held taboos are overcome, Muslim marriage and family counselors have discovered an untapped demand in the Muslim community for their services. An Arizona-based Muslim family and marriage counselor is fully booked to provide counseling services on his regular weekend trips to the Bay Area. Marriage counselors are even developing written materials to help young American Muslim 48 couples develop healthy relationships. Chaplains have been hired to minister to university students, armed forces personnel and prisoners. Muslim lawyers are asserting themselves in unprecedented numbers in the civil rights debate around the constitutionality of anti-terrorism legislation. All of these improved services to and within the US Muslim community point to the consensus that has built up around the integrationist approach, particularly as it is an approach that tackles previously unaddressed issues in the US Muslim society. Muslims in the US: Disaggregating Cultural and Religious Norms and Practices As American Muslims have developed the institutions and practices described previously, they have felt increasingly confident in looking past cultural norms brought from home countries to instead chart a course more appropriate for the American milieu. This includes fusing American themes and styles with Islamic requirements or sensibilities into architecture, products, and services. However, in contrast to this movement, the long history of scholars and fatawa (religious edicts) from home countries compelled many American Muslims to accept that Islamic legal guidance for their lives in America was sometimes irrelevant or inapplicable to their context. Muslims went from following foreign fatawa, regardless of applicability to the US context, to simply ignoring this religious guidance. Mosque communities grew in population but were underdeveloped in contextualized Islamic scholarship. Until recently, even mosque spokespeople were not well-versed in Islamic law. Leonard mentions that they have thus, “standardized and simplified the discourse, rendering it vulnerable to influences from overseas and also reducing the respect for the classical 49 schools of law.”55 In fact, Leonard notes that 52% of American Muslims at one point felt that the teachings of any particular madhhab (legal school of thought) were of little or no importance. In addition, a modernistic tendency has partially uprooted traditional scholarship, exposing the faith in the US to assimilation, culturalism and extremism. An added component was that converts were particularly likely to sense when practices they observed were home-country-based as opposed to being religious. The fact that culturalism impinged upon the evolution of Islamic legal thought in the US is related not only to lack of knowledge, but also to a purposeful attempt to maintain a certain status quo in immigrant communities. Leonard writes that, “religious practices help maintain cultural—particularly linguistic—identities for immigrants and thus are a form of social capital that both challenges adaptations to the United States and strengthens immigrant self-confidence.”56 It is no surprise then that descendants of immigrants, as well as converts, reacted negatively to the culturalism they detected in actions such as khutba language and the lack of women’s involvement in the mosque. Amina McCloud argues that immigrant Muslims were trying to impose home-countrybased customs on American Muslim communities, particularly as related to gender.57 As a result, more recently, integrationist groups and mosques began to seek authentic scholarship on their own to rekindle and essentialize the Islamic tradition while keeping in mind the longer-term goal of integrating this tradition into the American Muslim context. As a result of this trend, leading American Muslim scholars such as Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah in Chicago or Dr. Sherman Jackson in Ann Arbor, Michigan, are urging more and more that the context of modern life in the US should drive the issuance of US- 50 specific fatawa by people intimately familiar with the American experience. Leonard mentions that, “an increasing number of Muslim scholars disapprove of the application of Islamic legal decisions made elsewhere to the contemporary American context and encourage fiqh scholarship in the United States.”58 As such, there have been two movements in the US. First, many more American Muslims are heading to Muslim heartlands with the intention of returning as qualified Muslim legal scholars. Second, efforts are ongoing to establish a coordinated network of scholars in the United States, such as the Fiqh Council of North America. Organizations such as this have faced questions unique to the American Muslim experience, such as prayer direction towards Mecca from the Western Hemisphere (eastward using a flat earth projection or northeast as the shortest distance across a sphere?) or the permissibility of terminating Muslim marriages in a state court versus through an imam. Adding to the complexity is that all four Sunni schools of thought as well as the Shi`a perspective are present in the United States, provoking discussion between scholars about the weight of different adilla (evidences). This dialogue is an example of the discussions that must take place for US Muslims to rigorously disaggregate home-country cultural norms from the Islam tradition and properly integrate American norms in their place. An example of the integration of American norms and practices is the development of a distinct American Islamic legal discourse. Today’s American Muslim scholars, such as Hamza Yusuf in the Bay Area or Siraj Wahhaj in New York, are able to reach Muslim youth at a national level by speaking to them in a language they understand and about issues that they face in the US. For example, scholars will talk about issues of conversion and how to deal with a disapproving non-Muslim family. They will also talk 51 about the importance and form of English-language educational materials, both for Muslim and non-Muslim audiences. These types of discussions are a marked turnaround from previous decades, wherein ethnic consciousness, as Nyang mentions, had set in among American Muslims.59 Nyang describes a trend wherein, as more Muslim immigrants arrived in US communities, the immigrant community fragmented into ever smaller sub-communities. For example, immigrants were able to split into Arabs and South Asians. Arabs were in turn able to split into Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi communities. Nyang accepted this as a natural evolution of an ever-growing community. But it seems that the integrationist movement in the Bay Area, particularly among children of immigrants, has resulted in a convergence of ethnic communities into a larger American Muslim group. It appears that the MSAs have played a pivotal role in this effort, as Muslims of a variety of backgrounds are brought together randomly and learn to naturally function as an essentialist, integrationist Muslim group. MSAs at Berkeley, Stanford, Santa Clara University and San Jose State have served as incubators for American Muslim thought and activism, with alumni going on to take important roles in local mosques, outreach organizations and educational institutions, thereby influencing other, less integrated parts of the community. Nyang states, “American Muslim ‘identity entrepreneurs’ and ordinary members of all generations confront the problem of connecting to others in the US national contexts. A South Asian American Muslim has choices, to join with Middle Easterners, other American Muslims, Asian Americans, or people of color, and the US context encourages different kinds of coalitions in different conditions. The lead seems to come from campuses.”60 52 Of course, integrationism has not appeared evenly across multiple geographies on the US. For example, Mona Darwich-Gatto examines the Hawaiian Muslim community, consisting of myriad ethnicities. The roughly 3000 members of this community have not been as successful as the Bay Area in establishing an integrative basis of engagement with the larger Hawaiian society. The key variable in the case of this community appears to be the “sense of belonging” of the Muslim community. Because of the high cost of living and relative isolation, many Hawaiian Muslim residents are transient, particularly the large number of Muslims coming from the armed forces. As such, many community members do not feel a need to invest time or resources in building community infrastructure, such as schools and outreach organizations. In addition, it doesn’t appear that the level of education in the Muslim community in Hawaii is as high as the one in the Bay Area, resulting in numerous culturalist disagreements over ideology, and splits resulting from a preference to use home country languages instead of English.61 A final note on the future of Muslims in America is the critical nature of coordination between indigenous and immigrant segments of the population. Indigenous Muslims (those of African-American, European-American and other non-immigrant descent) are a growing segment of US Muslims. They provide the American Muslim community with a unique connection to the larger American society, and a means for accelerated integration. In the Bay Area, one of the most interesting trends has been the growing relationship between second-generation descendants of immigrants from affluent suburbs and African-American Muslims in San Francisco and Oakland. As mentioned previously, many of these connections are made while the second-generation descendants are at college, where they are exposed to leadership from African-American mosques for 53 the first time by attending lectures on campus and even going to study circles at the African-American mosques. These connections bode well for a community looking to create a viable American Muslim culture. A more personal example of these connections is the growing intermarriage of Muslims (in both the US and UK) not only with Muslims of other immigrant ethnicities, but also intermarriage with indigenous Muslims. In fact, the vast majority of Muslims of European descent marry into the immigrant community, though African-Americans tend to marry within their sub-community. Also, often the convert adapts to the home country culture of his or her spouse rather than the other way around. Still, in general, intermarriage is an example of integrationism, as the community assimilates within itself, rather than into the larger society, thereby preserving Islam in an American form. As such, the evolution of the integrationist Muslim community in the Bay Area can be used as a model not just in the UK (which will be examined in the next case study) but also in parts of the US that are still coming to grips with problems of the culturalist model. Muslim Community in Britain: Introduction At first glance, the UK Muslim experience is similar to the US experience in that both communities, in their current forms, resulted from quite recent migration starting in the late 1960s. Both communities grew partially as a result of British colonialism, which spread the English medium educational system through much of the developing world. Socio-economically, both communities are diverse. And while both communities are struggling with similar issues of immigrant-descendant transfer of faith and culture, they 54 have refused to adhere to the standard model of assimilation, instead progressing along alternate trajectories. Indeed, during interviews conducted in both communities, young people expressed a similar situation of feeling a split identity between when they are at home with their families and when they are at school with their “American/British” friends. However, that is where the similarity ends. Through interviews and research, it seems clear that the UK story is profoundly affected not only by the actions of UK Muslims along the lines of culturalism, but also by the subsequent reaction of the larger British society. As mentioned earlier, America, despite its mixed history with immigration policy, was built by immigrants and is composed of immigrants. On the other hand, as mentioned by Yvonne Haddad, “While it is probably not true that Muslims are more welcome in the United States than in Canada or Europe simply because of [the] history of diversity, it is certainly the case that, for many Europeans and Canadians, concerns for the stability of their (mainly) homogeneous societies rise with the increasing presence of a Muslim population.”62 This reaction will be discussed in more detail later. Suffice it to say that the British society, as well as the Muslim community itself, is sufficiently different from its counterpart in America to explain the profound relative underperformance in the British Muslim community’s efforts to integrate. Overview of Muslim History in the UK First Wave: Early Wayfarers and Converts Evidence of a Muslim presence in England dates back to the post-Crusades era, when some notable Englishmen (e.g., John Nelson) converted to Islam. In 1641 the 55 presence of a mosque was reported in London. Early institutions were primarily to address the needs of converts from the gentry as well as Indian seafarers. Neither was able to perpetuate a permanent presence on the British Isles, primarily because they never established a critical mass.63 The Indian workers in particular were quick to return home once they had accumulated sufficient wealth. Second Wave: Imperial Migration Historical sources have recorded Muslim Britons since the eighteenth century. Indians came to the country to work for imperial businesses such as the East India Company.64 These workers came without families, clearly intent on a temporary stint to earn incomes several times the amount they would earn in India. Haddad mentions, “The earliest American immigrants generally came for purposes of employment, as was the case in some European states.… For the most part, significant emigration to Europe [was] encouraged by many European countries to meet their particular labor needs, especially after the Second World War.”65 Muslim sailors and ship cooks also came from Bangladesh in the late nineteenth century, settling in large numbers in London and other port towns. In addition, a significant number of Yemeni migrants settled in southern England following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1864.66 Aden, Yemen, was a refueling stop on the journey from India and East Asia to England. The immigration was soon supplemented by environmental and political upheaval. The building of a dam in the Kashmir province of India in the early 1960s led to a surge of emigrants from flooded villages in the Mirpur district.67 These immigrants 56 recharged the heretofore ebbing trend of blue collar workers from the subcontinent entering the country. Immigrants of South Asian descent from the east coast of Africa also came around the same time due to political upheaval in countries like Uganda which were engaged in a policy of “Africanization.” These immigrants, in contrast to the Mirpuris, were often more highly educated, with professionals such as doctors, lawyers and engineers fleeing to the UK. This wave of migration, particularly after World War II, was the first to establish stable roots in the UK.68 What keyed this settlement was the decision by increasing numbers of immigrants to bring their families over to the UK rather than going back to their home countries. As with the US case, bringing families over caused an immediate change in priorities, from long work hours (driven in part by not having an extended family to care for or socialize with) to institution building, particularly mosques. The first known mosque opened in Cardiff in 1860. Thereafter, communities popped up in all of the major cities, with significant pockets in East London driven by the influx of Bangladeshi immigrants. An interesting pattern that developed was the intense concentration of these immigrants in just these pockets. “Concentration of immigrants from specific parts of South Asia grew in specific parts of Britain.”69 Nielsen mentions that nearly half of British Muslims live in and around London.70 This immigrant generation did have some success in setting up institutions that would help their communities maintain an Islamic way of life. By the early 1970s, immigrants had gained greater familiarity with local British administrative structures relating to, among other things, planning permission, charitable status, and allocation of public resources.71 However, they were still isolated geographically and socially from 57 the larger British community for a number of reasons.72 First, language was still an issue, as immigrants worked primarily in blue collar positions that required little in the way of communication skills. Thus, the ability to engage and interact with the larger British community was stunted. Second, prejudices in the larger community prevented inroads even when such interaction was desired by the fledgling Muslim community. As will be discussed later, British identity seemed to be a strong factor in the acceptance of immigrants, to the point of “Britishness” being associated with Anglo-Saxon background, Judeo-Christian faith and the English language. This British nationalism stunted the assimilation of Muslim immigrants into the larger community. Interestingly, a third factor that played into the isolation of the Muslim community was the actions of Muslims themselves. Twentieth century immigrants, arriving in a well-documented pattern of chain migration wherein relatives and friends followed others to the UK, tended to form enclaves in port towns and large inland cities. The latest migration wave to the UK actually comes around the same time as the post1965 wave in the US, but was more concentrated, allowing for rapid community formation. This clustering allowed for the communities to develop critical mass to rapidly form mosques and schools for families arriving to join men who had been living in the UK for months or years. The enclaves also allowed families to recreate social networks from large Muslim populations in home countries. While these positive elements helped new immigrants adjust to life in a very different, sometimes hostile society, they did little to help integrate these immigrants. Once these enclaves were formed, it became very easy to remain clinging to these social networks rather than engaging and interacting with the larger community, which would have facilitated the 58 natural mixing of Islam into British society. It became easy for the British to see the British Muslim community as a foreign, even parasitic entity. With no well-developed tools for engagement and interaction, Muslim communities withdrew into themselves even more. Culturalist forces in the community were strengthened, as they created a deconstruction of British society as decidedly amoral, with the only solution for Muslims being continued Balkanization in larger cities. Third “Wave”: A Community Struggles to Redefine Itself Despite these environmental disadvantages, the UK Muslim community continued to thrive and grow. The true test of the community’s mettle came in the emergence of the next generation. In contrast to the American community, there was no large indigenous Muslim community from which immigrants could absorb and co-opt a native Muslim culture. Also, the immigrant experience itself, as described above, was in marked contrast to the highly educated wave of immigrants that entered the US after 1965. Into this environment emerged a conflicted second generation. While in the US a healthy implicit debate occurred down to the individual level about the relative merits of culturalist versus integrationist modes of coping with Muslim life in the West, in the UK few opportunities existed for flexing the integrationist element of typical immigrant-host country discourse. As such, culturalist symptoms such as the previously described enclaves persist until today despite the passing of multiple generations of British Muslims. 59 The dramatic growth of Muslims in the UK can be traced by looking at British census data. Using ethnicity as a proxy for religion (since religious affiliation was not collected in the census), we see the following data from the British census in 1981: British Muslim Census Data, 198173 Ethnicity Population Pakistan-Bangladesh 360,000 India 130,000 East Africa 27,000 Malaysia 23,000 Nigeria 15,000 Turks 5,000 Turkish Cypriots 40,000 Arabs 50,000 Iranians 20,000 TOTAL 690,000 Ten years, later, we see that the population has increased by 50%: British Muslim Census Data, 199174 Ethnicity Population Bangladesh 160,000 Pakistan 476,000 Indians 134,000 Malaysians 43,000 Arabs 134,000 Turks 26,000 Turkish Cypriots 45,000 Sub Saharan Africans 115,000 TOTAL 1,133,000 There is little doubt that this dramatic growth, concentrated in London and other large cities, had a dramatic impact on social welfare systems, educational systems and the very fabric of British culture. According to the 2001 census, 8.5% of Londoners profess Islam as their faith. Islam is the second largest faith group in the city. The level of acceptance of British society of this ethno-religious wave is questionable. 60 One could argue that evidence of integration exists in British culture. For example, there are a few Muslim members of Parliament, and Muslims seem represented on TV (through specialty cable channels) and in professions such as medicine and law. In addition, one finds hints of Muslim penetration in the education system, with Urdu and Islam offered in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam options for high school students. However, these evidences are deceiving. The media programming and GCSE exams are more a result of the influx of a critical mass of Muslims into the country. There are now approximately three million Muslims in the UK, out of a total population of about 60 million (5%), and most of that population, as mentioned earlier, is quite concentrated geographically. In contrast, there are about six million Muslims in the US out of a total population of 282 million (2%), and the population is more spatially distributed across suburbs and even rural areas. In addition a colonialist legacy in South Asia spurs a continued desire in British discourse to include an understanding of the colonized from an objective perspective, thus leading to overrepresentation in the press and in educational fields. So therefore we see a preponderance of articles on “Asians” in the BBC news and GCSE offerings in Islam and Urdu. Also deceiving is the presence of MPs in Parliament. That can be directly attributed to the concentration of Muslims in certain districts and neighborhoods as described previously. This concentration must result in the election of certain politicians, no matter how low the voter turnout is in those heavily Muslim districts. In addition, through discussions with locals, one learns that a big difference between politics in the UK and in the US is that, in the eyes of Britons, politics in the US are a “rich man’s 61 game,” whereas in the UK one gets the sense that almost anyone can throw their hat in the ring. It is this low barrier to entry which also renders Muslim involvement on the local and regional level relatively easy. On the other hand, we must note that it is ironic that in the US, a country wherein the efforts to integrate have been so much greater, not a single Muslim has been elected to federal office, due in part to the diffusion of Muslims across the nation. We have painted a story of stark contrasts between the UK community and its impeded efforts to integrate and the US as a shining model community. Things are not quite this clear. What we see from the above measures is that integration has not been completely stopped in the UK, but has merely been somewhat slower than in the US, despite a long historical presence in the former. An example of improved engagement is the growing importance of organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). In addition, while we can explain away the preponderance of Muslim politicians, the fact of the matter is that in absolute numbers Muslims do seem to be active in the UK. As Haddad notes in her book, They had previously been marginal and often timid; they had tended to implicitly present themselves as ethnic minorities as they sought to fit in through the community and race relations structures. By the end of the 1980s many had laid claim to participation in the public space; they had effectively integrated into the organizational politics of the local scene functioning like most other special interest groups, standing out only by the express Muslim identity.75 Also, much as in America, exogenous events have “shocked” the British Muslim community into action. In the wake of the London Underground bombings, Muslim organizations came into the limelight and spoke out strongly about what Muslims stood for and how Islam was a part of the fabric of the country. Whereas before one might see 62 the factionalism that is symptomatic of culturalist infighting, after the London events of the summer of 2005, we see a consolidation of Muslim support behind fewer organizations with a shunning of extreme opinions associated with a few players on the scene such as the Al-Muhajiroun group and the group affiliated with Abu Hamza alMasri of the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London. In addition, it is in the wake of the London bombings that we are seeing an acceleration of engagement with the larger British community. Much as September 11 increased discussion of the presence of Muslims and Arabs in America, the Underground bombings were a wake-up call around the presence of British Muslims. This was not the first time such a wake-up call occurred. When two young British-born Muslims went to Damascus to study and then ended up becoming suicide bombers in Tel Aviv, there was no doubt that discussion occurred in British society. generated news and conversation. The Oldham race riots also While both of these events (and others) caused incremental changes in Muslim/non-Muslim relations, they did not have the paradigmatic impact that the London bombings did. So entrenched was the status quo of culturalist ghettoes that it took a fifty-year combination of generational change and increasingly intense exogenous events to evoke a meaningful response from both the government and the Muslim community. Reaction of British Society to the Growth of the UK Muslim Population Britain, relative to continental Europe, has had a history of openness (if not tolerance) of other ethnicities. This openness is a legacy from colonial times, when the colonial lands included parts of Africa, the Near East and the Far East, as well as the 63 Western Hemisphere. The British prided themselves on having built an empire on which “the sun never set.” However, openness to immigration had limits, and these limits were tested as immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the Caribbean flowed into the country under laws that gave automatic citizenship to members of the Commonwealth. Up until the latter half of the twentieth century, people of English background did not feel threatened by the trickle of “Asians” coming primarily to work temporarily or seek education and return to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The 1960s brought the immigration issue into the public discourse, as the UK experienced a significantly larger inflow of non-Europeans. The Commonwealth immigration law was amended in 1962 to get rid of the automatic citizenship provision, which resulted in a short-term increase in immigration before the law took effect. As mentioned earlier, international events induced further immigration in the 1960s and 1970s, which further increased discontent among English who began a public discussion on what it meant to be British. Haddad writes that, In a kind of reactionary process, anti-Muslim sentiments have swelled as part of a greater xenophobia, as many white non-Muslims in Britain object to changes in ‘their’ schools, public policies, and social services that have been made in order to accommodate the perceived inferior ways of ‘outsiders.’ As Islamophobia further increases, so does the now wellmobilized call for even more far-reaching forms of recognition. As the public sphere shifts to provide more prominent places for Muslims, Islamophobic tendencies may amplify.76 While immigration itself induced a reaction from the British public, a deeper issue may have been an unspoken British identification with the Anglican church. “Unspoken,” because although the Church of England is the official church and the 64 Queen is the official head of the church, few Britons would admit to being active churchgoing people. Yet when a non-Christian immigration flow began to achieve critical mass to open businesses, places of worship and schools, a historical relic of religious identification was brought back to life. In particular, one of the issues slowing down acceptance of Muslims into society is the history of unease in removing legal restrictions from any non-Anglicans. Anglicanism still remains the official faith of England, and even until a few generations ago, Catholics and “dissenter” Protestants were not even allowed admission into the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. So to accept Islam as a part of the “new” Britain was something that needed to be digested. The increasing number of public symbols of Islam provoked a reaction from conservative circles in the UK. “Some non-Muslims have objected to new [mosque] construction on the basis that the architecture is ‘foreign,’ and that the call to prayer too ‘intrusive.”77 It did not help that the Muslims themselves were having trouble with their identities, as will be discussed in more detail later. “The initial inclination of early immigrant Muslims to define themselves as Muslim or by their nationality, rather than by their adopted country, has contributed to their stigmatization.”78 As an interviewee stated, the UK is “politically liberal” and secular relative to US society, so it should in theory be a better host environment for a religious minority. However, Muslim community problems have affected the British view of Muslims. Many note that a substantial portion of asylum seekers are Muslim. Many if not most of these asylum seekers are seen to be using up social welfare resources. In fact, fraud in the public welfare system has become rampant. 65 Certainly there are elements of ethnic culture that have been wholeheartedly accepted. For example, chicken tikka masala is now the national dish of England, having surpassed fish and chips as the most popular type of restaurant food. In addition, one notes the increasing presence of peoples of South Asian origin in British media, both in entertainment programming as well as news media. However, the reaction to what the British see as a wholesale importation of a foreign culture, with no attempt to adapt, is interesting to note. As noted in the US, most peoples who previously came to the UK became either integrated or assimilated into the overall population. It was the concentrated pockets of the Muslim community in places like East London that caught people’s attention. Mistrust between the intelligentsia on both sides of the debate reigned. From the Muslim perspective, the attempts to emphasize religious education in schools, and to emphasize what it means to be British in social studies classes, were yet another imperial attempt to control them. historically at Looking other communities such as the Irish, the Native Americans and the situation back in home countries such as India and Pakistan, Muslims had reason to feel that they would be next to be subjugated. It didn’t help that global events led to Western media portraying Islam as the new post-Cold War enemy. External and internal news, such as the Rushdie Affair, the Iraq War and other events agitated simmering Islamophobic sentiments. Reinforcing these external events were community-specific events in England such as the Bradford-Leeds riots in 2001 and the London bombings in 2005. A British Muslim’s deconstruction of the non-Muslim reaction to the presence of Muslims in the UK was that it was representative of an overarching imperialistic 66 enterprise. Shadid and Konigsveld write, “Imperialism as an ideology based on unrestricted unevenness, as the studies by Edward Said, John MacKenzie and others reveal, was not merely geared towards defining and subjugating colonized peoples, but equally defined the British identity itself.”79 The flip side of the argument was that not only were the immigrants taking advantage of the welfare system in the UK without “giving back” to the society by integrating, but they were guilty of not appreciating the opportunities they had been given by living in the UK. “It would be quite fair to acknowledge the greater amount of freedom, mobility and economic stability that Western societies such as Britain have offered to Muslims so as to herald the desired debate and rethink, which is still not possible ‘back home’ due to various political, economic, societal and sectarian impediments.”80 The facts on the ground are too complex to support either one side or the other. But increasingly, signs of Islamophobic discrimination are being addressed through social and legal institutions. Increasing calls for redress of grievances such as employment discrimination are being heeded. Shadid and Konigsveld note that, “the defence establishment, the Foreign Office, Parliament, the universities, colleges, funding councils, the BBC, the British Council, DFID, and other such major public organizations are still subtly reluctant to open up executive positions to ethnic members.”81 However those same institutions are more apt to see diversity in their executive ranks as a healthy means of reaching out to an increasingly prominent minority community. Perhaps the hallmark of British acknowledgement of the existence of endemic anti-Islamic discrimination was the release of the landmark Runnymede Commission 67 Report on British Muslims in 1997. The report revealed wide, systemic biases against Britain’s Muslims. It showed that discrimination against Muslims existed along the lines of color, class and religious observance, and recommended a series of media-related, legal, and administrative goals to ameliorate these problems.82 One could argue that this discrimination was significant enough to affect upward social mobility, forcing discouraged immigrant and second-generation Muslims back into their enclaves and actually leading to downward social mobility, as immigrants were forced into jobs that were below their qualification levels.83 Any discussion of the status of Muslim minorities in the UK must confront this reality. The Runnymede Trust reports “the importance of media in perpetuating stereotypes such as the subjugation of women and violence in reinforcing discrimination in the UK.”84 One of those suggestions was asking political parties to increase the likelihood that Muslim candidates be nominated for winnable seats. It also suggested that Muslims be appointed to the House of Lords (which, since then, they have). The key recommendation of the Commission was that new legislation be passed recognizing discrimination based on religion. Up until that point, hate crimes were only recognized against races. Since Muslims cross a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, this move would better allow for the redressing of Islamophobia, a hereunto theoretical problem that had never been accurately measured. The Swann Report on minority education provoked a much more mixed response representative of the positions of the new Muslim community and hostile elements of the English community. As will be discussed later, the report detailed disparities in educational achievement amongst various racial groups, and suggested that government 68 institutions do more to support the needs of minorities. English parents felt that resources were being unfairly diverted away from their children. At the same time, Muslim parents felt that the report focused too much on ways of imbuing British values into their children. Jorgen Nielsen writes that, Reaction to the Swann Report (on minority education) was evidence of the significant changes which had taken place over the previous two decades. On the one hand, there were signs of a growing reaction among English parents and communities against perceptions that the ethnic minorities’ concerns had increasingly been taking precedence over those of the “white” majority. On the other hand, the reaction of Muslim bodies, while generally welcoming was sharply critical of the report’s attitude to religion and Muslim concerns.85 In addition to official and legal efforts such as Runnymede and Swann, social institutions have started adapting to the presence of Muslims. Despite clashes over religious education in schools, the Anglican Church was among the earliest allies of the nascent Muslim communities. The relationship became valuable when recent events were negatively affecting Muslims in the UK. “Sections within the churches were among the earliest to react seriously to the religious dimension of the ethnic minority communities. It was this…network which meant that the churches were the only major British institutions where Muslims found some degree of understanding for their concerns during the affair over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.” 86 Although significant adjustments have been made by British society to acknowledge the Muslim minority, both by addressing issues of what it means to be British and also providing legal and social means for engagement, more needs to be done to create a long-term sustainable relationship. Elements such as the British National Party and conservative religious groups are still pushing for Muslims to better assimilate. Culturalist Muslims, in turn, are further confirmed in their isolationism in minority 69 enclaves. This vicious cycle between societal and community factors will result in deeper mistrust. In this section I have addressed British societal factors leading to this mistrust. In the next section I will discuss in more detail the evolution of the most recent wave of Muslim immigrants, and community factors contributing to this vicious cycle. Evolution of the Community First Phase: Economic Survival As with its American counterpart, the new Muslim community was more concerned with financial gain than anything else when they first arrived. This was particularly important in the UK, because most of the immigrants, even in the final wave, arrived to work in blue collar jobs, in the factories in the north of England and around London. Many were concerned with sending regular remittances to families in their home countries. As such, most were oriented towards their home countries, and considered themselves temporary workers (which, incidentally, suited British society just fine, as they were not threatened by a culture-changing migration flow as long as it was temporary). The reality was that the actual situation indicated permanent settlement, though the workers may have initially denied it.87 This attitude of “temporary stay” was held in common with workers in the US. But one of the factors that differentiated the two communities and changed their relative trajectories was geographic concentration. Because of the “temporary stay” mentality, Muslim immigrants shrank from considering the host society their own. They did not associate with diverse social institutions. They did not speak English unless necessary. And they retreated to Muslim enclaves in Hounslow and East London, where jobs in the textile industry were plentiful and in close 70 proximity. These enclaves reinforced the culturalist attitudes that were originally an artifact of planning on a temporary stay. Thus, even when it was clear that the Muslims of the East London community were a permanent fixture on the British landscape, they continued to hold on to culturalist attitudes due to social reinforcement from the rest of their closely knit, highly homogeneous neighborhoods. They continued to live in these neighborhoods despite no longer being associated with industrial jobs, despite having branched out either to better paying employment or to the welfare rolls. They did this because of the comfort associated with homogeneity and culturalist reinforcement. Culturalism was manifested in the practices imported by Muslims to the UK from home countries, practices steeped in traditional home country values, and not necessarily orthodox Islamic values. For example, in February of 2002, the Barnsley Star, a local paper in Sheffield, reported on attempts by authorities to educate a local immigrant community about female genital circumcision. The Agency for Culture and Change Management in Sheffield had been working to eradicate the practice amongst Somalis in the city. The aim of the agency was to educate people about the health risks and to explain to people that it is illegal and not a religious requirement for Muslims. The chairman, Ahmed Hussein, said: Female genital mutilation is a taboo subject. I don’t know anyone who is doing this, but there is an understanding that the community is still practicing this. Many people still believe it is something to do with religion, but it is not. Anything that harms the person is wrong. We are here to act in the interests of the community and to support them. What we are saying is that there is a problem and we are trying to help our community to learn and understand.88 Culturalism manifested itself in intra-community relationships as well. “In addition to theological differences,” writes Shireen Hunter, “Britain’s Muslim community is characterized by ideological and political divergences. These divisions 71 appear along the following lines: (1) traditional versus militant or activist Islam, whose followers are often referred to as Islamists; and (2) traditionalist versus modernist.”89 Where Hunter uses the term “modernist,” I would substitute my term “assimilationist.” Similarly, her world “traditionalist” could be substituted with the word “culturalist,” except that traditionalist may also be construed to embrace Islamic orthodoxy in its essentialized form. The effects of culturalism were felt in the interaction of immigrants with two groups of stakeholders: the larger British society and their own children. British media regularly broadcast “discussions” with culturalist Muslims. In one case, on a recent BBC program, a Muslim woman stated that she does not really consider herself British, but rather that she lives in the country in order to “use the facilities” before going back “home.” Beyond the interesting choice of expression, the point of view demonstrates a profound gap between the expected path of minority integration and where some Muslims in London stand. This trajectory is slowly changing, for reasons to be discussed below, but not nearly at the rate that it did in the US, where an integrationist frame of mind became the dominant discourse fairly early on in the Muslim community. The second group to feel the effects of immigrant culturalism was the second generation of Muslims. As Hunter notes and interviews confirm, “As a rule, mosques and madrasahs are organized along ethnic lines and are dominated by South Asians.”90 But in applying my framework, the real story emerges of a culturalist immigrant milieu trying to maintain control of institutions that they established. Many of those in power at these institutions explained their desire to preserve the status quo as an ideological issue. Nielsen reports that, 72 The Deobandi and Brelwi movements appear in Britain in a number of guises. It is clear that among the mass of ordinary members of the community, it is these two traditions which have the widest support. The support has been so deep-rooted that conflicts over control of mosques and associated resources are almost stereotypically presented as DeobandiBrelwi conflicts. Even where there are evidently clan and caste reasons for the conflict, its presentation in Deobandi-Brelwi terms has served to legitimize it and to mobilize support from wider circles.91 Other movements that were heavily culturalist-centered were Jamaat-e-Islami and Ahl-i-Hadith, both from the Indian subcontinent. Nielson notes, “The Ahl-i-Hadith movement have made themselves particularly noted for their distribution of literature and audio- and video-cassettes propagating a policy of separation from non-Muslim society.”92 Lost in the shuffle was the negative impact these power struggles had on the youth. Turned off by sermons and lectures delivered in native languages, many youth left religious practice altogether. A desire to control mosque power and discourse prevented university-educated, English-language speakers from starting programs. Such programs are essential for second-generation Muslims who, regardless of education level, identified more closely with others who spoke their primary language of communication. Perhaps the most visible characteristic of the Muslim community in the UK is geographic clustering. Nearly 40% of the entire UK Muslim population lives in Greater London. As mentioned earlier, a total of 8.5% of London’s population is Muslim, concentrated in certain boroughs including Tower Hamlets (36% Muslim), Newham (24.3%), Waltham Forest (15%) and Hackney (14%).93 Over 150,000 Bangladeshis live in London (54% of Bangladeshis in the UK), and are concentrated in East London. There are also 140,000 Pakistanis in London. Of Birmingham’s population, 14% declares itself 73 Muslim. But three-quarters of this Muslim community is concentrated in just eight of the city’s 42 electoral wards.94 Interviewees indicate that one could speak a home country language their entire life in parts of East London, because your neighbors are all of the same ethnicity, as is your grocer, your barber and your landlord. 2001 Regional Distribution of Each South Asian Community in the UK (‘000’s)95 74 Map of London Boroughs Significant concentrations of Muslims of Pakistani background can be found in these boroughs Significant concentrations of Muslims of Bengali background can be found in these boroughs in East London Percentage of Each Religion Living in London, April 2001, UK96 75 On the positive side, this type of clustering helps preserve language and homecountry values and concentrates political and economic power. Children may better absorb and retain the minority culture’s values. It gives local communities the critical mass to establish institutions such as mosques, schools, butcher shops and restaurants that cater to their specific needs. It even helps them mobilize politically well before their counterparts in more dispersed regions of the country. By 1992, Bradford had 11 Muslim councilors, including the deputy leader of the ruling group. Bradford also eventually elected the first Muslim Lord Mayor. Leicester has had a Muslim Chief Executive as well as chief police superintendent.97 Hunter even mentions that such clustering may help prevent assimilation of Muslims into the larger society.98 However, the negatives of clustering have put UK Muslim communities in a difficult long-term situation. “Islamic schools in heavily Muslim areas often prepare their students well around Islamic values [and perhaps even in secular coursework],” says Hunter, “but seem to be doing a less impressive job of preparing their students for life in the larger British society.”99 An interviewee echoes the sentiment, indicating that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in London enclaves often go to schools were over 90% of students are of the same ethnicity as them, and thus they often have a skewed view of British society. They grow up not fully identifying with their parents, but not fully identifying with the rest of British society either. It also seems that the relative size of these communities is not as important as the concentration of each community. So while Bangladeshis are the smallest of the three South Asian communities, they are also the most concentrated, and thus are able to create a culturalist area in London. educational outcomes in these enclaves will be discussed in more detail later. The 76 Beyond educational issues, discrimination is also an outgrowth of this isolation. Without engagement, prejudices thrive in the larger society. The stereotype of the worst slumlord in East London is an unscrupulous immigrant from South Asia. This can be attributed in part to the Muslims in that region desiring to stay together, which in turn feeds misperceptions and bigotry.100 Finally, geographic clustering can affect the Muslim communities’ mindsets as well, preventing the emergence of a thriving indigenous Muslim culture in the host country. The negative impact can be seen in the emergence of a next generation that is ill-prepared to balance Islamic values with British ones. It is a generation, as interviewees describe it, trying to live as Muslims at home but as Britons while at school or work, and not fully succeeding at either. Emerging negative trends include backlash against Muslims after external shocks such as September 11. These events may spark hate crimes, but they are merely sparks that ignite long-simmering prejudices and resentment against a perceived ghettoized community that is portrayed as merely living off of the government’s largesse. Nielsen discusses the extreme of this type of clustering in talking about the Norwich experiment. He mentions that, A small community in Norwich of diverse ethnic background intentionally isolated itself, including schooling its own children, not registering marriages and even avoiding the national health system, instead preferring traditional medicine. When the community finally split up in the 1980s, personal bitterness as well as ideological conflict was involved.… The question must be raised whether such an “isolationist” mode of expressing a Muslim way of life does not produce such pressures on its participants that bitter fragmentation is almost inevitable as an outcome.101 77 The Norwich experiment was a fascinating test case for the culturalist approach. Isolationism of this sort can be seen as an extreme form of the geographic clustering of East London that I have described above. Two facts can be drawn from this experiment. First, as expected, it was not sustainable for more than a generation of leadership. The intensity of the culturalism in Norwich accelerated the eventual destabilization of the community, particularly as they realized that there was no external structure in the larger society to help maintain the status quo of their idealized society. Second, the breakup of the Norwich community uncovered ideological conflict endemic to any community that depends on homogeneity to thrive. It is for the very same reason that the leadership in mosques in culturalist enclaves such as East London are suspicious of integrationist attempts to establish English-language sermons and classes, knowing that such attempts will weaken the fragile yet necessary linguistic and ideological homogeneity that they need to maintain the status quo. A final note regarding the geographic clustering is that such a situation is by no means a guaranteed path to difficulty. Quite the opposite, having the critical mass to enact social and political change at the local level is certainly a positive for any community. However, the leadership in such communities must be focused on driving such change. These transitions from culturalist to integrationist approaches to leadership can already been seen in certain communities that have been hard hit by issues such as crime, unemployment and under-education. For example, the Bradford Council of Mosques, though criticized for its close affiliations with the local British authorities, has started to serve as a voice for local Muslims on matters of employment, housing and 78 education. It is this engagement that is necessary as UK Muslims move forward from a focus on economic survival to a vision of long-term sustainment in the UK. Second Phase: Building of Infrastructure In the United States, the second phase really consisted of the establishment of mosques and schools. What is interesting about the UK is that these institutions were established much earlier and more rapidly, due in large part to the clustering talked about earlier. A look at official registration of mosques, though presenting a far-from-complete picture of all mosques in the UK, gives an indication of the magnitude of the increase across twenty years in the second half of the twentieth century. Officially Registered Mosques, 1963-1985102 Year 1963 1970 1975 1980 1985 Number of Mosques 13 49 99 203 338 Nielsen mentions several reasons for the rapid increase in the number of mosques. “A large jump in the number of mosques started in 1975 was due to at least two factors. First, the community began to hope for infusion of money from the Middle East, where oil revenues were skyrocketing. Second, Muslims started becoming more savvy of local political and administrative power structures.”103 I would add a third reason, which is that as culturalist communities grew, infighting in communities led to the creation of multiple mosques in the same neighborhoods. 79 It seems that the former reason, links with foreign country governments (or desires to establish those links), drove growth in the 1960s and 1970s. This period also coincides neatly with the burgeoning of the culturalist movement. As newer generations began to assert a more independent view of the place of Muslims in the UK, we began to see the former reason being replaced with the latter. We can see this parallel generational transfer in the demographics of the community as extracted from census data using Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as a proxy for the London Muslim community. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK104 Total 5,000 24,900 170,000 360,000 636,000 UK-born 300 40,000 135,000 299,000 % UK-born 1.2 23.5 37.5 47.0 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 The growth of the UK-born segment of the London community was dramatic, particularly from the mid-seventies onward. Although the data do not include the 2001 census, research indicates that a recent influx of immigrants from countries including Somalia (2% of Muslims in the UK), Kenya (1%) and the former Yugoslavian countries (1%) has kept the number slightly below 50%. Nevertheless, the continued growth in British-born Muslims has had a dramatic impact on the influence of British-educated and culturally-immersed elements of the Muslim population. In addition to a generational shift, two factors helped encourage Muslims’ use of power structures in places like London. First, the geographic concentration mentioned earlier allowed for rapid deployment of a hereunto unutilized political power base. 80 Second, the external shocks such as September 11 and the London bombing pushed UK Muslims into engagement by necessity, as the spotlight was shone on them by increasing media coverage. Of course, as alluded to previously, mosques also proliferated in neighborhoods along ethnic lines. The establishment of a Deobandi or Barelwi mosque was a clear statement of the position of the culturalist leadership and the likely homogeneity of the mosque members. Culturalism in British mosques is best evidenced by Haddad, who notes, “certain beliefs and practices (including specific rites, roles, texts, lore, calendars, and patterns of worship) characteristic of local contexts in the subcontinent have been reproduced in Britain, especially where large numbers of persons from these contexts have settled.”105 Numerous efforts to create an umbrella organization to unite the disparate Muslim groups failed early on due to culturalism. Symptoms of this culturalism include intercommunity diversity but intra-community homogeneity, ideological conflict and competing foreign links such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Ahl-i-Hadith. Most importantly, culturalism fails to provide the tools necessary to understand and solve local issues affecting Islam’s viability in a new environment. It is inherently rigid in its approach to mu`amalaat (the everyday, non-worship actions of a Muslim). When umbrella organizations such as the United Muslim Organizations of the UK and Eire (UMO, 1970) did come along, they were not successful because they did not focus as much on local issues, instead attempting to form at a national level. Nielsen mentions that the UMO “was not successful because (a) it tried to concentrate on the national level rather than 81 local change and (b) it was premature to the development of organizations with enough scope to think nationally.”106 This national approach can also be linked to thinking about foreign affairs at the expense of local issues. A culturalist approach focuses on relationships with home countries. In contrast, though integrationists would see foreign affairs as critical, they would also see local issues as being directly relevant to their communities and their families. Eventually, parts of the UK Muslim community have learned this, but not without some rather public discussion. For example, the Muslim News, a community newspaper, held an informal poll in December of 2001 in the wake of the bombings of Afghanistan. The results raised an outcry among British society when 21% of Muslim respondents said that they saw a contradiction between being “British” and being “Muslim” and 48% of them felt they were “Muslim first and foremost” while 20% felt they were “British Muslim.” The survey revealed long-simmering resentment against Western governments’ foreign policies, indicating that 86% thought that the United Nations and the West had “double standards in dealing with injustice in the world.” If the West had been “tough and exacting against Israel (re: Palestine), India (re: Kashmir) and Yugoslavia (re: Bosnia),” then 43% would have supported tough action against Osama bin Laden. Fifteen percent agreed that enough evidence had been presented to show that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the events of 11 September, but 58% did not agree and 22% did not know. The report concluded that Muslims were comfortable with their citizenship but like others in the mainstream community, “there is a strong element of dissent on the Government's conduct of international affairs and this dissent is clearly informed by a perception of the reality of double standards.” It went on to say that this 82 government, which advocated ethical foreign policy, came to power with a lot of support from Muslims and, as these expectations had been raised and dashed, the government would have to work hard at convincing Muslims of their sincerity.107 While the design of this survey and its execution and response left much to be desired, the response indicated the gap between the Muslim community and the larger British society. The Muslim Council of Britain, a newer umbrella group of several functional organizations, set up committees to deal with local issues such as education, social affairs and employment. They also had a foreign affairs lobbying function.108 While the MCB has been successful in strongly communicating condemnation after the London Underground Bombings, they have been beset by resentment from Muslim quarters. Muslims remark that the MCB is often seen as a “puppet of the government.” One reason for this is the elitist nature of the MCB, representing professionals such as the Muslim Dentists and Doctors Association (MDDA). Another reason is because the rise of such centralized groups will inevitably undercut the influence of local imams over the discourse within their congregations. Local imams, annoyed by this co-opting of their power, have sometimes used their pulpits to rail against such organizations. This of course creates skepticism about MCB and other national organizations among culturalist and clustered congregations. While the trajectory of mosque establishment, mosque culture and party affiliations was fixed fairly early on in the development of British Islam, perhaps more interesting is the evolution of education in the Muslim community and the parallel transfer of religious and cultural values to the second and third generations. 83 An interesting manifestation of the growing influence of Muslim communities is the effect it has had on the national debate around the goals of education. British Muslims have been sensitive about, perhaps more than any other issue, the regulations and curriculum that their children are subjected to. For example, from the earliest moments of the UK Muslim community, parents pushed for modification to the dress code to allow their daughter to wear the hijab in schools. Nielsen notes that, “The first main fields of contact between Muslim organizations and local government were planning and education, primarily religious education and practical matters like dress in school.”109 As the Muslim population continued to grow and become a significant minority in several schools, and a substantial majority in some London school, parents pushed for a reconsideration of the traditional religious education component of coursework. Up until that point, it was standard procedure for British pupils to undergo instruction on Christianity and the Anglican Church. As mentioned earlier, while some white parents bristled at proposed changes, it is a credit to schools and educational governance systems in the UK that the issue of religious minorities and their education did enter the public discourse, and that eventually, through efforts such as the Swann Report, changes were initiated to teach more inclusively about religion in general. But Muslim parents, dissatisfied with the changes made, continued to push for reform of schools, and eventually, through the late 1970s’ increase in the number of school-age Muslim children, began other initiatives to teach their children. First, they attempted to use their concentrated electoral power to take control of schools that were predominantly Muslim. They proposed to local school boards in wards of London and 84 Birmingham that they should be given overall responsibility for these schools. Second, and more significantly, a wave of private Muslim schools opened in the major urban centers. Some schools, such as Jamia schools (established by Yusuf Islam, the former pop singer known as Cat Stevens), became models of high student performance.110 Others languished in mediocrity. Government officials balked at giving control of schools to the Muslim community or even providing public funds to Muslim private schools (as they were providing them to Catholic and some Jewish schools). While this refusal probably had something to do with racial discrimination and stereotyping of a long-suffering Muslim minority, there were some reasons given, reasons that can be linked to the culturalism in Muslim communities. For example, authorities rejected the Bradford Muslim Parents’ Association’s application to take control of five predominantly Muslim local schools, fearing that increased isolation of Muslim children was being sustained by the wellmeaning establishment of Muslim schools. One could predict that the Muslim parents would not react well to this news, and cries of discrimination were frequent. In addition, it further fed culturalist misgivings about the intentions of British society, some of them not without merit. The biggest fear for Muslims was that attempts were being made to assimilate their children into the larger society and tear them from their home country and Islamic roots. Nielsen astutely notes that, “at the heart of Muslims’ nervousness about education is an increasing marginalization of traditional educational institutions in their home countries, from madrasas to universities such as Al-Azhar.”111 Fundamentally, education was the battleground on which home country and host country values came into direct conflict. A foundation of the British system was that the 85 student should receive a liberal education to become an independent and critically thinking individual. The Muslim community, on the other hand, saw education not only as a functional means to upward socio-economic mobility, but also as a socializing tool to create good members of society imbued with the values of their forebears. Immigrants saw the British system as directly challenging the truth of divinity. This fundamental disagreement on values has resulted in “a dynamic process of challenge and response between Muslims and the host countries, as each side has asserted itself more strongly in response to the other.”112 This dynamic, in turn, has led to the negative outcome of disillusionment among young Muslims, who feel rejected by the host society and seek to express this rejection through anti-social behaviors in depressed areas, much as oppressed minorities have done in other countries. The socio-economic status of the immigrant generation, coupled with their struggles with the educational authorities, led to massive underperformance by their children in schools. According to Modood et al., as of 2002, 48% of students of Pakistani origin and 60% of students of Bangladeshi origin had either no or below GCSE-level education. The percentage of these two groups with A-level qualification was the lowest among all ethnic minorities for whom records were kept, at 20% for Pakistanis and 10% for Bangladeshis. Among women it was even worse. 11% of Pakistani women and 7% of Bangladeshi women had A-level or below qualifications. Only 7% of Pakistani women and a miniscule 3% of Bangladeshi women held a college degree. 113 86 Percentage of Working Age with No Qualifications: by Religion, 2004, UK114 Percentage of 16-30-Year-Olds with a Degree: by Religion and Country of Birth, 2004115 In terms of second-generation educational outcomes, interviews of British Muslim university graduates indicate three broad directions taken by this generation in their search for identity. A large segment of this generation has followed in the footsteps of many in the immigrant generation who do not have a university education. This group is diverse in religious practice, but often shares in common an adoption of their parents’ 87 culturalist attachments, evidenced by the predisposition to continue living in the enclaves established by the previous generation. When they are not culturalist, members of this group tend towards assimilationism. It is unfortunate that this group is often the source of many of the stereotypes of young South Asians in London, that of running with gangs and engaging in illicit activities such as drug consumption and drug dealing. Unfortunately, partial education has often resulted in this segment being caught between two worlds in London. As an interviewee noted, when the second generation went to school, they couldn’t come home and expect help with homework. Many London Muslim parents did not have a high amount of education and were educated just enough to hold down the labor-class jobs that they had. Indeed, research has shown that two factors that influence educational success are parental attitudes (e.g., general supervision and monitoring) as well as the general educational level in a student’s neighborhood.116 As an interviewee notes, large numbers of London Muslims don’t ever complete A-levels, which in addition to the reasons above, was driven a lot by an environment wherein everyone is doing the same thing. Another interviewee notes that, because these children did not get to spend as much time with role models as they would have liked, it affected their choice of employment. It became socially acceptable (and economically necessary within the family) to become a taxi driver or even just live off of the welfare system. In addition to schoolwork, children could not expect their parents to understand the social pressures they faced in school. This separation between the immigrant and second generations seems to either lead to an identity crisis that spurred many to seek to assimilate with the larger society or discourages these young people from seeking further education, driving them back into the same enclaves that they grew up in. 88 Research shows the results of these structural problems in the community around education. Tariq Modood charts the educational progress of various minority communities in the UK across generations. Percentage of UK Minority Groups with No GCSE or Equivalent Qualification by Generation (2001)117 Due to the strong culturalist neighborhoods in which second-generation Pakistanis and Bangladeshis grow up in London and other large cities, not only are they less likely in an absolute sense than other minorities to have at least GSCE qualification, but they also show less improvement between generations than others. It is only in the third generation (noted here as 16-24 year-olds), as culturalism gives way to integrationism (as discussed later), do we see improvement. The second and third segments are those from the second generation who took advantage of further education at the university level. For the second generation, going to university was a “make or break” in terms of their self-identification with the Muslim 89 community. The second segment are those in the “break” group. Coming from a culturalist background, perhaps with minimal indoctrination in orthodox Islam, they would often choose their first exposure to the larger British community to begin a process of assimilation. The third segment of this generation are those who are able to rediscover their Islamic backgrounds at the university level. These are the Muslims of the second generation who are most likely to adopt integrationist points of view. The university environment, with exposure to not only other faiths and Britons from all walks of life, but also to other Muslims from a variety of backgrounds, often expands a young person’s frame of reference in thinking about important issues for a community. Many students in this segment affiliate themselves with a certain group, such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir or Young Muslims. Others merely become aware of the issues facing Muslims in Britain. The point is that they are exposed to ways of thinking about the issues facing Muslims living in the UK, and how best to address these issues. Unfortunately, a wide majority of this second generation, the ones who fall into the first group mentioned above, never get the opportunity to expose themselves to these ideas. These young people are missing out not only economically and socially, but also in terms of their faith. They often fail to acquire the tools necessary to think about ways to successfully engage the larger society in an integrationist form. Living amongst others in what amounts to a monolingual mini-community, such as in East London, allows for the perpetuation of a culturalist community trajectory. In particular, women in the second generation are not offered the opportunity to seek this education. Parents not allowing their daughters to get a higher education can be seen as a culturalist barrier to 90 integration, not something related to religious tradition. The exploration and discovery of integrationist modes of engagement are severely limited for these members of UK Muslim society, just as they were for their parents. A more positive note is that change is occurring, albeit at a slower pace than in the US. The transition in the US to integrationism occurred at the second generation, primarily because of educational advantages among immigrants and their children. In the UK, we see such discourse starting to open up as the third generation emerges. This third generation, more likely to have GSCE or higher degree qualifications, also has more exposure to Islamic thought and institutions at a younger age, as lectures and classes in English, previously the domain of university Islamic societies, can now be found in local mosques. On a final note before moving on, we can do an interesting comparison of how British Muslim education as evolved vis-à-vis the American model. It is interesting to note that the dichotomy between Islamic madrasa-style education and secular education is much deeper in the UK for a few reasons. First, the initial generation came primarily as blue-collar workers with little incentive to further their education. Thus, an aspiration to attain higher education was not consistently passed on to children. Second, the British education system was designed such that students specialized much earlier on in order to take exams that would put them on a track towards a specific university course of study or to the working world. It was much easier for Muslim students to make a decision early on to leave secular education to focus on an alim course (Islamic scholarly training). Third, the madrasa system, imported from the Indian subcontinent, was very focused on classical training in Islamic sciences. Secular education, conducted in the afternoons, 91 was often poor and resulted in underperforming students.118 This is in contrast to madrasa-style programs in the US that trumpet their secular credentials in math, science and the social sciences when advertising to parents. As mentioned earlier, the second generation has begun to have a more prominent voice in their communities, driven by political organization in enclaves and by external shocks such as the London bombings. Integrationist-minded people in both the immigrant generation and second generation have driven a discussion around how best to sustain the Muslim community over the long run, and what types of institutions need to be established for this to happen. Third Phase: Community Sustainment and Institution Building As some UK Muslims have begun to transition to a more integrationist approach to engagement, they face new challenges. In analyzing the degree of integration of any UK organization, one needs to look at certain factors. It appears that London organizations have started to turn the corner on where the movements originate (UK instead of home countries) as well as the social base of recruitment (UK second/thirdgeneration citizens). However, along other metrics, London Muslim organizations still have much work to do. For example, many mosques throughout the greater London area still have informal, authoritarian leadership systems. Programs outside of the canonical daily prayers and the Friday sermons are minimal. Shadid and Koningsveld mention, “the majority of Muslim organizations in the UK are of a religious and socio-cultural nature. Their activities primarily aim at creating a more or less stable religious and social 92 infrastructure for Muslims, and in that respect at adjusting the national legislation in host societies in order to allow Muslims to comply with Islamic requirements.”119 When other programs do exist, they are often done in home country languages. And although many new organizations are sprouting up from among the second and third generations, the overwhelming majority of city mosques are still run by groups and movements with linkages to home countries. The most common affiliations are with tabligi jamaat (and the Deobandi group) or with specific sufi sects and leaders (and the Brelvi group). The most difficult challenge facing evolving organizations is the lack of leadership to help them make the transition to an integrationist trajectory.120 Locally grown leadership lacks the religious education to tend to the communities’ religious needs. Imams brought in from home countries lack language skills and the ability to grasp the unique social issues facing British Muslims. But the growing influence of the second generation is challenging this state of affairs. Nielsen mentions that “anecdotal evidence and personal observation suggest that mosque attendance is far from including the majority of the adult community. However, it is also apparent that during the 1980s there was a rising participation, in the Friday noon prayer in particular, of the younger and more educated.”121 Women’s sections of mosques are quickly being outgrown, as younger educated women are actively participating in increasing numbers. Another outwardly apparent issue as the Muslim society struggles to redefine itself is the lack of financial resources to drive the creation of social services and ongoing programs. Shadid and Koningsveld mention that “another barrier is found in the lack of financial means and qualified potential for the creation of an appropriate infrastructure [; 93 because Muslim communities consist mostly of members of a lower socio-economic status,] there still remains an enormous need for money to set up a complete infrastructure and to catch up with the Christian religious provisions which have existed for centuries.”122 A portion of this lack of resources can be related to a social phenomenon noted in an interview. Wealthy British Muslims, while participating in their favored projects, often isolate themselves from their poorer brethren. Evidence of the existence of an educated elite can be extracted from Office of National Statistics data: Qualification of the 17-64 Age Group by Ethnicity in the UK (2001)123 In these data we see that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (again, as a proxy for Muslims) have a high percentage of individuals without GCSE qualification (as previously discussed), but they also have a significant (though relatively small) percentage of members with degree qualifications. If we control for the fact that women are much less likely than men to have degrees, the number is even higher.124 94 These wealthy British Muslims often (certainly not always) shun the negative views of the overall British society on British Islam. Often having experienced discrimination themselves, they take pains to demonstrate, geographically and professionally, that they are not from the typical London Muslim enclaves. Oftentimes, this separation is also in terms of identity, with large portions of this educated elite attempting to assimilate into British society. A telltale sign of the language of separation is the offhand remarks of this wealthy class in referring to the lower classes, remarking on the lack of education and wealth among the Mirpuris and East London Bangladeshis. While Muslim wealth appears to be very slowly increasing on a per capita basis, the only way Muslims in London are really going to be able to marshal the financial resources they need is to draw on an increasingly massive collective wealth. With over 500,000 Muslims in the Greater London region, it is imperative that the growing contingent of integrationist-minded members of the London community look at means of pooling their wealth towards programs and services. Physical infrastructure is already relatively well-developed in London due to the density of Muslims. Some initial signs of the growth of Muslim financial clout in the UK comes from the financial sector. In March 2002, the Sunday Business journal published a survey of Islamic banking that outlined all the products currently available. This followed an announcement that the Bank of England had set up a working party of senior bankers to examine Islamic banking and the sudden growth of halal financing. Andrew Buxton of the British Bankers Association said, “We are trying to identify the barriers, whether it is cost or social legislation or whatever it is, and seeing whether the government would be willing to remove those barriers by changing the law.”125 This article can be seen as a measure of 95 the growing importance of an integrationist Muslim community, a community that is looking to take advantage of shari`ah-compliant options for financial transactions in the UK, similar to such options in the US. While leadership, infrastructure and political relations (as seen in the education sphere) are being addressed slowly and continuously, external shocks have certainly jumpstarted these efforts. The earliest serious external shocks were the actions and reactions to the publication of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The Rushdie Affair was a turning point for the British Muslim community. It helped shake up the culturalist status quo, and it helped integrationist-leaning Muslims realize the importance of becoming politically active and organized. Initially Muslims in the London area responded through uncoordinated engagement with local media outlets and politicians. However, as public response remained muted, Muslims in London and more so in the north of England began to resort to protests that climaxed with a book burning in Bradford in January of 1989. National coordinating organizations, including the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (UKACIA) and the Islamic Defence Council, that were until that point dormant, were able to help organize the protests. In response, national political and religious institutions, such as the Home Secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury, began to pay attention to Muslims at the national level.126 Subsequent to external shocks like the Rushdie Affair, and more recently the events of September 11, Muslims have continued to come to prominence at the national level, including election of MPs and appointment of Lords. In fact, in the 1980s, interviewees noted a trend of local councilors in the mainstream parties in Birmingham, 96 Bradford and parts of London “discovering” their Muslim roots, indicative of the growing importance of the Muslim electorate. However, political empowerment has not necessarily been associated with similar progress along social or economic indicators. In describing the Muslim community, researchers note that: They continue to be disproportionately employed in manual work, with twice as many in manual as in non-manual work, while white men are now evenly split between these two types of jobs. Pakistanis are twice as likely and Bangladeshis more than five times as likely as white men to be in semiskilled manual work.… More than four of five Pakistani and Bangladeshi households have an income equivalent to less than half the national average. At the time of the 1991 census, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were worse off than any other ethnic group.127 Interviewees note that there are huge disparities even within their communities in terms of the economic status of the immigrant generation. As a result, on average, Muslims in the first and second generations rank among the lowest of any demographic group across a wide spectrum of indicators, including health education, formal education (as noted in detail earlier), income levels and unemployment levels. These social and economic indicators directly affect the culturalism of Muslim neighborhoods in London, which in turn directly affects relationship with the larger society. The external shocks described earlier certainly helped accelerate UK Muslims’ progression towards integrationism. But interestingly, the London Underground bombings may be an even bigger wake-up call for British Muslims. It was a realization that they were not immune from the unrest that led to September 11 and outbreaks of violence in the Muslim world. As a consequence, existing institutions began to work harder to fulfill a heretofore unaccomplished mission to better integrate Muslim 97 communities into the larger British community. Also, new modes of communication, through organizations such as the MCB, have emerged to increase communication, which in turn will hopefully spur integration. As of this time, it has been less than a year since the bombings happened, so the effects have not been fully understood. But interviewees indicate that September 11 may have had a greater overall influence on relations between British Muslims and the overall society, but the London Bombings may have driven home the point of the importance of integrationism to combat the continuation of unviable strains of culturalism in British Muslim communities. Muslims in the UK: Struggling with Identity and Integration As a whole, Islam is the second-largest religion in the UK and is practiced by 8% of London society. However Muslims remain divided along racial and ethnic lines, driven by an over-arching culturalist mode of home country value preservation. As one interviewee commented, the Muslim “community” is not really a community, because there is too much infighting and segregation. Culturalist values that are not always congruent with orthopraxis are not only harmful to building a unified community, but can have negative repercussions on engagement with the larger British society. An example is the recent news that the UK government has banned the practice of ma`tam among minors. Ma`tam is the practice among some culturalist Shi`a Muslims to self-flagellate using chains and knives in memory of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. While many Shi`a scholars have disallowed the practice (including prominent theologians such as Ayatollah Khomeini), lay people in certain communities have clung to the practice. As a consequence of refusing to essentialize 98 Islamic orthodoxy, they have inadvertently furthered the separation from other Muslims and from the larger British community. This is one example, but overall London Muslims’ intra-religious differences, economic underdevelopment, geographic isolation and lack of understanding of instruments of political activity have hindered not only integration, but also basic social mobility. A more telling statistic describing the level of integration into the larger society is the rate of conversion of indigenous Britons to Islam. With the exception of perhaps 10,000 converts, all other British Muslims come from traditional Muslim cultural backgrounds.128 This is in sharp contrast to the American situation, where nearly half of the six million American Muslims are of African-American or European-American descent. In addition, interviews indicate that a substantial portion of the British convert population is conversion in marriage rather than independent acceptance of the Islamic faith. This is symptomatic of the culturalist, inward focus of Muslim Londoners. There are relatively few chances for productive interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims in the districts of London (in comparison with the American experience). As one interviewee put it, America may be more of a melting pot, accepting various beliefs and ethnicities, while in the UK, while there is a sense of political liberalism when it comes to religious, he sees the economically underdeveloped Muslim immigration as a type of “invasion” into areas of London that were previously the domain of other ethnic groups. However, as mentioned previously, Muslims in London may be turning a corner. Interviewees indicate that the external shocks described previously have had a profound effect on intra-community discourse. September 11 caused culturalist Muslims to realize that the current model was broken and that they needed to take a closer look at what 99 elements of their communities’ practices really represented orthodox Islam and what elements were cultural practices from home countries that could not be applied to the UK context. An example of this change is the reduced use of Urdu or Bengali during mosque classes and lectures. This adaptation of mosque communities is a move towards integrationism. Interestingly, at the same time as culturalists were moving towards integrationism, young Muslims who had gone down a path of assimilation (particularly in universities and after graduation) realized that they would not easily be able to deny their background. These former assimilationists realized that an oft-ignorant larger society frequently ostracized them because of their names and the color of their skin. Subsequently, they have begun to rediscover their culturalist roots. One can only assume that they will eventually find their way to the integrationist trajectory via culturalism. Conclusion I hope it has become clear that culturalism had been the dominant discourse in the UK until recent external events began to change its trajectory. At the same time, US Muslims have begun to adopt an integrationist trajectory at a much more rapid rate. Societal factors have no doubt contributed to this disparity, with the US having a tradition of immigration from diverse parts of the world contributing to the overall culture of America. Although it is a stretch to say that Islam has become a fully accepted part of the American fabric, recent initiatives by the Bay Area Muslim community demonstrate that Muslims are on the path towards integration. In the UK, writers have noted that in order for the Muslim community to escape the limbo of insecurity and marginalization that they currently face, they must be considered a permanent ingredient in British social, 100 religious and political culture. This establishment of a permanent British Muslim community must be a mutual effort between the host society and the Muslim community itself. At the government level, British society must legislate and adopt specific policies to fight prejudice and discrimination. One of these policies is the development of educational initiatives that move away from the focus on Christian religious education and towards the development of multicultural training for all students. Educational institutions must also develop guidelines to address values germane to Muslim lifestyles, such as dealing with headscarves in the public schools. To a large degree, these adaptations have been made. An encouraging example can be drawn from the Glasgow Herald on March 23, 2002. A private girls’ school was contacted by numerous parents and alumni pushing them to allow for the hijab to be allowed as part of the school uniform. Initially the school declined, citing concerns about creating a separate standard for Muslim girls. As the issue became more public, the school declined to comment but is reported to have said that it “fears” that the hijab could be a health and safety hazard. Spokesman for the Glasgow ethnic minority community, Councilor Hanzala Malik, said, “I hope the governors realize that they have an opportunity to redress an old custom and they will recognize we live in a multi-cultural society. It is a requirement of the girls' faith that they should be able to wear a hijab or long clothing and I think it needs to be recognized.”129 But where such concerns haven’t been addressed (such as in other private schools), headmasters are warned to take heed of the misguided French headscarf ban. 101 Another important area that requires government legislation concerns employment discrimination. As described previously, studies such as the Runnymede Report have shown discrimination against Muslims to be widespread. Interviewees note that surveys in Britain show that employers would hire other ethnic groups instead of Muslims. One concrete area of concern for the Muslim community is a lack of legal protection against hate crimes for them as a religious group. As of now, only racial groups are classes covered under hate crimes legislation. While organizations such as the British National Party may be considered fringe groups with little support, if we look at other European countries as historical models, it is quite possible for these xenophobic organizations to gain enough traction to exert political pressure. Jean Le Pen’s National Front in France is an example. A researcher notes that, One of the ultra-right groups in the Netherlands [for example] has in its propaganda created a view of Islam as a system of norms and values that is hostile to and totally inconsistent with the Dutch tradition. In the long run, and if appropriate measures against the ideas and practices of such groups are not taken, discrimination of Muslims will no longer be a taboo, a situation which will result in a further increase in discrimination.130 Political discrimination must also be addressed by the major parties. Things are changing for the better, as Muslims in Britain are more likely to register to vote (and actually vote) than whites. There are 136 city councilors in Britain of Pakistani descent. At the same time there is evidence that efforts are being made by white-dominated trade unions to limit “Asian” representation, which indicates that society barriers are still present. At the national level, legislation such as the recently passed UK Terrorism Act (comparable to the US Patriot Act) indicates that there is still much to do in the political sphere. 102 Of course, a major part of the integration efforts has to come from Muslim communities themselves. Culturalism has stunted the process of creating a well-adjusted, integrationist British Muslim community. It is not an easy process. In fact, as described earlier, even the relatively more successful American Muslim community has had to deal with the struggle between culturalism and integrationism. Factors that have led to the dominance of culturalism in the UK include socio-economic disadvantages of the immigrant community, the establishment of geographic enclaves and persistent linkages with home country organizations. The socio-economic disadvantages, resulting in educational underachievement, have been well-documented above. Suffice it to say at this point that educational investment by parents is a key not only to social mobility but also to social adjustment by the next generation to British society. It is important for families to look beyond the short-term value of having children begin bringing home income to thinking about the value that further education will provide the family and society, particularly considering the minimal cost of higher education in the British system (relative to US higher education costs). Along with addressing social barriers, Muslims must deal directly with growing negative perceptions of Islam and the Muslim ummah, due in large part to global events of recent years. London society sees the Muslim community’s ever increasing visibility and infrastructure, due in large part to the culturalist foundations of most of the community. British Muslims can take historical lessons from other minority Muslim communities, such as the 1200-year-old community in China, which, as mentioned earlier, has thrived through political upheaval by building out their infrastructure in a noticeably Chinese style. Also, Chinese Muslim restaurants have proliferated through the 103 large urban centers in China because they are known not necessarily for providing an ethnically distinct cuisine (which many do—providing food common to the Hui people), but rather for providing pure and high-quality food that the larger community trusts. Non-Muslims have in fact begun to open Muslim restaurants because of the marketing advantage that being associated with “purity” and “truthfulness” confers to them. I would like to emphasize some of the variables that lead to the emergence of a successful Muslim minority in the West. Investment in secular education: Human capital investment will continue to drive integration and will inevitably lead to upward social mobility, even in the face of discrimination. Investment in traditional Islamic scholarship, both through local institutions and culturally fluent, traditionally trained scholars: It is critical that Islamic scholarship be encouraged at the local level, hand in hand with secular education. Muslim communities must develop home-grown, traditionally grounded Islamic legal discourses to preserve and essentialize Islam, and properly apply them in the American or British context. Dispersion of Muslims in the host society instead of geographic clustering: Dispersion is not necessary for the emergence of a healthy community, but clustered communities must make concerted attempts to engage the larger society, whereas such attempts are more natural, daily occurrences for dispersed communities. Encouraging the emergence of an indigenous Muslim culture (in concert with indigenous segments of the Muslim community, including African-Americans, 104 European-Americans and other converts): In concert with the development of local Islamic scholarship, it is the evolution of Muslim culture in America or Britain that will signal true integration. Examples include growth of cottage industries around the product and service needs of Muslims, such as halal mortgages. A focus on mosque programs and services in the language and idiom of the local society: English-language events are critical for second- and thirdgeneration Muslims in the US to establish a strong identity that is not based on trying to “straddle” two different worlds, that of Islam at home and America outside the home. A willingness of the host society to accept and integrate (rather than assimilate) the new faith tradition: Host society reaction to a growing and assertive Muslim presence is an important variable in the development of healthy, integrative relations between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. While discrimination can be expected because of news events and a lack of education about Islam, a test of the ability of UK and US societies to adapt to and accept their Muslim citizens is the success of interfaith, civil rights and outreach efforts initiated by both communities. Muslim community-driven diversity and sensitivity training in workplaces, schools and public institutions such as police departments: This is the other side of the coin of outreach. Muslim organizations and local communities must themselves invest time and resources to reach out to the larger community in a proactive manner. Creating understanding and empathy is a powerful means of 105 accelerating acceptance and reducing discrimination. A strong example of this work is the work of the Islamic Networks Group in the Bay Area. Government legislation against religious hate crimes: Related to host society acceptance, it is important for government leaders to take an important role in acknowledging discrimination in the US and UK and passing legislation to outlaw it. An avoidance of allegiances to home country organizations (not to be confused with maintaining Islamic orthodoxy through linkages to Islamic scholarship): Particularly in the UK, it is important that local organizations and local voices emerge that are relevant not only to the larger British society, but also to secondand third-generation Muslims. In addition, there appear to be less significant independent variables such as country of origin of the immigrant, the faith of the host country, or the timing of chain migration (which in the case of the US and the UK seemed to occur roughly in the same time period). The move towards greater European integration (affecting the parallel struggle towards Muslim integration) appears to be a confounding factor in my analysis. In addition the fallout of political and social turmoil in the Muslim world has had complex effects in the US and UK. The societies of the two countries have been influenced to differing degrees by domestic terrorist attacks, the reaction of government officials to those attacks and the influences of European countries’ policies vis-à-vis the Muslim world.131 106 The US case study in this thesis highlights two general trends marking the emerging dominance of the integrationist view of Muslim life in America. The first is the growing convergence of African-American and immigrant Muslim communities. The second is the power transfer from immigrants to their descendants. The first is a natural outgrowth of the increasing percentage of Muslims who have lived most or all of their lives in the United States, now above 60% of the population.132 The descendants of immigrants relate more closely to the African-American indigenous Muslim experience than they do to their predecessors’ home countries. The second is a result not only of general demographic trends, but also of world events and assertiveness of a new, educated American Muslim generation, influenced heavily by living in cities and towns with few other Muslims. The progression can be traced back to the original institutions that immigrants formed. The post-World War II organizations that existed in the US, such as the Federation of Islamic Associations, emphasized ethnic identities, while the post-1965 MSA worked to unify Muslims of all national origins.133 Immigrant Muslims, even those who associated with the idealistic MSA, saw themselves as having dual political and cultural roles, between America and their home countries.134 This often resulted in tensions among US Muslims over how to handle issues that had differing effects on the home countries versus local populations, a tension that reached a crescendo in the 2000 election between Gore and Bush. However this tension between the “diasporic” and “claiming America” perspectives, as Sau Ling Wong describes them, shifted sharply from the isolationism of “diaspora” to the integration of “claiming America,” particularly after September 11.135 US-centric integrationism was a better framework to proactively “manage” one’s faith to counteract misinformation about Islam 107 from teachers, friends, and neighbors. No longer was the American Muslim community able to passively live in the US just to take advantage of economic and educational opportunities. In a post-9/11 environment Muslims are in the spotlight and are seen as representatives of their faith. There is an expectation of social responsibility to the Muslim community and the larger society that didn’t exist before. American Muslims have noted that they have two choices: assimilation or integrationism based on the understanding that Muslims must act as ambassadors of their faith. Some Muslims are able to temporarily find a culturalist option through immersion in densely populated Muslim enclaves in places like Devon Street in Chicago and Jackson Heights in New York City. While these enclaves continue to grow, a smaller percentage of Muslims are choosing to live in them, selecting instead a more typical American town with a small but active Muslim community. Generational differences have driven much of this geographic change. The first generation’s culturalist struggle to maintain status quo has increasingly given way to the integrationist second and third generations. Political and social experiences have shaped descendants’ experiences as much as their parents have. In addition, as MSA leadership shifted from immigrant graduate students to American-born undergraduates, the integration trend continued as descendants met up with each other and realized a renewed interest in Islamic orthopraxis and essentialization. As US Muslims have begun to establish an American Islamic presence, the first fruits have come from campuses, such as Syracuse University declaring Eid-ul-Fitr as an official university holiday in 1997 and Emory University allowing the adhan (call to prayer) to be pronounced from the campus bell tower in 2001. 108 In the end, immigrant Muslims in the US have made a revolutionary transition from a survival mode, struggling to balance faith-based and country-based norms, to claiming a place at the table of American cultural dialogue. John Voll states that, The challenge of the Muslims is to create responses that will provide recognition of the special character of Islam in both private and public life without creating unnecessary conflict. Muslim responses to issues such as prayer in school and worship in prisons may help all Americans create more general and universal practices that are not shaped exclusively by traditional Christian practices.136 And this perhaps best forecasts the future direction of the integrationist Muslim community in the UK. British Muslims must continue to chart a path that preserves the traditional Islamic discourse that has anchored the Muslim community and prevented its assimilation. At the same time, Muslims must keep Islam relevant for future generations in Britain by applying what they see as the eternal Islamic framework for living in any time and space. The British case study in this thesis points to an evolution in that direction. As for British society as a whole, the question is not how Muslims can be expelled from, or assimilated into, European society, but rather how best they may be accommodated and integrated into the fabric of these countries. One researcher emphasizes the critical imperative of Britain engaging its Muslim citizens, writing that, “relative to a dwindling and aging European population, the percentage of Europe’s Muslims, particularly the youth, is growing steadily.”137 An encouraging, if only symbolic, example of this official engagement was the Queen’s first-ever visit to a British mosque in July of 2002. The Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph reported that the visit was a part of a goodwill gesture to non-Christian groups to celebrate the Golden Jubilee, and was organized with the help of the Inter Faith Network for the UK. The Queen visited the 109 Islamic Centre on Parkinson Avenue in Scunthorpe.138 While most would see this visit as mere publicity for the government, it does at least represent a step in the right direction, an explicit recognition of the growing importance of the British Muslim community. Perhaps it is best for the UK government as well to look at the American model. American Muslims were not always as clearly on the integrationist path as they are now, but communities like the one in the Bay Area have gradually and incrementally made their way there. What has helped the US community, and will help the UK community, is a clear generational difference in looking at essentialized Islam and its relevance in the US. Young Muslims, fluent in the American or British idiom and culture from birth, not knowing another culture firsthand, are probably more apt to learn essentialized, orthodox Islamic practice, rather than a culturalized version. 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Suleyman Nyang, “Convergence and Divergence in an Emergent Community: A Study of Challenges Facing US Muslims,” in Yvonne Haddad, ed., The Muslims of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 238-239 2 By “orthodox” I refer here to the Sunni, Twelver Shi`a, and Bhora communities, which consider each other to fall within the bounds of orthodoxy, but consider other groups such as the Ismailis, heterodox 3 Michael W. Suleiman, Islam, Muslims and Arabs in America: The Other of the Other of the Other… (Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 19, No 1, 1999), p. 41 4 Essentialism is a term used by Syed Abedin and Saleha Abedin in Muslim Minorities in Non-Muslim Societies from John Esposito, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Vol. 3 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). It is term that describes Muslims’ distillation of core Islamic beliefs, practices and values from the larger set of cultural norms in any specific country 5 Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1998) and Allan Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America (New York: Routledge Press, 1997) 6 Muhammad Shareef, presentation: African Muslim Slaves (Berkeley: Al-Qalam Institute Conference, 1997) 7 Sulayman Nyang, Islam in America: A Historical Perspective (American Muslim Quarterly 2(1): 7-38, 1998), pp. 10-11. 8 Umar Abd-Allah, Islam in Victorian America: A Biography of Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb (forthcoming) 9 Michael W. Suleiman, Islam, Muslims and Arabs in America: The Other of the Other of the Other… (Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 19, No 1, 1999), p. 41 10 Umar Abd-Allah, Roots of Islam in America (San Jose: Islamic Networks Group presentation material for schools and universities, 2003), slide 27 11 Ibid., slide 28 12 Ibid., slides 32-33. Mosques were established early on in Ross, ND (1900), Michigan City, IN (1915) and Cedar Rapids, IA (1934) 13 Ibid, slides 19-20 14 Ibid., slide 23 15 Barbara Metcalf, New Medinas: The Tablighi Jama’at in America and Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 71 16 Michael W. Suleiman, Islam, Muslims and Arabs in America: The Other of the Other of the Other… (Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 19, No 1, 1999), p. 41 17 Stewart Lawrence, Religion and Immigration in the United States: A Bibliographic Report (Unpublished report to funders: Louisville Institute and the Pew Charitable Trusts, 1999), p. 23 18 Ibid., pp. 24-25 19 Karen Leonard, Muslim in the United States- the State of Research (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003), p. 17 20 Louise Cainkar, The Deteriorating Ethnic Safety Net Among Arabs in Chicago in Arabs in Michael Suleiman, America: Building a New Future (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999) 21 Fareed Nu’man, The Muslim Population in the United States (Washington DC: American Muslim Council, 1992), p. 13 22 Zahid Bukhari, Suleyman Nyang, Muslims in the American Public Square: Shifting Political Winds (Washington DC: Project MAPS- Muslims in the American Public Square, 2004), p. 6 23 United States Census Bureau, US Census 2000 (Washington DC: US Census Bureau, 2000) 24 Association of Bay Area Counties, Bay Area County Map (San Francisco: ABAC Report, 1996) 25 Bukhari, 2004, p. 8 1 115 26 27 Council for American Islamic Relations, Hate Crimes Report, 2004 (Washington DC: CAIR, 2004) Council for American Islamic Relations, CAIR-Net American Muslim News Briefs (Washington DC: CAIR, 4/25/2006) 28 Council for American Islamic Relations, CAIR-Net American Muslim News Briefs (Washington DC: CAIR, 4/27/2006) 29 Leonard 2003, p. 64 30 Nyang 1991, p. 239 31 Ibid., p. 241 32 Gulzar Haider, Muslim Space and the Practice of Architecture in Barbara Metcalf, Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 73 33 Jane Smith, Islam in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 153 34 Jane Smith 1999, p. 136 35 Smith 1999, p. 136 36 Nyang 1991, p. 238 37 Smith 1999, p. 127 38 Source: Discussion with Grananda Islamic School Board 39 Ibid., p. 127 40 Nyang 1991, p. 244 41 Bukhari, 2004, p. 37 42 Ibid., p. 32 43 Ibid., p. 38 44 Leonard 2003, p. 76 45 Suleiman 1999, pp. 38-39 46 Ibid., p. 43 47 Paul Findley, Elections 2000: Analysis of Muslim Bloc Vote (Washington DC: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2001, Pages 25, 82) 48 Leonard 2003, p. 82 49 Ismail al-Faruqi, Islamic Ideals in North America in Earle Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban, and Regula Qureshi, The Muslim Community in North America (Edmonton, Canada: University o f Alberta Press, 1983), p. 269 50 Nyang 1991, p. 236 51 Muhammad Abdul-Rauf, The Future of the Islamic Tradition in North America in Earle Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban, and Regula Qureshi, The Muslim Community in North America (Edmonton, Canada: University o f Alberta Press, 1983), p. 278 52 Nyang 1991, p. 243 53 Leela Jacinto, 'Hip' hijab takes on Dutch prejudices (Boston: Christian Science Monitor, 4/17/2006) 54 Leonard 2003, p. 106 55 Ibid., p. 91 56 Ibid., p. 106 57 Amina McCloud, African American Islam (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 157-158 58 Leonard 2003, p. 89 59 Nyang 1991, p. 238 60 Yvonne Haddad (ed.), Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 242 61 Mona Darwich-Gatto, Conflicts Among Hawaii’s Muslims (Amsterdam: International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Spring 2005 Review), pp. 20-21 62 Haddad 2002, p. 6 63 British Broadcasting Corporation, Religion and Ethics: Islam (London: BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/uk/index.shtml, 2006) 64 Ibid. 65 Haddad 2002, p. 4 66 British Broadcasting Corporation, Religion Ethics: Islam, 2006 67 Ibid. 68 Haddad 2002, p. 19 69 Ibid., p. 20 116 Shireen Hunter, Islam, Europe’s Second Religion (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002), p. 57 Haddad 2002, p. 21 72 Ibid. 73 Government of the United Kingdom, UK National Census 1981 (London: UK Office of National Statistics, 1981) 74 Government of the United Kingdom, UK National Census 1991 (London: UK Office of National Statistics, 1991) 75 Haddad 2002, p. 24 76 Ibid., p. 33 77 Ibid., p. 8 78 Ibid., p. 14 79 W.A.R. Shadid and P.S. van Koningsveld, The Integration of Islam and Hinduism in Western Europe (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1991), p. 81 80 Shadid and Koningsveld, p. 65 81 Shadid and Koningsveld, p. 108 82 Bhikhu Parekh, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain - The Parekh Report (London: Profile Books Ltd, 2001) 83 Tariq Modood, The Educational Attainments of Ethnic Minorities in Britain in Glenn Loury, Tariq Modood and Steven Teles, Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and UK (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, UK, 2005), p. 302 84 Iftikhar Malik, Islam and Modernity: Muslims in Europe and the United States (London: Pluto Press, 2004), p. 105 85 Jorgen Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, 3rd Edition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), p. 57 86 Nielsen 2004, p. 53 87 Shadid and Koningsveld, p. 17 88 The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding , British Muslims Monthly Survey, March 2002 Vol. X, No. 3, p. 11, from the Barnsley Star (Birmingham: The Center for Islam and ChristianMuslim Understanding, 2002) 89 Hunter 2002, p. 89 90 Ibid., p. 64 91 Nielsen 2004, p. 47 92 Ibid. 93 Government of the United Kingdom, UK National Census 2001 (London: UK Office of National Statistics, 2001) 94 Nielsen 2004, p. 42 95 UK Office of National Statistics April 2001 Census, British Asian Demographics (London: The British Library, 2001) 96 Government of the United Kingdom, UK National Statistics (London: UK Census Department, 2004) 97 Haddad 2002, p. 29 98 Hunter 2002, p. 65 99 Ibid., p. 72 100 Ibid., p. 57 101 Nielsen 2004, p. 50 102 Government of the United Kingdom, 2001 103 Nielsen 2004, p. 45 104 Government of the United Kingdom, 2001 105 Haddad 2002, p. 24 106 Nielsen 2004, pp. 48-49 107 The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding, British Muslims Monthly Survey, January Vol. X, No.1, P.11; from the Muslim News (Birmingham: The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding, 2002) 108 Nielsen 2004, p. 49 109 Jorgen Nielsen, Towards a European Islam (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 40 71 70 117 Yusuf Islam statement on Jamia Schools: the girls school and boys school have been ranked at the top of London’s private schools perenially 111 Nielsen 1999, p. 56 112 Hunter 2002, p. xiv 113 Ibid., p. 56 114 Government of the United Kingdom, 2004 115 Ibid., 2004 116 Linda Datcher Loury, Intergenerational mobility and racial inequality in education and earnings in Glenn Loury, Tariq Modood and Steven Teles, Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and UK (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, UK, 2005), p. 162 117 Modood 2005, p. 292 118 Office for Standards in Education, Inspection Report for the Institute of Islamic Education (Darul`Uloom Dewsbury) (Norwich: Office of Public Sector Information, UK, 2005, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/reports/manreports/2523.htm) 119 Shadid and Koningsveld, p. 15 120 Ibid., p. 16 121 Nielsen 2004, p. 54 122 Shadid and Koningsveld 1991, p. 16 123 Government of the United Kingdom, UK National Census 1991 (London: UK Office of National Statistics, 2001) in Tariq Modood, 2005, p. 290 124 Modood 2005, p. 289, 293 125 The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding , British Muslims Monthly Survey, March 2002 Vol. X, No. 3, p. 7, from Sunday Business (Birmingham: The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding, 2002) 126 Nielsen 1999, pp. 44-45 127 Hunter 2002, pp. 55-56 128 Shadid and Koningsveld 1991, p. 86 129 The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding , British Muslims Monthly Survey, March 2002 Vol. X, No. 3, p. 8; from the Glasgow Herald (Birmingham: The Center for Islam and ChristianMuslim Understanding, 2002) 130 Shadid and Koningsveld 1991, p. 12 131 Hunter 2002, p. xi 132 Islamic Network Groups, Muslim Patient Care Training presentation (San Jose: Islamic Networks Group, 2003), slide 8 133 Smith 1999, p. 169 134 Leonard 2003, p. 82 135 Sau Ling Wong, Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical Crossroads (Amerasia Journal 21(1-2): pp. 1-27) 136 John Voll, Islamic Issues for Muslims in the United States in Yvonne Haddad, The Muslims of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 209 137 Hunter 2002, p. xv 138 The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding , British Muslims Monthly Survey, March 2002 Vol. X, No. 3, p. 7; from the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph (Birmingham: The Center for Islam and Christian-Muslim Understanding, 2002) 110 118