The Mosque in America
I wanted to pick up on this post something I had mentioned in my last post, respecting a common complaint of some African American Muslims I know, that immigrant Muslims often associate Islam with their countries of origin, rather than America, which thereby neglects or dismisses the vibrant practice of Islam among Muslims whose ancestors have deep roots in this soil. I think that it is right to call this a problem, for any number of reasons. For one thing, to associate Islam with America, and some of its oldest inhabitants, takes away a weapon in the Islamophobe's arsenal, that America welcomes Muslims to this country from other places and then they ungratefully spread a message of hate. That's difficult to sustain for a variety of reasons of course (it ignores the reality of the American Muslim experience, which nearly universally has nothing to do with a message of hate), but once we start to talk about black Muslims, well then it just becomes too stupid to say (for just about anyone other than Virgil Goode, that is). America didn't exactly "welcome" blacks, I'm not sure "ungrateful" is the word I'd use for people who were brought here by force and in chains.
But aside from this, another problem I am noticing is that it leads to an alien Islam, a foreign Islam, one that is more difficult for American Muslims to relate to or appreciate, and that creates tensions within the community, and between the community and those outside of it. The best example I can think of respecting this is the deplorable conditions of all too many mosques in the United States concerning the treatment of women. Asra Nomani and her father wrote a really wonderful, and terribly sad, piece about this in the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture (vol. 8). Prayer areas are tiny, women's sections are overflowing with crying babies, there's always some sister or two in there enforcing dress code rules, to prevent the horror and abomination of a loose strand of hair showing, or worse yet, flesh near an ankle, sometimes they are so cordoned off you can't even see the women enter and leave, much less pray, and heaven forbid I run into a female friend outside the mosque and attempt a conversation. What kind of evil temptation am I tempting to draw her into through such inappropriate behavior, it might well be asked.
Now when I'm in Iraq and I walk into the mosque and this is it, I sort of get it, this is another country, I know gender relations in Iraq, they aren't the stereotype they're made out to be here (yes, I can talk to a female bank teller for God's sake), they are different and it's a different place. What I want to know is why when I walk into a mosque in America, I feel like I've backed up, well beyond Iraq and sort of entered Saudi or something.
Of course we can all parse Islamic foundational text and get to different answers about gender relations and what women's sections should be like, but this is hardly the point. As I've said so many times on this blog, in religion as in law, texts don't much determine anything, a person with particular cultural biases and predilections and ideological and ethical leanings and assumptions reads those texts, and an answer is shaped thereby. As it goes with Roe v. Wade, so it goes with Prophetic statements concerning khulwa, or unlawful seclusion of a man and a woman.
The point, rather, is that this isn't the dominant cultural predilections or practices of most of the people sitting in the mosque, and certainly not something they think of or dream about outside of the mosque. Yeah sure, each place has its weirdos, but your average Friday going dude isn't actually traumatized by his female coworkers, isn't scandalized by the fact that his daughter has a conversation with male colleagues (if they are Muslim and she is single, he might even be encouraged by that), and might not ever see a veiled woman outside of the mosque. So what's up, why aren't these people looking at their religion differently, interpreting the texts in a manner that makes sense to them, given their own biases and leanings? Why do you go nuts if I talk to a woman in the mosque when you know I talk to women, Muslim and non-Muslim, outside of the mosque all the time. Why are you such a fascist about the hair when you know she's taking the thing off as soon as she walks out? To be clear, this is not about hypocrisy. It's not like these Muslims think, outside of the mosque, that all of this behavior is unIslamic. Ask a Muslim in America if a woman's voice is prohibited to be heard, and he might think you're joking. Certainly he's not going to say yes to that, or to get mad if he sees me in conversation with a woman on the street. Yet in the mosque, different rules.
I think the explanation for this dichotomy is partly this notion that "Islam" for all too many immigrant Muslims is associated with the Muslim practices of their countries of origin. So mosques have to look as the mosques they remember in Karachi, or Cairo, or Jakarta, or wherever else. If they start to loosen up, or they start to change things around, it starts to feel, to them, less like the Islam they understand, grew up with and associate with. So in the mosque, we're therefore in Karachi. Outside of it though, well there is more need to adapt, and doctrine does adapt. American Muslims take remarkably flexible positions on any number of issues, in the name of Islam.
Go to the next generation, my generation, the native born, and we don't quite get it. It seems to us as Muslims there is stuff we're supposed to do, and stuff we aren't supposed to do. Don't eat pork. Pray. Work with coworkers of both genders. It doesn't change for us based on location. While we can sort of get some limited additional rule or two when actually worshipping (women here, men there, fine), it makes no sense to us to pretend as if a strand of a woman's hair is so tempting as to distract us from prayer and make us want to drop our pants and masturbate when we're heading back to an American campus where a bit more is shown. Muslim students are even more perplexed--you keep saying I should marry a Muslim, the student tells her parents, yet the rules of the game are set up such that the one thing I really can't do is talk to a Muslim in an Islamic setting. We don't internalize Islam as much as being related solely to some other country, we look for one big harmonious frame, not some stark dichotomy between what Islam requires of us in the mosque (a bunch of weird stuff we don't get) and outside the mosque (the world we know well).
And naturally I have my own worldview, and yes I do think it is a problem to have this dichotomous universe, because it seems to me that it is doing less to really plant an Islam on American soil to which American Muslims relate, and more to remind people of another place. But while that other place may be wonderful and worthy of commemoration (I love Iraq, I have always loved Iraq, I enjoyed my two years there and hope to be able to spend more time there in the future), it's not here. Here is America. And we are Americans. We know that outside the mosque, let's just make that mosque in our own image, not the fantastical image of another place, another time.
HAH
But aside from this, another problem I am noticing is that it leads to an alien Islam, a foreign Islam, one that is more difficult for American Muslims to relate to or appreciate, and that creates tensions within the community, and between the community and those outside of it. The best example I can think of respecting this is the deplorable conditions of all too many mosques in the United States concerning the treatment of women. Asra Nomani and her father wrote a really wonderful, and terribly sad, piece about this in the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture (vol. 8). Prayer areas are tiny, women's sections are overflowing with crying babies, there's always some sister or two in there enforcing dress code rules, to prevent the horror and abomination of a loose strand of hair showing, or worse yet, flesh near an ankle, sometimes they are so cordoned off you can't even see the women enter and leave, much less pray, and heaven forbid I run into a female friend outside the mosque and attempt a conversation. What kind of evil temptation am I tempting to draw her into through such inappropriate behavior, it might well be asked.
Now when I'm in Iraq and I walk into the mosque and this is it, I sort of get it, this is another country, I know gender relations in Iraq, they aren't the stereotype they're made out to be here (yes, I can talk to a female bank teller for God's sake), they are different and it's a different place. What I want to know is why when I walk into a mosque in America, I feel like I've backed up, well beyond Iraq and sort of entered Saudi or something.
Of course we can all parse Islamic foundational text and get to different answers about gender relations and what women's sections should be like, but this is hardly the point. As I've said so many times on this blog, in religion as in law, texts don't much determine anything, a person with particular cultural biases and predilections and ideological and ethical leanings and assumptions reads those texts, and an answer is shaped thereby. As it goes with Roe v. Wade, so it goes with Prophetic statements concerning khulwa, or unlawful seclusion of a man and a woman.
The point, rather, is that this isn't the dominant cultural predilections or practices of most of the people sitting in the mosque, and certainly not something they think of or dream about outside of the mosque. Yeah sure, each place has its weirdos, but your average Friday going dude isn't actually traumatized by his female coworkers, isn't scandalized by the fact that his daughter has a conversation with male colleagues (if they are Muslim and she is single, he might even be encouraged by that), and might not ever see a veiled woman outside of the mosque. So what's up, why aren't these people looking at their religion differently, interpreting the texts in a manner that makes sense to them, given their own biases and leanings? Why do you go nuts if I talk to a woman in the mosque when you know I talk to women, Muslim and non-Muslim, outside of the mosque all the time. Why are you such a fascist about the hair when you know she's taking the thing off as soon as she walks out? To be clear, this is not about hypocrisy. It's not like these Muslims think, outside of the mosque, that all of this behavior is unIslamic. Ask a Muslim in America if a woman's voice is prohibited to be heard, and he might think you're joking. Certainly he's not going to say yes to that, or to get mad if he sees me in conversation with a woman on the street. Yet in the mosque, different rules.
I think the explanation for this dichotomy is partly this notion that "Islam" for all too many immigrant Muslims is associated with the Muslim practices of their countries of origin. So mosques have to look as the mosques they remember in Karachi, or Cairo, or Jakarta, or wherever else. If they start to loosen up, or they start to change things around, it starts to feel, to them, less like the Islam they understand, grew up with and associate with. So in the mosque, we're therefore in Karachi. Outside of it though, well there is more need to adapt, and doctrine does adapt. American Muslims take remarkably flexible positions on any number of issues, in the name of Islam.
Go to the next generation, my generation, the native born, and we don't quite get it. It seems to us as Muslims there is stuff we're supposed to do, and stuff we aren't supposed to do. Don't eat pork. Pray. Work with coworkers of both genders. It doesn't change for us based on location. While we can sort of get some limited additional rule or two when actually worshipping (women here, men there, fine), it makes no sense to us to pretend as if a strand of a woman's hair is so tempting as to distract us from prayer and make us want to drop our pants and masturbate when we're heading back to an American campus where a bit more is shown. Muslim students are even more perplexed--you keep saying I should marry a Muslim, the student tells her parents, yet the rules of the game are set up such that the one thing I really can't do is talk to a Muslim in an Islamic setting. We don't internalize Islam as much as being related solely to some other country, we look for one big harmonious frame, not some stark dichotomy between what Islam requires of us in the mosque (a bunch of weird stuff we don't get) and outside the mosque (the world we know well).
And naturally I have my own worldview, and yes I do think it is a problem to have this dichotomous universe, because it seems to me that it is doing less to really plant an Islam on American soil to which American Muslims relate, and more to remind people of another place. But while that other place may be wonderful and worthy of commemoration (I love Iraq, I have always loved Iraq, I enjoyed my two years there and hope to be able to spend more time there in the future), it's not here. Here is America. And we are Americans. We know that outside the mosque, let's just make that mosque in our own image, not the fantastical image of another place, another time.
HAH
I would think that all religions have a similar issue. People are comfortable with what they grew up with, and identify with it better. Judaism has a similar issue. There is Hassidic, Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed Judaism, each successive one less hung up on old world values, more in tune with current times and evolving.
I grew up as a Conservative. I remember going to a Reformed service once as a kid, and my mother was horrified that men didn't have to wear a skull cap and that there was music played at the service. The Reformed service seemed odd to me, but as an adult I now think of it as Judaism that has changed with the times in an attempt to remain relevant. My mother, however, found it hard to consider Reformed as Judaism at all.
It sounds like you're advocating that American Muslims adapt Islam to the American experience. That would be a good thing in my view, but anything that makes it different will make it non-Muslim in traditionalists' views.
Reply to this
Salaam brother,
This is hilarious and sad. These are the very issues I write so much about. As Dr. Jackson said, we are transliterating instead of translating the religion. Its crazy and at times I feel like I'm crawling up a muddy hill backwards with a weight tied to my neck. When you get some time(you are busier than I am), check out my series on Islamic maturity here in the US.
Reply to this
I will, and I am sorry I haven't been paying nearly as much attention to your blog as you have to mine, though I do read it often. I will do my best to fix this!
Reply to this
Assalaam Alaikum,
I remember being in Cairo last summer, and it being prayer time. For men, it is easy for us to scurry into one of the many Mosques on nearly every corner. But I remember thinking what would my friend's wife do? Not many Mosques there have women's section, at least based on my brief experience. Where would she pray if it was time for prayer, and there is no space in the mosque for her?
At least in America, generally speaking, that would not be a major concern for a Muslim sister. Yes, the conditions of the womens area leaves much to be desired, but at least, unlike other parts of the world, she has a place to pray. And that is something.
Regarding the rules in place at mosques, I think it is because the mosque is considered a sacred place, people think it should have special rules. Yes, there is free mixing of the genders in general society, but when people come to a mosque, I think they expect to come to a protected area where their notions of Islamic etiquette can be applied. Some degree of gender segregation is considered part of that etiquette. Most Muslim societies consider complete gender mixing at mosques taboo. This is based on my own limited travels (India, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi, UAE) but also on experiences of others who have been to other places. It seems to be pretty common across the board, not just something specific to the culture of a specific group of Muslims.
That being said, I have seen American mosques much more liberal. Just this past Ramadan, at a mosque in southern California, there was a huge all-night prayer gathering, 2000 people showed up, maybe more, predominantly youth. While maybe 500 of them spent the entire night actually in the segregated Prayer halls (men on the first floor, women up on the second floor), majority of the people spent most of the night outside the prayer hall, but still on masjid premise, socializing. Men and women, no separation, freely interacting. (I'm sure most of the parents that dropped off the kids thinking their son/daughter would be spending the whole night in prayer/dhikr/reciting Quran ). Until, that is, time for the pre-dawn meal came. then each respective gender went off to their separate areas to eat breakfast before beginning their fast.
Moreover, I am not sure that the unnecessary policing of behavior and clothing at mosques necessarily results from fear of temptation. I have been told that my pants are too low, I have to wear a cap, or shirt needs to turned inside-out because of a picture on it. I think with my case, it was assumed that my prayer would somehow be less valid if I my dress didn't conform to their notion of what proper Islamic attire is. Similarly, I have been told that I shouldn't be discussing politics within the mosque. The mosque is for "deen" not "dunya." Perhaps some of the policing of women may also not be because of fear temptation?
Reply to this
Alaikum Assalam wa Rahmat Allah
I am sorry, but I don't agree. I don't think the comments men get for their cap with the near fascist approach that is directed to and at women concerning their dress in American mosques are really comparable. It's just not the same, not in quantity, not in quantity, not in temperament. but I suppose any listening sisters are probably the best judges. I've never once been told anything about my dress in a mosque, and I can't think of a single Muslim American woman who would say the same.
I agree American mosques are better than the situation in the Middle East, I think that's about as low a bar as can be set, however.
Thanks for the encouragement, and look forward to more comments.
Reply to this