America's Two Muslim Communities
If you go to any city in the United States with a Muslim community of almost any size, you are nearly guaranteed to find at least two mosques. One of those mosques will be largely African American, and the other will be largely immigrant. This split is far more common even than a Sunni Shi'a split. Until the Shi'a community reaches a particular nucleus, they often don't even bother with a separate mosque, they might do Shi'a things in homes and the like, but otherwise go to the Sunni mosque. But there will almost certainly be a separate mosque for African Americans. Growing up in Columbus Ohio this was certainly the case, and even here in Pittsburgh where there is a Shi'a mosque, it was opened recently, long after there were several Sunni mosques, among which were, as you might guess, predominantly African American mosques and predominantly immigrant mosques.
At one level, to one focussed more on doctrine than the social context in which that doctrine is located, this is perplexing. Islam is nothing if not race neutral, particularly in our time, particularly on a docrinal level. Why wouldn't the substantially more significant Sunni-Shi'a split, with the thorny questions about the first three caliphs, the doctrine of the Imamate, the notion of the returning Mahdi, end up being the first division? Why would it be black and immigrant when they're both Sunni and more or less believe the exact same thing?
To those of us more accustomed to looking at things in their social context, the Realists, it's not so surprising. First, America is a society riven by race in myriad ways. Whether it's television shows, movies, the people a person chooses as friends, neighborhoods, schools, there is a stark divide between black and white that is quite clear in American society that only a fool would fail to recognize immediately. Second, when brown people from other countries move into that social space, they effectively have to decide which of these two camps they are going to belong to. Are they going to be like white people, or are they going to be like black people. And to the legitimate dismay of African American Muslims, they almost always choose to be white people, and yes I think racism has something to do with that. Not Bull Connor racism, of course, American Muslims of the immigrant variety inhabit the social space of contemporary America, not 1950's Alabama, so it's not like they won't pray behind black people, or won't let a black imam lead the prayer, or will bar the doors to black people entering the mosque, any more than white people today demonstrate to prevent blacks from entering their schools. Most American Muslims would react violently to the notion that they are racist, they would regard it as the same insult that white Americans would. But if the question becomes do they want their daughters marrying African Americans, and let's make it easy and say African American Muslims, I think you'd find those preferring that over those preferring a white non Muslim entirely would be a very small minority. this despite the doctrinal ban on interfaith marriages of this sort (Muslim women can only marry Muslim men, reverse though it's a bit more open) and, as noted above, total race neutrality on marriage as a doctrinal matter.
But it's not just racism that causes them to choose to be white on the white black divide. Immigrants who come to the US tend to be from communities and places where they have had exposure to an America that isn't black, both in visitors who have come to them, in the colleagues who go to them to teach, and the like.
It really doesn't matter what the reason is, the point is, Muslims enter the US, and their doctrine doesn't recreate the social space, rather they adapt themselves to the social space. They adjust themselves to the social space, it becomes their lived practice. They become "white", they have white friends and like white movies and live in white suburban neighborhoods. And like most whites, they tend to forget there's a whole group of underprivileged black people living not too far away, such that the difference between the immigrant mosque and the black mosque in terms of facilities and their disrepair is rather stark. Again, not overt racism, more benign neglect. An African American imam if he comes to the immigrant mosque and tells the tale of his mosque, and of course he'll be invited, might gather a lot of cash, he will gather a lot of cash actually. What he won't gather is many visitors even if he pleads that they come take a look. A few might think about it, fewer still might venture over once or twice, and that will be that. The immigrants mean well, but they don't treat the brother as their own, they neglect the whole notion of the race blind brotherhood they are supposed to be following from the sacred texts, they send far more money back to their home countries for charity than they do to their coreligionists in the same city.
They adapt, that is, their doctrine to the social space, not so much by overtly changing the doctrine, but more by practicing parts and ignoring other parts to match the social space, which in this context is America's perduring racial divide. It's not pretty, in fact it's rather shameful and ugly, and even if I've overstated my case (meaning there is more cooperation and more intervisitation than I've allowed in these short remarks), that divide, among American Muslims, is tragically more real than I think many of us care to admit.
HAH
At one level, to one focussed more on doctrine than the social context in which that doctrine is located, this is perplexing. Islam is nothing if not race neutral, particularly in our time, particularly on a docrinal level. Why wouldn't the substantially more significant Sunni-Shi'a split, with the thorny questions about the first three caliphs, the doctrine of the Imamate, the notion of the returning Mahdi, end up being the first division? Why would it be black and immigrant when they're both Sunni and more or less believe the exact same thing?
To those of us more accustomed to looking at things in their social context, the Realists, it's not so surprising. First, America is a society riven by race in myriad ways. Whether it's television shows, movies, the people a person chooses as friends, neighborhoods, schools, there is a stark divide between black and white that is quite clear in American society that only a fool would fail to recognize immediately. Second, when brown people from other countries move into that social space, they effectively have to decide which of these two camps they are going to belong to. Are they going to be like white people, or are they going to be like black people. And to the legitimate dismay of African American Muslims, they almost always choose to be white people, and yes I think racism has something to do with that. Not Bull Connor racism, of course, American Muslims of the immigrant variety inhabit the social space of contemporary America, not 1950's Alabama, so it's not like they won't pray behind black people, or won't let a black imam lead the prayer, or will bar the doors to black people entering the mosque, any more than white people today demonstrate to prevent blacks from entering their schools. Most American Muslims would react violently to the notion that they are racist, they would regard it as the same insult that white Americans would. But if the question becomes do they want their daughters marrying African Americans, and let's make it easy and say African American Muslims, I think you'd find those preferring that over those preferring a white non Muslim entirely would be a very small minority. this despite the doctrinal ban on interfaith marriages of this sort (Muslim women can only marry Muslim men, reverse though it's a bit more open) and, as noted above, total race neutrality on marriage as a doctrinal matter.
But it's not just racism that causes them to choose to be white on the white black divide. Immigrants who come to the US tend to be from communities and places where they have had exposure to an America that isn't black, both in visitors who have come to them, in the colleagues who go to them to teach, and the like.
It really doesn't matter what the reason is, the point is, Muslims enter the US, and their doctrine doesn't recreate the social space, rather they adapt themselves to the social space. They adjust themselves to the social space, it becomes their lived practice. They become "white", they have white friends and like white movies and live in white suburban neighborhoods. And like most whites, they tend to forget there's a whole group of underprivileged black people living not too far away, such that the difference between the immigrant mosque and the black mosque in terms of facilities and their disrepair is rather stark. Again, not overt racism, more benign neglect. An African American imam if he comes to the immigrant mosque and tells the tale of his mosque, and of course he'll be invited, might gather a lot of cash, he will gather a lot of cash actually. What he won't gather is many visitors even if he pleads that they come take a look. A few might think about it, fewer still might venture over once or twice, and that will be that. The immigrants mean well, but they don't treat the brother as their own, they neglect the whole notion of the race blind brotherhood they are supposed to be following from the sacred texts, they send far more money back to their home countries for charity than they do to their coreligionists in the same city.
They adapt, that is, their doctrine to the social space, not so much by overtly changing the doctrine, but more by practicing parts and ignoring other parts to match the social space, which in this context is America's perduring racial divide. It's not pretty, in fact it's rather shameful and ugly, and even if I've overstated my case (meaning there is more cooperation and more intervisitation than I've allowed in these short remarks), that divide, among American Muslims, is tragically more real than I think many of us care to admit.
HAH
Just a question, in practice and in doctrine where do immigrant African Muslims fall?
And, outside America, when African Muslims and Arabic or Persian Muslims live in the same cities and regions, is there less division along racial lines than in the US? Along doctrinal lines?
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Thanks Kim. yeah, I hit "send" and realized I omitted the whole area of African Muslims which was rather dumb of me. Generally, African immigrant Muslims (meaning of course subsaharan Africa, as the North Africans consider themselves Arabs more or less) end up with the African American community by and large, though not exclusively, which does not surprise me terribly.
I'm not sure where outside the US you have such incredible diversity. Of course Canada and Europe and Australia, but they aren't much different in terms of their racial divides. The HK mosque I used to attend had immigrants from everywhere, though overwhelmingly South Asia. Still, folks from other places likewise attended,including Africans, and there was no "African Muslim" mosque that I knew anything about.
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