Prospects for absorbing the immigrants into American life seemed dim. They insisted in segregating their children in special religious schools, where, rumor had it, even the youngest were indoctrinated to hate others who were not like them. Knowledgeable observers claimed that the immigrants’ places of worship concealed arsenals; that their fanatical secret societies swore bloody oaths to exterminate Americans; that their religious loyalties would always prevent them from assimilating in anything but name. Self-evidently, their rigid religious dogmas prevented them from participating in the intellectual debates of an open democracy. At their worst, their clergy and spiritual leaders sounded as if they were still living in the 13th century. But somehow, matters changed dramatically over time. In 1960, in fact, a member of this despised immigrant religion even became president of the United States, and today only the narrowest of bigots would deny that Roman Catholics are fully assimilated into American social, political and intellectual life.
For scholars of contemporary American Islam, the Catholic precedent must seem hopeful. Of course, modern Muslims face drawbacks, especially in the political arena. For all the vigor of anti-Catholicism in the 19th century, American forces never found themselves facing multiple simultaneous wars against Catholic powers overseas. Nor did Catholic militias and terrorist cells try to destroy American cities. Quite the contrary, Irish Catholic groups used the United States as a reliable base from which to challenge imperial Britain, and more or less to this day, they are funded by American dollars.
Yet in other ways, Muslims enjoy advantages that Catholics did not possess during their historic struggles for recognition. Islam works outstandingly well as a decentralized religion, so ordinary believers cannot be accused of subservience to some distant equivalent of the Vatican. Nor do most strands of the religion possess authoritative clerical structure of the kind that Protestant Americans so detested among Catholics. Meanwhile, the great majority of Muslims clearly share moral and spiritual values closely akin to those of mainstream Americans, Christian and Jewish. In light of recent controversies, it is ironic to recall that prior to September 11, 2001, George W. Bush stood out in his determined outreach to American Muslims, in his consistent references to people of faith, whether they belonged to the church, synagogue, or mosque. That comprehensive phrase has now entered political vocabulary, and probably will become as obligatory as the adjective “Judaeo-Christian” has been over the past half-century.
Many Muslims, also, are prepared to commit wholeheartedly to American values. Karen Leonard’s book quotes the moving words of one Muslim activist who praised the true martyrs of September 11—that is, the police officers and firefighters who gave their lives trying to save others. In so doing, he suggested, they demonstrated Islamic values at their finest, the struggle (jihad) for righteousness. Some community leaders have enthusiastically praised the U.S. Constitution for its clear enunciation of pristine Islamic values. I have heard prominent Muslims declare, perhaps with an excess of patriotic fervor, that the United States is literally the only nation in the world in which it is possible to live a truly Muslim life. American exceptionalism is by no means exclusively Christian.
Leonard’s book has much of value, often for the scholarly directions in which she can point the reader as much as for what she says explicitly. This is a short text, avowedly a summary of research, and frankly it makes few concessions to the non-specialist reader. Yet given that, this is an excellent brief introduction to the world of American Islam, all the better for her coverage of a very wide range of themes and her array of scholarly approaches. She discusses the lengthy and complex history of the religion in North America, among African Americans and early migrants from the Near East. Unaccountably, to my romantic taste, she neglects to tell the fascinating story of one Arab Muslim who was an authentic pioneer of the American West, the legendary Hajj Ali, whose name was transformed into the rather endearing “Hi Jolly.” No doubt future generations of American Muslim schoolchildren will read books about him, and a commemorative postage stamp is but a matter of time. Like every other immigrant nation or faith, American Muslims try eagerly to write themselves into the nation’s story.
One of the book’s great strengths is its acknowledgement of Muslim diversity. Contrary to mainstream impressions—even among those policymakers who should be better informed—Islam as a lived religion is probably as diverse and complex as Christianity itself, and most of those diverse traditions are reflected within the United States. Thankfully, the range of Muslim voices is far wider than we might suspect from the well-funded pressure groups and talking heads we generally hear affecting to represent “Muslim America.” It is very much in the interests of the United States to encourage the widest possible spectrum of opinion, especially when it comes to selecting personnel for potentially sensitive positions like chaplaincies in the armed services or in the correctional system. Alongside the Wahhabis—truly, the straitest sect—we need to acknowledge other strands of global Islam now well-represented on American soil, including the Shi’ites and the many varieties of Sufis.
Potentially, of course, American Islam could be a deadly dangerous movement—but what it is most likely to undermine is not the United States but rather the constraints that are currently hampering the development of Islamic societies from Morocco to Malaysia. Just as the worldwide Roman Catholic Church was deeply affected by the experience of American believers in a pluralist society, so American Muslims might have a comparable effect on religious thought in the nations of Dar al-Islam.
The greatest potential for subversion occurs in the realm of Qur’anic studies, where scholars have for some years now been asking explosive questions about the origins and authority of the text. For obvious reasons, these efforts have made next to no impact in the Islamic world itself, because of the threats posed to life and limb by fanatics and extremists. Scholars are grimly aware of the precedent of respected Egyptian scholar Nasr Abu Zayd, whose critical work led to his public condemnation. Among other humiliations, his marriage was officially annulled on the grounds that no true Muslim could ask such searching questions, and therefore no Muslim woman could remain married to an unbeliever, a kaffir. Fortunate to escape with his life, he now lives in exile in the Netherlands. Fearing like retaliation, Muslim scholars know the cardinal virtue of silence, so the state of Qur’anic scholarship remains roughly comparable to biblical criticism before the European Enlightenment.
On American soil, though, speculation is free. And once ideas develop, they can be exported to the most secure citadels of fundamentalist orthodoxy, especially by way of the Internet. A European precedent comes to mind. In the 17th and 18th centuries, daring and heretical books thought to be subversive of Christianity were printed in the open-minded Netherlands, before being clandestinely book-legged into less tolerant nations. Might the United States today serve the same role that Amsterdam did in that era, giving a comparable impetus to free critical thought, and even, ultimately, to an Islamic Enlightenment?
Though Muslims in the United States has much to recommend it, the book contains one brief section that demands comment for its startling departure from the balance and objectivity that mark most of the text. In one paragraph on page 138, Leonard rightly comments on the enormous range of quality that characterizes post-2001 writing on Islam. She then launches a tirade against books by Stephen Emerson and Martin Kramer (“very bad … among the worst”), both of whom, she charges, “slander” the national organizations and leaders of American Islam, groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Kramer compounds his sins by indicting MESA, the Middle East Studies Association.
Leonard’s remarks are outrageous. Emerson was pilloried through the 1990s as a racist and scaremonger for his warnings about the dangers of extremist Islamist groups on American soil. In 1997, he warned specifically, “[The threat of terrorism] is greater now than before the [first] World Trade Center bombing as the numbers of these groups and their members expand. In fact, I would say that the infrastructure now exists to carry off twenty simultaneous World Trade Center-type bombings across the United States.” In the aftermath of 9/11, Emerson’s views sound quite prophetic, and his documentary film Jihad in America became required viewing for policymakers. Readers should examine Emerson’s amply documented works before assessing Leonard’s charge about “slander.”
Kramer, likewise, has abundantly demonstrated the consistent sympathy of MESA for anti-American views and for radical groups and organizations across the Middle East. Perhaps, as Leonard states, Kramer simplistically neglects “the many differences and conflicts within the association.” Having said that, if in fact many MESA members do reject the standard radical line, then it is incumbent upon them to make their opposition more audible and more public. So far, they have not.
In dwelling upon these controversies, I do not mean to detract from the value of Leonard’s helpful book. But it is troubling that even such a sober and scholarly work should be marked by a reluctance to confront serious allegations that have been made against the self-styled leaders of American Islam. Such a self-critical re-evaluation would seem to be the basic prerequisite for any future research into that growing—and potentially important—tradition.
Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author most recently of The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Oxford Univ. Press).
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