Is America a Muslim nation? Here are
seven reasons the answer may be yes.
Islam is monotheistic. Muslims worship
the same God as Jews and Christians. They also revere the same prophets as
Judaism and Christianity, from Abraham, the first monotheist, to Moses,
the lawgiver and messenger of God, to Jesus -- not leaving out Noah, Job,
or Isaiah along the way. The concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition only
came to the fore in the 1940s in America. Now, as a nation, we may be
transcending it, turning to a more inclusive "Abrahamic" view.
In January, President Bush grouped
mosques with churches and synagogues in his inaugural address. A few days
later, when he posed for photographers at a meeting of several dozen
religious figures, the Shi'ite imam Muhammad Qazwini, of Orange County,
Calif., stood directly behind Bush's chair like a presiding angel, dressed
in the robes and turban of his south Iraqi youth.
Islam is democratic in spirit. Islam
advocates the right to vote and educate yourself and pursue a profession.
The Qur'an, on which Islamic law is based, enjoins Muslims to govern
themselves by discussion and consensus.
In mosques, there is no particular
priestly hierarchy. With Islam, each individual is responsible for the
condition of her or his own soul. Everyone stands equal before God.
Americans, who mostly associate Islamic
government with a handful of tyrants, may find this independent spirit
surprising, supposing that Muslims are somehow predisposed to passive
submission. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dictators
reigning today in the Middle East are not the result of Islamic
principles. They are more a result of global economics and the aftermath
of European colonialism. Meanwhile, like everyone else, average Muslims
the world over want a larger say in what goes on in the countries where
they live. Those in America may actually succeed in it. In this way,
America is closer in spirit to Islam than many Arab countries.
Islam contains an attractive mystical
tradition. Mysticism is grounded in the individual search for God. Where
better to do that than in America, land of individualists and spiritual
seekers? And who might better benefit than Americans from the
centuries-long tradition of teachers and students that characterize Islam.
Surprising as it may seem, America's best-selling poet du jour is a Muslim
mystic named Rumi, the 800-year-old Persian bard and founder of the
Mevlevi Path, known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes. Even book
packagers are now rushing him into print to meet and profit from
mainstream demand for this visionary. Translators as various as Robert Bly,
Coleman Barks, and Kabir and Camille Helminski have produced dozens of
books of Rumi's verse and have only begun to bring his enormous output
before the English-speaking world. This is a concrete poetry of ecstasy,
where physical reality and the longing for God are joined by flashes of
metaphor and insight that continue to speak across the centuries.
Islam is egalitarian. From New York to
California, the only houses of worship that are routinely integrated today
are the approximately 4,000 Muslim mosques. That is because Islam is
predicated on a level playing field, especially when it comes to standing
before God. The Pledge of Allegiance (one nation, "under God")
and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (all people are "created
equal") express themes that are also basic to Islam.
Islam is often viewed as an aggressive
faith because of the concept of jihad, but this is actually a
misunderstood term. Because Muslims believe that God wants a just world,
they tend to be activists, and they emphasize that people are equal before
God. These are two reasons why African Americans have been drawn in such
large numbers to Islam. They now comprise about one-third of all Muslims
in America.
Meanwhile, this egalitarian streak also
plays itself out in relations between the sexes. Muhammad, Islam's
prophet, actually was a reformer in his day. Following the Qur'an, he
limited the number of wives a man could have and strongly recommended
against polygamy. The Qur'an laid out a set of marriage laws that
guarantees married women their family names, their own possessions and
capital, the right to agree upon whom they will marry, and the right to
initiate divorce. In Islam's early period, women were professionals and
property owners, as increasingly they are today. None of this may seem
obvious to most Americans because of cultural overlays that at times make
Islam appear to be a repressive faith toward women--but if you look more
closely, you can see the egalitarian streak preserved in the Qur'an
finding expression in contemporary terms. In today's Iran, for example,
more women than men attend university, and in recent local elections
there, 5,000 women ran for public office.
Islam shares America's new interest in
food purity and diet. Muslims conduct a month-long fast during the holy
month of Ramadan, a practice that many Americans admire and even seek to
emulate. I happened to spend quite a bit of time with a non-Muslim friend
during Ramadan this year. After a month of being exposed to a practice
that brings some annual control to human consumption, my friend let me
know, in January, that he was "doing a little Ramadan" of his
own. I asked what he meant. "Well, I'm not drinking anything or
smoking anything for at least a month, and I'm going off coffee."
Given this friend's normal intake of coffee, I could not believe my ears.
Muslims also observe dietary laws that
restrict the kind of meat they can eat. These laws require that the
permitted, or halal, meat is prepared in a manner that emphasizes
cleanliness and a humane treatment of animals. These laws ride on the same
trends that have made organic foods so popular.
Islam is tolerant of other faiths. Like
America, Islam has a history of respecting other religions. In Muhammad's
day, Christians, Sabeans, and Jews in Muslim lands retained their own
courts and enjoyed considerable autonomy. As Islam spread east toward
India and China, it came to view Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism as
valid paths to salvation. As Islam spread north and west, Judaism
especially benefited. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem, after centuries
as outcasts, only came about after Muslims took the city in 638. The first
thing the Muslims did there was to rescue the Temple Mount, which by then
had been turned into a garbage heap.
Today, of course, the long discord
between Israel and Palestine has acquired harsh religious overtones. Yet
the fact remains that this is a battle for real estate, not a war between
two faiths. Islam and Judaism revere the same prophetic lineage, back to
Abraham, and no amount of bullets or barbed wire can change that. As The
New York Times recently reported, while Muslim/Jewish tensions sometimes
flare on university campuses, lately these same students have found ways
to forge common links. For one thing, the two religions share similar
dietary laws, including ritual slaughter and a prohibition on pork.
Joining forces at Dartmouth this fall, the first kosher/halal dining hall
is scheduled to open its doors this autumn. That isn't all: they're
already planning a joint Thanksgiving dinner, with birds dressed at a
nearby farm by a rabbi and an imam. If the American Pilgrims were watching
now, they'd be rubbing their eyes with amazement. And, because they came
here fleeing religious persecution, they might also understand.
Islam encourages the pursuit of
religious freedom. The Pilgrim landing at Plymouth Rock is not the world's
first story of religious emigration. Muhammad and his little band of 100
followers fled religious persecution, too, from Mecca in the year 622.
They only survived by going to Madinah, an oasis a few hundred miles
north, where they established a new community based on a religion they
could only practice secretly back home. No wonder then that, in our own
day, many Muslims have come here as pilgrims from oppression, leaving
places like Kashmir, Bosnia, and Kosovo, where being a Muslim may
radically shorten your life span. When the 20th century's list of emigrant
exiles is added up, it will prove to be heavy with Muslims, that's for
sure.
All in all, there seems to be a deep
resonance between Islam and the United States. Although one is a world
religion and the other is a sovereign nation, both are traditionally very
strong on individual responsibility. Like New Hampshire's motto,
"Live Free or Die," America is wedded to individual liberty and
an ethic based on right action. For a Muslim, spiritual salvation depends
on these. This is best expressed in a popular saying: Even when you think
God isn't watching you, act as if he is.
Who knows? Perhaps it won't be long now
before words like salat (Muslim prayer) and Ramadan join karma and Nirvana
in Webster's Dictionary, and Muslims take their place in America's
mainstream.
