Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2000, Page 68

Islam in America

The Manifest Destiny of American Muslims

By Muqtedar Khan, Ph.D.

In the last three decades the American Muslim community has developed at an astonishing pace. Through conversions and migration it is now estimated to be over 8 million strong, making it the second largest religious community in the U.S. It also has grown in diversity. For a long time Arabs, South Asians and African Americans were the dominant groups in the community. Now, however, Hispanic and Caucasian Muslims combine with the children of immigrant Muslims to enhance both the diversity and the “Americaness” of American Muslims.

During these years of numerical growth, the overriding goal of American Muslims was to defend their Islamic identity. America’s transition from a melting pot to a multicultural society was itself a product, as well as a facilitator, of this resistance to assimilation. As the Muslim community became more organized and confident it took up the struggle to gain recognition in mainstream America and to fight the irrational but widespread fear of Islam and Muslims. To a large extent Muslims have succeeded in challenging prejudiced perceptions of Islam. With significant help from a growing body of American scholars of Islam, like John Esposito of Georgetown University, they have managed to educate American media and governmental institutions about Islam and Muslims. New Muslim organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Muslim Council (AMC) have successfully joined battle against prejudice and discrimination.

Most Americans now see Muslims not as terrorists threatening peace or democracy, but as fellow God-fearing Americans, struggling to balance the challenges of modern/ post-modern life with the imperatives of faith. Muslims now are doctors, computer scientists, basketball players, professors and the next-door neighbor whose mom covers her hair like a Catholic nun. The growing number of white and black Muslims also helps convince Americans that Islam is now an American faith.

Islam must learn to adapt as well as survive in the challenging environment of the West.

Life in America presented two distinct challenges to Muslims: the struggle to overcome prejudice against and fear of Islam, and the challenge of modernity and the stress it put on the traditional understanding and interpretation of Islamic values. Building a Muslim community in America, therefore, had to take place on two levels—dealing with challenges from outside and from within. While Americans feared Islam, Muslims feared modernity and democracy. Muslims feared, and many still do, that the American way of life would eliminate their Islamic identity. In the last three decades, I am happy to report, American Muslims have dealt with these dual dilemmas most admirably. Thanks to enlightened activism by Muslim intellectuals and organizations, and American openness and tolerance, not only has America come to accommodate Islam, but many Muslims too have adjusted to modernity.

There is a new mood in America. The anti-Islam rhetoric is considerably reduced. Both Congress and the White House have acknowledged the Amercian Muslim presence and have provided some opportunity to participate in policy discussions—a privilege which not all Muslim countries extend to their citizens today. As a consequence of these successes, American Muslims have begun to believe in a manifest destiny of their own. The American Muslim community believes it has a divine mission to fulfill. Its enormous intellectual talent, its highly educated population, the free and even encouraging environment of the U.S., and the enthusiasm and dynamism of Islamic resurgence, all combine to give the American Muslim community an excellent opportunity not only to spread Islamic values in the West but also to influence and reshape the destiny of traditional Muslim societies.

American Muslims have realized that if Islam has to survive in a fashion that makes it central and relevant to all spheres of human life, then it must learn to adapt as well as survive in the challenging environment of the West. The dangers to Islam in the Muslim world today are crude and physical. There are no intellectual and social alternatives to Islam “back home.” Islamists may face repression from secular authoritarianism, but the state security agencies are no substitute for Islam. Islam therefore survives and will continue to remain central to Muslim life in the traditional Muslim world.

Necessary Values

In the West, however, the combination of liberalism, democracy and respect for diversity, in conjunction with material prosperity, presents a real challenge to Islam. If it can be demonstrated that Islam not only is relevant to, but also necessary for, a good and virtuous life within the context of democracy and freedom, then Islamic values truly will be globalized and Islam will not be in danger of becoming anachronistic.

This, then, is the manifest destiny of American Muslims: to demonstrate to the rest of the world the relevance of Islamic values to a modern/post-modern existence. By interpreting Islam in such a way that it facilitates a virtuous existence, here and now, American Muslims can convince the West that Islam will only serve to enrich it further.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan is assistant professor of political science at Adrian College in Michigan. A member of the boards of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists and the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, his articles are archived at <http://www.themestream.com/authors/68815.html>.