Geneive Abdo, senior analyst at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and liaison for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations project, spoke Friday about the nature of Islam in post-9/11 America. She argued that contemporary American Muslims are in the process of asserting a new identity.
Abdo, who covered events in the Middle East and Islamic world for such publications as The Guardian, The Economist, and The Dallas Morning News before assuming her current positions, highlighted several points from her latest book, “Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11,” to describe the emerging American Muslim identity.
According to Abdo, two prevailing attitudes among American Muslims set the context for these changes. On the one hand, many Muslims express a desire to educate Americans about their religion. At the same time, Abdo said, many Muslims feel victimized and even physically unsafe in the American world.
“Muslims in America now feel they are under siege, that they are being forced to live in a world apart,” she said.
Abdo cited provisions of the Patriot Act as evidence of this persecution, which has allowed law enforcement officials to more easily search homes and make arrests.
In this environment, Abdo explained, a new generation, comprised largely of children of immigrants, is coming of age and creating a new Islamic-American identity. At the Zaytuna Institute in California, for example, young Muslims flock to Sheik Hamsa Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir for counsel when their religion seems to conflict with life in America. Faced with such conflicts as the Muslim tradition of marrying young versus the desire of many Islamic-Americans to pursue careers, Yusuf and Shakir emphasize the importance of separating tradition from doctrine in living a modern Muslim life.
Abdo highlighted the generational divide in many communities through her description of a conservative, Yemeni-dominated mosque in Dearborn, MI, where she conducted field research. Many young mosque members, mostly women, expressed to Abdo both a desire to adopt certain American practices and a fear of integrating with a society that they consider immoral.
“In particular, the women described how they really wanted to remain in the community, but could not agree with the cultural traditions that their parents were forcing on them, that the mosque was forcing on them,” she said.
In addition to case studies, Abdo used statistics to demonstrate the current position of Muslims in American society. In contrast to European Muslims, who tend to live an isolated and underprivileged existence compared to society at large, American Muslims enjoy more economic success than greater American society. They tend to be well-educated and hold predominantly professional or technical jobs.
Abdo also addressed issues of gender equality in Islam, asserting that the situation is more complicated than most Americans recognize. She favors a careful extrication of oppressive cultural traditions from religious authority, yet also emphasized the need for greater respect from Americans for practices that have a legitimate religious basis, in particular the wearing of the hijab. Abdo cited polls of Muslim women in the Middle East to demonstrate the conflicting forces that many face.
“Women want gender equality, but they also want religion to play a role not only in their own life, but, to some extent, in government,” she said.
Abdo concluded her lecture by warning against the isolation of Muslims in America, citing this possibility as her main motivation for lecturing.
“I wanted to try to communicate to non-Muslims that expressions of religiosity in Western societies are not necessarily a concern for non-Muslims,” she said.
Abdo asserted that, while America has not alienated its Muslim population as much as Europe has, there is the potential for similarly disastrous circumstances if Americans are not educated about Islam.
After the lecture, audience members engaged in a question-and-answer session with Abdo that lasted as long as the talk itself. The discussion ranged from technical questions about specific Islamic practices, to discourse about Islam’s future, to personal testimonials from audience members about their own struggles as Islamic-Americans.
The Muslim Students Association (MSA), sponsored by Muslim Chaplain Sohaib Sultan, brought Abdo to campus. Satrio Wicaksono ’10, secretary of the group, commented on the relevancy of Abdo’s ideas both to the University’s diverse Muslim student population and to the University community as a whole.
“By presenting a lecture in the frame of social sciences, not only about the religion aspect of Islam, we hope to attract Wesleyan students and professors to come and learn more about Islam,” Wicaksono said.
The MSA has scheduled several more speakers for this semester and plans to hold an Islamic Awareness Week on campus after spring break.
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