.... American Muslims are slowly but steadily carving their mark on the Islamic world. Their relatively small numbers, young history and still fledgling organization would seem daunting barriers to wider influence. Of the roughly 1 billion Muslims worldwide, those in the United States are only a tiny fraction, numbering somewhere between 3 million and 10 million. But a confluence of forces that has made those Americans among the freest, most educated, affluent and diverse Muslims in the world has given them an impact greater than their numbers. Helped by the growing use of English as a language of Islamic discourse and by the ever-spreading world of the Internet, they are self-consciously seeking to influence their religious brethren worldwide. Moreover, the spirit of the times may be on their side. ....
Provocative Islamic thinkers are flourishing in the climate of America’s unparalleled intellectual freedom. They are tackling taboo subjects such as spousal abuse and highlighting the aspects of their nearly 1,400-year tradition that embrace women’s rights, human rights and democratic practices. The sheer diversity of the community here is prompting efforts to promote Islamic models of pluralism. U.S. Muslims include American natives, mainly of African descent, as well as immigrants from more than 50 nations. American Muslims also are expanding their influence by bringing modern education, business practices and economic development to their homelands through a mushrooming number of nonprofit organizations. ....
American Muslims present the Islamic world with a seductive new model of modernity, says Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African and Islamic studies at Howard University in Washington. Until now, the main model in the Islamic world for modernization had been Turkey, which excised Islam from public life in the name of progress. America gives Muslims an alternative -- an example of a society in which the faithful are free to be both modern and religious. Here, more women are voluntarily donning the hejab head covering as a mark of religious pride and identity -- even rendering it hip with T-shirts touting it as "It’s Good to be in the ’Hood." Nyang argues that the potent combination of modernity and piety demonstrated by Muslims in the U.S. could catch on in the Islamic world, offering a compelling alternative to extremism. The American faces of Islam belong to people like Dany Doueiri and Shamshad Hussain.
Doueiri is a co-founder of one of the world’s most popular Web sites on Islam, www.islam.org. Every day, the Los Angeles-based site receives 140,000 hits. More than half the visitors are from outside the United States. They are shown an expanse of Islam that bypasses the divides of cultures, religious sects and schools of Islamic law that often separate Muslims from one another. For instance, when numerous Bosnian Muslim women were raped by Serbian soldiers during the Balkans conflict, the site was flooded with queries on the Islamic position on abortion. Doueiri says his team presented without judgment two opinions from different schools: one holding that any abortion is forbidden, the other saying that the procedure is allowed for up to 120 days into the pregnancy, after which, adherents believe, the soul enters the body.
The neutral presentation of differing views within the vast Islamic tradition, though rare, is equipping Muslims worldwide to think through their own Islamic practices rather than simply accepting the rulings of the local scholar, Doueiri says. "This site has brought so much happiness overseas, because people say they find a much more objective point of view than they get from their own scholars," he says.
The rise of the electronic fatwa, sometimes by self-styled experts, dismays some classically trained scholars. But experts say the trend is irreversible. The Internet, satellite TV and steady gains in literacy are prompting a quiet but dramatic shift in the source of Islamic authority throughout the Muslim world -- from political and religious leaders to the common educated people, says Dale F. Eickelman, a Dartmouth College anthropology professor and co-author of the book "New Media in the Muslim World." Led by Muslims in the West, unprecedented numbers of believers are debating the fundamentals of their faith and practice in a new Islamic reformation, he says. "Nobody is controlling anymore," Eickelman says. "Even if you’re not getting an increase in liberalism or a shift from authoritarianism, you’re now getting large numbers of people who know what they’re missing."
One pipeline of fresh Islamic views to younger Muslims abroad is the Iqra International Educational Foundation in Chicago. Iqra -- the Arabic word for "read" and God’s first word to the prophet Muhammad, according to the Koran -- is pioneering American-produced, English-language Islamic textbooks. In the last few years, overseas demand has skyrocketed and the foundation now exports tens of thousands of books annually to 16 countries in the Mideast, Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Europe. The books’ distinction, according to managing director Hussain, is that they promote the idea of self-study of the Koran and hadith and present the tradition’s essence shorn of regional and sectarian differences.
The quest to crystallize Islam’s essence, free of the overlays of cultural tradition, is perhaps most advanced here because America’s diversity is forcing Muslims to strive for a common understanding. Doueiri’s Internet group, for instance, represents Muslims from both the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites who hail from 30 countries. ....
In the academic arena, striking American voices of Islam belong to people like Khaled Abou el Fadl. The UCLA professor of Islamic law is breaking intellectual ground with bold social critiques based on a blend of classical Islamic training and Western academic grounding. He trained in Egypt and Kuwait and at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. Over the last four years, Abou el Fadl has published searing critiques on sexual abuse, wife-beating and other problems among Muslims, analyzing how Islamic tradition sometimes promotes such behavior. Without America’s academic freedom, he says, such scholarship would have been impossible. Using case studies of mistreated Muslims, Abou el Fadl has admonished the tradition -- and present-day imams -- for the general silence on incest and sexual abuse. He has challenged divorce laws favoring men and concluded that expectations of blind obedience from women is immoral. .....
His unflinching scholarship is controversial, but it is gaining notice abroad. Abou el Fadl has been asked to lecture in the Mideast, North Africa and Europe and has received e-mail from around the world. Some people chastise him, but he says the vast majority back his efforts to reinterpret the Islamic legal tradition. He has no patience for those who claim that Islam is perfect. .... |