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Fort Worth Weekly – Sept. 7, 2005
Some American Muslims are finding
that 9/11 rekindled their faith
By Shomial Ahmad
…. When 9/11 happened, most Muslims in this country had probably never really asked themselves what that meant — to be Muslim in America. Most are the first or second generation of their family in this country, immigrants or children of immigrants who, when their world changed that day, still didn’t feel fully American, even with blue passports in their hands. They were a community living in their own shells — going to work on weekdays and socializing with other Muslims at the mosques and dinner parties on the weekend, and the attacks scared them even further into that protective space. By that point, only a few Tarrant County (Texas) Muslims had ventured outside their own cultural groups to vote or to do charity work. The vast majority still felt like foreigners here, and “civic participation” wasn’t a phrase in their communal vocabulary…..
After 9/11, Muslims felt growing pains. From the outside world, they faced pressures: increased discrimination, an uneasiness about the two American-led wars in Muslim countries, and, everywhere, curious questions about their faith. Each time those pressures eased, another crisis — most recently, the London subway bombings — would put the squeeze back on.
Internally, a more fascinating process began: In Tarrant County and across America, Muslims have started to define Islam on their own terms, instead of leaving that task solely to religious scholars. It’s a process that many believe could revive Islamic study and scholarship and perhaps lead to another “golden age of Islam,” when once again, as in the 9th to 11th centuries, the masses of Muslims would practice ijtihad — interpreting the basic documents and precepts of their faith, rather than taqleed — imitating, or simply accepting dogma. The latter is the tradition — in many countries, a tradition enforced by law or fear — among most Muslim communities today.
Inayat Lalani, a surgeon who has lived in Tarrant County for the last 23 years, says 9/11 had the equivalent effect on Islamic thought as Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses to the church door had on the Catholic church. “For the first time, it shook us up and forced us to start asking questions that we should have been asking a long time ago, but we were not asking,” Lalani said.
Lydia Abdullah, an African-American Muslim who was active in the civil rights movement, figures that 9/11, for the first time, made immigrant Muslims really feel the sting of discrimination. “There was never an illusion with us [blacks] about whether you could count on the white man to help you. When the problem comes, whoever is responsible, everybody who is like that person will be clumped together,” Abdullah said. “Ask the Japanese, ask the Indians, ask the African-Americans — that’s the experience, and it was no different with the immigrant Muslims after 9/11. ... They got a hell of an awakening call.”
Ahmad Al-Khadra, who was 17 that year, got a different type of wake-up call. He was a senior at Western Hills High School when the planes hit, and at the time he was more concerned with driving a souped-up car than with practicing Islam. His friends began to ask questions about Islam. “I kind of felt ashamed at myself because I didn’t know how to answer,” he said. “It was like if any of my friends talked about sports or anything else, then right there I know. And my own religion, I don’t know.”
But how many Muslims have answered that incessantly ringing alarm clock with any new awareness or introspection about their community and their religion in an American context? Perhaps only a small fraction — as would be true with any group. Experts figure only one American Muslim in 10 is actually practicing; the other 90 percent are “cultural” Muslims whose observances are limited to attending Eid prayer and dressing up in fine clothes at weddings.
Yasmin Khan, one of 40 Muslim delegates to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, thinks her community, for the most part, is still asleep, and unfortunately parents are passing along apathy to their children. “I think [American Muslims] are not really in touch with reality,” Khan said. The events of 9/11 may have made them aware that some change is needed, she said, “but as far as [actually] doing something — uh-uh.”
One of the founders of the only full-time Islamic school in Tarrant County, Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani thinks that the Muslim community is at a crossroads, with three paths leading on from here “We can totally integrate with American society: We melt into American society. We [can] remain hostile — I think that’s a terrible road. ... The third, which is the middle road, [is that] we recognize that this is our country.”….
http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=2826
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