Law and the Transformation of Muslim Life in North America
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1992 al-Mughtaribun : law and the transformation of Muslim life in North America. Kathleen M. Moore University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Moore, Kathleen M., "al-Mughtaribun : law and the transformation of Muslim life in North America." (1992). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1841. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1841 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AL-MUGHTARIBUN: LAW AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MUSLIM LIFE IN NORTH AMERICA A Dissertation Presented by KATHLEEN M. MOORE Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 1992 Department of Political Science Copyright by Kathleen Marie Moore 1992 All Rights Reserved AL-MUGHTARIBUN: LAW AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MUSLIM LIFE IN NORTH AMERICA A Dissertation Presented by KATHLEEN M. MOORE Approved as to style and content by: John Brighain, )Chair ill Sheldon Goldman, Member Anwar Syed, Member Yvonne Y. Haddad, Member George Sulzner, Department Head Political Science ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been privileged over the years to be supported by many friends and professors. I am reminded of what I owe to those whose lives have blended with mine. The hours spent discussing ideas deserves more than the pro forma acknowledgements often given in a work such as this. Thus it is difficult to fully indicate the extent of my personal gratitude and intellectual debts. I received sustained personal support and intellectual engagement from close friends and peers in graduate school, especially: Stephen Pelletier— our relationship with its complex complementarities holds the promise of a lifetime of passionate collaboration. Phyllis Farley Rippey, whose friendship and collegiality time and again have been my salvation. Gary Lehring, whose robust opinion and enthusiasm for the life of the mind is at once inspirational and humbling, open to alternatives and affirming the human capacity to excel while continually challenging even the hint of hubris. It has been important that they have read, listened, and believed in my work. This work has taken a composite approach, working not from the center of the discipline of political science but from its edges. This was made possible by the latitude and guidance given to me by a variety of iv professors of different perspectives. John Brigham has helped me to learn from the analyses of the ^law and society' field, and to benefit from its particular critical tools. Anwar Syed has been an invaluable presence throughout my graduate education, guiding me to ask pertinent questions of historical and contemporary materials so as to make crucial comparative connections. Yvonne Haddad, a precious friend as well as mentor, has opened to me the insights offered by the study of history, belief systems and, especially, the perceptions of the disinherited. She has kept me honest. Sheldon Goldman has shown me the value of rigor in the study of the intersection of law and politics and I am grateful for his careful reading. In addition I would like to thank two professors who, while not on my committee, were of immeasurable assistance: Jerry Braunthal and Adnan Haydar. Both of these scholars have contributed to my personal development in myriad ways. It is with special appreciation that I thank my parents, Don and Kathleen Moore, who have seen me through this crucial period of my life, intellectually and emotionally, with such patience and love. They have made this work a reality. My vocabulary betrays me as I cannot find the words to convey adequately the depth of feeling I have for them. I will have to trust that they know. : ABSTRACT AL -MUGHTARIB UN LAW AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MUSLIM LIFE IN NORTH AMERICA MAY 1992 KATHLEEN M. MOORE, B.A., UCLA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor John Brigham The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the experiences of North American Muslims (estimated at over 4 million) as their claims for religious tolerance and inclusion in a pluralistic society have emerged. It traces a historical shift in consciousness of a religious minority precipitated by interactions with the legal institutions of the dominant culture. As members of a minority faith living in a non- Islamic context, Muslims have been subject both to what v Islam teaches about marginality ' and what the North American civil tradition promises about religious liberty and racial equality. The focus of this work has been on the gradual transformation of North American Muslims' perceptions and self -identification coaxed by the often subtle ways civil law has penetrated and come to dominate their daily lives. It shows how the normative ordering of Muslim life in North America has replicated certain aspects of the legal order, and where legal mechanisms have been v subverted' by those at the vi margins who wish to express their autonomy from the state, to assert and protect their religious freedom. North American Muslims' decisions whether and how to maintain a corporate life in a non-Muslim society have been viewed differently by Muslims over time and through different types of contacts with North American institutions. Chapters of this dissertation examine the erection of immigration and naturalization barriers at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth in the United States and Canada, and the responses of immigrants from the Muslim world to the emerging standards for citizenship; the religious liberty claims under the First Amendment of Black Muslims in prisons in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s; federal N hate crimes' legislation at the close of the 1980s and the inclusion of mosques as protected religious property; and municipal zoning practices negotiated by Muslims in two American cities where they built mosques in the 1980s and 1990s. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . IV ABSTRACT VI Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Statement of the Problem 14 Muslims in the United States and Canada*.'.* 28 Mapping the Terrain: The United States and Canada 46 * Outline of Chapters 52 2. IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY UNITED STATES AND CANADA 58 Membership in the Political Community ... 62 Racial and Eugenics Criteria 75 3. "OTHER ASIAN': IMMIGRANTS FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD 112 Description of the Community 113 Legal Standing of Immigrants from the Muslim World 117 The Anti-Polygamy Provision of Immigration Law 153 Consequences 161 4. MUSLIMS IN PRISON: CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 167 Prisoners' Rights 168 Black Nationalism and the Nation of Islam 180 Legal Treatment of Religion 194 The Cases 201 Conclusion 234 5. PROTECTION OF RELIGIOUS PROPERTY AND THE V UNITED STATES HATE CRIMES' LEGISLATION . 243 Historical Growth of Mosques 249 Hate Crimes Legislation 255 Reporting of Hate Crimes 264 viii 6. "THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD' MOSQUES IN NORTH AMERICAN SUBURBS 278 Zoning Mosques *.*.*.*.* 291 Strategies of Assimilation .'..*/.*.*.*.* Conclusion 308 ] 314 7. CONCLUSION 316 BIBLIOGRAPHY ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In The Myth of the Judeo^ristian Tradition, Arthur A. Cohen questions the notion that a s Judeo- Christian' tradition even exists, and suggests that it is an invention of twentieth century American politics spawned by efforts to form a cultural consensus and, in the process, syncretize religious identification and promote inter faith harmony. The conception of such a tradition is, in Cohen's words, "mythological or, rather, not precisely mythological but ideological and hence, as in all ideologies, shot through with falsification, distortion, and untruth. 1 The origin of the concept is found in theological inquiry; it was used at the turn of this century simply to suggest that Church rituals had developed out of x Arthur A. Cohen, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), xiii. Cohen writes, "We can learn much from the history of Jewish- Christian relations, but one thing we cannot make of it is a discourse of community, fellowship, and understanding. How, then, do we make of it a tradition?" (Ibid.) See also Martin E. Marty, "A Judeo Christian Looks at the Judeo Christian Tradition," The Christian Century , 8 October 1986, 858. For a different analysis and an example of consensus history which praises the Judeo-Christian tradition, see Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1960). See also discussion in Mark Silk, "Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America," American Quarterly 36 (1984): 74-77, and, for comments on the fortunes of consensus historians, 84. ' Hebraic practices. 2 Its theological basis, however, did not mean that the concept was remote from the polemics of the ideological and political contests of the day. By the 1930s usage of the term in American public life had come to signify something more than continuity between Judaism and Christianity. At one level it referred to a common body of beliefs including the values of egalitarianism and individualism as well as a modern world view that was based loosely on a shared prophetic interpretation of life and history. But the compatibility underscored by this account belied the construction of an ideology of difference that had brought v the term Judeo-Christian ' into popular discourse in the first place. As Mark Silk notes, the emphasis given in public discourse to the N Judeo- Christian' character of certain values was meant to signal a departure from the course plotted by the 2 Cohen suggests the concept of a v Judeo-Christian tradition appeared a little earlier in Europe, although its use had unmistakably pejorative connotations.