Experiencing Islam in America: Muslim Students Associations
By
Salua Fawzi Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University Montréal, Québec, Canada
A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Salua Fawzi Copyright © 2019
ii Table of Contents
Abstract iv
Acknowledgements vii
A Note on Transliteration ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Making Muslim Space on College Campuses 29
Chapter 2: American Muslim Youth Identify with Whose Religion and Which Culture 86
Chapter 3: Righteous Guides: Muslim Chaplains and Celebrity Shaykhs 138
Chapter 4: Getting High on Īmān: Religious Study Practices of American Muslim Youth 191
Chapter 5: Being Woke: Social Justice Activism and American Muslim Youth 241
Conclusion 292
Bibliography 299
iii Abstract
This dissertation is an ethnographic project on American Muslim youth participating in Muslim
Students Associations (MSAs) on three college campuses in the northeastern United States. It argues that MSAs are discursive spaces through which American Muslim students experience
Islam. In specific, it illustrates how MSAs, as discursive spaces, provide these youth with an opportunity to introspectively articulate and share particular existential and theological assumptions. For example, I examine how the discursive MSA space is one where some Muslim students distance themselves from the practices and beliefs of their parents’ generation as they exercise a sense of religious individualism. In addition, this dissertation analyzes how students’ participation in ḥalaqāt (study circles), led by university chaplains, transforms their engagement with religious texts. In speaking with students about their relationship with their chaplains and the appeal of other religious figures in the United States, my research demonstrates the affective qualities that are at stake for religiously guiding the new generation of American Muslims. It captures how MSA students are taught to appropriate self-reflexive textual hermeneutics that enables them to develop a personal and meaningful relationship with the Divine. As such, my research brings to the fore how MSA students’ relationship with the Divine, understudied in the literature on this demographic, is a primary catalyst and resource for how MSA students experience Islam in America. Lastly, this dissertation addresses how the discursive MSA space offers students an opportunity to engage with social justice activism as it pertains to race, gender, and sexual orientation. Despite, the Islamophobic rhetoric they have grown up with, this project describes how American Muslim youth have not abandoned their religiosity. By doing so, my dissertation offers a timely ethnography of what it means for American Muslim youth to experience Islam in America.
iv Abstrait
Cette thèse est un projet ethnographique sur la jeunesse musulmane américaine participant aux associations d'étudiants musulmans (MSA) sur trois campus universitaires dans le nord-est des
États-Unis. Il soutient que les MSA sont des endroits discursifs à travers lesquels les étudiants américains musulmans font l'expérience de l'islam. Précisément, il montre comment les MSA, comme des endroits discursifs, offrent à ces jeunes l’occasion de formuler et de partager de manière introspective des hypothèses existentielles et théologiques particulières. Par exemple, j’examine comment l’espace MSA discursif permet aux sertains étudiants musulmans de se démarquer des pratiques et des croyances de la génération de leurs parents qui projettent un sens de l’individualisme religieux. En plus, cette thèse analyse comments ces étudiants participant à des ḥalaqāt (cercles d’études), dirigés par des aumôniers d’universités, transforme leur engagement avec les textes religieux. En parlant avec les étudiants sur leurs relations avec leurs aumôniers et de l'attrait d'autres personnalités religieuses aux États-Unis, mes recherches démontrent les qualités affectives qui sont en jeu pour guider religieusement la nouvelle génération de musulmans américains. Il saisit comment les étudiants de MSA apprennent à s'approprier une herméneutique textuelle auto-réflexive qui leur permet de développer une relation personnelle et significative avec le Divin. En tant que tel, ma recherche met en évidence le fait que la relation des étudiants de MSA avec le Divin, qui n’est pas suffisamment renforcée la littérature sur ce groupe démographique, est un catalyseur et une ressource de base pour la façon comment étudiants de MSA vivent l’islam en Amérique. Enfin, cette thèse aborde la manière dont l'espace MSA discursif offre aux étudiants une opportunité de s'engager dans un activisme de justice sociale en ce qui concerne la race, le genre et l'orientation sexuelle. Malgré la rhétorique islamophobe avec laquelle ils ont grandi, ce projet décrit comment les jeunes
v musulmans américains n'ont pas abandonné leur religiosité. Ce faisant, ma thèse propose une ethnographie opportune de ce que signifie pour les jeunes musulmans américains l'expérience de l'islam en Amérique.
vi Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank McGill University, the Institute of Islamic Studies and
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for their financial support over the years, without which this project would have never come to fruition. My supervisor, Professor Setrag Manoukian, has been an indelible source of academic mentorship and guidance. Without his encouraging me to ruminate deeply on the questions that color this dissertation, many of this project’s findings would have remained dormant. I would also like to thank Professors Rula Abisaab and Robert
Wisnovsky who have contributed greatly to my scholarly development. My committee members,
Professors Katherine Lemons, Zareena Grewal, Michelle Hartman, Armando Salvatore, and
Khalid Medani provided constructive feedback, which helped me sharpen my analysis. Their astute insights and questions have given me much to think about as this project takes on new forms. Zeitun Manjothi and Adina Sigartau’s patience and support of graduate students greatly eased the navigation of academic life. I would also like to thank Sean Swanick, Charles Fletcher,
Stephen Miller, and Anaïs Salamon for their efforts in maintaining a library collection that is truly a privilege for students at the Institute.
This dissertation would not have been possible without the many students and chaplains who participated. The generosity they have shown me over the years has left me eternally indebted. I would like to express my utmost gratitude for their indulging a graduate student such as myself and for opening up their lives and their communities to me in the most illuminating of ways. While many of my interlocutors have joked that no one reads PhD dissertations, I do hope that this project has done some justice to the enlightening reflections, insights, and experiences they have shared with me.
vii Over the years, I have enjoyed the company of my many colleagues at the Institute. I will truly miss the one of a kind collegiality I experienced there. In particular, I would like to thank
Bariza Umar, Christopher Anzalone, Eliza Tasbihi, Heather Empey, and Jennifer Pineo-Dunn.
This journey would have been incredibly dull without our lively and stimulating conversations and without their support, friendship, and much needed doses of comic relief. I have learned a great deal from Usman Hamid and Fadia Bahgat, who have taught me so much about academic commitment and integrity, and have supported me as a friend and colleague in incredibly selfless ways. Yasaman and Banafsheh Kashani and Amir Kilani made Montreal a home and believed in my academic pursuits with an unwaveringness that changed my life’s trajectory.
My parents, Patricia and Richard Carney, have been invaluable sources of resolve over the years, bolstering my faith in this project during the most crucial of times. Their support of me is unparalleled and has been one of my life’s true blessings. Tarek Ismail, when I felt there was no end in sight, you tempered me. For that, I am eternally grateful. I dedicate this dissertation in loving memory of my father Mahmoud Fawzi and my grandmother Su‘ad el-Minawi both of whom continue to cast their nūr over me in the most numinous of ways.
viii A Note on Transliteration
This dissertation follows the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) guidelines.
Terms such as hadith and salat for example, do not employ diacritics. Other common words that have become part of the English vernacular and do not appear on the IJMES word list such as iftar, haram, and Eid, have been written in their English forms.
ix Introduction
In early 2015, I began my preliminary fieldwork. At the time, I scoured local Muslim
Students Associations’ (MSA) websites and Facebook pages for upcoming events and purchased tickets for an all-day tazkiya (purification) conference. I later learned that the conference I planned on attending was a staple of that MSA’s annual calendar and amassed a turnout of over a hundred students and families with guest speakers hailing from all around North America. The conference took place in a large hall located within the university’s student center. Upon entering, I quickly noticed that the event was segregated; a space was left between the sections for men and women to sit in designated areas. Such segregation is not uncommon at American
Muslim events but not necessarily the norm depending on the community one is a part of. The theme of that conference was on heroic ṣaḥāba (companions of the Prophet Muhammad) and the opening remarks delivered by an MSA student organizer explained that the invited guest speakers would be drawing on stories that Muslims do not often hear in order to demonstrate how the Prophet Muhammad and his companions were “examples of knowledge, fortitude, truth, and perseverance.”
The event was divided into six sessions with a lunch break as well as other recesses for
ẓuhr, ‘aṣr and maghrib prayers. Each session recounted examples demonstrating the notable and emulative qualities of a particular ṣaḥābī or two.1 Five of the speakers were male, one was female, and they included a chaplain, shaykhs, an academic, and a local lecturer. I recall being amused by the excitement these students exhibited as they introduced the speakers to the stage and the attendees’ generally admiring countenances as the speakers relayed their points. This fervor, while new to me at the time, became something that interested me immensely and I
1 Such figures included Salman al-Farisi, Abu Bakr, ‘Abdullah ibn Salam, ‘Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud, Mus‘ab ibn ‘Umayr and Asma’ bint Abu Bakr and they were presented as examples of mindfulness, valor, and sacrifice. Field notes, February 2015.
1 discovered that these American Muslim figures and those like them occupied a “celebrity” status in the MSA circuit.2 Of course, the question to be answered was why, and more specifically, what effect did they have on these young American Muslims? I would soon learn that their charismatic, relatable, and affable personalities made them influential sources of religious knowledge.
That day, I handwrote notes in a field journal accounting for my participant observation of the conference as it transpired. In addition, I also approached this event studiously, in that I diligently took notes recording what the speakers were saying, which comprised the bulk of my field notes as it captured concrete examples of the knowledge being imparted to these young
American Muslims. This became my method throughout my fieldwork and because I was in an academic environment, I was fortunate that the act of note taking did not look peculiar given there were students, while a minority, who took notes as well at similar events.
While this MSA did not participate in my research project, attending that event and the impression it left with me inspired many of the objectives and questions that are addressed in this dissertation. What type of a space do MSAs occupy on college campuses? How do American
Muslim youth experience Islam in these spaces? What types of discourses take place in these spaces and whose voices do they represent? What type(s) of religious knowledge are these youth being imparted with? Moreover, how was it being internalized, if at all? From that event and similar ones I attended during my research, I learned that MSA students were being imparted with religious knowledge derived from the Qur’an and hadiths that were attending to their immediate circumstances. This religious knowledge was presented in such a way that urged students to be inquisitive, introspective, self-reflexive, and most importantly God-conscious.
2 Over time, I learned that these individuals were very popular, as many of them have been invited to speak at local and national events and conferences. All of them have studied with Muslim scholars either in the U.S. or abroad.
2 Throughout the event recounted above, speakers implored the audience to ask questions of themselves such as: “Who are you seeking that knowledge for?” “What are you going to do with that knowledge?” and “How do you ensure that your journey is meaningful?” Others encouraged students to “learn about themselves” given that their being university students facilitated such introspection and provided them with “outlets” that would enable them to
“search for the means to enhance the reality [they’ve] been given.” What struck me as particularly unique was the fact that there was nothing legalistic about any of the speakers’ discussions or admonitory in their tones. Rather, they all appeared empathetic, even recounting examples demonstrating their own humility in error and their own struggles accepting qadr (will of) Allah.3 This is not to say that prescriptions were not offered, but the way in which they were offered was pleasantly evocative, hopeful, nuanced, and feeling. Moreover, when the Divine was invoked, He was discussed in reassuring terms. The Divine was described as loving kindness for example.4 The Divine was to be trusted “as a philosophy of life.” After I concluded my preliminary fieldwork, I began to question whether this tendency to implore self-reflection through the posing of heuristic questions, and without an emphasis on explicitly prescriptive
“correct” behavior was unique or if, in fact, this pedagogical style had become the norm in MSA spaces and American Muslim events.
This dissertation argues that MSAs are discursive spaces on college campuses in which
American Muslim youth experience Islam. Premised on inclusivity and a desire to be welcoming to Muslims from all ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds, MSAs offer both a physical
3 Field notes, February 2015. At another conference attended by Muslim families as well as MSA students, I heard one of the speakers make a similar point as she explained that accepting qadr Allah is particularly difficult for youth when they are confronted with “the test of life.” In order to remedy this struggle, she encouraged students to channel such feelings into having a relationship with God by talking to Him. Field notes, April 2015. 4 In articulating this point, the speaker referenced a portion of a hadith, “O Aisha, Allah is kind and he loves kindness in all matters” (Sahih Muslim, Vol. 6, Book 45, No. 2493, pg. 456).
3 and discursive space on college campuses for American Muslim youth to introspectively reflect on their religiosity and what it means for them to experience Islam in America. These spaces are shaped by a variety of discourses from their peers, families, chaplains and other notable religious figures, the broader campus community, along with political conversations emergent in the
United States. Thus, these discursive spaces are fluid, malleable, and are continuously being influenced by individuals both within and outside of their borders (Jovchelovitch 2007, 66).
Based on approximately two years of ethnographic fieldwork in MSAs on three college campuses in the northeastern United States, I discovered that this mode of religious education that privileged self-reflection had become a fixture in the pedagogical styles of not only MSA chaplains but also American Muslim celebrity shaykhs and other religious figures that frequent
MSAs.
History of the MSA
In spite of the prevalent presence of MSAs on college campuses in the United States, research that attends to American Muslim students involved in MSAs has only recently gained traction with notably insightful and rich ethnographic contributions by Shabana Mir (2009, 2011,
2014) on the experiences of American Muslim female college students.5 Mir draws our attention to the ways in which young American Muslim women navigate “third spaces” and how they confront the pressures of university, their peers, their families, and the state. Her ethnographic works examine how young American Muslim women address taboo topics such as dating, drinking, and modesty. Generally, published academic literature on MSAs, are included in chapters in American Muslim anthologies (Howell 2013; Kamal 2014), or are woven into larger
5 There are notable PhD dissertations on MSAs by Pschaida (2015), Dey (2012), and Kamal (2012), which discuss either MSAs or the experiences of American Muslim youth on college campuses.
4 monographs on American Muslims (Schmidt 2004b; Leonard 2003). These writings draw our attention to the influential place that MSAs have had on the institution-building efforts of
American Muslims since the 1960s, as immigration laws changed and new influxes of Muslims emigrated from various Muslim-majority countries.
We learn that the first Muslim Students Association was established on the campus of the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1963 by a group of international students from various Muslim-majority countries who wanted to establish an institution that would be welcoming to Muslims of all backgrounds (Kamal 2014). Unlike the student membership one generally encounters in current MSAs, which consists primarily of first- and second-generation
American Muslims with a smattering of international students, the original MSA was comprised mostly of male international students who had political affiliations with or affinities to groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tablighi Jama‘at in Pakistan, and the Muslim World
League (Howell 2013, 62).6 Zareena Grewal explains that the association “nurtured a global
Islamic political and religious consciousness, maintaining the Middle East as its political focal point” (2013, 138-139). Moreover, MSA members were “united” by “a rhetorical opposition to
Western secularism. This was a marker of distinction from the larger society, which inspired religiously motivated activism and responded to the fear of assimilation” (Yuskaev 2013, 272).7
The MSA’s stances complemented the broader trend amongst Muslim immigrants who were confronted with questions regarding “how (and how not) to become American, albeit with a wistful nostalgia for their homelands” (Grewal 2013, 137).
6 Christoph Schumann explains that the “political discourse within the MSA during the 1970s was overwhelmingly shaped by the socialization most activists went through in their respective home countries before they came to America” (2007, 18). The MSAs that I frequented during my research had a generally larger female presence at events (Peek 2005, 222). According to Kelly Besecke, “[a]s in many religious settings, women participate more regularly than men, while men speak more and take on leadership roles more than women” (2001, 370). 7 MSAs have generally been “focused on Muslims and sustaining their faith and Islamic practices” (Khan 2005, 135).
5 Over time, however, these initial transnational goals were adumbrated by domestic concerns.8 The MSA germinated equally prominent North American Muslim organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in 1982 (Leonard 2003, 12), which stands as a testament to the organization’s sweeping scope in its ability to bring about American Muslim institutions. It is also important to note that when the MSA was formed in 1963, it also introduced non-Muslim students to Islam (Knight 2013, 92). The same holds true today on college campuses. The presence of MSAs on campuses and the activities they organize, particularly Islam Awareness Week, correct stereotypes about Islam (Peek 2012, 158), inform non-Muslim students about Islam’s teachings, and provide non-Muslim students with opportunities (events and study circles) in which they can acquire answers to their questions about Islam.9 While Muslim students attend the majority of MSA events, they are open to all on campus and thus can leave impressionable marks on how non-Muslims understand Islam, potentially leading students to convert.
Experiencing Islam in America: MSAs
Irrespective of an MSA’s activities or what takes place within its borders, one thing is patently clear. It is an organization that plays a significant and influential role in the lives of
Muslim students attending American universities. As such, in order to understand how young
American Muslims experience Islam, it is crucial to study the happenings of the MSA. My research shows how participating in MSAs offers American Muslim students a discursive space
8 Zain Abdullah explains that “[a]fter 1970, however, changes in the social and political climate in the United States and worsening conditions abroad forced both Muslim immigrants and native-born converts to deepen their concern for their own neighborhoods and the society at large” (2013, 69). See also Kamal (2014) and Schumann (2007) who discuss how these changes affected the MSA. 9 Islam Awareness Week is not the only venue where such stereotypes about Muslims are addressed. Writers collectives, comedy shows and teach-ins have also become popular forms of educating the non-Muslim campus community and the broader non-Muslim public about the experiences of Muslims in America. See also Thonnart (2016) and Bilici (2010) for more on how American Muslims employ comedy to combat stereotypes.
6 where they can socialize with Muslim peers, reflect on their religiosity (Peek 2005, 228),10 probe deeper regarding what some of them argue is the “cultural” Islam they grew up with, and engage in a process of deliberately and autonomously owning their religious identity.11
In their more recent and contemporary forms, MSAs have been primarily concerned with fostering the religious development of American Muslims. According to Youssef Chouhoud,
MSAs serve as a “preliminary, sometimes primary, means of building a hyphenated sense of self” for American Muslim youth, which “hinges on the organization’s ability to compensate for the shortcomings of the mosques’ social and educational mechanisms” (2010, 18). Thus, today’s
MSAs find little in common with the objectives of the original MSA in Illinois and “the predominantly international (and male) MSA is a thing of the past” (Mir 2014, 10). No longer fueled or dependent upon the “religious inspiration and interpretations” from their parents’ home countries (Schmidt 2004b, 93), my research demonstrates the various ways MSA students discursively engage with their peers, Muslim chaplains, campus environment, the American sociopolitical climate, and popular American Muslim religious figures.12 The support and establishment of groups such as an MSA “has the potential to encourage individual students to develop fully as young adults belonging to multiple communities simultaneously and, more broadly, to shift the ways we think about the relationship between membership in individual cultural communities and in broader communities such as universities and societies” (Nasir and
Al-Amin 2006, 27).
10 Rabia Kamal, for example, notes how “MSAs on college campuses represent, mobilize, educate, and connect Muslims in unprecedented ways” (2014, 257). 11 The flourishing of MSAs can also be connected to a larger trend on college campuses whereby university administrations are working to “promote and protect religious diversity on campus” (Foody 2016, 732). 12 Some of the MSA students I spoke with listened to international Muslim figures who delivered lectures in English. Their material is available on YouTube or in podcast form.
7 The current MSA topography on most college campuses is quite racially and ethnically diverse particularly if the university boasts a student body that is comprised of American and international students. In entering these MSA spaces, one witnesses a mix of South Asian, Arab,
Black, Turkish, Iranian students and a smattering of other ethnic groups. By embracing Muslims from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, MSAs, have “create[d] a platform from which to understand themselves as Muslims and from which they exhibit[ed] and project[ed] their ideas of
Islam onto American society” (Bayoumi 2010, 167).
In accounting for how American Muslim youth experience Islam in America, it is important to note the intersection between race and religion that has historically shaped
American Muslim communities at large. Various scholars (Jackson 2005; Karim 2009; Abdul
Khabeer 2016; Grewal 2013; Ali 2018) have written on the relationship between Black Muslims and Arab and South Asian Muslim immigrants by addressing the historical shifts affected by race, class, immigration, authority, and gender that have united and segregated these various
American Muslim communities. In chapters two and five of this dissertation, I discuss the intersection between race and religion as it pertains to the inclusivity of MSAs in comparison to the local mosque communities my interlocutors grew up in, as well as MSAs’ engagement in social justice conversations and initiatives that combatted the anti-Black racism that exists within their communities and the U.S. at large.
During my fieldwork, I observed that one of the MSA’s key qualities is the fact that it does not coerce Muslim students on campus into participating. My ethnographic findings demonstrate how MSAs generally respect a voluntary approach to recruitment in that students join their respective MSAs for a variety of reasons and MSAs make great strides to be inclusive and welcoming of these various motivations. Such findings complement what Wade Clark Roof
8 describes is a form of ““new voluntarism”” which is a “religious participation based less on duty or obligation, and more on whether it “meets your needs”” (1993, 110). The current MSA model resembles a broader American trend where “new forms of community have arisen, organized around personal concerns and feelings” (Roof 1996, 157).13 My research findings illustrate how
MSA students generally tended to be mindful of and receptive to not appearing judgmental of their Muslim and at times non-Muslim peers. Such sensitivity complemented the MSAs’ objectives to carve out a space on campus that was gender-inclusive, ethnically, racially, and socioeconomically diverse, and essentially welcoming to all Muslim students irrespective of whether or how they practiced Islam. As such, current MSAs ensure an array of social and religious programming for Muslim students. Examples of social programming would include leisure activities whereas religious programming would involve ḥalaqāt (study circles), although these are not mutually exclusive. Of note is the attendance of jum‘a (Friday) prayers, which this dissertation argues offers both a social and religious experience for MSA students and findings from my fieldwork capture how the messages imparted in the khuṭab (sermons) are internalized by these youth. By providing students with different kinds of activities, MSAs offer accommodations for their Muslim peers and refrain from expecting potential members to participate in a particular way.
Throughout my research, I learned that the majority of MSA students I spoke with described the MSA as being a formative source of guidance for sustaining and cultivating their religiosity, which challenges the assumption that emerging adults “are expected to differentiate from their communal sources of support” (Magyar-Russell, Deal, and Brown 2014, 51). MSA students, as emerging adults, began to determine for themselves along with the influence of their
13 See Roof et al. (1999) for more on the development of intimate communities and the growing importance of self- reflexivity in American religiosity.
9 “peer relationships” what their belief-systems were and how to appropriate them into their daily life experiences (Barry and Abo-Zena 2014, 23). The changes they experienced upon entering university tended to be “more gradual” (Lefkowitz 2005, 59) but nevertheless, the college experience was opportune for inciting their critical analysis, political engagement, and self- awareness (Zlotkowski 2011).
In a post-9/11 context and in light of Islamophobic rhetoric and policies, some scholars working on American Muslim youth have focused on political discourses regarding citizenship, belonging, and resistance to the state (Maira 2009; Abdi 2015), identity construction (Sirin and
Fine 2008; Mir 2014; Ali 2018), and activism (Naber 2012). Other scholars have illustrated how
Muslims in the West are actively informing others about Islam in their respective communities
(Bayoumi 2010) and are engaging in processes of “self-authorship” (Ali 2011) by articulating their belonging in the United States while confronting discourses that cast them as “other.” Such strides for belonging often entail these youth confronting their own familial and religious backgrounds and many scholars have specifically attended to a trend amongst American
Muslims who are working towards “purifying” Islam of what they believe are “cultural” influences from their parents’ immigrant generation (Ewing and Hoyler 2008).
My research analyzes the specific areas where this demarcation between the “religious” and the “cultural” become salient points of contention for American Muslim youth and how they discursively engage with the Islamic “tradition” to argue their points (Asad 1986). Academic literature has accounted for how this process of differentiation between “religion” and “culture” is a byproduct of the education these youth are receiving. As these youth become more educated about the Islamic tradition, they begin to question whether their parents’ practices are irrelevant to their experiences as American Muslims and whether they have a rootedness in scriptural texts
10 or precedents (Schmidt 2004a; Cainkar 2014; Naber 2005; Bagby 2006b). I analyze how the delineation between “religion” and “culture” enables MSA students to exhibit a sense of
“religious individualism” and autonomy as they determine for themselves how they want to experience Islam in America (O’Brien 2015).14 In addition, my analysis of this trend brings to the fore the important place of chaplains in these young American Muslims’ lives who serve as religious guides and offer them counsel as they challenge some of their parents’ expectations surrounding marriage, obedience, and religious education.
Religious Literacy in MSAs
In the approximately two years I conducted my research, an emphasis on introspection and self-reflexivity was continuously being inscribed in MSA ḥalaqāt, events, and in my interviews with students. Unlike the MSA spaces studied by Marcia Hermansen (2003), where a dominant and exclusivist narrative about Islam was being circulated, the MSA spaces I encountered were focused on teaching students the importance of God-consciousness and were encouraging students to reflect on their personal relationship with the Divine.15 My findings as well as Hermansen’s are tentative given they cannot account for all MSA spaces and given the scarcity of research on MSA ḥalaqāt in general. However, my research indicates that there has been a shift in MSA discourses from the MSA Hermansen depicts.
14 John O’Brien argues that “cultural expressions of religious individualism are a pragmatic means by which modern religious actors both maintain religious involvement and repeatedly signal, and experience, a culturally American individualistic selfhood” (2015, 176). 15 Hermansen relays her observations of an MSA meeting writing that the “selections of the most naïve and apologetic nature from a certain South Asian publication were read out before an audience of university students. No one commented or questioned and the few non-Muslim students in attendance were perplexed and alienated by the childish level of credulity exhibited. If any of the Muslim students had comments or criticisms to offer, they were stifled by the conformity and group-mind culture that excludes diversity and marginalizes independent thinking” (2003, 310). Hermansen’s insights complement the findings of Khaled Abou El Fadl (2001a), who criticized the wave of Wahhabi/Salafi influence on American Muslim religiosity, arguing that these trends failed to account for the multiplicity of interpretations in the Islamic legal and tafsīr (Qur’anic interpretation) traditions. See also Leonard (2005) for a discussion on competing forms of American Muslim religious authority.
11 This dissertation analyzes how students’ participation in ḥalaqāt, led by university chaplains, transforms their religious experiences and their engagement with religious texts. In speaking with students about their relationship with their chaplains and the appeal of other religious figures in the United States, my research demonstrates the qualities and affective dispositions that are at stake for religiously guiding the new generation of American Muslims.
Such affective qualities included these figures being relatable, friendly, empathetic, and trusting.
Data collected during my participant observation of ḥalaqāt and in multiple interviews with students who attended them capture a marked shift amongst these youth who are appropriating self-reflexive textual hermeneutics that incite them to develop a meaningful and personal relationship with the Divine, while simultaneously rejecting the rote prescriptive religiosity of the Muslim communities they grew up with. My research underscores how students’ relationship with the Divine, understudied in the current literature on this demographic, is a primary catalyst and resource for how these students experience Islam in America. During my fieldwork, I witnessed the burgeoning of a religious consciousness in MSA students that was incited by their
Muslim chaplains along with “celebrity” shaykhs. These religious figures’ teachings imbued these youth with a mode of religious knowledge that enabled them to experience a personalized
Islam. It also, similar to other trends in American religiosity, “reinforces an individualistic orientation toward religion, one in which personal striving, sincerity, and experience – all of which may characterize people belonging to any religion – take precedence” (Wuthnow 2007,
146).
Various scholars have examined the religious literacy of American Muslims. Zareena
Grewal (2013) richly captures the pedagogical practices of American Muslim students travelling abroad to advance their religious literacy. Grewal analyzes the imbricated relationship between a
12 crisis of authority amongst Muslims, variant understandings of the “correct” transmission of pedagogical traditions, and the emergence of newer forms of Muslim authority shaping the objectives of American Muslim students espousing to “root Islam in the US” (2013, 173). Of note is Grewal’s discussion of the various trends that emerged in the U.S. after the immigration wave of the mid-1960s, which introduced new understandings of religious knowledge and authority amongst American Muslims. Yvonne Haddad, Farid Senzai, and Jane Smith’s (2009) edited volume on education in the United States covers a wide range of topics on the pedagogical practices of American Muslims in the media, prisons, homes, university campuses, among others. In particular, Nadia Khan’s chapter focuses on the religious literacy of youth and the educational institutions available to them in the United States. Khan also recounts the various motivations American Muslim students have in pursuing religious education such as socializing with other Muslims and providing them with an opportunity to “know God and His will” (2009,
124).16
This dissertation examines how studying passages from the Qur’an and hadiths in MSA
ḥalaqāt enables students to understand the presence of the Divine in their lives. By drawing on
William James’s ([1902] 1929) conceptual vocabulary pertaining to religious experience, my research illuminates how MSA students are taught to introspectively reflect on religious texts in order to achieve a sense of God-consciousness. Based on data from my attendance of MSA
ḥalaqāt led by two Muslim chaplains, I demonstrate how students are taught to read religious
16 David Tacey explains that while some may be “wary of youth spirituality” because of the fear “that it will lead to emotional isolation and an inability to function in the world,” “genuine spirituality will always seek fellowship and community” (2010, 71). In my own research findings, I found that the majority of the youth I spoke with were able to concomitantly work on their personal religiosity whilst also engaging with their religious Muslim peers and the broader Muslim community. As such, tending to their religiosity and being active and social students were not mutually exclusive but rather complemented each other in the MSA space.
13 texts in order to better understand their relationship with the Divine and to be aware of the
Divine’s presence in their lives.
By analyzing examples from one ḥalaqa series led by a chaplain whom I call Imam Hadi, I show how MSA students were taught a particular hermeneutical method that entailed them asking existential questions of religious texts and of themselves. At stake in Imam Hadi’s pedagogical approach was his encouraging students to engage in a self-reflexive reading of religious texts in order to determine what these religious texts informed them about the Divine’s message and how this was directly related to themselves and their immediate personal experiences. In order to connect their personal experiences to the Divine, students were asked to determine the source of these experiences, and to reflect deeply on what they believed the Divine was trying to communicate to them through these experiences. As such, students were taught that all experiences were religious in the sense that they were divinely ordained and were considered a medium through which they could respond to the Divine “neither by a curse nor a jest” (James
[1902] 1929, 39). In other ḥalaqāt led by a chaplain whom I call Imam Sherif, I demonstrate how students were being taught to consider the active and immediate presence of the Divine in their lives in order to develop an intimate relationship with Him. By drawing on narrative storytelling techniques reflecting his own experiences, my research analyzes how Imam Sherif consistently encouraged students to seriously contemplate their relationship with the Divine and the role He maintains in their lives. At the crux of both Imam Hadi’s and Imam Sherif’s pedagogical approaches is an emphasis on a personal, attentive, and self-reflexive understanding of the
Divine, which are what lie at the heart of the God-consciousness being taught in MSAs.
William James’s discussions of religious experience illuminates processes described by anthropologists of Islam such as Amira Mittermaier, who reveals how religious subjects are
14 “being acted upon” (Mittermaier 2011, 2012) and where the affective nature of the Divine’s presence cannot be neatly explained within the purview of the “technologies of the self”
(Foucault and Rabinow 1997).17 However, this dissertation does not confine itself to James’s assertion that personal religion and religious experiences are “primordial” things from which
“theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow” ([1902] 1929,
32).18 In fact, data derived from fieldwork demonstrate a delicate and dialectical relationship between religious experiences and the study of religious texts.
Similar to the findings of other anthropologists of Islam such as Saba Mahmood (2005) and Charles Hirschkind (2006), my interlocutors also engage with the “discrusive tradition” in order to “care for themselves.” Participating in informal ḥalaqāt can be conceived of as a technology of the self in that these study circles provide students with a toolkit (methods and questions) to work on themselves, but the model of religious education occupying these MSA spaces lends itself to a different mode of experiencing Islam, one that is less punctilious and prescriptive. A significant difference between my field sites and those of Mahmood, Hirschkind, and other anthropologists of Islam who are employing the discursive tradition/technologies of the self paradigm is that mine place less emphasis on cultivating a pious self through correctly disciplined and embodied behaviors. Thus, it would be empirically incorrect to study these MSA
ḥalaqāt strictly through the prism of the self-cultivation model, given I learned that my interlocutors were not being taught by their chaplains nor were they particularly interested in the minutiae associated with a “correct” understanding of religious texts in order to enforce their
17 See Schielke (2010), Osella and Soares (2010) and Mittermaier (2012) for arguments that challenge the “self- cultivation” model in the anthropology of Islam. See also Moumtaz (2015) for a survey of prominent texts and arguments that have shaped the anthropological study of Islam. 18 Charles Taylor notes that one of William James’s oversights is that he does not account for the ways one’s personalized religiosity “may continue into formal spiritual practices” (2002, 115). Tanya Luhrmann makes a similar argument explaining that as important as James’s contribution was and is, it overlooked how “spiritual training can plan in encouraging the [religious] experience” (2013, 145). Luhrmann’s essay examines how particular modes of prayer enable her interlocutors to have “experiences of God” (2013, 147).
15 daily practices. Rather, these discursive MSA spaces were more concerned with how studying religious texts served as a means for students to pensively reflect on their personal experiences and how to connect those back to their relationship with the Divine. As such, one of this dissertation’s key findings is illuminating how an engagement with the textual tradition can present a different mode of experiencing Islam, one that facilitates a sense of God-consciousness and can account for the palpable presence of the Divine in one’s daily experiences.
Relationship Between MSAs and Politics
Historically, efforts have been made by MSA students nationwide to Americanize the organization in the sense that it would focus on the community building efforts of American
Muslims who share a common religious identity and a desire to ground themselves in America.19
Despite the “Americanization” of the original MSA and the many decades since its inception,
MSAs became a cause for suspicion as was discovered during the Associated Press’s coverage of the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim Students Associations (Hawley 2012). The investigative reporting revealed that law enforcement officials worried that MSAs would be radicalizing
American Muslim students. The reality is far from that and the surveillance conducted by the
NYPD “led to no leads” (Goldman and Apuzzo 2012).
I came to recognize the connectedness and visibility of the MSA as a formative and representative Muslim group on college campuses when I chatted with a group of about twenty
MSA students and we talked about campus political engagement. As we sat in a semi-circle discussing the potential role of political activism in their MSAs, I listened to them share occasions where they had disagreements with a professor over a political cause or feared that if
19 This is not to suggest that MSAs do not accommodate international students, which they do. Some of these international students became highly involved in the MSA and served in leadership capacities.
16 their MSA became more “politically” vocal, it might draw unwanted attention from their university’s administration or student body. During that conversation, I could not help but empathize with the self-censorship (MACLC, CLEAR, and AALDEF 2013) some of these young Muslims were experiencing. Whether or not they should be supporting political causes abroad, or expressing disappointment with the American government’s handling of foreign policy, were troubling negotiations that many American Muslims have had to experience for there is always the “the possibility of government “backlash”” (Smith 2010a, 32).
Unsurprisingly, some MSAs’ transnational political stances have been circumscribed to focusing on relief and fundraising efforts for crises abroad, not necessarily taking an explicit stance on an international political issue. Support for Palestine is one arena where MSAs may make a political statement by refusing to co-sponsor events with the Jewish student group on campus, Hillel.20
However, the apprehension I initially witnessed during the first year of my fieldwork stands in contradistinction with the emboldened MSA youth of earlier generations who, according to
Edward Curtis, “helped to make the MSA one of the most successful immigrant led organizations in propagating Islamist ideas throughout North America” (2007, 689). Of course, these observations stem from the pool of students I spoke with and the MSAs they were members of and thus cannot account for the MSA experience nationally.
As my fieldwork progressed, the political climate in the United States changed, particularly in 2016 with the lead-up to Donald Trump’s presidential win. The election, coupled with a wave of social justice activism that permeated the United States, and college campuses specifically, directed my attention towards observations, conversations, and experiences that I
20 See Naber’s (2012, 42-61) account on the evolution of support for Palestine in the United States amongst various Arab groups. In Garbi Schmidt’s work on Muslims in Chicago, she notes that the MSA raised awareness on the prominent crises during the 1990s including support for Palestine and aiding the Bosnians that were afflicted during the Yugoslavian civil war (2004b, 128).
17 had already been compiling and documenting but whose meaning gained new relevance in light of ongoing sociopolitical events. The last chapter of this dissertation, which focuses on social justice activism, is in many ways a culmination of the previous chapters’ findings. Admittedly, a cursory survey of my research questions and interests did not necessarily lend themselves to a discussion of activism. Given activist efforts have become a prime concern for MSA students and minority youth across the country, I realized that my observations and conversations had the potential to record a significant juncture in how American Muslim youth are attending to these recent developments and how they shape their experience of Islam on their college campuses.
As Garbi Schmidt notes, entering university and the new changes and opportunities that come with that “affect Muslim college students as they practice religion and define their Muslim identity, community, and tradition, and as they prepare to become the caretakers and shapers of tomorrow’s “American Islam” and the future activism of their community” (2004b, 84). Based on my fieldwork, this dissertation demonstrates how American Muslim youth’s engagement with social justice issues hearkens back to the idea that the MSA is a discursive space inflected by an array of voices, objectives, and conversations emergent both within and outside of its borders. As such, my findings demonstrate how social justice activism becomes an extension of how MSAs are vying to foster inclusivity and tolerance within their circles. Participant observation of events, initiatives, and in conversations with students, examines the varying motivations for this activism and some of the ways their chaplains address social justice. While this activism cannot be divorced from the social justice fervor prevalent on college campuses and in the United
States, my research also underscores how MSA students and their chaplains root these activist objectives in Islamic precepts and draw on the discursive tradition’s exhortations in order to stand on the side of those who have been oppressed and marginalized. This dissertation
18 demonstrates how MSA activist efforts are premised on ensuring a welcoming space that is sensitive and welcoming to all irrespective of race, gender, and sexual orientation. This activism not only emboldened MSA students to address sociopolitical issues affecting their own communities, but also transcended such communal bounds in that they rallied with other student groups on campus to advocate for social justice issues, further cementing their “spatial and symbolic belonging in the post-9/11 context” (Kamal 2014, 259-60).
Questions, Objectives, and Research Methodology
Embarking on fieldwork incites a variety of emotions. On the one hand, it is exciting and awe-inspiring while on the other it is nerve-wracking and unpredictable. Unlike more exotic ethnographies, I was studying a community that existed in a country that I have lived in for the greater part of my life. The comforts of home did not escape me, nor did I have to learn a new language or adapt to a foreign climate. But, there was nothing inherently “familiar” or
“unfamiliar” about my fieldwork per se. As Vincent Crapanzano notes, it is “far more difficult to render the familiar unfamiliar and yet maintain its familiarity than to render the unfamiliar familiar and yet maintains its unfamiliarity” (2010, 72). Even now, as I write this, I question whether the observations and stories recounted in this dissertation do justice to the conversations and interactions I was privileged enough to access in the past couple of years. I am aware that the findings this dissertation promulgates are “inherently partial – committed and incomplete”
(Clifford 1986, 7). My hope is that I was able “to ground, make visible and audible, contending worlds of difference, to provide translation circuitry that recognizes its own relations to other circulating representations (M. Fischer 1993)” (Fischer 2003, 304). In addition, though I do believe that as an ethnographer, I “do not have the final word” (Tavory and Timmermans 2013),
19 this research does make a contribution to the study of Islam in America and brings to the fore some of the ways in which American Muslim youth experience Islam.
On the precipice of conducting fieldwork, somehow everything became personal because my status as an American Muslim positioned me as a wading insider/outsider. I was responsible for how my observations and interactions were to be read and understood by my interlocutors and other readers. Inherently double-sided, I felt torn between accurately portraying what my interlocutors relayed to me while also making them proud of the work they contributed to
(Chaudhry 2005). As such, I often felt anxious “about my ‘native’ research not being rigorous or critical enough” (Manchar 2013, 199). Having never been part of an MSA certainly aided my maintaining an open curiosity to my interlocutors’ experiences and prevented me from having preconceived notions or expectations of what went on in an MSA. However, as an American
Muslim myself, I realized that my insider/outsider status was contingent on the “values and norms” that both my interlocutors and I expressed at any given moment when interacting in the field (Merriam et al. 2001, 415-16). These potentially conflicting values and norms became very apparent to me when students made distinctions between “religion” and “culture” in our interviews. Theoretically and realistically, this distinction was not one that I was intellectually comfortable accepting, but at the same time I did not feel it was my place to challenge them in such a way that they had to justify what they were sharing. My objective shifted in order to demonstrate how this binary functioned in these students’ lives and enabled them to exercise autonomy as they were navigating emerging adulthood and determining the ways in which they wanted to experience Islam.
The research methodology for this dissertation is as follows. I conducted preliminary fieldwork in 2015 when I began attending Muslim Students Associations’ events on different
20 university campuses as well as evening events hosted at local mosques, youth conferences, and even educational weekend seminars. My reason for doing so was to obtain a feel for what would soon be my “local” (Lambek 2011), to ascertain firsthand what topics were being discussed in
American Muslim spaces, and to familiarize myself with the prominent figures that would be referenced by the youth I interviewed and who were formative players in the field (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992) of American Muslim religious education.21
Far from Islam being a monolith worldwide, it is also not a monolith in the United States, and one of the main objectives of this research was to remain attuned to new developments as they were brought forth. For example, the formative place of chaplains in these students’ lives was a significant finding during my research and is thus accounted for at various points throughout this dissertation. In many ways, I anticipate this project’s findings would have appeared differently had I worked with MSAs that did not have chaplains. The counsel they provided students and the teachings they imparted during their ḥalaqāt very much influenced the discursive MSA space and how these American Muslim youth experienced Islam.
I worked with three MSAs in the northeastern region of the United States. At two of the three schools, students hailed from all around the country and there were even international students who joined their campus’s MSA.22 Some MSA students came from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds and I learned in our interviews that their parents ran their own businesses, were doctors, IT professionals among other occupations. Others came from more working-class backgrounds and their parents held blue-collar jobs. I met with the vast majority
21 The local was comprised of MSA spaces and larger American Muslim discourses. Michael Lambek argues that the “local is relative – to persons, activities, conversations, and horizons” and that it consists of a “perspective whose circumference expands and contracts, with respect to the attention, engagement, or projects of its inhabitants” (2011, 200). 22 I did not deliberately choose the MSAs I worked with for this dissertation. Their participation was essentially incumbent on my having obtained the consent of their respective chaplains and having not bypassed any of their university’s ethics protocols.
21 of students an average of three times for semi-structured interviews that were tape-recorded. The total interview times varied, but on average, I spent about two hours of recorded time speaking to each MSA student. Given I had no contacts in the field, I gained the consent and trust of the three MSAs’ chaplains before I began my research. I explained my project to them and they became invaluable to my recruitment process. Two of them sent out emails with a short description about my project whereas one of them allowed me to discuss my project at the end of the first ḥalaqa of the semester.
All the chaplains and students in this dissertation have been given pseudonyms. At times,
I have also chosen to keep a chaplain or a student anonymous depending on the sensitivity of the topic and what they were sharing. Before interviews began, I stressed how all their identities would remain confidential and emphasized how they could ask me to pause at any point during the recorded sessions. My interviews with students began with a list of general introductory questions: name, age, how long they had attended their university and what their major was.
These questions segued into conversations about their families’ backgrounds in order to detect how their “religious identities” had developed throughout their lives (Guest 2010, 180). Data about their families and their relationships with them become demonstrative of the generational divide that exists between American Muslims, and the fact that like their peers, American
Muslim youth negotiate maintaining their own autonomy while also preserving a strong connection to their parents (Aquilino 2006, 212). While I initially asked these questions to break the ice and obtain a sense of their religious trajectory, much of the insights gleaned from these introductory interviews became illuminating and bore even more significance as I connected them to the religious experiences these students had when in university. As such, they formed a chapter in their own right.
22 I also asked them if they had any questions before we began. Most of them had none and those that did were often curious about how long the interviews would last. Being mindful of their impending engagements was something I took seriously, I often kept track of time and reminded them when we were nearing the end of the interview to ensure we could finish the topic at hand or suggest we resume at a later point. While I was generally eager to schedule a follow-up interview, I tried not to assume that students would feel the same way and made sure to ask rather than impose a particular expectation on them. Not closely abiding by a standard list of questions, my interviews were semi-structured, veering into tangential territory, which I welcomed. Such instances paved the way for passionate, unexpected, and personal insights and more importantly, provided my interlocutors with an opportunity to steer the conversation and teach me about their experiences.
I deliberately opted for semi-structured interviews because I wanted students to feel they had some control over the interview as they indulged in topics that may have never crossed my mind. This style worked to my advantage and students generally felt comfortable and appreciated the fluidity of the conversation, some even telling me that our interactions did not feel like an interview. However, on some occasions, students were self-conscious, and they would ask if they answered my question or would express that the conversation had veered off track. This resulted in my having to reassure them that this was, in fact, all right and that they were free to talk about whatever they wanted. I also feared that directly initiating a conversation about God and personal religiosity could potentially appear suspect and vague, as I theoretically conceive of religious experience as the most intimate and feeling aspect of one’s relationship with the Divine.
However, as trust was built, and I had spent more time in their MSAs, I found ways to address this topic by weaving it into larger discussions about their involvement in the MSA, their
23 chaplain’s pedagogical practices, and the religious education they obtained from prominent
American Muslim figures. Though topics such as Islamic furūḍ (religious duties) were not the main matters of concern in my conversations, when a student volunteered this information, we discussed the topic in further detail. My objective was to not pointedly inquire about whether students maintained such practices but to introduce more general questions about the religious activities they were involved in growing up and during their MSA tenure. Ultimately, I wanted to refrain from appearing judgmental or presumptuous if in fact they had not been practicing.23
Throughout the course of my fieldwork, I handwrote field notes in journals, jotting down my observations of events, conferences, as well as in-depth notes regarding the content of approximately one hundred and fifty ḥalaqāt. One ḥalaqa series, which I attended for almost two years was more intimate and so my field notes were complemented by my recalling more particular instances as I typed them up. Field notes from my participant observation were crucial for my research, particularly when documenting the topics discussed in ḥalaqāt. They were also important for accurately portraying the themes of the ḥalaqāt and enabled me to sharpen the vocabulary and qualifiers used when describing them. For example, terminology such as introspection, God-conscious, and existential are words that were cited in the ḥalaqāt themselves and are not my qualifiers. Attending these ḥalaqāt enabled my conversations with students to delve into more interesting territory because I was already familiar with their chaplains’ teaching styles and rhetoric and was thus able to ask less cursory questions about what they gleaned from these ḥalaqāt. For example, I was able to inquire about how students perceived their chaplain’s oratory techniques, their choice of vocabulary, or the lessons they imparted and could draw on
23 The majority of students I interviewed did maintain such practices, but I also learned that some did not or had struggled with being steadfast in their prayers for example. Those that disclosed their difficulty being steadfast often expressed a desire to be more committed.
24 examples from observations I made when attending the ḥalaqāt. Such questions also became the springboard for asking students about their relationship with the Divine.
One of this dissertation’s main objectives was to find a way to account for the Divine in the lives of American Muslim youth, a point that is often taken for granted or perhaps generates little interest amongst academics.24 To understand the ways in which American Muslim youth experience Islam, it would be remiss to not factor in how their understanding of their relationship with the Divine is an important part of their lives. Analyzing the religious teachings that permeate MSA ḥalaqāt provides us with a window into discourses that capture how American
Muslim youth experience the Divine. Observing these ḥalaqāt and in my conversations with students, I was able to better understand where the Divine was located in these youth’s lives, what type of a relationship they had with Him, when they thought about Him and why they did so.
As such, this dissertation illustrates how some American Muslim youth experience the
Divine in their daily lives particularly at a juncture when questioning, self-doubt, and independence coalesced into a burgeoning curiosity about existential and religious matters.25 By doing so, it considers some of the inner workings of one’s religiosity, the often untapped feelings and questions that penetrate our existence and are rarely shared, perhaps because they are too personal and perhaps because no one has inquired about them.26 In accounting for these students’ relationships with the Divine and how their attendance of ḥalaqāt incites in them a sense of God-
24 Synnøve Bendixsen notes “that certain aspects of religiosity, such as feelings of transcendence, are relevant to our understanding of the identification process among youth” (2013, 272). 25 See Benson and Roehlkepartain (2008), Astin, Astin and Lindholm (2011), and Chickering (2003) for more on the place of religiosity in the lives of university students. 26 In addition, there are multiple ways of approaching the anthropological study of Islam such as accounting for those who are not necessarily “pious, committed Muslims” but rather experience Islam as a “moral idiom, a practice of self-care, a discursive tradition, an aesthetic sensibility, a political ideology, a mystical quest, a source of hope, a cause of anxiety, an identity, an enemy – you name it” (Schielke 2010, 2).
25 consciousness, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of a more personal and transcendental dimension of how American Muslim youth experience Islam.
Outline of Chapters
At an event on one campus, I distinctly recall the chaplain emphasizing the historical significance of the MSA as an influential marker of Muslim life on college campuses specifically, and the United States as a whole.27 Accounting for MSAs at large is a seemingly impossible task as MSAs operate independently of one another. While there are regional conferences and there is an MSA umbrella organization entitled MSA National, the daily affairs of MSAs do not reflect a broader institutional agenda.28 The notion of a national MSA structure that local MSA chapters model themselves after does not exist because “local MSAs cannot be described in static terms” (Mir 2014, 17). MSAs are localized spaces. As this dissertation will demonstrate, they are discursive spaces shaped by the objectives and discourses of students, chaplains, and other prominent American religious figures. Moreover, each MSA is comprised of its own local culture that has the potential to evolve over time as new students join the ranks of the board and the general student body. As I am writing this, new classes, events, and figures are currently occupying the MSA spaces I once worked with. However, studying MSAs provide us with a barometer to understand how American Muslim youth have experienced Islam at various points in time.
Chapter one provides an overview of the different MSAs I frequented in my fieldwork and specifically describes how MSAs occupy both a physical and discursive space on college
27 Field notes, February 2016. 28 MSA National does facilitate annual conferences, which are attended by MSA students from around the country. It also provides a range of resources for MSA chapters such as classes, task forces, and networking opportunities (Kamal 2014, 257).
26 campuses. It explores the various reasons American Muslim students join MSAs. In addition, it examines key questions and concerns my interlocutors brought up such as the issue of gender segregation and an emphasis on trying to establish a welcoming Muslim space on campus. Of note in this chapter is a section devoted to MSA jum‘a prayers, which elucidates how this space/time enables MSA students to more intimately reflect on their relationship with the Divine and also introduces the formative place that MSA chaplains occupy in the religious experiences of American Muslim youth.
Chapter two moves on to a discussion of how American Muslim youth distinguish between what they perceive to be “cultural” versus “religious” Islam. Building off the secondary literature that addresses the generational divide between immigrant Muslims and American
Muslim youth, this chapter addresses key points of contention for the MSA students I interviewed. These include conflicting generational understandings of marriage, professional aspirations, religious literacy, and ethnic segregation. This chapter demonstrates the discursive ways American Muslim youth engage with the Islamic tradition. In addition, it argues that the distinction between religion and culture affords these students an opportunity to embody a sense of autonomy and exercise their agency by determining how they want to experience Islam in
America.
Chapter three discusses in more detail the formative place of Muslim chaplains on college campuses. It examines the history of Muslim chaplaincy in the United States and introduces the three Muslim chaplains I worked with. Moreover, it provides examples of their mass appeal amongst MSA students and the key qualities these students look for in religious guides such as their being relatable, friendly, and understanding. This chapter also analyzes MSA
27 students’ expectations of other religious figures such as “celebrity shaykhs” from whom they also derive their religious knowledge.
In chapter four, I examine the pedagogical practices of MSA ḥalaqāt. This chapter begins by providing a brief overview of Islamic education in the United States and continues to explain the informal and significant place that ḥalaqāt have historically had on transmitting religious knowledge to Muslim learners. To illustrate the self-reflexive deliberation taking place in
ḥalaqāt and moreover, how they incite a sense of God-consciousness in MSA students, I analyze scenes from ḥalaqāt led by two of the Muslim chaplains I worked with, Imam Hadi and Imam
Sherif. I argue that these chaplains’ pedagogical styles, while occasionally different, provide students with the confidence and a methodological framework in order to engage with religious texts and develop an affective relationship with the Divine.
Chapter five explores the social justice activism that took place amongst the MSAs I worked with during my research as well as the broader social justice rhetoric that has historically taken place within the American Muslim community, most notably amongst academics.
Specifically, it provides examples of social justice activism as it pertains to race, gender, and sexual orientation and how MSAs worked to provide a more inclusive space for their Muslim peers and outlying Muslim community while concomitantly rooting their activism in the Islamic tradition. This chapter examines some of the motivations for this activism such as the influence of their university chaplains. In addition, it provides multiple self-reflexive accounts of students who shared their views about social justice initiatives and their standing up against some of the injustices they witnessed in their American Muslim communities.
28 Chapter 1
Making Muslim Space on College Campuses
On a cold wintry Saturday, I began my foray into attending MSA events and embarked on my research. My day was filled to the brim as I had managed to squeeze in two MSA events on different universities’ campuses about an hour’s commute apart. The first event was part of a weekend conference celebrating variant forms of artistic expression and protest. Hosted in a university auditorium, approximately one hundred and fifty people attended the all-day event.
The majority of them were students although I noticed middle-aged attendants as well.
Beginning with a Qur’anic recitation by a shy hijabi, the first panel commenced.29
Writers, musicians, journalists, and academics were organized into subpanels, each with a designated time slot on stage. Sitting in chairs assembled in a semi-circle, these subpanels discussed a wide array of topics including the lack of representation or more importantly, misrepresentation of Muslims in the media and elsewhere. The panels availed themselves of the opportunity to ask questions that enabled one to “contemplate, debate, create.”30 After the panelists’ deliberations concluded, members of the audience were invited to ask questions.
A poignant point raised by one of the MSA board members was that this event was an opportunity “to celebrate perfect imperfections.” When I jotted down that statement in my field notes at the time, I did not think much of it nor did I after typing up my notes and recounting the events of the day. It took me over a year to realize that this student’s proclamation was demonstrative of a much larger phenomenon taking place in MSA circles: acceptance of one’s immediate positioning, meaning where they stood in terms of their religiosity. For example, were students struggling in maintaining certain Islamic practices? Did they have doubts about their
29 It is common for MSA events to begin with a Qur’anic recitation of a few āyāt (verses). I have seen both male and female students perform this duty, the majority of whom are trained in tajwīd (art of reciting the Qur’an). 30 Field notes, February 2015.
29 faith? While imperfections were celebrated in MSA spaces, the notion of striving for a perfect state of religiosity, or academic success, or the approval of their peers was something many of these youth encountered on a daily basis, which is why the student’s disclosure was so poignant and compelling. Though the proclamation did not eradicate the multiple pressures directed towards these students, it implored those in the audience to modify the ways they internalized these pressures and how they responded to each other.
Another salient point asserted in the event pertained to the limited representation of
Muslims in the media, the academy, the arts, among other spaces and highlighted the plurality of voices existing within the American Muslim community. The panelists, many of whom were writers of fiction and non-fiction, also emphasized how storytelling and sharing one’s experiences were important in fostering a better informed understanding of the diversity that exists within American Muslim communities. It was also the first time I began to notice elements of the millennial subculture. For example, I heard people snapping their fingers instead of clapping, a gesture that was not commonplace when I was in university alerting me to the almost generation sized gap between my interlocutors and me.31 Over time, I began to take this notion of snapping seriously because I began to recognize it was speaking to a much larger trend amongst millennials. They were growing up in a culture where there were multiple media for “self- presentation” (Doster 2013) and had thus grown accustomed to visibly, audibly, and instantly expressing their opinions.
My reason for recounting this event, as my introduction to MSAs, is because it provided me with my first sense of the kinds of discourses that emerge when Muslim students on campus
31 Snapping one’s fingers was something I had only previously witnessed at coffee shops or spoken word events. During the event, I recall asking myself when did university students inaugurate the gesture? In a conversation with a student the following year at an MSA event on her campus, I raised the same question. She explained to me that snapping was less disruptive than clapping. I told her that I agreed but still expressed my curiosity regarding why people felt compelled to instantly comment.
30 join together, such as their emphasis on being inclusive and their suspending judgment. While I recognize that MSAs across the country will vary in the sorts of activities they organize and of course in terms of more logistical elements, there are recurring themes that bear importance to many of the American Muslim youth involved in them.
This chapter begins by discussing the various reasons students expressed for joining their
MSAs. It then moves on to a discussion of what kinds of physical and discursive spaces MSAs occupy on college campuses through an analysis of major rituals performed by the MSAs as well as their engagement with the outlying campus community. Fundamental to this chapter’s argument is that MSAs are discursive spaces that provide Muslim students on campus an opportunity to commune, learn from each other, and “gather based on like-mindedness and a relative homogeneity of ideals” (Williams 2002, 262). In addition, this chapter addresses how
MSA students’ discursive engagement with issues such as gender norms, interfaith dialogue, inclusivity, among others, determine how MSA students socialize with one another and the kinds of expectations and objectives they have of their campus group.
Why Do Students Join MSAs?
Presumably, it might seem like a natural assumption that Muslim students would join the
Muslim Students Association upon their entering university as many college students decide to join religious and ethnic student organizations (Bowman, Park, and Denson 2015). That
American Muslim students would gravitate towards other American Muslim youth would seem like a logical conclusion given their status as minorities in a predominantly Christian and secular society and the potentially shared anxieties they might have around Islamophobia (Muedini
2005; Naber and Jamal 2008; Ernst 2013; Cainkar 2009; Cesari 2010), sociopolitical allegiances
31 (Jamal 2005; Hosseini 2013), growing up in potentially similar religious households considering many of them hail from immigrant backgrounds (Yang and Ebaugh 2001; Voas and Fleischmann
2012) along with a slew of other possibilities. For the purposes of this chapter, my point is to emphasize the important place that various kinds of discovery, acceptance, and friendship/community occupy in MSA spaces.
The notion that college is a formative period in one’s life was not lost on me when interviewing students. Julie Marcotte and Geneviève Lévesque, for example, note that upon entering college, students are exposed to “new social experiences and novel learning situations that allow individuals to try out new roles and statuses” (2018, 91) which results from numerous factors including the “relative weakening of social institutions such as family, religion, and workplace that previously served as guides for youth in their transition to adulthood” (2018, 92).
However, I would argue that campus groups such as MSAs do play a formative role in shaping
American Muslim youth and “may instill feelings of being “at home”” and “enable personal growth through honest questioning” (Bryant 2007, 4). It was precisely the significance of this juncture in one’s life as a time of opportunity, freedom, and inquiry that made me increasingly interested in how American Muslim youth experienced Islam in MSA spaces.
As I became better acquainted with MSA students over the approximately two years I conducted my research, I learned that there were multiple reasons for students joining their respective MSAs and that their involvement was in different capacities and degrees.32 As I argued above, it would be remiss to assume that all Muslim students joined their MSA for the same reasons but were these reasons so unalike? In order to become gradually acquainted with
32 Some students, for example, were incredibly active serving on the board or being heavily involved in the organization of MSA activities. Others had minimal contact with the MSA, perhaps sporadically attending an event whereas others occupied an intermediary space wherein academic obligations or responsibilities in other organizations might have precluded them from being as actively involved as they would have liked.
32 the students I spoke with, my first interviews generally involved asking them questions pertaining to their upbringings. For example, I would ask where they grew up, whether they participated in “religious” activities when they were growing up such as having attended a local mosque or a Sunday school, if they had siblings, and their educational interests as well as professional aspirations.33 Given I did not know any of these students prior to my research, these questions were significant for my gaining a better understanding of who these students were and how to situate their involvement in the MSA against the backdrop of their larger life narratives
(Abu-Lughod 1991; Chaudhry 2005). Such experiences were inevitably comprised of encounters that existed both within and outside of the MSA spaces on their campuses. My asking about these variables provided me with a better sense of clarity as to the forms of socialization MSA students had engaged in prior to university. These included, but were not limited to, their experiences in their local mosque communities, or lack thereof, their friendship circles before joining the MSA, as well as their interactions with religious teachers. Generally, most students recounted positive experiences socializing with other Muslims, which I anticipate, made socializing with their MSA peers that much easier.
In these introductory conversations, I also learned that some students had been involved in MSAs when they were in high school (Zine 2001) and participated in International Day, fashion shows, and organized hangouts with their Muslim peers.34 Given the relatively small size of the Muslim student body in most of these youth’s high schools, the spearheading of MSA events generally fell on the shoulders of a few students. I also learned that there were regional
33 The term “religious” is ultimately subjective. As my interlocutors began to expound upon how they were involved with their local Muslim community (if they grew up in one), they would make distinctions between whether they perceived an activity such as attending Sunday school one that was religious or cultural. This will be explored in further detail in the following chapter. 34 Recorded interviews with Dina, January 2016 and Usman, November 2015.
33 MSA competitions such as the Muslim Interscholastic Tournament35 (MIST) where students from various MSAs participate in a variety of tournaments including athletics, arts, debates, testing their knowledge of Islamic history, or showcasing their mastery of tajwīd.36 My impression was that these tournaments are fun and social extracurricular activities that enable
Muslim students to develop bonds with their peers in their locale since the tournaments are hosted according to geographic breakdown. They also enable students, especially the organizers of these events to acquaint themselves with one another on a more personal and intimate level given the collapsing of the formal bounds and restrictions of the mosque space or the Sunday school setting. In contradistinction with the preponderance of social events being organized by adults such as their parents or teachers, students find themselves being more responsible and agentive as they occupy pseudo-leadership positions in such tournaments (Maghbouleh 2010).37
Throughout my interviews, I learned that some students became acquainted with members of their prospective MSA during their first week of school unless their university hosted preview weekends before the academic year began.38 During both occasions, students became familiarized with campus life and the prospective clubs available to them. They interacted with MSA students who often left them with a lasting, positive impression. Lara, for example, in her first week of university walked around her university’s quad where booths for
35 The tournaments are organized regionally throughout the United States. 36 Recorded interviews with Fawzi, May 2016 and Nesma, April 2016. 37 Neda Maghbouleh’s ethnographic fieldwork on a Persian Student Group on a university campus draws attention to what she describes as being “selective acculturation” in which second-generation Iranian youth “specify cultural pathways,” some of which are inherited from their parents’ generation but are refashioned to complement the development of their own second-generation immigrant identities (2010, 214). O’Brien’s (2017) work with young American Muslim teenagers also alerts us to how young American Muslims behave independently when they are no longer under the purview of their parents’ or community’s watchful eyes. 38 For students who grew up near their university, or had siblings who attended the same university, exposure to the MSA might have also taken place before they enrolled. Samia, for example, shared that one of the reasons why she chose to go to her university was because of the Muslim chaplain. Recorded interview, October 2015. Jamila also commented that she had “heard so many amazing things about the sisterhood, and you know the community here and all the amazing events” explaining to me that she wanted to be part of those MSA experiences. Recorded interview, December 2015.
34 various clubs were set up. During that time, she met a female Muslim who informed her of the location of the campus’s prayer room. This led Lara to begin frequenting the space in order to pray, hang out, eat, or even take a nap if she was on campus studying late.39 Dina met the MSA during her school’s pre-frosh week and recounted to me how friendly and inviting the students were. When her first semester began, she attended a welcome back barbecue, which introduced the incoming freshmen to the MSA and reacquainted MSA students who had been apart over the summer. Dina also explained that having programming available to Muslim students on her campus was something her parents appreciated. The potential for positive influence on her life and the fact that she would not feel isolated as a Muslim on campus placated her parents (Ahmed
2009) and potentially alleviated their fears regarding peer pressure.
Omar, on the other hand, had no idea that his university had such an established Muslim presence on campus telling me, “I’m so fortunate that Allah placed me here and not like in a random school where they didn’t have any of this. I think personally for me, the person I was, I needed something like this vibrant of a community with a chaplain and everyone else to help me.”40 Omar’s response demonstrates that college-aged Muslim youth do not necessarily expect to find a Muslim community on campus and if they do, they do not necessarily expect it to be an active one. By “active,” I am referring to events and accommodations that are geared specifically to the Muslim student body such as the facilitation of Friday prayers, Ramadan iftars, extracurricular activities and weekend trips, events and lectures, along with charitable outreach.41
39 Recorded interview with Lara, June 2016. 40 Recorded interview with Omar, April 2016. 41 Extracurricular activities can involve going to the movies, amusement parks, bowling, sports nights, film screenings on campus, game nights, gatherings in dormitories, and study sessions around midterms and finals with food breaks. The majority of these activities were co-ed although on one campus there were some events such as sports night that were gender-segregated. Weekend trips involved going to a nearby city that could be reached by car and often took place outdoors. On one campus, there was also an annual religious retreat where students would bond and learn more about Islam at a nearby campsite. During trips, MSA students were generally chaperoned by their chaplains as well as older community members.
35 Such activities depend, to a certain degree, on university funding as well as outside donors to help subsidize the costs. They also require the availability and support of students and chaplains to oversee and organize them. The “activeness” or lack thereof of the MSA and/or broader campus Muslim community is dependent upon the students who lead and participate in it. As new cohorts of students emerge, MSA dynamics and how newcomers will receive the MSA will inevitably change.
Literature on American Muslim youth, particularly college-aged youth, documents how they shouldered the responsibility of teaching non-Muslims about Islam, combatted stereotypes, and clarified potential misinformation which will be discussed in more detail throughout this chapter. While there will certainly be differences of opinion, such initiatives can be perceived as a form of activism insofar as these youth are reforming people’s misconceptions about Islam and are potentially eradicating injustices at the hands of Islamophobic misconceptions. In many respects, MSA students are racialized stereotyped bodies, and are walking activist symbols on college campuses.42 This racialization is invariably complex and intersectional, as many academics have shown (Love 2010; Naber 2008; Razack 2007). For example, Su’ad Abdul
Khabeer examines how “race and gender play a critical role in the uneven application of citizenship and suspicion launched on American Muslim communities” (2017, 116). In her conversations with two American Muslim women, one African American, and one Pakistani
American, she captures how her interlocutors’ “claims of belonging… are in a constant state of negotiation – shifting and being shifted between citizenship and suspicion” (2017, 115).
42 One example would be the continued debates about the hijab and whether its donning is a political statement, a spiritual one, a social one or, as many hijabis would argue, is a combination of the above and potentially other reasons. For literature on the hijab in the United States, see Williams and Vashi (2007), Ali (2005), Haddad (2007), and Amer (2015) particularly chapter six.
36 For other students, participating in the MSA became an impetus for the purging of particular behaviors. Abstaining from haram, or morally transgressive behavior, is not uncommon for youth who begin to question matters of religiosity or lack thereof and attempt to determine its standing in their lives. Socializing in the MSA inevitably makes it easier for
American Muslim students to avoid such behaviors like drinking or partying (Ali 2018, 122).
One evening, as Zaid and I sat for an interview in a café not too far from his campus, we began chatting about the various inclinations students have towards joining their MSA. The first time I met Zaid, I immediately sensed that his insights about MSA culture would prove useful to me down the road. There was something seasoned about his reflections as if what he was sharing with me were things he had been thinking about for a while. Like some of the other students I had interviewed during my fieldwork, he had been involved in different university MSAs given he was a transfer student. His exposure to different MSAs equipped him with experiences and enabled him to reflect on the uniqueness of each MSA’s culture. Moreover, he was incredibly articulate and self-reflexive. He was not simply living through the MSA circuit enmeshed in a habitus (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). He was observing the MSA and thinking about it more critically than some of the other students I spoke with. I also learned that he was impressively well-read about Islam having spent his high school years studying with local shaykhs in his neighborhood, accessing Islamic resources online, and reading Islamic studies literature from
Western academics such as Yahya Michot, Jon Hoover, and Martin Lings. Unlike the majority of my students who did not study Islam academically (save for a few), my interviews with Zaid were quite multifaceted as they zoomed out of the MSA into larger discussions about Islam in
America, and to even larger historical discussions about Islamic philosophy and theology.
37 During our first conversation, I realized that when I asked about the “MSA,” that question could mean different things and could thus be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways by different students. This was useful to me as it led students to explain to me what they were referring to when speaking of the MSA. I learned that students were unsure of whether I was referring to the MSA board, the chaplain, the general student body, fringe members, the activities, and even the MSA “space” meaning the prayer room on campus that students would frequent. Particularly on campuses where there was a sizeable outlying group of community members, distinguishing between the MSA as composed strictly of Muslim students on campus and the larger campus’s Muslim umbrella organization became more challenging.
We were in luck that evening and managed to find a small table towards the back of the café. I treated Zaid to a seasonal peppermint hot chocolate and I consumed a coffee that managed to keep me alert for our interview and another event I had planned on attending later that evening. We delved into a discussion about why he felt students joined the MSA on his campus and he explained to me that many of those
who decide to venture into the [MSA], for them it is a matter of them finding their spirituality because they’re essentially like all college students. They’re experimenting. They’re learning... They’re experimenting you know with what fits their person, their narrative, right? Is it spirituality? Is it activism? Is it you know I don’t know, what other sorts? Anything, whatever their path.43
Zaid’s astute observation pointed out the multifariousness of MSA involvement and revealed to me that “activism” was an inception point through which students joined their MSAs. I realized that my objective was to remain more attuned to these various motivations. This inspired me to augment my research focus beyond the ḥalaqāt and to include other issues that were important to these students such as their distancing themselves from their parents’ generation’s practices and
43 Recorded interview with Zaid, February 2016.
38 beliefs, which will be discussed in chapter two and what forms of activism they embraced, which will be discussed in chapter five.
Over coffee with Usman, an MSA student on another campus, we had an interesting conversation about the cultures of various MSAs. He was one of the first students to take an expressed interest in this project on his campus. Over the course of my research, he would often ask me how it was going and would introduce me to his friends complimentary of the work I was doing, which is unsurprising given his own fondness for participating in his MSA. Having had friends in MSAs on different campuses and his interest in developing connections with different
MSAs, I was generally eager to hear his insights and observations. In our interview, he explained that some MSAs are comprised of members who essentially socialize with each other and do not participate in religious activities together, such as prayer, for example. When I asked him if the reason could be related to them not having a prayer space, his response accounted less for a logistical explanation but rather a larger one about the assumptions that people have about
MSAs. He shared,
My point is that I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. When people ask that question - is your MSA a “real MSA” or is it a hang out thing? They imply that the latter is bad. I mean like the thing about our MSA is we have all the social stuff and we have the spiritual stuff so people can choose what they want to come to.44 People that are committed to the entire MSA and things will do both but there are only people who will come to social things and there are people who will only come to spiritual things and because we give them that option, people choose what they want and I mean it comes down to what being Muslim means to each person that comes to MSA.45
Usman’s observation is illuminating because it demonstrates a flexible participatory style in some MSAs, particularly the ones I worked with that offered students a variety of ḥalaqāt and activities. However, the overarching impression students gave me was that by joining their MSA, they would be able to “assert their… identity in a safe way (Kurien 2005)” (Joshi 2016, 254).
44 Quotations are mine. 45 Recorded interview with Usman, January 2016.
39 During my research, I found Usman’s interpretation to be true and thus inquired about which
MSA activities students participated in and their reasons for doing so. Of course, many of the students interviewed during this project were ones that I saw frequent ḥalaqāt, jum‘a prayers, or simply hung out in the MSA. On a few occasions though, I did interview students that I did not see in any of the aforementioned spaces or activities and thus learned that it was not unusual to speak to students who might have had minimal contact with the MSA. Given the busy schedules that the majority of these students have, it would be impossible to assume that they could attend every event on their respective campuses. Also, like other students on campus, they tended to go to events with each other or expected to meet their friends there. As most events served food or involved hanging out afterwards, students could acquire some religious learning and socialize at the same time. When exams and final papers creep up on students, it is not unusual to find some regularly attended ḥalaqāt or events to be more empty than usual. In some cases, I also found that the last ḥalaqāt of certain semesters generated a larger turnout as students welcomed a respite from their studying. As such, the MSA often provided a break from a student’s bustling academic life.
As Nesma and I met one late afternoon after she finished a shift working on campus, she grabbed some lunch and began talking to me about her own foray into MSA life. She shared how she attended an MSA themed conference in her hometown and walked away from it feeling that she did not “benefit” from the experience because many of the talks pertained to MSA structures.
Nesma also expressed that she was reluctant to participate in her university’s MSA because she had heard about MSA conflicts and drama from older friends and family members, which were things she wanted avoid.46 However, during her preview week in her senior year of high school, her interactions with MSA members proved positive, but not enough to convince her that she
46 Recorded interview with Nesma, March 2016.
40 should become an active member. Her impression of the MSA was solidified when she celebrated her first Eid on campus. For many of these youth, celebrating Eid is a formidable part of their American Muslim experience with many children visiting relatives during that time, attending Eid prayers in their local mosques, and participating in activities organized for children. Because Eid was celebrated during her first semester at university, Nesma attended the annual Eid celebration on her campus and shared that the people with whom she interacted that evening were “really cool” admitting that she had made some of her best friends that day.
Nesma went on to explain that she slowly transitioned into being an active MSA member and that her membership on the MSA board happened spontaneously. Because the board needed to fill positions for that academic year and because she felt she was going to be nominated for a position, she decided to nominate herself for a position that she actually wanted to have. Other students shared similar stories having joined the MSA formally due to encouragement from fellow MSA students and on occasion even their chaplains. Some students joined their MSA or ran for positions to inadvertently stir up the status quo. Such students advocated for a more visible and vocal female presence in the MSA while others sought more direct oversight of MSA programming such as ḥalaqa discussions and invited guest speakers.47
Irrespective of the degree and capacity in which students were involved in their MSAs, there was an understanding that upon participating in the MSA, they were shouldering the responsibility of shaping Muslim life on their campus and they were volunteering themselves as visible representatives of Muslims on campus. This responsibility was shared with their respective Muslim chaplains whose roles in the MSA will be discussed further in chapter three.
47 Recorded interviews with Samia, November 2015 and Su‘ad November 2016.
41 MSA Space
Having attended as many MSA events as I could during my fieldwork, I became familiar with different venues, some of which were specific to the MSA and others, which were not.
These spaces included general assembly auditoriums, lecture halls, student lounges, and cafeterias. I began to wonder what “spaces,” both literally and figuratively MSAs occupied on college campuses and whether these spaces were somehow different from other spaces on campus. Was there something extraordinary or sacred (Eliade and Trask 1987) about these spaces?48 Were they even “Muslim” per se and if so, what made them Muslim? In the literal sense, I was confronted with questions involving where I could go on campus to find MSA students so that I could get to know them and interact with them. Figuratively though, what space did the MSA as a visible, active organization occupy on campus not only for Muslim students but potentially for the larger student body and outlying Muslim community?
Nadine Naber defines Muslim spaces in the Bay Area where she conducted her ethnographic research and the discourses they produced as having resulted from “global economic neoliberalism and related changes in Muslim immigration to the Bay Area; global
Muslim responses to the crystallization of U.S. empire in Muslim-majority countries; and the related rise in Islamophobic discourses and policies in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s”
(2012, 113).49 MSA spaces on college campuses provide responses to prevalent discourses about neo-colonialism and Islamophobia through their interfaith outreach, social justice work, and
48 See Jeanne Kilde for a survey of various theoretical approaches to the discussion of sacred space. In her conclusion, Kilde argues “the dissemination of more sophisticated view of religious spatial construction offers at least the potential for changing political dialogues” (2014, 201). 49 These included “mosques, Islamic educational institutions, students groups, and political events” (Naber 2012, 112-113).
42 discursive engagement with the Islamic tradition, which will be discussed in more detail in chapters two and five.50 According to Aaron Hughes,
Space, then, is part mirror and part catalyst. It not only allows an individual or a community to see itself anew and thus, aids in the creation of new maps of belonging, but also becomes the locus whereby a particular religious or ethnic group encounters other groups allowing it to define itself better in the process. As an individual or a community manoeuvres and negotiates such space, they creatively imagine the world based on such experience. (2005, 341)
On college campuses, such potentiality exists for MSA students who are forced to reckon with their religiosity, their politics, their Americanness, among other things. Interacting with other faith groups and social groups on campus becomes an opportunity for MSAs like other religious groups on campus (Mayhew et al. 2018; Butler 1989), to crystallize who they are, what they believe in, and what they stand for on campus (Kurien 2005, 441). Thus, what I mean by MSA space is not simply a coded physical space on college campuses where Muslim students can perform rituals and socialize. I conceive of it to be a more inclusive term that encompasses how
American Muslim youth share in a “religious space” that is both physical and discursive. These spaces are physical in the sense that they are being occupied by individuals who are joining together based on their common religious identity and perform religious rituals. They are discursive in that the socialization that takes place engenders multiple discourses about religious experience, religious identity, and religious responsibility, as the following chapters will address in more detail. In this regard, they resemble other ethnic/religious groups by establishing what
Khyati Joshi describes as a “third space” that is a “physical, emotional, and social space where second-generation Indian American Hindus encountered people who shared their challenges and frustrations” (2016, 249).
50 Like other student organizations, they can “offer a sense of security from racism” (Dhingra 2008, 44).
43 Similar to the “Islamic Centers” many of these youth grew up frequenting in their local
Muslim communities, MSAs tend to be a “school/restaurant/gymnasium/lecture hall/social club
– all rolled into one” (Hughes 2005, 348).51 The biggest controversy, however, surrounding
MSA spaces on campus has involved the securing of a prayer space (Mubarak 2007), a feat that all of the MSAs I worked with had already accomplished. MSA prayer rooms on some of the campuses I spent time on became makeshift spaces where students would gather to hang out in between classes, occasionally nap or take a respite, meditate, read the Qur’an, study, chat with friends, and eat. Comfortably cool during the summer and warm during the winter with clean carpets, as students took off their shoes before entering, these were desirable places for students who wanted some peace and quiet from the other bustling and generally crowded student centers on their campus. A particular adab (good manners, decorum) tended to occupy these spaces such as being quieter if there were individuals praying or silently reading the Qur’an, although these spaces were also social and served as a place to congregate with friends. Conversations in these spaces varied as students discussed classes, food, their families, or their upcoming weekend plans.
On one campus, the MSA prayer space consisted of two rooms: one for men and one for women. On another, the prayer space was one vast room with a partition occasionally set up between the men and women’s sides. Even when the partition was not arranged, men and women generally kept to their respective side of the room and it was common to see male and female students speaking to each other while standing on their respective sides. While gender segregation is maintained in the prayer space, it does not extend to all interactions between male and female MSA students. As such, male and female MSA students often sat together while
51 Aaron Hughes also notes that in North America, Islamic Centers “become an important and visible space for a particular community” and that they “are but one type of Islamic space, for they also overlap, often imperceptibly, with other types of space: ethnic, public, domestic etc.” (2005, 348). See also Metcalf (1996).
44 socializing, eating, or waiting for an event to begin. While my research experience exposed me to a variety of negotiations taking place on different college campuses, it is important to underscore the fact that the standing MSA members maintained these negotiations. Thus, MSA gender dynamics will invariably differ depending on the campus and the MSA’s student body.
Gender Segregation
Expectations, anxieties, and viewpoints concerning gender relations were a relatively frequent topic that organically arose in my interviews with students who voluntarily revealed their insights on the matter particularly as we discussed the inner workings of their MSA’s culture. My impression is that where MSAs stood on gender relations seemed to be a significant marker and potentially influenced others’ (non-Muslims and Muslims on campus who did not belong to the MSA) perceptions of the MSA both on and off campus. I argue that there are multiple reasons for a spotlight being shone on gender. First, gender relations were inevitably visible and were thus measurable by newcomers to the MSA, outsiders, and other individuals on campus.52 Second, Muslim gender relations and Muslim women’s rights are often connected in a highly politicized manner whether it be in the media, the academy and in everyday interactions with Muslims and non-Muslims. The assumption being that where Muslims stood on gender or gender relations portended future beliefs and behaviors, irrespective of whether or not such an inference was warranted or, for that matter, accurate.
I myself would often scour the room to observe how men and women interacted with each other and the platform or lack thereof given to the MSAs’ female students and community
52 According to Shabana Mir “[c]onstructing nonsexualized spaces that are markedly different from majority culture serves both inter-and intracommunity purposes: representing Muslims on campus recognizably as Muslims, and providing leadership, community, and religious frameworks to Muslims” (2009b, 245) and “[e]xcessive “comfort” in mixed groups does not sit well with MSA’s agenda of creating and maintaining physical distance between the sexes” (2009b, 248).
45 members. As an ethnographer, it enabled me to assess that particular MSA’s subculture, which helped me better navigate the terrain. Especially in the early stages of my research, I wonder if I too essentialized these interactions as being demonstrative of the larger MSA culture on campus when in fact, I would argue now that to define or even describe an MSA wholly is a rather complicated endeavor. As a neophyte in the MSA world, I learned that my experiences and observations about one campus’s social etiquette did not necessarily translate to another campus.
Each of the campuses I attended had their own culture regarding gender segregation. I constantly recalibrated my interactions based on what I sensed from each of the students I spent time with and consistently questioned the boundaries of our interactions. For example, should I shake my male interlocutors’ hands? Should our interviews be held in certain spaces? Would male students even volunteer to be a part of this project? After socializing with these young Muslim men and women, a few things became clearer. The underlying assumption in these spaces was that the friendships that developed between male and female students were essentially friendly, platonic, and unromantic (Scudder and Bishop 2001) and that these youth were comfortable socializing with members of the opposite sex. I write friendship to distinguish from other types of relationships such as a more formal courting between men and women that was intended to lead towards marriage. In my observations of the ways in which these students interacted with one another and in my interviews with students, the general baseline assumption was that peers of the opposite sex were perceived as “brothers” and “sisters” and in conversations with a few female
MSA students, it often seemed silly or implausible to even entertain the idea that one of their
Muslim “brothers” would be taken as a serious marital prospect.
46 The reality is though that there are students who find prospective partners in their MSA.53
According to one student, this was particularly the case for young Muslim men whom he noticed scouting ḥalaqāt for prospective partners. I also learned that one chaplain acted as a formal liaison for a young man who was interested in pursuing a relationship with one of my female interlocutors. As such, even when gender relations were not necessarily an issue on a campus, in the sense that students were comfortable with mixed-gender interactions, it was still one that students were aware of and had thought about because it inevitably affected the ways they socialized in their MSA and elsewhere.
Upon entering college, gender segregation can afford Muslim men and women an opportunity to mingle in an unassuming space because students are essentially ““working for
Islam”” in these gatherings (Hermansen and Khan 2009, 102).54 However, it would be inaccurate to argue that all MSA students simply permit socializing with those of the oppose sex because of an underlying religious objective. The reality is that many MSA students became friends with each other across gender lines. While their religious identities and status as minorities on campus might have established a bond between them, their interactions were not strictly bound to discussing religious matters. Rather, I found that their friendships were much more nuanced as they talked about classes, their families, music, upcoming assignment deadlines, enjoying new foods, going to the gym and a slew of other issues. Moreover, many of their extracurricular MSA events involved participating in “non-religious” recreational activities.55
53 Some MSAs also facilitated events that provided platforms for students to ask their chaplains and guest speakers about marriage. 54 In Marcia Hermansen and Mahruq Khan’s research, they found that for some MSA leaders purely “social” interactions were not considered to be “necessary” and were thus discouraged (2009, 103). 55 A religious gathering would be a ḥalaqa led by students, for example, or a qiyām al-layl (extended nightly prayer), which I attended on one campus. Non-religious gatherings would be a party.
47 In Shabana Mir’s ethnographic research on MSAs in the Washington D.C. area, she argues MSA student officers “employed more stringent “Islamic” gendered practices than most
Muslims practiced in their personal lives,” which led them to “construct MSA events as more gender segregated than “normal” life” (Mir 2014, 159) due in part to the pressure they felt to
“represent [an] idealized Islamic identity” at formal events but not necessarily in informal settings (2014, 160). During my own fieldwork, I found Mir’s insights generally rang true in that formal events hosted by the MSA were perhaps not as lax in terms of mixed-gender interactions as they were in other settings where students were not beset by community members and the non-Muslim student body, and were not “performing” the “habitual reproduction” (Burkitt 2002,
232) of what they felt was the idealized Muslim. I found that the majority of this performativity was gendered (Butler 2006) with some Muslim women embodying more awareness and control over their general demeanor when interacting with members of the opposite sex.56 In conversations with some of my male and female interlocutors, observations of events during my fieldwork, as well as my exposure to the teachings of celebrity shaykhs, what often arises with respect to Muslim female chastity is a “double standard” often imposed by families that unevenly places expectations on Muslim women and not men (Ali 2018, 83) leading many American
Muslim women to “grapple with, “what does it mean to be a young pious woman?””57
Seif, for example, confirmed that male privilege existed in MSA spaces when we discussed a ḥalaqa on his campus that addressed mixed-gender interactions and the comportment male and female MSA students should embody when interacting with each other.58 When I asked him how the ḥalaqa attended to that topic, he explained that his chaplain emphasized how
56 See cooke (2007), Mahmood (2005), Deeb (2006), Mernissi (2011), and Ouedghiri (2002). 57 Recorded interview with chaplain, November 2016. 58 Recorded interview with Seif, October 2016. Shabana Mir notes that Muslim men are perceived to be “almost biologically configured to “make mistakes”” and “were swiftly pardoned” whereas Muslim women’s transgressions “tainted” their “honor” (2014, 74).
48 students should be mindful, especially male MSA students who should not be “sending messages that you know can be misinterpreted and you know where your heart’s at so even if your heart and mind are in the same place but you’re still doing it anyway.” I asked him whether he was referring to flirtatious interactions, which he confirmed, and then asked if he felt that male
Muslims were afforded more leniency than their female peers. Again, he agreed, and lamented that unfortunately that was the case arguing, “there’s definitely that misbalance of privilege and in these circles the guys will get away with it because they’re a guy and they have much more freedom in a way because of for some reason the way our culture has [been] created.”
How MSA students came to understand mixed-gender interactions was invariably shaped by the homes and communities they grew up in. Some of these students grew up socializing with members of the opposite sex who were family friends or acquaintances in their mosque community or youth groups, whereas others did not. The impression I gleaned from my conversations with students and from observation of such events is that adult supervision, in the sense that an adult was present, tended to placate parental anxieties and also reminded students that a certain level of Islamic decorum was to be maintained because they were under surveillance. Other students attended Islamic schools with regimented rules regarding mixed- gender interaction although, like most teenagers, they found creative ways to bypass these restrictions by chatting online when they went home, for example.
While speaking with Yusuf, for example, he explained that when he was growing up, understanding the rules and reasons for discouraging gender mixing were not thoroughly explained to him by his parents. He relayed a conversation he had with his father who told him,
“Don’t hang out with girls.” When he shared this with me, he briefly chuckled, and went on to explain how he questioned what that even meant. My impression was that his father’s declarative
49 statement left him with little guidance and Yusuf did not feel that there was an invitation for him to probe deeper on the matter and question it. At that point, I was intrigued and wondered if perhaps I could stroke his memory further to see if his father had offered any conceptualization or background to his assertion. I asked if he had discussed the relationship between men and women or made mention of shayṭān (devil).59 Yusuf responded by telling me “nothing really” admitting that his father did mention things like shayṭān but that the problem for him was that the conversation did not afford him an opportunity to “better conceptualize” the issue. He concluded by saying, “I don’t think we really had that dialogue. Even for my sister it made it harder to understand certain things because we’re used to maybe just the education. I just felt like things my parents accepted was harder for me and my sister to accept you know?”60 His comment about his sister and the further difficulty she experienced because of her gender “draws attention to how gender structures individuals’ actions in a variety of ways that sometimes produce similarity between men and women, as well as how gender does not impact all women or all men in the same ways” (Irby 2014, 1270). Yusuf was cognizant of the added pressure many Muslim women feel in order to maintain a level of chastity. In fact, I found that many of the female MSA students I observed “tend[ed] to conform rather often to stereotypes about chaste, modest Muslim women” (Mir 2009b, 240). Yusuf’s commentary also exposes the generational divides that exist between American Muslim youth and their parents and the fact that these youth are struggling to understand the “products of long histories of interactions” pertaining to their parents’ cultural backgrounds (Abu-Lughod 2002, 787).
In an interview with Samia at one of the cafeterias on her campus, she expressed her derision towards some of the hardline and even inconvenient concessions made in the name of
59 I am referring to the widely circulated hadith, “A man and a woman are not secluded together except that the third of them is the shaitan” (at-Tirmidhi, Vol. 2, Book 10, No. 1171, pg. 538). 60 Recorded interview with Yusuf, February 2016.
50 halal gender interactions and also commented on the paucity of female presence in some of the local masjids where she was growing up. I was just getting to know Samia at the time and was drawn to her incredibly forthright demeanor. She was the first student on her campus to express interest in my project and even before she knew who I was and why I had suddenly started attending her MSA’s ḥalaqāt, she asked me if I wanted to provide my email so I could join the
ḥalaqa’s listserv. Over time, she became a valuable interlocutor whose insights extended beyond her particular MSA but to broader issues affecting the American Muslim community. As the conversation progressed that afternoon, she explained how a local masjid had changed its stance on female attendance and began permitting women to attend prayer during Ramadan. She recounted an incident where she was driving into the masjid with her brother who was sitting next to her. Samia explained that the parking lot attendant initially thought there were only men in the car but when they realized that she was driving, they asked her to back out and use an alternate entrance designated specifically for women. She qualified the situation as being
“ridiculous” and I joked with her about there being a lot of logistics to consider or poor planning on the masjid’s part. Samia, adopting a more serious tone, explained that when she was growing up, she never experienced these types of issues at her local community masjid and how fondly she remembered Friday night ḥalaqāt frequented by both boys and girls. She admitted that it was only when she got older that this “struggle” became more apparent to her. As I probed deeper, I asked her whether she thought fitna (civil strife) was the main motivation for these kinds of decisions or if she felt there was a combination of different factors contributing to this struggle.
She proceeded to take a rather affirmative stance noting,
First of all, I don’t think it’s justified. I’d like to put that out there. I think it’s just misinterpretation of verses that these scholars have not even studied. A lot of them are culturally meant and I feel like it’s just imitation. I think it’s what they grew up with.… So they think they can just take their culture and bring it here. In terms of these local
51 masjids that are like culturally run but that’s the only place that I’ve seen an issue. With MSAs sometimes there’s a bigger divide in some places.61
Samia’s reflection underscores some of the prevalent discourses amongst MSA youth, particularly a condemnation of certain practices maintained by their local communities.
As I explained earlier, the MSAs involved in this research maintained different stances regarding gender segregation and within different contexts such as the ḥalaqa setting as opposed to an extracurricular setting, which suggests that the adab that permeated these spaces was contingent upon the “nature” of the event and the allocated physical space. For example, if a
ḥalaqa was taking place in a prayer space on campus, it might naturally be segregated to accommodate incoming men and women who may not be attending the session but would wish to pray. On one campus during a rather popular ḥalaqa series that usually became crowded about half-way into the session, as men and women would make space for newcomers, the segregation would disappear as some of them would inevitably have to sit next to each other. On another campus, the ḥalaqāt tended to be segregated whereas communal spaces such as lounges or cafeterias on campus were host to men and women casually sitting with one another and hanging out. Other MSAs have had to work on “normalizing” male and female interactions initially for logistical purposes so that male and female students could communicate more directly with one another when organizing events. Ultimately, my impression was that MSAs’ approaches to gender relations were fluid and dependent on the standing board and student body. As evidenced in this section, though, it was an important topic during my interviews and was one that MSA students have had to confront both before and upon entering university.
61 Recorded interview with Samia, October 2015.
52 Are MSAs Really Inclusive?
I had never participated in an MSA, which helped me remain consistently inquisitive and open to my interlocutors’ insights and to not bring forward any expectations when analyzing my research findings. There were occasions when interlocutors would assume that I had participated in an MSA. When I told one of them that I had never been involved in one, I distinctly remember them asking me, “Do they not have an MSA at McGill?” I responded with, “Yes, they do” and changed the subject. My interlocutor’s follow-up question, while innocent in its delivery, reflects a certain expectation that some American Muslim youth have of each other: Muslims hang out with other Muslims. When they do not, there must be a “reason” for it, a justification. I do not want to conflate my interlocutor’s response in order to argue that all MSA students expected their Muslims peers on campus to participate in their organization but to rather speak to the fact that MSAs work hard to reach out to Muslim students on their campuses.
For example, as Zaid and I were discussing some of the ḥalaqāt taking place on his campus and their popularity amongst his peers, he explained to me that one of the reasons he and other students enjoyed participating in these events was the suspension of judgment his peers exhibited. He shared that there was a “collective understanding that this is an environment where we can just be ourselves and we can sort of unload who we are without worrying that the person next to us is gonna judge us for our spirituality or lack thereof or character or lack thereof and the idea is you know to validate each other’s experiences and to reinforce our strengths, essentially to overlook our shortcomings. It’s a very humanistic approach.”62 Having spent time on Zaid’s campus, I witnessed that there was an openness to all as his chaplain was explicit in fostering an environment where students reflected on ways to remain receptive and open to the
Divine (Mittermaier 2011; Chittick 2011) but also ways in which they could concretely work on
62 Recorded interview with Zaid, February 2016.
53 themselves in order to strengthen their īmān (faith) (Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006; Fadil
2011) as will be discussed in further detail in chapter four. No sin was too grave that it did not warrant God’s forgiveness.
While Zaid’s point is well taken, the reality is that in most of the MSA events and spaces
I attended during my fieldwork save for a very small and select few, most students did not publicly confess their transgressions. My impression was that sharing these transgressions was done in more intimate gatherings or was connected to a larger conversation about how one has actually “overcome” these behaviors. Even in my interviews with students, they tended not to share past wrongdoings, but I noticed that those who did tended to be male. Christine Jacobsen, in her research on Muslim youth in Norway, also notes that save one female interlocutor, it was her male interlocutors who “more frequently stressed that ‘coming back to Islam’ implied a rupture with a non-Islamic lifestyle with respect to alcohol, partying, dating, and sexual relations” (2011, 306). My experience was similar to Jacobsen’s in that unlike some of my male interlocutors who openly shared their morally questionable relationships with women, or those who had once engaged in drinking and partying, none of my female interlocutors admitted such behaviors.63 Perhaps the pool that volunteered for this project had in fact not engaged in such activities but I still anticipate that if they had, the social stigmas surrounding female piety, necessitated a commonly understood level of discretion and self-preservation even when in the company of other Muslim women, such as myself. And so while I did witness an openness that
Zaid noted in our interview, I contend that that openness was partly circumscribed in the sense that I did not get the impression that female MSA members enjoyed the same privilege or benefit of the doubt that their male Muslim peers did.
63 See Mir (2014) for a discussion of how undergraduate Muslim women deal with the pressures of drinking and dating on college campuses.
54 I am not sure that all the students I spoke with shared Zaid’s impression that MSAs are judgment-free spaces. These discursive spaces, like those established by other campus groups, were dynamic and consistently being refashioned as new cohorts of students joined their ranks
(Kim 2006). There were some constant variables in the MSA spaces I worked with such as the university’s support in ensuring a prayer space, the steadfast presence of a chaplain, and the building of alliances between the MSA and other student groups. However, one’s experiences in an MSA were shaped most influentially by their MSA peers who built upon the advancements of their predecessors while concomitantly envisioning an aspirational model for their respective
MSA’s culture and thus worked on setting their own precedents.
Some of the students I spoke with were slightly more vocal in recognizing the potential limits of how inclusive and accommodating their MSA was. In conversations with some MSA students who had served on their MSA’s board, they admitted how difficult it could be for MSAs to reach out to all Muslims on campus especially those who might drink or engage in activities that might leave them susceptible to judgment by their peers.64 Karim, for example, shared that he had a conversation with members from other MSAs about a “contingent of sleeper Muslims” who would be reticent in joining the MSA because they feel that they might be
“excommunicated” by some of their lifestyle choices.65 Karim’s concern alerts us to how some
Muslim students might have the impression that their MSA is a religious organization that expects its members to adhere to and embody particular religious sensibilities, ones they might infer as being “rigid and judgmental” (Ali 2018, 122). Often times, these sensibilities are not
64 Recorded interview with Amira, December 2015. See chapter three in Mir (2014). Recorded interview with Karim, February 2016. 65 One of the students I spoke with commented that sisters (in a general sense) could fall victim to judgments by their peers, something she herself had done. She shared an occasion where she corrected the way a fellow sister prayed due to what she had learned during her own upbringing and later realized that her understanding was incorrect and that there were multiple interpretations regarding proper prayer decorum. After reflecting on her interjection, she vowed to be as welcoming as possible to newcomers to the MSA.
55 necessarily related to belief but are demonstrative of lifestyle choices or lack thereof. For example, does the student pray? Does the student fast? Does the student drink? The assumption is that students who do not practice in accordance with or adhere to Islamic tenets would be reluctant to join their MSA. I also anticipate that students who maintained hardline orthodox stances would also feel uncomfortable participating in MSA spaces, particularly the ones that I frequented during my fieldwork. As a campus organization that vies to be inclusive but at the same time is comprised of students who share a religious identity, the looming question is, where does one draw the line regarding who should and can represent the Muslim student body on campus? One site where issues of inclusivity become more pressing and are still in the throes of development relate to accommodations for queer Muslims, as I will discuss later in this dissertation. It is worth noting that Karim was not referring to his MSA, which he found to be very welcoming, but was speaking in more general terms about MSAs whose student membership consists of people who present themselves “very piously” in terms of their appearance and are thus potentially “off-putting” to newcomers.66
The majority of students I spoke with rarely expressed any insecurity upon their participation in the MSA. However, one student, Fawzi, had a slightly different experience than the majority of my interlocutors because his Muslim peers did not automatically assume he was
Muslim. He relayed an instance where he said “salām” to a brother on campus and that when he saw that individual the following day in the library, the brother asked him if he was Muslim.
When he shared this with me, he giggled, as did I having had similar experiences as a “non- visible” Muslim, but I asked him how that made him feel.67 He responded by saying, “Honestly,
66 Karim went on to clarify that, “I don’t mean to box people in and it’s not good to stereotype cuz there’s people with beards and kufis who are very accepting and very wonderful and pluralistic but um yah, I think that’s what I’m trying to get at.” 67 I am referring to the fact that I do not wear the hijab.
56 I used it to think of it as a disadvantage because I feel like oh you know like I have to look a certain way to do something. Now, it’s just I feel like it depends on how you look at it. It’s a pro or a con.”68 When I asked him if his thoughts regarding it being a pro or a con depended on the person making the observation, he agreed that that factored into his interpretation. As Fawzi and
I were chatting, I was struck by his laid-back and matter-of-fact recounting of some of his experiences interacting with his Muslim peers in various social settings. I could not help but wonder if someone else would have had a negative reaction to the same experiences especially if that person, like Fawzi, was making a concerted effort to socialize with other Muslims. In that moment, I began to better understand how even informal and transient encounters between
Muslim students matter. They invariably shape the impression a student may have of their campus’s MSA culture and as such, I generally found that MSA students were careful not to be presumptive, fearing that such assumptions might deter potential students from becoming involved. In fact, during my fieldwork, I consistently observed students and chaplains introduce themselves to newcomers, which enabled them to embrace new faces and expand the breadth of their communities. Over the course of my fieldwork, many of these new faces would become board members, volunteers, and consistent attendees that filled the MSA space.
In a conversation with Amira, I learned about how important being accommodating was for her MSA. As someone who once served on her MSA board, she explained,
We try not to do this but I’m sure it happens anyway of making assumptions of where people are in terms of their relationship with Islam or being a Muslim community… I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe I guess there are some instances where we try not to assume what people want or are comfortable with so we try to do the most neutral thing according to the sort of culture around us.69
68 Recorded interview with Fawzi, May 2016. 69 Recorded interview with Amira, December 2015.
57 Amira’s reflection reiterates many of the same points made by Zaid earlier about how his MSA approached students sensitively and without any expectations regarding where they stood religiously.
While none of the students I spoke with gestured at having personally experienced judgment, I also recognize that all of the students who participated in this research had already been members of their MSA for at least a year and were already acclimated to their respective
MSA’s culture. Those that did experience judgment might have also been embarrassed to reveal that to me although I did hear of occasional instances where MSA students gossiped. While gossiping or speaking ill of one another is to be expected from individuals interacting in close proximity (Selby 2012), it was something frowned upon in MSA spaces, which resulted in a certain performative adab when gossiping. For example, I would often observe students preface what they are about to say with, “I don’t mean to say something bad.” Others would utter
“astaghfir Allāh” (I seek Allah’s forgiveness) after they shared something they would soon regret or speak about a hypothetical individual in order to anonymize the individual they were referring to. Such strides indicate the circulation of particular Islamic phrases to communicate one’s remorse as well as the negotiations being made in the attempt to ascribe to a higher standard of etiquette and morality based on Islamic precepts condemning slander and backbiting.
Some students, particularly female students had also witnessed the detrimental effects gossiping had had on women in American Muslim communities outside of the MSA space or had been subjected to the comments of a “judgmental” or a “nosy Auntie.” As Andrew Strathern and
Pamela Stewart note, “[b]ecause rumor and gossip work covertly, outside formal mechanisms for social control, they cannot easily be checked on or verified by explicit means” (2004, 29). While gossip and deficient fact-checking were somewhat commonplace in the Muslim communities
58 they grew up in, as they are in many communities, particularly virtual ones, I generally found that the MSA students I spoke with were hyper-aware, engaging in a form of self-policing so as to not promote such behavior.
This hyper-awareness even extended to some of the Muslim chaplains. On one campus, a
ḥalaqa comprised of 30 to 40 students specifically focused on the issue of backbiting and slander.70 The chaplain explained to the students that the way in which they spoke indicated the type of person they were and how important it was for them to reflect on the conversations they had. He went on to explain how the Prophet Muhammad paired his tongue with his heart and the connectivity between one’s tongue and other organs. The chaplain also incorporated other examples of virtuous behavior pertaining to gossip including a story about Hasan al-Basri, who was recorded as having given someone who was speaking ill of him a dish of sweet dates because he had received some of the backbiter’s ḥasanāt (good deeds) and wanted to return the favor. Ultimately, the ḥalaqa served as an opportunity to encourage students to introspectively think about how they will be held accountable for what they say. The chaplain underscored how important it was to be mindful of one’s speech. His seamless fusion of hadiths depicting situations where gossip was discussed, with more universal philosophical reflections imploring students to be self-reflexive in terms of their social comportment, ultimately undergirded his concluding argument that dīn (religion) was supposed to be functional in these students’ lives and should be inextricably related to the way they behaved and how they viewed themselves and others. The chaplain’s incorporation of religious texts to address gossip satisfies the general trend amongst American Muslim youth who “seek knowledge not as an abstract intellectual exercise, but, rather, for its practical daily application and relevance” (Ali 2018, 142).
70 Field notes, October 2016.
59 Jum‘a Prayer
Statistically, 25% of American Muslims claim they attend Friday prayers at the mosque
(Pew 2017). Irrespective of the frequency with which Muslims attend mosques, erecting a physical designated prayer space is a feat that Muslim communities have worked hard to accomplish (Metcalf 1996) having had to deal with the struggles of fundraising, zoning approvals and in a post-9/11 context, Islamophobic backlash. For MSAs, establishing a designated space for prayer is also an accomplishment and, in some cases, even a privilege as it stands as one of the main hallmarks of Muslim presence on college campuses. With some administrations refusing to allot a specific space for prayer or others offering un-kempt makeshift spaces such as the basement of a building for example, hosting jum‘a can become a symbolic rite of passage for some MSAs who have had to fight to convince their university’s administration to accommodate them on this ground.71 Like other religious and ethnic minority groups on campus, such as Jewish student groups, religious accommodations promote the idea that these groups of students “are valued and important” (Mayhew et al. 2018, 87).
Friday prayers on college campuses are a place/time for community building, reflection, and drawing awareness on social issues. They encompass the largest weekly assemblage of
Muslim students on campus and are generally packed with MSA students, other Muslims on campus who may not be involved in the MSA, along with community members or individuals who work nearby. Attending jum‘a prayers, like the performance of any prayer “gives expression to a minimum of religious ideas and feelings” (Mauss, Pickering, and Morphy 2003, 22). They provide MSA students with one of the most consistent forms of religious experience as many of the khuṭab (sermons) encourage students to reflect on their relationship with the Divine. The
71 MSA National even published a document detailing what steps should be taken by students to lobby for such accommodations on their campus.
60 khuṭab are usually led by MSA chaplains although guest imams, invitees who are in town for an event, local community members and even students have had the honor and the privilege of delivering a khuṭba including a handful of the male students I interviewed during my fieldwork.
The seamless facilitation of Friday prayer depends upon countless volunteers from the student body and community. These individuals, most of whom are students, arrange the prayer mats and seating for elderly members of the community, set up refreshment tables, and arrange the video recording as many of the khuṭab are circulated on YouTube or Vimeo. More than just logistical exercises, these efforts bond people and provide individuals with a fulfilled sense of service and of belonging to a community. All of the students I spoke with very much enjoyed attending Friday prayer on their campus. This place/time was a fundamental part of MSA socialization as it provided an opportunity for students to meet with friends, community members, and to catch up on the happenings of the week. On urban campuses, I often saw students grab lunch together afterwards and hang out. It was also the time when community announcements would be raised such as upcoming events and fundraising initiatives. In addition, a du‘ā’ (supplication) was often made on behalf of the community or those who might be experiencing travails such as health issues or the death of a loved one. In addition, bake sales were regularly held after Friday prayer to support charitable initiatives (Timani 2012).
I learned that many of the students I spoke with took advantage of the fact that their campus held regular Friday prayers even during academic intersessions. As such, Friday prayer was always crowded on the campuses that I attended, filled with a relatively equal mix of male and female attendees with families and young children also filling the space. People would warmly greet each other with hugs and salāmāt (greetings of peace and blessings) if they arrived
61 before the khuṭba began and once it did, a smile or a wave was employed so as not to distract attendees from listening to what the khaṭīb (sermon-giver) was saying.
With respect to American Muslim youth, leading a Friday prayer “indicates a kind of rite of passage, illustrating that one has moved from belief in Islam to knowledge of the faith and ultimately, to transmitting that knowledge” (Bayoumi 2010, 171). It is certainly an undertaking and one that the students I spoke with took very seriously. Students’ khuṭab reflected serious research and engagement with relevant citations from the Qur’an, sīra (biography of the Prophet
Muhammad), and hadith literature. Students who were neophytes generally asked their chaplains for advice. I recall overhearing a chaplain advising a young student as I was sitting outside his office waiting for someone to meet me for our appointment. The young man was about to give his first khuṭba in the coming weeks on a topic that was very dear to him, as many of them generally were to the students who volunteered their time for this undertaking. Sharing his research and notes about the topic with the chaplain, who was listening very supportively helped provide him with confidence and confirmed that the student was aware of the technicalities of the sermon. I was always amazed at the courage it took to deliver a khuṭba. These were undergraduate students who would be speaking before large congregations of not only their peers but also older members who were seeking spiritual fulfillment during those afternoons. I had the privilege of listening to some of these students’ khuṭab and was impressed by their oratory style, and the sincerity and humility I felt as they were relaying their religious messages.
When I spoke to Yusuf about his delivering khuṭab, he shared, “I started giving a lot more khutbas this year. I guess I’m getting more comfortable. Speaking out of faith. There’s still a lot that I don’t know but I think maybe over the course of my life or through certain experiences in college, I’ve gotten more focused on faith or have been more readily attempting to
62 try to connect it back to my life.”72 Another student khaṭīb, integrated pop culture references into his sermon, even drawing on superheroes and television shows to undergird his arguments. I was somewhat surprised by these references, not because of his interest in them, which I ultimately suspected given his extracurricular hobbies and the fact that MSA youth, like other American youth across the country have gravitated towards the rebirth of multiple superhero franchises.
Rather, I was impressed that his chaplain enabled him to incorporate them into a sermon that people of all demographics would be listening to including older community members who may not be familiar with such references. In our interview, I asked him if his chaplain thought the reference was possibly silly and he admitted that both he and the chaplain thought it was funny but that it did not take away from the validity of the reference as something that one could relate to.73 In my conversations with these students, I gathered that what they were most preoccupied with in their delivery of khuṭab was whether they would be “relatable” to their audiences, which was a recurring theme amongst students as they explained why they enjoyed listening to the khuṭab on their campus.
Dina, for example, appreciated when her peers delivered khuṭab because she found them relevant to her own concerns and experiences. She recounted a particular khuṭba where a student was talking about the fickleness of time and how it was, “about how he compared it to an orange and how you squeeze an orange and every drop that drops you give it a time like we think time is infinite but it’s not…. That week I had been procrastinating so much and I was like wow, I wasted all this time and there are people working so hard. That was really profound.”74
72 Recorded interview with Yusuf, March 2016. 73 Another student, Nesma, for example, commended a guest khaṭīb on her campus for encouraging the congregation to find “spirituality in everything,” noting songs and T.V. shows as being such examples. Recorded interview, April 2016. 74 Recorded interview with Dina, April 2016.
63 She continued to reveal that other graduate students had given khuṭab and relayed them “back to current events in a way without mentioning any specifics; activism or standing up for people who are being oppressed and I just think those are very relatable.” She claimed that the khuṭab she was exposed to on her campus lay in stark contradistinction with the imams from back home, whom she felt were admonishing in their rhetoric and were keen on prohibiting haram behavior.75 On her campus, she felt that the khuṭab focused more on self-development and that the prescriptions were positive as opposed to negative, an observation she was unsure other students had picked up on.
The relatability of these khuṭab enabled students to be self-reflexive and to think deeply about issues they were concerned with such as how they spent their time, the importance of seeking out religious knowledge, pondering over their relationship with the Divine, or engaging with social justice issues. Students like Karim, for example, very much enjoyed the khuṭab on his campus sharing, “I have never had so many just khutbas where I am like really listening and it’s not boring the hell out of me or it’s like people are actually saying things that are eloquent and you know there is a sense of academia, so people actually listen… and they like know things right? It’s interesting.”76 He went on to explain that in his hometown, he felt that many of the khuṭab were repetitive and glossed over the messages they were trying to impart. Interestingly, he shared that one of his favorite khuṭabā’ (sermon-givers) from back home was a man who was not a native English speaker but was still eloquent and engaging unlike others who illogically connected hadiths to the sermon’s theme or who touted something misogynistic (Hammer 2012;
Zwissler 2012; Barlas 2002, 2013). Ultimately, for him, the khuṭab had to resonate with him on a
75 Ihsan Bagby notes that many of the American imams who hail from Muslim-majority countries are trained in traditional madrasas that “no longer offer the highest level of critical thought” (2006a, 48). 76 Recorded interview with Karim, November 2015.
64 personal level and he admitted that some people like his chaplain had the “gift,” or what can be conceived of as an inherent sense of charisma, whereas others did not.
The chaplains I observed during my fieldwork all seemed to possess the “gift” Karim referred to. Samia, for example, told me that she would specifically go to Friday prayer on campus, even though she had other nearby masjids to choose from because she found that the chaplain who delivered the khuṭab always said something that was moving her.77 She admitted that sometimes, she would go so that she could cry. I was intrigued by her wanting to go to cry and asked her why crying was a motivation. Reaching an emotional state where one feels compelled to cry is not uncommon in Muslim circles or religious circles in general.78 Saba
Mahmood, in her research on the piety movement in Egypt, explains how crying among mosque participants was not “cathartic of one’s sorrow and grief” but was rather an expression of one’s heightened state and “one’s awe for God” (2001a, 843), or khushū‘ (humility) (Katz 2013).
Samia explained to me,
I saw it around me and was like OK I’m not crying but I remember hearing from a few people just advice on how to move your heart and to feel it and to like ask and beg of God and like have tears that would just like force it out um for the sake of you being in a position where you’re like desperately asking God for something or having like some sort of connection… I know it sounds weird.79
I responded by telling her that what she was sharing was in fact not weird. There is ample discussion in many Muslim circles and texts about the religious benefits of crying particularly when one is praying or making du‘ā’ as this bodily gesture is understood to signify an embodied state of piety, vulnerability, and submission. As our conversation continued, she shared that the
77 Recorded interview with Samia, April 2016. 78 Tanya Luhrmann and Rachel Morgain describe the various affective states Christian churchgoers experience including weeping, which they explain “are almost always described as good, and as experiences of feeling God’s love” (2012, 378). 79 Samia is referring to the modes of cultivation that can be used to discipline oneself so that they can cry (Mahmood 2001a, 822-24). Hirschkind also explains how crying, which is an expression of ḥuzn (sadness), “hones and expresses the listener’s ethical character as enacted and practiced in accord with authoritative standards of moral rectitude” (2006, 100).
65 reason those khuṭab left such an indelible mark on her is because the messages incited self- reflexivity and asked the congregation to be “critical” of themselves on a “human level.” When I asked her what she meant by “human” she explained how those khuṭab were judgment-free spaces in the sense that those who attended were not expected to have a particular knowledge of or have maintained a certain practice of Islam.
Zaid also employed the same exact phrasing, “human level” when discussing the style of the khuṭab he delivered on that campus. For him, the emphasis on presenting things on a “human level” or from a “human perspective” involved speaking to the congregation in a non-demeaning way that encouraged individuals to think about how they could “materialize or actualize” the lessons being relayed. Zaid also emphasized the importance of incorporating personal anecdotes that were relatable to the students and community members in attendance. In addition, Samia found that the chaplain’s approach to self-reflection was different from the other khuṭab she had grown up listening to because the questions posed, irrespective of whether or not one began to answer them, resulted in a realization that one needed to work on themselves. I understood where
Samia was coming from given that I too witnessed firsthand how uplifting and thought- provoking they were occasionally finding myself reflecting on things that I could improve in my behavior or in my convictions. For example, they reminded congregants that their religiosity needed to be consistently nurtured and watered with sage wisdom and reflection so that it could continuously flourish. During my attendance, I always observed people staring down at their feet in contemplation or intently looking at the khaṭīb. The khaṭīb had their full, undivided attention.
In a conversation with Omar, I also realized that khuṭab and their being relatable was slightly more complicated than I initially gathered from my conversations with other students.
Since the 2016 American presidential election, although even before it to a certain degree,
66 students, chaplains, and guest speakers touched upon social justice issues such as racism, domestic violence, and even LGBTQIA rights during their khuṭab. Addressing these social justice issues can become difficult for some students to reconcile. Omar explained, that in spite of his liberal arts education, which had conditioned him to be critical, he felt that he should not be listening to the khuṭba as an activist but as a believer who needed to be saved. When I asked him what he meant by “saved,” he shared,
Saved from all that I’ve done in the past week since the last jum‘a. That there is a reason that the message I’m hearing today sitting on the floor in front of Allah is being conveyed to me because it probably in some way relates to something I’ve experienced in the past week or I’m going through this year or I’m going to experience next week. So, to save myself from heedlessness in a way. I don’t want to be something and then I’m heedless of what I’ve done or what I’ve gone through. I don’t want to go into a week heedless of what could happen to me or what I could go through… and not understand the spiritual significance or not understand how it’s affecting myself or my soul. I think the reason we’re told that we are supposed to have these reminders in our lives like a khuṭba are because they’re supposed to save us from heedlessness.80
Omar’s reflection is illuminating on multiple fronts. It conveys how the liberal arts education can inform MSA students’ expectations about religious discourse and how some students recalibrate these expectations and temporarily suspend them in certain environments such as jum‘a prayer so that they can be more attuned and open to discussions that incite in them a sense of God- consciousness. Omar, for example, expressed the potential for negligence that would prevent him from acknowledging the purpose or the ultimate meaning behind what he was personally experiencing in his life. In a khuṭba that stood out to him, he shared that the khaṭīb was talking about how students have been so engrossed in their upcoming exams and paper deadlines without factoring in the looming “deadline of judgment.” He commented that this khuṭba was more “confrontational” than others given by this khaṭīb because he was
definitely calling us out. Everyone including himself like you know a lot of us are making excuses and we can’t continue to make excuses. But, he said it in a way that was very
80 Recorded interview with Omar, May 2016.
67 beautiful, very moving, and I think that that balance between giving uh between speaking truth and not being apologetic about it but then also doing it in a way that is very approachable and meaningful and like moving um and comes from a place of purity, sincerity. Like he was able to combine that really well and so I wish that amongst the friend groups that Muslim students have [here] and other schools that we could also like integrate those two with each other: where we could hold each other accountable in a way… and other people can see that and that we’re also not being hypocrites when we’re doing that. We’re also holding ourselves accountable. So, I think that’s the ideal inter- MSA dynamic of friendships.
This section has discussed the important place that jum‘a prayer occupies in MSA students’ lives and has explained the variant ways students derive benefit from the khuṭab. As the student reflections demonstrate, some of them found their jum‘a experience to be evocative and encouraging which was markedly different from their local mosques. While attending jum‘a was social in that many of the students I spoke with attended it with their friends, it was also an extremely devotional part of their lives. Given the overwhelmingly positive responses from my interlocutors, my impression was that they obtained a religious solace from the khuṭab because the overarching messages were optimistic. The discourses that reverberated throughout these spaces affirmed that one’s past transgressions were not irredeemable because there was hope to improve upon one’s circumstances and seek forgiveness if so desired.
Islam Awareness Week
MSAs are hosts to a variety of events specific to their members as well as the broader
Muslim and non-Muslim communities both on and off campus. Such events include ḥalaqāt, lectures open to the public, conferences, seminars, mawlid celebrations of the Prophet
Muhammad’s birthday, dhikr (remembrance of God) circles, Black History Month events, social justice initiatives, as well as Islam Awareness Week, which since its inception in the 1990s
(Kamal 2014, 258), has become a central and significant event on college campuses. According
68 to Muqtedar Khan, “[t]he Islam Awareness Weeks are so well-established that they have become nearly as ubiquitous on American campuses as hamburgers and Coca-Cola” (2005, 135). On the campuses I frequented, they tended to draw large crowds and were the main opportunity for
MSAs to inform the broader campus community about “Islam,” talking about topics such as the hijab, the status of women in Islam, Muslim-Christian relations, jihad, and other polemical issues that have drawn the attention of the media. In the post-9/11 context, “Islam Awareness Week” is one way in which MSA students engage in da‘wa (call to Islam, outreach) and provides an opportunity for Muslims to combat negative portrayals of Muslims and Islam and educate the wider non-Muslim public about Islam.
Islam Awareness Week generally consists of establishing visibility on campus with tables being set up in communal club areas (Bayoumi 2010), mostly outdoors given that many of them take place later in the spring semester with the weather faring better.81 The college campus environment is an ideal setting for such events because the facilitation of talks and lectures become an optimal format for addressing topics and answering any subsequent questions (Poston
1992, 123-124). According to Marcia Hermansen, Islam Awareness Week and the types of events hosted by Muslim students on their respective college campuses appear to be
“performative dialogues” (2004, 391). Hermansen argues that through performance “one creates and transforms an imaginary space, and therefore non-verbal elements such as costume and gesture function as much to persuade as do actual verbal utterances. In addition, one’s visible identity and actions warrant the acceptance of the claims to Islamic authority that are made through the performance” (2004, 392).
81 The tables are covered with pamphlets on various topics published in English. Some of the activities include a hijab day where students talk about the significance of wearing hijab and the MSA provides some for students to try on, teach-ins informing students about the history of Islam in the United States, and interfaith dinners.
69 With respect to MSA students, such claims to authority were found in their ability to define what it means to be an American Muslim and to regulate the narrative they desired other non-Muslims to draw from when interacting with them. Given that the college experience may be the first time that non-Muslim students interact with Muslims, the pressure to present a positive, accommodating, and potentially even pliant view of Islam becomes even more acute.82
Some MSAs hand out free copies of the Qur’an or pass out pamphlets about various topics
(Kamal 2014, 258).
In my conversation with one MSA student, she described this week as being “more about learning.” Another student explained how “it’s to communicate the message.” In a conversation with Mariam, she expressed her own realizations when speaking to non-Muslim students interested in Islam. 83 She revealed that when she participated in her first Islam Awareness Week, a sister told her that she would need to go and talk to people about Islam. Mariam explained to me that she felt that what the sister was asking her to do was unclear and so she interpreted her as suggesting that she should go and convert people. Mariam then recounted a story where one student, whom she described as being an atheist, began talking to her at an event. This interaction prompted them to begin exchanging emails. Mariam described the emails she wrote as being laden with prescribed Islamic “rules and regulations” and embarrassingly admitted that the young woman never responded.
Troubled by the rift in their correspondence, Mariam then shared the incident with her father who told her that it seemed like she was trying to convert the young woman. Mariam admitted to him that she was. Her father then advised her that when approaching conversations
82 As a response to the growing popularity of Islam Awareness Week on college campuses, an “Islamo-facism Awareness Week” has been held on college campuses by “organizers aimed to protest against the violent oppression of women in Islam” (Kabir 2013, 28). 83 Recorded interview with Mariam, May 2016.
70 about “Islam,” one should not begin with legalistic and prescriptive material, explaining that even when one begins to read the Qur’an, the bulk of the message in the beginning is about tawḥīd (oneness of God).84 He warned her that she should be trained before speaking about Islam
“because you’re representing yourself and you’re representing a religion so you don’t want to represent it the wrong way” and underscored how she did not have the ability to “convert anyone.”
Mariam’s experience signifies the complications that arise when MSA students are tasked with the responsibility of potentially converting their non-Muslim peers. 85 While sincere in her intentions, Mariam was met with rejection. She did not fully understand what transpired until she spoke with her father, an older and trusted figure, who counseled her and offered perspective about what had happened. Not all MSA students appeared to emphasize the importance of conversion, or at least that was not the impression I received nor was it disclosed to me in interviews. Much of what I heard and observed reflected a desire to better educate the public about Islam, correct stereotypes and more importantly, provide an opportunity for non-Muslims to engage in robust conversations with the Muslim community on campus.
However, the missionizing component of da‘wa was an important topic that I became more privy to during my research.86 Given the growing rate of conversion to Islam (Lipka and
Hackett 2017), it is unsurprising that the MSAs I worked with were mindful of being discursive spaces that were sensitive and welcoming to non-Muslims and did not unintentionally ward them off by overwhelming them with punctilious information, as evidenced in the case of Mariam.
84 See Rahman (1980), Robinson (2003), and McAuliffe (2006) for discussions on the thematic breakdown of the Qur’an. 85 See Poston (1992) especially chapters seven and eight for discussions of da‘wa strategies and the literature being used. 86 For example, at a Muslim Monologues event that I attended, the MC that evening commented on how Muslims need to be much kinder to converts who join the faith and to stop inundating them with punctilious prescriptions. Although his comments were articulated humorously, the points he raised were well noted as those in the audience laughed uncomfortably and nodded their heads in agreement.
71 Based on my interactions with MSA students, I would argue that the task of informing non-
Muslims about Islam can be quite cumbersome given that these students are in the throes of developing their own religious literacy. My point is that while Islam Awareness Week has been incredibly effective in clarifying stereotypes about Muslims and Islam, for some MSA students, misunderstanding this week’s objectives has the potential to impart discomfort and confusion.
Crossing Faith Lines
According to Asma Afsaruddin, “modernist and liberal Muslims have begun to re- emphasize the Qur’anic principle of human nonjudgment and noninterference in matters of faith, hoping to convince the skeptics among their co-religionists of a genuine regard for religious pluralism within Islam” (2017, 71-72). On college campuses, MSA students, in their interfaith work, are adopting such endeavors. Interacting with other faith groups on campus through interfaith dialogue is one of the discursive processes that many MSAs actively engage in to define who they are as American Muslim minorities on campus and in the United States. These dialogues also become exemplars of a larger trend on college campuses in that “college may serve as an intervention, a place of suspended judgment where students can interact with diverse others, wrestle with the discomfort often engendered by these interactions, and learn as a result”
(Mayhew et al. 2018, 72). Some MSAs are grouped together with other faith groups on their universities’ campuses. Consequently, their chaplains liaise with other chaplains at the university and MSA students collaborate with these faith groups. Many of the students I interviewed during my fieldwork were active members of umbrella religious life programs on their campus outside of their involvement in the MSA and others organized and participated in interfaith dialogues.
72 On two campuses I frequented during my fieldwork, there were Muslim-Christian dialogue groups facilitated by student organizers. Collectively, students read excerpts from the
Bible and the Qur’an and would share their personal reflections on particular passages. As
Usman described it, during these gatherings, “everyone is thinking that everyone else wants to believe it. It’s very accepting. It just feels spiritually uplifting.”87 Having attended one of these sessions, which centered on the portrayal of Moses in the Bible and the Qur’an, I witnessed firsthand how students felt very comfortable sharing how they internalized these passages and how they reflected upon them. The sort of acceptance Usman describes is similar to what unfolds in a religious studies course on college campuses in that, “the idea of analyzing elements of their own or another religious tradition rigorously and critically in these courses seems strange, and even out of place to them” (Dakake 2018, 331). As such, rigorous academic inquiry is generally not the main objective in these spaces.
A student on another campus, before transferring to the university I worked with, began an informal Muslim-Christian dialogue. I learned that when he was a member of his previous
MSA, he invited Christian students to an MSA event where a shaykh explained how particular prophets such as Jesus, Moses, or Abraham were depicted in the Qur’an and what could be gleaned from such narratives. After the lesson ended, he opened the dialogue up to members of
Christian groups on campus so that they could share their perspectives. Looking back on fostering these dialogues, he shared, “I think in the beginning I did it because it was so foreign, and I enjoyed it. But now, I really see the benefit of multi-faith dialogue and like how it does bring communities together so now I see like what we do really does build friendships and it builds respect for other faiths, other traditions and other groups that are different.”88 I asked him
87 Recorded interview with Usman, January 2016. 88 Recorded interview with student, November 2016.
73 if he felt that students bonded because they were “people of faith” and he agreed that yes, they certainly did but that the reason these gatherings were so important was that students learned about one another’s experiences and were able to reflect on their own personal beliefs. The insistence was not necessarily on arguing for whose interpretation was orthodox but rather how these students were internalizing these interpretations. He was careful to point that these dialogue groups were not spaces where one’s faith would be tried and that students were eager to question and learn more about each other’s faith in a manner that exhibited genuine curiosity.
In a conversation with Layth, I learned that one way students kept interfaith dialogue spaces open was by adhering to the notion of “make space, take space” so that no individual would dominate the conversation. To avoid presenting monolithic views of their faith traditions, students were encouraged by student moderators to use “I” statements as opposed to “Islam says” or “Christianity says.”89 These recommendations established decorum for these discursive spaces and regulated them so that the conversations remain respectful. As such students who attended these dialogues were not learning about “Christianity” or “Islam’s” take on a particular topic but how lay Christians and Muslims interpreted and reflected upon the seminal texts in their religious traditions.
While the aforementioned rules were taken seriously and were generally respected by student attendees, I was also informed that not all dialogues were held without controversy. I learned that on some occasions, non-Muslim students would pose questions inspired by information they had retrieved online from what a student described as “crazy right-wing websites” about Islam, recounting an instance where questions were posed about jizya (tax on non-Muslims) and the dhimmī status of non-Muslims during periods of Islamic history. My impression was that these questions were not geared towards inciting discussion but rather
89 Recorded interview with Layth, October 2016.
74 placed an onus on Muslim students who “can often become “used” as default diversity educators for their majority peers” (Mir 2009a, 117). Predictably, the student who shared this incident enacted the role of educator and explained the historical context under which such provisions were taking place and brought up how minorities were treated throughout Christendom. His interjection demonstrates a key objective for these dialogues, which is highlighting similar parallels between different faith traditions in order to underscore points of commonality.
Muslims of various backgrounds, particularly those living in the United States inevitably become familiarized with Judeo-Christian norms not only because Islam was the last of the three
Abrahamic faiths but also because they live in a country that is built on Judeo-Christian concepts and values (Asad 2003; Taylor 2007). Fast-forward to university, interfaith dialogues afford
Muslim students a seat at the table and enable them to discuss their relationship with Islam on their own terms. Bariza for example, recounted how when she was attending a small liberal arts college that she considered “progressive” and “liberal,” she recalled people “mak[ing] blanket judgments all the time about Islam. I heard it often in my political science and women’s studies classes” so when she hosted an interfaith event on her campus she hoped it would, “really shed light on how Muslim narratives are different and Muslims are human beings. Just like you don’t stereotype billions of Christian people, you really shouldn’t be doing the same for this faith group.”90
Many of the interfaith organizers recognized how their peers enjoyed breaking bread together and they often incorporated food when facilitating an event. As Nancy Ammerman notes, “[e]ating together enhances the work of teaching and the celebration of ritual for these immigrant religious communities” and “in all sorts of ways, congregations acknowledge the role of food in the work of building community (Sack 2000)” (2005, 59). For example, one campus
90 Recorded interview with Bariza, February 2016.
75 hosted a Muslim-Christian dialogue cook-off. There were also interfaith Shabbat dinners and interfaith iftars. These events usually involved a chaplain introducing what was being celebrated and encouraging those in attendance to socialize and learn more about each other’s faiths. The atmosphere was friendly as MSA students, particularly when they were hosting the event circulated between tables to introduce themselves to the guests and chat.
Reaching across faith lines has been met with some resistance in certain MSA circles. On one campus, an MSA student attempted to organize an interfaith event with the Hillel club.
Unfortunately, this gesture was met with considerable backlash from students on her campus as well as those from other campuses due to its being broadcast on social media. Resistance to organizing with Jewish groups is not entirely uncommon in MSA circles. I learned that some
MSAs make a deliberate decision not to cosponsor with Hillel, which they consider a Zionist organization. In a conversation with the student who shared this incident, they explained,
“People are very ignorant. They don’t read about Israel or Palestine but they’re making a lot of like blatant statements online about whether or not we should have supported it or not and they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to the conflict.”91 This example demonstrates that each MSA defines the extent to which it is willing to reach out to other faith groups on campus and how even within one MSA, there can be conflicting opinions regarding what types of outreach should be pursued.
The interfaith initiatives recounted in this section operate on a multitude of levels. They bring students of faith together by offering them an opportunity to think about their religiosity more introspectively and by enabling students of different faith backgrounds to learn from each other. With respect to Muslim students specifically, they provide a platform to be represented,
91 Recorded interview with student, April 2016. See Tapper (2011) for more on Muslim-Jewish dialogue on university campuses.
76 heard, and potentially better understood. This form of religious sharing and engagement is particularly important for American Muslim youth who are laying the groundwork for more collaborative engagement with other student groups. Thus, interfaith dialogues on college campuses foster friendship, support, and “discovery of… common ground among different religious groups and the formulation of a shared religious idiom” (Afsaruddin 2017, 74). They are a prime form of MSA socialization with other students on their campus by providing a “safe space for Muslim students to find support and allies outside their own faith community” (Ali and
Bagheri 2009, 53).
Awkward Conversations
Generally, I found that my interlocutors were uncritical of their MSA and their peers. In my participant observations of their interactions with one another, I was often left with the impression that students had established solid friendships as was demonstrated in the amount of time they spent socializing with one another and their volunteering complimentary depictions about each other in interviews. Admittedly, I did not explicitly ask students if they had faced any conflict during their MSA tenure because I did not want to sensationalize what could be construed as a “negative” understanding of their experiences. Because our conversations were fluid, and I worked at developing trusting relationships with these students, over time, particularly in my final interview with students, I found that some of them expressed more critical observations of the MSA socialization that took place on their respective campuses. Each of them, in varying degrees expressed a desire for more “spiritual fulfillment” from their local
MSA spaces in spite of their active involvement in their MSA and the pride they felt being part of their respective MSA communities. What I gathered from these conversations was that each of
77 these students felt that more could be done in terms of the theological engagement they were striving for. I should also disclose that their critiques were more introspective, and they placed the burden of change on their own shoulders. Some of them wanted to be challenged, or as one student described it, “be held accountable” by his MSA friends with respect to his religious commitments. This sentiment stands in contrast to the aforementioned MSA objectives of cultivating “judgment-free” and “welcoming” Muslim spaces on campus that avoid making assumptions about where people stand religiously.
Looking back on these conversations, I noticed that three out of the four students who shared this with me had opened up quite a bit during our interviews. Two of them cried in front of me, one when they were talking about their connection with the Divine and the other when talking about being able to accomplish something that brought his family a great source of pride.
Breaking down these walls and expressing this vulnerability were not things I took for granted as a researcher. I confess, particularly in the moments when students cried or shared a private experience, I did not always know how to react particularly as these examples seemed to resemble what Vincent Crapanzano describes as the “collapse of interlocutory distance” (2010,
71). I did not know if I should press them more about the underlying reason behind these expressions of vulnerability or if I should change the conversation altogether. There was also a large part of me that felt responsible and even guilty for the prompts I provided. However, the conversations that ensued, albeit uncomfortable, are important to share. They reflect the self- reflexivity and the penetrating depth of students’ MSA experiences. Moreover, they illuminate the ways in which the friendships developed, and the knowledge learned in MSAs leave an indelible mark on how some young adults in America experience Islam.
78 For example, in a conversation with one student, we began discussing his relationship with the Divine and the self-reflexivity he maintained in order to connect God’s attributes into his daily life. As the conversation evolved, he related his effort to learn more about the Prophetic tradition and his striving for a deeper understanding of the Divine to an observation he had recently made. It was towards the end of the year when we met and on many college campuses, particularly as students are graduating and summer is upon them, MSAs, like other campus organizations carve out time and events so that students can socialize. Attempting to schedule him for our last interview in the midst of banquets, movie nights, and other events proved slightly difficult, but we eventually agreed to meet one late afternoon on his campus.
We initially met by his MSA’s prayer space. Noticing the swarms of students hanging outside in the lounge area, we decided to find a quiet room on the same floor to conduct the interview. In luck, we settled on an empty seminar room. During that time, he shared that he had been spending more time with his Muslim peers and noticed what he felt to be a “lack of reinforcement of the Prophetic tradition in terms of the manners in which we communicate… the way we talk.” When I asked him if he was referring to etiquette, he agreed that yes, he was thinking of etiquette but that he was also referring to being with people who were at a “level” and seemed unable to qualify what that level was. Because I was aware of his tendency to recalibrate his phrasing in our interviews so as to not appear self-righteous or indignant, I asked him if he had ever been in the presence of those people he was hoping to interact with. He admitted that he had befriended some individuals who were like that, students that he could discuss the Divine with and who maintained what he described as being a “presence of mind,” which I interpreted to mean the God-consciousness so many of these students shared they were
79 striving for. 92 He admitted that these individuals were few and that these conversations were not necessarily the norm because the ways students gathered were not necessarily “conducive to them allowing people to remember God.” What this student was alluding to was a desire for more introspective, intellectual, and revealing conversations amongst his peers as they discussed matters of religion. As I spent more time with MSA students, I learned that such conversations often took place in more intimate settings such as between roommates who were getting ready before class, a handful of students as they were randomly chatting about what was going on in their lives, or perhaps after a ḥalaqa as students hung out afterwards and ate dinner. As this student was sharing this with me, I recalled how unique and sporadic such conversations were during my undergraduate experience because most of the socializing that takes place during college does not necessarily lend itself to that kind of introspection and inquiry.
In my conversation with this student, he appeared disappointed, which was understandable given the fact that he believed his friendships with fellow Muslims could be an opportunity for him to learn from their experiences and their insights. Still, he admitted that perhaps his feelings were a reflection of his sensitivity and that others who were coming from different backgrounds or had different expectations would feel differently further explaining to me, “I don’t want to be the one that thinks there has to be some sort of like method or like culture of socializing that has to be enforced that people coming to college just beginning to learn about
Islam are totally unaware of. They’ll be like oh? And I don’t know if that’s more so in terms of where I’m coming from or what I seek to expect from others.” Having spent hours with this student, I knew that it was difficult for him to speak of his peers in any way that could be misconstrued and his tendency to be self-reflexive in what he disclosed to me. In fact, this student’s reticence in explicitly critiquing his peers is part of Islamic etiquette in and of itself,
92 Recorded interview with student, May 2016.
80 particularly the notion of giving people the benefit of the doubt and not making assumptions.93
He admitted that he too shouldered the responsibility of the MSA’s socializing nature and felt that he could be more introspective so that when he entered a gathering with his peers, he could share something that pertained to his own God-consciousness. This conversation was illuminating on multiple fronts particularly because he was the third person in the batch of interviews that took place that semester that expressed a desire for more God-conscious conversations with their Muslim peers and I began to wonder how prevalent these feelings were amongst MSA circles and whether more students felt this way and just did not feel comfortable expressing this to me.
Another student shared what at the time was a recent conversation he had had about friendship with one of his friends, which inspired him to reflect on his own relationships with his peers. He explained,
Sometimes, I become frustrated when I’m really good friends with other Muslims but then we don’t talk about like, like pressing spiritual or religious issues in our lives or just…we only talk about things on a surface level for a long period and… [university] conditions you into becoming that way because we don’t really care about each other as we pass by each other sometimes. We don’t like dig deeper.94
As a follow-up response, I asked him whether the cause was, as he indicated, a result of his university’s conditioning or if it could also be a generational issue.95 He argued that it could be both but that he did not want to overgeneralize. As the conversation evolved, he expressed how
Muslims friendships are special because of shared concerns and experiences and the potential to learn from one another. As such, he seemed disappointed in the fact that his MSA was “overly
93 See sura 49 in the Qur’an for an explication of how Muslims should treat one another and give each other the benefit of the doubt. 94 Recorded interview with student, May 2016. 95 At the time, I was thinking of how social media affects the ways millennials in particular socialize with one another.
81 accommodating to the extent, to the point that we don’t talk about religion meaningfully even though we know that the other person is going through something or the other person is struggling with something. We’ll just shy away from the topic, to not want to like hold them accountable in a way that’s harsh.”
For further clarification, I asked follow-up questions about what was meant by
“accountability” and the student explained that this entailed having conversations that enabled students to vocally address personal issues and “hold each other accountable in a way that is true but then also do it in a way that’s sincere, moving, loving, compassionate” while maintaining a self-reflexivity and a purity in the approach because each MSA member was simultaneously holding themselves accountable. He explained to me that some of the reasons these conversations were not being had was that students did not want to offend each other, or they were unsure of how to approach a matter because they feared how their friends would respond.
This fear was expressed by another student months earlier. As she and I met over coffee for our last interview, she shared an illuminating observation with me: “MSA is a better barometer of how like socially Muslim someone is than how sort of religiously or spiritually someone is because these conversations are very awkward to have.” The “conversations” she was referring to pertained to MSA students or Muslim students on campus who were engaging in activities that they kept privately from their MSA. Distancing themselves from the MSA or their
Muslim friends is common for American Muslim youth who engage in partying and drinking and want to “avoid becoming a representative of Islam” (Mir 2009a, 122).
The MSA student continued by sharing that she had a friend who began drinking upon entering university. Although she remained friends with this person, she admitted that she had been unsure of how to interact with her sharing, “Does she not want us to discourage her? Who
82 am I supposed to be for this person?” I asked this student if she had, at any point, spoken to her friend about her drinking. In trying to establish rapport with this student and seeing how this relationship was troubling her, I explained how sometimes one person in a friendship needs to keep the communication lines open confessing that I too had been in similar positions. At this point, she expressed how difficult this incident was because of the assumptions that people might have of her, given the type of Muslim community she was raised in, her involvement in her
MSA, and the way she dressed. My interlocutor was a hijabi student who grew up in a predominantly tight-knit American Muslim community, had attended an Islamic school for most of her life and was heavily involved in her local masjid community along with her siblings and parents who also volunteered their time. Thus, it is unsurprising that she wondered if her background might potentially lead people to believe that she would be judging them or could be
“too religious for them.”
In my conversation with this student, I sensed how much she cared about this relationship but that she was treading delicately as a friend. At one point in our conversation, she expressed how she had “that sort of guilt of a good Muslim friend.” When I asked her where that guilt came from and what she meant by “being a good Muslim friend,” she explained,
Because there’s this whole idea in Islam that I grew up with of like um you know sort of being friends for the sake of Allah and um you know encouraging each other towards something that’s good and being better people for having been friends. So I think I totally believe in that. And so to me, it’s like if I knew that the other person, if it was my good friend who I knew wanted Islam to be a big part of their life who started drinking, I would sit down and be like, “Hey, I know this isn’t what you want right?” But when it’s someone where you don’t even have a sense of how much they care...96
My conversation with this student exposed me to the private chasms students experience when they have Muslim friends who change upon entering university and have made lifestyle choices that conflict with their religious sensibilities. The stakes grow increasingly higher as some
96 Recorded interview with student, December 2015.
83 students have been conditioned to believe that friendship involves encouraging one another to be righteous and steadfast in their relationship with God.
In this section, I have demonstrated the difficulty some MSA students have in engaging in frank and honest conversations with their peers about matters pertaining to their spirituality and/or lifestyle choices. Each of the students in this section expressed how they felt their MSA peers did not confront each other’s struggles. It appeared that this reticence was an unintentional consequence of the strides MSAs made to be welcoming and judgment-free spaces on their campuses.
Conclusion
This chapter, while not exhaustive in its account of the plethora of rich and nuanced insights MSA students shared with me, has attempted to draw out some of the recurring themes throughout my conservations with MSA students. It has highlighted some of the reasons
American Muslim youth join MSAs. Moreover, it has demonstrated the various ways in which
MSAs occupy both physical and discursive spaces on college campuses and has presented some of the issues at stake when American Muslim youth socialize with one another. From the student reflections in this chapter, they emphasized how their MSA strove to be welcoming and inclusive, and refrained from making assumptions about their peers in terms of where they stood religiously. The students I interviewed appreciated these MSA qualities and worked hard at maintaining them. This chapter has also demonstrated how participating in an MSA provides
Muslim students an opportunity to engage with their non-Muslim peers on their college campuses. In addition, this chapter has introduced some of the larger themes this dissertation will elaborate on in further detail such as the cultural divide between students and their parents’
84 generation, the important place of Muslim chaplains on college campuses, the urging of self- reflexivity, and how being an inclusive MSA influences how these American Muslim youth engage with social justice activism.
85 Chapter 2
American Muslim Youth Identify with Whose Religion and Which Culture
Upon socializing with young Muslims on college campuses, one is immediately confronted with some students, particularly those who are children of immigrants, who are trying to separate “religion” from “culture.” A ḥalaqa setting first exposed me to this demarcation. As the chaplain was explaining the meaning of a particular āya (verse) from the Qur’an, he turned to the students and noted, “If you don’t reflect on the verse, then you are imitating culture.”97 At that moment, I thought to myself, what would imitating culture concretely look like? Over time, I began to learn that a “cultural” reading of religious texts was understood to mean a regurgitation of what these students were taught by their families or their Sunday schools. It implied a lack of self-reflexivity and a passive approach to hermeneutics. It also implied an aphoristic and lofty interpretation that failed to relate these texts to what these students were currently experiencing.
The chaplain’s cautionary insight was one that the majority of the MSA students I spent time with felt comfortable accepting. In fact, I do not recall witnessing any pushback from students when the chaplain above or any other speaker made a similar recommendation.
Over the course of my research, I discovered that many MSA students were challenging what they perceived to be misconceptions or misappropriations of “Islamic” tenets, beliefs, and practices. At first glance, this appears rather commonsensical and almost to be expected. These youth shoulder the responsibility of presenting a palatable version of Islam to their non-Muslim peers, teachers, and the wider public. With the lack of a centralized authority for Muslims in the
United States and globally, these youth along with the aid of their chaplains and prominent
Muslim figures in the United States attempt to define what it means to be an American Muslim not only to the wider American non-Muslim public but also with relation to themselves. Based
97 Field notes, September 2015.
86 on my interactions with these youth and my observation of the events on their respective campuses, how they identify with Islam differs from that of their parents’ generation.98 When the discussion of culture generally arose in conversations with these students, it was often discussed within the context of parental or ethnic culture and the youth I spoke with exhibited a
“consciousness of the contested and constructed nature of the culture to which they are seen as belonging” in the diaspora (Anand 2009, 110). Culture then referred to the customs, traditions, or social mores of their immigrant parents’ generation and upbringing. For these students,
“religion,” often signified freedom and a multiplicity of interpretations whereas “culture” came to be associated with repressive, rigid, or overbearing expectations from their parents and the local communities they grew up in.99
Garbi Schmidt observes, in her study of Muslim youth in America and in Europe, “[w]e need more scholarly attention to the dynamic and not necessarily dichotomous relations between young and old and equally more attention to a deconstruction of the arguments of the young”
(2004a, 38). This chapter will demonstrate that American Muslim youth’s deviation from what they infer as being the “cultural norms” of their parents’ generation is predicated on the flexibility they seek with respect to issues such as gender dynamics, marriage, solidarity, and a more critical and self-reflexive appropriation of Islamic beliefs and tenets. I found that delineating between “religion” and “culture” enabled these students to collectively share
98 A few of the students I spoke with spent about half their childhoods living in a Muslim-majority country and despite their being immersed in their parents’ ethnic culture, they too were critical of the hegemonic authority they felt it possessed in their lives. 99 Louise Cainkar, in her research on American Muslim youth who travel to the Middle East and are met with disappointment upon their arrival, explains that their observations were “products of their US-based experiences that taught them to see Muslims in very fixed and sometimes very ideal ways, whether from a mainstream American culture that represents Muslims in religiously essentialized, non-complex ways, or from their religious teachers at home and in school who often contrasted how others behave to how “we” Muslims behave” (2014, 604).
87 common objectives such as their defining what it meant to be an American Muslim in a post-
9/11 world (Haddad and Harb 2014; Bilici 2012; Simmons 2008).100
This chapter begins with an overview of how some American Muslims have come to define “culture.” It will then provide examples of how this delineation has manifested itself in the lives of some of my interlocutors, most of whom were the children of immigrants from the
Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Shabana Mir argues that “Muslim Americans are situated at a nexus of political, religious, racial, ethnic, cultural, and transnational identities” a nexus that she calls a “third space” where American Muslims navigate the aforementioned territories and never quite “fit” into any of them (2014, 11). In order to navigate this third space, this chapter argues that American Muslim youth embody a sense of “religious individualism” (O’Brien 2015) that enables them to assert their autonomy as they discursively engage with the Islamic
“tradition” (Asad 1986) and find arguments to counter what they perceive to be the “cultural” practices of their parents’ generation.101 As such, we become attuned to what is at stake for these young American Muslims when creating these distinctions between religion and culture and how they, like many other American religious young adults are dealing “with issues of meaning, purpose, authenticity, spirituality” (Lindholm 2006, 75).
Now I do not wish to assert that the examples in this chapter represent the majority opinions of American Muslim youth given they stem from conversations with a specific sector of my research sites. For example, these findings do not account for the experiences of MSA
100 Nadine Naber (2012) argues that her young interlocutors “articulated Muslim First, Arab Second as an alternative to ideal concepts of marriage, gender, and race that underscored Arab cultural authenticity, the dominant middle- class articulation of Arabness” (112). 101 Talal Asad argues, “[a] tradition consists essentially of discourses that seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a given practice that, precisely because it is established, has a history…. An Islamic discursive tradition is simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present” (1986, 14).
88 students who converted to Islam or the children of converts.102 However, the examples listed below do signify important trends in the discursive MSA spaces I worked with, such as the important role chaplains maintained in these students’ lives. They also bring attention to multiple points of concern for some American Muslim youth such as an introspective engagement with religious beliefs, issues of authority, gender rights, as well as inclusivity.
How Do American Muslims Define Culture?
Various authors have attended to what happens during the transference of Islamic rituals and beliefs after Muslims immigrate to non-Muslim-majority countries. Fenggang Yang and
Helen Ebaugh’s research found that as ethnically diverse Muslims commune, they are confronted with the fact that practices and beliefs they understood as being “Islamic” “may not have a scriptural basis” (2001, 280).103 My research is not simply concerned with whether Islamic rituals and beliefs can be rooted in a scriptural basis but rather asking why it is that rooting these rituals and beliefs in scriptural texts is valued and primordial amongst the youth I encountered in the field. For example, in what ways do students discursively engage with these texts? What does this discursive engagement enable them to achieve?
102 For converts, questions around culture involve the pressure to “give up their ethnic American cultural identity in order to be Muslim” (Karim 2009, 140). For example, some converts grapple with whether or not they should be celebrating holidays and the mechanics of socializing with their non-Muslim families and friends. According to Muna Ali, the children of converts to Islam also engaged in processes of differentiating themselves from the practices of their parents’ generation such as expressing how they “began to “think critically” about Islam” (2018, 124). Ali explains, “[t]o some of their offspring, parents seem to practice an unexamined faith adopted from the “old country” where everyone was a Muslim or, in the case of converts, as they were taught by their imams and leaders, without questioning” (2018, 125). Thus, “culture” for many American Muslim youth is not simply relegated to their families and homes but extends to mosque communities and other religious spaces that endorse a practice of Islam that is being challenged by a younger generation of Muslims from a variety of backgrounds. 103 Muna Ali also notes that immigrant Muslims “worry about cultural impurities entering Islam at the hands of converts and young people who try to “Americanize” Islam” (2018, 94).
89 Olivier Roy similarly discusses the evolution of the “pristine culture” imported with
Muslim immigrants as they establish themselves, particularly in Western countries (2004, 22).104
Roy writes that in the West, as these new immigrants navigate their new homes, newer leaders and generations are confronted with what truly constitutes something as being considered
Islamic.105 Furthermore, “[t]he strength of the religious Islamic call among sons of immigrants is not a call for authenticity, a return to a lost pristine culture, but the invention of a new identity.
Traditional Islam, as embodied in pristine cultures, has little to offer to shape this new identity which has to cope with the challenge of ‘de-territorialisation’” (Roy 1999, 63). As the aforementioned secondary literature suggests, drawing a line between religion and culture has become intrinsic to the experiences of diasporic Muslims who upon immigrating to the West begin to define how they should practice Islam by reconsidering what beliefs and practices should be sustained. When younger Muslims commune, their understanding of their religious practices becomes more consequential because adhering to a “culturally” specific understanding of Islam may potentially “exclude” or ostracize Muslims from different ethnic and racial backgrounds (Quraishi 2006, 209).
According to Ihsan Bagby, “the second generation is not simply passively inheriting their parents’ culture and religion. Instead, they are redefining and reconstructing their parents’ culture and religion into something that better matches their own sense of authenticity and appropriateness” (2006b, 220).106 Bagby explains that these youth were critical of the teachings
104 Roy explains that “[t]he first generation of immigrants used to come with a pristine ‘ethnic culture’” which encompasses a myriad of attributes including “language, customs, religion, family patterns, diet, music” (2004, 122). 105 Sherman Jackson argues “Immigrant Islam embodies the habit of universalizing the particular. It enshrines the historically informed expressions of Islam in the modern Muslim world as the standard of normativeness for Muslims everywhere… And in this process, Immigrant Islam’s interpretations are effectively placed beyond critique via the tacit denial that they are in fact interpretations. In short, Immigrant Islam does not interpret; it merely transfers “true” Islam from one location to the next” (2005, 12). 106 Bagby discovered that second-generation Muslim men were less likely than any other group to feel a “sense of belonging” to their local mosque community possibly due to the fact that they had more “freedom” (2006b, 227).
90 and beliefs that their parents learned and brought with them upon their immigration to the United
States. In being critical, these youth were able “to detach religious authority from inherited culture” giving them “legitimacy in opposing many customs of their parents as being only a form of ethnic culture and not Islamic” (2006b, 232). More importantly, Bagby notes that this delineation provides them with an opportunity to discard culturally Islamic practices that are not
“mandated” by the Qur’an and sunna and might potentially conflict with the American norms they aspired to espouse (2006b, 231-232). Essentially, for the second-generation Muslims Bagby spoke with, “[r]eligious identity replaces ethnic identity” although he is quick to point out that one’s ethnic identity is never entirely “abandoned” but is rather circumscribed (2006b, 219-220).
The process of transcending cultural differences is not specific to Muslims living in
North America or the United States in particular. Similar trends can be detected with respect to
Muslims in Europe alerting us to the fact that while the experiences of Muslims in the United
States and Europe vary, comparable trends occupy both diasporic spaces and that the immigrant experience affects the ways in which Muslims practice Islam.107 For example, in her research on youth associations in Sweden, Pia Karlsson Minganti notes that the delineation being made between religion and culture resulted in three trends amongst Muslim youth: “[f]irst, they construct a common Islamic identity, which ideally surpasses any association with
‘race’/ethnicity, clan, or class. Second, they claim that this universal Islamic identification is
107 For example, a study of Muslims in the Netherlands by Maliepaard, Lubbers, and Gijsberts counters the religion/culture divide explaining that Muslims “who are strongly religious are more likely to associate strongly with their own ethnic group, not only in terms of identification, but also in terms of social activities and use of media” (2010, 467). In addition, the socioeconomic conditions of Muslims residing in Europe and in the United States affect how they are able to integrate into their respective communities and dictate how Islamophobia, for example, shapes the ways they discourse amongst one another. Moreover, populist trends also affect the ways they conceive of their identities as “others.” Adis Duderija similarly detects emerging trends that are a byproduct of the Muslim immigrant experience and have produced “new forms of immigration-specific religiosity… which is particularly evident in the growing number of western-born Muslims who not only emphasize their religious identity at the expense of their ethnic identity but also construct new ways of “being a Muslim”” (2007, 153). See also Voas and Fleischmann for more regarding the differences between how American and European Muslims challenge the import of ethnic culture (2012, 534-535).
91 compatible with being a good Swedish citizen. Third, the youth often question and sidestep traditional authorities, such as parents and ‘ulamā’” (2012, 374).
This secondary literature informs us that by drawing on scripture, Muslim youth are offered an opportunity to abandon some of their parents’ cultural baggage. Consequently, the cultural elements that they might feel more comfortable adopting are those that do not conflict with American culture and their religious sensibilities. For example, John Morgan writes that in the process of separating the “cultural” from the “theological” “those things [that] are… historical and temporal in the practice and those things [that] are… understood by the faithful to be transcendently indispensable to the practice of the faith, a way can be chartered for the assimilation into another culture without jeopardizing either the core of the faith or that which is indispensably cherished in the culture (Khan 1999)” (2013, 29-30).
With respect to the relationship between Islam and “culture,” Katherine Ewing, notes that
“the term ‘culture’ itself has also become a politically powerful symbol in discussions among
Muslims about how to practice Islam as a minority in a world understood to be simultaneously
Judeo-Christian and secular” (2015, 202). Ewing explains that with respect to second- and third- generation migrants, separating culture from Islam enables them to “reconcile”
the sometimes considerable differences between family expectations and the habits of everyday life in their new homes; second, negotiating life and Muslim identity in a post- 9/11 world at a time when the fear of terrorism has metamorphosed into the idea that Islam is a threat to Western civilization; and third, working out for themselves and articulating specific orientations to both Islam and what they consider to be the secular. (2015, 203)
Ewing’s observation underscores the fact that this separation serves very functional purposes by affording Muslim youth an opportunity to define on their own terms what it means to be a
Muslim in a heavily politicized and Islamophobic climate.
92 Even in my own research, while I found that students took distance from what they perceived to be “cultural” interpretations of Islam, a complete abandonment or rejection of
“culture” did not take place on the campuses I frequented. In a conversation with Layth, we joked about how his MSA celebrates food indigenous to different Muslim-majority countries and that even though students make a concerted effort not to pay preferential treatment to a particular culture, they also highlight, embrace, and celebrate the cultural diversity that exists within their campus’s Muslim community.108 Evidently the consumption of ethnic foods, or the donning of culturally specific attire, may or may not be exclusivist or incite feelings of inferiority amongst fellow MSA students. Still, embracing these cultural markers demonstrates that the demarcation between religion and culture is much more nuanced and that while there are elements of purified and “deculturalized” Islam taking place amongst this generation, the limits of this binary construction are much more specific than what my interlocutors initially intimated to me. I began to realize that “culture” was an umbrella term referring to specific practices and communities. It was part of their lexicon, rarely questioned amongst one another or in ḥalaqa settings, and enabled them to communicate a larger ethos they shared. I quickly learned that my objective was to not take this delineation for granted but to figure out how MSA students defined culture and more importantly which figures in their lives supported these delineations and potentially influenced them. For example, was it their peers, their chaplains, or other religious figures? This demarcation did not occur in a vacuum and while the impetus might result from a personal experience, I suspected that students needed validation. By speaking to figures such as their chaplains who helped them address personal issues, I learned that students obtained the confidence they needed to determine for themselves which of their parents’ practices and beliefs
108 Recorded interview with Layth, February 2017.
93 were worthy of emulation and which were considered extraneous, subjective, and in contradistinction with Islamic precedents.109
Before I begin addressing specific examples, it is important to note that the ramifications of this “religion/culture” divide extend beyond my interlocutors whose voices will be shared below. One of the beneficial consequences of this distinction is that it challenges some of the dominant, “normalized” practices and beliefs of American Muslim immigrants (Ali 2018, 94) that obscure, decenter, and at times undermine the religious experiences of Black American
Muslims and converts. Such practices/beliefs involve laying claim to a more “authentic” practice of Islam in comparison to Black American Muslims and converts (Howe 2018, 48, 60).110
Obeying One’s Parents
As this chapter began with a discussion of conflicting generational understandings of
“culture” and “Islam,” it seems fitting to begin by discussing how MSA students generally understood their relationships with their parents. The notion that students must “obey” their parents became part of many of the discussions that transpired in this project. In particular, appeasing one’s parents was a substantive responsibility many of these students shouldered and
109 Ewing also argues that by claiming “Islam is not a culture” Muslim youth are able to “open new possibilities for sources of religious authority as Muslims discard established sources of tradition and authority and turn to new leaders and new media for guidance” (2015, 220). These figures and media will be discussed further in chapter three. 110 Converts, for example, express being “unwelcome” in predominantly immigrant spaces where they “feel monitored for every minor infraction of cultural or ritual expectation” (Haddad 2006, 39). The treatment of Black American Muslims and white American Muslims by immigrant communities also involves perpetuating racial hierarchies where preferential treatment is often paid to white converts (Haddad 2006, 40; Ali 2018, 223). See also Karim (2009, 41-42) and Ali (2018 76-77) who discuss immigrant claims to authenticity and the mistaken assumption that Black American Muslims are often perceived to be “converts” by immigrants even if they were born into Muslim families. See also Knight who argues “[t]he indigenous-immigrant division problematically freezes American Muslims within categories that may no longer represent them” (2013, 96) particularly when considering the ethnic, racial, and generational makeup of a Muslim and from whom they are acquiring their Islamic knowledge. See also Ali (2018, 208-287) for a rich discussion of the various stakes and impediments in articulating an American Muslim identity for American Muslim immigrants and converts of diverse ethnic, racial, generational, and educational backgrounds.
94 an expectation they felt they had to fulfill. However, the lengths one had to go to and what they had to compromise of themselves in order to appease their parents varied. While I would argue that young Muslim women face greater challenges with respect to appeasing their parents, this pressure was something that I observed both young Muslim men and women experience during my fieldwork.
This form of respect not only extended to how they treated their parents and the elders in their families but the Muslim community as a whole. I can recall countless instances where I saw an MSA student assist an elder who was looking for a seat at an event, bring them refreshments, or listen to them with the utmost respect when they spoke at an event even if their ideas veered from the dominant understandings of Islam that they shared amongst their peers. With that said, there were occasional times in interviews and in side conversations with students when they shared how the older generation’s understanding of Islam was considerably different than theirs and that they did not necessarily feel comfortable challenging their elders. For example, in an interview with an MSA student, he encouraged me to attend a ḥalaqa series on his campus that was catered specifically to the MSA and did not include the outlying community. I had always been hesitant to attend because I was unsure if I was going to be invading the personal space of
MSA members and shared this with him. He jokingly responded with something to the effect of my being cool and that I was not an auntie or uncle who would be incapable of relating to the
MSA students. Even though I could have asked for clarification, by that point in the research, I knew what he was alluding to. The impression he had of me was that I would not be adhering to an “imported” or an “immigrant” version of Islam and would thus understand where these students were coming from and the struggles they faced as young Muslims growing up in
America.
95 In conversations with some students, I spent time talking to them about the complicated dynamics between them and their parents. Having grown up with a deceased father encouraged me to reflect deeply on familial relationships throughout my life. Thus, imparting some of the wisdom gleaned over the years was something I shared with my interlocutors whenever I felt it was appropriate.111 In these conversations, I learned that while these students were discussing the generational divide through “religious” and “cultural” trajectories, I contend that their age also lends itself to how they were interpreting these differences. I write this not to challenge or minimize what they were experiencing but to note that these students’ ages cannot be divorced from how the following examples should be understood and the fact that over time and with more experience, students may consider these moments differently. As such, how American
Muslim youth articulate difference and how they perceive their parents’ expectations resemble other “youth cultures” that are “defiant” (Best 2011, 914). Amy Best explains how for some sociologists “identities are treated as ‘projects’, emergent features of ongoing social interaction as youth draw on different cultural resources to project a self” (2011, 915). With respect to MSA students, such cultural resources involved their university, their relationships with the chaplains, the knowledge they sought from ḥalaqāt, and their interactions with each other, which inevitably informed the ways they worked on themselves (Foucault and Rabinow 1997; Asad 1993).112
Given the students I spoke with were “emerging adults,” their independence from their parents, whether they chose to live away from their parents or they had more independence outside of the
111 I delicately traversed my position as a “friend” and someone who was older. At times, my age afforded me an opportunity to be a confidante, or to be maternal, which is how one of my interlocutors described me before she was about to embark on her own ethnographic project and was asking advice about how to approach her interlocutors. However, I did not want to give the impression that I was somehow wiser than the students I interacted with and thus worked at remaining relatable to them given I too had had similar experiences. 112 Michel Foucault describes this mode of “work” as constituting a “care of the self” and qualifies the agentive means through which such care is achieved as “technologies of the self” that involve “a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (1997, 225).
96 home now that they were university students created possibilities “for more self-focus and self- determined decisions (Arnett, in press), thus providing the opportunity to explore familial roles and relationships” (Lefkowitz 2005, 41).113 While MSA students framed their discussions about their families in terms of “religion” and “culture,” the delicate balance between striving for independence while also maintaining strong familial ties is something that many “emerging adults” navigate (Aquilino 2006, 212).
In a ḥalaqa series on one campus, I was excited to learn that one session was being strictly devoted to the comportment one should embody when interacting with their parents and siblings. About a year and a half into my research at that point, I was eager to see how the chaplain was going to engage a topic that had frequently come up in my conversations with students. In that session, he cited a few āyāt 114 from the Qur’an that specifically address how one should deal with their parents and explained that these Qur’anic passages were aspirational and were meant to be a reminder to the believers. For example, he shared how one’s parents were
“deserving of our best attributes.”115 Additionally, he noted the blessings to be received when one is good to their parents but he pointed out that the idea that one should “obey” their parents is a poor misunderstanding of the Qur’an’s injunctions.116 Ultimately, the chaplain’s discussion was nuanced and empathetic of the fact that these young Muslims would not always agree with their parents but that it was religiously incumbent upon them to treat them well.
In a conversation with Karim, I began to better understand the “cultural” adoption of deference and how his views regarding familial respect evolved over the years. He explained that
113 According to William Aquilino, this consists of individuals between the ages of 18-25 (2006, 193) although Jeffrey Arnett’s (2015) more recent work extends the range to include those who are up to the age of 27. 114 In this particular ḥalaqa, the chaplain expounded upon the following Qur’anic verses: 31:12-15, 17:23-24, and 46:15. There are other Qur’anic verses detailing how one should treat their parents such as: 2:83, 3:7-11, 33-36, and 6:151. 115 Field notes, November 2016 116 There are parameters regarding to what extent one should obey their parents. For example, in sura 29:8, one is told not to obey one’s parents if they are encouraging one to associate another partner with God.
97 “South Asian culture very much stratifies people by age so I grew up with this sort of stratification in my mind but that’s been deconstructed as I’ve grown up. Now I don’t look at my parents as you know like my keepers like I can see them more on like an equal plane which is really weird and kind of interesting in a way.”117 When I asked him if he could clarify what he meant by the qualification “interesting” and what that was in relation to, he shared that “South
Asians invoked the verses of the Qur’an that say be good to your parents to establish total domination over your life” and that in his family dynamic, the boundaries pertaining to how one displayed respect to their elders were incredibly blurry. For example, he witnessed how female elders in his family were not necessarily being “revered” and how other figures in his family became his “role models” even though the age gap was minimal. What I gathered from this conversation was how different everyone’s family structures were and how a uniform appropriation of faith-based “respect” would be impossible to achieve. Some of these students lived with family members outside of their nuclear household, which is common when elders in the family require additional care. As some of the MSA students grew older, as evidenced in my conversation with Karim, they began to question the bounds of the religious obligation to respect their parents and began to determine on their own terms where this obligation was coming from and how it actually manifested itself in their family sphere. As the chaplain discussed in his
ḥalaqa, the Qur’anic edicts pertaining to one’s relationship with their parents were aspirational and the reality is that these students like many young people were doing their best to maintain good relations with their families.
Samuli Schielke notes that, “[a]n anthropological study of morality and ethical subjectivity has to take this inherent ambivalence as a starting-point” by looking at “the conflicts, ambiguities, double standards, fractures, and shifts as the constitutive moments of the practice of
117 Recorded interview with Karim, February 2016.
98 norms” (2009b, S37). Looking at parent-child dynamics is one site to explore the ethical conflicts young American Muslims experience when thinking about their parents. On the one hand, MSA students understood that speaking to their parents in a respectful manner and appeasing them were religiously prescribed tenets they should uphold. On the other, a blanketed kowtowing to their parents’ wishes was seen as burdensome. Those who had difficult or more complicated relationships with their parents often harbored guilt regarding their inability to communicate with and understand them. In a conversation with one female student, she expressed how difficult her relationship with her mother was over the years and how her mother was often inconsolable. This dynamic proved problematic given the young woman believed her mother was her “primary caretaker” and that the “hurtful things” her mother said to her often left her “fall[ing] into despair.”118 This young woman turned to her chaplain for counsel and appreciated his patience as she navigated this complex relationship. Having spoken to this chaplain about some of the issues his students experienced, I learned he was sensitive to the plights of these youth and recognized that some family members were difficult to deal with.
Familial Expectations and Professional Aspirations
How does appeasing one’s parents manifest itself in these students’ lives and in what spaces is it met with resistance amongst American Muslim youth? As the following sections will demonstrate, resistance often appears with relation to issues that affect the future trajectory of these students’ lives such as their careers, their understanding of their religiosity, and marriage.
After I returned her initial salām, Jamila asked me if I was still interested in resuming our interviews. By that time, months had passed since our initial conversation and I was pleasantly surprised when she offered to meet and pick up where we had left off. The following week, after
118 Recorded interview with student, May 2016.
99 surveying a floor at one of her university’s buildings in the hopes of finding an empty and open classroom, we were in luck and settled on a rather comfortable seminar room with plush leather swivel chairs and large windows. Maghrib was upon us and I noticed it gradually getting darker outside as the sun slowly set for the day. After she quickly grabbed something to eat from the cafeteria, we began our discussion. Initially, she was embarrassed to eat in front me and politely offered to share her food at numerous intervals throughout that interview. In fact, many of our interactions revolved around her eating and even a year later, after we had completed our interviews and I saw her in an entirely different campus setting, she offered to share her food with me once more. These gestures were endearing to me and reminded me of the consistent hospitality I experienced when in the company of the students and communities I studied.
Early on in our conversation, Jamila like many of my other interlocutors was drawing a fine line between “religion” and “culture.” She and I had been chatting about a summer camp she attended when she was in high school and how that experience left an indelible mark on her.
When she was at the camp, she shared that she was taught the historical context of Qur’anic āyāt as well as some tafsīr (Qur’anic interpretation). During that experience, she explained that she began “realizing the differences between my culture and the religion” and that “something that I was learning, I thought I had to do because it was Islam. I started realizing wait. No, this is actually more in my culture than it is about Islam.” At this point in the research, I was more curious regarding what my interlocutors meant when they paid preferential treatment to “Islam” and not the “cultural” norms they claim to have grown up with. In my conversations, I decided to ask them to describe the ways in which they made this split and how their separating the two functioned in their lives. Ultimately, to what end did this distinction serve? Put differently, what did it enable them to achieve?
100 As Jamila and I continued speaking, I asked her if she could provide me with examples where “culture” could be disengaged from “Islam.” She described, for example, the dynamics of one’s relationship with their parents. Growing up, she was taught that one should always obey one’s parents even if obeying them prevented one from fulfilling one’s aspirations. With respect to Jamila, she wanted to pursue an artistic major and her parents were unhappy with her choice.
After consulting an imam on the matter, she learned that, “Yes, your parents do have rights over you in a way that you have to show them respect. You have to honor them. You have to visit them if you move away. You have to help them in their sickness. You have to have manners too.”119 However, the imam explained to her that in matters regarding “how to live your life” such as choice of a marriage partner, the profession you pursue, or the decision on where to live, you are not obligated to fulfill your parents’ expectations. The imam’s response surprised Jamila given the way she was raised, and she told me she thought the points he raised were “interesting” and that it was the first time she was in the presence of an imam who expressed such views.
Other students discussed their parents’ expectations regarding their professional aspirations. Layth, for example, joked with me about how his grandfather “probably won’t brag to people like oh my grandson studies [humanities degree] but he would love to brag to them if I was an engineer or something.”120 While Layth noted that his grandfather was proud of the fact that he was admitted into a prestigious university, he admitted that he felt he had to “prove” himself before his family and “show” them that his choice of major would prove fruitful in the future. In an interview with another student, Hasan, I asked him about an MSA conference he had recently participated in and the kinds of discussions he and his Muslim peers had about familial expectations and the generational divide that exists between young American Muslims
119 Recorded Interview with Jamila, April 2016. 120 Recorded interview with Layth, October 2016.
101 and their parents.121 He shared that he spoke with his peers about how their parents’ generation had different “approaches to life” with respect to the academic disciplines one should pursue. He noted that the immigrant emphasis on the hard sciences was predicated on the fact that they are financially lucrative and there would be a higher possibility of finding a job. He further explained, “Countries that our parents are from. It’s not because… they’re not into arts. It can seem that way to the outsider.” As our conversation evolved, he expressed how there were justifiable reasons why someone would not be pursuing a liberal arts education.122 He then jokingly said, “What’s the phrase? I guess you know when your parents are doctors, you can afford to major in art history. But when people are depending on you, you can’t really be doing that kind of stuff.” Hasan’s multiple reflections draw attention to expectations regarding one’s achievements as it pertains to one’s economic class, and a tendency amongst some American
Muslim youth to attribute expectations regarding professional success and stability to their immigrant parents’ cultural norms.
My conversations with these students demonstrate variant elements of the debate regarding professional aspirations. In my conversation with Jamila, I learned that she was most concerned with whether or not she would be doing something Islamically frowned upon if she did not adhere to her parents’ requests. Layth, on the other hand, noted how pursuing certain majors provided his family with a sense of pride and the pressure he felt to have to prove to them that his academic choice was not made in vain. Hasan articulated a more pragmatic assessment of the debate namely the fact that immigrant parents want to ensure that their children will fare well professionally. With that said, many of the students I spoke to were pursuing liberal arts educations majoring in everything from history, to religious studies, to education and like other
121 He also noted that going to university and leaving home proved difficult for some American Muslim women. 122 Recorded interview with Hasan, May 2016.
102 American college students were “searching for more than a job, career, or money” (Hindman
2002, 170). They were attempting to establish “a life that is personally meaningful, professionally rewarding, and that, ultimately contributes to society” (Lindholm 2006, 89).
While the majority of them did not express parental pushback regarding their choice of majors, the pressure still exists for some American Muslims. Thus, it is unsurprising that many of the
MSA students I interviewed and interacted with appeared very keen on redefining what it means to be a successful American Muslim. As a chaplain put it in one ḥalaqa, “wealth is not a marker of success. In the Qur’an, the ultimate marker of success is janna (paradise).”123
You’re Marrying Whom?
Another site where cultural expectations affected these youth was with respect to marriage as “[n]egotiations involving conflicting generational values have produced new approaches to marriage-making among Muslim immigrants to America” (Al-Johar 2005, 562).
Denise Al-Johar explains that because American Muslim women become exposed to Islamic tenets through various activities in American Muslim communities such as events, they “learn of and identify with tenets of Islam that have been overlooked, de-emphasized, or unknown to them
“back home”” (2005, 567). While I did not sense a palpable anxiety amongst my interlocutors regarding a pressure to get married, discussions about marriage certainly ensued and illuminated some of the conflicting generational expectations American Muslims were meant to uphold. The sociocultural expectations regarding marriage often left these youth, particularly women, frustrated as the pressure to get married had the potential to make some of them feel inadequate.
For example, in our interview, Malak shared some of the religious conversations she had had with her father including one that pertained to marriage. She explained,
123 Field notes, January 2016.
103 Marriage, for example, shouldn’t be the only thing that a Muslim woman should be destined for her in her life. His understanding is that it should be and that it’s half our dīn and it’s protection for the woman and having a family and being a mother is what she’s destined for. I mean I don’t know. It depends on the social context. I think, the society that I’m usually in would answer this in the same way and I feel like that is not a satisfactory answer.124
After Malak recounted this conversation, I asked her if she felt that a woman’s role could be more than that, meaning more than a wife and/or a mother. She shared, “I mean what if a woman never finds the right person. Like why should she have to settle for someone who isn’t right for her or she has a better future doing something else? Or what if Allah knows that she’s not the best person for motherhood.” She concluded by saying there is almost “this shaming of women if they don’t follow it and give into that role that they’re supposed to play.” Malak was not alone in her observation regarding the notion that marriage was often articulated as a “compulsory norm” for Muslims (Mahmood 2005, 168).
Fawzi, for example, told me that there is still a lot of pressure amongst Muslim sisters to get married at a young age.125 He described this as being “crazy” because these young women were being “forced” into marriages with young Muslim men they did not know.126 He did not qualify the frequency of these cases but shared the story of a young woman he knew. He explained that her marriage ended badly, and he credited the dissolution of her marriage with prompting her to begin questioning her faith evidenced by her posting messages on Facebook expressing her doubts about the existence of God. In our conversation, I noticed that Fawzi was empathetic towards his friend and felt that the experience she was going through was “sad” and
124 The notion that getting married completes half of one’s dīn is widely circulated among many Muslims. Juliane Hammer explains that this hadith “points to marriage as a significant part of the devotional life of Muslims, while not sacralizing marriage as an institution akin to dominant Christian understandings of marriage as a sacrament” (2015, 37). Recorded interview with Malak, May 2016. 125 In an interview with Karim, we also talked about how young Muslims were “expected, almost like socialized to be married by a certain age” crediting his South Asian heritage with putting pressure on his cousins who have been told they’re getting “old” for marriage. Recorded interview, February 2016. 126 Recorded interview with Fawzi, May 2016.
104 that he hoped she had found happiness. He shared that this was not necessarily a unique phenomenon and that other such examples probably exist.
In recounting this conversation, my objective is not to suggest that all young marriages end badly and that when they do, American Muslim youth shun their religiosity. Irrespective of the frequency and the correlation between subsiding religiosity and divorce, however, it can take only one negative example to leave a lasting impression on the potentially adverse consequences of marrying young.127 The example Fawzi cited was not one that I personally came across in my research. None of the young men and women I spoke with were married during the course of our interviews and none shared an example such as Fawzi’s. With that said, the powerful scope of social media, and the ostensible openness and candidness that people exhibit when using these platforms expose these youth to a broader set of cautionary examples albeit with certain constraints as one never knows the full account of any story.
Lara also qualified the pressure to get married as being “cultural” in the sense that she felt that the discussions around marriage for young Muslim women like herself were fashioned by familial and ethnic expectations. While it would be unfair to suggest that young Muslim men are somehow immune from pressures regarding marriage, I would argue that young Muslim women are further expected to comply with ethnic and familial norms concerning marriage in order to preserve their family’s honor.128 As Lara and I met for our interview, sitting on a bench outside one of her campus’s buildings and admiring the pleasant weather that day, she explained to me that she often turned to her campus chaplain to help her clarify and better understand some of the issues she was having with her family especially around the topic of marriage. In a conversation
127 In our interview, Fawzi also expressed frustration with gendered hierarchies and the fact that women were occasionally treated as “second-class citizens” not only in his family’s country of origin but here in the United States. He confessed that he knew of Muslim brothers who did not want their wives to leave the home, which meant that they were no longer going to work because they felt that Muslim women did not “need” to work. 128 See chapter five in Mir (2014).
105 they had, Lara shared with him that her parents had told her it was their duty to make sure that she was married. Disagreeing with her parents, she explained, “it’s not their duty like do it if you can but if you can’t it’s not a major sin. My dad looks at that like a major sin on his shoulder and
I’m like out of all things, this is the only one you care for.”129 She then explained that in Islam, she had her full right to consent to or reject a marital prospect and that she was not supposed to be “pressured” into it (Smith 1979, 523).130 Lara’s reflection demonstrates her discursive engagement with Islamic edicts and the strategic deployment of them to advocate for her own agency in the matter. Ultimately, Lara was articulating that she had the right to approve the marriage and availed herself of her chaplain’s proficiency in precedents within the Islamic tradition in order to challenge her family’s assumptions.
As we continued to talk, I learned that her conversations with her chaplain about a variety of topics enabled her to come to the conclusion that these cultural expectations were not necessarily “Islamic” and thus, based on my understanding of our discussion, not something she felt obligated to fulfill.131 Once again, chaplains become pivotal sources of temperament for
MSA students as they attempt to reconcile their family’s expectations with their own religious sensibilities. Lara’s understanding of marriage was also tinged by the fact that she was not presented with “positive” examples of successful and happy marriages in her immediate and extended family. She found solace and inspiration in the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to
‘A’isha noting “I want what ‘A’isha and the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) had so it’s like that. I feel that’s where I get it from when I get stuck.” As the conversation progressed, we discussed her
129 Recorded interviews with Lara, May and June 2016. 130 Kecia Ali explains how “[t]he contemporary Muslim authors who affirm women’s freedom from compulsion to marry are not articulating a critique of dominant legal doctrine based on a reinterpretation or reassessment of the importance of “the permission ḥadīth.” Rather, they present the necessity of female consent as if it were an uncontested description of a traditional position” (2004, 283-284). 131 Saba Mahmood’s work on the piety movement in Egypt also draws our attention to the socio-religious expectations regarding marriage (2001b, 218-20).
106 expectations regarding marriage and other examples of marriage outside of her nuclear family.
At this juncture in her life, she disclosed that it would be important for her potential spouse to be a practicing Muslim and did not specify any ethnic or racial preference. Desiring a suitable partner who shares similar religious sensibilities is not uncommon for American Muslim youth.
Moustafa Bayoumi discovered that in his conversation with Muslim youth, “many young
Muslims explained… that marrying a good Muslim of any background was more important to them than marrying someone from their own ethnic or national background” (2010, 169).132
Another example where students argued that their family’s culture influenced marital expectations was in reference to endogamy. Jamila, for example, shared that it was “taboo” in her culture to engage in interracial marriage and relayed a conversation that she had with her father when she was fifteen. At that time, she was driving with him in the car and jokingly told him that she had a crush on a young Arab boy. Her father’s response was “astaghfir Allāh” and
Jamila retorted with, “What’s wrong with marrying someone outside your culture?” Later on, she shared with her parents the “beauty” that manifests when two people from different backgrounds are “coming together just for the sake of love for no other reason but you know coming together for the sake of Islam. Isn’t that beautiful you know what I mean? The only thing, the important thing that they share is Islam and I was telling them that it’s sunna, you know that’s the sunna of the Prophet.” During our conversation, Jamila also shared that she has talked about the issue of interracial marriage with her friends and has encouraged them to have these conversations with their parents early on, fearing that if one were to develop feelings for someone outside of their
132 Zareena Grewal explains how her interlocutors “employ Islam to subvert certain racial values and what they perceive as the restrictive expectations of their ‘cultural’ parents, demonstrating how culture and religion can come to operate in a discursive position” (2009, 341-42).
107 race or ethnicity, they would be devastated when their parents would reject the marital prospect.133
In order to substantiate her argument, Jamila turned to the Prophetic sunna to advocate her point. If it is preferable for a Muslim to incorporate the Prophetic sunna, then marrying outside of one’s background would be considered something favorable, an ideal to emulate and not one to be forgotten at best or rejected at worst. While the Prophet Muhammad did not endorse endogamy, it has historically been common amongst Muslims to do so as it has been perceived to facilitate harmonious marriages and has allowed for “providing a sense of communal accountability and oversight” (Hammer 2015, 38). For students like Jamila, the
“religious model,” which they understand to be rooted in the sunna, supersedes the historical reality of Muslims throughout the centuries. However, Jamila and her Muslim peers are situated in their own historical reality where endogamy is not always easy to maintain, or preferable given American Muslim youth interact with Muslims from various ethnic and racial backgrounds on college campuses, in the workforce, and other social spaces.
Youssef Chouhoud notes that the “mixed marital patterns” taking place in the American
Muslim community “is in line with established trends in other religious and ethnic minority groups in America as they progress generationally” (2010, 20). Juliane Hammer similarly observes that the “emphasis on endogamy has been challenged by the limited availability of suitable spouses within the confines of local communities and on more principled grounds by arguing that Muslims constitute a larger community (ummah) regardless of specific cultural formations” (2015, 38). At the heart of Lara’s and Jamila’s discursive engagements with the
133 In a khuṭba on another campus, I was told by a community member that the khaṭīb discussed racism and the fact that the congregants needed to adopt a more self-reflexive approach to examine their ethnic and racial exclusivity, particularly as it pertains to marriage. He shared that although people may think they are not racist, they might want to consider whether they would accept their child marrying someone from a different racial or ethnic background.
108 Islamic tradition is a “mobilization” that enables them to “differentiate themselves from normative religious behaviors” (O’Brien 2015, 194) that conflict with their historical reality in the United States (Ali 2018, 93), and are not rooted in any religious precedents. Like many second-generation American Muslim youth that I encountered in the field, Jamila supported interracial marriage and discursively engaged with the tradition “in order to challenge ideologies of colour and race, insisting that an individual’s worth is determined by faith and righteousness”
(Grewal 2009, 325). For many of these youth, it was their prospective partner’s piety, not their race or their ethnic background that mattered most to them.
In an interview with Nesma, she explained that after having taken a class on South Asian anthropology and given her own experiences having grown up around many South Asian
American Muslims, she understood how practices deriving from the caste system and other cultural customs have affected members of her community particularly with relation to women who
have had like horrible home lives and it’s like their moms won’t do anything about it either because like they just don’t know that they can do something about it or like they’re afraid of what other people will think of them and this idea of ‘izzat. It’s like the word I can think of. [It means] honor basically… like I have to be honored or I have to save face or stuff like that. It’s just unfair to me.… It’s purely cultural. That’s not how it is in Islam and I guess [my] understanding of Islam that I am growing makes me understand how we’ve like… disassociated Islam from our culture at some points and we’re just making it seem like it is Islam.134
To illustrate her points, Nesma went on to explain how she had witnessed people appropriate weak hadiths from the sunna by recounting an incident that took place in her mosque back home.
She explained that she saw a Muslim woman sobbing and noticed other women in the vicinity inform her that it was permissible for her to divorce her husband .135 The woman responded by
134 Recorded interview with Nesma, April 2016. 135 For literature on divorce in a North American context, see Hammer (2015), Ayubi (2010), and Macfarlane (2012). See also Ali (2004) and Sonbol (1996) for accounts of historical arguments pertaining to divorce.
109 telling them that there is a Qur’anic verse that states, “divorce is the most hated thing by Allah.”
Nesma interjected and said that the verse does not come from the Qur’an to which the woman retorted with “well it’s in a hadith.”136 This exchange prompted Nesma to investigate the particular hadith and upon researching its isnād (chain of transmission) she discovered it was not a “backed up hadith.” She explained, “It was just something I felt so angry about cuz she was going to hold onto this because that was her perception of Islam. This is what she grew up hearing and things like that and it just made me really sad…. I think that was cultural and I was like that is definitely not the thing that Allah hates the most. Shirk is.”137
Nesma was perplexed by the idea that this woman was equating divorce, something permissible in Islam as being “most hated” by God particularly as she points out in our interview, shirk, “is the one sin that cannot be forgiven or taken to the grave” (Chittick 2008,
223). As our conversation continued, I shared how the Prophet Muhammad permitted divorce and she explained that he himself was contemplating divorcing one of his wives and that his own adopted son had gone through a divorce. At that point, Nesma shared that she believed that people should be more educated about the Prophet’s life and the experiences he had gone through.
Speaking About Oneself
This section draws attention to a possibly more subtle but equally significant influence
MSA students felt their parents had on their lives. In my conversations with some students, they relayed how difficult they found it to share their feelings publicly and how they were raised in
136 The hadith appears in Sunan Abu Dawud. It is also important to note that the hadith says that the most “detested” or disliked halal thing is divorce (Vol. 3, Book 7/13, No. 2178, pg.1). 137 Shirk is often defined as polytheism or “associating something with God” (Chittick 2008, 223). See Hawting (2003) for more on shirk.
110 communities that did not necessarily talk about how they felt. Two students in particular, one male and one female, discussed how they felt that “talking about oneself” was uncommon in their cultures.138
When I asked Bariza about some of the memorable ḥalaqāt she attended on her campus, she recounted one where her chaplain was encouraging students to be self-reflexive. During the
ḥalaqa, the chaplain noted that there was a tendency amongst students to not be “able to articulate what their strengths and what their weaknesses are because they… were possibly raised in a community where there wasn’t such an emphasis on love of God and it was more of an emphasis on fear and negativity and that also translated into the way they were potentially raised by their parents and you know this like inability to talk about yourself.”139 These observations resonated with Bariza and she confessed this inability as something that has been a challenge for her because she was immersed in a family and a culture “where it’s not really OK to talk about yourself.” When I asked her to clarify what she meant by talking about herself, and asked if she was referring to having a more open and honest conversation, she went on to qualify honest conversations as being “about your strengths but also about your vulnerabilities… where you stand with certain aspects of your life, what you’re happy about, what you’re not happy about, what your insecurities are about.”140
Another student, Yusuf, talked to me about how his father who was enduring some personal hardships, preferred to remain reclusive and refrained from turning to his family for support. We had a lengthy conversation about how some of his father’s professional choices were affecting his immediate and extended family. In describing his complicated family dynamic
138 See Foucault for a discussion of how “conscience and confession are among the most important of those procedures” involving the knowledge of oneself (1993, 204). 139 Recorded interview with Bariza, March 2016. 140 See Katherine Ewing (2003) for more on identity construction in the diaspora.
111 at the time, Yusuf went on to explain “and it’s part of the culture where he doesn’t really talk about his emotions either so he’ll like listen to you and we’ve talked like countless times now, me, my sister and I, family...”141 In our last interview months later, Yusuf brought up his
“culture” again, this time in a conversation we had about his relationship with the Divine and how he felt “connected” to Allah through his attributes. He expressed this was a difficult thing to achieve and was not commonplace amongst Muslims sharing
I don’t know if it’s more of a South Asian or Indian thing. It seems like the way my parents learned… faith was kind of more in a systematic manner. I think in general how I learn the Qur’an is very much methodical cuz I don’t know what it means but you just learn it and the steps so in that same way, God to an extent, feels like you have to learn him in a certain manner. But, I don’t think the space for personal experience and how maybe like emotions and how you felt a certain way and bringing that back to God, that train of thinking is really there. But it comes from a lack of emotional expression in culture in general… within my family or that sort of thing but that’s just I guess speculation right now…
Yusuf’s argument about a “methodical” learning of the Qur’an will be discussed further in the next section. Here, though, I find it important to situate his reflections within a broader understanding of university campus culture that emphasizes introspection and expression.
Chaplains, such as Yusuf’s, are encouraging MSA students to reflect on their relationship with the Divine and their engagement with religious texts, which establishes an MSA subculture that privileges self-reflexivity. MSA chaplains and the kinds of discourses they present to students resemble the processes many college students experience such as “unlearning” things from their past through forms of deconstruction, self-reflexivity, and analytical inquiry, which subsequently pave the way for them to “learn” new things.
141 Recorded interview with Yusuf, February 2016. Yusuf himself admitted, “I’m just someone who’s very emotionally sensitive so I get emotionally attached.” In spite of his familial upbringing, he was able to nurture his sensitive side and he brought thoughtfulness and vulnerability into our conversations.
112 While I was waiting for a ḥalaqa to begin, I was invited to join a group of female MSA students. As they were eating their lunches and we were sharing suggestions for places to eat in the neighborhood, one young woman discussed a workshop she recently attended on her campus.
She communicated that at one point, the participants were asked to talk about themselves and their backgrounds. Jokingly, she admitted this was something she found difficult to do because she did not know what to disclose and the situation she found herself in was comically uncomfortable. The rest of the women in the circle agreed, nodding their heads.142
The more MSA students I spoke with and the more time I spent in the field, I realized that intimate conversations did not dominate the public MSA space but were rather held in private which I briefly discussed in the previous chapter. In light of my conversations with
Bariza, Yusuf, and the group of female MSA students, as well as my general observations, I would argue that the homes and communities some of these MSA youth grew up in, which were often described as being more reserved, influenced the way they communicated with their peers, the types of conversations they desired, and what elements of themselves they were willing to disclose publicly. In the MSA setting and in their university tenure at large, these youth were confronted with multiple scenarios where they would be engaged in processes that enable them to “author” themselves (Ali 2011), self-reflect, and share their opinions. During these experiences, some of them begin to draw their own conclusions regarding their feelings of discomfort engaging in such processes, and subsequently attribute them to their parents’/culture’s customs.
142 Jennifer Lindholm explains that particularly with respect to religious or spiritual discussions “students often do not feel comfortable “exposing” such aspects of their experience within environments where they are not secure that their perspectives will be heard without judgment and that their sentiments will be respected or, at the very least, will not be ridiculed” (2006, 98).
113 Religious Education
The vast majority of the students I spoke with were involved in some form of religious learning during their early childhood and into their adolescence. The extent to which they developed their religious literacy varied and was dependent upon the communities they grew up in, the sorts of educational opportunities these respective communities allotted them, and their own proclivities. I learned that younger American Muslim communities, for example, possessed fewer resources whereas more established communities with a consistent stream of funds afforded these young Muslims an opportunity to learn Arabic, memorize the Qur’an and partake in classes about Islamic history, as well as fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) pertaining to ritualistic practices such as salat and wuḍū’ (ablutions). Logistics also factored into the educational process. For example, some students explained how far away certain mosques were and how as they got older, their parents did not always feel the need to go to such great lengths to develop their religious literacy. Other students shared that they grew distant from their local mosque communities especially if an imam they had developed a close relationship with left.
Although a minority in the sample I worked with, some of these students were also frustrated by the fact that their parents did not meet their expectations in terms of religious acumen, and qualified their understanding of Islam as “being cultural.” While it would be unfair to imply that my interlocutors believed their parents were engaged in an inferior or possibly
“inauthentic” (Fadil 2017) practice of Islam, it was my understanding that many of them refused to settle for “cultural norms” that they felt were not explicitly derived from religious texts and/or precedents, and made a potentially negative impact on their lives. This questioning of religious matters is not only a symptom of generational discord but is also a byproduct of “emerging adulthood” where some students begin to engage in “questioning, learning more about their own
114 religion, or becoming more spiritual and less focused on organized religion” (Lefkowitz 2005,
59). It also speaks to a larger debate about how we define “religion” in the West and what its
“societal function” is, an issue that other religious minorities have grappled with (Joshi 2016,
251).143
When I asked students about the religious education they received when they were growing up, many of them credited their “cultural background” as being the impetus for the efforts that their parents made. In a conversation with Yusuf, we discussed how he began memorizing the Qur’an at a young age. He explained,
I was about ten or eleven just going [to the mosque]. I think for me because I was so young when I started, it just seemed part of the culture that you would go to the mosque to read Qur’an and there was no questioning about what it is that you’re reading. You just understood the Arabic exists so as I’m thinking about it now it’s not like I ever stopped and was like what is this?
Another student, Samia, credited her cultural background for being the reason that her parents,
“really like made sure we knew how to read Arabic so I had some Arab friends who didn’t know how to read it so they were always surprised like how do you know? You don’t speak Arabic but you can read it so I was able to learn how to write and actually understood something like grammatically.”144 In fact most of the non-Arab students I spoke with were taught to read and write Arabic so that they would be able to read the Qur’an and have some basic proficiency in comprehending it. With that said, the Arab students I spoke with during my research were unlike the ones described by Samia. They too had learned Arabic whether at home or while attending
Sunday school or their Islamic school.145 In a conversation with Jamila, we talked about her memorizing the Qur’an from a young age and how this was very much a part of her experience
143 See Talal Asad’s critique of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and his argument that “universal definitions” of religion “divert us from asking questions about what the definition includes and what it excludes – how, by whom, for what purpose, and so on” (2001, 220). 144 Recorded interview with Samia, October 2015. 145 See Malinovich (2006) and Joseph and Reidel (2008) for more on American Muslim schools.
115 growing up. She shared that memorizing the Qur’an was cultural in the sense that it was about
“pride.” She went on to share, “It’s about oh my kid memorized the Qur’an. My kid is a ḥāfiẓ
(one who has memorized the Qur’an) so it’s just a pride thing. Even when we’re pushed to go to
Qur’an school as kids, it wasn’t because oh you should learn the word of God or you should learn the Qur’an to get closer to God. It was more like you know it would be a shame if my child doesn’t know verses from the Qur’an.”146
I was unsure of what to make of Jamila’s observation that the emphasis on her religious education as a young girl was predicated on cultural pride, when in fact, “[r]eligious study is itself the quintessential act of piety” (Lambek 1990, 29) and “most Muslims regard religious study as a form of worship in its own right” (Hefner 2010, 4). Undoubtedly, this was her experience and her understanding of the religious literacy she acquired at that age. I wanted to probe deeper and so I asked her if there was a beauty or access that you would be getting by being able to recite the words of Allah even as a child.147 My reason for asking her that is because I wanted to verify if the objective for reading the Qur’an was simply cultural, as she argued, or if in fact there could have been perhaps an unintended religious benefit as a result of reciting God’s words (Robinson 2003, 9-14). She disagreed with me and I appreciated her honesty given she could have very well conceded that there is a beauty in reciting the Qur’an.
Instead, she confessed she was not “ever really that conscious as a kid.” Because she was not a native Arabic speaker and because she was not being taught the meaning of the words she was memorizing, she did not feel like she was “into it.”148
146 Recorded interview with Jamila, December 2015. 147 It should be noted that the “culture” Jamila is referring to is her West African Muslim culture. See Ware (2014) for more on memorizing the Qur’an in West Africa. 148 Another student, Yasmine, recounted to me how she did not want to memorize the Qur’an and how her mother in particular would reprimand her if she had not completed her memorization before class. Interestingly enough, Yasmine, a non-native Arabic speaker shared that it was not difficult for her to memorize passages, but she often thought, “Why am I doing this?” Recorded interview, May 2016.
116 Historically, Muslims, from a young age are taught to memorize the Qur’an with memorization being seen as “the first step in mastering the religious sciences (‘ilm)” (Hardaker and Sabki 2013, 347). George Makdisi writes, “[t]he development of the memory is a constant feature of medieval education in Islam. Anecdotes abound regarding those who possessed prodigious memories. Such persons were referred to in the biological works as ‘oceans’ (bahr) of learning, ‘receptacles’ (wi‘a’ pl. au‘iya) of knowledge” (1981, 99). As such, Jamila’s criticism of the process of memorization, as somehow being culturally inscribed is de-historicized from the normative Islamic pedagogical practices that have existed throughout time where ḥifẓ
(memorization) and qirā’a (recitation) are seen as enabling Muslims to “embody” and “retain”
Islamic virtues such as knowledge and “prophecy” (Hardaker and Sabki 2013, 348).149 I would argue that her expectations regarding religious education cannot be divorced from modern understandings of Islamic knowledge whereby “[a]n unintended consequence of making Islam a part of the curriculum is to make it a subject that must be “explained” and “understood””
(Eickelman 1992, 650).
Khadija, another student who was also taught how to read and memorize the Qur’an from a young age felt an “emotional connection” to the Qur’an even though she did not always understand what she was reciting or reading arguing that “there is something powerful about reciting the word of God.”150 Like Jamila, though, she expressed that she wanted to develop a
“relationship” with the Qur’an based on “knowledge, what’s being said, that sort of thing.”
From these students’ reflections, we learn that for some MSA students, embodied knowledge in the form of recitation and memorization needed to be coupled with
“understanding.” This emphasis on “understanding” does signify a shift in some American
149 See Eickelman for more on the importance of memorization in Islamic education (1985, 61-8). 150 Recorded interview with Khadija, November 2015.
117 Muslim pedagogical practices but must also be understood in light of the fact that my interlocutors were students, Muslim students on college campuses that whether or not they wanted to, would be met with having to reckon with their religiosity before their peers, possibly in their classrooms and to themselves, as they were navigating emerging adulthood. As John
O’Brien argues, “[i]n expressing agency, actors suggest that their own efforts bring about religiously normative behavior and that they are not simply mindlessly following religious routine” (2015, 181). By downplaying the merits of their parents’ expectations with respect to religious literacy, these students were challenging normative expectations regarding the type of religious knowledge they should be obtaining. It seemed that they were most concerned with pursuing modes of education that enabled them to exercise more effort in developing a better understanding of the Qur’an.
Another student, Usman, made distinctions between his and his father’s religiosity, particularly when he began attending ḥalaqāt more regularly and his father worried that he was becoming “too religious.” He explained that his father was not that “religious. I think he believes that someone who is like raised in a religious way becomes a good person, but he doesn’t believe you should completely be giving your life to it.”151 While he noted that he thinks his father prays, according to Usman, religion was not a “profound life thing for him.”
The examples in this section draw our attention to the disconnect these students felt when accounting for the religious literacy they acquired when they were growing up. For some students, their religious education was associated with their cultural upbringing, but they did not necessarily find this inherently problematic. For others, there was a suspicion regarding the intention behind pursuing religious education. While a minority, some students in my research were also confronted with the fact that their parents were not always supportive of the religious
151 Recorded interview with Usman, November 2015.
118 education they were pursuing. I should note that the students in this study did not recount any instances where they directly spoke with their parents about their feelings regarding their religious education. Thus, it is difficult to nuance their accounts with the perspectives of their parents who may or may not agree with their characterizations. More research accounting for the perspectives and stakes of multiple generations of American Muslims might better illustrate the complicated dynamics in the generational divide evidenced by these examples and the various ways in which American Muslims of multiple generations engage in the discursive tradition to interrogate and potentially upend practices and beliefs.152
“Culture” in the Home
In conversations with students, they also expressed how they felt culture affected their home lives. In an interview with one student, we discussed the period of his life when he identified as a Salafi. At some point in our conversation, I asked him how his family felt about the change in his religiosity during that time. He shared that there was nothing distinctly Salafi about his outward religiosity such as his praying more. However, he admitted that his condemnation of rituals, while they might have “fallen in line with Islamic tradition,” were a symptom of his once being Salafi. He went on to provide me an example of how on the fifteenth of Sha‘bān (eighth month of the Islamic calendar),
Some people would spend extreme time in worship and I would condemn my mom and my dad for doing that. I remember the worst thing that I ever did which I still regret to this day. It was during Ramadan suḥūr [pre-fasting meal] and my mother, father, and I were having suḥūr. We got into a conversation about prayer and fasting and what not and I called my dad a kafir. I told him, “Listen, you only pray during Ramadan so you’re not
152 Saba Mahmood explains, “[f]or Asad, an engagement with the founding texts of Islam is not limited to scholarly commentaries alone, but entails the practices of ordinary Muslims, such as when an unlettered Muslim invokes the authority of sacred texts to solve a practical problem, or a child argues with a parent about the correct (or incorrect) nature of an Islamic practice” (2005, 116).
119 a Muslim and there is a hadith that the Prophet [Muhammad] says that the difference between the Muslim and the unbelief is the abandonment of prayer so you’re not a Muslim because of that.”153 My mom was just like “How dare you?” My dad just shut down. I still remember the look on his face like he shut down and he frowned and he looked like he was about to cry. I still regret it. I was like 14 or 15 or 16 maybe.154
When this student shared this story with me, I was sympathetic to the internal religious struggles that some Muslim families face when different members adhere to variant understandings of the faith. After this student recalled this incident, I asked him if he had apologized to his parents. He explained that while he did not apologize at the time of the incident, he has since apologized to his parents for the “general behavior” he “exhibited” during that time in his life. Although this student did not specifically employ the word “cultural” to qualify his parents’ practices, my understanding was that he was critical of the religious revival that overcomes Muslims during
Ramadan whose motivations for being consistent in their prayer or elevating their worship are perceived as being incongruous with their daily affairs that do not necessarily adhere to Islamic prescriptions.
Another student, Rabia, when asked if she could clarify the relationship between culture and Islam, brought up an example from what she considered to be her father’s South Asian
Muslim culture. She explained that her father believed in a pir, whom she described as “some weird like priest people in Pakistan who apparently have a better connection to God.” When I asked if she was referring to Sufism, she said, “no not Sufism. It was kind of like I guess like you know middle-aged priests like when you… had to pay them to pray to God for you or something.” She clarified that what her father was practicing was not Sufism and that she was familiar with Sufism because she had a family friend who was Sufi. She explained that he brought her family to a shrine/museum in the United States, describing the experience as being
153 This student is referencing the following hadith, “Between a man and shirk and kufr, there stands his giving up the salat” (Sahih Muslim, Vol. 1, Book 1, No. 82, pg. 170). 154 Recorded interview with student, December 2016.
120 one of the strangest things she had ever seen.155 Ultimately, the point I gleaned from this conversation was not Rabia’s familiarity with accurately categorizing Islamic practices, which even academics struggle with, but the fact that she rebuked what she perceived to be her father’s cultural practices and that she did not believe there should be any intercessor between one and
God. This became clear to me as the conversation progressed and she shared, “In Islam, however, we all know that what makes Islam different is that we have a direct relationship with
God through du‘ā’ and prayer.” Moreover, Rabia’s story is indicative of a trend amongst the children of ethnic and religious minorities to question the origin of their parents’ practices, particularly if they feel these practices “did not belong to any clear-cut institutionalized religion”
(Jeung 2012, 206).
Not all of the students I spoke to shared distaste for what could be qualified as Sufi rituals or Sufism in general. Some of the MSA students and young working professionals I encountered in the field travelled abroad to study Qur’an or other forms of religious education with Sufi shaykhs. As such, I found the general attitude towards Sufism, or at least Sufi “thought” to be much more positive. What became more contentious or difficult for students was how to address particular practices they associated with Sufism such as whether dhikr was permissible and what kinds of dhikr would be permissible (e.g. silent). Omar and Bariza for example hailed from families with Sufi lineages and when they travelled to their parents’ home countries, India and
Pakistan, they visited their family’s shrines and became more knowledgeable about their families’ backgrounds. Omar for example, shared that he came from a “South Asian sort of Sufi like quasi Sufi tradition” with relatives who travelled to “honor the tombs and shrines of the saints.”156 Omar’s understanding of shrine visitation was nuanced. On the one hand, he admitted
155 Recorded interview with Rabia, January 2016. 156 Recorded interview with Omar, May 2016.
121 that he respected aspects of these traditions, implying a connection to his family’s history. At the same time, he disconnected himself from these practices, expressing that he did not feel such rituals “spoke” to him on a spiritual level. In John O’Brien’s discussion of religious individualism, he questions how “discursive work [can] vary in form and content” with respect to “local understandings of family” (2015, 195). Omar’s straddling both deference and independence from his family’s practices represents how some American Muslim youth maintain a sense of religious individualism which is predicated on respecting their families’ customs while also choosing to distance themselves from practices that do not satisfy their religious sensibilities. As Omar ultimately argued, “I do think it’s wrong to worship the saints or like worship the tomb but that’s just my personal belief.” Here, Omar framed his conclusion about this form of worship in terms of his own beliefs rather than articulate a conclusive statement about its permissibility. Afterwards, Omar asked me if I was familiar with shrine visitation and I told him I was, explaining that similar places exit in Egypt. I recall thinking to myself that perhaps Omar was trying to gauge my own level of comfort regarding a practice that occasionally draws controversy amongst some American Muslim communities who consider it bid‘a (innovation), something that Omar himself was familiar with.157
Bariza, on the other hand, grew up knowing that her family identified as being Sufi. She recalled an instance when she was in Sunday school and was learning about the different
“branches” of Islam. The discussion prompted her to ask her parents what her family was and they informed her, “well technically we’re Sunni but really we’re Sufi.”158 In our conversation,
Bariza appeared proud of her family lineage but recognized that people have become more
“conservative” regarding their understandings of Sufism and that these stances were derivative of
157 See Ibn Taymiyah (1999) for more on the condemnation of shrine visitation. 158 Recorded interview with Bariza, March 2016.
122 politics.159 She herself did not shun these practices and even accompanied her cousin who attended dhikr circles but she felt that the community her cousin was a part of was very insular.
While she described the community as being “interesting,” she found it difficult to connect with them especially since many of them had established friendships and were older than her. In my conversations with both Omar and Bariza, I learned that some students, while not necessarily maintaining their family’s practices, found beauty and even pride in their family’s religious genealogies.
Ethnic and Racial Homogeneity
Another issue that seems to be at stake for the younger generation of American Muslims is correcting the tendency amongst those from their parents’ generation who practiced what
Sylvia Chan-Malik describes as “ethnic particularism.” She writes,
Indeed, the majority of immigrant Muslims in the contemporary era are not interested in “passing” as whites nor assimilating wholesale into Western American cultural norms; it is precisely their desire to maintain close ties with their particular ethno-religious community (not whites), and their belief in the legitimacy of their own cultural-religious norms (not those of whites) that has led to those communities to, in many cases so callously, shun Black American participation in mosques and other religious endeavors. (2011, 35)160
Radical shifts in the American Muslim community occurred post-1965 when a new influx of highly educated immigrants who “often presented themselves as the voice of authentic Islam”
(Curtis 2013, 19) rose to the ranks of leadership positions in various immigrant Muslim
159 The framing of these practices as being “cultural” is derivative of a larger “strategy for criticizing many Sufi practices, which are frequently framed as corruptions of Islam through cultural contamination” (Ewing 2015, 204). Karen Leonard also notes how Sufism “has been increasingly attacked and marginalized in the United States by the post-1965 immigrant professionals” (2003, 21). 160 See also Bald (2013) for a rich historical discussion of Bengali immigrants to the United States between the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. He writes, “[t]he stories of this hidden life of Harlem also make one thing certain: it is impossible to find the “South Asian America” of the pre-1965 era as if it were a neatly delineated ethnic neighborhood, with clear borders and clearly marked signs; this South Asian America was and continues to be embedded within other Americas, within Puerto Rican America, Afro-Caribbean America, and African America” (2013, 192).
123 communities (Jackson 2005; Karim 2009). This immigration wave introduced new racial, ethnic, and class hierarchies among existing American Muslim communities, which determined where and with whom American Muslims should be interacting and establishing their institutional roots. According to Jamillah Karim, “[t]his difference in residential options captures the power structures of class in the American ummah. Patterns of residence in the larger society limit the possibilities for interethnic solidarity in the American ummah” (2009, 39).161
Such historical shifts influenced the demographic composition of the communities my interlocutors grew up in, most of whom socialized with Muslims of their ethnic background.
However, some of these students such as Nesma, Samia, Rabia, Yasir, and Seif grew up in more ethnically and racially diverse Muslim communities that were comprised of Black, Arab, and
South Asian Muslims, converts, as well as Muslims from other backgrounds in their suburban and urban neighborhoods in the northeastern, southern, and western regions of the United States.
Samia and Rabia noted how open their community was to the non-Muslim youth in their urban neighborhood, which led some of their Black and white friends to convert to Islam. Yasir expressed how the first time he met a Mexican Muslim was at his Sunday school, which was predominantly run by Bengali teachers but was open to Muslims of all backgrounds in his urban and ethnically and racially diverse neighborhood. Another student, Dina noticed that the suburban Muslim community she grew up in has become increasingly diverse since she moved away for college and expressed appreciation for these changes.
Many of the students and chaplains I worked with emphasized the need for inclusivity and a combatting of intracommunal racism, framing their discussions by drawing on the
161 Karim explains how “[c]lass functions as social leverage enabling nonwhite immigrants to assimilate into white communities despite their brown, black, or yellow skin. It is these intersections of race, class, and national origin that make possible the notion of a model minority. In other words, high income and education allow the immigrant status to be preferable to that of America’s native poor or America’s most racially oppressed group” (2009, 40).
124 Prophetic sunna.162 While religiously rooting this discussion complements the general tendency for MSA discourses to be engaging with Islamic precedents, it is also important to connect this push for more ethnic and racial inclusivity to the fact that the history of Islam in America is not an immigrant experience or import. Black Muslims comprise twenty percent (Mohamed and
Diamant 2019) of the American Muslim population and have been at the cornerstone of establishing Muslim institutions in the United States and transmitting the Islamic tradition
(Jackson 2005; Grewal 2013, 81-124; Howell 2013, 2014, 174-214). As Sherman Jackson writes,
“Blackamericans had established their relationship with Islam independent of and long before the post-1965 immigrant wave. This relationship went back, in fact, to the beginning of the twentieth century and the proto-Islamic movements of Noble Drew Ai and, especially, the Honorable
Elijah Muhammad” (2005, 4-5). The erasure of Black Muslims from the broader American
Muslim narrative and experience (Abdul Khabeer 2016) will be discussed further in chapter five but here I want to illustrate that racial and ethnic exclusivity was something that many of my interlocutors took seriously, condemned during our interviews as well as informal conversations in the MSA space, and worked to combat through their racial justice work on campus.
The majority of my interlocutors were born in the 1990s, “a particularly divisive decade for mosqued Muslims, as communities fractured along sectarian and ideological differences and split across growing ethnic and racial and class conflicts” (Grewal 2013, 158). During my research, I learned that some MSA students were vocally critical of what they observed in their mosque communities growing up, crediting their “cultural backgrounds” as being responsible for some of these isolationist attitudes. They also discussed their local mosques’ boards and the inequitable hierarchies they observed based on race, ethnicity, gender, and class or as Fawzi
162 See Louise Cainkar who discusses how young Muslims in the United States are in “search for commonality” with other Muslims (2014, 618-619).
125 described it, “imams going crazy with power.” As such, my interlocutors had varying experiences in their local mosque communities. However, the overwhelmingly vast majority of them, when asked about diversity and inclusivity were able to offer concrete examples and observations, which I would argue is a testament to the fact that questions surrounding race and ethnicity mattered to them, not only during their MSA tenure but before it as well and are thus an important dimension in how they came to understand their own experiences of Islam in America.
One student, for example, explained to me how he believed his Muslim community was
“very secluded. We do our own thing. That’s how they are. It’s really weird and I don’t think it’s a good thing to be honest. I think it’s toxic. I see now slowly the [ethnic] community is like engaging in other events.”163 The student was referring to an annual charity fundraiser that his community avoided participating in and how he recently saw the event being advertised at the local masjid. He suspected that the flyer was posted by younger community members but still noted the fact that progress had been made and that perhaps his community was “slowly breaking those barriers.” Another student was also critical of what she perceived to be the isolationist nature of her local Muslim community. She shared an incident when she attended the grand opening of a nearby masjid explaining that when she opened the doors, she saw a
“humungous [national] flag on the wall and it angered [her] so much.” She credited nationalism for the reason behind the display of such a symbol and proceeded to explain, “I guess one of the reasons why I liked MSA so much was that even though there were a lot of Desi people, it was still the idea of like hey, you know, the main connection is that we’re Muslim.”164
Both of these students were heavily involved in their MSAs and appreciated the diverse makeup of Arab, South Asian, Black, and white Muslims that existed in these spaces especially
163 Recorded interview with student, October 2016. 164 Recorded interview with student, August 2016.
126 given they were raised in seemingly insular communities that did not co-mingle with Muslims of other ethnic and racial backgrounds. I found that most MSA students generally appreciated the ethnic and racial diversity that comprised the MSA communities on their campuses and they worked to foster a communal solidarity that was premised on a unified religious identity rather than an ethnic or racial one. However, as will be discussed further in this dissertation, some
MSA students felt there was more work to be done regarding the combatting of racism in MSA spaces.
Is All “Culture” Bad?
After mulling over the religion/culture divide these young men and women shared with me, I wondered if they felt that everything they deemed “cultural” should be discarded. While pondering over this, I was reminded of what I had read in an anthropology essay: “taking our interlocutors seriously means accepting them as sources of knowledge and as theorists in their own right, whose visions can critically interrogate, unsettle, and remake–and not only confirm– our own understandings and theorizations of the world” (Fadil and Fernando 2015, 82). This transfer of power to the young Muslims I spoke with was an important exchange to be made. It enabled these students to assert on their own terms what they deemed problematic about
“culture.” In retrospect, I could have challenged a student to consider whether Islam has ever been practiced in an acultural way historically, but I realized that these distinctions had become a part of their vernacular and something they had grown accustomed to making. My objective at the time was to determine, if at all, whether or not students could articulate to me what their delineation between religion and culture enabled them to achieve in their American Muslim context.
127 Not everything that would be considered “cultural” was a point of contention that they had to reconcile, and I never challenged them on these points during our interviews. For example, I witnessed both female and male students wear ethnic clothing during social gatherings and celebrations such as the annual Eid prayers and banquets hosted on their college campuses. I learned in my interviews that for International Day during their high school years, students would bring ethnic food to represent Islam. The examples above demonstrate that with respect to food and clothing, the students generally did not take issue with its origins or the implications in associating these cultural markers with “Islam.”
When I spoke with Khadija about her West African background and whether she could qualify her understanding of Islam in cultural terms, she explained, “I think perhaps there’s…sort of like traditions that have been passed down and I think obviously in Islam your culture influences a lot, like your religious practices; prayer and stuff but other things that go on it’s really based on the cultural framework that you’re from.”165 Having been immersed in environments where her ethnic background was the majority and in other spaces where it had been the minority, Khadija enjoyed both an embracing and suppressing of certain “cultural” norms. While she did not specify anything “cultural” per se with respect to the actual act of praying, she noted that in her culture, prayer is not referred to as namaz, which is the term employed in many MSA circles because of the heavy concentration of South Asian Muslims. An even-tempered and insightful young woman, Khadija described her experiences as being a
“struggle” and that with respect to language, food, and even certain celebrations, different environments had privileged certain cultural frameworks over others enabling certain practices or vocabularies to become “normalized.” At one point I asked her if she would be willing to
165 Recorded interview with Khadija, May 2016.
128 educate others about the cultural frame of references that she had grown accustomed to. While she did not resist such a possibility, she expressed how “awkward” it would be.
Another student, Nesma, noted,
But also, culture is really important and I think culture can have some really beautiful additions to Islam but it’s not about changing the theology. It’s about changing some maybe some practices not practices but coloring some practices. Islam is like a clear river that flows over rocks and you can see through rocks but there is this clear force around it and it’s not changing or altering anything about the rocks. It’s just like a reflection of something beautiful on top right? I think that’s kind of how culture and Islam are like the ways people celebrate Eid are different all over the world, the way you dress for going to Eid or going to jum‘a or going to anything.166
The characterization Nesma provided is what Marcia Hermansen describes as ““Islam above culture” in its traditionalist form,” which “allow[s] for religious pluralism and acknowledges that some good elements exist in cultures, both Islamic and non-Muslim” (2009, 191).167 As Nesma admitted, there were “beautiful” elements of the “cultural” practices of Islam. For her, what was important was that these “cultural” elements did not interfere with theology, however loosely defined that was.
In a conversation with a university chaplain, I brought up the distinction students made between religion and culture. Unlike some of the other chaplains I had worked with, I noticed that he did not explicitly denounce the Sunday school curriculum many of these students grew up with, nor did he vocally criticize “tradition” or the “cultural” practices Muslims maintained. As we were sitting in his office one afternoon, I asked him if he found that his students made a distinction between religion and culture. He responded by explaining that some of the people he has come across consider themselves to be “acultural” and that for young Muslims, they would have to “sacrifice [their] Americanness as much as [they] expect [their] parents to sacrifice their
166 Recorded interview with Nesma, April 2016. 167 Hermansen also writes, “but it may also simultaneously adopt a paradoxical or even “against culture” position in relation to secular or materialistic norms” (2009, 191).
129 Egyptianness or their Pakistaniness” a feat that would be difficult for them to overcome.168 Our conversation was refreshing and I felt that we were both amused by some of the observations we had both made about this prevalent tendency amongst MSA students. Admittedly, it was comforting to have someone affirm the immense difficulty in drawing a clean separation between religion and culture because at many times during this research, I felt I was the only one who shared that sentiment. As the chaplain continued, he expressed how he wanted “people to realize how much their culture impacts them, however they would describe their culture but to not imagine themselves as somehow floating above culture or that somehow they can totally separate religion from culture.”169
As our conversation progressed, the chaplain explained why he felt students gravitated towards this distinction crediting rebellion, generational battles and the struggles of young people, particularly Muslim youth who are in the pursuit of “owning” their religion and leading authentic lives.170 This striving for authenticity and ownership resembles trends in American religiosity and modernity where the individual is “not first identified by [their] family and town and ancestral occupation” (Ammerman 2006, 40) but rather the individual develops an
“internalized meaning system” that is constitutive of elements they have “chosen” for themselves
(ibid.). For American Muslims, that becomes even more complicated as they battle Islamophobic stereotypes consistently casting them as the “other” (Ali and Bagheri 2009, 49-50). The chaplain also noted how difficult it would be to extrapolate the “cultural” from the “religious” because,
“it’s not as easy as saying like if there is something for which there is a textual proof then it’s
168 Recorded interview with chaplain, February 2016. 169 Nahid Kabir for example writes about how second-generation people are “less ambivalent” about their new home countries (2013, 3). See especially chapter two. Sirin and Fine’s (2008) research demonstrates the many ways American Muslim youth are adopting hyphenated identities. 170 Kabir discusses the scholarly distinction between the “collectivistic” and the “individualistic” self, noting that “it is important to recognize that these cultural models are only tendencies, and it is entirely possible for an individual to embrace both an individualistic and a collectivistic stance as precursors to acquiring bicultural skills” (2013, 43).
130 religious as opposed to cultural because even sometimes religious textual proof might be like you have to know the culture from which our texts come you know?”
Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, a prominent American Muslim figure explains that amongst many American Muslims, culture “is a loaded word, something dangerous, inherently problematic and “un-Islamic” (a deeply ingratiated Islamist neologism)” (2006, 372). Abd-
Allah’s reflection characterizes the impression I was given by the MSA students I spoke with.
However, I would argue that much of these students’ reflections are not strictly about their parents’ “culture” but also demonstrate how they envisioned experiencing Islam in America as something meaningful, inclusive, autonomous, and was not predicated on inherited customs and norms from their parents’ generation. In many ways, whether they would articulate this or not, they were describing an “American Muslim” culture. By an American Islam, I am referring to the discourses, put simply, the kinds of conversations and questions these students asked of themselves, their chaplains, and each other when determining how they should lead religiously fulfilled lives.
American “Exceptional” Islam
The idea that “Islam” could be practiced in an unadulterated fashion and that it was
Muslims who were tainting pure religious beliefs in favor of their own cultural proclivities is an easy argument to make. First, one does not have to seriously interrogate whether Islam has always manifested itself “culturally” or whether juridical interpretations or cultural norms derivative of elements of the sunna might conflict with a modern worldview.171 Second, the
171 According to Scourfield et al.’s work on Muslims in Europe, “[i]t is notable that parents did not criticize Islam itself. They might be self-critical or critical of mosques or groups of Muslims, but not critical of the faith itself. There was a general view that a true Islam is beyond reproach and any problems that are caused by Muslims are due to people straying from the true faith or confusing religion with culture” (2013, 86).
131 scapegoat becomes a concept larger than individual people as it is “culture” that is importing problematic elements that must be expunged. As Jamillah Karim notes,
South Asian and Arab immigrants to the United States reproduce Muslim culture, they modify cultural symbols, they invent meaning and value, and they imagine new possibilities.… When Islam travels, new questions are asked and new forms of knowledge and practice are produced. For many immigrant Muslims, this travel of Muslim identity brings about the discovery of “true” Islam.” (2010, 116)
In an interview with Seif, we discussed how one could distinguish between culture and religion. He explained to me that the distinction, for him, was pretty simple and that he was concerned with where one derives the justification for their beliefs. Seif shared that for him, religion depended upon a contextual study of the Qur’an and hadiths as opposed to relying on what an aunt, uncle, or imam was touting.172 What I gathered from our conversation was that
“religion” was predicated on turning to sacred texts and contextualizing their message. A
“cultural” understanding involved blindly accepting arguments even those potentially made by imams. Our conversation digressed into the legitimacy of hadiths and I asked him to clarify how he understood the appropriation of hadiths. He responded by explaining, “I mean whatever makes me a better person is usually the basis for which I operate under and if this hadith makes me a better person and if it changes some sort of aspect of my life or kind of influences one of my habits for the better, then it’s usually pretty easy for me to do it.” This self-reflexive response directed my attention to a particular epistemology that was often stressed in MSA ḥalaqāt; students were urged to improve their state of īmān through self-reflexive processes that enabled them to be God-conscious in all of their daily affairs. Given an emphasis on self-reflexivity, what might be considered beneficial for one student might vary markedly for another. I responded with a follow-up question asking Seif about the rubric or benchmark he referred to in order to
172 Recorded interview with Seif, November 2016.
132 define what was “good.” Appearing stumped, he confessed this was a “deep philosophical” question but explained “I mean usually some of the questions I ask [are] like does it make me kinder or nicer?” and then he half-jokingly asked “do I have to define what kinder and nicer
[are]?”
In their interviews with South Asian American Muslim women, R. Stephen Warner, Elise
Martel, and Rhonda Dugan (2016) illustrate how these women distinguish between “religion” and “culture.” The authors note, “[a]ny negatives attributed to Islam were due to ignorance on the part of the observer, not to the essence of the religion.… “Religion” pertains to what is cosmopolitan, enlightened and conducive to autonomy. Whatever is parochial, benighted, or driven by obsequiousness to public opinion is attributed to “culture”” (2016, 50). This observation draws our attention to the fact that “religion,” as understood by these youth, requires a deliberate and conscious engagement with religious tenets and practices. An understanding that is imitative or devoid of a sincere engagement is relegated to culture. When these youth enter university and learn that there are ikhtilāfāt (differences of opinion) amongst the fuqahā’
(jurists), or that there exists a plenitude of tafāsīr of particular passages in the Qur’an, many of them are left bereft and frustrated with the seeming indoctrination they had endured throughout their upbringings. Couple that with the university environment that values inquiry and an engagement with a diversity of opinions leaves these youth yearning for a deeper engagement with and justification of Islamic beliefs and practices. Moreover, their parents’ or their local
Muslim community’s religious leaders’ inability to satisfactorily address their theological queries, with answers that are rooted in “religious” precedent rather than the norms that are associated with a particular cultural heritage, leaves these youth disgruntled. I often found them
133 desiring nuanced explanations that provide them with the multiplicity of Islamic interpretations, and responses that could assist them as they navigated their current struggles.
Embracing the diversity of opinions within the Islamic discursive tradition enables these youth to articulate an American Muslim ethos that is rooted in inclusivity, tolerance, and plurality and is refracted through race, citizenship, gender, authority, and approaches to Islamic epistemology that are inextricably linked to variant religious geographies and genealogies. For example, Amira shared, “What I’ve learned in college is that Muslims, that Islam in America isn’t just Islam manifesting itself in a different country. It’s very much a culture into itself.” She went on to explain that “It becomes this sort of distinct culture that’s not just you know?… There are things that define it in terms of how people dress, how people act.”173 Zaid echoed similar sentiments when I shared with him that secondary literature suggests that American Muslim youth are seeking a “pure Islam” (Bilici 2012, 117; Mandaville 2001, 122) and that I was wondering if first such a thing could exist and second if he believed that his peers were projecting an American Islam. He explained that his views had evolved over time and that he no longer believed there was a pure Islam because inevitably “all practices of Islam are influenced or filtered through a certain prism or a certain lens shaped by the sociocultural atmosphere.”
While he was reticent to qualify Islam in America as an American Islam because the phrase denoted a form of “American hegemony or superiority, exceptionalism” he admitted, “I don’t know if I would call it an American Islam but there is certainly a Muslim identity that is unique and different from an identity in [a Muslim-majority country].”174 He continued to explain,
173 Recorded interview with Amira, December 2015. 174 Zareena Grewal describes American Muslim exceptionalism as denoting that Muslims in America “are culturally distinct from (unlike, different from) the global umma as well as being morally distinct from (superior than) the global umma” and that it “fuses a Muslim American excellence and exemplarity, and, importantly this discourse of an exceptional American umma is profoundly depoliticized” (2013, 339). In addition, Grewal notes how this discourse is a rupture from the “global, panethnic, and politically radical moral visions” of American Muslims such as Malcom X among others (ibid.).
134 “there is a unique and authentic Muslim identity here that we have relating to our practice.”175 As our conversation continued, I admitted that I was still processing this idea of an American Islam.
This portion of our conversation ended with him suggesting that maybe the term should be
“American islam” with a lowercase i. I proposed that maybe it should be “American islam(s).”
Jokingly, he responded with “we’re getting very academic now.”
Omar also explained to me that during his university tenure, his views regarding Islam in
America changed sharing,
When I came to [name of university], I think that was big for me. Discovering that there is an American version of Islam that is valid and exists and that I can practice and meeting my chaplain who was born and raised in America and going to Muslim conferences since I was a freshman and then meeting all of these Muslims my age who are more or less born and/or raised in America like that was huge for me. I just needed to see that there is this community that exists here that is rooted here and then I would call it immigrant Islam versus American Islam and maybe that dichotomy is problematic. But in a sense like growing up ,I only had an immigrant notion of Islam.176
For many of these youth, critiquing their parents’ “cultural” norms encouraged them to discursively engage with the Islamic tradition and afforded them a sense of autonomy as they distanced themselves from beliefs and practices that did not complement their religious sensibilities. Moreover, such distancing united MSA students who worked at collectively sharing a religious identity that was devoid of the cultural politics of appropriation and ethnic exclusion, as some of the examples in this chapter have demonstrated. The collective sensibilities these youth share will become more apparent in the following chapters pertaining to the influence of their chaplains and the rhetoric employed in the ḥalaqāt on their campuses. As such, the conversations surrounding culture that students had with me, their chaplains, their peers, and their parents signify an important rite of passage for American Muslims and people in general who are “struggling to disentangle their competing identities in the face of intertwined local,
175 Recorded interview with Zaid, May 2016. 176 Recorded interview with Omar, April 2016.
135 national and transnational forces” (Brodeur 2010, 81-82).
Conclusion
Adeline Masquelier and Benjamin Soares argue “the generational awareness among young Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 has triggered a wide range of questioning, experimentation, processes of self-fashioning, and, occasionally, protests” (2016, 2). Garbi
Schmidt’s research also attends to the “owning” of one’s religious identity writing that when
Muslim youth “state that their practice of Islam is not forced on them by parents and kin, but based on the personal conviction that this religion prescribes guidelines for the most attractive lifestyle, they minimize the risk of critique” (2004a, 35).
The notion of practicing an inherited religion does not afford these students agency and compels them to question whether they are “sincerely” and “voluntarily” practicing Islam. The more I delved into the delineation between religion and culture in my conversations with students and in my observations of the ḥalaqāt, the more I realized this differentiation offered them pragmatic solutions and was not simply an aspirational ideal these youth were striving for.
It was functional in that it enabled students to decide for themselves what it meant to be an
American Muslim, and that it did not extend to every practice or belief adopted by their parents.
The discursive MSA space also facilitated conversations and realizations that enabled these youth to confront some of the practices and beliefs they were uncomfortable with and to reify how they wanted to experience Islam. In part, due to their interactions with chaplains, religious figures, and the teachings imparted in their ḥalaqāt, some of these MSA students became more emboldened as they deconstructed the “cultural” practices of their parents’ generation. These conversations and teachings greatly influenced these youth as they began to
136 realize they were free to take distance from certain familial expectations and that they were not religiously obligated to satisfy all of their parents’ requests. In addition, discarding the cultural baggage of their parents’ generation enabled them to enact a sense of religious individualism as they discursively engaged with the Islamic tradition and began to more deeply consider and define what satisfied their own religious sensibilities and experiences as American Muslims.
137 Chapter 3
Righteous Guides: Muslim Chaplains and Celebrity Shaykhs
Initially, the role of the Muslim chaplain on college campuses did not figure as a main protagonist during my fieldwork. Because I intended to work on American Muslim MSA students, it seemed natural that the majority of my observations and interviews would center on their life narratives, their experiences, and their viewpoints. However, as I began spending more time in the field, I soon recognized that the Muslim chaplains on these college campuses were not ancillary characters but were vital figures in shaping the discursive MSA space. Not only were they the gateway to my accessing these students, they also embodied the prototype of a trustworthy and knowledgeable older and wiser Muslim figurehead as I learned that they were formative sources of guidance for MSA youth as they navigated the discursive MSA space.
Along with chaplains, American Muslim youth are exposed to a broader sector of trans- local American Muslim figureheads as their MSA boards invite these individuals to speak to their peers about religious topics. These figures have been described as “celebrity shaykhs” for their mass appeal amongst American Muslims who flock to hear them speak live or listen to their teachings online. While students do not feel pressured or obligated to adhere to or entertain the teachings of these celebrity shaykhs, many of them do and their reasons for drawing on these individuals’ teachings offer us insight into the religious rhetoric and style that appeases these students’ religious sensibilities.
This chapter will begin by providing a brief overview of Muslim authority in the West. It will then move on to a discussion of the professionalization of chaplaincy in the West and in the
American Muslim community, and will then describe the chaplains I worked with based on my observations and those made by the students I spoke with. Specifically, this chapter analyzes the
138 chaplains’ demeanors, their manner of speaking, and their standing as pastoral care providers and spiritual guides. By sharing students’ reflections and experiences while engaging with their
Muslim chaplains, this chapter provides concrete examples of the myriad responsibilities, expectations, and the indelible impact these chaplains have on inspiring these youth to lead more spiritually fulfilled and self-assured lives. Lastly, it will discuss the “celebrity shaykh” culture that has surfaced amongst the American Muslim community by analyzing the appeal of figures who have become notably popular amongst American Muslim youth.177
Muslim Authority in the United States
In academia and in mainstream lay discourse, the question of who speaks on behalf of
American Muslims and who maintains authority over them has been a long contested issue.
What can be more generally agreed upon is that certain shifts in the American Muslim landscape and in the world178 have shaped the ways various forms of religious authority are dispensed and the expectations that Muslim communities have of religious leaders.179 In some American
Muslim communities, a sense of suspicion or dislike is usually directed towards older, imported
‘ulama’ from abroad who work in local community mosques, or Islamic centers and who fail to understand “local conditions and circumstances” (DeLorenzo 2000, 66).180 Thus, what can be deduced is that in the American Muslim landscape, the success and appeal of religious figures is
177 The phrase “celebrity shaykh” is one that has become increasingly popular in describing the “rock star” status (Leonard 2005, 16) appeal of religious figures. 178 See Abou El Fadl (2001a, 2001b), March (2007), El-Affendi (2009), Robinson (2009), and Zaman (2002). For example, A. Kevin Reinhart notes that amongst some Muslims there is a “distrust of the professionally religious” who are “mostly perceived (outside of the Shi‘a realm) as remote and bureaucratized figures” (2010, 99-100). Thus, the characterizations of these ‘ulama’ amongst the laity, according to Reinhart, are often negative as they are considered to be “foreign, irrelevant, or just ignorant” (2010, 100). 179 See chapter one in Abdo (2006) and chapter two in Barrett (2007). 180 Importing traditional authority reflects how Muslims in the West are attempting “to do away with the circularity of dependence on traditional religious authorities abroad and thereby overcome the limitations of tradition” (El- Affendi 2009, 26). However, criticisms are drawn when those imported imams are supplanting beliefs from their respective home countries.
139 dependent on their ability to respond to the queries and plights affecting the local Muslim communities they are working with.
In the American Muslim community, as elsewhere in the world, there is ample competition regarding the sources one should turn to in their pursuit of religious knowledge.181
The collapsing of institutionalized Islamic authority worldwide has led to a “‘Protestantization’ of Islam,” which denotes “the deconstruction of traditional religious authority, and has placed the right to interpret the Qur’an and offer ‘opinions’ into the hands of the laity” (Grafton 2009, 262).
In addition, “rapidly developing access to new media such as Islamic websites that post
‘authoritative’ information about Islam and its teachers has created a shifting terrain of religious authority and intense debates about what is true Islam” (Ewing 2015, 215). Saminaz Zaman argues by employing various mediums to obtain knowledge including the Internet enables
American Muslims “to fashion a religious identity based on a hermeneutic approach” (2008,
465-466) with “religious interpretation … [becoming] de-territorialized and increasingly negotiated with the help of transnational personalities or online resources” (2008, 468).
In MSA communities, student group websites, YouTube videos,182 podcasts, Facebook,
Snapchat, Instagram and other online platforms comprise the various mediums American
Muslim youth frequent in order to access religious figures and their teachings from various parts of the world.183 Dale Eickelman explains that the expansive scope of mass media and the
181 Muhammad Qasim Zaman explains “modern communication and information technologies or mass higher education have not necessarily curtailed the influence of the traditionally educated religious scholars; in fact, the ‘ulamā’ have often adapted their religio-political roles to changing times and challenges in ways that have made possible a new visibility for them in the public sphere” (2006, 176). Dale Eickelman also notes “no one group or type of leader in contemporary Muslim societies possesses a monopoly on the management of the sacred” (2009, 25). See also Krämer and Schmidtke (2006), and Meijer (2013) for more on the authority that the ‘ulama’ have historically maintained with regard to the interpretation of religious scripture and the transference of this knowledge. 182 Charles Hirschkind explains, “[t]hese patterns of online sociability do not reflect some fixed or doctrinal model of Islamic devotion but are an attempt by contemporary Muslims to extend and sustain Islamic ethical and aesthetic traditions within the technologically structured architecture of this mass media form” (2012, 18). 183 See Bunt (2009), Sands (2010), and Varisco (2010).
140 emergence of new religious figures “feeds into new senses of a public space that is discursive, performative, and participative, and not confined to formal institutions recognized by state authorities” (2009, 25). What ensues, then, is that the lay individual has a much more vested and participative stake in the consumption of religious education and the relationship between teacher and student is reciprocal and intertwined given the vast field of transnational figures who are competing online and in person.184 Religious figures depend on the laity to preserve and extend their authoritative position by “consuming” the religious education they are imparting as do the laity rely on these figures for religious guidance. Such a dynamic reflects what Robert
Wuthnow describes as “spiritual shopping,” which “involves trying out new things, considering whether or not they fit one’s lifestyle and piecing together beliefs and practices from a variety of traditions” (2007, 107-108). While my interlocutors did not, to my knowledge, draw on elements from different faith traditions, they did select teachings from different American Muslim figures by adopting certain principles and discarding others. Essentially, there appeared to be no compulsion to follow a particular figure. Such developments are manifestations of a decades long trend in which Islamic learning has been “democratized” (Zaman 2008, 469-470) and where interpretive authority is no longer solely relegated to “orthodox Islamically educated jurists or mujtahids” (Meijer 2013, 54). Rather, what has emerged is the “reintellectualization” of “Islamic doctrine and discourse in accessible, vernacular terms, even if this contributes to basic reconfigurations of doctrine and practice” (Eickelman and Anderson 2003, 12).185
184 Lara Deeb and Mona Harb in their research on youth in South Beirut explain that, “[t]his individualistic notion of faith may also be related to a consumerist sensibility, where youth are choosing from among the multiple options available to them within a marketplace of ideas about morality and religiosity (Schulz 2003)” (2013, 18). 185 Another consequence of this widened and deinstitutionalized scope of religious education is that some of these figures “have also standardized and simplified the discourse and weakened the commitment to legal pluralism” (Leonard 2009, 188). See al-Atawneh’s discussion of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, which has decided to “create an environment of legal pluralism and religious tolerance” amongst different Muslim schools of thought (2014, 226).
141 Zareena Grewal and R. David Coolidge astutely describe the “personality” driven educational trend amongst American Muslims where there is a growing concern over whether
Muslim educational institutions will outlive their religious leaders. They explain, “[t]he criticism is directed at those institutions that are overwhelmed by their charismatic religious leaders. In other words, it would be more precise to express the criticism this way: Islamic educational institutions must move beyond their personalities” (2013, 256). Some of these prominent
American Muslim religious figures include Imam Zaid Shakir, Shaykh Omar Suleiman, Shaykh
Yasir Qadhi, and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, for example, has been likened to
American televangelists (Naggar 2018, 315). His “lectures have been structured in a uniquely
American style, reflecting the tradition of sermonizing that had been cultivated by generations of
American religious and secular public speakers” (Yuskaev 2017, 147).186 Many of the figures that are especially popular amongst younger Muslims “have succeeded in blending the vocabulary of Islamic faith with that of self-help” (Aishima 2016, 117). Their message is a positive and self-reflexive approach to religious literacy that implores these youth to critically think about their religiosity and incites in them a confidence to stand as practicing Muslims who do not have to sacrifice their status as Americans for their religious identity.
The reality is that gravitating towards religious figures’ personalities does not seem to be subsiding amongst American Muslim youth.187 This trend draws our attention to the important place that temperament and charismatic appeal have in creating meaningful relationships
186 Yuskaev also notes that Yusuf’s “fame is partly based on how well he embodies the traditionalist transformation he teaches. Its marker is his near-native command of the Arabic language” (2017, 119). His “traditionalist” reputation is also derivative of his having travelled abroad to obtain his Islamic education in places such as Mauritania, for example (Grewal 2013, 159). 187 Since 2017, there have been discussions about spiritual abuse in American Muslim communities. It is too early to determine what impact these discourses will have on curtailing the mass appeal of celebrity shaykhs. These discussions arose after my fieldwork concluded. As such, I am unable to account for my interlocutors’ viewpoints but given the timeliness of this ethnography, I felt it would be irresponsible to not mention this point. See Sobia (2017) and “Roundtable” (2017). See also Ansari (2015) who publicly spoke out about the issue of spiritual abuse before it gained its level of prominence in 2017.
142 between religious leaders and practitioners as will be evidenced in the likability of Muslim chaplains on college campuses and celebrity shaykhs. The question is, however, what type(s) of personalities are agreeable to young Muslims? In addition, what sorts of religious knowledge do these students learn from these figures? Moreover, how do these chaplains’ personalities as well as those of celebrity shaykhs shape how American Muslim youth experience Islam?
History of Chaplaincy in the West
Before I discuss the place of Muslim chaplaincy on college campuses, it is important to survey the history of chaplaincy in the United States in order to understand how the profession has evolved and what this role ultimately entails. Until more recently, chaplains in the United
States have, for the most part, been Christians who were serving the Christian majority population. Initially, these chaplains were often young men but since the 1970’s, women and religious minorities have also joined the profession (Dell 2004, 87; Yuskaev and Stark 2014, 49).
In spite of the fact that the pastoral care tradition upon which most chaplaincy programs are founded derived from “Judeo-Christian healing traditions,” chaplaincy work has expanded so that it can also tend to the needs of people from non-Christian faith traditions (Padela et al. 2011,
360). Currently, chaplains work in a variety of professional sectors including universities, the military, the healthcare field and in their local communities by overseeing religious holidays, funerals, weddings, and other significant rituals.
As representatives of faith communities, chaplains also liaise with other faith groups and foster an inclusive community that is open and welcoming to all irrespective of one’s religious
143 affiliation.188 Robert Anderson notes that chaplains “can bridge the gap and offer understanding and comfort” with respect to the “myriad identities” that human beings embody (2004, 9).189
Despite the theological underpinnings of chaplaincy work, it is a professional job above all else
(Morgan 2010, 115). Morgan explains that the success of professional ministers such as imams or chaplains is incumbent upon their engagement with
(A) the extensive body of theoretical knowledge required in professional ministry; (B) the professional demand for dedicated service to the community and society at large; (C) the emergence and maintenance of professional organization requiring membership of its constituencies in the fields of practice; (D) the existence of a licensure process empowering the professional to function at a high level of validation and authentication from one’s peers and society at large, and (E) an explication of the “symbols of leadership” required of any profession. (2010, 115-116)
Chaplains are usually accredited by a national association and hold graduate degrees in a theological discipline from a seminary that involves training in clinical pastoral care among other criteria (VandeCreek and Burton 2001, 85).190 With respect to the healthcare field,
“[p]rofessional chaplains address these cries through spiritual care that emphasizes transcendence and enhances connections to support communities, thus aiding healing and recovery” (VandeCreek and Burton 2001, 83).191 Chaplains with a robust network also serve on the boards of hospitals and are thus capable of offering “trustworthy” referrals to their
188 By doing so, “[t]he message is that this particular faith community is welcoming of outsiders, is generous with its hospitality, and is eager to share the responsibility of community service by using its own facilities for that purpose” (Morgan 2010, 118). 189 Anderson urges chaplains to “grasp the web of meaning that characterizes individual reality in responding to the web of meaning embodied in the person we serve. In facing the pluralistic nature of spiritual care giving, we are called to address and set aside subtle as well as overt attempts at conversion, to influence the person to think or believe as we do” (2004, 21). His thoughtful suggestions reflect the need for chaplains to suspend judgment and to handle situations by approaching them on the laity’s terms. 190 Most seminary programs require three years of full-time study although some Christian denominations require less training for certain programs and ministries (Dell 2004, 87). Some chaplains are also required to adhere to “annual continuing education requirements,” maintain a “code of professional ethics,” or “demonstrate clinical competency” (VandeCreek and Burton 2001, 86). 191 According to Dell, chaplains do not have the necessary training or exposure to treat patients with psychiatric illnesses (2004, 100-101). See also Padela et al. (2012) for more on the roles of Muslim chaplains in tending to American Muslim patients.
144 communities. Muslim chaplains also offer patients prayer and counsel (Abu-Ras and Laird 2011,
51).192
On college campuses, chaplaincy work is relatively new but has become increasingly important as chaplains are responsible for addressing students’ personal issues whether they relate to their professional aspirations, their psychological wellbeing or their spirituality (Aten
2004, 91). As chaplains are confronted with students’ psychological dilemmas, they often have to recommend them to mental health clinicians. This partnership has become increasingly exigent, particularly when “a collaborative relationship with religious leaders may improve mental health providers’ ability to gain access to and assist religiously committed groups” (Aten
2004, 90-91). In addition to caring for their students’ mental wellbeing, chaplains are also responsible for addressing students’ religious queries.193 Vineet Chander, a Hindu Chaplain at
Princeton University explains,
As dedicated professionals in the field of religious life, they can help students learn to adapt their tradition to be relevant to the time and place they find themselves in, and address questions such as how much change is permitted and how can the tradition be adapted – both by encouraging students to wrestle with the tensions and by modeling such wrestling themselves (Venkatachari, 1996). (2013, 108)
As such, the responsibilities and oversight that university chaplains maintain are complex, far- reaching, and directly impact various aspects of college students’ wellbeing. In spite of the fact that chaplains are generally well received and popular among student populations on college campuses, allocating funding for chaplaincy work has proven difficult on some campuses and the
192 Kamal Abu-Shamsieh, a Muslim chaplain, credits Qur’anic verses for affording him the opportunity to “articulate a theology that promotes the closeness of God, physically and spiritually, and comforts the patient by invoking the closeness of God to answer their prayers. In addition, the knowledge of God’s presence might empower some patients to be closer to God” (n.d., 2). 193 Since the #MeToo movement, I have also witnessed Muslim chaplains on college campuses explicitly demonstrate their support for victims of sexual assault by providing students with both male and female contacts so they can obtain whatever assistance they might need.
145 “future” of chaplaincy work depends on universities securing the financial means to support these positions (Kowalski and Becker 2015, 40).
Muslim Chaplaincy in the United States
In perusing secondary sources on American Muslim youth, literature on chaplaincy was scarce, which is to be expected given the relatively recent introduction of Muslim chaplains into campus life.194 It is difficult to obtain a precise number quantifying how many Muslim chaplaincy programs exist on college campuses in the United States, especially if one were to account for chaplains who work part-time.195 In the healthcare profession, Muslim chaplains are beginning to penetrate the field so as to provide Muslim patients with the necessary religious care particularly as it pertains to issues regarding medical ethics (Abu-Ras and Laird 2011).
According to the Association of Muslim Chaplains’ website, Muslim chaplains work in hospitals, prisons, their local communities by participating in disaster relief programs or their local fire departments, the military, and on university campuses.196 The website also provides the training requirements for each professional sector, which generally involve some form of pastoral care training, proficiency in classical Arabic, and in some cases, graduate coursework in theology and related disciplines. However, it appears that chaplaincy programs offer minimal training in the classical Islamic sciences, “such as theology and law” placing more emphasis instead on “developing applied pastoral skills such as counseling, interfaith relations, and
194 Sajida Jalalzai’s (2016) and Harvey Stark’s (2015) PhD dissertations are important contributions to the growing work on Muslim chaplaincy. 195 A New York Times article estimated that there were approximately 40 Muslim chaplains at private universities (Freedman 2016). 196 This association was established in 2011 (The Pluralism Project, n.d.). See Lee (2002) for more on the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) model. Lee also explains that chaplains offer services to patients who may or may not ascribe to a particular religious affiliation. As such, chaplaincy work in this setting is not limited to a particular “belief system” but rather extends “into an integral element of patient care for all” (2002, 340).
146 leadership training that will be a resource not only to Muslims but to people of all faiths who seek their counsel” (Grewal 2013, 329).197
According to Timur Yuskaev and Harvey Stark, “[f]or both imams and chaplains, the process of professionalization has been a slow and steady shift from part-time, volunteer, and ad hoc leaders to full-time paid professionals, recognized as such by the institutions they work in, the communities they serve, and society at large” (2014, 49).198 They also write that the increasing requirements of chaplains such as their being accredited by a clinical training program demonstrate the ever-changing expectations of the profession (Yuskaev and Stark 2014, 55).
Zareena Grewal and R. David Coolidge explain that, “[a]s resources within mosque communities, chaplains do not command much religious authority by means of their degree, but their skill sets as counselors, conflict-mediators, and public spokespeople are in high demand” and they also serve as resources for educating non-Muslims about Islam (2013, 264).
Regarding my field sites, the chaplains I worked with did exhibit a command of the
Arabic language and were able to address theological queries posed in ḥalaqa settings and other classes, often citing their teachers and their educational backgrounds to undergird their arguments.199 The extent to which they were able to provide specific fiqh related answers regarding a particular issue rarely arose in the interactions I observed and I only knew which madhhab (school of law) one chaplain followed because of his own admission.200 This particular chaplain was careful not to provide his own personal opinions on matters opting instead to direct students’ attention to the plenitude of interpretations often adopting the phrasing, “my teachers
197 Thus, Muslims are joining Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who since the 19th century have been involved in “social service development” (Dell 2004, 102). 198 These include “liturgical, educational, and counseling functions within religious and nonreligious institutions” (Timur and Yuskaev 2014, 49). 199 See Blackburn (2018) for a history of the Arabic training that takes place at the Hartford Seminary. 200 See Hallaq (1997) and (2001) and Calder and Imber (2010) for more on the sources of fiqh.
147 have said” or “x scholar has noted.” Another chaplain when asked about the permissibility of pursuing a certain profession by a community member informed her that he was unable to answer the question but offered to direct her attention to a mufti who would be better equipped to address her query. In my participant observation, I noticed that the three chaplains I worked with erred on the side of caution when presented with legal questions. Harvey Stark aptly characterizes chaplains’ relation to Islamic law by explaining, “[i]t is not that they necessarily advocate an approach to Islam that neglects Islamic law, but in their work, they tend to emphasize the spiritual over the legal” (2015, 43).201
Muslim chaplaincy in the United States has become a more officiated occupation with the establishment of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. The program offers a variety of degrees including a Master of Arts in Religious Studies as well as a
Graduate Certificate in Islamic Chaplaincy. A brief survey of the program’s website informs prospective students that degree requirements include “practical training” which provides students with hands-on experience in potential chaplaincy settings such as universities, hospitals, and other locales for a total of 240 hours. Unlike “imported” imams or local leaders who are criticized for not being well versed in dunyawī (worldly) matters, the Islamic Chaplaincy
Program is predicated on an understanding that prospective chaplains should have real world experience in offering pastoral care.202
201 See Stark (2015, 74-77, 98-99) for how the chaplains he interviewed dealt with fiqh questions from their students. See DeLorenzo (2000) for some of the issues at stake in issuing fatwas in North America. Hussein Agrama’s ethnographic work on the dissemination of fatwas in Egypt draws our attention to how seeking out a fatwa can be conceived of as “facilitating a journey” (2012, 182). Agrama argues that “[h]ere it is not the creativity of the fatwa that matters but rather, its capacity to enable a self to stay and advance on an already defined path toward an ideal Muslim self” (ibid.). 202 See Bagby (2006a) and Bilici (2012). Bilici explains that when imams from abroad came to the United States, they were expected to both lead prayers along with other responsibilities such as offering counseling services depending on the breadth of the mosque they were working in (2012, 39). These new responsibilities differed dramatically from the ones they were accustomed to and thus it can be inferred that many of them have had little
148 The Hartford Seminary is becoming increasingly appealing for a younger generation of
Muslims who can choose to pursue chaplaincy work in the various sectors noted above. One of the students I interviewed, for example, expressed his desire to pursue chaplaincy work by attending Hartford Seminary upon graduation. He credited a chaplain he highly respects with inspiring this choice and expressed how pursuing interfaith work and serving the community was something that very much appealed to him. Other institutions in North America include Bayan
Claremont in Claremont, California and Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the
University of Toronto (Jalalzai 2016). There have also been attempts made in the American
Muslim community to develop seminary programs that are “grounded in a more thorough engagement with Islamic texts and sources via classical Arabic (Abdullah 2011)” (Gilliat-Ray,
Ali, and Pattison 2013, 154), which draws attention to the complex and discordant views regarding the burgeoning professional expectations of Muslim chaplaincy work.
On college campuses, the myriad responsibilities chaplains manage include their ability to employ “pastoral care” techniques when engaging with Muslim students, “promote intra- and interfaith dialogue, educate about the Muslim faith and its interpretations… interface with other chaplains on student well-being, and work for the general welfare of all students” (Khoja-Moolji
2011, 15). They similarly assume many of the same responsibilities as an imam who serves “the role of educator, administrator, accountant, fund-raiser, political agitator, informal lawyer, and counselor” (Poston 1992, 95). On college campuses, Muslim chaplains generally maintain adaptability because they are often confronted with “the unique demands of the student body, the requirements of the school administration, and the background of the chaplains themselves”
(Khoja-Moolji 2011, 11). The chaplains I became acquainted with shouldered these
preparation to shoulder the new expectations they were confronted with upon taking on their positions in the United States.
149 responsibilities with grace and professionalism. Their appeal and their making an impact on the developmental stages of these youth’s lives were very clear to me early on during my fieldwork.
There appears to be an increasing demand in nurturing homegrown chaplains who are familiar with the struggles endured and concessions made by North American Muslim communities, and with respect to my research, American Muslim youth.203 During my fieldwork and since, I have noticed more universities hire full- and part-time Muslim chaplains. According to Mumina Kowalski and Wendy Becker, “[t]he trend to hire Muslim chaplains has emerged at a time when participation in student religious groups spanning a diverse set of beliefs has created administrative and accommodation issues in private and public institutions” (2015, 38). The chaplains on the college campuses I worked with participated in interfaith events, organized workshops and lectures, led their own ḥalaqāt and jum‘a prayers, and tended to the religious needs of their students by remaining consistently available for counsel. They communicated with students in English, a welcome departure for some of these youth who grew up around foreign imams whose proficiency in English was minimal.204 For example, in an interview with Lara, she appreciated the fact that the newer generation of American imams were speaking in English given she had difficulty understanding some of the Urdu terminology employed by Pakistani imams in her local mosque, even though she was fluent in Urdu.205
In my interviews with students, it was their chaplains’ roles as spiritual caregivers that most stood out to me. Students recounted examples that conveyed the deeply felt appreciation they had for their chaplains. I recall feeling that way as an undergraduate student myself and
203 Gilliat-Ray, Ali, and Pattison note that in an interview with an American Muslim chaplain, he explained that there were three main reasons that students approached him: “crises of faith, sometimes brought about as a consequence of academic studies; exposure to different worldviews and interpretation of Islam; and establishing personal discipline and boundaries within the permissive environment of the student campus” (2013, 162). 204 In Moustafa Bayoumi’s research, he found that Muslim youth complained about how religious leaders from previous generations were unable to connect with them and that it was important for leaders to not only possess a strong proficiency in Arabic but that they were also articulate in English (2010, 170). 205 Recorded interview with Lara, June 2016.
150 even during my graduate studies: exposure to older mentors who were genuine, thoughtful, and compassionate. Chaplains understood the religious experiences, familial expectations, cultural backgrounds, along with the imposed expectations of being a Muslim student on a secular college campus given all of the chaplains I worked with had at least attended one secular
Western institution for higher education.
Female Leadership Positions
All the chaplains discussed in this dissertation are male. It should be noted that there are female Muslim chaplains on college campuses in the U.S. The introduction of Muslim women into the chaplaincy sector “may ultimately have considerable future impact, in a context in which religious commentary and authority have until now been an almost exclusively male preserve, particularly in the interpretation of religious texts and doctrines” (Gilliat-Ray, Ali, and Pattison
2013, 189). Shenila Khoja-Moolji credits women’s ability to penetrate chaplaincy positions to a couple of factors: debates surrounding Muslim leadership, and determining whether or not women can fill these positions do not concern the “hiring managers at universities [who] are primarily concerned with the spiritual wellbeing and growth of students and are less interested in the internal theological debates on Muslim leadership” (2011, 6). While Khoja-Moolji notes that the “liberal and progressive context of educational institutions” (ibid.) makes the environment more conducive to nurturing the leadership capacities of Muslim women, she acknowledges how this authority becomes circumscribed with respect to female chaplains leading prayers and delivering sermons.206 Still though, Khoja-Moolji’s research demonstrates that female Muslim
206 Khoja-Moolji acknowledges that chaplains “do not have to obtain the same level of authorization from their constituencies or religious authorities as they would in a mosque or religious center” (2011, 6). Masooda Bano explains how “female leadership in mosques and madrasahs” is “an outcome of the socioeconomic and political context, domestic as well as global, as of the intellectual caliber and leadership qualities of the women who come to
151 chaplains are finding creative ways to participate in prayers by assisting students with their
Arabic proficiency and participating in the writing of khuṭab (2011, 13).
During the course of my research, there was no official female leadership position associated with the MSA or the broader Muslim organization on the campuses I worked on.207
Still, women were an integral part of the MSAs and the broader campus Muslim communities.
Assistants to the chaplains were women and were fundamental in ensuring the smooth transition of events and directing student queries. Female students recited the Qur’an before pubic events and there were even mixed-gender ḥalaqāt led solely by women, many of which enjoyed a sizeable turnout. This is not to suggest that women in American Muslim communities have traversed patriarchal norms and are now able to ascend to the ranks often occupied by men.208
However, in MSA circles, women do witness more opportunities for leadership as evidenced historically when women “swept the polls in the MSA national elections, resulting in a female president heading an all-women executive board” (Leonard 2013, 185).
In my own research findings, I witnessed a concerted effort by the male university chaplains I worked with to normalize women’s presence in leadership and educational positions.
They availed themselves of Muslim women of various age groups in their communities, the broader American Muslim community, and occasionally worldwide who were intelligent, capable, and deserving of an opportunity to be heard and subsequently learned from. Female
Muslim entrepreneurs, musicians, writers, public policy experts, academics, and activists, among others were invited to speak on campuses and share their experiences, knowledge, and expertise.
exercise that authority” (2012, 508-509). See the rest of the volume for numerous examples of Muslim women vying for authority, representation, and inclusion throughout the world. See also Jalalzai (2016, 243-247) for a discussion of female Muslim chaplains and the intersection between religious authority and gender. 207 As I was writing this dissertation, one campus did introduce an associate female Muslim chaplain. 208 See Bullock (2005) and Haddad, Smith, and Moore (2006) for more on the experiences of American Muslim women.
152 As such, the contributions of American Muslim women were visibly celebrated in the MSA spaces I encountered.209
The Friendly Imam
What initially interested me about Imam Sherif was his ability to attract droves of students and tap into their emotional psyche in an uplifting and powerful way. Young, charismatic, friendly, and popular amongst the MSA student body as well as the broader Muslim public in the United States, Imam Sherif was a pillar of his community and a religious mentor for most of the students I interviewed at his university. When I asked Seif why he attended Imam
Sherif’s ḥalaqāt, he explained “I have so much love for Imam Sherif and any time he speaks, I just feel like I learn something from him and… I feel moved. I feel empowered. He helps me love my religion.”210 Similar to a motivational speaker whose energy lures their audience, Imam
Sherif was able to achieve the same excitement and awe from his students although his performance did not involve the same sorts of theatrics. There was no PowerPoint presentation with inspirational aphorisms to jot down. No microphone was placed nearby to help him project his voice and he did not need to move around to sustain the crowd’s attention. He usually sat still, and the only movement was that of his head as he equally divided his attention between the male and female sections of his audience. However, his speech was by no means monotone or boring and like the other chaplains I worked with, his talks were interspersed with jokes and personal anecdotes. His oratory style was direct, not harsh, but he was empathetic when underscoring a particular point.
209 The visibility of women in leadership positions extends beyond the MSAs I worked with and is becoming increasingly more apparent in regional and nationally organized Muslim events and conferences. 210 Recorded interview with Seif, November 2016.
153 The first time I heard him speak, I felt that I was attending a rally. He had captured an audience of approximately two hundred attendees that day and would continue to draw large crowds during ḥalaqāt and events. What made Imam Sherif so charismatic was his appearing relatable. He was polite yet cool, confident yet humble, smart yet curious. One of his defining qualities was his reliance on narrative storytelling techniques when speaking to different audiences. By drawing on and sharing his own experiences, such as when he did not pray consistently, or when he began to learn more about Islam independent of his Sunday school upbringing, made him accessible to students who may have experienced the same struggles.
Moreover, these admissions reflected his humility and openness. It should come as no surprise then that students often considered him a mentor they could look up to, and more importantly, a friend they could turn to when confronted with a myriad of issues.211
With an admired reputation that he was careful not to boast about, I witnessed firsthand and was privy to secondhand accounts of his continuing to strive to reach out to all members of his growing community, while concomitantly tending to the Muslim students on his campus.
Initially, I was intimidated by Imam Sherif even though he was noticeably approachable and was equally willing to help me recruit MSA students. This intimidation stemmed from my desire to not want to waste his time. Almost every interaction we had necessitated my need to be direct and perhaps even interrupt what he was doing in order to broach the topic of recruitment or scheduling a prospective interview. He generally appeared busy speaking to a student, facilitating an event, or heading to a meeting. In spite of his full schedule, he was always present and observant of his surroundings. When his attention was granted to me or to anyone else, it was undivided, and he always appeared happy to help.
211 These issues included personal struggles along with logistical questions regarding the facilitation of MSA events, among others.
154 Over the course of my research, I never witnessed Imam Sherif crack under pressure nor did I obtain any secondhand accounts of how the weight of shouldering the responsibilities of the community he was overseeing as well as his other engagements were becoming too much to bear. I admired his vigor and his ability to maneuver through so much with a young family to support. Imam Sherif himself spoke fondly of his young family and they were subsequently woven into the fabric of the community he helped found. His wife and children would occasionally drop by events and their supportive and energetic demeanors brought smiles to those who interacted with them. Imam Sherif’s family members were very much a part of his public persona. He would speak glowingly of his wife or cheekily of his children. Occasionally, he would draw on anecdotes about his children’s precociousness to inject a dose of comic relief or relay a message during his ḥalaqāt. For example, he would joke about his daughter’s sweet tooth and her ability to secure free baked goods with her charms when entering certain shops in his neighborhood. On the handful of occasions I did see her, she was undeniably friendly and sweet.
Imam Sherif’s seamless integration of his family into the Muslim community on his campus demonstrated the interlocking of both aspects of his life, which uniquely personalized him in the eyes of his Muslim students. As such, there was no division between public and private for Imam Sherif. His home was open to his community members. He entrusted them with his children when they were on campus. They trusted him with the future of their community and their spiritual and emotional wellbeing. Despite his young age, he was an almost universally respected figure in his community not only for his activist efforts and community organizing initiatives but also for his ability to conjure up excitement and affective emotions in the young students on his campus as well as others. His reputation certainly preceded him, and I found it
155 amusing how students would share snippets about his background including where he studied, his accreditations, and where he grew up. Many of them were incorrect in their assertions and when I casually corrected them once I was privy to more about his upbringing and his professional background, it did not seem to matter. His appeal was not predicated on him having studied at a renowned Islamic university or having obtained a PhD in Islamic studies from a
Western institution. It derived from his affable personality, his compassionate interactions with students, and the relatable knowledge he imparted to them during his ḥalaqāt.
In a conversation with Fawzi, he spoke about Imam Sherif describing him as “gold” because of his down-to-earth demeanor and his consistently welcoming presence. He shared that
Imam Sherif treated his students like “friends” and that while they were respectful of his esteemed position as the leader of a large community, Fawzi was deeply appreciative of the fact that Imam Sherif “opens so many doors for them in terms of friendship and trust and all that and
I’m just like you know a lot of people don’t really have that or they don’t understand how that’s possible you know?”212 Zaid similarly described his relationship with Imam Sherif as being a
“strong like personal relationship” and qualified his presence as being very accessible and open- minded. While more detail will be given to the content and reception of ḥalaqāt by MSA students in the following chapter, students generally credited their chaplains’ personalities and comportment as facilitating the kinds of introspective discussions and engagement they obtained when in these educational spaces. Imam Sherif, for example, was sincere, straightforward, and personal in his delivery. His openness and honesty cultivated a sense of warmth and security in the spaces he occupied. With respect to Zaid, he credited Imam Sherif as being an “indispensable mentor” whose words always “resonated with [him].” When I asked him why he thought he was
212 Recorded interview with Fawzi, May 2016.
156 an indispensable mentor, he explained that he taught him things “that nobody else could have” such as
authentic empathy for other people, speaking to people at the level that they come from or the level that they’re at… you know not boxing people into categories based on their sectarian, political, ethnic, tribal, religious backgrounds.… You wanna see that everyone is coming from a certain experience, background. [Imam Sherif] taught me a lot about that. He taught me like what it means to care for someone without expecting anything in return.213
Seif also acknowledged that when Imam Sherif offered counsel, he was capable of addressing the various situations presented to him on an individual basis because he understood that people’s circumstances were “not black and white.”214 He went on to describe Imam Sherif as being “brilliant” in terms of his leadership capabilities stating “not only is he a great imam and he’s smart but he’s creative. He just seems to have a lot of the answers to some of these things in a way.” “These things” are referring to the way his campus community was going to respond to the anxiety surrounding Donald Trump’s presidential win but also what I gathered to be the various social justice and welfare initiatives Imam Sherif had been responsible for in his community.
In a conversation with one student, she explained how hopeful she felt when attending
Imam Sherif’s khuṭab and ḥalaqāt because, “he kinda like generalizes a bit and then expands on that more relating it to like our reality of like you know being like American citizens or being like in the Desi household cuz there are some of his talks which [are] focused on that and he would just… be less um research based and more ok well these are scenarios of everyday life and this is a solution.” 215 She explained that his sermons and du‘ā’ were “spiritually uplifting.”
213 Recorded interview with Zaid, May 2016. 214Recorded interview with Seif, November 2016. 215 Many of the students I interviewed used the term “Desi” when referring to their South Asian backgrounds whether it be in relation to food, cultural norms, or clothing. According to Shalini Shankar , the term “Desi” “signals the shift from South Asians as immigrants longing to return to a homeland to public consumers and producers of
157 When I asked her why they made her feel that way, she credited the fact that because they were conducted in English, she was able to understand and reflect on what he was saying and shared,
“I don’t think that spiritual uplift[ment] is such an easy and a quick task. I don’t think so. I think you need to dedicate time and patience and just energy to that.” She described his style as being poetic and infused with citations from the Qur’an and hadiths. When I asked her if she felt this was important, she explained, “I think it’s important if this is an Islamic lecture and you’re preaching about Islam then I think it’s always important to just sort of at least have one” and that while some topics such as particular political issues could be discussed without necessarily referencing the Qur’an, she noted that there was always something to be drawn on from scripture.216 The notable examples she cited were rallying together after an Islamophobic incident in her community and the fact that eradicating injustice was an important concept in
Islam.
Another student also appreciated Imam Sherif’s communicating to his audience in
English, which was not always the norm in the local mosques she attended growing up. What she found to be particularly striking about Imam Sherif’s religious teachings was the fact that they
“made you stop and think and ask yourself a lot of questions… and be very critical of yourself which I guess is not something totally new cuz you’d get that here and there but it wasn’t to that extent where everything he’s saying is at like a human level.”217 Having already heard Imam
Sherif speak on numerous occasions both on his campus and when he was invited to speak on others, as many chaplains are, I was unsure of what this student meant by human level and so I asked her to clarify. She explained to me that this “human level” entailed him approaching his
distinctive, widely circulating cultural and linguistic forms” and has become popular fairly recently (two decades), particularly amongst younger peoples of South Asian descent (2008, 4). 216 The student is referring to at least one scriptural citation. Recorded interview with student, April 2016. 217 Recorded interview with student, October 2015.
158 religious teachings, by “just talk[ing] to you and mak[ing] you reflect on yourself without expecting you to know certain things.… Cuz even when you talk to him, he’ll ask you the questions… because you sit there and you answer them, or you don’t answer them, or you realize wow, I need to work on myself.”
This student’s reflection demonstrates what I found to be a universal appreciation for chaplains who were encouraging self-reflexivity in MSA spaces, and what I presume to be chaplains having noticed that young American Muslims are craving discourses that enabled them to define their religiosity on their own terms and without judgment. The reason that this lack of judgment is so important for students is that it hearkens back to what I discussed in chapter one about the MSA being an inclusive space that would be welcoming to students who may not be practicing Muslims, students who may not be familiar with certain tenets of Islam, as well as converts. In addition, the underlying assumption that self-reflexivity and critical thinking are important virtues for developing one’s religiosity can be likened to similar virtues held in high esteem in the college classroom, namely the privileging of autonomous thinking.
In all of the khuṭab and ḥalaqāt I attended by Imam Sherif, I also noticed he cultivated spaces where congregants were encouraged to constructively respond to the political circumstances surrounding them, to join together, empathize with each another, and draw on each other’s strengths to steer through difficult times. Having attended some of these khuṭab in person, I witnessed the uplifting spirit penetrating these spaces with congregants listening eagerly, becoming emotional in the final du‘ā’, and turning to each other nodding or smiling when something powerful was being articulated. The affective spaces I encountered resemble
Jenna Supp-Montgomerie’s description of affect as “intimately working through beings who are always the sites of fracture, incoherence, and dissolution. Affect offers the opportunity to
159 consider religious subjects and their collectives as modes of organization that rely on persistent dynamism; affect is the constant movement between coming together and falling apart that constitutes any mode of being” (2015, 336). By cultivating these affective spaces on his campus,
Imam Sherif’s relatable presence positioned him as a model for communal empathy and solidarity. As noted in the passages above, students commented on his ability to teach them how to be empathic of other’s plights, to refrain from judgment, and to approach others by recognizing their individual circumstances, whatever those may be. By practicing what he preached and by embodying the aforementioned qualities, Imam Sherif was a chaplain who stood not only as a religious guide but also as a friend.
The Existential Imam
My first exposure to Imam Hadi was when I accidentally came across a ḥalaqa on a website I perused for local Islamic events. While it is difficult to put into words, Imam Hadi was unlike any another imam, Muslim public intellectual, or chaplain I had come across throughout my research. His demeanor and how he spoke were nuanced in ways that I had never before witnessed. He was welcoming and generous with his time with everyone. Yet, he was also very direct when discussing religious matters and almost acerbic in his critique of “culture,” “religious institutions” and ideas that he felt were preventing Muslims from developing a sincere and affective relationship with the Divine. Moreover, the educational atmosphere he cultivated was much more serious and disciplined than other ḥalaqāt I attended. I experienced this myself and was consumed by a sense of guilt if I was unable to attend a ḥalaqa for whatever reason. When I would see Imam Hadi the following week, he would ask me how I was and would comment on my absence. In many ways, I felt like a university student who was held accountable for her
160 attendance and whose proficiency in the material depended on having consistently attended his
ḥalaqāt. At first, I thought it was only I that felt this way but in casual conversations with other students before and after class, I learned that they too felt guilty if they had missed his ḥalaqāt for a period of time and vowed to be more punctual or more consistent in their attendance. My feelings, as well as those shared by other students, demonstrate the air of studiousness Imam
Hadi cultivated in his ḥalaqāt. While a serious and disciplined tone permeated these spaces, I did not obtain a sense of sternness or reprimand. From my observations, what I gleaned was that there was an underlying assumption by Imam Hadi and his students that religious education required attentiveness, patience, and more importantly, commitment.
As I spent more time with Imam Hadi, I grew to understand why he valued consistency and commitment in students’ participation. It was my impression that he understood learning to be a lifelong journey and that being comfortable with this indefiniteness was one that needed to be cultivated and maintained. Because the nature of his ḥalaqāt was considerably in-depth, in the sense that he would occasionally spend weeks discussing the same handful of āyāt or a single hadith, regular attendance was vital to understanding the material comprehensively. With that said, Imam Hadi did refresh his students with the material that was discussed in the previous class before engaging with anything new.
Imam Hadi was highly revered amongst the MSA students I spoke with during this project. For those who gravitated towards his teachings, this was not surprising given his dedication to his craft and to his pedagogical style, which were unique to the other speakers and chaplains I had come across. He was teaching students how to engage with religious texts on an introspective and personal level but at the same time understood that such a process would require guidance. In the following chapter, this guidance will be demonstrated through an
161 analysis of the method he was imparting to his students during his ḥalaqāt. Imam Hadi’s appeal stemmed from a variety of reasons. I recall one of my interviewees informing me of Imam
Hadi’s meager chaplaincy salary and the fact that she never saw him eat. I recall another warning me that he refused to accept gifts when I asked her if he would potentially accept a token of gratitude for assisting me in my research. After the summer break, I returned to his ḥalaqa with pastries for the students and while he was grateful for the gesture, his main concern was making sure that everyone in the ḥalaqa had their share of sweets. He, however, did not have any, which made me more privy to examples of his abnegation. My reason for sharing these students’ comments is to demonstrate the respect they had for his simple, almost ascetic lifestyle and how much they valued the time he spent educating the communities he was a part of, including the
MSA students I worked with. Because of the close proximity students have with their chaplains, and what can be a considerable amount of time interacting with them depending on their involvement in the MSA, they begin to notice and appreciate elements of their chaplains’ behaviors and lifestyle choices. Thus, their favorable impressions of their chaplains are not simply based on their teachings but upon who they are as individuals and how they “embody”
Islamic knowledge and virtuous attributes (Marsden 2005).
Yasmine, for example, was encouraged to approach Imam Hadi through a friend who suggested that she converse with him about religious matters and attend his ḥalaqāt. When I asked her what made her trust Imam Hadi, at which point I asked her if “trust” was in fact the most appropriate word and if I had interpreted her previous comments accurately, she agreed that she did in fact trust him. She went on to explain,
His approach is without any like false beliefs. You can throw away the masks and look at things as they are. You can like question things even things… I’d never considered questioning because they were indoctrinated so strongly. I felt I was freed from a very limited worldview to a new one where I could actually take responsibility. I could take
162 action and I could be involved in my religious education. I could be involved in my human life and have it related to my relationship with God.218
Samia for example, speaking shyly, expressed that Imam Hadi was available to students to address their problems and shared that she did not generally speak to him about any specific thing per se. Rather, she enjoyed his company and could spend hours talking with him. I recall a moment when she was slightly late for one of our meetings because she had spent time speaking with him and lost track of time. As she apologized to me and explained her tardiness, I smiled.
At a time when there is skepticism of religious authority in general, it was endearing to witness someone enjoy the company of a religious leader. This echoed a similar observation I had with another student who was speaking to Imam Hadi about what had transpired earlier that day.
Rabia, who was outgoing and more forward than some of the other women I had come across, began sharing some of the difficulties and stress she was experiencing at work as Imam Hadi was preparing for the ḥalaqa that day. Imam Hadi responded with an occasional word here and there.
In observing this interaction, I realized that Rabia was not seeking counsel or guidance. She merely wanted someone to listen to her. The fact that it was her chaplain, with whom she shared these rather mundane happenings, is indicative of the everyday sensibilities and qualities these students perceive their chaplains to have and the fact that chaplains do not seem bothered by such interactions. In fact, chaplains seemed to welcome them as I witnessed them converse with their students informally countless times throughout my research about everything from food, to sports, to other basic pleasantries. Observing Rabia interact with Imam Hadi also made me realize how Imam Hadi was able to traverse some of the stereotypes about male Muslim religious figures who seemed distant, inaccessible and, more importantly, disagreeable, particularly to women.
218 Recorded interview with Yasmine, May 2016.
163 What I discovered in my conversations with students and during my participant observation was that he was a confidante, a source of calm and composure for these students in the midst of their emerging adulthood anxieties. As one student explained to me in an interview, it was in her conversations with Imam Hadi that she found many of her anxieties disappearing.
Before she met Imam Hadi, she had experienced an almost decade-long battle with anxiety and had sought counsel from therapists, none of whom seemed to help her. However, the relationship she developed with Imam Hadi whom she described as a “mentor/therapist” proved influential.
She explained that the reason she responded so well to Imam Hadi, as opposed to the other therapists she had interacted with, was because during their first interaction he “validated” her anxiety and told her “You need to find yourself and ground yourself based in that [anxiety] and for some reason that was the answer I needed to hear.”219 Imam Hadi’s religious pedagogy will be discussed further in the following chapter but here, it is important to note that one of his main objectives as a chaplain was to encourage his students to reflect on their experiences and question the existential significance they had in their lives. According to Imam Hadi, all of one’s experiences bore meaning and required introspection as they were being connected to one’s relationship with the Divine.
When I asked Mariam why she began attending the ḥalaqāt on her campus, she explained that Imam Hadi’s qualifications and that his classes were being offered for free incentivized her.
When I asked her why she felt he was qualified, she initially giggled and explained, “Well I always see him studying. I don’t see him walking around…. When I would go see him, he would always study so he seems like he would know what he’s talking about.”220 Aside from his
ḥalaqāt, Mariam shared that she made a point to speak to him privately on a couple of occasions.
219 Recorded interview with student, January 2016. 220 Recorded interview with Mariam, May 2016.
164 During one of their conversations, she asked him for advice about jealousy and how to control it and during another, she spoke with him about the passing of a close family member. In both instances, I was told that he allotted her between an hour and a half to two hours of his time, which is very generous given his meager salary and the fact that he often met students beyond his paid working hours. She appreciated his advice particularly when he told her to “focus on yourself” in order to “keep yourself on the right path.” When I asked her how this counsel made her feel, she responded with “Good. It’s good advice. I mean it’s something you think about but then when no one says it like you don’t have the courage to take that step.”
Throughout my fieldwork, I even observed students challenge Imam Hadi in his ḥalaqāt when they attempted to better understand a point that he was making. He appeared to welcome these interjections and seemed to prefer them to students who would repeat what he had just said.
This openness is not unusual in MSA spaces where students are often encouraged to speak freely about their opinions or pose whatever questions they might have. Given the intimacy of the
ḥalaqa setting and the fact that Imam Hadi’s student body was small, I came across such examples on a more frequent basis and was thus better privy to his appreciation of students who independently articulated their points. As such, by encouraging autonomy in leading a religious life and in learning about religion, Imam Hadi was an educator who instilled in MSA students the confidence to arrive at their own conclusions. Students also appreciated his hermeneutical methodology, which will be discussed further in the next chapter, because it enabled them to address their religious queries and provide them with a sense of God-consciousness when reading religious texts.
165 The Pastoral Care Imam
Imam Ibrahim was the first chaplain I became acquainted with during my research.
Warm, polite, and accommodating, he was an invaluable resource in helping me understand
MSA culture on college campuses. It was his initial support of my project that provided me with the necessary boost of confidence to embark on this ethnographic journey having been met with multiple rejections and red tape during my preliminary research. Over time, I grew more comfortable around him and I recognize that my initial insecurities or the reservations I had were my own doing. Because I spent the most amount of time on Imam Ibrahim’s campus during this research, in many ways his MSA and community became more than a research site. They became the first American Muslim community I felt a connection towards and this is no doubt thanks to him, his wife, his assistant, and the student body he shepherded. Imam Ibrahim was more than just an affable figure on this campus. With almost a decade of experience, he had served various communities and student cohorts throughout this time. His formal training as a chaplain, coupled with the fact that he was well-read and availed himself of reputable scholars’ opinions, enabled him to make thoughtful decisions for his community.
Nesma, for example, explained that she felt students had a very unique relationship with the chaplain on her campus because students were unafraid to approach him.221 When I asked her if she felt that was important, she responded with “yah, it’s made a huge impact on my life at least.” At this point, our conversation evolved into a discussion about how her chaplain fared in comparison with other religious figures she was exposed to when she was growing up. Even during her university tenure, as she was home for one of the academic breaks, she heard something in her local masjid that disturbed her and reached out to her chaplain on Facebook explaining that she had a problem with what was being said. Imam Ibrahim responded with
221 Recorded interview with Nesma, March 2016.
166 alternate hadiths and interpretations, which she found to be very “comforting.” As she described the imam’s position in the mosque, she noted, “This guy at the masjid, he’s not really an imam.
Like he knows a lot, but he’s not trained so I think it’s made a big difference to have someone with more knowledge and more spiritual knowledge.” The latter characterization was directed towards her chaplain who helped her address these queries. Nesma’s story draws our attention to a couple of salient features in the student/chaplain dynamic. First, Imam Ibrahim’s accessibility to students and his willingness to address their questions by providing answers that offer them
“comfort,” demonstrates his ability to discern what is at stake in their proposed queries. Nesma’s reaction to her local imam’s comment affected her deeply and Imam Ibrahim responded to her uneasiness by providing her with alternative interpretations that could potentially appease her.
Her story also shows how chaplains are operating within the larger arena of religious figures in the United States and worldwide. When someone touts a questionable stance, American Muslim youth can avail themselves of different answers or interpretations, and as in the case of Nesma, that reaching out can be as simple as sending a Facebook message. Nesma also told me that she enjoyed listening to her chaplain’s insights in ḥalaqāt. While she recognized that other students’ questions were not always relevant to her religious experiences, she felt they should be shared with Imam Ibrahim because he might be the only person those students could turn to for religious counsel. With relation to her, she explained that she appreciated the fact that Imam Ibrahim
doesn’t give one answer. He usually like gives like different schools of thought and he kind of says like you know like there are places you can look at to find out more so it’s not like him telling me an answer. It’s him giving me options of different interpretations… things like that so that I can form my own answer um so then I don’t you know like I don’t take anything at face value and I really appreciate that cuz I guess it’s nice not being talked at. It’s more like you now you should look up this stuff yourself like this is your question like here are ways you can look it up and I feel that’s really
167 important.222
She continued to describe Imam Ibrahim as a “good person like he’s genuine” and went on to say he is the closest person she knows that demonstrates “exemplary character.”
Omar explained that he often referred his friends to Imam Ibrahim for guidance and has been able to ascertain constructive advice from Imam Ibrahim such as his encouragement of dhikr and how istighfār (seeking Allah’s forgiveness) “can be very purifying.”223 Ultimately, he described his chaplain as a “role model” because while “he doesn’t go into polemics or anything but he’s very good at you know like saying this is what the issue is and like he’s not gonna give us like a vanilla cotton candy whatever you want to call it?” Omar also explained that he talked to his chaplain “about a number of issues or just a number of things in life” and confessed that he did not turn to him as much as his peers because of his responsibilities on the MSA board. He explained that one of the reasons his chaplain appealed to him so much was because he was able to ask any question and casually converse in an open space.
Dina also found Imam Ibrahim to be a valuable resource. When we discussed the difficulties she experienced in praying consistently, she expressed that she had been meaning to speak to him to see if he could offer her some advice. She also received secondhand advice from her chaplain through a friend. Around the time of one of the terrorist attacks in Europe, Dina spoke to her roommate about how she was so unsettled and upset. Her roommate expressed she had a similar conversation with their chaplain about what had happened and he told her, “It’s much more courageous to live through your faith than to die for it.” Dina explained that that
222 Nesma’s characterization of her chaplain resembles one of the religious instructors described in Justine Howe’s ethnography of the Webb community in Chicago who positioned himself as a “guide” and as someone “who does not necessarily have all the answers” (2018, 135). 223 Recorded interview with Omar, May 2016.
168 particular reflection really resonated with her and was something that she ended up sharing with other people.
When I asked her why she attended some of the ḥalaqāt led by the chaplain on her campus, one of the reasons that stood out to me was when she explained, “[Imam Ibrahim] also sees what the sense of the room is, what people already know or what people have grown up thinking.” The reason Dina’s reflection was so striking is because it so aptly captured the general sense I observed in these settings. Imam Ibrahim had an astute way of gauging the temper of the room and very much addressed those before him on their own terms. For example, he would ask follow-up questions to gain better clarity on what was being asked. It was not unusual to notice him scouting the room to make sure that all attendees were given an opportunity to share their thoughts or ask a question especially if the discussion was being steered by a handful of individuals. Occasionally, he would ask a student if they had something to say especially if they looked confused, they had not contributed in a while, or if they might be able to offer some insight on a particular topic. Imam Ibrahim addressed every question, as loaded or self-indulgent as it may be in a very delicate and thoughtful manner.224 I recognize that my qualifying these queries as being “loaded” or “self-indulgent” is a judgment call on my part but what I am referring to are the kinds of discourse that can take place in any intellectual setting such as the classroom environment where students freely ask polemical questions or if a student spends time focusing on a particular point that deviates from the original topic at hand. I generally found that
Imam Ibrahim handled himself with grace, calmness, and delicacy even in instances when someone was dominating the conversation. His diplomacy and thoughtfulness set a particular tone for other congregants who generally modeled Imam Ibrahim’s composure. Even in
224 I am generally referring to polemical questions and arguments that I found repeated in these ḥalaqa settings, specifically discussions about predestination and human agency, good vs. evil, and women’s rights.
169 instances where “Islamic” tenets were being challenged, perhaps in ways that could be perceived as offensive, Imam Ibrahim remained cool and unfazed. His ability to answer such questions respectfully and the warmth he exhibited in his ḥalaqāt created a familial atmosphere of students and community members who were friendly, courteous, and interactively engaging with each other.
As such, I noticed Imam Ibrahim was consistent when it came to introducing students and community members to each other. He also made every individual feel welcome by providing them with his time and attention. As Nesma aptly put, she found her chaplain and his wife to be models of “striving for perfection” and that “being able to see that and interact with them and learn from their actions not even their words… I think… that sets the precedent for the MSA here… for a lot of people here at least.”225 Nesma’s comments demonstrate how chaplains’ behaviors, not simply what they say become observable, measurable, and emulative qualities that students strive to embody and that set a particular tone for the community. Thus, a chaplain’s behavior and comportment inflect the discursive MSA space and how these youth actually experience Islam during their university tenure by shaping how students interact with each other, how they approach religious literacy, and their pursuit of religious guidance.
In a conversation with Usman, I learned that he turned to his chaplain to discuss more existentially troubling spiritual matters. For example, he told me that he began questioning whether he should be “blindly following” the religious teachings he was taught when he was growing up, which urged him to “literally go out and question everything.” As we spoke, he shared that he began having “severe doubts about Islam” explaining “I got the idea in my head that everything should be questioned… cuz if you don’t do that then you’re just being ignorant.
225 Recorded interview with Nesma, April 2016.
170 You’re just being a dumb follower. It says in the Qur’an that you should question, you shouldn’t be blindly following things. That inspired me to literally go out and question everything.”226
It is worth noting that Usman still engages in normative Islamic rituals such as praying five times a day, reading the Qur’an, fasting, and making du‘ā’. In fact, one might qualify
Usman as more “practicing” than some of the other students I spoke to who were not struggling with the same faith-based issues but yet were inconsistent in adhering to prescriptive Islamic tenets. He admitted that he recognized there was a disconnect between his sincerely praying and making supplications while simultaneously embodying so much doubt which has led him, in his
“intellectual academic mode,” to articulate that “I don’t believe in Allah. Maybe I’m lying to myself, I don’t know. But I won’t tell you that I don’t believe in it. I will tell you that I believe in it but I’m not sure if I’m lying to myself.” He shared the doubts he was having with his chaplain during his freshman year, providing him with a list of things that had “hurt” him.
In a follow-up interview, the topic of doubt arose again and Usman explained in more detail the kinds of conversations he and his chaplain had. At this point, Usman and I had already completed a lengthy introductory interview and I was better prepared to ask follow-up questions.
These included whether he benefited from these interactions, whether he was able to arrive at any conclusion, and whether his chaplain advised him to read relevant literature. Imam Ibrahim did recommend books written by Western academics that argued for God’s existence and Usman found them to be helpful. When Usman shared this with me, he was not critical of his chaplain and did not blame him for being unable to placate some of the doubts he was having.227 Usman understood that his questions were his own to confront but he appreciated the fact that his chaplain was attuned to what he was specifically experiencing and was actually listening to him.
226 Recorded interview with Usman, November 2015. 227 See Chouhoud (2018) for a study on the place of “doubt” amongst American Muslims.
171 After I commended his chaplain and noted that not everybody has the skillet necessary to deal with these sorts of questions, Usman responded by saying, “he’s been a chaplain for a while.” He then went on to describe his chaplain as being “on top of it” and credited his substantial experience as a chaplain for enabling him to deal with students who have had the same sorts of issues.228
In this conversation, two important points emerge. First, a chaplain’s open engagement with students is crucial to establishing an affective and impressionable relationship. Second, their professional experience makes them trustworthy and equipped to handle the questions directed their way. The more experience they have, the better tempered and prepared they are. By adopting the model of pastoral care, Imam Ibrahim was able to help students navigate and process their own religious concerns which draws our attention to another point, namely chaplains’ roles as sources of guidance rather than prescription for these students. As I argued earlier, they were not muftis or classically trained clerics, but they were righteous guides in the
MSA space who students availed themselves of to help them address and process whatever religious concerns they had.
Celebrity Shaykh Culture on College Campuses
As previously noted, Muslim speakers are invited to give talks to MSA students. Most of these events take place in the late afternoon/early evening of a workday or during the weekend.
They are often advertised on campus posters, in emails, and on the MSA’s social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Some MSAs also have public listservs that one can sign up for if they attend an event and once they are registered, they automatically become updated on future MSA happenings. Other MSAs managed private and public listservs with
228 Recorded interview with Usman, January 2016.
172 private ones enabling students to ask each other questions, post ads, and share religious reflections. These MSAs generally hosted MSA specific events in addition to those that were made available to the larger Muslim community that included young professionals and families.
Before an event took place, it was common to receive multiple reminders advertising the events and any updates regarding modifications to the time or location. MSAs took this advertising seriously as it was important to draw in as large a crowd as possible. When a speaker was coming, there was general excitement amongst the student body, particularly if this was the first time a speaker was visiting their campus or if the speaker was in high demand.229 At times, students were able to spend some quality time with these figures before or after an event as some
MSAs hosted lunches or dinners that students could sign up for. I found myself becoming excited to hear speakers for the first time, particularly those that I had listened to online and were praised by students in our interviews.
In conversations with students and my observation of events, I became exposed to what could be qualified as a “celebrity shaykh” culture in the sense that particular religious figures generated a mass following of students who invited them to their campuses as well as their local mosques and fundraisers.230 These shaykhs possess a celebrity status because of their large followings in addition to their charismatic and affable personalities which students find relatable, inspirational, and worthy of emulation. The charismatic appeal of these figures signifies a trend in American Muslim circles that has been described by some as “edutainment” or “religio-
229 There are logistical elements to booking a speaker, especially finalizing an honorarium. While I am privy to some of the honorarium figures that speakers have been given, I do not have enough data to make an argument regarding how honorariums are finalized. This topic did not arise in any recorded interviews with students. However, it casually came up in a side conversation with an MSA board member who shared that it was important for speakers to be generously compensated for their campus visits. There is ample room to further research the politics regarding the compensation of Muslim religious figures in the United States. 230 Zareena Grewal and R. David Coolidge note, “[t]he most popular preachers develop large followings among Muslim Americans, attracting thousands of adult learners at local and national Islamic conferences and retreats throughout North America” (2013, 247). These spaces also include MSAs on college campuses.
173 tainment.” Shaimaa El Naggar defines “religio-tainment” as being “(the blurring between religion and entertainment) manifest in televangelism and other emerging genres such as
(Muslim) hip hop in which religious and ethnic issues are discussed (and mediated online)”
(2018, 317). Having spent time in Egypt in the early 2000s, I recall a time when religious speakers like Amr Khaled were dubbed rock stars amongst Egyptian youth. 231 Figures like Amr
Khaled and those that have become popular amongst American Muslim youth share multiple similarities.232 They are often male, young, charismatic, funny, and speak to their audiences in their vernacular (English in terms of the U.S. Muslim community) and more importantly attempt to imbue in them confidence so that they can cultivate a sense of religious literacy and fortified
God-consciousness. Like Amr Khaled, these shaykhs generally refrain from using the “scare tactics” of their predecessors. Rather they communicate with their audiences by speaking more generally about love for the Creator and urge their audiences to contemplate why they are performing rituals by posing questions that incite self-reflection and encourage individuals to consider the “private and individualistic” (Svetlova 2014, 205).233
Unlike earlier generations of religious figures in the United States who tended to focus on educating Muslims about how to properly perform rituals or incorporate fiqh into their lives, many of these younger shaykhs delve into “deeper” (Ali 2018, 45) conversations about the religious efficacy of prayer, fasting, reading the Qur’an, and maintaining one’s taqwā (piety, fear of God). In fairness though, earlier generations of shaykhs and imams, particularly those who
231 See Aishima (2016), Rock (2010), Svetlova (2014) as well as Mouftah (2014). While these pieces address the Islamic Revival and piety amongst Egyptian youth, they shed light on the appeal of young and charismatic Muslim religious figures. Svetlova explains how Amr Khaled’s revivalist project involves “the overall reform of the minds and souls of Muslims all over the world, which will in due course be translated into actions, so that Muslims will once again be in the vanguard morally, spiritually, and technologically” (2014, 193). 232 Rock notes, “Amr Khaled offers these youth a different interpretation of what religion ‘means’ and how it should be approached” (2010, 31). Rock explains that part of Khaled’s appeal is his ability to personally connect with the youth who admire him and his embodying an “‘everyman’ quality” (ibid.). 233 See Bellah (1996) and (2006) and Roof (1993) for more on American “ religious individualism.”
174 were imported from abroad, shouldered the responsibility of establishing a Muslim community that had the resources to lead a practicing Muslim lifestyle in the United States. As such, if there were no American Muslim religious institutions to disseminate basic religious beliefs and practices, I would argue that this new generation of speakers would be unable to effectively and convincingly expound upon the important place of religious practice and thought in their audience’s lives.
Celebrity shaykhs are effective in transmitting religious knowledge to these youth not simply because of their religious literacy, but because of their ability to communicate religious knowledge in a way that speaks to one’s heart, one’s insecurities, or “with an ability to narrate stories with an intellectual and emotional content” (2010, 174). Moreover, their delivery tends to be gentler enabling their talks to be engaging and less intimidating, a welcome departure for youth who have been exposed to religious figures during their childhoods who were considered stringent and aloof.
In their research on popular Muslim podcasts Scholz et al., explain that the rhetorical style of one of them “is the combination of a humorous, sometimes even ironic speech mode drawn largely on what could be called “Western popular culture” on the one hand, and countless advices regarding a “good Islamic life” on the other hand” (2008, 481). Humor becomes a defining quality of many of these shaykhs and has the ability to provide “a sense of control and empowerment” as well as “in-group bonding” for these youth (El Naggar 2018, 313). In an
Islamophobic context, humor reshapes the American Muslim narrative and offers a respite from the media by “engag[ing] with the stereotypes and realities of being both Muslim and American in a post-9/11 context” (Michael 2013, 130). The incorporation of pop culture references and humor resonates with these youth and breaks the monotony of listening to a talk filled with
175 suggestive prescriptions. By drawing on humor and cultural references, these youth are able to identify with and relate to these shaykhs who in turn exhibit that they understand the myriad of experiences and Western influences these youth are immersed in on a daily basis. Chaplains also comfortably incorporate pop culture references into their ḥalaqāt, which often add a dose of comic relief to the discussions but more importantly demonstrate that they are in touch with students and are able to draw on symbols and examples outside of religious texts to relay a point.
During my fieldwork, chaplains made pop culture references to Justin Bieber, sports such as basketball and soccer, and popular television shows and films.
Unlike chaplains that cultivate a sense of ṣuḥba (companionship) with their students because of the close proximity they have with students on campus, celebrity shaykhs are much more enigmatic due to the fact that they are usually accessed on social media platforms such as
YouTube or Facebook.234 This virtual encounter creates an air of mystique or what can be described as “pseudo-charisma” (Diekema 1991) because of its mediated form.235 Although students did experience an “īmān boost” when they were in the company of these figures, students’ connection to these figures was generally through an online format or an event and thus this boost was difficult to sustain. Samia, who was the first student to use the phrase “īmān boost,” qualified it as “a natural high” that was somewhat fleeting, maybe lasting for a few days and would inspire her to “pray… be good… drop some bad habits.”236 Unfortunately, coupled with that boost was a sharp decline. This left Samia feeling “spiritually dead” that is until she
234 Rudolph Ware explains that ṣuḥba “was partly built on mimesis – that is to say, on the assimilation of gestures, mannerisms, and dispositions through extended physical proximity” (2014, 54). 235 Pseudo-charisma, according to Diekema differs from “pure charisma” and “routinized charisma” (Weber 1968) because of the mediated nature of the relationship. This mediated relationship is “decontextualized” “illusory” and has the potential to be “fleeting” because the relationship that is constructed is between the “viewer and the medium… not the focal actor” (1991, 151-54). 236 Recorded interview with Samia, October 2015.
176 found her chaplain’s ḥalaqāt, which provided her with stability and consistency and revived her relationship with the Divine.
These shaykhs’ qualifications and backgrounds vary and include American Muslims of
South Asian and Arab backgrounds as well as African American and white converts to Islam.
Some have been formally trained at institutions such as al-Azhar or the Islamic University of
Madinah whereas others have travelled the world learning from shaykhs in Muslim-majority countries such as Mauritania or Syria.237 I recall one student, in a casual conversation we were having about the “celebrity shaykh” culture, sharing how much she admired individuals who travelled the world in search of Islamic knowledge. She felt inspired by these figures’ thirst, passion and their leaving the comforts of a first-world country in order to learn more about their religion. It is not unusual to find MSA students following suit including some of the ones I interviewed who registered for summer Arabic programs in the United States or abroad or who aspired to do so once they acquired the necessary financial means. 238 Essentially, what I gathered was that students were not acquiring knowledge for knowledge’s sake but were making a declaration about their commitment to their faith and their desire to seek out the company of those deemed righteous.239
Students’ Impressions of Celebrity Shaykhs
Before I begin highlighting students’ views of the celebrity shaykhs they have become acquainted with, I should note that I will not be disclosing their identities. I have spent a great
237 See Grewal (2013) for more on how American Muslim students travel to different parts of the Muslim world in order to obtain Islamic knowledge. 238 It should be noted that travelling in the pursuit of religious education is not a modern phenomenon. See Winter (2014). 239 See Fabio Vicini’s work on “pedagogies of affection” employed in Turkey. Fundamental to this approach is a relationship between teacher and student that “evokes admiration and encourages emulation” of the former (2013, 396).
177 deal of time pondering over whether there would be benefit in including their identities, particularly as I hope that this research offers a timely narrative of the American Muslim experience. While I initially found no harm in doing so given they are public figures whose lectures are accessible online, because this dissertation is focused on students’ experiences in
MSAs, I felt it would be more appropriate to center the narrative on how MSA students receive these figures without delving into a discussion about their general public persona and their teachings.
With the exception of a few female religious figures, the majority of those MSA students learned from were relatively young men dressed in Western garb, and spoke English fluently.
Their lessons were generally humorous and relatable because they described how they too had struggled with their faith at various junctures in their lives.240 Their general tone was uplifting and the religious guidance they imparted was practical and focused on techniques to strengthen your faith, such as making du‘ā’, tips for not missing your prayers, and redefining the meaning of happiness. Recurring themes in these religious lessons were the fact that “we all make mistakes,” “we all have to deal with hardships,” “we are all tested” and “we all must seek forgiveness.” In an online interview with one of these popular shaykhs, he bemoaned the fact that many of the youth he encountered were intimidated by religiosity and how they felt that they were incapable of experiencing spiritual fulfillment.
Many of the students I spoke with desired some version of the īmān boost or īmān high described by Samia, which would preclude them from feeling eternally damned for their
240 By relatable, I am referring to “celebrity shaykh” figures whose personal journeys such as their struggles with their faith, or lifestyle choices, are disclosed to their students. In many ways, they resemble the televangelists in Egypt whose “moral legitimacy as Islamic spokespeople derives… from their projected status as ‘ordinary Muslims’ who struggle to lead an Islamically correct life in a world where it is manifestly difficult to do so. They have legitimacy not because they are different from the audience they preach to, but because they are one of them” (Moll 2012, 37). See also Echchaibi (2011).
178 transgressions. However, I was made privy to the fact that there were students involved in MSAs who were not interested in being posed such questions and thus sought religious education elsewhere. They developed their religious literacy by attending local mosques whose shaykhs/imams satisfied their educational expectations of learning a more regimented curriculum. I also learned there were smaller assemblages of MSA students, generally male, who would discuss what they had learned about fiqh related matters. I never spoke with these students during my research because they did not attend the ḥalaqāt I frequented and because they never responded to the recruitment emails sent by their peers and chaplains.241 As such, I am unable to account for their voices in this dissertation but I find it equally important to acknowledge the fact that there are MSA students who do not share the same religious sensibilities as the students I spoke with during my ethnographic research.
During my fieldwork, the vast majority of students I encountered generally sought out religious teachings that inculcated in them a sense of confidence about their religious identities.
These MSA students were drawn to Islamic pedagogical approaches that employed critical thinking, asked heuristic questions, and provided them with thought-provoking explanations as opposed to being offered prescriptive responses. During my fieldwork, students often discussed how much they appreciated when celebrity shaykhs would contextualize passages from the
Qur’an or historicize a hadith. Many of these shaykhs compassionately discussed the importance of monitoring one’s heart and evaluating one’s intentions. I found that students valued these insights because they shifted the focus away from superficial and outward displays of religiosity, and instead placed emphasis on the inner workings of an individual’s faith, which was only knowable to them and God and could not be assessed by anyone else.
241 Recorded interviews with Samia, April 2016 and Amira, December 2015.
179 Fawzi, for example, enjoyed listening to some of these prominent figures because the lectures offered him what he loosely qualified as being “tafsīr,” or a “breakdown” of commonly used phrases such as bismillāh (in the name of God), al-ḥamdu li-llāh (thank God), and passages from the Qur’an.242 Students like Fawzi, who described themselves as being “laid back” and
“carefree,” appreciated lectures and ḥalaqāt that were simplified in the sense that they offered basic explanations and expounded upon terminology and topics most of them were familiar with.
Conversing with Fawzi during my fieldwork was refreshing. Only he and another student I spoke with admitted any limitations to their religious knowledge even though they were both inquisitive and eager to learn more.243 This is not to intimate that any of the students I spoke with were boastful but the majority of them did not express an insecurity or deficiency in their religious literacy. I grew to recognize the uniqueness in Fawzi’s candor even though the questions posed in my interviews were not geared towards a self-assessment of their religious knowledge, but rather on where and from whom they acquired it.
Fawzi continued to provide examples from a ḥalaqa series he regularly attended entitled
“Diseases of the Heart.” When I asked him why he enjoyed that class, he explained that the shaykh was a professional and that he trusted what he was saying. He noted an instance where the shaykh expounded upon the etymological breakdown of the word qalb (heart) explaining that it is derived from the root q-l-b which means to toss and turn. Fawzi described this piece of knowledge as a “Snapple fact” because it was concise and memorable. Another student, Layth, shared a similar example when discussing another figure. He recounted a video where he saw the speaker deconstruct the word īmān. At the time, Layth was beginning to learn Arabic roots and the speaker explained how the root of īmān “means like a safety net and religion is a safety net. I
242 Recorded interview with Fawzi, May 2016. 243 Recorded interview with Yasir, July 2016.
180 was like wow this concept is amazing and I used that concept like in class. I just thought it was so cool.” As I described earlier in chapter two, some MSA students internalized a sense of inadequacy in their religious literacy. By deconstructing popular Arabic words in a simple and memorable fashion, celebrity shaykhs are filling a comprehension gap many students felt they had due to their Sunday school curriculums.
Jamila, for example, when asked what she appreciated about these shayhks’ styles noted how they were engaging. She explained, “for example his tafsirs. I was listening to one video that was just mind-blowing. It breaks it [down] piece by piece. He gives the context, the historical context of the verse.” As our conversation continued, she expressed that she “loved” hearing the historical contexts of Qur’anic verses because it “put things into perspective” for her.
Asking how she was afforded clarity, she shared,
For example, especially the tafsirs of certain verses. Seeing the linguistic miracle of the Qur’an reminds me to think you know my intellectual capacity can only go so far and then it makes you realize well this book. It definitely can’t be written by a human being and then it just makes you think you know. You get chills.… You compare your intellectual capacity to something like that or something looking at the universe and then you can’t help but become closer to God you know what I mean?244
Unlike the counsel of their parents, which these youth generally criticized as discussed in the previous chapter, chaplains and celebrity shaykhs were generally praised. I initially found this to be interesting because these religious teachings did not overtly conflict with those espoused by their parents and Sunday school teachers on a rudimentary level. What was different was that all three of the chaplains modeled their ḥalaqāt like that of a university classroom where free thinking was encouraged, self-reflexivity was valued, and differences of opinion were welcome and not shunned or even worse, ignored.
244 Recorded interview with Jamila, April 2016.
181 Yasmine was another student who attended weekend-long religious seminars with celebrity shaykhs and she provided various reasons for having attended these classes including socializing with her friends. In terms of her educational motivation, she expressed she was
“trying to develop that connection that we seek in prayer or like maybe trying to understand what prayer is like. I don’t see why else I would be taking all those classes unless it’s trying develop something.”245 The classes she took focused on ‘aqīda (creed), and fiqh pertaining to wuḍū’ or salat. She explained that one of the shaykhs who “affected” her did so because “when he spoke,
… he was teaching the material, but he would incorporate like I guess belief education or something. I didn’t know what it was called but like a personal touch to religion I guess.” I had actually attended a class with the shaykh she mentioned and noticed how in that particular weekend seminar, he was generally affable and humorous as he spoke of his family and life experiences.
In this section, students have provided multiple reflections accounting for the positive appeal of celebrity shaykhs. Students who availed themselves of these shaykhs’ teachings found themselves excited to learn more Arabic and to continue their Qur’anic education because they were imparted with teachings that were memorable, shareable, and affective. Like their chaplains who possessed affable personalities, celebrity shaykhs were also likeable and relatable.
Moreover, they filled an educational void for these American Muslim youth who were often dissatisfied with the religious education they obtained in their Sunday schools and in their local mosques.
245 Recorded interview with Yasmine, May 2016.
182 Embodying Adab While Being Critical
During my research, I learned that there was an adab to social critique particularly as it pertained to students’ impressions of American Muslim religious figures. Some students voluntarily criticized figures and their stances while others did not. On social media, one becomes more exposed to outspoken individuals who are shielded by their anonymity and may thus feel more comfortable sharing their critiques. However, this embodied adab in real life was not always clear to me and invariably depended on the context and the individuals present. In this section, I will draw attention to some of the instances I encountered during my fieldwork that incited criticism and discord amongst some American Muslim university students.
In a conversation with one student, I learned that disagreements took place in an MSA board meeting when a local figure was suggested to speak at an event. When the figure’s name was mentioned, one of the MSA board members responded with a “meh” prompting my interlocutor who initially proposed the figure to ask the board member “what meh?” and whether they felt the speaker was “too liberal.” The board member conceded that he did in fact think the speaker was too liberal and my interlocutor surmised that the speaker was cast as such because of his religious views. The speaker was eventually invited to speak on campus, but the pushback illuminates the internal tensions that can exist within MSAs as there are differences of opinion regarding from whom they should be obtaining their religious knowledge. My conversation with the student who shared this incident evolved into a discussion about the terms “liberal” and
“conservative,” which were occasionally employed by students, chaplains, and guest speakers on the campuses I worked with. The student I spoke with confided that they had grown increasingly critical of these terms because when they were growing up, these terms were rarely adopted and people “didn’t need to. It just felt like a balanced way of approaching dīn and then when you get
183 to college level, it’s like everywhere and it means something else everywhere and you can’t define it. Every MSA you go to, it’s like different.”246 In my interactions with students, I often found that they felt these terms served little in the development of constructive and transparent dialogue. One must also bear in mind that American Muslims have often had multiple labels imposed upon them that misrepresent what is really at stake in terms of their beliefs, practices, and sociopolitical commitments. Moreover, these qualifiers can be divisive especially when they are used to discredit particular individuals, beliefs, and practices.247
One student, Reem, expressed a vehement dislike for the employment of categories and labels. Her stance forced me to question some of the qualifiers I myself have taken for granted.248
In that conversation, though, I admitted that unfortunately, our ability to articulate ideas and views relied on linguistic modes of communication. She agreed but still argued that she was uncomfortable with qualifiers. What I found to be commonplace was that by refraining from adopting labels or by censuring the appropriation of labels, students were making a political statement. As Muslims growing up in a heightened level of Islamophobia where words such as
“Islamic fundamentalist,” “Islamic radical,” or Islamism, are so callously equated with terrorism in the media, it seems only natural that these youth would avoid participating in discursive processes that relegate them or other Muslims to negative stereotypes. By and large, the one label that seemed to generate the most reticence in its use was “Salafi,” even though the students
I spoke with were the ones who brought it up in our discussions and then retracted what they had just said explaining that they do not know who a “Salafi” really is. One student even admitted
246 Recorded interview with student, October 2015. 247 Zareena Grewal explains “the application of political categories such as “liberal,” “progressive,” and “conservative” fails to capture the varied perspectives and religious orientations of Muslim Americans” (2013, 321). 248 Recorded interview with Reem, February 2016.
184 that the term Salafi has a generally negative connotation.249 As such, I suspected that MSA students attempted to avoid these labels in order to refrain from contributing to more stereotyped mischaracterizations. At the same time, they were exposed to these labels and subconsciously employed them, generally clarifying their statements when we discussed the matter in further detail, which indicates the MSA students’ general tendency to more reflexively consider the implications of the terminology they used.
Layth and I sat down for our last interview soon after a highly revered American Muslim shaykh was criticized for making what some perceived to be racially insensitive comments.250
The shaykh was a guest panelist at a large Muslim conference and was asked to comment on the
Black Lives Matter movement. The following day, some of the other guest speakers in attendance criticized the shaykh’s comments arguing that more should have been said to unequivocally condemn police brutality.251
Few students brought this situation to my attention and my interviews were wrapping up by this point in the research. Ultimately, I sensed disappointment from those who broached the subject as in the case of Layth who recognized the fact that some of the criticisms directed at this shaykh were valid. However, Layth was troubled by the outpouring of negative commentary the shaykh was receiving on Facebook and the “unfair” accusations people were making against his character. He explained, “[name] is like this prominent figure in America. Why are Muslims attacking each other like this? Muslims are just like so lost sometimes.” When Layth shared this with me, I could sense his sincere frustration and disappointment with how people were handling the situation. Layth himself was outspoken and I grew to learn that he advocated for a variety of
249 In academia, the term Salafi has also been met with differences of opinion. For example, see the exchange between Frank Griffel (2015) and Henri Lauzière (2016). 250 Recorded interview with Layth, February 2016. 251 Dalia Mogahed and Youssef Chouhoud state that sixty-six percent of American Muslims support the Black Lives Matter movement and I suspect that this number has increased since the report was published (2017, 3).
185 causes and worked to bridge alliances with different faith groups. He was not a passive youth and was critical of issues taking place within certain American Muslim circles such as ethnic exclusion and the confusion around the use of labels such as Salafism. However, there was a fine line for Layth between engaging in constructive dialogue and public shaming, which is how he perceived the criticisms leveled at this figure.
One of the ramifications of the preponderance of social media platforms is that they facilitate an atmosphere where austere criticism can be dispensed with little consequence. As
“t]he Internet has led to the democratization of Islamic knowledge” (Zaman 2008, 467), it has also led to the democratization of social commentary where Muslims are both those who offend and can be offended as emotions are heightened, and there are variant expectations regarding the ways in which individuals should address sociopolitical issues.252 Moreover, it is often difficult to gauge the influence of critics, supporters, or those who are indifferent to a social issue. With the loudest and most controversial voices gaining traction or with the voices of prominent shaykhs, like the one Layth was referring to becoming the most noticed, assessing whether
Muslims are always attacking each other as Layth suggested proves challenging. Certainly, it may appear that way as many individuals can recount a variety of instances where they observed someone they admired being unfairly critiqued. As Daniel Varisco notes in his analysis of the
Muslim blogosphere, “the rules of engagement are no longer the same. It is not the individuals who are observed online, only their virtual shades” (2010, 72).
Sitting with Omar for our last interview, he expressed his disappointment with an
American Muslim shaykh who is highly revered in MSA circles and the broader American
Muslim community. While he found that he could to turn to the speaker regarding “anything
252 Gary Bunt explains, “[f]or blogging iMuslims, there can be little separation between online and offline worlds. Blogs have become a significant adjunct to, if not the primary thrust of, conversation, intellectual stimulus, and Muslim networking” (2009, 133).
186 about spirituality and anything about the issues of the West,” he found that he did not always offer a diversity of perspectives when answering people’s questions. He shared one video where a woman asked the shaykh about the hadith in which women are described as “deficient in some way in the dīn.” 253 The student explained that the speaker “responded by saying well maybe deficient isn’t the best translation of the word but like… the reasons people have offered for this hadith are that like women menstruate and therefore bla bla bla so I heard that and I was like
OK? I hear that might be the mainstream interpretation but I was hoping he would offer more caveats or like alternative interpretations.”254
Omar discussed this disappointment with his chaplain who responded by explaining to him that the shaykh’s “job is not to offer alternative interpretations. He’s not gonna do that as a traditionalist and you have to look to other kind of interpreters of the tradition.” The conversation with his chaplain proved fruitful and Omar expressed he would have to be more selective regarding whom he turned to for which topics. Omar’s story is a common one amongst American
Muslims. As various figures occupy the American Muslim authoritative stage, determining which figures can best address one’s concerns often entails trial and error. From this example, we learn that shaykhs work within the rubric of their own training and that perhaps expecting them to employ other hermeneutical frameworks is possibly unfair, as disappointing as their arguments may be.
In a lively exchange with Samia a couple of hours before her chaplain’s ḥalaqa, she explained to me that there were people who were “critical of these major scholars.” I responded with “yah but people are critical of everyone” to which she replied, “yah but people weren’t as outwardly critical of people like [name] and [name] as they are I think now.” I asked her “Why
253 The hadith this student is referring to is found in Sahih al-Bukhari (Vol. 1, Book 6, No. 301, pg. 181). 254 Recorded interview with Omar, May 2016.
187 do you think that is?” and she explained that over the years, these scholars, particularly when speaking to MSA students and youth in general had become much “bolder, more audacious with their claims and their statements” and that “a lot of it is necessary.” She continued to share that some of the pushback these scholars received was from community members who took issue with some of the social justice and political issues they were propagating. As the conversation progressed, I asked if she could recall any figures who were immune from these critiques. She admitted that she guessed everyone received criticisms but noticed this was considerably more than “like ten years ago.” When I asked her if she could account for this shift, she stated,
because I think people have gotten more critical of their own faith and of their surroundings based on a lot of context like you see a lot more Muslim academics now than you did ten years ago. You see critical conversations that people are having and it’s popular and it’s gained traction um to the point here like I’ve seen on my Facebook world and I’ve had Facebook since 2007 so even if I scroll back to some mentors, I saw the changes that they went through from being like really religious online to being really political and only political to being like a balance between the two to calling this and calling that out and just like really loud about things and they weren’t before because before it was like hey we’re Muslim living in post-9/11, let’s stay together.
She went on to say that with respect to Islamophobia, she does not feel that it has subsided and that it is in fact worse, which has incited intellectually minded college students to speak about various political issues employing an academic vocabulary and rhetoric that counters the “religious jargon” they grew up with.255 When I asked her if she could clarify what she meant by “academic,” she explained that currently, in the MSA undergraduate community, it’s “cool”
“to be that person who calls out things and who’s critical.” After she finished, I asked her if that was actually cool. This conversation took place during the first half of my research and I had not really been in the company of students who were necessarily “calling anything out.” It would not be until the following year where I would witness social justice initiatives more visibly taking
255 Recorded interview with Samia, April 2016.
188 place amongst the MSA students on the campuses I worked with. In addition, I wanted Samia to further explain her claim that being that student that she described actually made you “cool.”
Samia clarified that this being “cool” really depends on the community under discussion and elaborated by using her own experiences as examples.256 She relayed the fact that people’s impressions of her, often because of her conservative dress, have been countered by her outspoken nature on issues relating to the status of women in the mosque or social justice initiatives. She found that her social media posts on Facebook coupled with her desire to speak critically about issues, had garnered people’s attention, admittedly some positive and some negative. In many ways, though, these posts made people perceive her as being “cool” because they generally received “likes.” It would take me a year to understand where Samia was coming from and to fully realize her exceptional position amongst her MSA peers, whom I found to be generally more reserved when addressing sociopolitical issues on their campus.257
Conclusion
This chapter has provided multiple examples accounting for how Muslim chaplains and celebrity shaykhs are influential figures in the lives of American Muslim youth and have become popular because of their relatable personalities and their ability to understand the struggles that
Muslims in the West experience. Accounting for students’ relationships with their chaplains provides another dimension to the discursive MSA space as it captures how chaplains serve as mentors and religious guides. In the MSAs I worked with, I found that chaplains and students developed deep interpersonal relationships and students viewed their chaplains as role models
256 See Alhassen and Abdul Khabeer (2013), Khabeer (2016), and O’Brien (2017) for different discussions of Muslim “cool.” 257 While Samia’s MSA was less likely than other MSAs I studied to participate in social justice initiatives, they were very charitable and had raised record amounts of money for various organizations.
189 and turned to them for spiritual counsel when they were confronted with a variety of issues including personal doubts and anxiety, further demonstrating the significant role that chaplains play in overseeing the wellbeing of their MSA students. This chapter has also offered some of the reasons why American Muslim youth gravitate towards celebrity shaykhs that have become popular in the American Muslim community. We learn that these figures are appealing to these youth because of how they impart religious knowledge in a deconstructed and thus memorable fashion. Students also appreciated how they could relate to these figures and found them to be personable and compassionate.
The charismatic appeal of chaplains and celebrity shaykhs in the United States is connected to a shift in the expectations that American Muslim youth have of religious figures. To survive in the “spiritual marketplace” (Roof et al. 1999), celebrity shaykhs have packaged their religious knowledge in a fashion that is both contemporary and relatable to these young
Muslims. Moreover, celebrity shaykhs and Muslim chaplains are both empathizing with MSA students’ vulnerabilities and are responding with a rhetoric and discourse that is affective, imbues them with confidence, and is more evocative than it is admonitory. Their approaches effectively complement the sense of “religious individualism” these youth expressed when distancing themselves from their parents’ generation. Such individualism is also predicated on a deep and affective relationship with the Divine, which will be discussed in further detail in the following chapter.
190 Chapter 4
Getting High on Īmān: Religious Study Practices of American Muslim Youth
Throughout the course of my research, I attended weekly ḥalaqāt on three different college campuses, each one ranging between one to two hours although some ran over that time- frame depending on what time they began or the length of the question and answer period.258 In this chapter, I will be discussing ḥalaqāt led by Imam Hadi and Imam Sherif.259 The majority of the ḥalaqāt took place in the late afternoon or early evening. Some of them were thematically based and addressed a particular topic, which was advertised beforehand, concluding at the end of a session or at the end of a semester. Others lasted indefinitely covering a wide range of issues during their tenure. All of them were open to students and the outlying Muslim and non-Muslim community, which resulted in a diverse turnout. Depending on which campus hosted the ḥalaqa, the demographic composition may have consisted strictly of students whereas others had a balanced mix of community members and students. The longest ḥalaqa series that I attended spanned the entirety of my research, were organized by the university’s chaplains, and addressed a myriad of topics including the hermeneutics of the Qur’an and hadiths.
In my own conversations with MSA students, they questioned the nature of their religious education prior to their entering university and how much of it involved a mechanical process of learning as opposed to inciting them with a sense of God-consciousness. For some of the students I spoke with, they explained how the pursuit of their religious education upon entering university was an attempt to awaken and fortify their relationship with the Divine. The model
258 I would like to thank Professor Noah Salomon for feedback when I presented an excerpt of this chapter at the University of Toronto, as well Jairan Gahan, Khalidah Ali, and the attendees for their engaging questions. 259 Given my having conducted research on different college campuses that were spread apart in terms of geographic distance, I was unable to attend all of the ḥalaqāt each one hosted. I also deliberately chose not to attend some depending on the intimacy of the setting and whether or not I felt I would be overstepping any boundaries especially if the instructor was not one I was familiar with and had not developed a relationship with during my research.
191 Muslim these youth aspired to was the believer who thought deeply about the Divine and the messages of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. It was not enough to have simply memorized the Qur’an or hadiths. In fact, the essential objective for many of these youth was to better understand the religious texts they grew up reading by making it relevant to their lives.
This chapter places particular emphasis on how studying religious texts becomes a means through which students develop a relationship with the Divine. I argue that the Islamic pedagogy offered in MSA ḥalaqāt, such as those led by Imam Hadi and Imam Sherif, taught students how to study religious texts in order to achieve three epistemological objectives: question what these writings informed them about the Divine such as His qualities, contemplate these questions in order to develop a relationship with the Divine and thus fortify a sense of God-consciousness, and relate these texts to whatever they might be experiencing in the material world. God- consciousness, and consciousness were relatively ubiquitous terms in MSA ḥalaqāt. They referred to a mindfulness of the Divine and an awareness of the Divine’s presence in all of one’s experiences and feelings. I find William James’s discussion of personal religion, which is rooted in religious experience, as being a fruitful entry point for conceptualizing how experiences were discussed in these ḥalaqāt. James contrasts personal religion with institutional religion, the former being defined as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” ([1902]
1929, 31-32). James’s privileging of the personal, experiential dimension of religious life captures the fundamental objective of the teachings being imparted in the MSA ḥalaqāt I attended.260 Drawing on William James’s discussion of personal religion also enables us to better understand what MSA students experience when they internalize the teachings imparted to them
260 According to Craig Martin, Russell McCutcheon, and Leslie Smith, William James “grounds the authenticity of religious experience in an individual, internal, mental state” (2012, 38).
192 in their MSAs’ ḥalaqāt especially as it relates to how we account for the Divine’s presence in the lives of American Muslim youth.
This chapter begins with a discussion of Islamic pedagogy in the United States. It then explains the nature of ḥalaqāt historically and their contemporary significance on college campuses. To illustrate the text-based learning practices imparted in these ḥalaqāt, this chapter analyzes the pedagogical styles and teachings of two chaplains, Imam Hadi and Imam Sherif.
It examines how the study of religious texts enables students to achieve a sense of God- consciousness. In addition, this chapter reveals how students were being urged to contemplate personal everyday experiences and connect them to the Divine in order to understand their religious meaning. This chapter also connects these study practices to broader trends in
American religiosity such as the pedagogical practices of other religious study groups in the
United States that are also teaching their congregants to develop an affective relationship with the Divine.261
Islamic Education in the United States
Academic studies on Islamic pedagogical practices have often been examined with relation to state and institutional factors (Messick 1993; Starrett 1998), the socio-historical context (Hefner and Zaman 2010), an engagement with the “discursive tradition” through processes of self-cultivation (Asad 1993; Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006), and in the North
American context, issues of legitimacy given the contestation of Islamic authority (Abou El Fadl
261 According to Michael Lambek “[t]he nature of texts and the knowledge to be drawn from them in any given historical context are shaped by a sociology or political economy of knowledge: how textual knowledge is reproduced and circulated; what the social factors are that mediate access to texts; who is able to read, and in what manner; who has the authority to represent what is written; and how challenges to such authority are manifested” (1990, 24). These study practices also complement American ideas of religious individualism. Particularly since the baby boomer generation, the interplay between commitment, introspection, and religiosity has led many Americans to engage in a process of “figuring out what to give themselves to and where to place their energies” (Roof 1993, 185).
193 2001a; Leonard 2005). In their research on Islamic education in North America, Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith explain that the “Religious education of Muslims, however, generally has been the province of the private realm of individual communities and families across the country as they have struggled to discern the best ways for both children and adults to learn and maintain the faith and practice of Islam” (2009, 4). As such, Muslim families in the United States have educated their children about religiosity in a variety of ways, either in the home by teaching them about Islam themselves, by employing private tutors, by sending them to Sunday school or after- school programs at the local mosque and in some cases, by enrolling them in an Islamic school.
Religious education outside of the home generally involves providing students with a foundation to “understand Islamic principles and be able to carry out the core practices of the
Islamic faith – the Five Pillars” (Douglass and Shaikh 2004, 8). Each of these mediums has its advantages and disadvantages as I learned from the students I interviewed. For example, they
“have served as a vehicle for the transmission of religious knowledge and practice, cultural history and identity, and both a moral and ethical code” (Memon 2011, 286). Given there is no systematic approach to Islamic education in North America, save the Sister Clara Muhammad
School system (Memon 2011, 289), there is no template from which “Islamic” education could be modeled.262 Thus, Muslim students’ experiences can vary considerably depending on where and from whom they have received their religious education particularly if those teachers have no formal training, which indicates a dearth of “oversight and accountability” (Senzai 2009,
258).
In Craig Joseph and Barnaby Reidel’s (2009) work on Muslim private schools in the
United States, they describe the ways in which these institutions instill ethics founded upon
262 See Senzai (2009) for proposals regarding future research on Islamic education and its impact on American Muslim youth.
194 akhlāq (virtues, morals) and adab.263 By doing so, the emphasis is less on cultivating students who have mastered rote memorization, but is focused more on the moral programs found in the
Islamic tradition. Zareena Grewal and R. David Coolidge also note that many of these Islamic schools are similar to other schools in terms of their curriculum but that “what makes many
Islamic schools “Islamic” is simply that Islamic studies and sometimes Arabic are additional courses and that the Muslim-majority school environment creates an Islamic ethos that normalizes Islamic practices and cultivates pride and a strong “Muslim-first” identity in students” (2013, 251).264 Having interviewed MSA students who attended Islamic schools in the
United States, their reflections accounting for the time they spent there mirror the conclusions made by the scholars above. They emphasized how the “environment” and the fact that their classmates were Muslim were some of the qualities that made the school “Islamic.” Of note were their schools’ emphasis on developing one’s akhlāq, rules about gender relations and the extracurricular programming made available to students.
Upon entering university, ḥalaqāt become a prime source of religious education made available to American Muslim students. To better understand the significance of the ḥalaqa setting on college campuses, it is important to bear in mind two intersecting phenomena: contemporary American Muslim youth’s approach to Islamic pedagogy and the MSA as a campus organization that attends to college students’ religiosity and is not merely a social or cultural group. Since 9/11, a great deal of scholarly attention has been devoted to the experiences of American Muslim youth as questions concerning their identity formation have taken center
263 Adab is commonly understood to refer to good manners and has evolved throughout history to refer to the ““high quality of soul, good upbringing, urbanity, and courtesy,” the two last words referring to manners used in elite company, and behavior befitting a civilized person” (Douglass and Shaikh 2004, 14). 264 See also Grewal and Coolidge (2013), Khan (2009), Kashani (2014) and Douglass (2014) for more on both formal and informal educational institutions available to American Muslims. Other institutions that have grown increasingly popular and are not mentioned in the aforementioned literature include SeekersHub Global and Bayyinah Institute.
195 stage. In chapter two, I discussed how American Muslim youth question matters of belief and challenge the mosque and Sunday school education they were immersed in by employing “their knowledge of scriptural interpretation to help win the argument” against their parents (Khan
2009, 126), or defy what they perceived to be oppressive cultural norms. At the core of these youth’s pursuit of religious knowledge was a commitment to nurturing their religious sensibilities and learning more about Islam. This chapter builds upon the previous chapters by examining how American Muslim youth involved in MSA ḥalaqāt are taught to read religious texts in order to reflect on their relationship with the Divine.
Daan Beekers, in his research on Dutch Muslim youth, explains “the notion ‘aesthetics of persuasion’ implies that persuasion – in religious and other domains of social life – does not only come about by discursive registers and forms of reasoning, but also by the evocation of sensorial experience” (2015, 195).265 Beekers’s essay elucidates an experiential mode of learning that entails something “happening” to Dutch Muslim students as they attend religious events. With respect to the education of American Muslim youth, the gravitational appeal to particular chaplains or Muslim public figures cannot be explained strictly through the purview of effective argumentation. As previously discussed, what happens is that students feel something when they listen to their chaplains or celebrity shaykhs. These feelings, while potentially rooted or explicable via rhetorical repertoires and logical reasoning, were much more enigmatic to the students I spoke with. They were generally fleeting and inconsistent as students experienced these bursts of positivity or euphoria in these spaces and generally noticed these sensations subsiding upon leaving them. However, this chapter demonstrates how ḥalaqāt provide a consistent form of religious experience for MSA students as they are continuously encountering the transference of affective teachings about the Divine’s presence in their lives.
265 Beekers notes that the term “aesthetics of persuasion” has been introduced by Birgit Meyer (2010).
196 What is a Ḥalaqa?
The term ḥalaqa means study circle and is derived from the root ḥ-l-q, which means to encircle.266 Historically, ḥalaqāt have been held in a variety of locations such as mosques, people’s homes, and even bookshops (Tibawi 1962, 226). On college campuses, they are generally hosted in classrooms, prayer rooms, or other communal spaces for religious life programming on campus. All ḥalaqāt are led by an instructor who oversees the study circle. On the campuses I frequented, instructors included chaplains, guest speakers, students, male and female, young and old. The democratization of ḥalaqa instruction demonstrates the fluidity of religious knowledge and moreover the “informality” of the study circle. 267 As A.L. Tibawi explains, “[i]t must not be assumed that the circle (ḥalqah) of a learned man in any mosque was solely intended for, or attended by, aspiring scholars, for it was often open to whoever could profit from it, irrespective of age or academic standard. Hence the ḥalqah had to be ‘liberal’ in its approach to learning” (1962, 230). Wadad Kadi similarly notes the “informality” of ḥalaqāt explaining that students could choose from a diverse array of subject matters and prerequisite levels (2006, 314).268 This lack of formality, when adopted on college campuses denotes a flexible participatory style with students choosing from a myriad of topics and ranging in their commitment to attendance.269 With that said, though, the majority of the ḥalaqāt I attended were successful in their ability to attract droves of attendees. Some witnessed over a hundred students
266 Garbi Schmidt argues that “[t]he use of the word halaqa on American campuses and beyond shows the Americanization of an Islamic term” (2004b, 119). 267 Tibawi credits the historical “informality” of ḥalaqāt to the fact that instructors would hold study circles in different physical locations as well as at centers that did not “belong” to their “own rite,” which Tibawi infers as being indicative of “informality and tolerance rather than formality and rivalry for office” (1962, 230). Khaled Abou El Fadl also notes “the informal halaqa system arose as a challenge to the official clergy system controlled and certified by state institutions” (2014a, 23). 268 Some of these subjects included ijtihād, hadith, as well as relevant “auxiliary disciplines” such as Arabic poetry and science (Kadi 2006, 314). 269 Garbi Schmidt, in her research on Muslims in Chicago noted that some MSAs implemented the Peacenet Curriculum which included standardized subjects that were being taught during the year such as “sira, tajwid (intoned recitation of the Qur’an), hadith, fiqh, comparative religion, Arabic language, character building, current affairs, and sports” (2004b, 125).
197 during a session while others were more intimate. At the end of each semester, as exams crept up and graduation was in the near future, ḥalaqāt tended to have a smaller turnout which is to be expected on a college campus when students are juggling their various academic responsibilities.
I also noticed students deliberately attend ḥalaqāt in the midst of their other obligations because it afforded them an opportunity to think about something more introspective and served as a respite from their academic deadlines and obligations.
Ḥalaqāt are a popular form of religious education for college-aged American Muslim youth. Those led by Muslim chaplains generally involve reading the Qur’an, hadiths, and on occasion popular religious books. These discursive spaces, like other forms of discursive religious spaces in the United States can provide “an opportunity for shared meanings to evolve that are different in narrative style, or for confronting existential realities anew” (Roof 2001,
169). When many of these American Muslim youth enter university, joining the MSA becomes an opportunity for them to continue their religious education and probe even deeper about matters of belief. In my interviews with students, they often appreciated the fact that participating in their MSA’s ḥalaqāt provided them with a space to individually reflect upon and question their religious beliefs. As Fawzi explained to me, “I guess well when I first started realizing the importance of Islam or prioritizing it, I wanted to learn as much as I could.”270
Chaplains and students occasionally worked together to determine the themes of the study circles. I learned that some students approached their chaplains to see if they could establish a smaller ḥalaqa to read a particular book and, on occasion, I also saw emails asking students to choose from a list of topics. This democratization of learning draws our attention to the reciprocal and discursive relationship between student and chaplain and more importantly, the fact that chaplains are concerned with tending to the spiritual queries and interests of the students
270 Recorded interview with Fawzi, May 2016.
198 on their campus. Thus, the knowledge that chaplains are providing is not only what they feel students should know but also reflects what kind of religious teachings students themselves would like to explore with tutelage. In ḥalaqāt, chaplains often avoided discussions of “correct practice” and prescriptive tenets. Rather, they often posed self-reflexive questions for students to consider. Such questions were often existential and included: “What if you have never thought about what God means to you?” and “Why did God give me existence?”
On the three campuses I worked with, ḥalaqāt were the most consistent and formative mode of educational programming made available to students by the MSA, and were a weekly occurrence save university holidays and recesses. Chaplains and MSA members heavily advertised ḥalaqāt through email listservs that students could sign up for through a Google form or in person at an event sign-up sheet. Many of these ḥalaqāt were also live-streamed on
YouTube or Facebook further widening the scope of potential “participants” but also making the lesson available to resident students and community members who were unable to attend that session in person. Examples of advertising and accessibility demonstrate the great lengths MSAs took to reach out to fellow students and the value they placed in ḥalaqāt as a means through which students could learn more about Islam. The bulk of my research data emerged from the
ḥalaqa series led by each of the resident Muslim chaplains on the campuses I worked with. The general approach to studying religious texts, specifically their imploring students to be self- reflexive and God-conscious, was a recurring theme on all three campuses’ ḥalaqāt.
In the time I spent with these chaplains, either by conversing with them informally or during our interviews and my observations of their interactions with students, I noticed them intentionally direct students’ attentions away from fixating on prescriptive minutiae in order to consider larger themes at stake. What I mean by this is that the minutiae associated with
199 maintaining particular practices was not the end goal in the public setting of the ḥalaqāt.271
While none of the chaplains I worked with shunned rituals and practices, when they mentioned them, they connected them to issues such as being in constant remembrance of God, leading an honest and charitable life, and making sure that one was consistently engaging with the Qur’an and hadiths.
It is important to note that the notion of self-reflection is not a contemporary phenomenon amongst Muslims, even if this approach appears dormant or deemphasized in certain Muslim pedagogical circles. Khaled Abou El Fadl notes that the “sages of Islamic mysticism” addressed the importance of “introspection” as well as the “maladies of the soul” (2014a, 183).
Furthermore, he explains that “[w]ithout introspection and self-judgment a person grows complacent with his/her ego until all sense of reasonable and just self-perception is gone. And according to the sages of Sufism and Islamic theosophy, self-knowledge and knowledge of God are inseparable” (ibid.). In the MSA space, chaplains such as Imam Sherif and Imam Hadi urged students to take up the call for self-reflection and encouraged them to be mindful of the Sunday school curriculum they had been indoctrinated with, emphasizing the need to probe beliefs they might have taken for granted. By doing so, they offer a counter to pedagogical trends that are generally geared towards rote memorization. As Imam Sherif succinctly put it, “our religion doesn’t rely specifically on the physical but how this relates to the metaphysical.”272 Throughout his ḥalaqāt, he often underscored that ritual practice needed to be connected to broader
271 I write “public” to distinguish from more “private” conversations they might have with students who come to them to discuss specific matters. 272 Field notes, November 2016. By physical, I understood Imam Sherif to be referring to rituals or the excessive prohibition of certain behaviors. Imam Sherif’s comment is emblematic of a discourse amongst certain American Muslims who are critical of what they perceive to be mosque practices that are “narrow, overly ritualistic, and exclusionary” (Howe 2018, 76).
200 existential and theological objectives or it could potentially fall flat in its ability to assist believers in sustaining spiritually-fulfilled lives.
The Literate Reader
In this section, I will be explaining the type of “literate” Muslim chaplains such as Imam
Hadi and Imam Sherif were cultivating in their ḥalaqāt. In particular, this section will focus on what degree familiarity and comprehension of the Arabic language was fundamental to reading and understanding scripture. Doing so provides a more nuanced understanding of how the rhetorical choices chaplains make shape the kind of religious literacy being developed in their respective ḥalaqāt. Moreover, this section will demonstrate how Imam Sherif and Imam Hadi’s incorporation of Arabic, or lack thereof, shapes the discursive ways students read these texts in order to experience the Divine.
Over the course of five weeks, Imam Sherif expounded upon Sūrat al-Mu’minūn translated as “The Believers.” Having begun this discussion in the winter intersession and, despite the frigid temperatures at the time, I was pleasantly surprised to see the large assemblage of attendees who swarmed to a different location to attend the ḥalaqa because the university’s buildings were closed for the holiday. Each week, the ḥalaqa, which was about an hour and a half to two hours long, was devoted to a select few āyāt of the sura with some weeks devoted to an in-depth discussion of a specific āya. During the first week of this series, Imam Sherif brought with him a handful of books such as The Study Qur’an, which had been recently published. At that time, one of its editors had booked speaking engagements at two of the MSAs I worked with. Over the course of my research, a chaplain on another campus would occasionally bring the text with him to clarify the contextualization of a Qur’anic verse. The second was Hans
201 Wehr’s Arabic-English dictionary, which he encouraged students to refer to when attempting to define Qur’anic Arabic.273
During his ḥalaqāt, Imam Sherif often expounded upon the etymological breakdown of an Arabic word by providing its root and then offering its definition. Examples include his explanation that zakat is a form of purity that can be related to tazkiya (Picken 2005), that insān
(human being) is derived from the root n-s-y, which mean to forget, that ḥalīm (someone who is patient) is derived from the same root as ḥ-l-m, which means to dream or that ḥifẓ
(memorization) is derived from the root of guardianship or protection, ḥ-f-ẓ.274 When he chose to expound upon the definitions of these words, he often referred to terms that were part of many of these students’ religious vernacular as they would have learned them in their Sunday school curriculum or in their homes. In these ḥalaqāt, students were asked to more deeply reflect on the definitions of these words and how such reflection would lead to a mindfulness of the Divine in their lives. For example, when discussing the definition of ḥalīm, a quality the Prophet
Muhammad was described as possessing, Imam Sherif underscored that it was important to not get agitated and angry but to reflect on one’s experiences in order to “gauge where our proximity is to God.” In his deconstruction of the word salat, Imam Sherif argued that prayer was a link that one had with God and that when an individual developed a sincere connection to a God who was listening to them and who loved them, prayer would not feel so burdensome.275 Moreover,
Imam Sherif emphasized how that connection to God was predicated on an attentiveness to God during prayer, which was subsequently connected to a sense of attentiveness outside of prayer.276
273 Field notes, January 2016. 274 Field notes, September 2015, November 2015, January 2016, and February 2017. 275 Imam Sherif stands in stark contrast to the pietist women in Saba Mahmood’s text who “effect change” in their students through their “admonitory style” and prescriptive guidance that teaches individuals how to perform rituals such as prayer correctly (2005, 92). 276 This understanding of prayer is similar to what Annemarie Schimmel notes: “[i]n the end the praying Muslim may experience that, although his wish has not been granted, his will has nevertheless been changed, so that he
202 By expounding upon the meaning of prayer as embodying one’s link to God, Imam Sherif attempted to answer questions often overlooked with regards to prayer such as “[w]hat kind of activity is this, what does it signify, and what does it achieve?” (Katz 2013, 75).277
Imam Sherif’s proficiency in the construction of these Arabic terms also legitimated his position as an authoritative figure in these spaces who could access the Qur’an in its original language, an objective some of these students also had.278 From my participant observation of students reading translations of the Qur’an and hadiths in English, or alongside the Arabic, it appears that the hegemony of Arabic might be loosening in MSA ḥalaqāt.279 On some occasions, when these texts were read in English, and when the translation was contentious or unclear, I witnessed students and chaplains turn to the original Arabic terminology in order to arrive at a better translation of the term in question but generally, chaplains and students discursively engaged with the English translations of these texts.280 It is also important to note that the overwhelming majority of students I worked with had learned Arabic at some point in their lives to obtain a basic proficiency, which enabled them to pray in Arabic and read the Qur’an in
Arabic. Comprehension, however, was something some felt they lacked. In MSA spaces and in lectures given by American Muslim shaykhs and public figures, the comprehension gap is filled by figures such as Imam Sherif who provide explanations of terms relevant to their teachings.
accepts what God in his eternal wisdom has decreed” (1978, 41). James also discusses prayer as “the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence” ([1902] 1929, 454). 277 See Katz (2013) for the various theological, philosophical, and legal interpretations of prayer. See also Justine Howe (2018, 173-181) for a similar discussion about how American Muslims discuss salat in terms of God- consciousness, intentionality, and choice. 278 Ali Albarghouthi notes that “Arabic is perhaps the most portable and easily discernible marker of authority” but that “it can be undermined if its display is perceived as ostentatious or as interpreted as foreign disconnect from community” (2011, 32). 279 See Jackson (2000) and Reinhart (2010) for discussions on the hegemony of Arabic. 280 See Mahboob (2009) and Bilici (2012, chapter three) for discussions about whether English can be considered an “Islamic” language as well as the history between the English language and its reception and appropriation by Muslims. See Morris (2000) and Wild (2015) for more on the politics of translating the Qur’an into other languages, especially English.
203 Given these explanations are conducted in English, it is unsurprising that English “has also become the lingua franca for a significant number of Muslims” (Bilici 2012, 72). I would also argue that as Muslim students are confronted with polemical terms such as jihad or kafir in the media, school, among other spaces, positive words that focus on spirituality and good conduct provide students with self-confidence and an opportunity to internalize and share more generally perceived to be positive understandings of Islam with their non-Muslim peers on campus.
In addition, it appeared to me that Imam Sherif was employing the definitions of these
Arabic words as a springboard for larger discussions. They complemented an argument he once made in a ḥalaqa, which is that “texts change meaning as you bring yourself into it.”281 Thus, expounding upon the definitions of these words was not simply a linguistic exercise but was an invitation for students to probe how these words, as employed by the Divine, were to be personalized in their own lives. Where did the students stand in relation to these words? How did they embody these words’ definitions? How could understanding these words enable them to reflect on their relationship with the Divine? Ultimately, Imam Sherif was encouraging students to more deeply comprehend these words’ meanings in relation to themselves and their relationship with the Divine.
Imam Sherif was also interested in discussing contemporary hermeneutical trends when reading the Qur’an. In one ḥalaqa, for example, he explained to students the distinction between what he argued could be either an eisegetical or an exegetical reading of the Qur’an; the former being problematic because one would be imposing their own meaning or pre-drawn conclusions before they read the text.282 He also expressed sensitivity to those consumed by anxieties and trepidation when they approached the Qur’an, reminding students that the Qur’an was for them
281 Field notes, November 2016. 282 Field notes, January 2016. See Abou El Fadl (2001a) for his distinction between an “authoritative” and an “authoritarian” interpretation of religious texts.
204 and that it would bring benefit to their lives. Ultimately, Imam Sherif was speaking to issues surrounding Qur’anic hermeneutics. On the one hand he was critiquing a self-imposed reading of scripture that stripped it of its inherent “authoritativeness” (Abou El Fadl 2001a) or universal wisdom because it had been decontextualized.283 On the other, he was mindful of how the
Qur’an was shelved because of its perceived inaccessibility, and was encouraging students to read the Qur’an, even if only a little bit every day.
In contradistinction with Imam Sherif, Imam Hadi, a chaplain on another campus rarely indulged a student in his ḥalaqāt who was curious about what a particular Arabic word meant.284
This austere stance was unlike that of Imam Sherif as well as the other shaykhs and chaplains I had observed throughout my research. However, Imam Hadi’s assessment of Arabic was more nuanced than the first time I heard his condemnation. Over the year and a half I spent in his
ḥalaqāt, I learned that while he acknowledged that one’s knowledge of Arabic could serve as a tool in helping them understand scripture, he argued in his ḥalaqāt that the “communal emphasis
[on Arabic] is idiotic.” In another ḥalaqa, he explained that even Arabic balāgha (rhetoric), was something that was not commonly understood by those who lived during the Prophet
Muhammad’s time.285 His overarching argument during the beginning of that particular ḥalaqa was a reminder that while Arabic is a skill, “one needs to develop other skills too. You have to speak to the people as one of them.”286 His resistance to Arabic, despite his proficient comprehension of the language having spent years studying classical Arabic and his ability to
283 See Abu Zayd (2004), Arkoun (2002), and Rahman (1980) for more on modern discourses about Qur’anic exegesis. See also Zaman (2005) who compares the discourses of Muslim modernists with those of the traditional ‘ulama’. Zaman writes “that categories like the “‘ulama’,” the “Islamists,” and the “modernists” are far from being monolithic and that particular “traditionally” trained religious scholars might have some significant commonalities with a modernist or an Islamist worldview or both, just as modernists and Islamists may themselves encompass a range of positions” (2005, 98). 284 Field notes, May 2016. 285 Field notes, December 2016. 286 Field notes, April 2016.
205 seamlessly read Arabic as I had witnessed time and time again, surprised me. Throughout my research, I learned that the majority of these students’ parents had made a concerted effort to ensure that their children had acquired some level of proficiency in Arabic and that there was an underlying assumption that knowledge of Arabic was fundamental and part of one’s ability to understand the Qur’an and hadiths. As such, Imam Hadi’s critique of Arabic knowledge as a prerequisite for accessing the Qur’an and hadiths is exceptional when compared to the predominant discourses I was exposed to in the MSAs I worked with. What most concerned
Imam Hadi was a practical consideration of how little Arabic these students could have actually learned prior to their entering university. Moreover, the incorporation of Arabic might create hierarchical divisions regarding the internal dynamics of his ḥalaqa. Those students who knew
Arabic would be deemed superior or more proficient than those who did not (Ali 2018, 145). For an instructor who believed that “In Islam, no one should be in a position of power,” and that it was our duty to “enlarge the circle so everyone can be included and be equal,” speaking in a foreign language could potentially stand as a roadblock preventing just that.287
By speaking strictly in English, no student in his class was left with an opportunity to feel that they had an upper hand or a more meaningful insight into the text because they knew its meaning in Arabic. Moreover, by displaying his own unfamiliarity with precise English terminology, for example, or the correct conjugation of an English verb (oftentimes in the negative form), he displayed his own humility and the fact that he too could learn from his students. The same approach extended to his occasional inability to recall a certain āya from the
Qur’an after which he would ask the class if anyone could remember that particular passage.
These instances were infrequent, but they demonstrate his lack of ego and his preference for relaying information accurately. While his age and his extensive teaching experience did not
287 Field notes, December 2016.
206 make him “one of the students,” the way that other students identified with the younger chaplains and public figures in their community, his down-to-earth persona and penchant for precision made him relatable given that he, like his students, was also committed to learning.
The Scene
Imam Hadi’s ḥalaqa series took place in a classroom one floor above the MSA prayer space on his campus. Given that his ḥalaqa was scheduled in the late afternoon, he accommodated the start and end time around the impending call to prayer. The classroom was mid-sized with tiered seating and was physically divided into two sections by a set of stairs with men and women sitting separately in each one. I always arrived early given the almost three-hour commute I took each week to get to this campus and my noticing his penchant for punctuality early on in my fieldwork.
Generally, Imam Hadi arrived shortly afterwards dressed in dark slacks, black oxfords, and a button-down shirt carrying his MacBook and iPhone. He would greet me with as-salāmu
‘alaykum and I would return his salām. On occasion, as he was connecting his MacBook to the projector and setting up his PowerPoint presentation for the day, we would make small talk about how my research was going. Usually, though, he focused on the task at hand, preparing his presentation and setting an alarm for the class’s end time. Students generally arrived five minutes before class and settled in. At this point, some of them took out their laptops or a notebook.
Some sat chatting with their friends while others waited quietly for Imam Hadi to begin. Imam
Hady’s students pursued a variety of majors ranging from business, to biology, to philosophy, with a relatively equal division between the STEM subjects and the humanities. The class size varied throughout the semester. Around midterms or during the end of the semester, the class
207 size was noticeably smaller with only four or five students attending, whereas during other weeks as many as 10 students would show up. Irrespective of the student turn out, Imam Hadi was prepared each week to teach students what he referred to as being a “methodological” reading of the Qur’an and hadiths.
Establishing a Methodological Reading of Religious Texts
During my attendance of Imam Hadi’s ḥalaqāt, what became apparent to me was his concern with whether his students were introspectively questioning how to relate religious texts to the Divine, themselves, and their religious experiences. This section will explain how Imam
Hadi guided his students through reading scripture in order for them to develop an affective relationship with the Divine.288 Students were taught to read scripture by employing what Imam
Hadi described as being a “methodology.” When he employed the term “methodology,” he was referring to an existential hermeneutical reading of religious texts that would enable students to understand how their Creator’s speech in the Qur’an or the messages in the hadiths were
“explaining the purpose of [their] existence in the world.”289 This “methodological” reading of scripture, or method, stood in contrast to what he argued was a literalist interpretation that was fixated on specific details.290 His method offered students a hermeneutical blueprint so that they could access these texts and reflect upon them without having to draw on existing tafāsīr or other people’s interpretations. As such, Imam Hadi’s students were taught to “apply the Qur’an to
[their] day to day lives” in order to “investigate existential concerns” and their immediate
288 According to Anne Gade, for those who accept the Qur’an’s “Message”, “the Qur’an describes (and thus prescribes and even proscribes) affective states” (2008, 36). 289 Field notes, September 2015. Imam Hadi consistently referred to Allah as the Creator in his ḥalaqāt. 290 Field notes, March 2016, October 2016, November 2016.
208 personal circumstances.291 The method Imam Hadi was teaching involved posing various self- reflexive questions for his students to think about when they were reading these texts. Framed in a heuristic manner, they often involved asking students to inquire about what this text informed them about the Divine on the one hand, and about themselves and their experiences on the other, ultimately encouraging students to connect the two.
Moreover, Imam Hadi inculcated in his students the need to employ their “human qualities” so that they could better understand how these texts could be related to their experiences. “Human qualities,” according to Imam Hadi, were comprised of one’s feelings, perceptions, and consciousness, and students were encouraged to draw on these qualities in order to connect with the Divine. William James’s ([1902] 1929, 28-29) discussion of how feelings can be conceived of as religious when they are being directed towards a divine object underscores what is at stake in Imam Hadi’s urging his students to employ their feelings to develop an affective relationship with the Divine.292 For Imam Hadi, one’s feelings have the potential to be religiously illuminating when they are connected to a divine source.
During his ḥalaqāt, Imam Hadi guided his students through his hermeneutical blueprint.
This guided reading involved students studying religious texts through the prism of their current personal experiences. Essentially, students were asked to reflect on how the text under discussion could be related to what they were experiencing at that moment in their lives. After students drew a correlation between these texts and their experiences, they were asked to consider the source of these experiences, which was their Creator. Upon acknowledging that it was their
Creator who was providing them with these experiences, students were encouraged to think about what their Creator was trying to communicate to them through these experiences, how that
291 Field notes, September and December 2016. 292 According to James, there “seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only a common storehouse of emotions upon which religious subjects may draw” ([1902] 1929, 29).
209 made them feel, and how they could connect with Him through these experiences and feelings.
Imam Hadi’s primary pedagogical objective was guiding students through a reading of religious texts that facilitated an acknowledgement of their Creator in order for them to achieve a sense of
God-consciousness, which would enable them to experience an affective divine presence in their lives. In addition, by reminding students of the contingency of their lives, Imam Hadi was cautioning his students against reaching definitive overarching conclusions. Instead, he was encouraging them to question and be receptive to their current experiences in the universe, which were inevitably changing. As such, in these ḥalaqāt, the study of texts served as a conduit to the
Divine and was invariably open to new questions, new meanings, and more importantly, new ways to connect to the Divine.
It is important to bear in mind that studying scripture for Muslim students can be overwhelming, daunting even. Some felt they were never encouraged to question scripture nor were they taught how to introspectively relate these passages back to their personal experiences, which often left them dissatisfied. In Imam Hadi’s ḥalaqāt, they found that the questions and explanations he posed when they were studying scripture made these texts more relatable, more personal, and thus more meaningful.
How then did Imam Hadi’s proposed methodology enable students to study scripture? In one ḥalaqa, Imam Hadi proceeded to explain a line-by-line reading of a hadith qudsī that was projected in both Arabic and English onto a classroom monitor.293 Usually, the ḥalaqa began with a different student reading the Arabic and English translation of the text under discussion.
After these recitations, Imam Hadi began expounding upon each line from the hadith translated as, “Did you not know that such and such worshipping servant of Mine was ill, but you did not
293 Field notes, September 2015. In contradistinction with prophetic hadiths whose isnād is traced back to the Prophet Muhammad, a hadith qudsī is considered a “direct-discourse statement ascribed to God” (Graham 2014).
210 visit him? Did you not realize that if you had visited him you would have found Me with him?”
As he paced back and forth looking at both the male and female sections of his class, he posed a couple of heuristic questions to his students. He asked: “How can we find God when we visit an ill person?” or “Has anyone acknowledged that they are healthy?”294 These questions served to channel further reflection and were meant to encourage students to turn inward and attempt to relate these verses back to their relationship with the Divine. He proceeded to offer some guidance to his students explaining that upon visiting someone who is ill, they come into contact with someone who is suffering and who is need of health and begin to realize that illness and health are derived from a source, the source being their “Creator.” He then asked his students to reflect on their own state of health and to question its source explaining that it was also given to them by their Creator. He concluded the study of this particular passage by asking students to ruminate on how they felt about their Creator’s bestowing them with blessings such as their health and what emotions this acknowledgement elicited, gratitude being one such example.
Emotions such as gratitude are representative of the human qualities Imam Hadi was urging his students to draw upon when they were reading scripture. Students were being taught that by acknowledging a particular feeling they have towards the Divine, they would become conscious of and thus experience a palpable Divine presence in their lives. At the end of the ḥalaqa, he explained to students “when you remember, you have found God.” As I have shown, Imam
Hadi’s guided study of scripture involved posing questions to his students and providing short explanations, which essentially comprised the hermeneutical blueprint they could apply when reading other scriptural passages either independently or in future ḥalaqāt.
294 This translation is from my field notes and is a slightly altered translation of hadith qudsī #18 taken from sunnah.com, which is the source that Imam Hadi referenced.
211 The Communicative Creator
During my interviews with his students, I learned that following Imam Hadi’s insistence on introspection, they applied his hermeneutical method to scripture by making sense of their own religious experiences and their relationship with the Divine in variant ways.295 The Divine, in these ḥalaqāt was not discussed in the absolute but was rather what Imam Hadi argued was,
“whatever you think God is in your eyes is the way that God is.”296 In particular, Imam Hadi’s portrayal of God as a “Creator” that was consistently acting in one’s life resonated with his students. I argue that Imam Hadi’s depiction of the Divine is what I describe as being a
“Communicative Creator” who was consistently discoursing with creation by acting in these students’ lives and through the world around them. Imam Hadi often discussed how the Creator was communicating through the universe, or material world and encouraged students to observe and ponder over the universe in order for them to decipher its signs and determine what message their Creator was trying to impart through them.297 The notion that the world provides a connection to the Creator is fundamental to Islamic theology in that “the clear objective of the order of thinking is to let humankind explore the universe and recognize the Creator” (Aziz and
Ambreen 2016, 20). Anna Gade similarly notes that “[t]he Qur’an often moves from the theme of the emotive power of nature to the didactic power of the Message of the Qur’an, which, like
God’s Signs in the natural world, makes beings react and behave in appropriate praise and sensitivity” (2008, 37).298
295 Imam Hadi’s calling for his students to turn to the Divine to make sense of their worldly experiences resembles al Faruqi’s discussion of religious experience in that for Muslims, “reality consists of two utterly disparate orders, the natural and the transcendent; and it is to the latter that he looks for the values by which to govern the flow of the former” (1973, 200). 296 Field notes, November 2015. 297 Field notes September - December 2015 and March - April 2016. 298 See sura 16:3-18, which offers multiple examples of the Divine’s signs in the material world.
212 I find it helpful to draw on William James’s discussion of religious experience to better conceptualize Imam Hadi’s teaching his students to acknowledge their Creator and how they actually did so in their moments of reflection. James argues, “it would seem as though transmundane energies, God, if you will, produced immediate effects within the natural world to which the rest of our experience belongs” ([1902] 1929, 513-14). In my interviews with students,
I found them relating their everyday observations and experiences to a higher divine order and that they were introspective about what this informed them about their Creator, all the while crediting Imam Hadi’s study of scripture to these realizations. Some students found his methodological approach difficult to grasp, sharing that it was something they were continuing to understand while other students seemed much more settled and comfortable in adopting his hermeneutical method.
In my conversations with a few of his students, I explicitly asked how they felt about
Imam Hadi referring to the Divine as the “Creator” in his ḥalaqāt. Initially, I wondered if this made any impact at all. On other campuses, I often heard God, Allah, and the Divine used interchangeably and thought that perhaps the term “Creator” while specific to Imam Hadi’s
ḥalaqāt became part of a vernacular that was unquestioned and possibly insignificant. It should also be noted that the Creator, or al-khāliq, is one of the ninety-nine names of God and so Imam
Hadi’s students could have also heard God being referred to as such in other religious settings.
Instead, I discovered that the term “Creator” did impact students and opened new possibilities for how they conceived of the Divine in their lives. In an interview with Lara, she explained that she still uses the terms “God” and “Lord” but that she felt that when she used “Creator” it “gave a whole new shift to it like you’re seeing it from a different lens. I guess it helps in that way.”
When I asked her what that lens looked like, she shared, “when you say Creator, you’re also
213 acknowledging that yes, you were created by a higher power. And you are His creation and you start looking at other things around you and you’re like these are His creations. So I guess it helps in that way for you to look at things differently. I never did before.”299
Mariam, another student, echoed a similar sentiment providing an example of the sun rising and setting and its relation to prayer. She explained that when she was growing up, she was taught to look at the sun when it was time to pray but confessed that no one explained this before. Mariam expressed how Imam Hadi taught her to “appreciate creation. You actually see
[God] as the Creator. You don’t just hear that He’s the Creator. He’s both these things. When you contemplate, when you think about it, you could actually see that He is a Creator, that there is a Creator.”300 In both of their reflections, Lara and Mariam explained how referring to the
Divine as the Creator provided them with a new prism through which they viewed the universe.
Their observations became more meaningful because they were signs of creation and their
Creator acting in the universe around them. Still, though, I wondered to what degree Imam
Hadi’s message was deeply internalized, and to what degree it enabled students to achieve a sense of God-consciousness. As I noted earlier, God-consciousness involved these students being mindful of the Divine in all of their experiences; essentially a divine presence that was not simply accounting for their actions but could be turned to as a source of love, sakīna (tranquility)
(Katz 2013, 36), and guidance.
As Rabia and I sat on stools in her cafeteria for our last interview, we began discussing what impact, if at all, Imam Hadi’s ḥalaqāt had on her during her time at college, especially since she was a senior soon on her way to graduate. Towards the end of the interview, I asked her, “What do you think is the most important thing you have learned from Imam Hadi’s
299 Recorded interview with Lara, June 2016. 300 Recorded interview with Mariam, May 2016.
214 ḥalaqāt?” her response being, “God consciousness in two words if I had to choose.” I asked her to clarify how this emphasis on God-consciousness, which she described as a “take away” had impacted her personally and if she could provide me with examples. She explained,
Well basically it’s the same thing. Whether it’s clothing or food. I’ll think more rationally I guess of where the sources came from. We’re all from God. For me, God-consciousness is not through items. Having God-consciousness is just like being aware of God like everywhere we go from the little things to the big things and just like every breath we take. Even a breath we take for granted. Like right now, I’m super sick and it was hard for me to talk yesterday and I was like oh crap, I couldn’t. It was hard to breathe at some point. But of course I didn’t make that connection. You know al-ḥamdu li-llāh for feeling well my other days you know. It’s like when I don’t have that, I feel more like oh God I wanna feel better now you know?301
She went on to share how her having God-consciousness also enabled her to be thankful of other blessings which she described as being “signs of God,” such as the patterns she noticed while lying on the grass and concluded by saying how in being God-conscious, she was acknowledging and appreciating God. Rabia’s reflection also provides an example of how Imam Hadi’s students were internalizing his urging them to use their human qualities, or feelings, in order to think about the Divine. Drawing on one’s feelings became fundamental to the introspective process these students were being taught and enabled them to develop a more personal and affective relationship with the Divine.
In a conversation with Yasmine, who was the most consistent attendee of Imam Hadi’s
ḥalaqāt, we also discussed how she was attempting to appropriate his methodological approach.
She explained,
The scripture that I’m following or that I’m reading right now as the proof, as God’s speech is the Qur’an. The Qur’an is like a constant conversation back and forth. You read the Qur’an with your questions, you get some kind of understanding from it, and then you live your life. You go about your day and you take care of your responsibilities, your duties, whatever needs to be taken care of today and you encounter things all the time that just make you question like why this right now? I need to have a clear purpose in my
301 Recorded interview with Rabia, May 2016.
215 life and it needs to be more than just living to eat or going about our human needs and stuff.… I’m just like living in a world where a lot of things don’t make sense to me if I were to imagine that there is no Creator. So I’m constantly being connected and reminded through my environment, through the people I encounter that there is a Creator and I would like to develop that connection, that relationship with my Creator.302 So I take everything that I encounter as basically like a handshake, like an introduction and try to think about it deeply. What am I encountering? What am I being told right now?303
Yasmine’s reflection illustrates the important place that texts serve in connecting Imam Hadi’s students to the Divine. For Yasmine, there is a discursive engagement with the Qur’an that is carried with her and incites an awareness of the Divine in her daily interactions. In my conversations with Yasmine and Rabia, I realized that Imam Hadi’s consistent depiction of the
Divine as communicating with creation was resonating with his students. It was affecting how they perceived their experiences, which became religious for them because they were being personally connected to a higher source. These students’ experiences became more meaningful and a source of introspection and questions, which was precisely what Imam Hadi was teaching them to do in his ḥalaqāt. Moreover, their studying scripture became a dialogue. The Divine was ever present.
Charles Taylor explains that William James’s “stress on personal religion, even his insistence that this is what religion really is, as against collective practice, can seem entirely understandable, even axiomatic, to lots of people” (2002, 12-13). Incorporating James’s discussion of personal religion enables us to ask different questions about the ways in which
American Muslim youth experience Islam. In the student reflections discussed in this section, they valued a self-reflexive and experiential understanding of their relationship with the Divine.
For James, at the center of personal religion is that “[t]he relation goes direct from heart to heart,
302 Tanya Luhrmann reports that her interlocutors believed that “God was also understood to speak through circumstances. Congregants would describe events that might seem to be coincidences, but say that God was speaking to them through these circumstances in order to communicate something to them…” (2013, 150). 303 Recorded interview with Yasmine, May 2016.
216 from soul to soul, between man and his maker” ([1902] 1929, 30). I would argue that this type of a personal and more importantly direct relation with the Divine is precisely what MSA students were being urged to experience and fortify in Imam Hadi’s ḥalaqāt. That this relationship could be experienced when reading religious texts is where Imam Hadi’s pedagogical approach is rather unique and demonstrative of how some American Muslim youth are taught to read religious scripture in a way that is personal, experiential, and affective.
For the American Muslim youth under study in this dissertation, an approach to religious study practices that was rooted in personal introspection makes sense given the emphasis they placed on maintaining a semblance of autonomy and their desiring pedagogical styles that were more relatable and affective. Chaplains such as Imam Hadi were urging MSA students not to take matters of belief for granted. Imam Hadi’s ḥalaqāt served as a discursive space that afforded students an opportunity to approach religious texts on their own. While he did offer them a hermeneutical blueprint to apply when reading religious texts, as evidenced in the examples above, this blueprint incited personal introspection, questions, and affirmations that were unique to what each student was experiencing. This emphasis on a personalized religiosity resonated with his students and gave new meaning to their personal experiences and how those were connected to their relationship with the Divine.
Is There Something Wrong with Eating Dates?
This section examines how Imam Hadi taught his students to read a particular Prophetic hadith in order to draw attention to some of the conflicting issues in textual interpretation. Many
Muslims struggle with how to incorporate the Prophetic hadiths into their daily lives often questioning to what degree and in what capacity the hadith should be applied, if at all. Jonathan
217 Brown’s scholarship (2007, 2011) on the authenticity of hadiths explains how both Salafi revivalists and Muslim modernists have worked to “expunge” the employment of weak hadiths
(2007, 327). These attempts at purification have certainly influenced lay discourses. For example, in conversations with some students, they shared how they believed that a preponderance of weak hadiths had infiltrated social discourses making it complicated for them to verify the authenticity of hadiths writ large and ultimately leaving them suspect of some
Prophetic narrations.304 In an interview with Mariam, we had a lengthy conversation about how her relationship with hadiths changed throughout her life. At times, she was much more vested in understanding hadiths but has since changed her stance explaining to me, “I feel like people with the hadith, they abuse it more than the verses of the Qur’an. Like it’s easier to manipulate someone with a hadith. They can like make up a hadith so with the hadith I try to be very careful.”305
Imam Hadi’s approach to studying Prophetic hadiths was concerned with how they could be appropriated in one’s life.306 However, it seems to me that he was deemphasizing the literal minutiae in the hadiths, which he believed led students to a “short-sightedness” and prevented them from maintaining “long-term goals.” In one ḥalaqa Imam Hadi explained that the hadiths are applicable to everyone and their respective life conditions and that students must interpret the hadiths and relate them to their own life conditions accordingly. The ḥalaqa took a turn when
Imam Hadi asked his students, “What are the criteria for determining what is sunna?” No student in the class replied. This was generally the norm when Imam Hadi posed such questions, which served as signposts for where the ḥalaqa was heading and not necessarily an invitation to
304 See Hallaq (1986), Hansu (2016), and Musa (2008) especially chapters three and four for debates on the authority of hadiths. In fact, Imam Hadi argues that the “authenticity of the hadith does not guarantee that they should be applied literally” (Field notes, October 2016). 305 Recorded interview with Mariam, May 2016. 306 Field notes, September 2015.
218 respond. As such, students often sat quietly, some of them taking notes on their laptop or in a notebook patiently anticipating his follow-up responses. Imam Hadi continued to explain that the sunna did not pertain to the actual Prophetic narration, meaning the matn or letter of the text, but was rather referring to the underlying ethical message to be extracted from the text.
Imam Hadi then paraphrased a widely circulated and popular hadith about breaking one’s fast with dates.307 He continued by contextualizing the hadith he was referencing, explaining that during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, dates were the most common fruit available, which is why they were consumed when one broke one’s fast. He went on to explain that breaking one’s fast on the common fruit in one’s region would facilitate following the sunna. He then asked his students to consider why the Prophet Muhammad was sent to teach the Qur’an and whether they believe that anything in the universe is superfluous or extra. These questions were important because they complemented his assertion that the primary purpose of the Prophetic message was to “teach us who our Lord is,” meaning they were meant to encourage students to think about their Creator who was communicating to them through his messenger, the Prophet Muhammad.
At one point in the ḥalaqa, Imam Hadi asked his students what they thought he was trying to teach via this example. A young woman who was sitting behind me raised her hand and asked whether or not one should be breaking their fast on three dates, a point she had heard from a shaykh and wanted clarification on. At that point, Imam Hadi smirked and asked the class,
“Why are we focusing on the numbers? Is this what the message was really about?” Asking these questions served multiple rhetorical purposes. Students were expected to seriously consider what they thought the hadith was really about, meaning its underlying significance. These questions were also a sarcastic nod to the fact that focusing on the textual minutiae was unimportant, a
307 One version of this hadith is found in at-Tirmidhi’s collection: “When one of you breaks his fast, then let him do so with dried dates, then water, for it is purifying” (Vol, 2, Book 6, No. 695, pg. 144).
219 point he consistently emphasized in his ḥalaqāt because he felt that a focus on the minutiae, or the material, distracted and prevented students from questioning how they could connect this scripture back to the Divine and themselves. Suffice to say, Imam Hadi did not entertain the young woman’s question and did not provide a response explaining that the issue was not the quantity of dates that one should be concerned with, but rather what he termed their “attitude” towards the dates. The young woman’s question, in spite of the fact that it was dismissed by
Imam Hadi, represents the challenges students can face when approaching Prophetic narrations and the fact that it can be difficult for them to ignore the fine details, which was precisely what this young woman’s shaykh was teaching her about.
There are a few reasons why I found this episode interesting, as there was nothing inherently anachronistic about this hadith. In fact, on most college campuses and around the world, Muslims break their fast on dates, which are passed around for consumption shortly before the maghrib call to prayer. As such, this hadith was not difficult to follow in the literal sense. However, as evidenced in this example, Imam Hadi was teaching his students to not confine themselves to the minutiae in the hadith. Rather he was attempting to show them how to study these narrations as texts that begged both questioning and appropriation. Thus, his seeming abstraction of the narration from its literal interpretation was an attempt to encourage students to think more introspectively about the Prophetic narration’s potential meanings and to not be stuck in a cycle of scrupulous appropriation.
Debating Knowledge
In the previous two sections, I have explained Imam Hadi’s methodological approach to scripture. This section will be examining his role as a vital pastoral care provider for students
220 when they were confronted with questions about conflicting scriptural interpretations in their
MSA. Doing so highlights what Fida Adely describes as the “porosity” of educational spaces and the difficulty in controlling intersecting and conflicting religious discourses (2012, 307).
Early on in my research, I heard Imam Hadi posit in one ḥalaqa if the Qur’an or hadith
“does not answer why we are here then it is irrelevant. Any interpretation that does not help you should be unimportant.”308 As I was transcribing my field notes, I bolded his claim. It was a point that I returned to multiple times throughout my research because I was unsure of what to make of his assertion. Ultimately, one could interpret this statement in multiple ways. Was Imam
Hadi encouraging his students to make scripture relevant to their immediate circumstances as I outlined in the previous two sections? Or, in fact, was it possible for a hadith or Qur’anic āya to be irrelevant for the time being?
I gained better clarity after an interview with Jamila who was a consistent attendee of
Imam Hadi’s ḥalaqāt. After she and I finished attending ḥalaqa that afternoon we sat down to continue our conversation from the previous week. Finding an empty seminar room across from where the ḥalaqa took place, we delved into a discussion about the novelty of Imam Hadi’s hermeneutical approach to scripture. She explained how over time, she felt that while his pedagogical style was not the norm, it was not contradictory to other more “traditional approaches” she had encountered by attending events with guest speakers or listening to lectures online. At one point she laughed as she admitted that her response would have been markedly different had I asked her the same question years ago explaining, “I realized after a while it’s not so different. He’s saying the same things that we’ve learned but he’s saying it in another way that makes us question our own belief.” As our conversation progressed, she shared how she often avoided polemical conversations. At that point, I was intrigued. Was she making a general
308 Field notes, September 2015.
221 statement about polemical debates or was she referring to specific instances? For clarification, I then asked her if she had witnessed such debates at her MSA. Again, she laughed and admitted,
“all the time.”
She then relayed an incident in which she was mired in a dispute with members of her
MSA over the interpretation of a hadith. One day, as she was sitting in the women’s prayer room, she learned from a couple of sisters that there was a slightly heated conversation that took place earlier in the MSA. To provide a context regarding MSA space and socialization on her campus, the prayer space is segregated whereby women and men each have their own prayer rooms with separate entrances. The MSA lounge area is located a few feet from the prayer rooms and is an open space comprised of chairs and tables. In between classes, male and female MSA members use this space to chat about classes, make plans to hang out, or eat. Unlike the ḥalaqa setting where Imam Hadi predominantly directs the discussion, in these lounge spaces students tend to more freely discuss religious matters amongst themselves. Because of the lack of tutelage, some conversations such as the one I will be sharing below can become contentious with certain voices dominating the discussion.
As Jamila and I continued chatting, I learned that the debate involved the interpretation of a hadith and whether a woman could request to be the breadwinner in her marriage contract. A sister in the MSA raised this point in the midst of a larger conversation about women’s rights in
Islam and a fellow brother pointed out “no, that’s not possible. That’s not in Islam.” After these sisters shared this incident with Jamila, they asked for her thoughts on the matter. Jamila responded to them by saying, “I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?” Because Jamila shared this story to me piecemeal, it was not until later in our conversation that I learned she was actually present for the earlier part of the debate between these brothers and sisters. A brother
222 whom she described as having “taken over” the conversation prompted her to walk away. My understanding was that Jamila became frustrated when multiple brothers inserted themselves into the conversation and she did not appreciate the gender dynamic that ensued because she felt that her male peers were trying to enforce their opinions on her and the other MSA sisters.
When this conversation was brought to her attention in the prayer room, Jamila started questioning whether it was actually permissible for women to claim breadwinner status in their marriage contracts. Jamila’s reaction to her peers’ debate is common amongst youth who are being inundated with variant discourses whether in the classroom, the extracurricular MSA space, or online. As I discussed in the previous chapter, due to the diffuse nature of Islamic knowledge and authority, religious knowledge is no longer relegated to elite ‘ulama’ but is now shaped and transmitted by various individuals vying for interpretive authority.
Jamila’s self-professed curiosities and doubts led her to consult Imam Hadi and ask for his thoughts on the matter. She shared,
And he said of course what [Imam Hadi] would say. It’s a waste of time. You don’t need to know this. He said only worry about it if you’re in that situation. Then you can come to me and ask me if you are in the situation because the interpretation of each hadith is specific to your situation.… So he was saying that people are wasting their time sitting there and complaining about it you know what I mean?309
When Jamila shared Imam Hadi’s reaction, I was unsurprised given his consistent emphasis on personal religiosity and not discussing religious matters hypothetically. In recounting her conversation with Imam Hadi, I learned more about his role as a discerning pastoral care provider who offered his students perspective when they became unsettled. As evidenced in his correspondence with Jamila, he consoled her, telling her that she need not worry. Additionally, he pivoted the conversation back to her and asked her whether the message found in this hadith
309 Recorded interview with Jamila, April 2016.
223 was something that was impacting her life at the moment, further reinforcing her need to attend to her own personal religiosity and not to be consumed by polemical debates. In addition, he left the window open for further conversations, informing Jamila that if she did find herself in a position where this hadith could apply, she was welcome to speak to him and they could discuss it together. I was unsure of how Jamila felt about his response and so I asked her if she agreed with him. She replied, “I agreed with him and I didn’t think about it that way. I was like you’re right you know? We’re like wasting our time saying oh is it this or is it that? It depends on your situation you know what I mean?”
I have recounted this episode to underline how even though Imam Hadi can guide scriptural interpretation in his ḥalaqāt and frame questions in a manner that enables students to remain introspective when studying religious texts, the discursive MSA space is comprised of individuals who approach scriptural interpretation in variant ways. When Imam Hadi’s students are confronted with these alternate approaches, his role as an empathetic pastoral care provider becomes increasingly important in ensuring his students do not become overwhelmed by the ambient voices in the discursive MSA space.310 What most concerned Imam Hadi was ensuring that his students remained attentive to their own personal experiences and relationships with the
Divine when reading religious texts so that they would not become distracted by the interpretative objectives of their Muslim peers.
310 Nadia Khan explains, “[i]nevitably, a young Muslim will find more than one version of “authentic Islam” being presented. While Islam has always been a religion characterized by intellectual cacophony (or, depending on how one views it, a multiple string orchestra), the plethora of “pure Islams” with which Muslim youth are confronted in America can become an issue if they are not given a framework of understanding that allows them to respect and accept inter-and intrareligious differences” (2009, 126).
224 Keeping It Real
Imam Sherif held weekly ḥalaqāt that took place in the early evening, making them accessible not only to MSA students, most of whom had finished their classes for the day but also to outlying community members such as young professionals who would attend after they finished their work day. The ḥalaqāt varied in their themes. Some weeks, Imam Sherif devoted the session to talking about ahl al-bayt, the Prophet Muhammad’s family, around the month of
Muharram. During others, he would enlist guest speakers to discuss topics such as how to pay zakat or the mechanics of performing hajj. While not the norm, there were other ḥalaqāt that generally drew larger crowds and complemented Imam Sherif’s desire to foster a community that was sympathetic to the plights afflicting members of its congregation. They also served as a
“safe space”311 in which Muslims could discuss uncomfortable truths, which were brushed over in other Muslim circles such as some mosques and community centers.312
These ḥalaqāt served his larger objective of creating a campus Muslim community that was open to all experiences without prejudice or judgment. They also signify a shift in ḥalaqāt in that in addition to imparting religious literacy, they tended to the daily, lived experiences of
American Muslims (Jeldtoft 2011; Schielke 2009a).313 For example, on some of these occasions,
Imam Sherif facilitated discussions about domestic violence and substance abuse addiction. I will be drawing your attention to how these “judgment-free” spaces facilitated an environment
311 The term “safe space” is relatively ubiquitous on college campuses and has been employed by my interlocutors when describing their objectives when organizing MSA events. I find it helpful to draw on Tania Mitchell’s definition of a “safe space” as one that enables individuals “to process, to be vulnerable, to fail miserably, and to be triumphant” because it aptly describes the processes I witnessed students undergo (2013, 268). 312 Khaled Abou El Fadl addresses the myopic and “stereotyped responses” to people’s experiences and explains that “[t]his occurs because practitioners fall into the habit of avoiding the pain of wrestling with uncomfortable facts, and the escape into ready-made dogma acts to dull the intellect and hamper the continual development of a critical sense of moral responsibility” (2014b, 372). 313 Nadia Fadil and Mayanthi Fernando describe “everyday Muslim inclinations” as “natural, human inclinations – toward contradiction, doubt, curiosity, self-reflection, ambiguity, imperfection, and skepticism” (2015, 79).
225 for self-reflexivity and introspection for MSA students and the type of religious experiences these ḥalaqāt nurtured.
Upon meeting Imam Sherif, it is immediately palpable that he cares about the students and community members on his campus. His speech is peppered with comforting phrases such as
“May Allah make things easy for us/you” and as I explained in the previous chapter, the students
I spoke with viewed him as a friend. I personally learned this in an interview with Imam Sherif, when I realized how seriously he considered students’ life experiences and how important it was for him that students felt comfortable sharing their feelings, doubts, and insecurities. In MSA spaces such as ḥalaqāt, I noticed that Imam Sherif channeled his sensitivity to these life experiences into his discussions by relating them to one’s relationship with the Divine. As such, his ḥalaqāt were modeled on an intimate space where one could self-reflect and be vulnerable.314
Imam Sherif facilitated a level of intimacy during these ḥalaqāt by encouraging his students to greet one another by offering salāmāt and by engaging in conversations with the person sitting next to them, particularly if they were someone the student did not know. Whereas the other two campuses I worked with were smaller, it was much easier for students to become acquainted because they were consistently in each other’s presence during prayers, in-between classes when hanging out in MSA spaces, and when they attended MSA events. The MSA’s small student body made it inherently warmer. Imam Sherif’s campus community, on the other hand, was considerably larger and thus it was much easier to resort to social cliquishness where people gravitated towards those they already knew, potentially leaving newcomers isolated as they sat alone or had no one to speak with. There was also something deeper at play in his encouragement of communal sociability. Imam Sherif was trying to prevent ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic divisions from taking place; congregants would only interact with those who
314 See Nagata (2004) for more on the incorporation of self-reflexivity in educational environments.
226 came from the same background, subsequently preventing an all-inclusive community. Imam
Sherif consistently vocalized the need for his community to overcome such divisions, which I attributed to the vast and growing size of his diverse Muslim community and his standing as a passionate American Muslim activist and humanitarian.
Similar to Imam Hadi, Imam Sherif also presented the Qur’an and hadiths as texts that were capable of addressing our immediate dilemmas and that one should read these texts in order to develop a personal relationship with the Divine. The Qur’anic passages and hadiths Imam
Sherif cited during his ḥalaqāt were presented as approachable and understandable by those who chose to engage with them (Grafton 2009; Albarghouthi 2011).315 Unlike Imam Hadi, Imam
Sherif did not guide his students through a particular hermeneutical method when reading religious texts. Rather, his pedagogical style drew on narrative storytelling techniques to relay his points. Sharing his personal experiences became a pedagogical medium through which his students often found him relatable and affective. Some of these personal examples were more profound such as when he recounted a story about how when he was hit with some medical complications, he had never felt so close to God until that point in his life. Others were more affective such as when he shared an experience where he was temporarily consumed by his ego when interacting with someone and became humbled. Imam Sherif’s sharing of personal struggles demonstrated his sense of humility and self-reflection, qualities his students admired and shared with me during our interviews, but they more importantly offered students an example of how they too should be self-reflexive about their relationship with the Divine.
315 Muna Ali explains that, “[w]hile many advocate self-education but still defer to scholars and imams to interpret Islamic sources, a growing number of Muslims, especially younger generations, wish to push that argument further by calling for individual ijtihad” (2011, 365). Deeb and Harb also note their young interlocutors “believe that they can and should individually assess their behavior and that they can read and listen and demand answers to questions and then choose which ones to apply in their lives” (2013, 19).
227 During my attendance of his ḥalaqāt, Imam Sherif often underscored the practical implications of religious texts. By doing so, the Qur’an and hadiths would be able to offer students a framework to work through their personal experiences and it would provide answers to any ethical dilemma they could possibly face. Students gravitated towards him because they felt like he was one of them given that Imam Sherif had experienced difficulties trying to remain committed to his faith as discussed in the previous chapter. What ensued for Imam Sherif and his students was a spiritual search for religious truths, and on occasion certainty, not in the traditional sense of ‘ilm al-yaqīn (knowledge of certainty), but rather in an individualized self- affirming sense where one was consciously adhering to the tenets and beliefs of their faith through self-reflection and deliberation.
For example, in one ḥalaqa, Imam Sherif expounded upon the following hadith: “The feet of the son of Adam shall not move before his Lord on the Day of Judgment, until he is asked about five things: About his life and what he did with it, about his youth and what he wore it out in, about his wealth and how he earned it, and spent it upon, and what he did with what he knew.”316 Rather than present this hadith as a condemnatory or even foreboding warning to students, he explained to them that these questions were “meant to be introspective” and should encourage them to think about why God would be concerned with these points. He went on to note that the five things cited represented the fact that students were not in “possession of everything” in their lives and that their time and their health, for example, had been given to them. Thus, it was their responsibility to employ these blessings wisely in order to avoid heedlessness and a disregard for what had been ordained by the Divine. Imam Sherif ultimately incorporated hadiths in his ḥalaqāt to impart students with a framework that enabled them to embody these Prophetic traditions with confidence and with a sense of assuredness. He often
316 This hadith is found in at-Tirmidhi’s collection (Vol. 4, Book 35, No. 2416, pg. 428).
228 underscored how the Divine was always available to them even if their own personal struggles made them feel isolated, such as when he referred to the hadith: “Worship Allah as if you see him. And even though you do not see Him, know that He sees you.”317
The Divine in these ḥalaqāt, similar to Imam Hadi’s, was discussed as being ever present and active. Students were encouraged to develop an intimate relationship with the Divine as
Imam Sherif explained to them that they were “entitled to have a relationship with God.”318 Like the ḥalaqāt described above, Tanya Luhrmann’s research elucidates how evangelical Christians are taught how to “incorporate” God into their lives by “walking with God” and that “people accept that there are different degrees of that incorporation, more being better” (2004, 521).
Another pedagogical emphasis during these study circles was on teaching students how to attain a level of satisfaction in their religiosity through modes of self-reflection, which did not assume that adhering to Islamic rituals would inevitably make them happier.319 Khaled Abou El Fadl explains that “when submission becomes a formulaic relationship based on generalized stereotypes about history, societies, and people, or on a stereotyped understanding of one’s self dealing with a stereotypical understanding of an omnipotent but inaccessible God, unhappiness becomes the norm” (2014b, 109). As such, Imam Sherif’s teachings provided an anodyne to pressing issues afflicting American Muslims and Muslims worldwide such as “doubt” (Adhami
2018) or “unhappiness” as “symptoms of failure” (MacIntyre 2016, 194) and “guilt” (Schielke
317 This hadith is found in Sahih al-Bukhari (Vol. 1, Book 2, No. 47, pg. 42). 318 Field notes, February 2016. 319 Charles Hirschkind’s (2006) and Saba Mahmood’s (2005) work on the Islamic Revival in Egypt elucidate the ways in which religious individuals engage in a discursive process with the Islamic tradition through “modes of reasoning” and “deliberation.” However, what is primordial in this discursive engagement is that religious texts such as the Qur’an and hadiths stand as authoritative sources and thus the ultimate objective is engaging in “correct practice” and embodying “moral behavior.” This is not to suggest that self-reflection is not part of the discursive process but that for those involved in this project “choice is understood not to be an expression of one’s will but something one exercises in following the prescribed path to becoming a better Muslim” (Mahmood 2005, 85). Hirschkind does underscore how individuals also “hone those affective-volitional dispositions, ways of the heart, that both attune the heart to God’s word and incline the body toward moral conduct” (2006, 9).
229 2009a and 2009b).320 Akin to the Bible study groups James Bielo analyzes in his own ethnographic research, MSA ḥalaqāt encourage “adherents to engage in open, reflexive, and critical discussion about crucial issues of their faith (cf. Bielo, 2004; 2008; 2009)” (2008, 52) and that by doing so, these study groups become “an ideal space to “get closer” to God by “getting closer” to each other” (2008, 55).
What Does the Divine Mean to You?
On a mild winter afternoon shortly after jum‘a prayer, Imam Sherif held a ḥalaqa devoted specifically to addressing what the Divine “means to us.”321 I had seen the ḥalaqa advertised on an email sent by the MSA’s listserv and was eager to attend even though I had attempted to wrap up the bulk of my research a couple of months prior. As I was hurriedly getting ready that morning, I told myself that I would regret not going to this event and that I needed to spend more time in strictly MSA spaces, meaning the majority of the attendees would be students and not the general student/community member mix I was often exposed to on this particular campus. In an interview approximately a year prior, Zaid described this particular
ḥalaqa series as being the
most introspective because… I’ve seen people break down into very deep parts of their spirituality, like spill themselves out and it’s a very welcoming environment and there’s no judgment. Like judgment is lifted so they’ll talk about the past or they’ll talk about a sin that really troubled them or they’ll talk about a friend or a family member that they lost and how that affected their spirituality. I think it’s a very good space. I think those spaces are necessary because I don’t think there are outlets for a lot of students.322
320 Zaid Adhami (2018) explains that in the American Muslim community, “[t]he response of community preachers to the problem of doubt has generally been to emphasize that people must establish the proper intellectual foundations of religious belief, and that they must trust in religious authority. However, these communal voices fail to take into account how personal experience plays a very central role in people’s sense of cognitive dissonance.” See also Fadil (2009) who describes the various “economies of affect” that influenced her interlocutors as they distanced themselves from their religious upbringings. 321 Field notes, February 2017. 322 Recorded interview with Zaid, February 2016.
230 After students finished eating their lunches and wrapping up their conversations with friends, they assembled into a u-shaped circle. The ḥalaqa was surprisingly crowded. About thirty to forty students were in attendance, slightly more women than men but ultimately a generous turnout occupied the space given it was being held in the mid-afternoon when students were usually busy with classes, wrapping up assignments, or having lunch. Imam Sherif began the ḥalaqa by directing the students’ attention to their peer whom he credited with inspiring the theme of the ḥalaqa that day. This particular student began by sharing that he asked Imam Sherif to offer some pointers on how to think more deeply about one’s relationship with God. He then candidly explained that when he was growing up, he was not raised in a culture where people necessarily shared their feelings or discussed the intricacies of their connection with the Divine and so he hoped that the ḥalaqa’s theme would resonate with his peers who might have been conditioned in a similar way and were subsequently struggling with the same sorts of theological queries.
As I grew to know this student throughout my research, I was struck by his consistent desire to improve his īmān, never seeming blindly content with the state of his faith in spite of the fact that his peers, some of whom I interviewed shared with me their admiration for his thirst for religious knowledge and his seamless ability to think more introspectively about religious matters. Concomitantly, I also learned that he struggled with the laudatory praise he often received from his peers and questioned whether it was warranted given he too struggled with many of the same faith-based issues they did.
Looking back on that ḥalaqa, and his introductory remarks, I wonder if it afforded him the opportunity to provide a more flawed depiction of himself in order to combat, or at least nuance, the esteemed impression people associated with his faith. My reason for sharing this is
231 that MSA ḥalaqāt allow for more intimacy and deeper self-reflection than other MSA events.
When one enters these spaces, a feeling of calm, quiet, and probing introspection shapes the discourses that are about to unfold. In some respects, the baggage of worldly concerns was left at the door and when they did creep in, they were connected by students and chaplains to larger questions concerning how they could be related to one’s relationship with the Divine. Thus, what
I tended to observe was that students felt comfortable, as Zaid noted in his reflection, revealing elements of their religiosity in these spaces that they might not otherwise publicly share when socializing with their peers outside of such ḥalaqāt.323
While Imam Sherif’s talk that afternoon was not relegated to the politics of sharing per se, although it did begin with an MSA student sharing how their own upbringing inhibited certain understandings of the Divine, it did touch upon the “affective dispositions” (Schulz 2006;
Hirschkind 2006) Muslims embody before the Divine and how a self-reflexive understanding of this dynamic is fundamental to what he as well as many of the students I worked with would describe as a God-conscious life. Essentially, the ḥalaqa elucidated the omnipresent nature of
God’s existence and the fact that it was important for students to think more deeply about the presence of God in their lives. The God described in this ḥalaqa was a loving God, and Imam
Sherif explained that due to God’s immense love for those who worship Him, it was incumbent on them to return the favor.
To illustrate this emphasis on the loving nature of God, he drew on one of the Divine’s names/attributes, namely al-wadūd or the most loving one, and continued by explaining that drawing a correlation between the Divine’s love and human love enables us to grasp the attribute
323 The Bible Study groups studied by James Bielo had similar kinds of honest discussions and were also led by “the guiding expectation of meeting together… to cultivate intimacy and thereby grow in personal faith” (2009, 77).
232 more tangibly.324 However, he noted how this correlation still fails to encompass the true magnitude325 of the Divine’s love, which is ultimately beyond our capacity as human beings to rationalize.326 Imam Sherif’s admission is one that lay Muslims throughout the centuries have grappled with, namely what Bruce Lawrence explains is “exploring the divine beyond the mask of words, and so beyond a human calculus of precise knowing and loving, engaging and trusting, benefitting and praising the Thing by any name” (2015, 18-19).327 This message of humble devotion and incomprehensibility resonated with some of his students like Seif who expressed in an interview that “We’re all limited by the confines of our human mind and to think that our
Lord transcends all of that that… we can’t even begin to comprehend.”328
Imam Sherif’s ḥalaqa was probably not the first time the majority of his students had learned about the Divine’s attributes as many of them learned God’s names/attributes during
Sunday school. At a certain point in my interview process, I became curious regarding whether these students favored a particular name/attribute and began asking them. From those I interviewed, I learned that the majority drew on the Divine’s mercy, compassion and companionship with a handful of students even telling me that their favorite name was al-walī, or
“friend” and “protector.”329 Irrespective of the names they referred to in our conversations, the consistent recurring theme was that students either attempted to internalize these names by
324 In an interview with Seif, he appreciated when Imam Sherif explained to them, “Allah loves us more than a mother loves her child. In the same way that a mother would never want to throw her baby into a fire, God loves us so much more than that.” Recorded interview, November 2016. 325 William Chittick explains how Muslims authors in the past “insist that love is beyond definition and can only be known by tasting (dhawq)” (2011, 171). 326 Imam Sherif’s statement resembles what Zain Ali argues is Ibn Taymiyah’s reconciliation between an anthropomorphic understanding of God with the “uniqueness of God,” which “is achieved by an affirmation of fallibility – i.e., acknowledging that our concepts cannot fully grasp the nature of God” (2016, 896). Ali further explains how this understanding of God can be likened to the Islamic concept of “bi lā kayfa” which is defined as ““without asking how”, or “without comment”” (ibid.). 327 Historically, there have been debates amongst Muslim theologians and philosophers regarding the appropriate interpretation of God’s attributes. See Hoover (2007), Wisnovsky (2005), and el-Bizri (2008). 328 Recorded interview with Seif, November 2016. 329 See Bonab, Miner, and Proctor who specifically address the ways Muslims conceive of God as an “attachment figure” that serves as a source of “protection” and “comfort” (2013, 85).
233 emulating them in their own lives or they discussed these names in terms of their own personal relationship with the Divine whom some viewed as a companion (Luhrmann 2004, 2012).
During this session, Imam Sherif also noted that God loves everyone unconditionally and made a contradistinction between Islam and the prosperity gospel (Bowler 2013). I had heard
Imam Sherif make this distinction before and have heard the same comparison made by a chaplain on another campus. Specifically, Imam Sherif extended the conversation by being critical of the underlying socioeconomic implications of the prosperity gospel, such as its ability to promote a certain exclusivity to those who have been “blessed” by God’s bounty, and to overlook systemic issues that impede others from obtaining the same rewards. His relaying this message to larger social justice issues was common for Imam Sherif who during his ḥalaqāt, khuṭab, and when making supplications made a point of drawing on current events and connecting them to his community’s religious obligations. While Imam Sherif was privileging what he saw as Islam’s more egalitarian tenor, it would be unfair to insinuate that this was a polemical discussion. It was, as I understood it, more indicative of how Muslims and some
Protestants who adhere to the prosperity gospel worshipped the same God but they conceived of
God’s blessings differently.
Proceeding to explain how all aspects of our religion are connected back to God, Imam
Sherif criticized the ritualistic and legalistic prism that many people apply when thinking about their dīn and the kinds of lifestyle choices they were making. This criticism resonated with his students like Seif who explained to me that, “Growing up, sometimes religion was seen as a burden you know. This is haram. This is haram. You do this, you’re going to hell. You do that, you’re going to hell, but Imam Sherif twists it in a way.”330 This was not the first time I heard
330 See chapter six in Justine Howe (2018). Howe captures the issues at stake in the halal/haram divide for many young American Muslims. She writes, “Webb parents believe that for their vision of American Islam to flourish,
234 him offer this critique nor was he the first person to do so. Given the growing convert population that existed on certain college campuses and in the American Muslim community at large, this critique was a deliberate reminder to heritage Muslims that patience, a suspension of judgment and a lack of focus on the minutiae were critical in nurturing a growing community of Muslims.
Chaplains reminded these students and community members that converts (Guimond 2017) must initially grasp some of the larger theological suppositions that undergird the rituals and prescriptive behavior many heritage Muslims have come to accept with little hesitation. On another campus, I recall the chaplain relaying a story shared by a young woman who recently converted to Islam. The young woman explained that she was hanging out with some of her
Muslim sisters and during their conversation, they encouraged her to sleep on her right side noting that this habit was part of the Prophetic sunna.331 The chaplain used this as an opportunity to discuss how while there is nothing wrong per se with incorporating the sunna into one’s life, he wondered if this was an example that a newcomer to Islam should prioritize.
That chaplains encouraged their communities to be mindful and cautious when giving advice, presented a more nuanced interpretation of the Islamic “naṣīḥa (advice) giving” culture
(Becker 2011) many Muslims have been exposed to.332 Talal Asad explains how giving naṣīḥa
“is precisely how “religious” duties are embedded in social relations (learning and teaching correct religious practices, giving moral advice to fellow Muslims, and so on) and what specific duties are entailed by social relations that need to be analyzed in fiqh” (2003, 243). Asad’s description of naṣīḥa underscores the “discursiveness” of the Islamic tradition in that lay
their children must themselves be able to recognize Islam as a faith that epitomizes universal values and is rooted in a flexible moral framework unmoored from the rigid constraints of halal and haram” (2018, 168). 331 The hadith these sisters were referring to is found in Sahih al-Bukhari “When you go to bed, do wudoo’ as if for prayer, then lie down on your right side” (Vol. 1, Book 4, No. 247, pg. 155). 332 See Fazaluddin (2016), Pieri et al. (2014) and Cook (2000) for more on the Islamic exhortation to “enjoin good and forbid evil.”
235 individuals engage with the tradition, which they then share with others. I would argue that there is a triangular relationship in naṣīḥa giving, because the person who is supplying the advice may be engaging with “tradition” differently than the person they are counseling. Imbalance ensues when heritage Muslims feel they inherently possess more knowledge than a convert. What is at stake for Imam Sherif is not a dismissiveness of the importance of giving naṣīḥa but directing students’ attention to the kinds of naṣīḥa they are giving and more importantly the manner in which they are offering it. As such, one could infer that there was a hierarchy regarding which kinds of naṣīḥa should be prioritized.
At one point in the ḥalaqa, Imam Sherif asked the students a rather difficult question,
“What if you’ve never thought about what God is to you?” Unlike other figures I had seen or heard exercise a condemnatory or foreboding tone by invoking the “rhetorical techniques of tarhīb” (Hirschkind 2006) when posing such questions, Imam Sherif was gentle, trying to demonstrate the fact that these young Muslims would be left shorthanded if they neglected to confront such an important question.333 He proceeded to caution against the socializing processes that dictate how we think about God. While he did not elaborate too much on this point, my impression was that he was urging students to transcend binary characterizations of God as being a punisher or the all-forgiving for example. With that said though, he also noted that God was infinite and cautioned against reducing the ways one perceives God exclusively with respect to the ninety-nine names (al-asmā’ al-ḥusnā) in spite of the fact that they are beautiful. This segued into a conversation about how we as human beings are prone to appreciating things that are beautiful and that we should refrain from engaging in ugly behaviors such as gossiping,
333 See Hirschkind’s discussion of tarhīb (fear) and targhīb (encouragement or the inciting of desire) as rhetorical devices, which invoke “an ethical emotion.” Fear, for example, “does not simply inhibit wrong behavior or limit human agency but allows one to achieve excellence in the performance of the moral acts one undertakes” (2006, 181). See also Hirschkind (2006, 188-192) for more on tarhīb.
236 backbiting, maintaining prejudices, and lying.334 By highlighting these pernicious behaviors, he also implored his students to not fall down a self-deprecating spiral but to rather be introspective.
His cautioning against self-deprecation was something I heard Imam Sherif mention throughout many of his ḥalaqāt and it was something that intrigued me immensely given American millennial culture in particular. Self-deprecation was something many of these youth had become exposed to via comedians, actors, and even religious figures in their midst who employed self- deprecatory techniques to appear relatable, humble, and self-aware (Lee, Slater, and Tchernev
2015). In another ḥalaqa, for example, he explained that when we are consumed by self- deprecation, “we don’t have the confidence to do right by God” and it is this “passivity that prevents us from interacting with God.”335 As such, Imam Sherif was encouraging his students to think more critically about what could be done in order to remedy a sense of complacency or stillness that inhibited them from developing a relationship with the Divine. Ultimately, Imam
Sherif consistently reminded students to seriously contemplate their relationship with God and urged them to have a conversation about who God is and the kind of role He maintained in their lives. One of the more salient points in his discussion was when he explained that we should not asses God based on what is going on in our lives because we will always be afflicted with hardships. Thus, our understanding of God should be autonomous and not dependent on whether or not we feel we are in God’s favor. Essentially, Imam Sherif was encouraging students to self- reflect on their trials and tribulations and to view them as an opportunity through which they could become closer to the Divine.
334 In a popular hadith, the Prophet Muhammad is known to have said, “God is beautiful and He loves beauty” (Chittick 2014, 231). 335 Field notes, September 2015.
237 For example, Imam Sherif told the MSA students during that ḥalaqa that they should not fear God so that they could “act audaciously.”336 Essentially, he was imploring these students to not be consumed or more importantly paralyzed by the fear of God and/or impending punishment (Smith and Haddad 2002). He proceeded to share that students needed to take their
“understanding of the Divine and apply it to their challenging lives” reminding them that the
Divine was always looking out for their best interests and that because people inherently carry a lot of pain, they should participate in gatherings where they could reflect more critically about their lives. Unlike Imam Hadi, Imam Sherif underscored the value in collectively reading religious texts, which makes sense given his own tendency to draw on his personal experiences to relay points throughout his ḥalaqāt. Based on my observations, this form of sharing was an affective mechanism that incited his students to be more self-reflexive and cultivated a space where vulnerability and introspection were encouraged. Imam Sherif specifically encouraged his students to commune and read religious texts collectively so that they could share their reflections with each other. Such gatherings resemble the “third-space discussions” in Justine
Howe’s research on the Webb community in Chicago where “participants constructed Islamic knowledge through peer discussion and debate, while privileging interpretation and experience”
(2018, 134). Whereas Imam Hadi often seemed skeptical of whether peer reflections could distract his students from forming their own connections to religious texts, Imam Sherif believed students could benefit and learn from each other’s insights when reading scripture. Imam Sherif also affirmed it was much better to read the Qur’an a little bit each day than to read it during one specific portion of the year.337 What I understood from this suggestion is that by his students
336 Field notes, February 2017. 337 I assumed he was referring to the greater preponderance of Muslims who recite Qur’an and pray more during the month of Ramadan.
238 habituating the reading of the Qur’an and in participating in a communal reading of the text, they would develop a closer relationship with the Divine and each other.
Conclusion
This chapter has examined how MSAs are implementing an Islamic pedagogy that places emphasis on a personalized religiosity, nearness to the Divine and the importance of religious texts. As evidenced in my discussion of these ḥalaqāt, religious texts are imbued with rich meanings that enable students to gain an existential and deeper understanding of their experiences, and how those could be connected to the Divine. Imam Sherif communicated these teachings by drawing on personal experiences and by encouraging his students to be confident and to not be inhibited by their insecurities and anxieties around religion. Imam Hadi offered his students a hermeneutical approach to the study of religious texts, arguing that by connecting the study of religious texts to their personal experiences, they would be able to fortify a deeply affirmed God-consciousness.
The reciprocal and discursive relationship between student and the Communicative
Creator was also fundamental to the ḥalaqāt I attended. In the student reflections I discussed, we learn that Imam Hadi’s students found great value in his methodological approach to scripture and developed ways to appropriate it so as to make sense of their experiences and how those were connected to their relationship with the Divine. Those such as Rabia believed that Imam
Hadi’s emphasis on developing a sense of God-consciousness helped her “figure out the puzzle” of her existence. Still though, students such as Jamila, when confronted with alternative approaches to scripture became unsettled and turned to Imam Hadi for perspective. While the hermeneutical method Imam Hadi taught his students enabled them to root their religious beliefs
239 in self-affirmed convictions, there is a wider field of competing Islamic pedagogical practices that exist both within and outside of MSA spaces.338 When American Muslim youth joined their respective MSAs, their understanding of their faith was reoriented. They encountered a pedagogical style that afforded them an opportunity to introspectively engage with their religious beliefs. Chaplains such as Imam Hadi and Imam Sherif taught them that their personal queries, thoughts, and experiences were what mattered because those were the foundation to their developing a sense of God-consciousness and a deep connection with the Divine.
As such, in order to study American Muslim college students’ religiosity, one needs to understand how ḥalaqāt offer a self-transformational mode of religious education. Imam Hadi’s and Imam Sherif’s ḥalaqāt are just some examples of how MSA students’ engagement with religious texts is intimately tied to their experiences, inquiries, and curiosities about their relationship with the Divine. In order to nuance discourses on American Muslims, I have demonstrated how the conjoining of religious experience and textual study reorients these students’ lives and demonstrates a marked shift in American Muslim pedagogical practices.
More importantly, it opens new conversations about the importance of religious experience and one’s relationship with the Divine as being significant factors when accounting for the religious sensibilities of this demographic.
338 Michael Lambek explains the complex process in which one arrives at a conviction writing that “[i]t builds gradually” and is a “product of public ritual and of interpersonal relations, albeit relationships that take place both in the outer, social world, and inwardly by means of identification, introjection, and individuation” (2015, 181).
240 Chapter 5
Being Woke: Social Justice Activism and American Muslim Youth
Shortly after the U.S. presidential election results of November 2016, letter-writing campaigns, scripts for speaking to local congressmen and advertisements for upcoming events aimed to galvanize the Muslim community swamped my inbox.339 Similar to other marginalized and targeted demographics such as women, the Black community, undocumented peoples, and members of the LGBTQIA community, MSAs felt that they could no longer afford to have their voices dismissed or their experiences overlooked. Divisions could no longer be accepted.
Complacency was no longer tenable. Quiet resistance was no longer an option. Echoing the sentiment, “[t]he key to significant and sustainable change… is in framing the issue in terms of what needs to be done, rather than simply what needs to happen,” (An-Na‘im 2006, 60), I witnessed these youth embody the often referenced slang, become “woke.”340
The first Friday after the election, I attended jum‘a prayer on one campus. Having avoided the healing groups that had taken place the day following the election, because I personally needed to process the turn of events privately, I decided to venture out that Friday and congregate with the rest of the Muslim community. On my walk to Friday prayer that afternoon, looking down at the sidewalk and listening to a podcast, I pondered on how the fear of voyeurism was something I was consistently cognizant of. Was it appropriate to observe the communities I had engaged with for over a year and a half at that point while they were grieving even though their safety and wellbeing occupied my thoughts? Was it awkward and perhaps even uncouth to record how these communities were feeling or was it my responsibility to document
339 I would like to thank Professors Banu Gökariksel and Juliane Hammer as well as the participants at the Duke- UNC Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies Graduate Student Workshop for their insightful questions and suggestions when I presented an early draft of this chapter. 340 The popular slang “woke” has gained traction in more mainstream, American vernacular and has been used to denote social consciousness, privilege, and racial justice (Foley 2016).
241 what was taking place? The answers to these questions are still ones I am struggling to find but during that time, it dawned on me that the significance of this research became even more pressing and its implications, particularly its speaking to the political climate during that time period became that much more exigent.341
As I walked into the jum‘a space, finding the back corner where I usually sat, I observed students as they offered each other consoling hugs, leaned on each other’s shoulders and shared comforting smiles. I too participated in offering the aforementioned gestures, all the while recognizing their efficacy was limited. No warm embrace or reassuring smile was capable of placating the anxiety many of these students and community members felt. I was in their shoes, weary, disappointed, and baffled. The sermon that day was not traditionally uplifting the way many of them are on the college campuses I frequented. The weather had cleared up by that time and the sun crept in the big glass windows casting a slight shadow over the lines of congregants eagerly sitting on their knees or cross-legged to hear words of comfort from the khaṭīb that afternoon. I spent most of the time playing with the tassels of my headscarf, quietly admitting to myself that I needed to be reassured as much as any of them did. The khaṭīb’s tone that day was more mellow than usual. As he began speaking, I could not help but sympathize, imagining that he was unprepared to respond to the shocking election results. Yet here he was, three days later attempting to console and provide hope to a community that was directly attacked by President- elect Donald Trump. He began by sharing with the congregation that every prophet throughout history has been confronted with deterrents explaining to them “for every Moses, there has always been a Pharaoh.”342 Towards the end of the khuṭba, he implored his community to
341 Juliane Hammer’s article on why “gender matters” in Islamic studies highlights the need for scholars to consider their own positionality in their research and the fact that “all our scholarship in Islamic studies has political implications” (2016, 655). 342 Field notes, November 2016.
242 remember that they were not singularly being targeted and that it was incumbent on them as
Muslims to stand in solidarity with First Nations people in the protection of sacred land in North
Dakota, to stand alongside African Americans who have faced brutality at the hands of law enforcement and to stand by immigrant communities who fear potential deportation, along with any marginalized community that was in need of support.
When I began research for my dissertation, I did not anticipate social justice activism being so prevalent amongst the Muslim youth enrolled in the college campuses I chose for my ethnography. In my preliminary research, I pursued events that discussed religious matters specifically addressing the theological and socio-religious concerns of MSA members.
Moreover, I was reluctant to explore social justice activism because I was unsure of how some of its larger themes and implications would complement my accounting for religious experience and learning practices.343 Ultimately, questions around personal and affective religiosity certainly loomed large in my interviews with students and the concepts I considered when observing the majority of events I attended during my ethnographic research. However, about a year into my fieldwork, I began noticing that the Muslim Students Associations’ members I had spent time with were mobilizing in order to foster dialogue and action that critically address their positions in the pursuit of justice and tolerance, both within and outside their communities.344
Social justice can be defined in a plethora of ways (MacIntyre 1988) and indeed its definition will invariably depend on the sociopolitical and historical context within which it is
343 According to Zeina Zaatari, “anthropologists can and should investigate democratic practices, new modes of communication, the language of poetry and music, and how these influence social and political relations and transform gender identities and sensibilities” (2015, 342). 344 See Sirin, Abo-Zena, and Shehadeh (2008) for a discussion about Muslim youth’s engagement with charity work as well as Husain’s (2015) research on volunteerism. In their study of Muslim youth, Sirin, Abo-Zena, and Shehadeh, explain that youth volunteered at their local mosque or in their local Muslim community by “cleaning the mosque, providing humanitarian relief… volunteering at events including babysitting, and teaching Arabic or serving as a teaching assistant for elementary-age children” (2008, 244-45). Many of the students I interviewed were involved in their local Muslim communities in some capacity and tended to the aforementioned duties.
243 operating. For the purposes of this chapter, social justice is defined as being “concerned not in the narrow focus of what is just for the individual alone, but what is justice for the social whole”
(Capeheart and Milovanovic 2007, 2). The “social whole” with respect to the MSAs in this research involves their respective local Muslim communities, the American Muslim umma, suffering Muslims worldwide, and the general equitable treatment of all peoples in the United
States. In MSA circles, social justice also constitutes a higher moral ground because the motivations for these calls to reform are predicated on engagement with an Islamic ethos of ‘adl, or justice.
This chapter begins by discussing the activist spirit amongst American Muslim youth, social justice activism on college campuses, and Islamic definitions of justice. It then moves on to examine how some MSAs are engaging with social justice by analyzing three examples from my research: support for Black Muslims and the Black Lives Matter movement, addressing gender grievances in prayer space, and accommodating LGBTQIA people. As this chapter will demonstrate, while MSA students were responding and contributing to some of these liberal reforms such as women’s advocacy, LGBTQIA rights, and a condemnation of racism, their benchmark for initiating some of these reforms was still tempered by their engagement with the
Islamic “tradition.” Moreover, these reforms were predicated on maintaining a sense of inclusivity in the MSA space and ensuring a just treatment of their members. Illustrating how these youth rooted their engagement with reform by engaging with the Islamic "tradition" as well as the broader social justice rhetoric on their campuses demonstrates the “heteroglossic” atmosphere of competing and overlapping articulations within which MSAs on college campuses operate.345 As the following case studies will demonstrate, there were varying limits regarding
345 My usage of heteroglossia, while coined by Bakhtin (1981), is borrowed from Amira Mittermaier’s (2014b) employment of the term to discuss charitable giving in Egypt.
244 the reaches of liberal understandings of justice and equity in these MSAs’ respective discourses and reforms. While some social justice issues were able to gain significant traction within MSA communities, others remained at inchoate stages of development.
American Muslim Youth and Activism
Academic literature on American Muslim youth often highlights how they pay preferential treatment to their collective religious identity. In my own findings, as discussed in chapters one and two, members of the student clubs I worked with vied to foster a sense of inclusivity in order to sustain similarities while living in a diasporic community: religion, values, and experiences. During the time spent with these students, I also witnessed them confronting differences be they racial, gendered, or regarding sexual orientation. According to Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera, amongst Muslim youth worldwide, “there appears to be a growing generational consciousness, diffused in part through the new media, about issues of social justice and human rights accompanied by a profound moral outrage at the violation of fundamental rights” (2010, 11). MSA students, in particular, drew inspiration from each other, Muslim public figures, and their supportive chaplains whose own messages and teachings encouraged them to be engaged, socially conscious and unafraid when vocalizing their opinions about sociopolitical issues.346 In writing about Muslim youth, Shelina Janmohamed explains, “[d]espite their embrace of individualism, they are keen to uphold marriage, family, and ummah. They want to be heroes
346 Omar, for example, commended his chaplain for finding a balance between avoiding polemics when discussing social justice initiatives but also not sugarcoating the issues at hand. Recorded interview, May 2016. As discussed in this dissertation thus far, chaplains have become formative figures in the religious development of MSA students. Jennifer Lindholm explains, “developing people’s abilities to access, nurture, and give expression to the spiritual dimension of their lives impacts how they engage with the world and fosters within them a heightened sense of connectedness that promotes passion and action for social justice” (2006, 78).
245 of their own lives, but also to make sure their spouses, families and communities are all the better for it” (2016, 189-190).
In many respects, social justice activism encompasses the culmination of my research findings. Members of MSAs are collectively engaging with the world around them, seeking out religious knowledge, and are introspectively thinking about their relationship with the Divine.347
The confluence of such conditions emboldens these students and encourages them to reconsider their place in the world and determine if they can play a part in standing up against injustice, an obligation incumbent upon them religiously. In fact, what I often sensed was that being a good and pious Muslim was predicated on supporting social justice issues (Abdul Khabeer 2018, 147).
During my fieldwork, MSAs organized rallies combating hate and white supremacy, stood in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, protested on behalf of undocumented peoples, raised money for the crises in Syria and Myanmar, travelled to Standing Rock to display their support, passed out water bottles in Flint, Michigan and raised money for local organizations that help victims of domestic violence. They have also raised funds to assist DACA students facing potential deportation, and initiated environmentally friendly campaigns to minimize waste at gatherings where food is served and to avoid the use of plastic, among others.
While many of them rallied behind their peers who were protesting injustices, spent their time volunteering, and raised awareness on various issues, some MSAs do struggle with whether they should be politically engaged. As I discussed in the introduction, I encountered MSA students who were unsure of whether they should be advocating for political causes fearing the
347 Amira Mittermaier’s work on charitable giving in Egypt complicates our understanding of the virtues of doing good. In her ethnographic work, she discovered that “human-centered visions of “the good” are inherently limited and that whatever we give is not ours to begin with. Humans merely mediate divine justice, which exceeds our limited understanding of the good” (2014a, 527). Thus, she argues that the “triadic system of mediation – between God, donor, and recipient – runs counter to the notion of an autonomous yet compassionate volunteer” (ibid.).
246 stigmatization and backlash that might ensue.348 I understood that this backlash might stem from their professors, their peers and even their campus’s administration. Statistically, 42% of Muslim students in pre-university education have been affected by some form of bullying, and about
25% percent of these cases have “involved a teacher or other school official” (Mogahed and
Chouhoud 2017, 4).
While this statistic does not reflect the experiences of Muslim students attending universities, the students I engaged with were not much older than school age and the lingering effects of bullying and harassment in schools cannot be ignored. In some cases, bullying and other forms of Islamophobia, which operate “as a form of imperial racism,” can ignite a fire in some young Muslims to “become social justice activists” (Naber 2012, 134). Throughout the course of a year, I noticed that it was becoming increasingly important for Muslim youth on college campuses to be politically active. Whether or not one wanted to be involved, one could not escape the conversations and the emerging “wokeness” that was surrounding them.
Activist Spirit on College Campuses
According to Mary Ryan, “[c]ivic participation of young people around the world is routinely described in deficit terms, as they are labeled apathetic, devoid of political knowledge, disengaged from the community and self-absorbed” (2011, 1015). Ryan’s observations certainly reflect the impressions that many have of millennials who have been criticized for their lack of political involvement and their sense of entitlement. However, the current climate of the United
States has witnessed an increasing presence of millennials who have been advocating for social justice reforms and challenging the oft-cited characterization that they are politically apathetic.
348 An example of this would be explicit support for Palestine. See Casey (2018) for a discussion of how the stigmatization of American Muslims arises both from within and outside of their communities.
247 Undoubtedly, the college experience affords MSA students the freedom and the platforms to build their own social networks, forge alliances with their non-Muslim peers, and cultivate spaces that reflect the values, beliefs, and introspective critical thinking necessary for addressing injustices. As Christopher Broadhurst notes, student activists in the United States “are trying to change the world. That world might be as small as their campus or as large as humanity itself, but each student, each group, each movement, is moved in some way to better society” (2014,
12).349 The Muslim student groups I observed reached out to their own members and they also traversed their own student group’s network to develop coalitions with other groups on campus in order to “generate the critical mass necessary to form political groups and mount political actions” (Crossley 2008, 29).350 What one witnesses on college campuses is reflective of the larger political culture of the United States. Recently, various alliances have been formed to support people that have been targeted by President Donald Trump. Such examples include the worldwide solidarity in the Women’s March, condemnation of the Muslim Ban in the forms of petitions and airport protests, concern over the deportation strategies of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials, and support for the Black Lives Matter movement.351
On college campuses, the success of activist efforts is also heavily dependent on the cooperation and support of the university whose funding sustains student organizations. In a conversation with a prominent female activist in the American Muslim community, one of the
349 Broadhurst’s comment mirrors Mary Ryan’s research, which notes how youth are trying to “make a difference to those close to them and ‘be a good person’” (2011, 1029). Thus, the extent to which student activism flourishes is dependent on the groups’ attitudes and what their immediate objectives are. 350 Crossley (2008) also notes that student activists often become involved due to the influence of their friends. 351 There have been debates regarding the most effective way to demonstrate solidarity. On various roundtable podcasts, particularly “Code Switch” and “#goodmuslimbadmuslim,” hosts have expressed that protesting and signing petitions is not enough to combat the fear that many minority groups face in the Trump era. Commentators have suggested that to truly stand in solidarity, one must give up some form of their privilege. For example, wearing a headscarf to show support for Muslim women is moot unless people speak out when they see a Muslim woman being harassed or discriminated against. Thus, what can be gleaned from such criticisms is the fact that true solidarity can elicit discomfort. One must be willing to sacrifice their privilege for the greater cause.
248 student moderators specifically brought up how pursuing activist efforts is a time-consuming and expensive endeavor. Noting these burdens demonstrates that student activists depend on financial support to fund initiatives, as well as each other, so that the burden of organizing does not fall on the shoulders of a handful of students. One must not forget the recent debates arguing that liberal college campuses have cultivated “safe spaces” at the expense of even listening to or entertaining a viewpoint that differs from their sociopolitical sensibilities. Such stances have become more visible in light of the Trump presidency and demonstrate how the current climate on college campuses is brimming with vocal and critical students of diverse backgrounds who are addressing a myriad of issues that are indexed by race, gender, sexuality, and class among other factors.
In spite of the progress already made by previous generations of Muslims who have participated in local and national levels of civic engagement, the generation of Muslims I worked with were all too aware that more cooperation with non-Muslim groups was becoming increasingly important. For example, in an interview with Layth, he shared salient points he acquired while at a leadership conference over his university’s winter break. Excited to relay his experience and what he had learned, he explained to me that the student invitees were being taught that it was imperative for American Muslims to resolve conflict within their own communities and to reach out to other minority groups within the United States such as the Black
Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQIA community. He shared, “no one is united in any way and we’re constantly bickering back and forth in our own communities and we’re like arguing with each other.”352 At that moment, I could not disagree with what Layth was saying. Muslims, like other groups in the United States have been confronted with the realities of working together as a united front. While I witnessed criticisms of public figures in the American Muslim
352 Recorded interview with Layth, February 2017.
249 community and I recognized that harsh criticisms were certainly being directed at people, perhaps in unfair ways, I am not entirely sure that what was taking place was so different from other minority communities who were advocating for change. Even the Republican Party, which has often been lauded for its ability to stand united and in its consistency regarding certain sociopolitical issues has witnessed factional divides in recent years. The reliance on social media to express viewpoints and the constant inundation of news reports, blog posts and other forms of social commentary have exacerbated the issue. Whereas the representative opinions of a particular group might be relegated to prominent figures, experts, and journalists, anyone with access to the Internet now has the opportunity to be a part of the conversation. On the one hand, such access permits a diversity of voices but at the same time, some of the loudest and most contentious voices are the ones given prominence over those expressing more nuanced and tempered critique. As Layth pointed out though, the lack of unity and internal hostility are ultimately detrimental to the success of American Muslims. Reaching out to other marginalized groups necessitated a present cohesion within the American Muslim community.
Forming offshoot Muslim student groups to specifically address political issues has enabled some MSAs to reconcile potential conflicts of interest. By doing this, the MSA would strictly serve students’ “religious needs” and not be subject to controversial attention. In a conversation with one chaplain, he reminded me that some international students participating in
MSA activities worry that being affiliated with a politically engaged campus group might negatively affect them upon their return home. As such, Muslim students who had no desire to be politically engaged could still participate in the MSA without drawing any political attention.353
With that said, over the course of my research, I observed more and more MSAs becoming
353 I should also note that the NYPD had been spying on MSAs throughout the northeastern United States. While the surveillance program was terminated before my research began, its ramifications were still palpable as I learned in my conversations with some students. See MACLC, CLEAR, and AALDEF (2013) and Fawzi (2014).
250 increasingly “woke” and politically active by protesting and building alliances with other marginalized groups on their campuses. These students were excited and proud of their MSAs’ accomplishments and looked forward to more social justice engagement.
The Impact of President Trump
Before I treat the case studies in this chapter, it is important to situate my social justice engagement within the context of the political events that have taken place since I began my preliminary ethnographic research in early 2015. Most notably, there was a visible surge in political mobilization across multiple social justice platforms in the United States with Muslim students and the outlying community being at the forefront of some of these initiatives alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQIA community and feminists.
When Donald Trump became the Republican front-runner for the 2016 presidential election, an overwhelming fear concerning the future of the United States overcame many minority communities including American Muslims. Of note is the infamous South Carolina rally in December 2015 when Donald Trump essentially called for a ban on “all Muslim foreigners from entering the United States” (Diamond 2015). This unsettling anxiety explained the palpable shock and gloom that overcame many American Muslim communities after his victory.
One must also not forget Senator Bernie Sanders who has been credited for lighting a fire amongst many young Americans including Muslim youth across the country. His campaigning for free education struck a deep chord amongst those who were burdened by their student loan debt, the rising costs of higher education, wealth inequality, and a health care system that many felt was in dire need of repair. According to Dalia Mogahed and Youssef Chouhoud, “the
251 majority of young Muslims preferred Senator Bernie Sanders for President, which may have further contributed to their dampened enthusiasm for the available choices” (2017, 6). Thus, many Muslim millennials similar to their non-Muslim peers abstained from voting in the 2016 presidential election. Mogahed and Chouhoud’s report also noted that the justification for
Muslims’ abstention was not religiously motivated but was due to other factors such as the unfavorable impression Muslims had of both candidates, a sentiment shared by other Americans.
My reason for connecting the MSAs’ social justice initiatives to the larger political climate is to demonstrate their contingency, the inherent sense of immediacy, and a calling for outspokenness, change, and solidarity that many of these students advocated for at the time. Such initiatives did not happen in a vacuum. This is not to suggest that the reforms I will be discussing would not have occurred if the volatile election did not take place, but these objectives became even more pressing considering the unexpected election results, subsequent policies enacted by
President Trump’s administration, and heightened sensitivities from all peoples irrespective of their political affiliations or lack thereof regarding social justice issues.
Islamic Definitions of Social Justice
In the Qur’an, the terms ‘adl or qisṭ are employed to refer to justice with ẓulm being the most common term referring to injustice.354 Multiple passages in the Qur’an address how God brings justice to humanity, and “[p]romulgating the worship of God and the essentials of justice are two of the Qur’an’s main purposes” (Timani 2012, 139).355 According to Jonathan Brockopp
354 See Brockopp (2001) for more regarding other terms synonymous with justice and injustice, their usage in the Qur’an, as well as the distinction between divine and human justice. 355 For example, see Qur’anic verses 3:108, 4:30, 4:135, 5:8, 16:90, 40:31, and 55:9. Cassandra Chaney and Wesley Church explain that “Islam has a zero tolerance policy for injustice and everything has rights and to exceed the boundaries or not give someone or something its due right is called haram or forbidden act” (2017, 37). Timani (2012) highlights the Qur’anic injunctions as they pertain to justice for women, slaves, and orphans.
252 (2001), “[t]he qur’ānic exhortation that believers render justice and be just in their actions, therefore, is part of their acceptance of this cosmology of justice.” Toshihiko Izutsu, in his work on the ethics outlined in the Qur’an, elucidates the emphasis on “justice and love in social life” and how this connects to one’s piety (2014, 207).356
In light of the textual and ethical Islamic precedents laid out above, it would be remiss to insinuate that MSA students experienced an epiphany upon entering college whereby they suddenly gravitated towards social justice issues. The majority of their parents were active in some capacity in their local mosque communities either by serving on the mosque’s board, spending time volunteering at their local mosques, and participating in fundraising initiatives.
Yasir, for example, when asked about how he became familiar with his MSA, noted that a charity fundraiser was his initial exposure to MSA students on his campus. Because of his involvement in this fundraiser, he became acquainted with the MSA and decided to learn more about it. The positive experience he had, coupled with the friendliness of those he met, left him with a positive impression of the group and encouraged him to attend ḥalaqāt and use the prayer space on campus.357 As such, an acknowledgement of privilege, socioeconomic inequalities and an inherent religious obligation to participate in ventures that can improve others’ circumstances was already engrained in many of the students I spoke with (Schmidt 2004a).
Before university, and during it, many of these students volunteered, fundraised, and donated money in the forms of zakat or ṣadaqa (voluntary charity).358 In the current social media climate, websites such as LaunchGood provide another venue where people can become
356 See Izutsu (2014, 207-211 and 234). See also Sayyid Qutb (2000). 357 Recorded interview with Yasir, July 2016. 358 For example, some MSAs including some I worked with are active in MSA Charity Week, which is an annual competition run by Islamic Relief USA, a prominent non-profit. Students raised funds for various causes such as aiding orphans and underprivileged youth. See also Pschaida (2015, 139-155) for a discussion on different MSAs’ outreach initiatives. See Mattson (2010), Timani (2012), and Stiles (2012) for more regarding the virtues of zakat as maintaining social welfare and justice.
253 involved in charitable causes. Many of the MSA students I worked with were active on these sites and created multiple campaigns. Some of these campaigns were geared towards aiding international crises such as in Myanmar or Syria. Other initiatives on these websites were more local and drew attention to and generated support for local community shelters and/or soup kitchens.
Highlighting local charitable initiatives that are serving the economically underprivileged, those who are victims of domestic violence, and those who are victims of the criminal justice system, has become increasingly important and indicates the many ways in which American Muslim charitable giving is focused on giving back to American Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Even when zakat is distributed within the American Muslim community, it has faced criticisms. Ingrid Mattson, for example, elaborates on the inequality regarding zakat distribution by explaining the fact that because affluent mosques and Islamic centers in the U.S. require funding for their erection and maintenance, unfortunately it is predominantly affluent American Muslim communities that frequent them. She writes that even though these Muslims may not personally benefit from these zakat contributions in the sense that it does not go to them directly, “they benefit from the social, cultural, and religious services provided there. Meanwhile, little zakat is left to support poor and needy Muslims in other neighborhoods. Clearly, this violates, at a minimum, the spirit of the zakat system” (Mattson
2010, 16).
However, during my research, I noticed that MSAs were cognizant and were responding to local plights and there seems to have been progress made since Mattson’s important observations. Some examples of this included local charity toy drives for homeless women and children during Eid and Valentine’s day, raising funds for feminine hygiene products to support
254 nearby families affected by domestic violence, a weekly soup kitchen initiative that involved raising funds for meals and volunteering for meal prep and distribution at local shelters, and volunteering to help raise funds for a local community clinic that was serving lower-income individuals and families who were unable to afford medical care.359
According to Louise Cainkar, second-generation American Muslims “are more able than their immigrant parents to cross barriers of culture, race, and ethnicity and to forge pan-Islamic relationships. Their knowledge of American methods of organizing will increase Muslim civic and political integration in American society” (2004, 118). Cainkar’s characterization of
American Muslim youth was apparent in my research but it is also important to equally note that the first and second generation of Muslims whose narratives I became acquainted with in my research were not so unalike. First-generation Muslim immigrants were also concerned with civic engagement. In fact, I would argue that their building the foundation for Muslim networks, mosques, and institutions has enabled these university students to reach out to other groups.
Inevitably, while more work can be done to foster a more cohesive American Muslim body, an objective some of these students expressed, worrying about basic accommodations such as a local mosque to pray in or a youth group to be a member of was something many of them were privileged enough not to experience (Schmidt 2002, 7). More importantly, I learned through my interviews that some of them were incredibly proud of the accomplishments that their parents in particular, and their community at large, had made when they were growing up. Thus, while the direction of American Muslim youth’s civic participation is veering off from their parents in
359 Justine Howe extensively details how through “service and leisure” activities, the American Muslim community she studied in Chicago “offer[ed] a positive, affirming representation of American Muslims as good citizens and the right kind of religious practitioners” (2018, 70).
255 some ways, earlier generations of Muslims made it their prerogative to foster robust and active
Muslim communities in the United States.360
Before I treat the individual case studies in this chapter, it is additionally important to obtain a sense of how students articulated their social justice consciousness to me. Bariza, for example, explained that she always saw “social justice being I guess so weaved into Islam.” This inspired her to pursue “mission driven work” upon graduation, acknowledging that her relationship with God played a role in her choice.361 Bariza’s comment is indicative of a more recent development amongst these students, namely a reformed understanding of “success” and a desire to pursue degrees that would enable them to serve their communities. Unlike their parents who encouraged them to study the hard sciences such as medicine or engineering, the young
Muslims I spoke to during my research studied a variety of majors including social work, public policy, and even psychology. Some academic studies have shown that “[s]tudents in the social sciences and humanities became more liberal and critical in the course of their studies. The implication is that this change leads to activism” (Crossley 2008, 23).
In my interview with Nesma, a humanities major, she often credited “colonialism” as being the cause for some of the problems afflicting the Muslim community such as the trope that
Muslim women have no agency (Mahmood 2001b, 2005). She shared that this mischaracterization “has to be contested especially like as a younger like new generation Muslim girl in America like when I see this disparity, I’m gonna question it obviously and reading the actual knowledge of the religion makes things so much clearer.”362 Another student, Seif, expressed his desire to “Be someone who helps to leverage other people’s strengths to succeed
360 See Smith (2010b), GhaneaBassiri (2012), and Howell (2014) for accounts detailing the institution-building efforts of American Muslims throughout the 20th century. 361 Recorded interview with Bariza, February 2016. 362 Recorded interview with Nesma, April 2016.
256 and that’s where you kind of fall into talking about privilege. I have a lot of privilege al-ḥamdu li-llāh. And so how can I use my privilege in the pursuit of bringing justice and equity to those who may not have the same levels of privilege.”363 The acknowledgement of one’s privilege is central to the contemporary discursive grammar of social justice and was articulated by many of the students I spoke with.
During all of my initial interviews with MSA students, I asked them what they hoped to accomplish with the education they were receiving at university and the litany of responses varied. Interestingly, when I posed these questions, my intention was to casually break the ice before I began asking them more personal questions about their families, their upbringings, and their religious views. As I noted earlier, because the concept of social justice and activism was not one of my core research objectives, my questions regarding academic studies and professional aspirations did not initially factor in the way they do now. As I became more familiar with these students, their interests, and the causes they supported, the selection of their majors became more significant and illuminating. I realized that these students deliberately chose to study majors that did not necessarily guarantee them financial success such as social work, for example. Certainly, one could be affluent while simultaneously working to improve their community’s conditions, but it appeared that the latter took precedence over the former. As such, the majority of the students expressed a desire to give back to their communities in some capacity.
Realistically, it is difficult to predict whether students will be able to fulfill these objectives and whether their ability to locate professional opportunities in such fields will deter them from pursuing the careers they once felt so passionately about. Given the success of
363 Recorded interview with Seif, November 2016. See Harper and Quaye (2009, 84-90) for more on how college students address privilege and its relation to social justice.
257 American Muslims who have pursued activist inspired professions, these objectives, at least from these students’ vantage points, seemed attainable. Witnessing someone like Linda Sarsour364 successfully lobby for including Eid as an official holiday in the New York City school district, or the success of Eboo Patel’s “Interfaith Youth Core” project are just some examples of countless Muslims who have made careers for themselves by being involved in ventures that promote inclusion.365
Mixed Feelings Towards Activism
During my research, I noticed that the MSAs that had been the most robust in engaging with social justice issues had supportive chaplains who were willing to advocate alongside them.
Chaplains, in particular, assisted students as they planned events, invited activist guest speakers, offered their public support for various causes, and touted a consistent rhetoric that brought to the foreground the importance of social justice engagement. However, there were MSA students who questioned the social justice fervor on their campuses.
At a brightly lit café not too far from her university campus, Reem and I met for our second interview. Having had difficulty finding a quiet place to sit, we settled on a semi-private corner in the back with only a bench and a chair made available for seating. During that interview, I asked about her thoughts regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and what our involvement as Muslims should be. At that time, February 2016, Black Lives Matter was all over the media. College campuses were talking about police brutality and were becoming vocal in their support, cable news channels were reporting on it, and media pundits, particularly on the
364 See Sarsour (2011) for some of her reflections on her activism and leadership role within the Arab Muslim community. Linda Sarsour was also a prominent figure in the Women’s March and during the 2016 presidential election where she campaigned across the country for Senator Bernie Sanders and encouraged the youth to vote. 365 The progressive Muslim movement is also responsible for initiating social justice conversations. See Safi (2003).
258 right were critical of its efficacy and chipping at its credibility by labeling it a violent protest movement. When I asked Reem if she had felt a sense of responsibility to this cause, particularly in light of the advocacy and conversations taking place on her campus, she explained,
I would just say I actually don’t feel like I have a responsibility and there isn’t something I’m supposed to do. I just believe that if I am given existence in a specific place during a specific moment and I witness something and then I should I should act. But if something is happening and it’s out of my scope of my existence or work or out of the scope of my awareness at the moment then there isn’t anything I should be doing. I found this to be good in the sense that I’ve become more aware of where I am and whatever is happening exactly around me. I’ll intervene and when something is happening not around me, it’s sort of not. I mean I don’t want to say there’s nothing I can do but I don’t, I don’t sense that there is something I can do.366
When Reem shared this with me, I was initially surprised, not because I took issue with what she said per se but because I mistakenly assumed that her studying social work would have elicited a different response, one that was more emboldened. I would later learn that Reem’s stance was influenced by what she had observed and experienced during the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi. In our conversation, she explained that her engagement with social justice initiatives, or “staying true to the justice” involved investigating the injustices taking place and becoming educated about the situation. She shared, “I cannot take action without knowledge.” Reem’s emphasis on being “educated” derived from her having supported certain social justice causes in Egypt, later realizing that she was fed misinformation and was not necessarily acting in favor of those who were being wrongly treated. These experiences led Reem to become more conscientious about how her supporting social justice causes could yield unintended consequences, collateral damage and inadvertently oppress the oppressed. As such, I understood her emphasis on education and immediacy not to signify that she did not support social justice causes on a macro level but that on a micro level, she self-
366 Recorded interview with Reem February 2016.
259 reflexively questioned how she could responsibly and fairly enact the changes she wanted to see manifest.
Having developed a more personal relationship with Reem outside the confines of my research, I found her to be a sincerely compassionate individual who was present and attentive in conversations, treated people with courtesy and respect, and was in a constant state of observing the world around her. Reem deeply cared about the issues she was confronted with. In her work with adolescents of immigrant backgrounds, she was consistently considering their specific needs and circumstances and advocating on their behalves in the face of institutions that had miscast them in a derogatory light.367 What I gathered during our conversations was that confronting injustice had to be something she could readily respond to and tangibly change and alerts us to the important place of immediacy in political engagement. She recounted a message she learned in a ḥalaqa explaining that one’s faith is at its peak when they see an injustice and they intervene physically. As we met for our last interview, she provided me with an example of the correlation between standing up for justice and one’s faith by relaying an instance where she saw a young woman being pulled by the hair by what appeared to be her partner at the mall.
Disturbed by what she was witnessing, Reem approached the man and told him to stop. She shared,
At that moment, I kind of remembered how oh my belief has increased. My belief changed because I acted upon what I believed is right and I said it was OK at that time. I normalized my feeling of being nervous and anxious and I really didn’t know like what would have happened, whatever, but that wasn’t even concerning me. My concern was what’s wrong.
Unlike some of the students I spent time with along with those I observed throughout my research, Reem did not shy away from uncomfortable topics or presenting viewpoints that ran counter to the majority of the other students. In fact, it was her directness that I grew to
367 For more on the interplay between the social work profession and Islam, see Chaney and Church (2017).
260 appreciate and a quality I found to be refreshing. As evidenced in her reflection above, Reem was inspired to lead a life that stood up for justice not simply in theory, but in practice. This is not to say that both are mutually exclusive. As rallies, protests, and circulated petitions became the norm on college campuses, Reem was unique in that she did not feel pressured or compelled to express her caring about issues or supporting them because everyone else around her was. Her focus was on observing her immediate surroundings and intervening when possible to stand up for those being mistreated. After our conversation, I began to wonder how isolating it must be for someone like Reem on a college campus that had developed a reputation for raising awareness about social justice issues. Her peers and her chaplain were instrumental in organizing fundraisers and campaigns, and I grew to learn that students from other universities admired the social justice fervor that percolated throughout Reem’s campus.
Another interlocutor, Su‘ad expressed reticence in participating in social justice initiatives on her campus. We had been chatting at a bustling café one chilly fall evening for about a half hour talking about the aftermath of the election and how her MSA responded to
Donald Trump’s presidential win. As she was sipping her green tea and I was consuming what was probably my fourth coffee that day, I listened to her describe some of the social justice initiatives she was responsible for on her campus. At this point in my research, the question of social justice became more intriguing to me and so I spent more time asking her questions about the nature of these activities. About midway through our almost two-hour conversation, she confided that she occasionally feels “apathetic” about issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and immigration reform. I was surprised because earlier in the conversation she expressed how she deeply cared about these issues. At that point, I was unsure of how to interpret her disclosure and her sharing, “I’m completely apathetic in that I think the focus
261 should be solely… on ourselves in terms of individual growth. I’m sure there’s a balance in there
I’m missing. It’s been completely difficult for me because I don’t want to get involved but I’m also at the forefront.”368
As the conversation progressed, I was able to discern her apprehension more clearly.
Su‘ad relayed an incident on her campus that put her on the frontlines of a particular social justice event given her photograph appeared on the news and other social media platforms. The attention she was receiving and the fact that she had involuntarily become the “face” of the event troubled her. Su‘ad admitted her conflicted stance did not necessarily make sense given she worked to rally her peers, and encouraged them to be involved in social justice initiatives. It appeared to me that while she personally cared about these initiatives, it was when people’s expectations of her surfaced and when their own projections of her became palpable, Su‘ad wanted to retreat and afford other individuals an opportunity to take the lead. By doing so, the pressure she felt would subside, and the responsibility could be distributed amongst those who might be embodying stronger convictions. In my conversation with Su‘ad, I began to realize how taxing and exhausting such work can be for these students, sentiments I anticipate many of them would be reluctant to publicly express due to how they might be perceived by their peers. The question I could not help but consider was whether there was room for quietism at best or apathy at worst on college campuses. With phrases such as privilege and being woke strewn around in conversations among students and during our interviews, it was difficult to escape politics but then again, Reem and Su‘ad’s internalized conscientiousness and reticence signify the individualization that invariably shapes the various ways in which American Muslim youth come to understand their engagement with social justice.
368 Recorded interview with Su‘ad, November 2016.
262 At this point, I also began to reflect more seriously on what it felt like to be a college student and the fact that a myriad of obligations and opportunities were constantly being introduced to these young Muslims. They were concerned with their grades, worked on their own self-development, participated in student clubs, and cultivated social and professional networks.
Each of the aforementioned fronts required discipline and energy and could at times, become overwhelming as evidenced by Su‘ad’s conflicting feelings regarding her role in the combatting of injustices. Reem and Su‘ad’s self-reflexivity on the matter of social advocacy work represent a sincerity and thoughtfulness concerning the pursuit of these initiatives and the fact that without a sufficient support network, and a potential to positively make an impact, such initiatives can become taxing ideals that are burdensome and not ultimately rewarding for all students.
After attending a public event with a prominent activist from the North American Muslim community, I met with Khadija over coffee. As she sipped on her chai, I asked her about her impression of the talk since she was one of the few MSA students who attended it. She began by extolling the speaker and his imploring the audience to converse with those who had different understandings of justice and acknowledged this was a thought-provoking idea that she had not been exposed to during her university tenure. However, as our conversation continued, one of the critiques Khadija leveled at the speaker was the generally highfalutin nature of the discussion that tended to obscure a practical treatment for how some of the theories he was proposing could be materialized such as the notion that one should engage with different conceptualizations of justice. She expressed how she wanted to learn more about “concreteness” and less about
“theory.” We also noticed how at numerous points that afternoon, he mentioned that he was speaking at a prestigious university and surmised how that potentially affected the way he was handling the subject matter in the sense that he modeled his talk to cater to an elite academic
263 environment at the expense of what Khadija noted was “being real.” Khadija also commented on his background having grown up in an affluent and suburban environment explaining,
I feel like there was an elitism there or sort of like uh, there was a privilege that I don’t think he was acknowledging in terms of the way he rationalized those things and even thinks about, like conceptualizes. I think he just has an immense privilege doing that and… there was sometimes, he would joke, make fun of his upbringing but I don’t think he realized the way that influences the way he can theorize about certain things.
Khadija also confessed it would be difficult to accept a conception of justice that “denies her humanity.”369 She argued, “I don’t think I should even entertain that person and be like I’m gonna sit in the same room with your voice and be like “Oh, I wanna hear you out.” Because that’s rooted in my denial.” As our conversation continued, I quickly realized that there was something even deeper at play. Khadija’s reluctance was a pushback on the apologetic discourses surrounding police brutality that was taking place in predominantly Black urban communities like the one she grew up in. She went on to discuss the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael
Brown to provide some examples. In that moment, I realized that her critique spoke to a larger discussion about privilege and how as much as accepting different conceptions of justice is an important sentiment, it can fail to recognize that not all people, particularly minorities, are afforded the same value of life.370 Referring to the speaker specifically, she shared,
I think he made some really important statements about trying to come to understand difference but I feel like… like acts of intention, you have to have a privilege to sit in a room with you and be ok with your difference. If that’s because I have to struggle to live, that’s like no, like I don’t know? I just feel like he was removed from the daily experiences of minority people… who don’t have time to deal with somebody else’s bs to be honest because they have to live, and I think that was very like disconcerting for me. Because I think seeing, seeing him as a Muslim and… I wish [it] was more like down to earth and it wasn’t…
369 Recorded interview with Khadija, May 2016. 370 An appropriate example would be the questionable messaging behind #AllLivesMatter that became popularized on social media platforms in response to the increasingly popular Black Lives Matter movement. The issue is not whether in fact if all lives matter, but whether the loss of all lives generates the same public outcry and condemnation.
264
Thus, for Khadija, she was uncomfortable with the idealized notion of “tolerance” because it ran the risk of veering into an apologetic discourse that precludes one from admitting there are deep- seated racial divides in the United States. Moreover, Khadija’s multiple reflections alert us to the racial and class hierarchies that exist in the United States at large and amongst the American
Muslim community. Such hierarchies along with others, such as gender and sexuality for example, affect how certain privileges or lack thereof invariably inform the discursive registers that enable one to see, conceptualize, articulate, and embody justice. When I asked her if she defined social justice along religious lines, she referred to the oft-cited hadith “love for your brother what you love for yourself.”371 Ultimately, for many of these MSA students, one of the first steps towards social justice reform involved acknowledging oppression by speaking out against systemic social ills.
Racial Justice and MSAs
Analysis of the comportment and rhetoric of the universities’ chaplains, whose standards were modeled by many of these youth, first exposed me to racial justice. On one campus, I repeatedly witnessed the chaplain make a concerted effort to encourage his community to interact with those from different racial and ethnic backgrounds during his ḥalaqāt and before
Ramadan iftars. Racial justice was consistently on the tip of his tongue in many of his speaking engagements. In an interview with a student from another campus, I learned that the interracial intermingling within his community was due to the efforts of the chaplain who early on in his tenure worked to combat the prevalent social cliques. All of the chaplains I worked with, including one who was apolitical, drew on the story of Moses and Pharaoh to implore their
371 The hadith Khadija referenced is found in Sahih al-Bukhari (Vol. 1, Book 2, No. 13, pg. 19).
265 students to fight for the oppressed and probed their students to think deeply about how this religious example relates to their immediate lives and to consider whose side will they be standing on. Ultimately, enabling Muslims of all backgrounds to feel welcome and included, and encouraging students to grow increasingly cognizant of oppression were immediate objectives and not luxuries in the MSAs I worked with. As one female Muslim public figure bluntly expressed to her audience at a campus event, “racism can’t be conquered by coddling.” 372 These
MSA students engaged in racial justice by drawing on religious sources and precepts to not only encourage racial justice in the broader American context but to also specifically combat the anti-
Black racism that exists within their own communities.
Academic literature on the relationship between Black Muslims and immigrant Muslim communities readily acknowledges the tumultuous relationship between both groups. Aminah
McCloud notes that one of the factors leading to the “invisibility of African-American Muslim intellectual thought is the perception that “real” Islam is practiced only by Muslim immigrants in
Western societies and by Muslims in the Muslim world itself” (2007, 173). According to Edward
Curtis, African American Muslims “produced and circulated stories that located communal authenticity in a shared past that was both black and Muslim” (2005, 688). Curtis’s research highlights the need for the experiences of African American Muslims to be “included in the history of Islam” in order to provide “scholars a unique opportunity to explain how and why these human beings from the recent past have become Muslims” (2005, 681). Sherman Jackson has discussed how “African-American Muslims lost confidence in their ability to articulate themselves in terms that were likely to be recognized and accepted as Islamic” (2000, 408).373
372 Field notes, February 2016. 373 See also Jackson (2005).
266 During Black History Month, many MSAs around the country organize events highlighting the accomplishments of Black American Muslims such as Muhammad Ali or
Malcolm X, which generally draw a sizeable turnout of Black Muslims but also a sizeable turnout of Muslims from other backgrounds which allow for “recognizing the history and contribution of Blackamerican Muslims as part of the collective heritage of Muslim America”
(Ali 2018, 228).374 Such events are one medium through which the experiences and accomplishments of Black American Muslims are acknowledged and celebrated. I have also observed, while sporadic and paling in comparison to the consistency evidenced during Black
History Month, coalition-building efforts among Black student groups and MSAs outside of the month of February. As one student explained to me, she did not want to give the impression her
MSA was only “caring” about Black Muslims exclusively during that month, and so her campus initiated a series of events where issues pertaining to Black Muslims on campus were held.375
According to Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, “[i]n the context of the unequal power relations that define the “indigenous-immigrant” divide, ethnic Muslim spaces dominated by Arab and South
Asian U.S. American Muslims are typically spaces where Blackness is rendered invisible or marginal” (2016, 92). Muna Ali also discusses this divide writing, “[s]o, when Muslim immigrants marginalize Blackamericans and their historical contribution to Islam, immigrants not only commit injustice but also do so at their own and their individual and community’s peril”
(2018, 227). Su’ad Abdul Khabeer’s and Muna Ali’s crucial observations alert us to questions surrounding racial inclusivity and the need for immigrant Muslims to acknowledge the experiences and injustices faced by Black American Muslims not only in the context of the
374 As Zareena Grewal explains, “[s]ince the figure of Malcolm X is so thoroughly saturated with both street credibility and Islamic legitimacy for Muslim youth around the world, Muslim religious leaders from a wide range of Muslim sects and traditions compete to claim him as their own” (2015, 15). 375 Recorded interview with student, November 2016.
267 United States at large but also within their communities. The establishment of MSA events centered around the Black American Muslim experience is one way to correct the ignoring of
Black Muslim history in broader American Muslim spaces and to inform Muslims of immigrant backgrounds of the rich and formative legacy of prominent Black Muslims and their communities. In addition, I witnessed multiple MSA events in which Black imams, activists, academics, male and female had been invited to speak on political and religious issues which is another way MSAs and their chaplains have worked to oversee programming that is more racially inclusive and thus more wholly representative of the American Muslim community.
Another example where MSAs are acknowledging racism in their communities is in the organization of events that provide safe spaces for Black Muslims to express their grievances. At one event facilitated when the Black Lives Matter protests were in full force, an African
American woman shared the neglectful treatment of her Muslim brothers when they saw her struggling to hail a cab and made no intervention to assist her, inferring that their negligence was racially motivated. My understanding of this story was that if the Muslim woman were not
African American, the brothers would have been more inclined to help her or would have been more sensitive to her having to wait alone. Bariza, who shared this example with me, expressed anger and disappointment in that fact that such an incident had occurred in her community but also explained that this story made her reflect more deeply on what it means to be an “inclusive
Muslim community.”376 The story Bariza shared was not uncommon. While none of the Black students interviewed for my research expressed mistreatment or deliberate negligence from their
MSA peers, I have been in the company of older Black community members who have shared instances where they felt discriminated against or ignored by fellow immigrant Muslims. One of the more contentious examples relayed to me during my research was when a student told me
376 Recorded interview with Bariza, March 2016.
268 that she learned that one of the leaders in a local MSA used a racial slur in front of a Black
Muslim. This incident led to an MSA event facilitated by Black MSA members who educated their peers about proper etiquette and explained why racial slurs were offensive.377 These examples draw our attention to how racial justice is a work in progress that necessitates spaces where both Black Muslims and their non-Black Muslim peers can openly communicate so that they can more effectively collaborate on how to combat pernicious behaviors.
At another campus event, which took place during Black History Month, I learned more about the diverse backgrounds of Black MSA members on one campus. Speaking to a mixed audience of students and community members who hailed from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, Black MSA students shared crucial elements in the cultivation of their identities, expressed frustrations with their being “tokenized,” and shared their struggles with the imposed social pressures of being “Black enough” and “Muslim enough.” What I gleaned from this event was the fact that each of the student speakers framed their Black and Muslim identities in their own unique ways based on their own personal upbringings, their studies, and their understandings of their religiosity. For example, one of the panelists was a convert who shared that her journey to Islam was different from the rest of her co-panelists who were heritage
Muslims, some of whose families hailed from Muslim-majority countries. All of the panelists’ narratives and reflections illuminated the fact that there is no monolithic Black Muslim experience in the United States. In addition, they emphasized the growing importance of including Black voices in the historical and contemporary religious narratives circulated by
Muslims.
377 On one of the campuses I worked with, a workshop was organized to educate MSA students about the history of racism in the United States.
269 Unfortunately, I was skeptical whether the underlying message expressed above resonated with those in the audience. In a conversation with a student who had attended the event a few weeks later, she asked me who of the Black student speakers struggled the most. Surprised by this student’s question, I tried to explain that my impression was that each experience was unique and that I felt that was the fundamental point articulated by each of the student speakers.
Conversing with that student proved to me that there are still great strides to be made to fully account for the multi-faceted nature of the Black Muslim experience in the United States. As one of the speakers lamented to the audience that day, the narrative(s) of Black Muslims are unevenly woven into the larger Muslim mosaic, which often results in ignorance and misinformation.
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer’s and Jamillah Karim’s ethnographic work address how race, class, and gender have shaped the relationship between Black and immigrant Muslim communities.
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer’s ethnographic study of interminority relationships in Chicago proposes the notion of “Muslim Cool” as “a way of being Muslim that draws on Blackness to contest two overlapping systems of racial norms: the hegemonic ethnoreligious norms of Arab and South
Asian U.S. American Muslim communities on the one hand, and White American normativity on the other” (2016, 2).378 Her illuminating findings illustrate how “Muslim Cool, with its validation and celebration of Black expressive culture as an end in itself, offers a counterpoint to the elisions of culture and race that, in the process of policing what is “Islamic,” rehearse the facts of
Blackness” (2016, 92). Jamillah Karim’s ethnographic research in Chicago and Atlanta brings to the fore the concept of “ummah ideals” which are “religious ideals of interracial solidarity and equality, in an American religious community made up of an African American and immigrant
378 Aminah McCloud explains that contemporary Black Americans “remain apart from immigrant communities, the white American mainstream and their African heritage while at the same time, to one degree or another, connected to them all” (2007, 174).
270 majority” (2009, 36). Karim’s ethnography explores how these “ummah ideals” cannot be divorced from a broader nexus of determinants such as race, class, and gender and she explores how African American and South Asian American Muslim women navigate this nexus and travel outside their “ethnic spaces” into new “ummah sites” for a variety of reasons.
During my research, I noticed that some second-generation American Muslim youth of immigrant backgrounds drew correlations between their experiences living in a post-9/11 world and the injustices faced by Black Americans. At one campus event, for example, that was focused on how to deal with ICE, a young Arab Muslim woman from the community was invited to discuss the shared similarities between Islamophobia and other forms of racial injustice.379
During her talk, she drew on the example of Black activists who for decades have fought for justice380 to encourage her peers to avoid being complacent and apolitical because of their fears surrounding Islamophobia.381 In addition, the event drew parallels between various minority communities, which proved productive in this particular setting, as most of those in attendance were people of color who were asked to consider how they and their peers have shared histories and shared experiences in the United States.382 For example, the speaker discussed the social constructions of the “good Muslim” vs. the “bad Muslim” (Mamdani 2004) and how this dichotomy was similar to that of the “good immigrant” vs. the “bad immigrant.” The general
379 Field notes, March 2017. 380 Abdin Chande notes, “[o]ne of the interesting consequences of 9/11 is that immigrant Muslims are now more willing to consult African Americans on civil rights issues over which African Americans have a lot of experience” (2008, 239). Chande notes the alliances being formed between immigrant-led Muslim organizations and African American leaders enable them to work together to remedy problems afflicting their communities. Kathleen Moore also draws our attention to the historic efforts made by Black Muslims to secure accommodations. She explains, “[t]he pioneering efforts made by African American Muslims to secure political and legal rights have made a significant contribution to the political history of Muslim Americans,” which include accommodations made in prisons, claiming Muslim space, and employment (2010, 43). 381 During the 1960’s, members of the NOI highlighted the interpreted similarities between Muslims coming from the Arab world and the Black Muslims who resided in the U.S. (Curtis 2007, 700). Curtis explains that “[t]he signs, once present, can be appropriated in any number of ways” (ibid.) 382 See Sirin and Fine (2009, 164-170) for various reflections on how young American Muslim women work to combat racism and the solidarity they feel with other people of color.
271 theme of this event was in highlighting the similarities between different minority groups and was emblematic of the coalition-building efforts that were gaining traction in the country at the time. It also addressed, albeit subtly social hierarchies indexed by race, immigration, and class.
The fieldwork examples that I have listed thus far do demonstrate that Black Muslims still face discrimination and there is still much to be learned about the Black Muslim experience, which I will detail further below. However, displays of solidarity, inclusivity, and open-dialogue events such as the ones described above signify how American Muslim youth are attempting to move past the divisive or passive rhetoric of previous immigration generations and are creating opportunities to connect with, learn from, and support their Black Muslim peers.
The efficacy of these open dialogue events and the impact they have on modifying behavior is challenging to gauge, particularly their ability to speak to and influence the larger
American Muslim community. As one prominent Caucasian American Muslim speaker lamented in an MSA khuṭba, he has yet to see a mosque post a Black Lives Matter sign on its door. This silence stands in contrast to many of the MSA students I encountered during my fieldwork. For example, MSA students on one campus wore all black while attending jum‘a to stand in opposition to police brutality. Other students that I have spoken with have protested against police brutality or other racial justice causes with their broader campus community. In a conversation with one chaplain, he explained how American Muslim youth are asking themselves, “Who are you standing with in this epic racial battle in America for example or this battle for civil rights in America?” While more progress can be made to ensure racial inclusivity and justice, I found that the MSAs I worked with displayed a readiness to confront uncomfortable truths within their circles and readily prioritized the need for racial inclusivity and justice amongst their peers. Moreover, they exhibited a willingness to ameliorate the discomfort
272 and eradicate the injustices experienced by Black Muslims even in what appear to be the most welcoming of spaces. As such, I found that the MSA spaces I encountered are offering a corrective to some other American Muslim spaces where racial and ethnic segregation is the norm and the Black Muslim experience is merely a footnote in the understanding of Islam in
America. There was a passionate awareness, articulation, and advocacy of racial justice amongst many of the MSA students and chaplains I worked with.
Not all discomforts were made public. On one campus, a West African scholar was invited to give a series of religious talks.383 One of my interlocutors, a first-generation American whose family emigrated from West Africa, explained to me that this was a welcome departure from the speakers she had grown accustomed to seeing throughout her involvement in her MSA.
One of the things that struck her during that event was the considerable amount of time spent asking the imam context-driven questions about how Islam is practiced in West Africa and how he was given preferential treatment not necessarily based on the merits of his educational credentials, which were impressive, or the wisdom of his teachings that was illuminating as evidenced by conversations I had with other students who also attended the talks. It was based on the fact that he was someone unlike the audience had ever seen, listened to, or interacted with.
She shared,
I think one of the sessions, we spent [so] much time asking, asking him about Islam in West Africa. I was just like, I’m kinda confused and I get it because there’s not enough literature about West African Muslims and the Islamic tradition in West Africa but it’s also like there’s just so much people don’t know and they’re having their questions answered about Qur’anic education and things like that and how that works but it’s also a little bit frustrating because it’s like when scholars like him do come the first day or so [it’s] like wait, we didn’t know about this tradition… this is so interesting, it’s cool. Tell us about it. Sometimes, it detracts from the actual teachings he can give you because he’s spending so much time giving you a context about this culture that the people are very unfamiliar with…
383 See Rudolph Ware (2014) for a rich and insightful discussion about Islamic pedagogy in West Africa.
273 My conversation with this student exposed me to a private dissent from some of the prevailing
MSA culture that prefers the maintenance of a collective Muslim identity that can obscure the rich cultural traditions and histories that have inflected the way that Islam has been transmitted, practiced, and preserved in different parts of the world. It demonstrated how the subjectivity of particular MSA members can be unintentionally ignored, and how greater effort could be made to invite a more diverse array of figures to MSA events so that it would not be a novelty for someone like my interlocutor to see herself in an invited religious speaker.
Women’s Accommodations in Prayer Space
Samia and I became acquainted early on in my research, and I quickly realized she was a force to be reckoned with on her campus. Outspoken yet incredibly polite, she was responsible for giving Muslim sisters a more active voice in her MSA and for inviting speakers who were often rejected for their “progressive” ideas about Islam.384 However, when it came to the parameters for accommodating women, she shared “you have like this progressive Muslim culture, and then you have the other end of the spectrum, so that makes that even more difficult sometimes to find the balance.”385As my relationship with Samia grew friendlier, I realized there were limits to the sorts of accommodations she felt women should be given. Over time, I began to understand more clearly that while she passionately supported women having an active voice in her MSA and in leadership positions generally, having been raised in a Muslim community with strong female role models herself, Samia did not feel that she could endorse all progressive
384 The qualifier “progressive” was noted by Samia. Some of the speakers in question were outspoken critics of social injustices and were considered too “liberal.” See Safi (2003) for more on progressive Muslim discourse. 385 In the interview, she was referring to those who were “bringing it back to Medina and the 7th century.” Recorded interview with Samia, April 2016.
274 reforms. While balance was not always found, as Samia and many others explained, one of the campuses I studied demonstrated the power of frank dialogue and compromise.
Before discussing the accommodations made on one campus, it is important to situate these calls for reform within developing trends in the North American Muslim context. The most important of which with respect to prayer space was when Amina Wadud, an Islamic Studies professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, led a jum‘a prayer in March of 2005.386 Asra
Nomani and some progressive Muslims facilitated the prayer, which took place at the Synod
House of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. This unprecedented event in the
United States was subsequently met with mixed reactions from Muslims worldwide (Sharify-
Funk and Haddad 2012, 43-45). On the one hand, Wadud’s leading a mixed-congregation prayer inspired some women to follow suit whereas others focused their energies on “assaulting
Wadud’s character and pronouncing disparaging conclusions regarding her motivations”
(ibid.).387
It is in line with Juliane Hammer’s observation that, “it is not exaggerated to describe the woman-led prayer as a symbolic watershed in Muslim debates on women and gender issues”
(2012, 29) that I will contextualize the following example from my research. Laurie Silvers has echoed a similar sentiment noting that regardless of what stance a Muslim community takes, “the discussion will benefit all Muslims since it will encourage communication about women’s concerns” and “will moreover ensure that a particular community will come to terms with the issue before woman-led prayer takes root among them” (2008, 252). While the accommodations
I will be discussing did not result in a woman-led prayer space, it would be naïve to assume that the debates that took place a little over a decade ago bear no connection to the progress that
386 See Wadud (1999) for her feminist hermeneutical reading of the Qur’an. 387 See also chapter two in Yuskaev (2017) for more on Amina Wadud’s contributions to gender justice.
275 Muslims activists have made in North America. More importantly, the precedent set by Amina
Wadud leading a mixed-congregation prayer whether implicitly or explicitly has become a referential point symbolic of prayer reform and more visible female inclusion in prayer space.
In an interview with Karim, I learned that some of the young women in his MSA shared how unhappy they were with the layout of jum‘a. As he and I continued eating dinner at one of his university’s cafeterias, I confessed I was unsure if anything would change telling Karim that
“one must be realistic.”388 In that moment and later on as I was transcribing our interview, I was surprised by my own skepticism and by my having vocalized it. While I did not have a vested stake in the debate, I recall not wanting Karim or his peers to become disappointed having read about so many failed attempts at reform throughout the years that divided communities and left members embittered. This was a congregation I had grown immensely fond of, and this disruption surprised me given the seemingly idyllic sense of community I had witnessed.
When Malak, another student on campus, initially shared what was taking place in her community over a coffee date, I did not probe further even though Karim had already discussed it with me. Our meeting was off the record and I did not want to pry or seem nosy at the time and thus waited until a few months later to discuss what had transpired when we met for our last interview. By that time, the topic arose organically after a series of questions about her experiences in the MSA. My reason for mentioning Malak having initiated the discussion is because unlike other topics I examined in my interviews, this one seemed different. I myself was sensitive to the debates regarding female inclusion and the fact that, as Juliane Hammer astutely notes, they tend to be connected to larger “projects for gender justice and equality” (2012, 132).
As such, the vocalization of these grievances and the potential responses they would elicit would markedly transform this community. During this time, I quietly observed changes unfold on this
388 Recorded interview with Karim, February 2016.
276 campus, and questioned whether the ways in which an individual community addresses its own needs inevitably sets precedents for how American Muslims conceive of broader senses of accommodation.
As Malak and I continued chatting, she offered more context regarding the proposed accommodations in the prayer explaining that some of the grievances cited by women included their inability to make eye contact with the khaṭīb.389 Malak shared that these students proposed changes to offset the “patriarchy and oppressiveness” they had experienced elsewhere. While
Malak had her own gripes with “patriarchy,” she did not believe students’ requests “should come at the expense of worship.” Malak herself appeared slightly frustrated with the proposals fearing that “a little bit of compromise can lead to too much compromise.”390 As she chose not to vocalize her skepticism of these changes, preferring to remain publicly neutral, I anticipate that there were others amongst her peers who maintained the same stance. I learned in conversations with different members of the MSA that there were a couple of what they described as being disgruntled students who did not support these changes and expressed concern over how these accommodations would interfere with their ability to attend what I inferred as being an orthodox jum‘a setting.391
I personally never spoke to the students who vocalized their concerns about this particular topic, especially since their identities were revealed in confidence, but I did speak to
Hasan who was more vocal in unpacking some of the issues at stake in the proposed accommodations. A graduate student in the humanities who had lived in Muslim-majority
389 Recorded interview with Malak, May 2016. In conversations with others, I learned that some women in the community shared how they were distracted by men who attended prayer dressed immodestly, and latecomers who interfered with their ability to concentrate. 390 Anxiety surrounding the parameters of compromise are common in North American Muslim discourses and appears in debates surrounding accommodations, bid‘a, and fitna. 391 In another interview with Karim, I learned that the committee was initially designed so that those in favor of reform could freely discuss their ideas and that criticisms were to be shared privately with the chaplain.
277 countries as well as in the United States, I found our interviews to be lively and stimulating as they tended to transcend the American Muslim experience and veered into conversations about the employment of academic categories such as the “spiritual” and the “religious” or how to define “progressive” and “liberal” movements within Islam. Our similar backgrounds as graduate students, and having lived abroad enabled our conversations to include our own experiences and reflections accounting for how different Muslim-majority communities address issues surrounding gender and piety and how they differ from American Muslims debates around female inclusion. In our conversation that day, we discussed some of the contemporary Muslim debates he and his friends spoke about noting sexuality and woman-led prayer as being some examples. Our conversation quickly segued into the recent discussions that had taken place on his campus. Hasan admitted he could see where some of those advocating for reform “were coming from” and expressed empathy for women in the congregation who felt that they were not
“getting the same experience” as men, explaining that there is “dispensation in religion… and it’s to make people’s affairs easy so if the motivation is to actually make it a fuller richer experience then you know and we’re doing it within the tradition,” then he saw nothing wrong with it.392 As our conversation progressed, Hasan expressed his own wariness arguing that while jum‘a has become more of a “social” custom in the United States, it is still a “religious obligation” and that, “We have [these] very kind of Eurocentric and Western imposed ideas of equality and egalitarian[ism]… so for me… we have to be conscious about that, imposing this very Eurocentric Orientalist framework understanding of Muslims and Islam on ourselves and we are kinda digesting them without thinking about where [they are] coming from.”393
392 Recorded interview with Hasan, May 2016. 393 According to Ihsan Bagby’s own research, Muslim women in the United States “do have a foothold in the mosque unlike the Muslim world, where women do not attend the mosque and have absolutely no role in the mosque’s life” (2009, 480). While Muslim women do attend mosque services in some Muslim-majority countries,
278 Hasan’s cautionary stance is one that I have thought about throughout the course of my research. I have also noticed chaplains and Muslim public figures similarly question the privileging of Western standards of inclusion and accommodation regarding women’s rights or queer rights, for example, without a thorough examination of how such models coincide with religious precedents and thus how they will invariably shape the expectations that Muslims have of their communities. As Hasan’s commentary suggests, it is not the import of Western ideals that is so problematic, but the lack of investigation into the origins of these idealized standards that runs the risk of blind appropriation. Ultimately, such skepticism is common for Muslims in the West, who grapple with questions concerning the moral wellbeing of their communities and are continuously warding off what they perceive to be pernicious ideological infiltrations.
Perhaps it is not ironic that Hasan shared that observation given his fondness for American
Muslim academics like Sherman Jackson who similarly echoed the same sentiment, “while the role of Muslim tradition is not to provide cut-and-dried solutions to all modern problems, it can greatly assist modern Muslims in avoiding the trap of prostituting their religion to the latest secular fads, by forcing them to vindicate their conclusions in conversation with their premodern forebears” (2011, 170).
Jackson’s assertion highlights the potential pitfall that Muslims can face if they appropriate Western ideals without an engagement with the precedents set by Muslims from previous generations. When I spoke with the chaplain, who was responsible for moderating the discussions and issuing his blessing for the proposed changes, I immediately sensed the heavy
Bagby appears to be alluding to the fact that the visibility of female mosque attendance in the U.S. is more commonplace. See Katz (2015) for a thorough historical examination of the debates surrounding women and prayer space. Chapter four in particular addresses modern and more contemporary arguments for and against female participation. Hasan also noted, “You’re not even thinking about that, just taking this notion of equality that basically Westerners are telling you that you guys are oppressed. You’re very patriarchal. You are this religion that has always demeaned women in society, cultures. All these things are very colonialist and these are very smart people. They’re just… it’s sad for me when we absorb all these ideas and yes, let’s become more equal now and I’m like ahh you know? What are you actually doing at the end of the day you know?”
279 toll this placed on him as a leader of a sizeable community that was catering to multiple generations of Muslims hailing from a variety of ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds.394 He offered more insight into the debate explaining that for some women, the notion of sitting in the back was troublesome because “for women who grew up hearing the Rosa
Parks story not wanting to sit in the back of the bus, it’s very hard to convince them that back doesn’t mean inferior.”395 Ultimately, the chaplain compromised and changed the physical layout of the prayer space and introduced a section in jum‘a that allotted women in the community a platform to express their “spiritual religious authority.” When he and I spoke months after the changes were put into effect, I asked him what he felt his community accomplished. He shared that he thought it was a “moment for the community to see like how much we would be willing to stretch our sense of pluralism you know? Um, or stretch our sense of accommodations.” While he described the changes as not being “normative” per se, he also remarked that they did not fall outside the purview “of the tradition or what’s considered a valid option within the tradition.”
Unfortunately, however, while there was “enthusiasm” about these changes, some of the strongest voices advocating for reform remained inconsistent in their participation in Friday prayer, and a few other congregants stopped attending altogether. It should also be noted that he never publicly endorsed these changes, emphasizing that they were made specifically for his community and should not necessarily be a model for others to follow. The attendance at jum‘a prayers is still incredibly high.
394 Recorded interview with chaplain, November 2016. 395 Laurie Silvers, in her reflections on Amina Wadud’s leading the Friday prayer draws a similar correlation between the Friday prayer and Rosa Parks. She writes, “I would like to draw a parallel with the Civil Rights movement in order better explain why supporters of woman-led prayer are willing to challenge the comfort of the community at large. Seen in the light of the courageous Rosa Parks, women who have led mixed-gender congregational prayers have dared to come forward from their place in the back of the mosque to stand in front of men” (2008, 250).
280 According to Abdullahi An-Na‘im, “[a]dapting to change, however, requires maintaining a proper balance of the ends and means of being Muslim, through religious self-determination”
(2014, 161). An-Na‘im describes this process as involving “the possibilities for the re- imagination of “being Muslim”” so as to “abandon the security of the anchor of our familiar cultural awareness and social experience” (2014, 161). What is vital for this process of re- imagining a specific Muslim community in the United States is for “members of each community to more deliberately and strategically pursue values and human relationships that are best suited to their particular context” (2014, 163). The prayer space accommodations discussed in this section represent the process of “re-imagination” An-Na‘im is referring to. These aforementioned changes were primarily predicated on how certain members of the community felt and were not rooted in direct engagement with the reinterpretation of scripture or law to advocate for reforms. It was my impression that an engagement with text or precedent was ultimately left to the discretion of the chaplain who researched the topic and consulted with teachers. With that said, this MSA community’s private dissent from the conventional formats of
North American jum‘a prayers alerts us to the processes of negotiation that can constructively take place when grievances are shared and subsequently acknowledged and when the spiritual fulfillment of all congregants is a priority, even when the pursuit of compromise imparts discomfort.
LGBTQIA Rights
According to Dervla Shannahan, “there seems to be a pervasive assumption in academia, secular and Christian queer culture and activism that queer Muslims will follow the model of liberation set out by their Jewish and Christian counterparts” (2010, 676). The findings of my
281 own research nuance this assumption by illustrating how American Muslim youth are attending to questions about sexuality. In an interview with Omar, we began discussing the process of
“fatwa shopping” and seeking out answers to religious queries. As a heterosexual male who identifies as a progressive Muslim, one topic he admitted he searched for opinions on was homosexuality.396 When I asked him about his thoughts on homosexuality, there was an initial pause. He proceeded to explain that his views had evolved throughout his university tenure and that he currently did not believe homosexuality was “something you should contend against as a believer” because it was something “given” to you by Allah. He also raised propositions to advance reform suggesting that his community “make accommodations” theologically, see if there was a possibility for reinterpreting the tradition, and become better educated on the topic.
When I noted academics have written about homosexuality in Islam, he did not appear to be familiar with the writings but still maintained education was important.397
Scott Kugle attends to the “ambiguities “ in Islamic sources regarding sexuality, writing that “[t]hese ambiguities should urge those Muslims with a keen sense of justice and a firm hold on reason to entertain the possibility of reassessing the Islamic tradition’s stand regarding homosexuality as part of rethinking its stand on sexuality in general” (2003, 194). In a conversation with Seif, an MSA student who was highly revered in his community, I witnessed how some American Muslim youth are entertaining the possibility that there can be ambiguity
396 Recorded interview with Omar, May 2016. Saminaz Zaman explains that the availability of Islamic websites “has led to fatwa-shopping as American Muslims surf the Internet for an opinion that matches their own… Islamic law on the Internet offers a pick-and-choose, do-it-yourself brand of self-help that sometimes results in virtual talfiq” (2008, 471). 397 See El-Rouayheb (2009), Kugle (2010), and Eidhamar (2014). The literature I am referring to is the “flourish of academic and semi-academic interest in the life stories and testimonies of queer Muslims, enjoined with the growing transnational body of discourse surrounding Muslim sexualities, and also the trend towards diversification within queer studies” (Shannahan 2010, 672).
282 regarding Islam’s understanding of sexuality.398 As Seif and I met for our last interview, he began to share moments when it was difficult for him to conceive that things understood from an
Islamic perspective could be placed in such finite binaries, citing homosexuality as being one such example. Curious to hear his thoughts about homosexuality, and taking this opportunity to discuss a topic I know might make some students uncomfortable, I asked Seif what he felt in his heart about homosexuality. He proceeded to share that “Allah made us all unique right… I think in so many ways religion and science go hand in hand and we can’t deny the science that tells us that people are born gay and you just don’t make the decision one morning I’m going to be gay.
It doesn’t work that way.”399
Not all of my interviewees shared the openness Seif and Omar exhibited when expressing their opinions on homosexuality. One female student, for example, expressed conflicting feelings. It is worth noting that I often found that this student valued the opinions of older
Muslim figureheads such as her Islamic teachers and her chaplain and thus resorted to their arguments when validating her own personal life choices or her views regarding certain issues.
With that said, in our other conversations about women’s rights and certain Salafi discourses she had been exposed to, I found her to be much more vocal as she shared her disapproval of what she considered to be austere or misogynistic stances. As such, this student discursively navigated topics in variant ways, sometimes undergirding her claims without resorting to arguments made by others whereas at other times, she tended to rely on the opinions and counsel of other Muslim scholars and figureheads. For example, while she acknowledged that her community was open and refrained from “excluding people,” she spoke to her chaplain about how it was difficult for her to accept homosexuality explaining to him, “my upbringing makes me feel in my heart that
398 Islam here is used to encompass the sources that Kugle refers to in his article namely “the Qur’an, the prophetic traditions, and the decisions of Islamic jurists” (2003, 194). 399 Recorded interview with Seif, November 2016.
283 this is wrong.” She told me that when she shared her discomfort with him, he “posed liberalism as being problematic in that it’s invasive and on campus and you don’t really know what to do about it.” Ultimately, she explained that she considered homosexuality a sin like any other sin people are struggling with and that it would be unfair to exclude gay people from the community because “it’s not our place to judge.”400
When I spoke with one chaplain about social justice movements on campus and students feeling compelled to advocate for causes, he noted LGBTQIA rights as being an alliance where advocacy is being pursued “irrespective of scripture.”401 On the campuses I worked with, there were openly gay Muslims. One of them was active in the MSA and even shared his struggles as a queer Muslim with certain individuals in his community. One of his MSA peers was moved by his narrative telling me it was “touching” and resonated with her because it reminded her of another queer Muslim she knew who battled with the same experiences.402 In my interviews with this student, he noted that the acceptance he found amongst his MSA peers was “exceptional” and a privilege he did not take for granted. I also learned later on, in a less formal conversation we had while hanging out after jum‘a one afternoon that he did not want his experience to represent how all queer Muslims on college campuses are treated. He acknowledged that the support and the open community he had found did not necessarily reflect the experiences of other queer Muslim peers. Noting this exceptionalism is important because it would be irresponsible to give the impression that acceptance of queer Muslims is commonplace amongst
400 Levi Eidhamar notes that, “[a]ccording to the moderately progressive stance, homoerotic acts are sins, but not more serious than some other sins” (2014, 256). 401 The chaplain’s proclamation is an example of Alasdair MacIntyre’s observation that “[t]here are a multiplicity of goods to be acknowledged and of evils to be avoided, and in many situations we can act consistently with one principle that we have hitherto honored only by violating another such principle” (2016, 151). 402 See also Kugle (2013) for ethnographic research on the lives of queer Muslims.
284 American Muslims or even American Muslim youth for that matter even if I was met with predominantly positive examples during my fieldwork.
As Shannahan notes, “a faith-centered anti-homophobic reading of the Qur’an… would necessarily look at the whens and wheres of how divine love has historically been interpreted as only present along straight lines, families, bodies, and love(r)s” (2010, 680). With that said, I have witnessed prominent figures within the American Muslim community make strides in trying to find some semblance of balance when addressing how queer Muslims should be treated.
On one campus event, I heard a highly revered shaykh note that distinctions need to be made between a discussion of sexual ethics in Islam regarding the permissibility of homosexuality and a discussion about oppression.403 The latter, according to the shaykh was categorically unacceptable and he implored the American Muslim youth in attendance to always stand with those who are oppressed such as the queer community.404
In a conversation with Layth, I learned how another prominent shaykh offered a more historical discussion to combat the assumption that homosexuality is a recent or modern phenomenon amongst Muslims. Speaking at a more “conservative MSA” than the one Layth was a member of, he explained how the shaykh noted that, “There are gay Muslims from the past and they were prominent figures and he said there were court clerics and gay Muslims from the past and it’s a fact, like the history of this and he’s like “wake up, this is a part of the history.””405 In hearing Layth share this story, I was initially surprised. By historicizing homosexuality in Islam, the shaykh was subtly critiquing and debunking the myth that contemporary Muslims have about
403 See Kecia Ali (2016) particularly chapters five and nine. 404 Field notes, February 2017. 405 Recorded interview with Layth, February 2017.
285 the pervasive influence of modernity and liberalism.406 Layth commented that he realized not all
Muslim students who are part of MSAs thought about social issues in the same manner as he did.
He explained, “I don’t realize sometimes what’s common sense to me and what’s like from my studies” and admitted that perhaps many of his Muslim peers have not come to the same conclusions or have been privy to the same information. While he did not qualify his understanding as superior to those who were unaware of the same historical facts, it seemed to me that he felt it was important for his fellow Muslim peers to be more educated in order to purge themselves of misinformation and assumptions that fail to account for Islam’s historical particularities. It is important to situate Layth’s observations within the context of his own academic training in the humanities. In the time I spent with Layth during my fieldwork and even afterwards, I found that his insights were less descriptive and more intellectually self- conscious than some of my other interlocutors. I attributed this to the fact that he was observing various American Muslim communities not only as a Muslim who had a vested stake in what was unfolding but also as someone who aspired to be an academic working on the experiences of contemporary Muslims both in the United States and Europe. In our conversations, I observed him continuously balance his reflections with both historical and contemporary discussions about
Islam.
In a conversation with one student, he shared that his chaplain in a ḥalaqa setting “went back to the Lot verses and said that it’s about rape cuz that’s not the traditional interpretation so I feel like he’s changed.”407 He went on to say that when he discussed the topic of homosexuality with his chaplain, he noted that while the chaplain did not believe that the Qur’an “condemns
406 Khaled El-Rouayheb explains “Islamic religious scholars of the period were committed to the precept that sodomy (liwāṭ) was one of the most abominable sins a man could commit. However, many of them clearly did not believe that falling in love with a boy or expressing this love in verse was therefore also illicit. Indeed, many prominent religious scholars indulged openly in such activity” (2005, 3). 407 Recorded interview with student, February 2016.
286 homosexuality…. He can’t really let go of the Prophetic tradition.” Ultimately, the student acknowledged that “Queer accepting theories in Islam either have to let go of the Prophetic traditions or try to transcend them.” Scott Kugle similarly acknowledges that many lesbian and gay Muslims
will wonder whether any purpose is served by focusing on classical jurists and Qur’an commentators. Can there be any rapprochement with the Shari‘ah and the authorities that support it? Or is any discussion of the Shari‘ah a capitulation to authority that is hopelessly prejudiced against the very possibility of thinking that homosexuality is about anything but misplaced lust? This is a crucial question. (2003, 227)
Throughout my research, I did not witness a serious confrontation with scripture regarding the permissibility of homosexuality in Islam amongst the Muslim students I spoke with. However, many MSA students were receptive to the challenging experiences of queer
Muslims who have often been marginalized, oppressed, or even shunned from their families and local communities. There are loosely defined parameters concerning this support. Some of these youth might adhere to a heteropatriarchal understanding of sexual ethics in Islam, but they do not believe that gives them license to be homophobic or exclude queer people from their community.
Layth, for example said that while he could not predict what people “would be thinking in their heads” if an openly queer Muslim were before them, he noted that he did not anticipate there would be a change in their “attitude towards that person” and that that person would have the same “chance as anyone else” if they were to run for the board of their MSA, for example. Thus, based on Layth’s experience, one’s sexual orientation would not preclude one from being able to publicly serve as a representative for their on-campus Muslim community. My impression was that on different campuses, one would be confronted with differing stances pertaining to homosexuality. Given the emerging debate I noted earlier being touted by American Muslim public figures, I anticipate a middle ground might gain more traction not only amongst the more
287 public stance being taken by MSAs but perhaps amongst the American Muslim community at large.
While some MSA students may not agree with homosexuality in their “hearts,” as one female student shared with me in an interview, the general sense I obtained from the students I worked with was that they would not condone hate crimes, bullying, or any other form of discriminatory behavior. Some of these youth might stand in solidarity with the LGBTQIA community in their pursuit of rights and feel that they should be afforded certain protections but that did not necessarily mean that they would participate in LGBTQIA activities on their college campuses.408 As such, MSA support really stems from a place of ensuring inclusivity and speaking out against unjust discrimination leveled at queer individuals both within and outside of their campus’s Muslim community.
Conclusion
Abdullahi An-Na‘im notes that the re-imagination of American Muslim communities depends on “local actors who live the life of their communities and enjoy their confidence, while remaining open to influence by wider social currents of positive change through the protection of human rights and promotion of cross-cultural cooperation” (2014, 163). He describes “agents of social change” as being those who are “motivated and engaged social actors who take the initiative in seeking to influence the direction of change in favor of individual freedom and social justice, instead of being passive subjects of change” (ibid.) According to An-Na‘im, the individuals involved in such reforms help fulfill God’s “purpose in this life” (ibid.).
408 While there is growing support for the queer community amongst American Muslims albeit from a safe distance, there is also debate regarding whether or not the queer community in the U.S. is accommodating to queer people of color. Aqdas Aftab (2017) writes, “[i]n a world where the only way to be queer relies on white, cis, and American standards, how do Black and brown LGBTQIA folks express themselves?”
288 This chapter has offered some of the ways in which Muslim students on college campuses embody the “agents” An-Na‘im discusses in his work. It has explained how American
Muslim youth engage with social justice in their communities, the priorities they share, and the mechanisms they use to advocate for the amelioration of grievances and for providing accommodations. In considering these examples, one wonders if the progress made or the kinds of conversations had on these campuses will persevere when a new influx of students replaces the socially conscious activist voices I have highlighted in this dissertation. Some of the more contentious cases mentioned like accommodating women in prayer spaces and LGBTQIA rights will be difficult to sustain on these campuses if there are no longer faces or voices to propel these conversations forward. However, these students have established significant precedents and solid platforms for confronting uncomfortable truths and I am optimistic that MSAs will continue to advocate on behalf of those who are oppressed.
Scott Kugle notes, “[h]arnessing religious beliefs and values to an agenda of political change is called “religious politics”” particularly when “movements for political change find that secular strategies are not persuasive among many populations” (2013, 112).409 In some measure, the umbrella term religious politics is the most appropriate for describing what is central to the social justice activism prevalent amongst American Muslim youth, which is essentially predicated on ensuring a sense of communal inclusivity and accommodation and how those are connected to Islamic tenets. This chapter challenges the assumption that the driving impetus for the social justice initiatives taking place on these college campuses can be strictly credited to liberal ideals. That is not to say that being immersed in a liberal university environment has no bearing on the issues these students are becoming sensitive to and their entertaining the need for reforms their community has at times been resistant to. As different minority groups continue to
409 See also Esack and Mahomed (2017).
289 build alliances in the United States, I anticipate that MSA students and American Muslims will continue to be influenced by the discursive grammar employed by these groups. Based on my conversations with MSA students and during my attendance of events, I predict that there will continue to be a desire for American Muslim youth to connect these causes to larger theological values such as tolerance, the collapsing of human judgment, and combatting oppression.
Moreover, such initiatives conform with the general MSA ethos of being sensitive to their peers and their desire to cultivate a welcoming Muslim space on campus.
According to Sherman Jackson, what constitutes an Islamic view “in terms that the
Muslim community can recognize and validate as such – is the fact that it can trace a genetic relationship back to the sources of Islam, a relationship that is most easily recognized when mediated through the tradition of Muslim exegetical and jurisprudential discourse” (2000, 406).
In many respects, I admired these students and their chaplains for trying to strike a balance in the sense that they engaged in an American liberal articulation of social justice while turning to their own texts, traditions, and figures to justify the social justice reforms they enacted on their campuses.
American Muslim youth, like their non-Muslim peers have a vested stake in the wellbeing of the United States as they are American after all and this is their home. The majority of American Muslim youth, perhaps due to their experiencing harassment, bullying, and other forms of discrimination, are all too aware of the importance in giving back to their communities and standing on the side of those who have been aggrieved. Moreover, the barometer for the proposed accommodations are framed within the parameters of a religious vocabulary that reflects and sustains how these students feel a duty before the Divine and the inherent wisdom in the Divine design of the world. In one ḥalaqa devoted to the topic of domestic violence, I heard a
290 chaplain share that one’s primary relationship is with the Divine and how eventually, one will be confronted with the “Creator of creation.”410 The students I spoke with knew this point all too well.
410 Field notes, October 2016.
291 Conclusion
Since I have completed my fieldwork, the students I interviewed have gone on to attend graduate school, secure fulltime jobs, or near the end of their undergraduate studies. The MSAs I worked with have since recruited more individuals on their staff, organized exciting new programs and events, and filled their MSAs with new cohorts of students whose own objectives will invariably color how they and their American Muslim peers will experience Islam on their campuses. One of the MSAs I worked with recently posted an online video about the experiences of being a Muslim on their university’s campus. Watching the video, I saw unrecognizable faces but noticed that many of the points they posed reflect this research’s findings. For example, some of them discussed whether their campus Muslim community was inclusive and welcoming to
Muslims. Some expressed that it was while others shared observations of what they felt has inhibited the MSA’s ability to better reach out to their Muslim peers. The issue of racial inclusivity also arose as some students articulated the importance of being more wholly representative of the American Muslim community.
Listening to these students, whose experiences and observations varied, reminded me of the voices that fill this dissertation. They are the voices of American Muslim youth who shape the discursive MSA space, a space that is never fully resolved nor are its goals ever fully realized. Many of the MSAs’ objectives discussed in this dissertation are aspirational and idealistic, and that is precisely what makes the MSA a fascinating and illuminating field site to explore. In speaking with these students and spending time on their campuses, I came into contact with the discourses that have molded the recent past, present, and future understanding of what it means to experience Islam in America.
292 At a recent conference I attended, the discussant on my panel posed a question that I have been unable to shake. She asked about the potentially implicit bias that ensues when one’s research centers on mosques or other forms of American Muslim institutions.411 Ultimately, the underlying question is whether working on institutions prevents researchers from considering other ways of experiencing Islam in America. When it was my turn to address this question, I posed my own experiences doing research and how working with associations facilitated greater access to Muslim students, maintained a level of transparency and accountability, and respected ethics protocol. I recognize that my answer was a justification for why I chose to work with an association and not recruit Muslim students on university campuses at random. Aside from the immense difficulty that would pose, I have come to realize the empirical benefits in working with students involved in a formal association like the MSA. Working with students involved in
MSAs exposed me to a plethora of factors that shape how American Muslim youth experience
Islam including their family’s backgrounds, the religious education they received when growing up, their relationships with their chaplains, the appeal of celebrity shaykhs, their interactions with their fellow Muslim peers, and the vital place of religious experience in their lives. This dissertation has attempted to balance the voices of collective and disparate American Muslim
MSA youth to highlight points of commonality and difference and to flush out the intricacies of the discursive MSA space.
If we conceive of “anthropology as a dialogue and an encounter” (Schielke 2010, 12), it is important to remain receptive and responsive to the various voices one encounters in the field including those considered peripheral in the sense that they challenge normative practices and
411 For example, Meredith McGuire argues “[t]o understand modern religious lives, we need to try to grasp the complexity, diversity, and fluidity of real individuals’ religion-as-practiced, in the context of their everyday lives. Although studies of religious organizations and movements are still relevant, they cannot capture the quality of people’s everyday religious lives. As messy as these lives may be in practice, individuals’ lived religions are what matters to them” (2008, 213).
293 assumptions. These MSA voices are interspersed throughout the dissertation to complicate our understandings of how American Muslim youth dealt with myriad issues such as their expectations when socializing with their peers, or their engagement with social justice issues on their campuses. I found them valuable and illuminating because they enabled me to more wholly engage with overarching themes in my research findings without reducing their particularities. In addition, these voices demonstrate the variant beliefs that can occupy any single MSA space, which suggests that there is no monolithic MSA experience or monolithic MSA student per se.
While there are multiple points of commonality, which I have underscored throughout this dissertation to unpack recurring themes, my findings demonstrate how the different MSA students discussed in this dissertation navigate the discursive MSA space in their own ways and with their own proclivities, interpretations, and backstories brought forth with them. With that said, I would argue that the fact that the MSAs I worked with vied to be inclusive spaces that attended to the various motivations and objectives inspiring students to join their ranks, is one of the main factors that enabled me to speak to students with varying experiences.
One of the main sites where there was an overwhelming consensus amongst some of my interlocutors was in relation to how they addressed the practices and beliefs of their parents’ generation, a challenge that many youth face. According to Nancy Ammerman, “[t]he clash of cultures is across generations, as well, as second and third generations arrive at their own relationships to ethnic and religious traditions” (2003, 208). This dissertation demonstrates how
MSA youth, like other ethnic and religious groups in the United States, challenge their parents’ generation by rooting their arguments in Islamic tenets found in the tradition. Ethnographic examples underscore how their challenging helped them exercise a sense of religious individualism and afforded them a sense of autonomy as they discursively engaged with the
294 Islamic tradition to confront their parents’ expectations. Understanding these students’ delineation between religion and culture enables us to more fully comprehend the issues at stake in this generational American Muslim divide and how American Muslim youth, similar to other
American youth are navigating emerging adulthood.
Underscored throughout this dissertation is also the fact that the MSA is a discursive space that is heavily shaped by Muslim chaplains. As I have argued throughout, Muslim chaplains served as immense sources of guidance, religious counsel, and leadership amongst their respective students. Unequivocally well received amongst their students, Muslim chaplains were influential in shaping the ways in which American Muslim youth experienced Islam on their campuses. This dissertation has introduced concrete examples of how their affable demeanors and their religious teachings heavily inflected the discursive MSA space, which I hope can complement the growing literature on this profession. I anticipate that their contributions will only continue to grow and open new points of inquiry regarding the ways they attend to the religious experiences of American Muslims. For example, more research could be done to interrogate their positions on secular college campuses and the vast negotiations they will continue to make. Moreover, if social justice activism becomes more prevalent amongst
American Muslim youth, how will chaplains continue to address their students’ engagement? To what extent will they display their support? As this dissertation has demonstrated, their role in these students’ lives clearly left an indelible mark. Admittedly, I anticipate that my dissertation findings would have varied had the MSAs I worked with not been hosts to Muslim chaplains, particularly when analyzing ḥalaqāt and the religious education they imparted to these youth.
Moreover, this dissertation draws attention to a growing appeal for American Muslim religious figures who are equipped with a skill set that is not merely rooted in their ability to navigate the
295 Islamic discursive tradition, but is predicated on qualities such as compassion, empathy, and discernment as they are tasked with ensuring the wellbeing of American Muslim youth.
With respect to religious literacy, this dissertation demonstrates how American Muslim youth are adopting a self-reflexive hermeneutical approach to the study of religious texts, which is being taught to them by their chaplains. Studying MSA ḥalaqāt alerts us to how American
Muslim youth are being imbued with a sense of God-consciousness and how these spaces privilege the importance of having a personal relationship with the Divine. Andrew Strathern and
Pamela Stewart argue that “[t]here is a struggle to embody values and patterns that is particular to each person within their life context, and persons need “props” and reminders in order to continue on their pathways. Personhood in this light has to be seen as a process, not a fixed pattern” (2011, 393-394). In many ways, the MSA ḥalaqāt I studied offered such consistent reminders to students. My research explains how the teachings found in these spaces urged
American Muslim youth to attend to their own religious experiences and their relationship with the Divine by employing self-reflexivity and introspection. This dissertation also highlights some of the pedagogical stakes for chaplains such as Imam Hadi and Imam Sherif. Imam Hadi encouraged students to address their existential concerns by reading religious texts, and offered a hermeneutical blueprint so that they could access religious texts independently to better understand their religious experiences. Imam Sherif inculcated in students a sense of confidence so that they could act boldly and audaciously and to not be hindered in their ability to connect with the Divine.
Examining the discourses that take place in MSA ḥalaqāt enables us to understand another dimension to the ways in which American Muslim youth experience Islam. It illustrates how American Muslim youth are concerned with an existential and affective dimension of
296 religion as it pertains to their relationship with the Divine. As such, more work could be done to consider the significant place that other types of MSA ḥalaqāt have in the lives of American
Muslim youth and to interrogate the kinds of discussions they foster and moreover, how their teachings are being internalized. Studying ḥalaqāt illuminates a crucial component to the experiences of American Muslim youth who are concerned with a personalized religiosity that is filled with questions, self-reflection, and religious experiences.
According to Garbi Schmidt, “MSA activities therefore involve a redistribution of authority and an incentive for new expressions of institutional forms. In that sense, the MSA and all that it represents pose a personal and ideological challenge to the adult Sunni Muslims who still remain leaders of the community” (2004b, 135). One site where MSA students are actively challenging some of the institutional practices of older American Muslims is how they engage with social justice activism. The case studies in this dissertation regarding race, gender, and queer rights demonstrate how MSA students are working to be more inclusive and accommodating to all in their communities. While such inclusivity is a work in progress, the general climate I observed demonstrates that MSA students are deeply concerned with ensuring that all individuals in their community feel welcome and heard. Since I have completed my fieldwork, discourses around social justice activism have gained even more traction amongst the
MSAs I worked with as they continue to develop programming devoted specifically to how
American Muslims should be engaged in social justice initiatives. Another campus has hired a new instructor, whose social justice rhetoric has been incorporated in many of his khuṭab and
ḥalaqāt, which I have accessed online. While this research demonstrates how social justice activism is gaining momentum, particularly amongst American Muslim youth, social justice activism has also been drawing criticisms from American Muslim public figures. Further
297 research exploring this tension will help elucidate the competing narratives surrounding the relationship between American Muslims and social justice activism and the issues at stake for those who support and oppose it.
Karen Leonard notes that “Islam and Muslims are barely mentioned – or not mentioned at all – in most scholarly work on broad changes in American religion in the later twentieth century” and how this shortcoming is reflective of “an obvious yet challenging task to relate
Islam and Muslims to the mainstream literature” (2003, 86). One of this dissertation’s objectives has been to draw parallels between my findings and other trends in the United States writ large.
Each of these chapters has attempted, when appropriate, to reference broader discussions about generational divides and emerging adulthood, the history of chaplaincy in the United States, social justice activism amongst college youth and the important place of personalized religiosity.
It is my contention that American Muslim youth are part of these trends and contribute to them in their own right. As such, insulating American Muslims such as the youth studied in this dissertation from broader religious and sociopolitical trends in the United States does a disservice to the creative, self-reflexive and thoughtful discursive spaces they have cultivated.
This dissertation is a timely ethnography of the religious experiences of American
Muslim students involved in MSAs. It does not presume to account for the lives of all American
Muslim youth or all MSAs, but it does draw attention to some of the ways in which American
Muslim youth are experiencing Islam. However, I anticipate that the general themes analyzed in this dissertation do account for many of the objectives, initiatives, and trends that will continue to shape the experiences of American Muslim youth for some time to come.
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