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ISLAM IN BLACK AND BROWN: THE MAKING OF MUSLIM COMMUNITIES, INTRA-FAITH RELATIONSHIPS AND DIVERSITY IN EAST-CENTRAL ILLINOIS BY TSELEQ YUSEF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education Policy Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Yoon Pak, Chair Associate Professor Chris Span Assistant Professor Arshad Ali Professor James D. Anderson ABSTRACT This project explores the origins of Muslim communities in East-Central Illinois with specific attention given to intra-faith relationships and diversity as experienced by African-American Muslim males. Employing an oral history methodology, this research explores the themes of identity, transitions, and diversity as narrated by the participants. Utilizing the theoretical framework of symbolic power to explore conceptions of “whiteness” while simultaneously addressing matters of privilege, and power, the accounts of the participants are placed in conversation with literature as well as concepts associated with symbolic power. Ultimately the findings of this research suggests that the differences among African-American Muslim and immigrant Muslim communities are byproducts of being fundamentally different in who they are historically, and culturally. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………....1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………….6 CHAPTER 3: THE NEW FACE OF ISLAM IN AMERICA……...…39 CHAPTER 4: FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY…………….63 CHAPTER 5: INTERVIEWS AND ANALYSIS……………………..89 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION/FINAL THOUGHTS………………..140 REFERENCES: ……………………………………………………...155 iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Admittedly, I was never particularly intrigued by discussions of identity, or intra-faith dialogue until I moved to Champaign. It was just prior to coming to Champaign that I decided I wanted to make a conscious effort to grow as a Muslim and learn more about the spirituality that I identified with. Back in 2010, I decided I was going to go to jummah (Muslim prayer service) at The Central Illinois Masjid and Islamic Center (CIMIC). As I was walking up to the building, I caught stares and several glares. I immediately felt very uncomfortable. Although no one said or behaved particularly rude to me, I felt a hostility of sorts, and immediately felt very unwelcomed. I began to wonder if I was overly sensitive for some inexplicable reason and my reservations were just some sort of subconscious insecurity that I was experiencing. Nevertheless, I felt so uncomfortable in fact that I did not attempt to attend 1jummah at CIMIC again for almost three years. During my first three-and-a –half years in Champaign, I took on boxing as an extra- curricular activity. One summer afternoon in 2011 after my team competed in a suburb of Chicago called Harvey, we stopped at a neighborhood gas station and convenient store for Gatorade after our matches. As I’m scanning the selection of sports drinks in the coolers adjacent to the check-out counter, I hear the two clerks behind the counter speaking what I recognized to be Arabic. While by no means fluent in the language, I recognized the use of “abd” or “abeed.” Fully aware that it carries the same connotation as “nigger,” I looked around the store and noticed that all my teammates were outside and I was the only person, black or otherwise, in the store. As I approached the counter I hear more conversation in Arabic, and “abeed” being used repeatedly being followed by laughter that suddenly stopped as I approached the counter. Without a greeting or glance, the cashier told me what I owed for my items. Visibly agitated with 1 “Jummah” is a Muslim congregational prayer that is held every Friday afternoon 1 clenched fists, I just stared at him for a moment and said “hal-anti-majnoon-ahki” (Are you crazy my brother?) Seemingly alarmed at his recognition that I was aware of at least some of what was being said, he started apologizing and saying “ahki, la, la” (My brother no, no). Grossly offended, I paid for my items and left. One Friday afternoon in late April 2015, I was at jummah at CIMIC , and the imam was concluding the khutba (sermon) with a request for dua (prayer) for the world as a whole. The imam mentioned just about every natural disaster, human rights violation, or geopolitical conflict that effected Muslims and non-Muslim alike around the world. What was mysteriously absent in his list of concerns was the unrest in Baltimore after a 25 year old black man (Freddie Gray) died in police custody. The flames in Baltimore were still burning as the khutba was being delivered and not only was there no mention of the unrest that was currently taking place in Baltimore, there was no mention of any issues facing the black community or even Africa. Somehow, his list covered the span of the United States, Europe, The Middle East, and Asia but nothing specific to the black community of Africa. In the summer of 2016, I was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Fellowship (FLAS) to participate in the Summer Institute of Languages of the Muslim World (SILMW). Due to the long period that has passed since I had taken Arabic classes in succession, I was moved from an advanced class to an intermediate class. In a conversation with my instructor (Arab and practicing Muslim Woman) after class on the first day, she tells me that she “questions” whether I can be successful in her class. Never having had this instructor before, I was curious as to what would prompt her to say that. I ignored it. The following day I had a question regarding the textbook for the class and the accompanying assignment because I hadn’t received my book yet. The instructor proceeds to raise her voice and literally berate me 2 suggesting that I needed to “work harder,” and that I needed to take my coursework seriously. Aware of the possibility that any response expressing my dissatisfaction with her attitude and behavior towards me could exacerbate a bad situation, I emailed her expressing my concerns about ideas about me as a student and forwarded copies to the acting coordinator of SILMW, and the acting-chair of the department that awarded me the fellowship. Later that week, I took a test on which I did not perform well. When she returned my test, it was covered with comments that not only suggested that she had something against me personally, but these comments also referenced information she could have never known without talking to my former instructors. As the summer would go on, other students noticed how she seemed to have a “thing” against me with her continuous antagonistic attitude. It was well before the last two experiences that I really began to interrogate the intra-faith relationships among black and immigrant Muslims as there were numerous other microagressions. The first two incidents were instrumental in raising my awareness of the black and brown divide in the Muslim community, and the last two convinced me of the necessity of such work. Conscious of my own experiences, I began to ask other Blackamerican Muslims about their experiences. When it was suggested that I could incorporate this topic into a dissertation project, I was immediately excited as I would have the opportunity to tell what I came to find was an unfortunately familiar story with Blackamerican Muslims. I became very interested in how diversity influences intra-faith relations in the American Muslim community. Particularly, I wanted to interrogate the changing as well as differing notions of what constitutes being a “Muslim” and “Islam” in East-Central Illinois from the 1960’s to the present. Fully aware that I was taking on a very complicated project, I had to carefully and meticulously map out the steps to addressing my research question. 3 The first objective was to gain an understanding of the development of Muslim identity, particularly in the United States. This proved to be an arduous task because what I learned fairly early in my research was that examining the historical trajectory of Muslim identity involved observing immigration patterns, the demographic information on these immigrants, conceptions of race, and the role that immigration policy had in influencing these things. This task was complicated further by the fact that each of those previously mentioned measures are not necessarily independent of each other as some of them yielded causal relationships with others. Central to this discussion of identity is “whiteness.” Determined based on discriminatory attitudes and perceptions about skin color, known as “common sense knowledge,” whiteness became a prized identity for immigrants from the Muslim world. It is this conception of “whiteness” that becomes essential to the examination of intra-faith dialogue because different experiences of race between Blackamerican and immigrant Muslims tend to become points of contention in their interactions with one another, and ultimately begins to play a role in the shaping of Muslim identities. My next challenge in understanding the role of identity and its influence on intra-faith relations was finding a theoretical framework that addresses a very complicated and oftentimes competing narrative of difference between Blackamerican and immigrant Muslims. Bourdieu’s symbolic power seemed to be the most appropriate “fit” as it addresses power, identity, and privilege while stressing their interconnectedness and interdependence on one another. Offering discussions related to legitimation and misrecognition, symbolic violence, habitus, and symbolic capital, symbolic power was the most appropriate framework to examine the complicated and nuanced role of identity, privilege, and power as it relates to what is termed the “indigenous- immigrant” divide (Khabeer 2009). These different discussions were then applied to whiteness as 4 a prized identity to be obtained, and also as an identity historically denied to Blackamericans.

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