FINDING MECCA IN AMERICA: AMERICAN MUSLIMS AND CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP by Mucahit Bilici A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) in The University of Michigan 2008 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Fatma Muge Gocek, Chair Professor Michael D. Kennedy Professor Margaret R. Somers Associate Professor Andrew Shryock Assistant Professor Genevieve Zubrzycki © Mucahit Bilici 2008 “tuba lil guraba” ii Acknowledgements In the writing of this dissertation and the many years of study that led up to it, I have accumulated a lot of debt to a great many people. I have been extremely lucky to have Fatma Muge Gocek as my advisor. Ever since I came to Ann Arbor, she has provided me with the support and guidance without which my experience of graduate school would have been far different. She has been an inspiration for me in intellectual courage and academic self-confidence. She did what all excellent mentors should do: while providing the necessary direction, she always let me be myself. Working with her has been a deep pleasure and she will be my role model for academic mentorship in the years ahead. I am also thankful to Michael Kennedy. Even when I seemed unsure of myself, Michael remained supportive and confident about my ability to produce original work. Special thanks go to Margaret Somers, from whom I learned the intricacies of social theory and the sociological importance of the concept of citizenship. I am indebted to Andrew Shryock in many ways. I have been fortunate to be part of the Building Islam in Detroit project initiated by him and Sally Howell. Both Sally and Andrew have been invaluable sources of local knowledge and field know-how for me. My research experience with Andrew in and around Detroit sharpened my ethnographic eye. Among the many memorable experiences I had with him was the day we were iii driving along, deep in conversation, when my car was suddenly engulfed by one of Detroit’s notorious potholes. Our collaboration has thus extended both to research and changing tires. Genevieve Zubrzycki has been an incisive reader and encouraged me to look at things from different perspectives. I benefited immensely from her class on cultural sociology and her comments and suggestions during the process of writing. All the members of my dissertation committee deserve credit for the success of this project; the shortcomings, of course, remain entirely mine. During my time as a graduate student at Michigan, I have enjoyed the comraderie of Andy Clarno, Dave Dobbie, Claire DeCoteau, Kim Greenwell, Camilo Leslie, Chris Roberts, Atef Said, Hiro Saito, Hiroe Saruya, Rachel Schroeder, and many others. I also found a community of Turkish colleagues at Michigan (the “Young Turks”) whose warm support has been crucial to me. Many thanks to Baris Buyukokutan, Didem Ekici, Asli Gur, Asli Igsiz, Burcak Keskin and Cihan Tugal. I would also like to acknowledge my appreciation for the friendship of Serkan Turhal, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Esra Ozyurek and Marc Baer. I am grateful to the members of the Muslim community who have generously opened their hearts and minds to me. I thank Nihad Awad and the other staff members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, DC. In the local Detroit area, among the many community members and spokespeople who generously helped me in this project, I especially thank Ihor Debryn, Eide Alawan, Najah Bazzy, Achmat Salie and Dawud Walid. iv The support that one receives from one’s own family is most likely to be taken for granted, but it is also the most crucial of all. Though they could not read this dissertation even if it were in Turkish, my parents Nefise Bilici and Mehmet Emin Bilici deserve more gratitude than I can ever bestow for their efforts to send us all to school against all odds. The unconditional love and support of my siblings Murat and Esra in the U.S. and Fatma, Zeliha and Nermin in Turkey has meant more to me than I have words to express. My final and deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Rachel. Without her warm support and intellectual critique this work would not have been possible. I am fortunate to have such a rare source of love, care and intellectual inspiration right by my side. And when it comes to family, there is one more person whose spot on my list of important people has been secure for more than a year. Through his charming distractions and frequent attacks on my laptop, my one-year-old son Harun has been deeply involved in the writing process. He has helped his mother to turn the writing of this dissertation into an archipelago of activity within a sea of happiness. v CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vii Glossary viii Abstract x CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Muslim Life and American Forms 1 PART I CULTURAL SETTLEMENT 2 Finding Mecca in America: Muslim Directionality and the Codification of American Space 30 3 The English Language and Islam: Genealogy of an Encounter 69 4 Homeland Insecurity: How Immigrant Muslims Naturalize America in Islam 107 PART II CITIZENSHIP PRACTICES 5 Citizen Aliens: CAIR and the Rights of Muslims in the US 154 6 Seeking Kinship Through Abraham: Muslim Interfaith Activism 180 7 Funny Jihad: Muslim Comedy Takes Flight 218 8 Conclusion: American Life and Muslim Forms 260 Bibliography 268 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Muslims at the airport. 6 Figure 1.2 Conceptual orientation of the two parts of the dissertation. 26 Figure 1.3 A thematic list of individual chapters. 28 Figure 2.1 Fundraising flyer for the first mosque in Detroit, ca. 1921. 37 Figure 2.2 The old and the new directions toward Mecca at the Albanian Islamic Center in Harper Woods, Michigan. 41 Figure 2.3 Center and Margin. 50 Figure 2.4 Structural homology of Bentham’s Panopticon and the Kaaba, focal point of Islamic sacred space. 51 Figure 3.1 A typical mosque library shelf. 80 Figure 4.1 Stages and juridical tools of Muslim cultural settlement in the US. 130 Figure 5.1 CAIR’s “Islam in America” ad campaign. 176 Figure 6.1 Hate graffiti painted on the front of the old Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan. 184 Figure 6.2 The text that greets visitors to the Muslim Unity Center, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. 197 Figure 6.3 Interfaith National Day of Prayer in downtown Detroit. 212 Figure 7.1 The iceberg model of ethnic comedy. 254 vii GLOSSARY adhan the call to prayer darura desperate circumstances; in times of darura the forbidden may become lawful dawah proselytizing eid major religious holiday. There are two eids, one marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan and the other coinciding with the culmination of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca fatwa a legal opinion issued by an Islamic jurist, generally in response to a question and tailored to the circumstances of the inquirer fiqh Islamic law as it pertains to mundane affairs; the Islamic legal heritage halal/haram religiously permissible/impermissible; may apply to food, activities, etc. hajj pilgrimage to Mecca hijra originally the Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution; by extension, emigration for a religious purpose imam the leader of a Muslim congregation; an imam may be a spiritual leader comparable to a pastor, but can be anyone competent to lead others in prayer jihad struggle against oppression; may refer either to armed resistance or to spiritual self-improvement juma congregational prayer, held on Fridays at midday khutbah sermon madhhab one of the five schools of Islamic jurisprudence masjid mosque mihrab a niche in the wall of a mosque used to indicate the direction of prayer viii muezzin the person who gives the call to prayer qibla the direction of Mecca, towards which Muslims turn to pray sharia Islamic law in the most general sense, closely identified with divine revelation; extends to questions of ethics, ritual practice, and civil and criminal law Shia/Sunni the two main sects of Islam. Sunni tradition places emphasis on the Prophet Muhammad’s contemporaries as ethical exemplars; Shia tradition emphasizes reverence for the Prophet’s descendants. ummah the worldwide community of Muslims ulama Islamic scholars collectively; one scholar is an alim ix Abstract This dissertation investigates the experience of Muslim identity in the United States. It explores the various encounters between Muslim life and American forms. It pays particular attention to the processes of cultural settlement of Muslims and their post-9/11 citizenship practices. Arguing that there has been a growing disjuncture between the nation and the state since 9/11, I ask how Muslims respond to this disjuncture which threatens to leave them outside the definition of the nation while still remaining inside the state. How do they remake boundaries so as to include themselves in the nation? Focusing on the relationship between religious identity and cultural citizenship, my multi-site ethnographic research explores various boundary works: the process of boundary-crossing where Islam is translated into another language, culture and even geography and the process of boundary-shifting where Muslim demand for recognition takes the form of multiple citizenship practices such as civil rights advocacy, interfaith activism and Muslim ethnic comedy. My dissertation also explores the ways in which 9/11 has encouraged the formation of a distinct American Islam. x CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Muslim Life and American Forms Imagine that you are reading today’s New York Times. As you begin to turn the pages, you notice that a great many of the stories have to do with Islam or Muslims.