THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA “Most Religious” in Washington, D.C.: A Qualitative Study of Muslim American Religiosity A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Theology and Religious Studies Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By Brandon Edward Turner Washington, D.C. 2017 “Most Religious” in Washington, D.C.: A Qualitative Study of Muslim American Religiosity Brandon Edward Turner, Ph.D. Director: Wilhelmus Valkenberg, Ph.D. ABSTRACT: As American interest in Islam has increased in recent years, a growing interest in Muslim American religiosity as the subject of empirical social research has developed. Several recent studies have sought to understand how levels of religiosity influence Muslim Americans and a wide variety of instruments have been developed in an attempt to measure Muslim American religiosity more accurately. Depending on how individual researchers define and/or measure religiosity, many different Muslim cohorts have been identified as the “most religious” Muslims in America. The problem with such judgments is that little is known about the meaning(s) that Muslim Americans assign to the idea of “being religious,” how these meanings are or are not related to larger social-scientific understandings of religiosity, or how the meanings are or are not related to traditional Islamic understandings of faith, understanding, or piety. In addition, it is difficult to say whether these concepts are uniform across Muslim American cohorts or whether different communities have similar standards about what constitutes someone as being more or less religious. At best, it is assumed that these categories mean the same thing to different people. This dissertation explores the definitions of religiosity and the concepts of most or more religious offered by a select group of Muslim Americans in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to refine and/or enhance understanding of how Islamic religiosity is expressed and defined in the American context. Using the qualitative and ethnographic approach of grounded theory, two studies with 174 Muslim Americans were completed. My research found that while Muslim Americans understand the concept of being religious in different ways, three main areas of agreement were common. As a whole, Muslim Americans feel that someone is “being religious” if they allow Islam to “be a way of life,” if they allow Islam to “change how they act privately,” or if they allow Islam to “change how they act publicly.” However, my research has found that significant differences exist between Muslim cohorts- most notably between male and female Muslims and between older (age 40+) and younger Muslims. Men and women differ in how they conceptualize and discuss issues relating to prayer, the theological concept of taqwā, and the role of education. These concepts tend to be framed as devotional or relational issues for women and ritualistic issues for men. In addition, older Muslims are more likely to define Islam as a “way of life” than younger Muslims. Younger Muslims tend to understand religiosity in a more narrow sense in that Islam isn’t “a way of life” in the abstract but rather a canonical guide of do’s and don’ts. Finally, my research found that Muslim Americans tend to separate specific dimensions on how an individual could become more religious from their definitions of what being religious actually means. In the clearest example of this, the majority of my participants feel that “becoming more educated” would make them more religious, despite the fact that very few participants had mentioned or incorporated any notion of education when defining religiosity. This dissertation by Brandon Edward Turner fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Philosophy approved by Wilhelmus Valkenberg, Ph.D., as Director, and by Bill Dinges, Ph.D., and Besheer Mohamed, Ph.D. as Readers. ________________________________ Pim Valkenberg, Ph.D, Director ________________________________ Bill Dinges, Ph.D, Reader ________________________________ Besheer Mohamed, Ph.D, Reader ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my professors at Carson Newman, Gardner Webb, and Catholic University who instilled in me a love of learning; to my employers who were flexible and understanding with my schedule; and, most of all, to my family. Words cannot express my love and gratitude for all you have done. Thank you. I love you more than you will ever know. iii INTRODUCTION In an August 2011 report entitled “Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism,” the Pew Research Center aimed to “take stock of any important changes in the attitudes, opinions, and experiences” of Muslim Americans as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approached.1 While the majority of the report focused specifically on the ways that Muslim Americans felt about Islamic extremism, the report also provided an interesting glimpse on the various ways Muslim Americans were religious in the American context. As a young student who was (and is) interested in the ways Islam is and is not adapting to the American milieu, I was particularly drawn to a section that dealt with “levels of religious commitment” (pages 27-30). According to Pew’s findings, nearly three-in-ten Muslim Americans (29%) had a high level of religious commitment, 22% had a relatively low level of religious commitment, and roughly half (49%) of all Muslim Americans fell somewhere in between.2 Pew found that religious commitment varied significantly by religious affiliation (e.g. Sunni Muslims were twice as likely to be highly religious than Shia Muslims) and by race (e.g. native born African American Muslims were almost twice as likely to be highly religious than other native born 1 Adam Nekola, "Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism," Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, August 30, 2011, accessed March 12, 2015, http://www.people-press.org/2011/08/30/muslim-americans-no-signs-of- growth-in-alienation-or-support-for-extremism, 7. 2 Nekola, “Muslim Americans: No Sign of Growth,” 27. For a point of comparison, these numbers are similar to rates of commitment found among U.S. Christians. 1 2 Muslims) and that religious commitment varied somewhat by place of birth (e.g. 34% of native born Muslims were highly religious compared to only 26% of foreign born Muslims).3 However, what most interested me was a chart on page 27 which seemed to show that Muslim American men were more likely to be highly religious than Muslim American women (32% vs. 26%) and that younger Muslim Americans (age 18-39) displayed slightly higher levels of religious commitment than older (40+) Muslim Americans.4 On the very next page, though, the authors of the Pew report explained that “men and women have roughly similar levels of religious commitment” and that “there are no differences in religious commitment across age groups,”5 suggesting, of course, that the numbers listed on page 27 fell within the margin of significance. Nevertheless, even if one were to assume that the 2011 Pew study found equal amounts of religious commitment among male/female and younger/older Muslims, these findings seem to break from traditional norms. In their book “Why are Women More Religious than Men?” (2012), sociologists Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce point out that “since 1945, the Gallup polling organization has consistently found that, on every index used, American women are more religious then American men, and not by small margins.”6 As sociologist Phil Zuckerman points out, on just about 3 Ibid, 27. 4 Specifically, Pew found that 30.5% of younger Muslims were highly religious compared to 27.5% of older Muslims. 5 Ibid, 28. 6 Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce, Why are Women More Religious than Men? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 6. 3 “whatever measures one uses to assess religiosity – frequency of prayer, belief in God, church attendance, or self-identification – women are more likely than men in the United States to be religious.”7 Pew’s own Religious Landscape Study (2008, repeated again in 2014) also provides evidence of this, as it found that 86% of American women claim to be religious compared to only 79% of American men; 77% of women believe in God with absolute certainly compared to only 65% of men; 66% of women but only 49% of men pray daily; 63% of women say that religion is very important in their lives compared to 49% of men; and 44% of women attend religious services on a weekly basis compared to only 34% of men.8 According to Zuckerman, these “differences may or may not be significant…but they are at least consistent.”9 Similar differences are found in other countries around the world as well.10 According to sociologist Tiina Mahlamäki (University of Turku, Finland), 7 Phil Zuckerman, “Why are Women More Religious than Men? The Differences between the Genders is Clear and Consistent,” Psychology Today (September, 2014): accessed February 12, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-secular-life/201409/why-are- women-more-religious-men. 8 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life., and Pew Research Center, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 2008: Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic, 61-68. 9 Zuckerman, “Why are Women More Religious?,” 6. In the original text, Zuckerman includes the phrase “social science gets fuzzy here” after the phrase “these differences may or may not be significant.” This concept is not present in Trebiatowska