American Muslims and authority: Competing discourses in a non-Muslim state

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 5-30

  Leonard, Karen ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61349125425     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (101)

1. Islam is poised to displace Judaism and will be second to Christianity in the number of its adherents in the United States. For the varying population estimates, from 1 to 8 million, see Karen Isaksen Leonard, Muslims in the United States: the State of Research (New York, 2003) 4, 147 (note 1).
2. One breakdown puts African Americans at 42%, South Asians at 24.4%, Arabs at 12.4%, Africans at 6.2%, Iranians at 3.6%, Southeast Asians at 2%, European Americans at 1.6%, and "other" at 5.4%. Another breakdown puts "Americans" at 30%, Arabs at 33%, and South Asians at 29%. The first is Fareed H. Nu'man, The Muslim Population in the United States: A Brief Statement (Washington, D.C., 1992);
3. and the second is Ilyas Ba-Yunus and M. Moin Siddiqui, A Report on the Muslim Population in the United States (New York, 1999).
4. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Adair T. Lummis, Islamic Values in the United States: a Comparative Study (New York, 1987) point to this conservatism in numerous places, e.g., 30-33, 123-24, 127. They saw considerable adaptation among earlier immigrants.
5. Karen Leonard, "South Asian Leadership of American Muslims," in Yvonne Haddad, ed., Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens (New York, 2002), 233-49.
6. In the 1990 U.S. Census, the immigrants from India had the highest median household income, family income, and per capita income of any foreign-born group, and they also had the highest percentage with a bachelor's degree or higher and the highest percentage in managerial and professional fields. Karen Isaksen Leonard, The South Asian Americans (Westport, Conn., 1997), 77-78. Since 80% of South Asians in the U.S. are from India and Pakistan, and about 90% of these are from India, the Asian Indian census data is quite relevant. Among Indian immigrants in the 1990 census, 10% were medical doctors and 17% were engineers. Iranian Muslims, also highly-educated and sharing many of the attributes of South Asians, are overwhelmingly secular in their orientation.
7. See Mehdi Bozorgmehr, "Internal Ethnicity: Iranians in Los Angeles," in Sociological Perspectives 40, no. 3 (1997): 387-408, which reports that only 5% are religiously observant "always and often" and 95% are so "occasionally and never" (chart, 398). Also, Iranians are Shi'i, the minority sect within Islam and within American Islam as well.
8. Edward Said, Covering Islam, 2d ed. (1981; New York, 1997).
9. For the estimate, no longer accepted as accurate but without an accepted replacement, see Haddad and Lummis, Islamic Values, 8.
10. In the leadership of many mosques, too, South Asians are becoming prominent. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, "At Home in the Hijra: South Asian Muslims in the United States," in Howard Coward, John R. Hinnells, and Raymond Brady Williams, eds., The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States (New York, 2000).
11. "Ideology, Class and the Origin of the Islamic State," Economy and Society 9, no. 4 (November 1980): 465.
12. Abou El Fadl, from Kuwait but educated in Egypt, is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Fellow at UCLA's Law School. Alalwani, of Iraqi origin, has headed the Fiqh Council since 1986, when ISNA upgraded and expanded its thirty-year-old Fiqh Council. He is also president of the School of Islamic and Social Sciences (SISS).
13. Abou El Fadl first became known for his columns in The Minaret. Published by the Islamic Center of Southern California, this is one of the four leading American Muslim journals according to Sulayman Nyang, "Islam in America: a Historical Perspective," American Muslim Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1998): 10-11.
14. Khaled Abou el Fadl, "The Authoritative and the Authoritarian, The Minaret, May 1997, 43, cites earlier jurists who explain that the purpose of a Sharia inquiry is not to reach the right result but the inquiry, the search for the ruling, "a life consumed by the search for the Divine Will."
15. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses: A Contemporary Case Study (Austin, Tex., 1997), 10-11.
16. The third edition is now out, with a lengthy new introduction and postscript. See And God Knows His Soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses (New York, 2001).
17. Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington, D.C., 1986), 7, 14.
18. See the pathbreaking work by Maria Jasachok, A Mosque of One's Own: On Being Muslim, Hui, and Woman in Contemporary China (Richmond, Surrey, 2001).
19. See John Bowen, for example, on legal, moral, and social applications of Islamic texts in Indonesia: Muslims through Discourse: Religion and Ritual in Gaya Society (Princeton, N.J., 1993), 8.
20. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion (Baltimore, 1993), 208-14.
21. For earlier immigrants, see Barbara C. Aswad and Barbara Bilge, Family and Gender Among American Muslims: Issues Facing Middle Eastern Immigrants and Their Descendants (Philadelphia, 1996);
22. Earle H. Waugh, Sharon McIrvin Abu-Laban, and Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, eds., Muslim Families in North America (Edmonton, 1991);
23. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith, eds., Muslim Communities in North America (Albany, 1994);
24. Mehdi Bozorgmehr and Alison Feldman, eds., Middle Eastern Diaspora Communities in America (New York, 1996).
25. For the contemporary scene, see Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito, Muslims on the Americanization Path? (Atlanta, 1998);
26. Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (New York, 1999).
27. See Talal Asad, "Modern Power and the Reconfiguration of Religious Traditions," Stanford Humanities Review 5, no. 1 (1996): 5 (http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/asad.html).
28. Marcia K. Hermansen, "In the Garden of American Sufi Movements: Hybrids and Perennials," Peter B. Clarke, ed., New Trends and Developments in the World of Islam (London, 1997), 155-78.
29. See Leonard, Muslims in the United States, Appendix II, for a chart of these organizations.
30. Khaled Abou el Fadl, "Setting Priorities," The Minaret, April 1998, 41. Others have described these new spokesmen as "boss Muslims" or "professional Muslims."
31. The secular Muslim scholar, Bassam Tibi, argues that globalization has swept all Muslims into an international state system that renders discussion of dar ul Islam, or "the abode of Islam," obsolete. Defining secularization as an inevitable part of social evolution towards functional differentiation in modern society, Tibi says it will allow for the development of Islam as a religious ethic, a "civil theology." A political scientist born in Damascus and living in Germany, Tibi uses Middle Eastern and North African materials and advocates a secularization of Islamic religion, theology, and culture. Bassam Tibi, The Crisis of Modern Islam: a Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific Technological Age, tr. Judith von Sivers (Salt Lake City, 1988), xiii-xiv, 130-31, 148.
32. Larry Poston, Islamic Da'wah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (New York, 1992), 32
33. citing an Islamic Horizons 15, no. 3 (May-June 1986) article by Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, "Muslims in a Non-Muslim Society," 22;
34. for ISNA's initiative, see Steve A. Johnson, "Political Activity of Muslims in America," 111;
35. Sulayman S. Nyang, "Convergence and Divergence in an Emergent Community: A Study of Challenges Facing U.S. Muslims," 247, both in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, ed., The Muslims of America (New York, 1991).
36. One Indian American Muslim political scientist explains that since there is no explicit declaration of war against Islam, the U.S. cannot be dar ul harb, and since there are no specific treaties with resident Muslims, it cannot be dar ul sulh. He concludes that most American Muslims believe the U.S. to be dar ul aman (as India, in fact, is categorized by Muslims there). Mohommed A. Muqtedar Khan, "Muslims and Identity Politics in America," in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito, eds., Muslims on the Americanization Path? (Atlanta, 1998), 115, 118-19.
37. Indian Muslim discourse has become increasingly relevant since in both India and the U.S. Muslims are a minority in a secular state, very concerned with secular pressures, with interrelations among Muslims, and interrelations among religions Kenneth Cragg, The Pen and the Faith: Eight Modern Muslim Writers and the Qur'an (London, 1985), 3-4.
38. In the 1980s, discussions within developing Muslim organizations revolved around issues centered outside the U.S., and most American Muslim national leaders opposed Muslim participation in American politics or gave it only qualified support. Reflecting the Middle Eastern origins of most leaders then, internal conflicts focused on Sunni-Shi'i differences heightened by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war, or Salafiyya versus Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen (that is, Reformist/Fundamentalist versus Muslim Brotherhood) and intra-Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen differences linked primarily to politics in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf states. Johnson, "Political Activity," 111-24.
39. A new Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) was formed in 2000 in Washington, D.C., as a membership-based nonprofit organization. See www. islam-democracy.org. The Chair, Ali Mazrui, is also the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at SUNY-Binghamton, and the Vice-Chair, John Esposito, is Director of the Center of Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.
40. The Minaret, August 1995, 22, and The Orange Crescent 18, no. 2 (February/ March 1993) report the 1993 forming of this council, which was thought to include 65% of all mosques in North America. Al-Amin's (the former H. Rap Brown's) arrest for murder in 2000 and recent conviction and W. D. Muhammad's reported withdrawal from the shura in 2000 put this arrangement in jeopardy. The National Fiqh Council was under reconstitution in 2004, and women and Shi'i were being added.
41. Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam (New York, 1995), 126-27.
42. Shuras typically try to set common dates for all mosques and Islamic centers for Ramadan. South Asian and Arab-based congregations often differ on which day to offer the Id prayers ending the Ramadan month of fasting. Some use Saudi Arabian sightings of the moon to determine the timing of observances in North America; others use local sightings. Some set the prayers for the day after the day of Arafat, others set them by sighting of the moon. Fifty-six member mosques and affiliated groups in southern California formed a shura in 1995, and twenty-six Islamic centers agreed on a common date for Id prayers in December of 1995. Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1996, B4. A common date for Id was still not being practiced in 2004.
43. Alalwani heads SISS, the School of Islamic and Social Sciences, first established as the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) by Dr. Ismail R. al-Faruqi and others in 1981 in Washington, D.C. In 1996, it moved to Herndon, West Virginia, and was reshaped as SISS with a small campus in Leesburg, Virginia. It offers an M.A. in Islamic Studies (an American-style graduate program) and in Imamate Studies. Christopher A. Furlow, "Islam, Science, and Modernity: From Northern Virginia to Kuala Lumpur," paper presented at the American Anthropological Association meeting, Chicago, 1999. It trains imams for the U.S. armed forces and has offered to train imams for Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
44. See Alalwani's examples of misapplied fatwas in Abu Amal Hadhrami, "Muslim Americans Need Own Outlook," Islamic Horizons 29, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 2000): 48-53
45. See also Abou El Fadl, "Striking a Balance."
46. Khaled Abou el Fadl, "The Page," The Minaret, January 2000, 41-42. Their opinions were the product, he says, of "oil-nourished plutocracy" (the remark points to the rising tensions between American and "foreign" forms of Islam).
47. "Conference of Books Revived," The Minaret, August 1996, 23.
48. Dale F. Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson, eds., New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington, 1999), 12.
49. Examples of Eickelman and Anderson's "new people" include the physicians Dr. Hassan Hathout, Reading the Muslim Mind (Plainfield, Ind., 1995)
50. and Dr. Shahid Athar, Reflections of an American Muslim (Chicago, 1994).
51. Aslam Abdullah, "Expectations from American Muslim Institutions and Leadership," Pakistan Link, Oct. 16, 1998, 14. He also wants social and behavioral science and management skills, not political maneuvering and wealth, in those who run the Islamic centers and mosques.
52. Cragg, The Pen, 9.
53. Abou El Fadl, And God Knows the Soldiers, 1-42, lays this out forcefully.
54. C. Eric Lincoln found that, in 1960, "the Ahmadiyah were generally accepted as a legitimate sect of Islam." The Black Muslims in America (Boston, 1961), 221.
55. Whether or not the Ahmadis consider their founder a Prophet is contested, and there are differences among Ahmadis too, who were declared non-Muslims in 1974 in Pakistan after the third of three court cases. The two earlier decisions, based on the same body of textual material as the third, did not find them unorthodox, and the third decision was reached only under extreme political pressure. Tayyab Mahmud shows the political forces behind all three decisions. "Freedom of Religion and Religious Minorities in Pakistan: a Study of Judicial Practice, Fordham International Law Journal 19, no. 1 (Oct. 1995): 40-100.
56. Ihsan Bagby, Paul M. Perl, Bryan T. Froehle, "The Mosque in America: A National Portrait," April 26, 2001, released through CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), Washington, D.C. For the definitions and exclusions, Ihsan Bagby, personal communication, June 26, 2001. Project MAPS (Muslims in American Public Square), based at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University with an advisory board of leading academics, is also undertaking a national survey of Islamic centers, mosques, schools, and organizations.
57. Ihsan Bagby, Paul M. Perl, Bryan T. Froehle, The Mosque in America: A National Portrait. A Report from the Mosque Study Project (Council on American-Islamic Relations: Washington D.C., 2001), 28. Page 1 describes the respondents and other background information about the survey, which is the Muslim part of a denominational survey project coordinated by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research.
58. The questionnaire and interview results can be found at www.projectmaps.com/PMReport.htm. The method was to create a phone list by matching the zip codes of 300 randomly selected Islamic centers (from a list that omitted Nation of Islam and Ahmadi mosques) against local telephone exchanges, then identifying common Muslim surnames from the local telephone books and calling them. If the person answering identified him- or herself as Muslim, the interview proceeded. An additional sample of African American Muslims was taken in person at several (named) urban locations to compensate for their Anglo-American or non-Muslim surnames, to achieve a weighting for African Americans of 20% of the American Muslim population (many would consider this an underestimate).
59. Murad Wilfried Hofmann, "Muslims in the Next Millenium," Islamic Horizons (January/February 1999), 20-22. Hofmann is a retired German diplomat to Algeria and Morocco, with a Munich University doctorate in jurisprudence.
60. Mohommed A. Muqtedar Khan, "Muslims and American Politics: Refuting the Isolationist Arguments," American Muslim Quarterly 2, nos. 1-2 (1998): 68.
61. Omer Bin Abdullah, then President of the APPNA (Association of Pakistani Physicians in North America), said, "the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were knowingly or unknowingly based on the Islamic principles of equality and justice for all ... [thus there is] a great similarity between the success of America, especially in science, medicine and technology, with the success that was achieved by the Muslims of Baghdad, Cordoba and Istanbul ... in this country, Muslims have the opportunity to practice Islam as it should be practiced because there is no government edict to restrict religion, nor is there sectarian control over belief...." Omer Bin Abdullah, "Eyes on the Muslim Future in America," Pakistan Link, August 18, 1995, 27.
62. See Karen Leonard, "American Muslims Before and After September 11, 2001," Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), June 15, 2002, for a fuller treatment of this topic.
63. Bush had been slated to meet with American Muslim leaders at 3 p.m. on September 11, with several of those I have termed the "new spokesmen." See Leonard, "American Muslims," for details.
64. Peter Ford, "Listening for Islam's Silent Majority," Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 5, 2001.
65. On that very day, September 20, FBI agents showed up at Hamza Yusuf's house to question him about a talk he had given September 9 in which he had criticized the U.S. and said "this country has a great, great tribulation coming to it." His wife told them he was with the President, and they found she was correct. He had been the only Muslim invited to pray with the President, sing "God Bless America," and endorse the plans for military action. Hanna Rosin and John Mintz, "Muslim Leaders Struggle With Mixed Messages," Washington Post, Oct. 2, 2001, A16.
66. American Muslim leaders were caught in a situation that was difficult from the beginning and continues to be so. Proclaiming their loyalty to the U.S. and tempering their previously strong and outspoken criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, they have been confronted with the American bombing of Afghanistan, then the worsening situation in Israel and Palestine, and then uncertainties about the next targets of the "war on terrorism."
67. The respected scholar of Islam, John Esposito, told American Muslims that they had to put forth more women and young people who speak accentless American English to articulate their community's message. "Unless you tap the next generation, you are not going to make it through the next few months," he said, suggesting that, by using representatives who speak English as Americans do, Muslims would avoid appearing as though they were a predominantly foreign group. "Muslims Urged to Work on Improving Image," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 7, 2001, cited in CAIR Islam-Infonet American Muslim News Briefs of that date. Esposito was a speaker at a fundraising banquet for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Los Angeles, Oct. 6, 2001.
68. A convert to Islam at age seventeen, Hamza Yusuf (42 in 2001) is the son of two academics, his father a professor of the humanities; he has studied with leading Islamic scholars in Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania.
69. Richard Scheinin, "Expert Says Islam Prohibits Violence Against Innocents," San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 16, 2001.
70. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf also said that what Americans were now feeling "has been business as usual for Lebanese people, Palestinian people, Bosnian people," and when the reporter immediately asked about Israeli people, his answer was sympathetic: "Certainly the fear element is there for Israeli people ... there are still a lot of Jewish people alive who remember the fear and terror of what happened in Europe...." Interview transcribed by Jamillah Karim and sent to me via e-mail, Oct. 9, 2001. In Arabic, he said, "Infinite Justice" is an attribute of God and Muslims would consider using that phrase almost a proclamation that America was God.
71. Sufism, the mystical strand of Islam, increasingly has been attacked in the U.S. by post-1965 immigrant professionals.
72. Jack Sullivan, "Imam Hamza Yusuf: 'If you hate the west, emigrate to a Muslim country,'" The Guardian, Oct. 8, 2001 (the day Yusuf was to meet with religious leaders at the House of Lords in London).
73. He was a featured columnist for The Minaret, but it would not always publish his pieces. The Islamic Center of Southern California, which initiated MPAC and publishes The Minaret, is one of the most successful interethnic Islamic congregations in the U.S. and its new spokesmen make a self-conscious effort to formulate and represent an American Islam.
74. These are laid out in all his books, but see especially his Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oxford, 2001).
75. "Derangements," The Minaret, special edition, Oct. 2001, 11;
76. "When God Asks the Child," The Minaret, November/December 2001, 11.
77. Teresa Watanabe, "Extremists Put Own Twist on Faith," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24, 2001, A13.
78. Teresa Watanabe, "Battling Islamic 'Puritans,'" Los Angeles Times, Jan. 2, 2002, A1.
79. For more on them, see Leonard, "American Muslims, Before and After September 11, 2001."
80. Kabbani is the representative in the U.S. of a sect based in Cyprus. He strove for ascendancy in American Muslim politics in the late 1990s, and he had been successful in presenting an individualistic and moderate form of Islam to Americans. But in 1999 Kabbani alienated the Sunni mainstream immigrant leaders by branding 80% of the American Muslim population "extremists" in a speech to the U.S. Secretary of State's Public Forum. Roundly condemned, he had been boycotted ever since by all major American Muslim groups. He was immediately called upon by the mainstream media after September 11.
81. While still a student, Khan was "the Cyberspace Mufti." "The Internet has made everyone a mufti [legal advisor] ... [opening up] a variety of opinion ... [it is] the globalization of the mufti." A self-described "more liberal voice," he gave advice that was no doubt controversial, reportedly saying, about homosexuality, that, while there certainly cannot be gay pride parades in mosques, "Clinton's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is a perfectly Islamic solution." About premarital sex, he said "remember that Allah is all-forgiving, especially to those who repent sincerely (this is in case you have already been naughty)." Emily Wax, "The Mufti in the Chat Room: Islamic Legal Advisers Are Just a Click Away From Ancient Customs," Washington Post, July 31, 1999, C1.
82. I got this e-mail October 27 from a friend in Pakistan, and efforts to track down its author and source failed. The full-length message captures the mix of anger, ignorance, and intelligent questioning on the part of many Americans.
83. Nayyer Ali, M.D., "Winners and Losers," Pakistan Link, Nov. 2, 2001.
84. He included President Bush, Pakistan, and Islam among the winners, India and Israel's right-wing among the losers, and Afghanistan as still unclassified. Addressing the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Qatar on October 10, the head of the American delegation said, "At no other time has the Muslim community in America been more effective in working with the American government." Dr. Jamal Barzinji, board member, American Muslim Council, and director, International Institute of Islamic Thought; full text in Islamic Horizons, January/February 2002, 56.
85. Dr. Ghulam M. Haniff said, "The dastardly act occurred just when Muslims were beginning to make inroads into the mainstream.... The Muslim community in America will be under the gun for a long time.... The future looks bleak and uncertain." Haniff, "WTC Tragedy: A Major Setback for Islam," Pakistan Link, Oct. 26, 2001, CL6.
86. Two weeks later, he saw opportunities. "Muslims must stand up, assert their identity and not only accommodate to life in America but become champions of liberty and justice." Ghulam M. Haniff, "American Islam at a Turning Point," Pakistan Link, Nov. 9, 2001, CL4.
87. The most thorough story is Jake Tapper, "Islam's Flawed Spokesmen: Some of the Groups Claiming to Speak for American Muslims Find It Impossible to Speak Out Against Tenorist Groups," Salon, Sept. 26, 2001. He implicates CAIR and the AMC as having been tacitly supportive of extremist groups.
88. The President said this at the September 26 meeting with Muslim leaders, according to CAIR Islam-Infonet, Sept. 26, 2001.
89. See also Solomon Moore, "Fiery Words, Disputed Meaning," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 2001, B20, for more on Siddiqi, Hamza Yusuf, Abdurahman Alamoudi of CAIR and the AMC, Nihad Awad of CAIR, and Sheikh Kabbani's spiritual mentor.
90. Mahjabeen Islam, M.D., "An American Muslim's Perspective," Pakistan Link, Nov. 16, 2001, CL3; and see http://www.usmae.org.
91. Hasan Zillur Rahim, "Silence of the Imams - Muslim Clerics Must Challenge Extremist Views," India-West, Oct. 26, 2001, A5. Rahim is a software consultant and was editor of Iqra, an Islamic magazine, from 1986-1999.
92. Zahir Ahmed (Chair, Islamic Research and Publications), "Mosques not Controlled by Imams," letter to India-West, Dec. 28, 2001, A6.
93. Gisela Webb, ed., Windows of Faith: Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America. (Syracuse, N.Y., 2000), 205.
94. The Progressive Union, inaugurated November 15 (Eid Monday), is led by Iranian-American Omid Safi, the editor of the Progressive Muslims volume, and three others (Egyptian-American Ahmed Nassef, the co-founder and editor of Muslimwakeup.com; Arab-American Sarah Eltantawi, who left her post as communications director of MPAC to hold the same post for the new group; and Hussein Ibish, Lebanese-American former Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee(ADC).
95. Islamic Horizons, May/June 2003. This growing liberal, moderate, or progressive movement wherever it manifests itself is under attack from immigrant Muslim conservatives, of course, one of whom (Abid Ulla Jan 2002) calls it "neo-mod" and as harmful to Islam as America's "neo-cons."
96. Powerful African American Sunni Muslims were involved in planning this since 1999, with Jamil Al-Amin (the former H. Rap Brown) in Atlanta and Imams Siraj Wahaj and Talib Abdur-Rashid in New York; they conferred with other indigenous leaders, including Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. After Jamil Al-Amin's arrest in 2000, MANA was formally inaugurated in February of 2001. Its head is Siraj Wahaj, Sunni imam of the Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn and a very charismatic speaker; other leaders include Ihsan Bagby, long a key insider in ISNA, and imams in Cleveland, Detroit, Ann Arbor, New Haven, and North Carolina.
97. http://www.mananet.org/about.asp.
98. Jackson has published on Islamic law but is now turning to African American Islam more specifically; his book, Islam and the Black American: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (Oxford, 2005), is a major new interpretation of African American Islam.
99. Sherman A. Jackson," Islam(s) East and West: Pluralism between No-Frills and Designer Fundamentalism," 112-35, in Mary L. Dudziak, ed., September 11 in History (Durham, N.C., 2003), 132. Jackson would use Islamic legal traditions to justify polygyny (to ease black women's poverty), Islamic punishments for adultery (when it destroys and impoverishes black families), violence (in the face of the overwhelming and unjust state power exercised by Israel against the Palestinians), and affirmative action (rather than reliance on Islam's commitment to equality).
100. Thus a widely-circulated piece by an American Muslim political scientist advises first-generation immigrants to redefine a Muslim American agenda, with a focus on issues in the U.S. and a more adequate reflection of the concerns of African American Muslims. Pointing out that Pakistani and Indian Muslims differ on Kashmir, he urges that "those ... who feel compelled to pursue national or ethnic agendas should be free to do so through separate national or ethnic associations and lobbies." Himself a first-generation immigrant from India, Ayoob does not seem to envision the second generation taking leadership yet. Mohammed Ayoob, "How to Define a Muslim American Agenda," New York Times, Dec. 29, 2001.
101. Asma Gull Hasan, "First Betrayed by the Hijackers, Then by the Americans," Pakistan Link, Nov. 2, 2001, CL3, expresses the outrage of young American-born Muslims who feel suspicion and discrimination directed against them.