Becoming American?: The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America

132 Pages·2011·2.681 MB·English

by  Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad WHO IS ARAB? WHAT IS ISL AM?
is Professor of History of Islam and
WHO DECIDES?
Christian-Muslim Relations at the Center
Renowned historian Yvonne Haddad
for Muslim-Christian Understanding,
argues that American Muslim identity
“Haddad is always at the cutting edge in the study of Arab and Muslim
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign
is as uniquely American as it is for any
Americans. Becoming American? is an important contribution both to the
Service, Georgetown University. She
other race, nationality, or religion.
American Muslim community and to the growing corpus of scholarly writ-
is author or editor of more than fif- ing on Islam in America. Her unique voice is highly valued.” Becoming American? first traces the his-
teen books, including Muslim Women in
—JANE I. SMITH, tory of Arab and Muslim immigra-
America: The Challenge of Islamic Identity ASSOCIATE DEAN, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL
tion into Western society during the
Today and Muslim Minorities in the West:
19th and 20th centuries, revealing
Visible and Invisible. “For the past 30 years, Yvonne Haddad has been one of the most impor- a two-fold disconnect between the
tant scholars of Islam and Muslims in North America. This new book is a cultures—America’s unwillingness
welcome addition to her critical work on Arabs and Muslims in the pub-
to accept these new communities at
lic and political landscapes of the United States. Blending anecdotes and
home and the activities of radical Islam
personal narratives with recent scholarship, she has created a book that is
abroad. Urging America to recon-
as readable as it is important.”
sider its tenets of religious pluralism,
—AMIR HUSSAIN,
EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION Haddad reveals that the public square
has more than enough room to accom-
modate those values and ideals inher-
“A must-read for all those interested in the development of Western Arab
and Muslim communities.” ent in the moderate Islam flourishing
—ANTHONY MCROY, throughout the country. In remark-
THE MUSLIM WORLD BOOK REVIEW IN PRAISE FOR NOT QUITE AMERICAN?
able, succinct fashion, Haddad prods
readers to ask what it means to be truly
American and paves the way forward
for not only increased understanding
UU.S.S.. PPOoLliItTicIsC/SR /e RliEgLioIGnION but for forming a Muslim message that
is capable of uplifting American society.
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Becoming American?
<

Becoming American?
The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity
in Pluralist America
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS
© 2011 by Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas 76798
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior per-
mission in writing of Baylor University Press.
Cover design by the BookDesigners
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, 1935-
Becoming American? : the forging of Arab and Muslim identity in pluralist
America / Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60258-406-8 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Arab Americans--Ethnic identity. 2. Muslims--United States--Ethnic
identity. I. Title.
E184.A65H325 2011
305.892’7073--dc23
2011022342
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper with a 30% pcw
recycled content.
Contents
<
1 The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity
in the United States 1
2 Muslims and American Religious Pluralism 37
3 The Shaping of a Moderate North American Islam 67
Notes 97
Works Cited 113
v

1
The Shaping of Arab and Muslim
Identity in the United States
<
The al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon are repeatedly depicted as hav-
ing “changed America forever.” Whether or not such hyperbole
is completely justified, there can be little doubt of the reverbera-
tions of the event in all spheres of American life in general and
in the lives of Muslims and Arabs living in the United States in
particular. The questions that future scholars will have to inves-
tigate include whether the attacks had a lasting effect on Arabs
and Muslims and their integration and assimilation in the United
States, as well as what permanent impact, if any, they will have on
the unfolding of the articulation of Islam in the American public
square. Certainly the U.S. government is currently attempting to
play an important role in such a reformulation of Islam through
its high-intensity attempts to identify, one might even say create,
a “moderate Islam,” one that is definitively different from that
espoused by those who perpetrated the attacks and justified their
actions by reference to the religion of Islam.
There are no accurate figures for the number of Muslims
in the United States. Neither the census data nor the records of
1
2 Becoming American?
the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) provide any
information on religious affiliation of citizens or immigrants.
Consequently, there exists a great disparity in the estimates of
their number in the United States, from two million, as reported
by B’nai Brith, to as many as eleven million, as reported by
Warith Deen Mohammed, leader of the Muslim American
Society (MAS), the largest African-American Muslim organiza-
tion. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in all
of its communiqués, gives the figure as seven million Muslims.
While the numbers are contested, it is generally agreed that they
are significant. The larger the community, Muslims believe, the
bigger its potential impact in the political arena and influence on
policy. The figures appear to be of similar importance to some
in the Jewish community, who over a decade ago began warning
about the “imminent threat” of a Muslim presence in America.1
An estimated three million Arabic-speaking people (and
their descendants, a few of whom are in their sixth generation)
now live in the United States, constituting about 1 percent of
the population. The majority arrived during the last third of the
twentieth century. The community is still in the process of being
formed and re-formed as the policies of the American government
regulate the flow of immigrants from the Arab world. Legislation
limiting immigration, as well as American foreign policy and the
prevailing American prejudice against Arabs, Muslims, and Islam,
has at times accelerated and at other times impeded the integra-
tion and assimilation of the community into American society.
The Arab community in the United States is noted for its
diversity, which is evident in its ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious,
sectarian, tribal, and national identities. Today Arab-Americans
are dispersed throughout the United States. Two-thirds of them
live in ten states, including one-third in California, New York,
and Michigan. About half of them (48 percent) live in twenty
large metropolitan areas, with the highest concentrations in
Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, Chicago, and Washington,
D.C. About a quarter of them (23 percent) are Muslims (Sunni,
Shi‘ites, and Druze) and constitute a minority within the
The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States 3
Arab-American community, the majority of whom are Christian,2
with a small Jewish minority.3 Arab-Americans are also a minor-
ity (25 percent) within the Muslim-American community, which
includes an estimated 33 percent South Asians and 30 percent
African-Americans.4
The Arabic-Speaking Immigrants of the United States
A few Muslim males from the Syrian Province of the Ottoman
Empire (today’s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine/Israel)
began arriving in the United States in the 1870s. They were
rural migrant laborers hoping to make money and return to live
in their homelands.5 Their success, the deteriorating economy
in the Middle East, and the subsequent famine precipitated by
World War I brought about 4,300 additional Muslims to the
United States between 1899 and 1914.6 The flow of immigra-
tion was interrupted during World War I, and was curtailed by
the National Origin Act of 1924, which restricted the number of
immigrants from the Middle East to one hundred persons per year.
The early immigrants were classified by the officials of
the INS as coming from “Turkey in Asia.” These immigrants
resented the Turkish designation, since many were running away
from Ottoman conscription and oppression, as well as the Asia
designation, since it excluded them from becoming citizens. By
1899 the INS began to add the subcategory of “Syrians” to their
registration.7 That became the identity of choice, as argued by
Philip Hitti in The Syrians in America,8 who insisted that Syrians
were distinct from the Turks and had made great contributions
to human civilization. They spoke of themselves as “wlad ‘Arab”
(children of Arabs), a reference to the language they spoke.
The early Muslim immigrants to the United States from
Greater Syria were few in number. They came to the United
States when racism and nativism were paramount, when “Anglo
conformity” was promoted as the norm for citizenship and the
Protestant establishment determined what was American. Like the
millions of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, they fol-
lowed the patterns of integration and assimilation that refashioned