Culture Islam in America

Nonfiction. American Islam. The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion. By Paul M. Barrett. 304 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.

Late last year a conference of accomplished Muslim women gathered at the Westin Hotel near Times Square in New York City to debate how women might exert greater influence on the interpretation of Islamic Scriptures. During a panel discussion, an Iranian- born anthropologist from Britain said she seconded the position taken by the Labor politician Jack Straw that the full facial veils worn by some Muslims have no place in Western society because they erase a woman's humanity.

The conference room seemed to sunder in two. Half the roughly 200 women present erupted in energetic applause, while many of the rest made catcalls, heckling the speaker.

In the post-9/11 world Muslims have frequently been stereotyped as monolithically murderous, all 1.3 billion worldwide lumped together as extremists bent on destroying the West. The heated debates among Muslims themselves about violence committed under the banner of Islam are often drowned out in the fray.

Paul M. Barrett's timely and engaging new book, "American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion," brings some of those voices in the United States to life.

The book, a series of seven profiles, draws partly from Barrett's reporting for The Wall Street Journal about Islam in America after the 2001 attacks. (He now works for Business Week.) He sketches a varied cast — with a pronounced skew toward outspoken moderates — to try to illustrate the diversity among American Muslims.

Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian- born law professor and Islamic scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, tries to live the moderation he teaches: adopting stray dogs, for example, although many Muslims believe that Scripture condemns dogs as unclean.

There is Osama Siblani, a secular Lebanese Shiite in his early 50s who publishes a weekly newspaper in Dearborn, Michigan. "Since 9/11 I have felt choked," he tells Barrett, a common sentiment among Muslims, who often find themselves in the contradictory position of loving the freedom offered by the United States while abhorring the way the government treats Muslims in the country and abroad.

To describe the African-American Muslim perspective, Barrett spent time with Siraj Wahhaj, a prayer leader who made the rather typical transition from the radicalized Nation of Islam toward more mainstream Sunni Islam. Wahhaj espouses polygamy and refuses to blame Osama bin Laden for the 2001 attacks; African-American Islam, Barrett writes, "lacks fully developed leaders."

"American Islam" mentions in passing, but does not analyze, the pronounced rift between immigrant Muslims and African-Americans, who make up as much as 40 percent of the estimated six million Muslims in the United States. Many African-Americans maintain that Arab and Asian immigrants disdain them as insufficiently orthodox, failing to appreciate the inroads they made for Islam.

"American Islam" lacks figures to represent the conservative or the extremist viewpoint — one difficulty in relying on a series of profiles to illustrate the faith — and the format doesn't allow for an in-depth assessment of Islamic radicalism in the United States.

Barrett refers to a hot debate over the degree to which the creed of the Wahhabis, the puritanical Saudi Arabian sect hostile to non-Muslims, exists here. But aside from a few swipes by Wahhaj at democracy, we hear only from critics of extremism.

It might have been a problem of access: American Muslims are extremely wary of reporters. They feel they were vilified after 9/11, being considered somehow less than loyal Americans.

"American Islam" is perhaps reassuring in noting that Muslims in the United States are more prosperous, better educated and more politically active than immigrants elsewhere in the West. And Barrett's cast implies that there are vigilant Muslims determined to uproot extremists should they try to plant themselves in the United States.

Source : http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/04/features/bookfri.php