Tailor Muslim practices to fit life in America

A study on US mosques conducted in 2000 by four of the main Muslim American national organizations showed that 2 million of the estimated 6 million Muslim Americans attend Muslim religious institutions at least once or twice each year, and of those, just 411,060 attend mosques regularly. Even allowing for possible exaggeration and duplication - because the survey relied on mosque representatives for its information - the results still raise issues that most Muslim American organizations are afraid to tackle. The most obvious one is that two-thirds of Muslim Americans don't publicly participate even in the most minimal cultural manifestations of their faith (like a Roman Catholic who celebrates only Christmas Mass or a Jew who attends synagogue only during the High Holy Days).

In fact, America's traditional Muslim institutions are isolated from the daily reality of life in America.

For one thing, they continue to systematically exclude women from participation. Not only do practically all US mosques shut women out of the top leadership position, fully half of them either officially forbid women from serving on their governing boards or, in cases where there is no such specific prohibition, where women have not served on these boards over the past five years.

Women who do attend mosques and who aren't willing to fulfill traditional roles find it hard to participate actively. For Farah Nousheen, a young Muslim American filmmaker who just completed "Nazrah," a documentary on Muslim American women, her alienation reached such a level that, after searching through mosques in the Chicago and Seattle areas and finding the same stifling atmosphere, she decided to stop attending altogether. "My experience had a lot to do with being a woman in an environment where almost all the leadership were men. At prayers, women sat in a separate area with all the crying kids. It made me feel less important," says Ms. Nousheen, "There are a lot of people out there who feel like they don't belong."

Far from moving toward inclusiveness in the way they deal with women, mosques seem to be doing the opposite. Today, fully two-thirds of mosques force women to pray in a separate room from men or behind a curtain, compared to slightly more than half in 1994. Given this development, it is no surprise that women represent only 15 percent of attendees at the weekly congregational prayers.

Another element that is driving progressive Muslims away from traditional mosques is the preoccupation with literalism and the imposition of foreign customs on a faith that prides itself on its universalism. Sermons delivered by nonnative English-speakers on esoteric topics, such as the intricacies of ablution and the ritual washing before prayers, are the rule - not the exception.

For people like Katelin Mason, a young American Muslim convert and a graduate student of Islamic studies, the identification with Islam by the traditional Muslim American leadership of specifically cultural expressions, such as wearing particular clothing, is a distortion of the faith. "Wearing hijab [head covering] and having a beard have taken priority," she wrote in a recent article for our online magazine, MuslimWakeUp.com. "When the focus is on appearance, actions and intent become less important. When appearance loses importance, piety emerges."

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