To be Muslim and American: two books examine how

How do US Muslims reconcile their seemingly disparate worlds?

By Jane Lampman

from the March 20, 2007 edition

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More than five years after Sept. 11, 2001, many Americans are still grappling with doubts about Islam and concerns about the American Muslim community.

Although an estimated 6 million Muslims live in the United States today, 60 percent of Americans say they do not know a Muslim, much less have one as a neighbor. More than one-third say they question Muslims' loyalty to this country (although polls show that those acquainted with Muslims hold more positive views).

As Americans wonder whether the home-grown extremism encountered in London could develop here, two new books offer valuable insights into the Muslim-American experience.

Both are written by seasoned journalists, outsiders (one Jewish, the other Christian) who have nevertheless gained access to the lives of both prominent and ordinary members of the faith.

In American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, Paul Barrett sketches complex, stereotype-defying portraits of seven individuals. These include a politically astute newspaper publisher in Dearborn, Mich.; a black imam from Brooklyn, N.Y.; a convert to Sufism; a feminist; and a legal scholar whose writings on the Koran and sharia challenge fundamentalism.

Barrett covered the Muslim community for The Wall Street Journal before moving to Business Week, and he spent many hours in homes and mosques across the US. "Some Muslim preachers, sad to say, give sermons condemning nonbelievers," he writes, "but these messages are not that different ... from those delivered in some fundamentalist Christian churches."

Still, the profiles show the tensions some Muslims face as a result of internal struggles in the faith between strict orthodoxy and a more moderate Islam, or between Sufi and other sects, or over the role of women in the mosque.

The experience of Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a case in point. A prolific writer leading the charge against the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, he is a hero to progressive Muslims, yet controversial among others. His work on such subjects as tolerance toward other faiths and the role of women has brought threats on his life.

Other profiles reveal the challenge of straddling two cultures. Osama Siblani, a dynamic Lebanese-born publisher, has a deep love for the US, yet strongly disagrees with its foreign policy.

Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a highly respected Saudi graduate student at the University of Idaho, was tried for supporting terrorism by serving as a webmaster for questionable Arab-speaking sites. He was found innocent – yet he and his family are deported.

More encouraging is the story of Mustafa Saied, an Indian student at the University of Tennessee who was drawn into Islamic radicalism by the Muslim Brotherhood and then "won back" by moderate members of the Muslim community. Now a family man and business owner in Florida, Mr. Saied promotes moderate Islam in online forums.

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