When NYPD wears a Muslim topi

Latif has consciously shaped his ministries to help forge a new kind of Muslim identity, one that confronts this painful clash of traditions. The experience echoes that of Catholic immigrants who a century ago found themselves in a largely Protestant culture suspicious of their beliefs.

Unlike their counterparts in Europe, Muslims in the US tend to be solidly middle class and mainstream. Their incomes and education levels mirror those of the general public, according to a comprehensive 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center. That has helped them fit into the broader society. No one is sure of their numbers, though. Some groups say there are as many as 7 million Muslims in the US. Pew estimates there are 2.35 million throughout the country, mostly in urban areas.

Many devout Muslim immigrants simply try to re-create their traditional cultures in the US, say some scholars. But when their children grow up within the American culture, they adopt American attitudes and values. “What the [older generation] sees is that religion can only survive in their particular cultural matrix,” says Sherman Jackson, professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Michigan, a Muslim who has also addressed Latif’s questions. “So their tendency is to take that cultural matrix wherever they go as a means of preserving the religion.”

“In America, we are in a different cultural space, and we are still in the process of trying to develop a culture that resonates with the teachings, the sensibilities, the moral parameters of our religion,” he continues. “What you have are two communities, one who says that Islam already has a cultural expression, the other saying that, no, Islam in America is in the process of developing a cultural expression.”

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Latif’s own religious awakening began his junior year at Wardlaw-Hartridge, a private prep school in Edison, N. J., where he grew up as the youngest of three children. He played defensive back on the football team and was class president. His father, a doctor, had brought his bride to the US in the 1970s. Though not particularly devout in their early years, the family connected with their religious roots during the 1990s.

By his junior year, Latif was taking advantage of his reputation and position as a top student and popular leader to cut class – to attend mosque. But he would arrive there in his prep-school jacket and tie and driving a black Lexus. “I had no idea, I had no comprehension whatsoever, about differences in people’s perceptions of affluence and socioeconomic backgrounds,” he says. “I just wanted to pray. And so it became hard to find someone to teach me.”

At NYU, he continued to explore his religious identity and became a leader in the university’s Muslim student group. After graduating, he became the de facto chaplain. Eventually he attended Hartford Theological Seminary, which has a program in Islamic Studies.

His work at NYU and Princeton, where he also served as a chaplain, attracted the attention of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who appointed him an NYPD chaplain in April 2007. For Latif, serving in a world-renowned American institution was the perfect opportunity to forge a particularly American form of Islam.

“And now it’s like, how do you mesh together this seeming dichotomy of Islam and the West?” he asks. “When I walk down the street and I’m wearing my uniform, and I also have a beard and my head covered, you see that that’s not a dichotomy, it’s a reality.”

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