Ramadan
20
10
12
By Frankie Martin
Ibn Khaldun Chair Research Fellow
at American University
O
ver the last two years I have been on an ex-
traordinary journey. As a member of a re-
search team accompanying American
University's Chair of Islamic Studies, Akbar Ahmed, I
have visited over 75 U.S. cities and 100 mosques for
the book Journey into America: The Challenge of
Islam, which is published this month by the Brook-
ings Institution Press. During our fieldwork, I
learned a great deal about America's Muslim com-
munity, the religion they practice, and their various
cultures. But what surprised me the most was what I
learned about America.
Growing up in this country, I rarely thought about
what it meant to be American. It was only in my time
abroad that I began to ponder this question, first liv-
ing in Kenya during high school and then as a college
student traveling with Professor Ahmed on a project
that visited eight Muslim countries and culminated
in the 2007 book Journey into Islam: The Crisis of
Globalization. Those I met on the trip in places like
Jordan and Pakistan were often coming across an
American for the first time. I was hit with a torrent of
anti-American sentiment that left me reeling.
At first, I was tempted to think that there was lit-
tle I or anyone could do about the fury I encoun-
tered. The America described to me seemed a dark
fortress at home and a warmongering nation abroad,
bent on exploitation and terror. Yet upon listening
and showing the people I met respect, I was able to
add some nuance to my earlier assessment as they
welcomed me into their homes and places of wor-
ship. Yes, it turned out, they were furious, but they
were furious in part because they felt betrayed. They
used to have something, they said, which had been
ripped away after 9/11: a belief in the ideals of Amer-
ica. People of every background and religious inter-
pretation told me howmuch they appreciated these
ideals and commonly said they were the same as
those found in Islam.
Walking with Professor Ahmed near his child-
hood home in Karachi, I was fascinated to hear how
he idolized America and people like John F. Kennedy
and Martin Luther King Jr. growing up. When Jackie
Kennedy visited Lahore in 1962, he told me, thou-
sands of cheering Pakistanis lined the streets, throw-
ing flowers at her open car. Her visit to the tribal
areas elicited the same response. Now, a few feet
fromwhere we were standing, a suicide bomber had
blown himself up the previous week, killing an
American diplomat. Broken glass littered the ground
around us. The good will had all but evaporated.
So what happened? Our journey through America
would yield some answers.
The first thing that struck me about American
Muslims was their patriotism. Muslims throughout
the land spoke of their love for America and fre-
quently cited it as the best place
to be a Muslim.
Yet the community is on edge,
often paranoid and living in fear
of Americans around them, sen-
timents commonly reciprocated
by the Americans themselves.
Although we met
many compas-
sionate Ameri-
cans of all
religious and
cultural back-
grounds who wel-
comed Muslims and were working towards a true
pluralistic society, many also saw Islam as an insidi-
ous monolithic threat attempting a takeover of the
United States. The nineteen terrorists on 9/11 had
triggered a deep-seeded fear in Americans, who
lashed out at any real or imagined danger.
Like those overseas, Muslims in America were
acutely aware of the results of this fear and suspicion.
They spoke of a gap between what they understood
to be American ideals and what they had experi-
enced.
Traveling across America we sawmosques that
had been firebombed and visited American Muslim
citizens who had disappeared into prisons and were
held without charge in hellish conditions. We met
young Muslim children who are beaten up at school
and called terrorists, constantly asking their parents,
"Why us?" when the police burst into their homes in
the middle of the night or airline security officers
give their family more scrutiny than others. While
parents commonly urged patience, the explanations
given by the children for their predicament were
filled with anti-Semitism and talk of an American
crusade against Islam. These sentiments are jarring
enough when spoken in a rural madrassa in India,
but positively chilling when uttered matter-of-factly
by 10-year-old boys in sweatpants speaking perfect
American English.
Meeting Americans who said that Muslims should
not be a part of this country -- and witnessing what
the community is going through -- got me thinking
about what America means to me.
Studying the writings of the Founding Fathers, my
gloom turned to pride. I was inspired to see what
these extraordinary men wrote about Islam and the
inclusive vision they had for the nation. John Adams
cited the Prophet Muhammad as one of the
world's great truth-seekers alongside
Confucius and Socrates; Thomas Jeffer-
son learned Arabic using his Quran and
hosted the first presidential iftaar during
Ramadan; and Benjamin
Franklin expressed his hope that
the head cleric of Istanbul
would preach Islam to Americans
from a pulpit Franklin himself
had funded, so passionate was
his belief in religious freedom. In
fashioning a nation of law and
civil liberties, the Founding Fa-
thers wanted to make America a haven for the op-
pressed and "begin the world over again," in the
words of Thomas Paine.
It is this America, the true America, that inspires
American Muslims to speak of their patriotismor
millions upon millions of Muslims overseas to look
to the U.S. for justice, wisdom, and hope. They do
not think much of the America that sees Muslims as
a dangerous foreign "other" at home and finds it nec-
essary to torture terror suspects. And many feel ha-
tred for the America that has contributed to the
deaths of 80,000 Somalis in the pursuit of three Al
Qaeda suspects, for example, or the deaths of one
million Iraqis in pursuit of no Al Qaeda suspects and
weapons that never existed. Muslims at home and
abroad are aware that Guantanamo Bay remains
open, the Patriot Act has been extended, and the
practice of indefinite detention and rendition con-
tinues.
Nearly every time I turn on the television, some-
one is asking what can be done to win over Muslims
and defeat terrorism. The answer is simple. We
should start acting like Americans.
—The Huffington Post
What I learned about
America from visiting
100 mosques
