Search for the American imam
Saturday, June 2, 2007
SHAYKH Yassir Fazaga regularly uses a standard American calendar to provide inspiration for his weekly Friday sermon.
Around Valentine's Day this year, he talked about how the Quran endorses romantic love within certain ethical parameters. (As opposed to, say, clerics in Saudi Arabia, who denounce the banned saint's day as a Satanic ritual.) On World Aids Day, he criticised Muslims for making moral judgments about the disease rather than helping the afflicted, and on International Womens Day he focused on domestic abuse.
"My main objective is to make Islam relevant," said Shaykh Fazaga, 34, who went to high school in Orange County, which includes Mission Viejo, and brings a certain American flair to his role as imam in the mosque here.
Prayer leaders, or imams, in the US have long arrived from overseas, forced to negotiate a foreign culture along with their congregation. Older immigrants usually overlook the fact that it is an uneasy fit, particularly since imported shaykhs rarely speak English. They welcome a flavour of home.
But as the first generation of American-born Muslims begins graduating from college in significant numbers, with a swelling tide behind them, some congregations are beginning to seek native imams who can talk about religious and social issues that seem relevant to young people, like dating and drugs. On an even more practical level, they want an imam who can advise them on day-to-day American matters like how to set up a retirement plan to funnel the obligatory almsgiving known as zakat, which Islam mandates.
The problem is that you have a young generation whose own experience has nothing to do with where its parents came from, said Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the Near Eastern studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, who surveys Muslim communities.
But the underlying quandary is that American imams are hard to find, though there are a few nascent training programmes. These days, many of the men leading prayers across the United States on any given Friday are volunteers, doctors or engineers who know a bit more about the Quran than everyone else. Scholars point out that one of the great strengths of Islam, particularly the Sunni version, is that there is no official hierarchy.
But this situation is fueling a debate about just how thoroughly an imam has to be schooled in Islamic jurisprudence and other religious matters before running a mosque.
The downside for Islam in America, some critics argue, is that those interpreting Islamic law often lack a command of the full scope of the traditions carried in the Quran and the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (upon him peace) considered sacred.
Experts say the problem is exacerbated because few immigrant parents want their children to become imams.
"Immigrant parents want their children to become doctors, engineers, computer scientists," Dr Bazian said. "If you suggested that they might want their kid to study to become an imam, they would hold a funeral procession."
The few imams born or at least raised in the United States who win over their congregations tend to be younger men who can play pickup basketball with the teenagers, but also have enough training in classical Arabic and Islamic jurisprudence that the older members accept their religious credentials.
Imam Ronald Smith Jr, 29, who runs the Islamic Center of Daytona Beach in Florida, converted to Islam at 14 to escape the violence in his African-American community in Atlantic City. As part of his training, he spent six years studying at the Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia.
"Foreign imams, because of the culture in their countries, kind of stick to the mosque and the duties of the mosque without involving themselves much in the general community," Imam Smith said. "The hip-hop culture is difficult to understand if you have never lived it.
"The foreign imams' idea of mosque outreach," Imam Smith said, "is sponsoring an evening lecture series where everyone sits around for an hour and listens to a speech about being devout or maybe world politics, which teenagers find less than compelling."
Mosque leaders say the risk is that younger Muslims, already feeling under assault in the United States, might choose one of two extremes. They either drift away from the faith entirely if they cannot find answers, or leave the mosque for a more radical fringe.
Born in the East African nation of Eritrea, Shaykh Fazaga moved to the Arab world before coming to Mission Viejo at age 15. Drawn toward Islam by college students, he enrolled in the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, a Virginia campus of al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The United States government expelled much of the faculty in 2004 as part of the crackdown on extremist Islamic rhetoric.
The school was accused of being an American outpost of the puritanical Wahhabi sect, a label Shaykh Fazaga rejects. But that might be one reason he has been stopped for questioning some 20 times every time he returns home from abroad.
Younger Muslims seek him out for guidance, he said, and the fact that he is studying for a masters degree in psychological therapy helps. Teenagers have requested advice about being addicted to Internet pornography, he said, and about sexual orientation. He counsels adolescents — gay and straight — that sexual attraction is natural, but to act on it is wrong and that any addiction should be treated.
Previous imams would simply admonish the youths that something was a forbidden abomination, subject closed. Nermeen Zahran, a female congregant, wonders, in the end, whether a purer form of Islam will develop in the United States, with prayer leaders focused on the concerns of the community, rather than not treading on the toes of the government that supports them, as in much of the Muslim world.
"Islam in America is trying to create a new cultural matrix that can survive in the broader context of America," claimed Prof Sherman Jackson, who teaches Arabic and Islamic law at the University of Michigan. "It has to change for the religion to survive."www.nytimes.com
Around Valentine's Day this year, he talked about how the Quran endorses romantic love within certain ethical parameters. (As opposed to, say, clerics in Saudi Arabia, who denounce the banned saint's day as a Satanic ritual.) On World Aids Day, he criticised Muslims for making moral judgments about the disease rather than helping the afflicted, and on International Womens Day he focused on domestic abuse.
"My main objective is to make Islam relevant," said Shaykh Fazaga, 34, who went to high school in Orange County, which includes Mission Viejo, and brings a certain American flair to his role as imam in the mosque here.
Prayer leaders, or imams, in the US have long arrived from overseas, forced to negotiate a foreign culture along with their congregation. Older immigrants usually overlook the fact that it is an uneasy fit, particularly since imported shaykhs rarely speak English. They welcome a flavour of home.
But as the first generation of American-born Muslims begins graduating from college in significant numbers, with a swelling tide behind them, some congregations are beginning to seek native imams who can talk about religious and social issues that seem relevant to young people, like dating and drugs. On an even more practical level, they want an imam who can advise them on day-to-day American matters like how to set up a retirement plan to funnel the obligatory almsgiving known as zakat, which Islam mandates.
The problem is that you have a young generation whose own experience has nothing to do with where its parents came from, said Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the Near Eastern studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, who surveys Muslim communities.
But the underlying quandary is that American imams are hard to find, though there are a few nascent training programmes. These days, many of the men leading prayers across the United States on any given Friday are volunteers, doctors or engineers who know a bit more about the Quran than everyone else. Scholars point out that one of the great strengths of Islam, particularly the Sunni version, is that there is no official hierarchy.
But this situation is fueling a debate about just how thoroughly an imam has to be schooled in Islamic jurisprudence and other religious matters before running a mosque.
The downside for Islam in America, some critics argue, is that those interpreting Islamic law often lack a command of the full scope of the traditions carried in the Quran and the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (upon him peace) considered sacred.
Experts say the problem is exacerbated because few immigrant parents want their children to become imams.
"Immigrant parents want their children to become doctors, engineers, computer scientists," Dr Bazian said. "If you suggested that they might want their kid to study to become an imam, they would hold a funeral procession."
The few imams born or at least raised in the United States who win over their congregations tend to be younger men who can play pickup basketball with the teenagers, but also have enough training in classical Arabic and Islamic jurisprudence that the older members accept their religious credentials.
Imam Ronald Smith Jr, 29, who runs the Islamic Center of Daytona Beach in Florida, converted to Islam at 14 to escape the violence in his African-American community in Atlantic City. As part of his training, he spent six years studying at the Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia.
"Foreign imams, because of the culture in their countries, kind of stick to the mosque and the duties of the mosque without involving themselves much in the general community," Imam Smith said. "The hip-hop culture is difficult to understand if you have never lived it.
"The foreign imams' idea of mosque outreach," Imam Smith said, "is sponsoring an evening lecture series where everyone sits around for an hour and listens to a speech about being devout or maybe world politics, which teenagers find less than compelling."
Mosque leaders say the risk is that younger Muslims, already feeling under assault in the United States, might choose one of two extremes. They either drift away from the faith entirely if they cannot find answers, or leave the mosque for a more radical fringe.
Born in the East African nation of Eritrea, Shaykh Fazaga moved to the Arab world before coming to Mission Viejo at age 15. Drawn toward Islam by college students, he enrolled in the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, a Virginia campus of al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The United States government expelled much of the faculty in 2004 as part of the crackdown on extremist Islamic rhetoric.
The school was accused of being an American outpost of the puritanical Wahhabi sect, a label Shaykh Fazaga rejects. But that might be one reason he has been stopped for questioning some 20 times every time he returns home from abroad.
Younger Muslims seek him out for guidance, he said, and the fact that he is studying for a masters degree in psychological therapy helps. Teenagers have requested advice about being addicted to Internet pornography, he said, and about sexual orientation. He counsels adolescents — gay and straight — that sexual attraction is natural, but to act on it is wrong and that any addiction should be treated.
Previous imams would simply admonish the youths that something was a forbidden abomination, subject closed. Nermeen Zahran, a female congregant, wonders, in the end, whether a purer form of Islam will develop in the United States, with prayer leaders focused on the concerns of the community, rather than not treading on the toes of the government that supports them, as in much of the Muslim world.
"Islam in America is trying to create a new cultural matrix that can survive in the broader context of America," claimed Prof Sherman Jackson, who teaches Arabic and Islamic law at the University of Michigan. "It has to change for the religion to survive."www.nytimes.com
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