Farzaneh Milani
Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages
and Studies in Women and Gender, University of Virginia
Abdulaziz Sachedina Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
"Imaginging Unity: Muslim Cultural Diversity in North America"
May 1, 2003

Faranzeh Milani: Let me begin by telling you that these are not easy times to be Muslim. Much less, a Middle Easterner. The proliferation of stereotypes, the circulation of misconceptions, the abundance of misinformation are rampant. In such a climate, a Middle Eastern Muslim is locked in a posture of defensiveness. And that is not one of my favorite postures.

So what I have to say this evening if it strikes you as stridence, please accept it in the spirit in which it is offered. A spirit of genuine desire to establish a dialogue between cultures rather than a clash between them. The topic of our conversation this evening is ìImagining Unity: Muslim Cultural Diversity in North Americaî. At a time when Islam is presented and I quote here, ìas a very evil and wicked religionî by no less than Reverend Franklin Graham, in a period in which a respected holy man insists that the God of Christianity and Islam are as different as lightness and darkness, then Unity and Diversity take on new connotations.

When faith, which ought to be a unifying force, becomes divisive, when it accentuates imaginary differences rather than focus on real similarities, when the factual diversity within a community is neglected and artificial and injurious homogeneity is imposed upon itís members, then mutual respect can turn into intolerance with grave consequences for all parties involved.

Consider the pain and suffering inflicted on men who wore the turban after the cataclysmic events of September 11th. Overnight, they came to personify terrorism. Prior to September 11th, the turban did not arouse much curiosity in the West. It was relegated to the margins if remarked at all. Occasionally it appeared as the villainsí headgear of choice in such popular movies as Aladdin, or the best selling novel, Harry Potter.
September 11th changed all of that. Although none of the nineteen hijackers wore turbans. Although all of them were smooth shaven, close cropped, bareheaded men in western clothes, the turban became the defining feature of the Islamic world. And linked with terrorism. Mr. John Quincy, the congressman from Louisiana called the turban, ìa diaper on the headî in a radio show he announced that should he encounter a diaper headed guy on a plane, he would need to have him pulled over. The congressman was not alone in his indictment. Indeed, some passengers were not allowed to be air borne and turbaned at the same time. A few men who attempted to board planes wearing turbans were pulled off their flights. Others found it preferable to give up on travel all together. Finally, the Federal Aviation Administration had to issue guidelines regarding turban wearers. Much to their surprise, even non-Muslim men who wore the turban found themselves the target of anger and revenge.

One Indian man paid with his life for wearing a turban. A gunman who had mistaken a Sheik for a Muslim, shot Mr. Shootie at his convenience store in Arizona in mid-September 2001. His sin was wearing a turban. And his executionerís explanation was love for his country.

But not all those who wear a turban are Muslim. Not all Muslims wear the turban. Not all Arabs are Muslim. Not all Muslims are Arab. In fact, only 23% of the Arab population living in the United States of America is Muslim. 77% are Christian. Islam being the fastest growing faith in this country as it is in the world today, the number of Muslims in America has soared in the last decade. Fourteen fold. Only half a million in the early ë70s, the estimated number of Muslims in America today is between six and to seven million. 75% of them are non-Arabs.

Currently there are 1.2 million Muslims in the world. In other words, one out of every five person living on the face of the earth is Muslim. A ratio that is projected to be one out of four by year 2020. In view of such a significant number and a vast variety of races, nationalities and cultures, in what sense if any can one speak of a typical Muslim man or woman. Such a person has never existed.Just as an Islam unified in itís practices, policies and goals has never existed.

But perhaps the most misunderstood sector of the Islamic community is itís women. Countless number of articles, editorials, books and film reflects and reinforce misperceptions. Muslim women are uniformly identified as oppressed and victimized. They are reduced to stereotypes. Denied their human dignity. Islam is often held responsible for abuses of women based on the reported lives of some Muslim women during certain periods in certain countries. All chosen randomly. The rights granted women in the Koran are rarely discussed. The high profile and vital role of women in the early years of the Islamic history are infrequently mentioned. The reality at the most orthodox as well as the most radical Muslim pronounce the Koran to be the immutable words of God and yet, great disparities exist within the Islamic world providing and proving that different interpretations of the scripture are both possible and viable are often overlooked.

I do not need to suggest that Islam is not interwoven in more ways than one with the position of women in Islam. It is. Islamic canonical law known as Shariía is still observed in most Muslim countries presented at God will. Shariía amplifies gender inequities and hierarchies drawing heavily on male centered interpretations of Koranic gender laws. It inculcates a hierarchy within the family unit and by extension, in the society at large where men exercise control over women.

In fact, beneath local and denominational variations in the Islamic world some basic patterns are discernible and some well established facts available. For instance, Muslim women have one of the lowest literacy rates in the world today. And in spite of compulsory education in most countries, the gap between boys and girls enrollment remains large. There is a low level of female employment. Men control goods and services that have exchange value while women are mainly involved in use value production such as childcare, and the domestic work. There is a high level of fertility coupled with relative infrequency of celibacy, or the choice of it.

According to Shaiía a man can satisfy his sexual desires with as many women as he wishes. He is allowed to marry up to four wives simultaneously provided he can offer equivalent care, attention and affection to each. Shiites also practice temporary marriage. This is a contract between a man and an unmarried woman in which the duration of the union and the price are specified. Men also have the unilateral right to divorce but women can obtain divorce on grounds of cruelty, abandonment, sexual impotence or lack of support. This is not such a happy picture.

Muslim women suffer discrimination in most Islamic nations while their religion granted them more rights and privileges fourteen centuries ago. More rights than any Muslim majority country that I know, grants women rights today. The Koran in itís core teaching treats men and women as equals while acknowledging the physical distinction between them as well as their different roles and functions in society. The Koran does not base superiority on gender. It bases it on the level of piety. So while Muslim women are identified as oppressed and victimized in the West, I as one of observer see them as the most vibrant agent of change in the Islamic world today. Never before have so many women played such an active and important role in all aspects of life. Refusing to be eliminated from the public scene or relegated to the domain of the private, women have invaded previously all male territories in most Islamic countries. Not surprisingly, they are concerned the most threatening emblems of change in that region but also you should realize that they hold the political future of the region in their hands. Thank you. (applause)

Abdulaziz Sachedina: It is indeed my pleasure to see all of you here tonight. And it is going to make my task of conversation much easier seeing that you are eager to participate with me in assessing a human experience.

Modernity does not know any boundaries and it creates situations that were unthinkable some decades ago. The world has indeed become very small. We are able to travel; we are able to go to different parts of the world, observe, visit, even live there temporarily or permanently and change our identities. In Islam, immigration has always been encouraged as a God-given right to human beings to move, to exercise mobility. Human beings should be able to move freely and seek God's blessing anywhere on earth. It is very interesting to note that nationalism is much weaker in the Islamic world because human beings are always connected to the entire earth. Regionalism and nationalism is human construct. Godís plan is to relate people as a global community. People are encouraged to work locally and think in global terms. Nationalistic terms of reference are incidental rather than natural. But this universalism is not without it's problems.

Immigration or emigration, leaving your native place and establishing somewhere else creates a challenge. It is a challenge of insecurity in a foreign culture. In such a situation of insecurity people want to imagine a community of their own. They want to imagine that all the people in oneís faith community are somehow united. There is a sense of unity at the level of faith. And yet, the different regions of the world from where one comes create the diversity that must be recognized in any healthy community.

To seek homogenization of culture is to destroy the ability of human beings to adjust in different cultures, to engage different cultures. The experience of living in a different culture is like tasting different ethnic food, listening different ethnic music, reading poetry and literature of the Other. Human beings, according to Islam, were meant to be global because the God who has created them is universal God. But that is not the reality of the people who always want to find a small niche of their Italianess, Germaness, Iranianess, Arabness. There is a competition between our global, universal connection as humans and our particularity within our own ethnic group. Throughout the ages we have dealt with this reality and each community has found its own solutions to this competing reality of one's identity. That is why I call this imagined unification as a challenge between integration and assimilation. Muslim communities in North America are living in a very difficult time. And like any modern people, their experience with modernity creates lots of tension and challenges for them. It is very healthy if one knows how to deal with it. But the moment we submit to the fear and the insecurities that we feel around us, it might hamper our ability to adjust in the new environment.

I see you tonight as very brave people coming to learn about a new culture; about people who live among us Americans. They are our new neighbors. We don't know them. They happen to be Muslims, Arabs, Persians, and all kinds of other peoples about whom we know very little.

Our information about Muslims and Arabs even after the Iraqi liberation, so to speak, has been limited. the fact is that we know so little about the people we call Iraqis. We know so little about their women and about the specific problems that confront them. I am a consultant to the Defense Department and the Department of State. I am consulted on the Iraqi religious communities, including Shiites, Sunnis, and various Christian sects. On some occasions I have found, to my astonishment, a total absence of Iraqi women who could be consulted about the Iraqi situation specific to women. These are our policy makers. It appears that women issues are not a priority for the DOD or the DOS. However, as I am sure you all would agree that women are certainly a priority to any human community. If women are ignored then the health of entire family and community is sacrificed.

Basra, Baghdad, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, all other modern cities, in some ways, face very similar fate in terms of the role women play in the well being of the entire nation. Considering the modern times one can note that there is unprecedented economic integration. There is unprecedented cultural homogenization. Our materialist, consumer culture is bringing us together in all places, and at all times. We wear similar things together. We shop together. We do everything together. And yet, we find at the cultural and religious level fractionalization separates us.

We like to feel that as Americans, we are similar in our ways, similar in our handling of the issues that are important for our life. However, it appears that it is more materialist-consumerist homogenization rather than cultural homogenization that takes place. We know so little about a person sitting next to us. The sense of community is lost to us, and that is what modern society is all about. Modern men and women are lonely. The emphasis is on individual success at the expense of familial and other social relationships. By the way, it is worth keeping in mind that familial and social relationship is the core of Abrahamic Traditions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Conceptually Muslims think of the place where they move as immigrants as dar al-hijra (abode of immigration). That means that they are in some sort of Diaspora. Although in Islam there is no concept of Holy Land with a promise to return to it one day, there is always a longing among Muslims to go back to their native country somewhere in the Middle East. Loyalties are somehow divided. It is not unhealthy to nurture oneís culture and religion and commit oneís personal life to oneís cultural-religious identity. But dual loyalties create a problem if taken to its logical culmination in some kind of isolationism. This is a challenge to, what sociologists call, acculturation - the need to adjust and integrate in a new culture.

How should Muslims look at their role in North American social environment? As Muslims, we come with our value systems. We come with our cultural baggage. We also bring with us our deeply entrenched self-righteous attitudes. How do we handle this in the larger intercommunal connections that we need to establish? The wave of immigrants in the sixties and seventies has changed the demographic configuration of North America forever. And, we, from the Third World countries, ought to thank Robert Kennedy for that. In the 1960s, as a senator he was the one who actually introduced the legislation to allow non-European immigrants to come to the United States. Up to that point, only European immigrants were encouraged to come. We never encouraged people from the Third World countries to immigrate. But this immigration of Muslims raises new problems of adjustment for the community in light of the modernity that forces cultural homogenization.

The central question is and has remained as to how we should handle this readjustment. What should be our strategy in the modern environment? There are basically three options for Muslims, individually and as communities. Any one of the three options offers its own problem. The three options are: (1) Withdrawal from engagement with modernity; (2) Accommodation with social and cultural forces that end up into conformity with materialism; and, (3) Resistance to the modern world by creating defensive reaction against those qualities that hamper human development in its totality in the modern world.

The first option, the ìwithdrawalî strategy to face an age of great social, cultural, and psychological uncertainty has led to religious revivalism. Religious revival among Muslims provides the stability and identity by reenacting imaginary historical connection between independent sense of Muslim community, its religion and its religious laws and ethics. This ìseparatismî in religion while seeking assimilation in all other elements of open society, has led to withdrawal from engagement with modernity, engagement with the new social sector, engagement with democracy, which is so important in the development of American identity. This option has revealed the reality that these Muslims have had a hard time adjusting in the American political culture.

The second option, ìaccommodationí with social and cultural forces is informed by the desire to be accepted, with the will for religious reform. There is an underlying recognition that Americans are superior to us. Since, majority of the Muslims come from the Third World countries, they suffer from what I call ìinferiority complex.î Most of them, including myself, come from colonial backgrounds. I remember going to the British schools in Tanzania. English was the language we learnt. Our exams came from overseas and we were graded in Cambridge, England. I attended a Jesuit school, so I was thoroughly indoctrinated in English and Catholic cultural and religious dimensions. The fact is that under the colonial education we did not learn to develop self-respect. What we really learned was to respect colonial rules. That was the game that the colonizers play everywhere. When we migrated to the West we, all of a sudden, became aware of a different attitude. This is an attitude of acceptance. As long as one is willing to play the game in accord with the rules set by the dominant group in the society there is tolerance. The message is very clear: ìAs long as you obey the rules we have set, then you are tolerated. Otherwise, go to hell!î I hear that all the time and I am very conscious of it. Assisted by social and educational advancement and at times ascendancy the American model of ìmelting potî was attractive to those Muslims who were willing to go through the accommodation option.

The third option, ìresistanceî for Muslims has been to grapple with possible futures emerging from their interaction with their heritage in America. In this Muslims share the struggle to foster shared moral commitments and vision in the world devoid of spiritual and moral connections and relations. Intellectually leaning Muslims find the third option of ìresistanceî challenging because resisting the negative implications of modernity can open the possibility of maintaining that ideal communal identity of unified community while engaging the world around individually.

There is a problem in this ideal that is imagined and that does not exist in the concrete reality. There is no such unified worldwide community. In fact, there are many Islamic communities founded upon ethnic identities. The struggle is between a universal identity of Islam and a divisive and specific ethnic identity. The question has always been framed in ethnic terms: Am I Arab first and then Muslim? Some Muslims are Indians, and some others Persians, and so on. They are all Muslims. And, yet, they always exchange their identities within the two identities of being a Muslim, and being a member of ethnic group. The latter seems to be even more important because that is the one that is played out in the local mosque politics around America. Whichever of the two competing identities that serves better is given prominence. The challenge is to stand above these identities in order to search for a shared vision of a civil society in the multifaith and multicultural North American society.

I see myself choosing the third option, which forces me to look into my religious and cultural resources in order to actively engage in my own integration rather than accommodation. My search for a real Muslim identity has led me to sit in dialogue with peoples of different cultural and religious backgrounds.

After spending almost three decades in dialogue I have reached a point where I believe that we need to engage in ìdiapractice.î We need more diapractice so that we can sit together and share with one another our experiences of pain and joy. We must learn from women how to relate, how to build connections and to maintain and sustain them as important part of our life as human beings. Recently, I read about two groups of women in Norway - Muslim and Christian, sitting together and sharing their life narrative. They have gone beyond a dialogue. They are engaged in diapractice. They come together, share meals, listen to one another's complaints, and help each other to overcome the insecurities connected with the religious and cultural ìotherî. That is what we need to do.

For you and me what is the option today? At this time in history we are engaged in helping the people of Iraq to become democratic and to enjoy all the freedoms that you and I enjoy in this country. But, we also read about the difficulties that confront our administrators in fulfilling this promise that we have made to the people of Iraq and, lest we forget, the people of Afghanistan. We want them all to be free people. But unless we begin to engage in diapractice right here and now at home, we will not be able to do that abroad. Remember that age-old maxim: ìCharity begins at home.î Thank you very much. (applause)