As more blacks warm to Islam's emphasis on order, Protestant leaders scramble to make their traditional churches more appealing to young men.

Islam is spreading rapidly among black Americans - not so much because of Louis Farrakhan, but because of men like Suetwedien A. Muhammed. Standing amid boarded-up buildings and graffiti in the East Germantown section of Philadelphia last week, the 31-year-old African-American says, "I know this area. I helped mess up this area." As a boy he sang in the Baptist church's choir, but as a teenager he spent a lot of time on neighborhood street comers. In 1975 he converted to Islam; by 1992 he had opened a small storefront mosque to help turn the neighborhood around. It offers a "homework association," a crime watch and a Big Brothers program for young black men - most, like him, converts from Christianity. A lot of people leave church and go into the bars with their Sunday clothes on"' Muhammed says. "We've been getting a fast fix in church, with the singing and the clapping. Then we come out and are faced with the same problems."

Although Christian ministers say their congregations aren't shrinking - and black evangelical numbers are growing slightly - some leaders are worrying about the church's ability to attract young people in the country's toughest neighborhoods. About one third of the 4 million to 5 million Muslims in the United States are African-Americans, and at its current rapid rate of growth, Islam will become the second largest religion in the United States by the year 2000. While still small compared with Christianity's overall numbers, the Muslim community's growth has been dramatic. In 1989, there were 2,000 declared Muslims in the armed services. This year there are 10,000. In Philadelphia, the number of Muslim blacks has risen from 40,000 to 60,000 in five years. In Chicago, there were only a handful of mosques 20 years ago; today there are 30. And a third of all blacks in the federal prison system are Muslim; most of them converted after being locked up. The surge in interest in Islam - underscored by the prominent Islamic rhetoric at the Million Man March - is forcing mainstream Protestant churches to try new ways to put people in their pews. They realize that Islam's popularity is an indictment of their performance. "We've got a million black men in prison, and they're quickly becoming Muslims," s the Rev. Henry Lyons, leader of the National Baptist Convention, the largest organization of Baptists. "And we're standing by idly doing nothing."

In marketing themselves to black men, traditional African-American churches face two problems: Jesus is commonly depicted as white and most churchgoers are women. The growing interest in the African heritage of American blacks - from music to fashion to academics - has led some to view Christianity as a religion imposed on them by slaveholders. "Christianity is what kept the slaves in check in the first place," said 37-year-old Gwen Priestly, a media consultant in Los Angeles, who recently converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam. "That religion told them to be patient and to wait on the better life in heaven." As earthly conditions for black men have deteriorated, more of them have come to dismiss local churches as irrelevant. "The church was just too women-oriented for me," says Jason Gordon, a 21-year-old from Los Angeles who recently left the Baptist Church for Islam - over his mother's strenuous objections. "Men my age didn't really seem to have an active place. And they do in Islam."

Islam is perceived as more compatible with Afrocentrism and, in some ways, as more masculine. Islamic clergy often emphasize that about a third of the slaves were shipped to America from Muslim countries. And since Islam rejects visual depictions of God, blacks can pray to a formless Allah instead of a blond, blue-eyed Jesus. Most important, Islam's emphasis on dignity and self-discipline appeals to many men in the inner city, where disorder prevails. Muslims are expected to pray five times a day, avoid drugs and alcohol and take care of their families. "Even the manner of walking is different," says Ghayth Nur Kashif, imam of a mosque in southeast Washington. When young men are first introduced to Islam, he says, many come in strutting - "swaying from side to side or walking with a little limp. In very short order the limp and swinging stops." In keeping with the notion that Islam is a full-time way of life, Islamic clergy also pay great attention to the worldly needs of men. Kashif's mosque offers classes not only in the Koran but in computer programming and typing.

Farrakhan may be the best-known "Muslim" leader, but the Nation of Islam has only 20,000 members. In fact, many Muslims don't think the Nation is actually Islamic. Among many differences, Orthodox Muslims believe Allah created all mankind; the Nation teaches that the white race resulted from a botched experiment by a mad black scientist named Yakub. Traditional Islam preaches racial harmony; the Nation advocates racial separatism.

Meanwhile, some churches - impressed with the Muslims' success - have tried to attract more black men by Africanizing Christianity. More ministers are wearing kente cloth on their vestments and playing African drums during services. At First A.M.E. Church in Los Angeles, a stained-glass image of a black Jesus was installed three years ago. Some Philadelphia churches now have images of Christ, Solomon and Moses depicted as black. The Rev. Ivan Hicks, assistant pastor of the Bright Hope Baptist Church, says he hopes to talk young men out of converting to Islam by showing them these images and saying, "You see those broad lips and that broad nose? Jesus looks just like you." And then he talks about Jesus as "a revolutionary, someone who was bringing liberation to the oppressed."

Churches, like mosques, are keen to emphasize outside-the-sanctuary selling points. At Bright Hope Baptist, they've started a Rites of Passage program in which elders mentor 14- to 18-year-olds in spiritual growth and African history. And even without dramatic changes in theological marketing, Protestant leaders believe that there's a limit to how much Islam can ultimately grow, given that the religion traditionally encourages women to wear Muslim garb and concentrate on child rearing. "Women aren't going to put up with all that veil stuff, says Herb Lusk, pastor of the Greater Exodus Baptist Church in Philadelphia.

If that's true, there may be a widening of the spiritual gender gap in the black community, with women going to churches and men to mosques. Religious leaders say that's not necessarily bad. The Rev. James Demus, of the Park Manor Christian Church in Chicago, says the battle for the hearts of young black men is not between Christianity and Islam, but between religion and the lure of the streets. "If they see the street gang as addressing their needs, they go there," he says. "If it's a church group, they go there. If it's Islam, they go there." The hope is that in religion, as in commerce, competition will raise the quality of all the services offered.

The children of Muslim immigrants who came to America in the `60s are coming of age. Both pious and modern, they are the future of the faith In El Cerrito, Calif., Shahed Amanullah knows it's time to pray, not by a muezzin's call from a mosque minaret, but because his PowerMac has chimed. A verse from the Koran hangs by his futon. Near the bookcases--lined with copies of Wired magazine and Jack Kerouac novels--lies a red Arabian prayer rug. There's a plastic compass sewn into the carpet, its needle pointing toward Mecca. At the programmed call, Amanullah begins his prayers, the same as those recited across the globe--from the Gaza Strip to Samarkand.

In his goatee and beret, 30-year-old Amanullah wouldn't remind anyone of Saddam. Hussein or a member of Hizbullah, the sort of Muslims who make headlines. He has never built a biological weapon, issued a fatwa or burned Uncle Sam in effigy. "You think Muslim, you think Saddam. Hussein, you think ayatollah," says one MuslimAmerican twentysomething.

Not after meeting Amanullah. A native Californian, Amanullab grew up running track, listening to Nirvana and reading the Koran. He is a member of a burgeoning subculture: young Islamic America. The children of the prosperous Muslim immigrants of the '60s and '70s are coming of age, and with them arrives a new culture that is a blend of Muslim and American institutions.

Online and on campus, in suburban mosques and summer camps, young American Muslims are challenging their neighbors' perceptions of Islam as a foreign faith and of Muslims as fiery fundamentalists or bomb-lobbing terrorists. That image problem may be this generation's biggest challenge in the New World. Within hours of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Muslims were prime suspects. "You'll die," was one of the printable messages left on mosque answering machines around the country.

America's Muslims are not only taking on stereotypes, they're taking on the status quo. As it was for Christians and Jews before them, America is a laboratory for a re-examination of their faith. America's Muslim community is a quilt of cultures: about 25 percent are of South Asian descent, Arabs represent another 12 percent and nearly half are converts, primarily African-Americans. U.S. society allows them to strip away the cultural influences and superstitions that have crept into Islam during the past 1,400 years. By going back to the basic texts, they're rediscovering an Islam founded on tolerance, social justice and human rights. Some 6 million strong, America's Muslim population is set to outstrip its Jewish one by 2010, making it the nation's second-largest faith after Christianity. Richer than most Muslim communities, literate and natives of the world's sole superpower, America's Muslims are intent on exporting their modern Islam. From the Mideast to central Asia, they'd like to influence debate on everything from free trade to gender politics.

At home, it is a generation committed to maintaining its Islamic heritage while finding a niche in the New World. America's 1,500-odd mosques are spread from Alaska to Florida. Muslims pray daily in State Department hallways, in whiteshoe corporate law firms and in empty boardrooms at Silicon Valley companies like Oracle and Adaptec. Last year Muslim organizations made life miserable for Nike when the company marketed a shoe with a design resembling the name of Allah in Arabic. After protests, Nike discontinued the style and started sensitivity training for employees. In Washington, the American Muslim Council lobbies on issues from school prayer to the Mideast peace process. "We're learning to use our clout," says Farhan Memon, a Muslim and 27-year-old partner in Yack!, a multimillion-dollar Internet publishing business.

Clout doesn't come without confidence, says Manal Omar, a Muslim woman raised in South Carolina. Tall and leather-jacketed, with a trace of Southern drawl, she explodes any stock image of the crushed and silent Muslim woman. In high school, she played basketball in hijab--the Muslim woman's head covering ("my coach nearly freaked"); at college, she won national public-speaking prizes. Friends thought she should become a stand-up comic. Instead, Omar went into refugee relief In her off hours, she's working on a series of books for Muslim-American teenagers--"a sort of Islamic 'Sweet Valley High'," she says. If fighting stereotypes is American Muslims' biggest battle, it is women who are on the front fine. Raised playing touch football and reading Seventeen magazine, women are returning to the Koran to discover whether Islam sanctions the veils, seclusion and silence that many Muslim women endure. (Short answer: no.) In Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, wearing a veil is the law. In Savannah, Ga., or Topeka, Kans., it's a statement. "For some young women, the veil in America works a bit like the Afro during the blackpower era," says Mohja Kahf, a professor at the University of Arkansas. Amira Al-Sarraf, 34, a teacher at an Islamic school in Los Angeles, explains: "I don't have men flirting with me. I enjoy the respect I get."

At her wedding four years ago, Amanny Khattab wore an Islamic veil under her translucent lace tulle one. She remembers the "living hell" of her freshman year at Farmingdale High School on New York's Long Island. "The week before school started, I bought all the cool stuff--Reebok sneakers, Guess! jeans," recalls Khattab. "I wanted to look just like everybody else, but with the scarf." It didn't work. But enduring all the cracks--"towel-head," "rag-head"--made her tough. "Non-Muslim women think I'm oppressed because I wear too much?" says Khattab. "Well, I think they're oppressed because they wear too little."

In Pakistan, tradition dictates that women pray at home rather than at the mosque. In America, women not only go to the mosque--they're on the mosque's board of directors. Saudi Arabian clerics have ruled that it's un-Islamic for women to drive. But try telling a 16-year-old from Toledo, Ohio, who's just gotten her driver's license that the Koran prohibits her from hitting the road. She'll probably retort that the Prophet's favorite wife, Aisha, once directed troops in battle from the back of a camel.

That willingness to challenge convention is revitalizing a religion that many think has stagnated since the Middle Ages. Today a reformation is afoot. Muslims worldwide are working to square a faith founded in Arabia with modernity. Dehates rage: Is Islam compatible with Western-style democracy? With modern science? With feminism? American Muslims, wealthy, wired and standing on the fault line between cultures, are well positioned to bring a 13-century-old faith into the next millennium.

The United States is arguably the best place on earth to be Muslim. Multicultural democracy, with its guarantees of religious freedom and speech, makes life easier for Muslims NSE than in many Islamic states in the Middle East. It's an idea they'd like to export. U.S. Muslim social organizations send money and medicine to beleaguered Kashmiris and Bosnians. The Web site of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an organization devoted to "promoting the establishment of free trade and justice," has links to the Islamic University of Gaza. "The U.S. Constitution describes the perfect Islamic state," says Muhammed Muqtader Khan, who teaches American politics to Muslims. "It protects life, liberty and property."

Growing Muslim-American political consciousness may be the surest sign of assimilation. While their parents may have been happy to sit on the sidelines and pine for the Old World, the new generation realizes that to protect its rights as Americans--and Muslims--it has to speak out. Some mosques educate their communities to be more politically assertive, registering voters and holding programs on how to be an, active PTA parent. Freshly minted Muslim lawyers are joining other ambitious young politicos in Washington. "When people say we'll never have elected MuslimAmerican officials, I say, 'Hey, those are the same things they said about a Catholic named Kennedy running for president'," says Suhail Khan, a 28-year-old congressional staffer. Muslim and Arab groups have protested against airport-security profiling, which they say unfairly targets them as potential terrorists. Last month the American Muslim Council organized a fax-and-phone campaign against bombing Iraq. The No. 1 foreign-policy concern is the Arab-Israeli peace process. Recently, the Arab American Institute--which involves both Muslims and Christians--took a congressional delegation to Syria for a 3 1/2-hour meeting with President Hafez Assad to discuss the issue.

In the 1996 election, three times as many Muslims supported Bill Clinton as Bob Dole. The White House has not forgotten. Last month the First Lady threw a Ramadan party in the marble-and-gilt Indian Treaty Room in the West Wing. Hillary Clinton's talk--which touched on everything from peace to democracy to the trials of being a beleaguered minority--drew fervent applause. Long after the First Lady left, guests loitered, munched baklava and hummus and took snapshots of one another. Having made it to the White House, it seemed, they didn't want to leave.

Early History of Islam

Little is known about Muhammad's childhood. He was orphaned at the age of 6 and brought up by his uncle. As a child, he worked as a shepherd. He was taken on a caravan to Syria by his uncle at the age of 9 (or perhaps 12). Later, as a youth, he was employed as a camel driver on the trade routes between Syria and Arabia. Mohammed later managed caravans on behalf of merchants. He met people of different religious beliefs on his travels, and was able to observe and learn about Judaism, Christianity and the indigenous Pagan religions.

After marriage, he was able to spend more time in meditation. At the age of 40, (610 CE), he was visited in Mecca by the angel Gabriel. He developed the conviction that he had been ordained a Prophet and given the task of converting his countrymen from their pagan, polytheistic beliefs and what he regarded as moral decadence, idolatry, hedonism and materialism.

He met considerable opposition to his teachings. In 622 CE he moved north to Medina due to increasing persecution. The trek is known as the hegira . Here he was disappointed by the rejection of his message by the Jews. Through military activity and political negotiation, Mohammed became the most powerful leader in Arabia, and Islam was firmly established in the area.

By 750 CE, Islam had expanded to China, India, along the Southern shore of the Mediterranean and into Spain. By 1550 they had reached Vienna. Wars resulted, expelling Muslims from Spain and Europe. Since their trading routes were mostly over land, they did not an develop extensive sea trade (as for example the English and Spaniards). As a result, the old world occupation of North America was left to Christians.

Believers are currently concentrated from the West coast of Africa to the Philippines. In Africa, in particular, they are increasing in numbers, largely at the expense of Christianity.

Many do not look upon Islam as a new religion. They feel that it is in reality the faith taught by the ancient Prophets, Abraham, David, Moses and Jesus. Mohammed's role as the last of the Prophets was to formalize and clarify the faith and to purify it by removing foreign ideas that had been added in error.

Estimates of the total number of Muslims in the world vary greatly:

• 0.700 billion or more, Barnes & Noble Encyclopedia 1993
• 0.817 billion, The Universal Almanac (1996)
• 0.951 billion, The Cambridge Factfinder (1993)
• 1.100 billion, The World Almanac (1997)
• 1.200 billion, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic relations)

Islam is growing about 2.9% per year which is faster than the total world population which increases about 2.3% annually. It is thus attracting a progressively larger percentage of the world's population. The number of Muslims in North America is in dispute: estimates range from under 3 million to over 6 million. The main cause of the disagreement appears to be over how many Muslim immigrants have converted to Christianity since they arrived in the US. Statistics Canada reports that 253,260 Canadians identified themselves as Muslims (0.9% of the total population) during the 1991 census. Those figures are believed to be an under-estimate.
 

Sacred Texts

• the Qur'an are the words of God. This was originally in oral and written form; they were later assembled together into a single book, the Qur'an. Its name is often spelled "Koran" in English. This is not recommended, as some Muslims find it offensive.
• The Hadith, which are collections of the sayings of Mohammed.

Muslim Beliefs and Practices

A Muslim's duties as described in the Five Pillars of Islam are:

1. to recite at least once during their lifetime the shahadah (the creed: "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his Prophet"). Most Muslims repeat it at least daily.
2. to perform the salat (prayer) 5 times a day. This is recited while orienting one's body towards Mecca. It is done in the morning, at noon, midafternoon, after sunset and just before sleeping.
3. to donate regularly to charity through zakat, a 2.5% charity tax, and through additional donations to the needy as the individual believer feels moved.
4. to fast during the month of Ramadan [began 1995-FEB-2, 1995 (Year 1415); begins 1996-JAN-22 (Year 1416) and 1997-JAN-10 (Year 1417)]. This is believed to be the month that Mohammed received the Qur'an from God.
5. if economically and physically, to make at least one hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca

The vast majority of Muslims have an entirely different definition of Jihad. It is seen as a personal, internal struggle with one's self. The goal may be achievement in a profession, self-purification, the conquering of primitive instincts or the attainment of some other noble goal.

Common beliefs:

• strict monotheism. God is the creator, is just, omnipotent and merciful
• respect for earlier prophets and belief in their teachings: Abraham, Moses and Jesus
• that Mohammed is the last of the prophets
• belief in the existence of Satan who drives people to sin
• that Muslims who sincerely repent and submit to God return to a state of sinlessness
• belief in Hell where unbelievers and sinners spend eternity
• belief in Paradise, a place of physical and spiritual pleasure where the sinless go after death
• abstinence from alcohol and gambling
• rejection of racism
• avoid the use of alcohol, other drugs, eating of pork, etc.
• avoid gambling
• that Jesus is a prophet. They regard the Christian concept of the deity of Jesus to be blasphemous
• that Jesus was not executed on the cross

Understanding of Jesus, within Islam and Christianity

• Jesus' birth was miraculous.
• Jesus was the Messiah.
• He cured people of illness.
• He restored dead people to life.

• In original sin: that everyone inherits a sinful nature because of Adam and Eve's transgression.
• That Jesus was killed during his crucifixion. He narrowly escaped death, and later reappeared to his disciples.
• That Jesus was resurrected (or resurrected himself) circa 30 CE.
• Salvation is dependent either upon belief in the resurrection of Jesus or belief that Jesus is the Son of God.

Islamic Sects

• Followers of the Hanafi school are called Sunni Muslims and constitute a 90% majority of the believers. They are considered to be main stream traditionalists. Because they are comfortable pursuing their faith within secular societies, they have been able to adapt to a variety of national cultures, while following their three sources of law: the Qur'an, Hadith and consensus of Muslims.
• Followers of the Jafri school are called Shi'ite Muslims and constitute a small minority of Islam. They split from the Sunnis over a dispute about the successor to Mohammed. Their leaders, Imams promote a strict interpretation of the Qur'an and close adherents to its teachings. They believe in 12 heavenly Imams (perfect teachers) who guide the faithful from their locations in Paradise.

• Sufism: a mystic tradition in which followers seek inner knowledge directly from God through meditation and ritual and dancing. They developed in the 7th century CE as an ascetic reaction to the formalism and laws of the Qur'an.
• Baha'i World Faith: This is an attempt to integrate all of the world religions. It was originally a break-away sect from Islam but has since grown to become a separate religion.
• Ahmadis: Followers of the Ahmadiyya Movement  believe that God sent Ahmad as a Messiah, "a messenger of His in this age who has claimed to have come in the spirit and power of Jesus Christ. He has come to call all people around one Faith, i.e. Islam..."

The movement's founder was Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908). He was born in Qadian, India. He felt that he had a mandate from God to correct a serious error within Christianity. Most Christians believe that Jesus is a member of the Godhead. "...because Jesus, whom God sent as a Messiah to the Israelites was taken for a God, Divine jealousy ordained that another man [Ahmad] should be sent as Messiah so that the world may know that the first Messiah was nothing more than a weak mortal."
After his death, the community elected a series of Khalifas (successors). The current and "Fourth Successor (Khalifatul Masih IV), to the Promised Messiah was chosen in the person of Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad" on 1982-JUN-10. The Ahmadiyya Community currently has more than 10 million members worldwide. They are very heavily persecuted in Pakistan.
• Black Muslim Movement (BMM): This is largely a black urban movement in the US. One driving force was a rejection of Christianity as the religion of the historically oppressing white race. It was started by Wallace Fard who built the first temple in Detroit. Elijah Muhammad (born Elijah Poole) established a second temple in Chicago and later supervised the creation of temples in most large cities with significant black populations. They taught that blacks were racially superior to whites and that a racial war is inevitable. The charismatic Malcolm X was perhaps their most famous spokesperson; he plaid an important role in reversing the BMM's anti-white beliefs. In its earlier years, the movement deviated significantly from traditional Islamic beliefs (particularly over matters of racial tolerance the status of the BMM leaders as prophets). This deviation is being reversed.

Criticisms of Islam:

A number of anti-Islamic books have been written recently, criticizing some Islamic countries for lack of religious tolerance, equality for women, lack of democracy, etc. One of the most famous of these books is "Why I am Not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq, an ex-Muslim. Many reviews by readers of this controversial book are available on-line from the Amazon.com web site. An excellent rebuttal of the book by  Jeremiah D. McAuliffe, Jr., titled "Trends and Flaws in Some Anti-Muslim Writing as Exemplified by Ibn Warraq" is at:   http://idt.net/~balboa19/warraq/warraq1a.html
 

References:

• Visit http://www.icna.org for news, frequently asked questions, etc. about Muslims in the U.S., as well as general essays on Islam. The site is maintained by the Islamic Council of North America.
• Visit http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~calmsa/calmsa.html for an impressive home page maintained by the Caltech Muslim Student Association (MSA). It includes essays on Islam and many links to other Islamic WWW sites.
• Visit http://www.wvu.edu/~msa/ for an equally inclusive home page maintained by the Muslim Student Association at the University of West Virginia.
• An excellent Web site: "Islam, the fastest growing religion in the world" discusses Islam, its relationship to science, the role of women in Islam, comparison of Islam with other religions, and other topics. Of particular interest are a series of debates on various topics of interest to Muslims and Christians. See: http://www.beconvinced.com

Islamic Voice carries news from the Islamic world. http://www.islamicvoice.com/ They have a FAQ essay at: http://www.islamicvoice.com/august.98/zakir.htm

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