#americanmosques

Masjid An-Noor: Interview with the Imam (Part 2 of 2)

Masjid An-Noor: Interview with the Imam (Part 1 of 2)

Touring Masjid An-Noor (Part 3 of 3): Exterior Community Spaces

Touring Masjid An-Noor (Part 2 of 3):  Signs and Symbols of Faith

The mosque is decorated throughout with beautiful Arabic calligraphy, including on and around important features such as the mihrab and minbar at the front of the room, the zakat (charity) box located at the main doors, and in the hallways.

For more on the role of calligraphy as decoration see this article on “Calligraphy in Islamic Art” from the Victoria and Albert Museum or this article on Arts in the Islamic world from the Smithsonian.

Learn more about the mihrab and minbar features of a mosque from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s educator’s guide to the mosque here.

During a research trip to Buffalo, New York, we were fortunate to speak with the imam of Masjid An-Noor, Imam Khalil.  Imam Khalil spoke about the community outreach efforts and interfaith programs that he believes are a central part of his work as a community leader and his role as an Imam.

In the overall interview he spoke about a the importance of knowing your neighbors, and a local gift-giving event his mosque and students of the University of Buffalo put together every year as a celebration of Eid. The imam put a great deal of emphasis on community engagement and outreach. His message of community engagement and the need for fostering positive interactions is especially valuable in the context of rising Islamophobia in the United States.

What happens in a mosque?

One of the most common themes in American questions about the importance of mosques in the USA are a frequent lack of understanding about what actually happens in a mosque.  

Q&A SERIES: Part 2 of 3 in STUDENT QUESTIONS ABOUT WHY/IF WE NEED MOSQUES IN THE USA

(See Q&A posts explained HERE)

Early American mosques come in many forms, some less recognizable than the mosques in Cedar Rapids and Ross.  The First African Baptist Church at Raccoon Bluff on Sapelo Island, coastal Georgia, was established in 1866.   You can read more about Sapelo Island in this blog’s posts from June 10, 2015 to June 13, 2015 (starting HERE).  Based on islander Cornelia Bailey’s accounts of its early use we can conceptualize classic American church as a form of an early American mosque as well.  Bailey, a descendent of an early American Muslim named Bilali, writes in her book  God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island, Georgia that,

“When freedom came, Bilali’s children and grandchildren formed the First African Baptist Church.  Some of them would have been Muslim still and some likely were Christians by then, and they wanted to go to church together.  So they patched things up, and they used Muslim traditions in a Christian church” (p. 158).  

The First Arfrican Baptist Church at Raccoon Bluff, Sapelo Island, GA.  Photographed June, 2015.

Early American mosques were places where Americans of diverse backgrounds came together to pray, and to share in each other’s lives.

As you can see in the questions put forward in Part 1, there are many misconceptions about the role of mosques in the USA.  In discussion with attendees of American mosques, many of our informants point out that these misconceptions spring from a few “studies” that perpetuate misinformation.  The article “Debunking the “80 Percent of Mosques in America” Myth” produced by Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative supports this claim, detailing how the claimed “studies” about radicalism in US mosques are biased, anecdotal, and/or unreliable.  The study group concludes, “The assumptions, biases, and methodological flaws that characterize these “studies” indicate that journalists and audiences should not take these “statistics” and “studies” (and the arguments they bolster) at face value.”

Visiting one mosque in the American South I spoke with a woman, who I will call “Fatima”, who was working to address these misconceptions in her local community.  Fatima pointed out that mosques in the USA do the opposite of what many people think.  She said that by educating youth about Islam and their responsibilities to their communities, mosque communities promote responsible American citizenship and make youth more critical about using violence, decreasing rather than increasing the likelihood of radicalism.  Fatima told me that “jihadists” are usually not well educated about Islam, pointing out that the books bought by two jihadist in the UK were “Islam for Dummies” and “The Koran for Dummies”, suggesting they had little education about religion.  

This idea is discussed in the article, “What the Jihadists Who Bought ‘Islam For Dummies’ on Amazon Tell Us About Radicalisation”, where the author notes that, “In 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation [...] revealed that, “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” The analysts concluded that “a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation”, the newspaper said.  For more evidence, read the books of the forensic psychiatrist and former CIA officer Marc Sageman; the political scientist Robert Pape; the international relations scholar Rik Coolsaet; the Islamism expert Olivier Roy; the anthropologist Scott Atran. They have all studied the lives and backgrounds of hundreds of gun-toting, bomb-throwing jihadists and they all agree that Islam isn’t to blame for the behaviour of such men (and, yes, they usually are men)”.  Mosques, as many of our informants have pointed out, are important parts of fostering a well established and informed religious identity.