Patrick Belton on American Islam

Oxblog's Patrick Belton has written an article on Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan which he plans to develop into a book. It works primarily as a historical profile, portraying the community today while charting the development of both its political and religious institutions and the ideologies which have swept through the community, causing both conflict and restoration. I found it a highly informative survey, mentioning the different waves of immigration, tracing the struggles for control over mosques and religious endowments, and highlighting the relations of the Dearborn Islamic community with their non-Muslim neighbors.

In this article Belton unfolds a story of the building of a community, and based on that story concludes with a message of hope for the future of Arabs and Muslims in the United States. This Dearborn community, defined both religiously and ethnically, has in his words, "made a thriving and prosperous middle eastern enclave, where they are weaving forth a spectrum of civil society organizations, international trade to enrich their region, and an inevitable desire to secure greater political influence for their community shared by every other immigrant community in the United States's history." Implicit in this history is the contribution Dearborners have made, not only to their own community, but by extension to the larger fabric of regional and national life of which they represent an increasingly important part.

Approaching the piece as a religious and cultural historian, I was an interested in the potential for further exploration as I was what Belton actually presented. For example, the process of Islamic community formation is Michigan is in many ways similar to the way Islam spread to such regions as West Africa, Indonesia, and India, with groups of frequently economic migrants first establishing a community which later attracted converts. And just as Islam emerged from its Semitic Middle Eastern religious environment with all the common features of Middle Eastern religion - monotheism, prophet, holy book, sanctuary - so as it spread into new areas people interpreted it in new ways through the already existing concepts and ideologies of these new regions.

This happens with all religions: In the 18th-century Kingdom of Kongo, Halloween/All Saints' Day became the major Christian holiday due existing beliefs in the spirit world and the importance of ancestors. It would be interesting to see what differences are developing between American Muslims and their counterparts in other areas in terms of what beliefs and practices are considered most important, as well as which movements have the greatest following and why.

Other possible questions relate to developments in social practice, if I might temporarily withhold that term from the theoretical constructs in which Pierre Bourdieu embedded it. Immigrants bring with them ideas and ways of doing things based on the social and political environment from which they came. How do Arab ways of doing things - such as setting up and running mosques, for example - survive in the American environment, and to what degree has the American environment forced people to develop new ways. My knowledge of the Middle East drops off several hundred years ago, so I don't know a good standard of comparison here, but I think Yvonne Haddad has done some work along these lines.

Finally, what does it mean to be a Muslim in Dearborn? To a degree this question's impact might be limited by the impact of recent immigration and ethnic differences between Muslim and non-Muslim, but it's still a question which bears watching as Islam becomes the nation's second-largest religion. I think it was in southeast Asia that the standard became eating pork - no matter what else you did in life, the fact you abstained from pork tied you to Muslim culture. What will happen in this country? Dress? Mosque attendance? There is probably no single answer.

Anyway, as you might have gathered, I found this article extremely interesting. Can't wait to read more!