Article by Audrey Thibert

Imam Anwer Imam, a Muslim clergyman in Austin, Texas, remembers his wife telling him that he seemed more himself in his sessions talking to college students about their faith. “Even my own parents,” he said in a recent interview, would tell him, “Your jokes are funnier. You look happier when you’re preparing for those sessions. I used to joke, ‘I wish there was a mosque just full of college kids.’”

Now, he leads one — or rather, he allows the kids to do so.

At Nueces mosque, a three-minute walk from the University of Texas at Austin but with no official affiliation with the university, a majority of the congregation is made up of students and young professionals. Under Imam’s supervision the teens and 20-somethings take the lead in the liturgies and even mosque administration.

It’s a community that Inaya Sheikh, a senior at the school and public relations director at Nueces, said most of the students have never had before.

“A majority of religious centers are run by older people who have experience and wisdom but also lack in certain areas when it comes to connecting with younger folks and catering to their needs, making them feel welcome and helping them grow,” Sheikh said.

Filling that gap, mosques like Nueces and others on and near university campuses around the United States tailor their services to younger congregants, encouraging them to learn to lead prayers and providing opportunities for students interested in public speaking or leadership roles.

They also provide community for many young Muslims, who make up the bulk of the U.S. Muslim population. In 2017, Pew Research Center found that Muslims are “considerably younger than the overall U.S. adult population,” with more than a third between 18 and 29 years old, “a far higher percentage than the share of the general population that falls in that age bracket (21%),” Pew said.

A 2020 study by PRRI, a research group that tracks American religion, similarly showed that the average age among Muslim adults in the U.S. is 33, “significantly lower than the median for all Americans (47), and among the youngest of all religious groups.”

At least nine universities in the U.S. have mosques on or near their campuses that serve younger congregations, including Texas A&M in College Station, Texas Tech in Lubbock, University of Arizona, University of Washington Notre Dame, New York University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Texas at Austin and Georgetown.

Imam, who has led Nueces mosque since finishing a seminary program in Dallas three years ago, said he fell in love with the community at Nueces.

“It’s a very niche kind of time in university students’ lives,” he said. “It’s beneficial for them to plug into any mosque, but having one on campus, where even the day-to-day programs, classes and seminars are managed and curated by students, for students adds a layer.”

He added: “They’ve dedicated a portion of their life to serve something beyond themselves, to serve the community. I think it’s something very, very beautiful.”

Another near-campus mosque, the Islamic Center of Madison, is located minutes from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ibrahim Saeed, president of the mosque, called it a “training ground” for students who want to get more involved with reciting the Quran or giving the khutbah — the formal sermon given during Friday prayer or on special occasions.

“We test students who show interest to see how good is their reading on the Quran, all kinds of things,” Saeed said. “If I’m not there or somebody else is not there, then some of the students will lead. That’s very interesting for them. They are very happy with that.”

Saeed said about 10 students help lead night prayer during Ramadan, which can take over an hour to complete.

Saeed, who is also the imam at the Islamic Center of Madison, has committed to making the mosque a home for the students. “We told them, ‘This is your place, it’s not ours,’” he said. “We lead the thing, but it’s your place. I think they feel more at home when you let one of them lead the prayer.”

To help prepare the students to give their talks, Saeed sits with them and listens to their reading, recitation and pronunciation of Arabic letters.

Aslam Sayeeduddin, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison last year, gave talks at the student mosque in Madison starting in spring of 2023. He said the experience gave him an opportunity to share with the Muslim student community the traditional version of Islam he follows. Sayeeduddin emphasizes that he is not a learned person or an imam, but has spent a lot of time picking up on what scholars have taught him.

“Obviously, you’ve got 18- or 19-year-old students doing this, some of them for the first time. They’re going to make mistakes,” Imam said. “We at Nueces kind of embrace it.

We expect them to make mistakes. Otherwise, how can we correct them?”

Students at Nueces who want to give talks go through training workshops, then practice in front of Imam to get feedback. Imam gives his students autonomy to lead projects they are passionate about, as long as they run it by him first. “My role is I sort of reality-test, validate and temper some of their ideas,” he said. “And put them through the ethos of Islamic values.”

And at the Islamic Center of East Lansing in Michigan, Aamir Baig, a senior at Michigan State University and a member of the school’s Muslim Student Association, has been leading night prayers at the Islamic center for more than four years, and through a program at the mosque has memorized the Quran.

Baig said life at the mosque, which is on the Michigan State campus but not officially affiliated with the university, is driven by the youth, including a strong representation from the area’s high schools.

“Until last year, it was just me leading the sermons, but now we’re getting more participation from the other college students who want to lead and who want to be involved in public speaking and things like that,” Baig said. “Our mosque is really good at incorporating the youth from a younger age too if they want to be engaged in the community here.”

Nueces also offers a seminary program that helps Sheikh and other students learn about the foundations of Islam through a biweekly class. But she said it’s about more than just learning about their religion. “It’s just a great way for students to not just practice their religion or their religious duties, but also basic things like public speaking and research and making sure they’re able to communicate specific things with a large audience,” Sheikh said.

Sheikh said she has been able to develop her leadership skills and grow professionally. “I think in the same way as in the political realm, we’re seeing a lot of older people taking the lead, which there’s nothing wrong with,” Sheikh said. “But I think we also need to pave a way for the younger generation to participate and gain experience.

She added: “I also do think that there is so much value in having elders in your community. One thing Islam preaches is seeking advice and consult from your elders. In order for us to ensure that we are doing the best we can to serve our community, we want to make sure that we’re seeking that advice and checking in with our elders.”

Imam, who hopes Nueces will serve as a model for all campuses, said the mosque offers the broader Muslim community the virtues of both youth and age. “The Muslim community, especially with these campus mosques, has struck a really beautiful balance,” he said.

Source: Religion News

A New PBS Series Shows the History of Muslims in America

Producer & Writer: Mafaz Al-Suwaidan

Project Lead: Graham Judd

Executive Producers: Graham Judd, Maytha Alhassen, and Zaheer Ali

Hosts: Malika Bilal, Aymann Ismail, and Asma Khalid

American Muslims: A History Revealed is a series of six short documentary films that reveal and explore the early history of Muslims in America. The series is hosted by three leading American Muslim journalists: Malika Bilal, Aymann Ismail, and Asma Khalid. Over the course of the series, they travel the country to piece together stories spanning over 200 years.

The new docuseries begins with the portrait of Mamadou Yarrow, or Yarrow Mamout, an African man. What’s remarkable about the painting is not the artistry, but the subject-a formerly enslaved Black man, a Muslim who bought his freedom. This portrait was created by a famous Revolutionary War painter, showcasing a forgotten history.

Yarrow’s story is part of the PBS docuseries American Muslims exploring the untold stories of Islam in the U.S.

Cohosted by NPR’s White House correspondent Asma Khalid, the series aims to challenge and reshape our understanding of American history and identity, highlighting the contributions of Muslims in shaping the nation’s story.

Episodes

• Ep 1: Little Mosque on the Prairie
  Is This One of America’s First Mosques?
  Duration: 22m 1s

Among the millions of immigrants arriving in the United States at the turn of the 20th century were thousands of Muslims from Lebanon, then part of Greater Syria. In this film, host Aymann Ismail (author and staff writer, Slate Magazine) tells the story of two of these people, a woman named Mary Juma and her husband Hassen who homesteaded in North Dakota in the early 1900s. Traveling across the Midwest, Aymann explores how the community that Mary and Hassen founded constructed one of the first purpose-built mosques in the country, keeping their traditions alive while creating a new identity on the American frontier.

• Ep 2: Hidden from History
  From Slavery to Freedom: The Untold Story of America’s First Muslims
  Duration: 23m 19s

Even before the United States was founded, tens of thousands of Muslims were already present, captured in West Africa and brought to colonial America in chains. Host Asma Khalid (NPR’s White House correspondent and ABC News contributor) tells the surprising story of one of these people, a Muslim man named Mamadou Yarrow, who, after 45 years of enslavement, negotiated his way to freedom, bought a house in Georgetown, and had his portrait painted by the famous Revolutionary War artist Charles Willson Peale. Through Yarrow’s story, Asma reveals the little-known story of America’s first Muslims, whose labor helped build the economic foundations of the early United States.

• Ep 3: Muslims and the Civil War
  Fighting for Freedom: The Little-Known Story of Muslims and the Civil War
  Duration: 22m 24s

Muslims have been present at every defining moment in American history, including the Civil War. Malika Bilal (Senior Presenter., Al Jazeera English) tells the recently discovered story of Muhammad Kahn, an immigrant from Afghanistan who traveled to the United States in 1861, fought in the Union Army, and left behind a 200-page pension file documenting his experiences. While piecing Kahn’s story together, Malika also discovers the stories of other Muslims involved in the conflict. These include Nicholas Said, an African immigrant who fought in the United States Colored Troops, and a senior Tunisian official who wrote to the U.S. government in 1864, urging them to end slavery. This letter made its way to Senator Charles Sumner, a leading abolitionist in the United States, who referred to Islam in his speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

• Ep 4: Unexpected Unions
  How South Asian Muslims and Mexican Americans United in the 1920s
  Duration: 23m 39s

Asma Khalid travels to Sacramento and Phoenix to piece together the story of a man named Mir Dad, a South Asian Muslim who arrived in the United States in 1917 and made a home in the American Southwest. Asma discovers the prejudice faced by South Asians of all religions traveling to America in the early part of the 20th century and the race-based naturalization and immigration laws that shaped their lives. She also discovers how Mir Dad joined a growing number of South Asian and Mexican American couples who built their lives together in the 1920s and 30s, forming blended communities whose descendants still treasure their mixed heritage today. Includes readings from actors Kamal Khan and David Rasche.

• Ep 5: Muslims at the Nation’s Founding
  How South Asian Muslims and Mexican Americans United in the 1920s
  Duration: 24m 43s

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Qur’an? That George Washington owned enslaved people who were Muslim? And that a Muslim diplomat broke his Ramadan fast in the White House in 1805? These are just. some of the facts that Aymann Ismail (staff writer, Slate Magazine) discovers as he explores the role that Muslims played in the imagination of America’s founding generation. Aymann’s journey takes him from George Washington’s Mount Vernon to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello but begins in the Library of Congress. Here he sees two books that symbolize the promise and contradictions of the early Republic; Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an and an autobiography written by an enslaved African Muslim, Omar Ibn Said, who was brought to the United States during Jefferson’s presidency. Through these books, Ayman discovers how some Muslims were included in the founders’ vision of religious freedom in the nascent Republic, while other Muslims were denied all their rights, because of their race and legal status.

• Ep 6: How Islam Influenced Black Americans in 1920s Chicago
  Duration: 23m 44s

The 1920s saw a revival in Islam among Black Americans fleeing poverty and persecution in the Jim Crow South. In Northern cities including Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, and New York, they found strength and security in a range of Muslim organizations, from the India-based Ahmadiyya movement to the homegrown Moorish Science Temple and Nation of Islam. In this film, host Malika Bilal (Senior Presenter, Al Jazeera English) tells the story of these early Black American Muslim communities through a woman named Florence Watts, who moved to the bustling South Side of Chicago around 1910, where she found work as a cook and a maid. Drawing on the work of Sylvia Chan-Malik, (author of Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam,) Malika discovers how Florence was drawn to the teachings of the Ahmadiyya missionary, Mufti Mohammad Sadiq. In 1923, she joined one of the first multi-racial Muslim communities in the country. That same year, Florence was featured in the Ahmadiyya magazine Moslem Sunrise, her image captured in one of the earliest known photographs of a group of Muslim women taken in the United States. Through Florence’s story, Malika discovers how these Muslim groups helped working-class Black Americans resist the confines of race in the United States and feel part of a global community of believers. They in turn helped to create a legacy of Islam that has been embraced by African Americans since.

Source: https://www.americanmuslimsfilm.com/

In a city with one of the highest percentages of American Muslim population, the Montclair Town Council has issued a proclamation designating January as a “Muslim Heritage Month.”

The proclamation was announced during council meeting by mayor Sean Spiller in the heels of a statewide Muslim heritage month approved last year.

“Whereas on April 29, 2023, Governor [Phil] Murphy signed a joint resolution number six by the Senate and General Assembly of the state of New Jersey designating the month of January of each year as Muslim Heritage Month,” Montclair’s resolution read in part.

“Now therefore, the mayor and the town council of Montclair do hereby declare the month of January as Muslim Heritage Month and acknowledge the contributions of all Muslims who continue to enrich all aspects of the Montclair community.”

Last year, American Muslims welcomed the proclamation by the city of Richmond, Virginia, designating July as Muslim American Heritage Month.

Also in 2023, Muslims celebrated the signing of the Muslim Heritage Month Resolution into law by New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy.

There are over 300,000 Muslim Americans in New Jersey, representing one of the largest Muslim American communities in the United States.

Source: Patch.com

It covers the lives of women, from an aristocrat to a cafe owner and World War Two spy, and reinstates them as “actors, storytellers and story makers,” the authors said.
“Muslim women were key contributors not just to British Muslim history but to all of British history,” said sociologist Prof Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor, of Coventry University.
“If we are to understand who we are as a society we have got to understand all of our contributions,” she added.

She has worked with co-editor and historian Dr Jamie Gilham to curate stories from a range of contributors, often from “very scarce source material,” she said.”These women came from communities that experienced precarious and difficult challenges – racism, prejudice towards their marriages and children, wars, financial insecurity, patriarchy and the problematic citizenship status of their husbands,” she explained.
“Preserving their records and life histories was perhaps the last thing on their minds.”
The publication tells the stories of those who lived in Britain between the mid 19th and mid 20th Centuries, before immigration profoundly affected the size and composition of Britain’s Muslim communities.

In the book, Muslim Women in Britain, Prof Cheruvallil-Contractor writes about the life of Olive Salaman, helping shed light on the contribution of working class women.

Her story was an “important one”, said the academic, who had gathered information using the BBC interview and oral history recordings.
“Mixed ethnicity marriages were not commonplace, they were frowned upon significantly in those times.”
Her social class had “added another layer of invisibility, further cloaking these women’s lives,” she added.

“It was amazing when I started digging into these histories, I found not only were they alive and kicking and really active in their communities.”
Two of the first British mosques “had women at the very centre of their establishment,” she said.
“The one in Woking was funded by a woman and one in Liverpool a woman, Lady Fatima Cates, was its founding treasurer.”

In the book he charts her life from a strict Christian household, her route to Islam at the the Abdullah Quilliam in Liverpool via the Temperance Movement, until her death in 1900.
Her grave in the city’s Anfield Cemetery lay unmarked until Mr Mahmood, who founded a madrassah school named after her in London, revealed it.
“Fatima’s life and struggle against persecution, violence and Islamophobia more than a century ago is now being rediscovered by British Muslims,” he writes.
In 2022, a stone was finally placed on her unmarked grave, commemorating her life and significance.

“It’s much harder to find resources about women and it was important to get their stories out,” explained Prof Cheruvallil-Contractor.

“But if women were from the middle or upper middle classes there tended to be archival sources – their families hold material, their letters,” she said.

“We decided this wasn’t the final word on the subject by any means, it’s just introductions to springboard for further research,” added Dr Gilham.
“Our hope is that it inspires more research using archival and, where possible, oral history methods to shed light both on those women who actively helped to build British Islam.”

Continue reading at: BBC NEWS

As well as, creating physical collections of archives, the objective of the project is to educate and empower the Muslim community in the importance of creating tangible connections between their Muslim heritage and the representation of their identity in the wider society.

The collections are partially catalogued and archived in archival institutes across the UK, placing Muslim history and heritage directly in the context of wider British history. Our archive partners to date include Bishopsgate Institute, Vestry House Museum, George Padmore Institute, Surrey History Centre, Brent Museums and Archives.

Our work is not only important in documenting and preserving our history and heritage for historical reference but, aims to place value on the achievements, contributions and struggles of our community.

We are already working closely with community groups and mainstream organizations, mosques, schools, academics and heritage organizations to develop resources to support their efforts in identifying, documenting and celebrating the contribution of Muslims in society today and in an historical context. Collaborations can support aims to engage with a large and diverse audience with the purpose to promote understanding, awareness and learning about the everyday aspects of Muslims lives.

Projects

– Archiving the Heritage of Britain’s First Purpose Built Mosque
Explore the history of the Shah Jahan Mosque and Muslim life in Woking through the stories of Muslim’s dating from the 1880s to the present day.

– Exploring the Diversity of Black British Muslim Heritage in London
The first archive collection based on the stories and memories of the Black, African and Afro – Caribbean (BAAC) Muslim community in Britain.

– We Weren’t Expecting to Stay
We Weren’t Expecting to Stay’ documents the lives of British South Asian Muslim from 1940 to the present day in London.

Website: https://www.everydaymuslim.org/

All-American Muslim Girl

By Nadine Jolie Courtney

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Publication Date: November 12, 2019

All-American Muslim Girl is a relevant, relatable story of being caught between two worlds, and the struggles and hard-won joys of finding your place.

Inspired by her own experience, as a blond-haired, green-eyed Muslim of Circassian descent, Nadine Jolie Courtney has written “a love letter to Islam,” a compelling novel of a 16-year-old girl who decides on her own to embrace her Muslim heritage.

During her family’s frequent moves around the country, as her father pursues a career as an American history professor, Allie Abraham has been encouraged by her dad not to let people know she’s from a Muslim family. With the reddish-blond hair, hazel eyes and pale skin common in people of Circassian descent, Allie has always been able to stay under the radar, to “pass.” Her father, who moved to the U.S. at 18 to go to college, goes by Mo rather than Muhammad, is not a religious man and has never encouraged Allie to learn Arabic (which means she can’t communicate with many of her relatives including her beloved grandmother). An only child, Allie has always been close to her father but fearing his disapproval, she hides her new interest in her faith, secretly buying a Qu’ran, joining a prayer group and studying Arabic…

Source: The Buffalo News