San Francisco Muslims Visit Nicaragua
The Amazing Story in Chinandega
Islam is growing fast in America, and its members defy stereotypes.
Reprinted in part from U.S. News & World Report July 1998.
In the polished wooden pews of a white-steepled New England church, the weekend congregation sits with heads reverently bowed. The town of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, is Yankee to the core, and so are most of the inhabitants. Like the sober, straitlaced Pilgrims 300 years before them, the worshipers here shun liquor, dress modestly, and feel uplifted when they call out "God is Great!" Unlike their Puritan predecessors, however, those gathered here address their Maker in Arabic: "Allah-u Akhbar!" They chant, in a call offered five times each day by Muslims from Maine to Alaska.
Five to 6 million strong, Muslims in America already outnumber Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Mormons, and they are more numerous than Quakers, Unitarians, Seventh-day Adventists, Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Scientists, combined. Many demographers say Islam has overtaken Judaism as the country's second-most commonly practiced religion; others say it is in the passing lane.
Yet while Muslims make up one of the fastest-growing religious groups, largely because of immigration, they are among those least understood by their neighbors. Over half the respondents to a recent Roper poll described Islam as inherently anti-American, anti-Western, or supportive of terrorism--though only 5 percent of those surveyed said they'd had much contact with Muslims personally. And according to a draft report scheduled to be released this week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, although the incidence of violence and harassment directed at Muslims declined 58 percent last year, discrimination reports increased 60 percent.
In part, such statistics reflect attitudes shaped by Muslims who live across the globe rather than those who live across the street. Militant fundamentalists such as the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran (and a tiny minority of American Muslims) come from an extreme wing, rather than the more moderate center of the world's 1 billion Muslims. But TV cameras and international showdowns raise the militants' public profile. They overshadow the mass of American Muslims, who tend to vote Democratic on issues like immigration and affirmative action, veer Republican on "traditional family values," including such topics as abortion and sex education, and live comfortably within the mainstream of society.
The statistics also suggest that the United States must wrestle with a question that has challenged France, Germany, and other European nations as their Muslim populations have grown: Is America a nation based on Judeo-Christian values or on something more universal? Do we value cultural diversity, or merely tolerate it? As the country begins thinking about how the expanding Muslim population might change the nation's sense of itself, the challenge will be to see Islam as it really is, rather than as people wish or fear.
One of the most widespread misconceptions about Muslims here or abroad is that they are primarily Middle Eastern. Fewer than 1 out of 8 American Muslims (12.4 percent) are of Arab descent; other Middle Eastern groups like Iranians and Turks account for only a few additional percentage points each. On a global basis, there are about 100 million more Muslims on the Indian subcontinent alone than in all Arab countries combined. The two largest Muslim groups in the United States are native-born African-Americans (42 percent) and immigrants from South Asia (24 percent).
America's polyglot neighborhoods are home to Muslims of every conceivable background: Malays from Southeast Asia and Bosnians from southeast Europe, Songhai from the Sahara desert and Uighars from the Taklimakan desert. America is seldom so truly a melting pot as in her mosques. There is even a mosque on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico: Islam has a small but long-standing presence among Native American communities from the Plains to the pueblos.
Islam, which stresses egalitarianism, has a special appeal for the marginalized, but the faith draws many converts from the white middle class: More than 80,000 of America's Muslims are of West European background. When Mariam Agah (nee Mary Froelich) started questioning the faith of her birth, she was not only white and middle class...she was a Roman Catholic nun. At the age of 25, after seven years as Sister Frederick, she gave up her habit: "I was not convinced that Jesus was divine," she says, "and that's when I realized that I needed to leave." That was 28 years ago. Agah got a job at an elementary school, and for a long time she taught and she thought. She read her way through many bookshelves of philosophy, and two works stood out: the Koran and the Autobiography of Malcolm X. "I continued my spiritual journey," she says, "and it led me to Islam."
Jim Bates is another unlikely convert. In 1990, after four terms as a Democratic congressman from San Diego, he lost an election...and also lost his marriage, his home, and his sense of direction. Born and baptized a Catholic, raised Protestant in a series of orphanages and foster homes, then a loose follower of Unitarianism for most of his adult life, at age 50 Bates found himself searching, he says, for a truth that would never slip away. He found it through the faith of Pakistani-American friends he'd made during his tenure in Congress. Now Bates spends much of his time consulting, and the rest farming hay and raising quarter horses on a ranch in Idaho.
The man who attracts the greatest following among American Muslims...black, white, or Asian...is a moderate who has left behind divisive doctrines the Nation of Islam upholds. Warith Deen Mohammed, an imam (leader of prayer) and the son and successor of the black separatist Elijah Muhammad, has up to half a million solid supporters, and perhaps 1.5 million followers more loosely affiliated. He has championed unity among Muslims of different races and made significant headway, though desegregation is still a work in progress. Two decades ago, he led most of his father's radical Black Muslim flock into the mainstream of moderate Islam, and into the mainstream of everyday American life. "I've become almost a fanatical supporter of the United States government," he told U.S. News. "To me, the vision of the Founding Fathers is the vision that we have in Islam."
Only a few months after the death of his father in 1975, Imam Warith shocked the faithful by renouncing many of the key tenets preached by Elijah Muhammad. Racially exclusionary rhetoric was jettisoned, as was the proposition that whites were "blue-eyed devils" created by an evil scientist named Yacub as a laboratory experiment. Imam Warith tossed out core Nation of Islam doctrines that are viewed as heresy by the rest of the Muslim world: for example, the belief that movement founder Wallace Fard was a manifestation of God and that Elijah Muhammad was his prophet. "He was like Dr. Frankenstein," Imam Warith (born Wallace) says of his namesake. "He picked up some dead pieces here and some dead pieces there, put them all together, and breathed life into the creature."
In 1985 Imam Warith disbanded the Nation of Islam altogether, urging his supporters to attend any mosque they wished without regard to the race of the other congregants. Several splinter factions had already broken away: One was led by Farrakhan, who reestablished the old Nation and resurrected almost all of Elijah Muhammad's doctrines.
Wali Mutazammil, who had served as the Nation of Islam's minister for public relations in Kansas City, Mo., remembers setting aside his initial reluctance and rejoining American society. A boxer who'd been the Marine Corps champion featherweight of 1970, Mutazammil had been drawn to the old Nation of Islam partly by the example of boxing legend (and Nation spokesman) Muhammad Ali. In 1976 Mutazammil and the rest of his Missouri congregation followed Imam Warith's invitation to enter the mainstream Muslim fold. Having already studied some of the texts of orthodox Islam, he says, he was glad to be part of a worldwide community. Now Mutazammil runs a management consulting firm with business stretching from East Asia to West Africa. Three-time world heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali also renounced the old Nation theology in the late 1970s.
Westerners tend to regard Muslim attitudes toward women as inherently discriminatory, but reality often differs from the stereotype here as well. "In the name of Islam, cultural habits have developed that suppress women," notes Laila Al-Marayati, "and this needs to be dealt with head-on." Born, raised, and still living in Los Angeles, Al-Marayati is a physician and past president of the Muslim Women's League. Throughout the world, she notes, women are denied equal rights of marriage, divorce, and property. But such discrimination, she and many other Muslims argue, is a not a reflection of the true spirit of the faith: "The challenge is to let Islam become a tool for elevating women rather than for oppressing them."
Perhaps the most persistent negative stereotype of Islam is that it is a faith of violent extremists, represented by a masked militant rather than the doctor or computer software designer living next door. It is a stereotype that stings: Muslims in America say they are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators. In a sense, American Muslims (many of them refugees from the regimes with which they are associated in the public mind) are held hostage to the behavior of Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah: Anti-Muslim violence in the United States rises sharply when tensions peak in the Middle East.
Sgt. George Curtis feels a special pride in having defended the holy sites of Mecca and Medina from the forces of Iraq. He is the commander of an M1A1 Abrams tank at Fort Carson, CO, a veteran of the gulf war, and also one of the 10,000 Muslims serving in the U.S. military. He sees no contradiction in his roles, noting that the Army has provided special "halal" meals for him and has relieved him of daily physical training requirements during the fast of Ramadan. "Whether it's Iraq or anywhere else in the world," he says, "my first duty is to defend my country."
At a mall in Chantilly, Va., last January, all sides of American Islam were on display. It was Eid-ul Fitr, the festival that ends the fasting month of Ramadan, and the crowd in attendance was as multifaceted as any other mass of 15,000 people one could find. The prayer leader delivered his sermon in English--the only language virtually everyone present could understand. Somali immigrants in white robes and loosely coiled turbans rubbed shoulders with Philadelphia B-boyz in Kangol hats, Lugz jackets, and hip-sagging Tommy Hilfiger jeans. Veiled mothers bought their kids pink cotton candy and tried not to worry about the competence of the carnies wearily operating the miniature merry-go-round and the ferris wheel. The longest lines were for a gyroscope ride: Teenagers with scraggly beards and decorous skullcaps were strapped in place, and they grinned wildly as their world spun around and around. For these kids and their friends and classmates, it was just another all-American day at the mall.
Islam and America? What would have seemed an impossible concept a decade ago is now becoming a reality. It is possible to live in the 'Western' world and uphold, maintain and promote Islamic living and ideals. It takes conscious and dedicated effort on the part of all American Muslims, but it is happening...right here and right now.
To Allah belong the East and the West, whithersoever ye turn there is the presence of Allah. For Allah is All-Pervading All-Knowing. (Quran 2:115)
Muslim immigration occurred in large numbers in Nicaragua in the late 1800's. The majority of immigrants were originally from Palestine with Nicaragua in Central America the main country of resettlement. This constituted one of the biggest waves of immigration to Central America. It was followed by a second large group of settlers in the 1960's, and again more recently in the 1990's.
The earliest wave of immigrants quickly lost their Islamic roots upon settling in their new country and consequently, one finds many Arabic and Muslim surnames but almost no Islamic traditions or practice. These groups quickly blended into the local population and adopted the local Christian heritage due to intermarrying and pressure of the government. Many of the family names encountered in Nicaragua are still common in Palestine today. There is almost no knowledge or practice of Islam in these communities...but the shadow of Islam endured.
The second immigration group in the 1960's were better educated, but not any more oriented towards Islam than the first. This group of immigrants was effected by two major events in Nicaragua: a major earthquake in 1972, and the Communist revolution in 1979. At that time, many of the former Palestinians immigrated to North America or returned to Palestine. Those that stayed suffered greatly and their families were further assimilated into the Christian faith.
The latest and smallest group of émigrés was in the early 1990's. Many of these were immigrants returning to Nicaragua who had since become more aware of their Islamic heritage from exposure in North America or Palestine. These immigrants also possessed a stronger Islamic identity than previous groups, enabling a reawakening of Islam by the community.
To make matters more difficult, the Nicaraguan government bans all missionary groups from Pakistan, India and other Arab or Islamic countries. After receiving requests for help, a group of brothers from the San Francisco area made travel arrangements to Nicaragua to reintroduce Islam to these forgotten brothers and sisters. As the group contained Spanish speaking brothers with strong commitments to spreading the word of Allah, there was much excitement and anticipation upon setting out.
While in Managua, the capitol city of Nicaragua, the group was told about a Palestinian elder, named Mukhtar, who had been in a coma for three weeks and near death. Before going into the coma, this man had asked to be among Muslims as he died. He was located in the town of Chinandega, which is approximately 150 Km from Managua. Upon arrival of a brother from the small village, several of the brothers from the group accompanied him to the dying man's home.
As they traveled to the sick and dying man, the local brother explained some background of the family. It seems that the man assimilated into the culture of his chosen country and married a local woman who was very strong in her Catholicism. They had two sons and a daughter who were all raised Catholic and the wife was insisting upon the man's burial as a Christian.
As the brothers arrived in the small city, they were undecided as to whether they should go directly to the home of the elder, or first stop at the house of the driver, have lunch and pray Dhuhur (afternoon prayer) before proceeding to the man's house and giving their full attention to his needs. It was decided to go directly to the stricken mans' home before focusing on their own comforts. Upon entering his home, they were surrounded by a plethora of Christian statues and large crucifixes everywhere. They felt as if they had been transported into a church. Ignoring these, they approached the dying elder brother on whose face could be seen the trauma and torture of his sufferings. With his sons and daughter present they immediately started reciting "Surah Yaseen" and made a collective Dua for the old gentleman.
They could see in the eyes of the sons and daughter the anguish and love for their father. At that moment one is filled with a sense of helplessness.
"Then why do ye not (intervene when the soul of the dying man) reaches the throat...and ye the while (sit) looking on... But we are nearer to Him than ye, and ye see not." (Qur'an 56:83-85)
The group comforted these grown children with mention of the greatness of Allah and the principles of Islam, some points about the Prophet Issa (AS), and tried to give them a little of what they had missed of an Islamic upbringing. As they were listening, the oldest brother removed the cross from his neck and at once accepted Islam and said the Shahada (declaration of faith), followed by his brother, and together they invited their sister to do the same, which she did. The Mother, listening to this conversation, became upset by what was happening and left the house.
The brothers from San Francisco then proceeded to their drivers house for a late lunch and Zuhur Salah along with the children of the dying man. It was the first salah for the children and they were instructed to make Dua (supplication to Allah) for their poor dying father who had been in a coma for three weeks. As the group prayed for the dying man with their hands raised to Allah, the phone rang...the father had passed away...in peaceful repose. How thankful the brothers from San Francisco were that they had delayed Zuhur prayer and lunch for the sake of visiting the man who only had a short time left in this life.
They all then returned to the elders home and started the process of an Islamic burial. The eldest brother, the first of the family to accept Islam, was able to perform a final service for his beloved father by Islamically washing and preparing him for the final internment with the help of the San Francisco brothers. The wife of the deceased man admitted that when she had left the house earlier, she had gone to her local priest and explained to him about this strange group of men who had arrived from nowhere and converted all her family and was in the process of burying her husband of many years Islamically. She explained to the priest what the brothers had been saying about Jesus and Islam. This priest agreed with the points the brothers had made and suggested that she submit to her husband's wishes. During the burial, the son's of Mukhtar were able to place him lovingly into his grave facing the Qiblah (Mecca) with their own hands and thus fulfilled their father's dying wish...to be among Muslims as he died. The greatness of Allah allowed him to be buried as a Muslim, by Muslims, and with those Muslims being his own blood family.
After the burial, the brothers from San Francisco stayed awhile and provided further Islamic information for the family. The family cleared their house of idols and crosses and made their big house into the 'Mosque of Chinandega'. It was then that the mother, who was deeply touched by her husband's funeral also accepted Islam before the brothers departed! There were other miraculous stories that came from the S.F. group visiting Nicaragua.
Many stories such as these came from the San Francisco group to Nicaragua. Within the Islamic community of Managua there had been friction caused by business differences. The masjid was virtually empty during salah times when the group first arrived. Due to their efforts, a renewal of Islamic spirit and brotherhood ensued. The hearts of the Muslims of Managua were again united in brotherhood. As a result of their visit, many of the Islamic residents of Managua were again attending Fair and Isha prayer in congregation. The San Francisco brothers also provided a yearly prayer schedule which the Managuans hadn't had previously, having to rely on a schedule they had received during Ramadan which they had not adjusted for the course of the year.
These descendants of the early immigrants are hungry for information about Islam. Almost 60 people accepted Islam as a consequence of the group from San Francisco. Spanish Qur'ans and literature are continually in demand. It's the responsibility of all of us to remember these Muslims far away. Please help if you can in our efforts to assist with Spanish language literature.
There were many moving and some amusing stories of the San Francisco group as they continued on to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala...watch future issues of The Islamic Bulletin for their adventures!
One of the brothers of the San Francisco group visiting Central America was asked by his secretary to deliver some items to her mother, Mrs. Molina, then living in the little town of Granada, close to Managua, while on his dahwa trip. It seems that the brother's secretary, a non-Muslim, had been getting some criticism from her mother and other members of her family for her Islamic leanings due to working for our friend. She was not eating pork anymore and she liked to read the Qur'an "because it made her feel good". The mother had been accusing the good brother of 'brainwashing' her daughter.
Well, the brother delivers the parcel to Mrs. Molina as promised and after a little friendly conversation, he realizes it is time for Maghreb prayer. He asks her permission to pray there, to which she accedes. After praying, our friend starts answering Mrs. Molina's questions about Islam and before he knew it...she asked to become Muslim, made Shahada, and even asked him to speak to her neighbors and friends about Islam! A very enthusiastic convert! Well, needless to say...the brothers secretary no longer heard about 'brainwashing' from her mother, and was even a little surprised by this turn of events. Not too surprised, knowing this brother who is her boss! The problem though...now her mother is criticizing her again...wanting to know what is taking her daughter and son-in-law so long in accepting Islam too!
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