Tag: Religion

by Anna Challet

from Boom Winter 2015, Vol 5, No 4

On learning to be Muslim in America

If the American Muslim community has a tendency to isolate itself, to retreat from the rest of American society, Zaytuna College is where that insularity comes to die. At the only accredited Muslim college in the United States, students spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be American.

Zaytuna is located on ‘‘Holy Hill’’ in Berkeley, just around the corner from the Graduate Theological Union, a consortium of Christian seminaries affiliated with University of California, Berkeley. The college emerged from the Zaytuna Institute, an Islamic educational organization founded in nearby Hayward in 1996. The college admitted its first class in 2010 and was accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges earlier this year.

The school has sixty students, split roughly equally between men and women. About half are from California, and the rest are from other parts of the United States. Students don’t take out loans and graduate debt-free, although most of them receive financial assistance from the school, which is supported by individual American Muslim donors.

Zaytuna offers only one bachelor’s degree, in Islamic law and theology, but the curriculum combines Islamic and Western teachings. If students are going to be Muslims in the United States, Zaytuna believes they need to understand the country’s history and founding principles.

Religious study isn’t enough at this college. Islam may be the world’s second-largest religion, but in the United States, it is the subject of much misunderstanding and even hatred, and its adherents are often maligned. At Zaytuna, young Muslims are asked to figure out the future of their faith in America.

Nirav Bhardwaj

‘‘I’m an American and I’m a Muslim and those things can go together,’’ says Nirav Bhardwaj, a twenty-five-year-old sophomore at Zaytuna. ‘‘Unfortunately, people think being Muslim means hiding in a little pocket,’’ says Bhardwaj. ‘‘That’s not what it’s about.’’

Bhardwaj is a convert to Islam. He was raised Hindu. Both of his parents are from Rajasthan in northern India.

Bhardwaj says he was ‘‘Islamaphobic’’ in college. But after graduating from University of California, Irvine, with a degree in business administration, Bhardwaj got what he describes as his ‘‘dream job,’’ working for a major league baseball team doing statistics for scouting and player development. While traveling with the team, he became disillusioned. ‘‘We had players who were married,’’ he says, ‘‘and that just went out the window when they were out at the clubs. It was all about seeking immediate satisfaction. I started asking myself, ‘What are you doing? What benefit does baseball provide society anyway? What is the purpose of life?’’’

Around that time, a Muslim friend shared some Islamic lectures with Bhardwaj. ‘‘I opened a Koran and started reading it, and it worked,’’ he says. Bhardwaj decided to travel in the Muslim world and quit his job. He and his friend went to Egypt. It was there that Bhardwaj converted, while studying with a local sheik in 6th of October City outside Cairo.

There was tension when he returned home. ‘‘I don’t think I’ve ever made my mom cry except for two times,’’ he says, ‘‘and one of those times was when I told her I converted.’’

Bhardwaj says his mother has become supportive after seeing how he has found his place at Zaytuna. Bhardwaj was drawn to the college to study Islamic principles of economics and transactional law.

‘‘I thinkMuslims have a lot to offer in the field of finance,’’ he says, especially given ‘‘the corruption on Wall Street.’’

Dawood Yasin

Zaytuna’s coordinator of learning outside the classroom, Dawood Yasin, says the college wants students ‘‘to think outside the masjid,’’ using the Arabic word for mosque. ‘‘How are we going to engage the broader community if we’re only working within our own community?’’ he asks.

Yasin is also a convert. He was raised Catholic and is a fourth-generation native of Nantucket, Massachusetts. So it’s pretty ironic, he says, ‘‘when people give me the finger and say, ‘Go back to your country!’’’

Yasin worked as a fashion model in the 1990s in New York, Paris, and South Africa. It was while working in South Africa that he converted.

‘‘A lot of times conversion stories are about hitting rock bottom, but I was doing quite well in South Africa, doing TV, and print, and runway,’’ he says. ‘‘But I was asking myself, ‘What does this all mean?’’’

After converting, Yasin backpacked around the Muslim world and studied at an Islamic seminary in Damascus, eventually coming back to the United States, working as an Arabic teaching assistant at Yale and later studying at Dartmouth.

At Zaytuna, he leads service education trips with students, in which they work with non-Muslims through organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and with state forestry departments. He also sets up volunteer experiences for students at places such as domestic violence shelters.

Some students traveled to Ferguson, Missouri, last year after the death of Michael Brown, to work as community organizers.

Yasin’s focus with the students is not a ‘‘feel-good Islam,’’ he says. Yasin wants students to think about their faith in the context of issues such as poverty and the environment.

‘‘How do I buy that pint of strawberries that I know is being picked by people who don’t have access to healthcare or education?’’ he asks students, when ‘‘the Koran is telling me to eat that which is pure.’’

‘‘The Koran talks to you through the natural world,’’ Yasin says. ‘‘It’s talking about the mountains and the sky and the rivers and the stars.’’

He adds: ‘‘The Koran serves as a reminder to you to be mindful of your responsibility.’’

Iman Hamze

Sophomore Iman Hamze is a nineteen-year-old Bay Area native. A first-generation American, her mother is South African and her father is Lebanese. She was raised Muslim. Part of what attracted Hamze to Zaytuna was the chance to study Arabic intensively. She eventually wants to teach the language, ‘‘so that more people can know what the religion is really about. If you can read the Koran, you can figure out the religion for yourself, so it’s not just people feeding it to you.’’

Hamze has three older sisters, but she’s the only one of the children in her family to wear the hijab, the head covering worn by some Muslim women, which is not required at Zaytuna. ‘‘My mom wore the hijab and really wanted me to,’’ she says. ‘‘And I never really cared what people thought.’’

For Hamze, wearing the hijab hasn’t been isolating. On the contrary, it’s been a way for her to connect with non-Muslims. ‘‘I guess people have this idea of women in Islam, that they’re oppressed,’’ Hamze says. ‘‘For me the hijab is empowering. I like that it makes me stand out. People ask me about it. Or they ask me about the way I live my life. And I can talk to them and they can see that we’re just like everyone else.’’

Colleen Keyes

‘‘Things are really bleak in the Muslim world,’’ says Colleen Keyes, the dean of students at Zaytuna. ‘‘There’s so much suffering.’’

Keyes believes these ‘‘miserable conditions’’ draw people to extremist Islamic groups. But, she says, those radical views reflect ignorance of Muslim traditions, and ‘‘people around the world are hungry for solid scholarship and thought that makes sense.’’

Originally from New Haven, Connecticut, Keyes was raised Catholic. She converted to Islam in the late 1980s. She was teaching English at a community college and had several Muslim students. She wanted to learn more about Islam and in the process realized that the religion resonated with her in ways that Catholicism hadn’t.

Her family was taken aback, especially when she began praying five times a day and fasting during Ramadan. ‘‘My mom said, ‘Can’t you find an easier religion?’’’ says Keyes. ‘‘And my sister said, ‘I give her six months.’’’

Keyes taught at an Islamic university in the United Arab Emirates in the 1990s, before returning to the United States to work in community college administration. Keyes is the first woman in administration at Zaytuna. ‘‘Some of the women wish there were more female scholars,’’ she says. ‘‘I tell them that when they get their Ph.D. they can come back and be those female scholars. We’re waiting.’’

She adds: ‘‘American Muslim women have high goals. As they pursue those goals, there will be change. Change has always been part of the Islamic tradition. Wherever it has gone, it has adapted to its environment. I don’t know how there could be anything but change.’’

Anna Challet is a reporter with New America Media.

Note

All photographs courtesy Zaytuna College.

by Mustafa Rony Zeno

from Boom Winter 2015, Vol 5, No 4

Shari’a revisioned

One Friday my Christian girlfriend joined me for prayers at the mosque and asked me why she found a watering can in her bathroom stall. The Prophet Muhammed instructed us to clean our anuses with water, I told her. To me, growing up around Muslim families in Southern California, a watering can evokes a bidet, not plants. The conversation led me to consider all those objects that I, and other Muslims in California, have repurposed for shari’a—which literally means ‘‘the path to water’’ (although is usually translated as ‘‘Islamic Law’’).

Gym towels can become prayer rugs in a pinch. Clippers keep my pubic hair trimmed as the Prophet Muhammad commanded me. Usually worn on trips to the beach, flip-flops take on a new meaning in my mosque bathroom where they are used for ritual cleanliness. While stuck in traffic I’ve seen drivers pull over, unfurl spare yoga mats kept in the trunk, and lay prostrate on the shoulder of the highway right before the distant sun sets into the Pacific. Each of these objects takes on different meanings through a Muslim lens.

Capturing shari’a in California was both challenging and illuminating. First came the realization of habit. Do I even know why I perform the rituals I do? Second was the difficulty of locating masader, religious sources, for those everyday practices. Finally, I worried how ancient religious texts or practices might look or sound—archaic, cryptic, crude?—to Western sensibilities, both Muslim and non-Muslim. This discomfort, however, underscored the need I felt to locate Quranic verses or hadith (teachings of the Prophet Muhammad) for each photograph, each practice in my life.

The objects depicted here, and by extension my faith, give me comfort. To represent their rawness and sanctity, the photographs are not adjusted for white balance or effect. These things symbolize the practices of my faith. The materials may be mundane, but they have come to inhabit sacred spaces. This photographic essay was produced for Shari’a Revoiced, a project of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, led by Mark Fathi Massoud and Kathleen M. Moore, with funding from the Henry Luce Foundation.

‘‘O ye who believe! Celebrate the praises of Allah, and do this often.’’ (Quran 33:41)

‘‘O ye who believe! When ye prepare for prayer, wash your faces, and your hands (and arms) to the elbows; rub your heads (with water); and (wash) your feet to the ankles. If ye are in a state of ceremonial impurity, bathe your whole body. But if ye are ill, or on a journey, or one of you cometh from offices of nature, or ye have been in contact with women, and ye find no water, then take for yourselves clean sand or earth, and rub therewith your faces and hands, Allah doth not wish to place you in a difficulty, but to make you clean, and to complete his favour to you, that ye may be grateful.’’ (Quran 5:6)

‘‘Never stand thou forth therein. The mosque whose foundation was laid from the first day on piety is more worthy of the standing forth (for prayer) therein. In it are men who love to be purified; and Allah loveth those who make themselves pure.’’ (Quran 9:108)

‘‘O you who believe! when the call is made for prayer on Friday, then hasten to the remembrance of Allah and leave off trading; that is better for you, if you know.’’ (Quran 62:9)

‘‘And He hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me Prayer and Charity as long as I live.’’ (Quran 19:31)

‘‘Prophet Muhammad said: Cleanliness is half of faith.’’ (Narrated by Muslim 2:432)

Mustafa Rony Zeno is a filmmaker, photographer, cultural anthropologist, and educator reared in Syria and living in his birthplace, Los Angeles. His work focuses on fringes and the spaces between culture and in religion.

by Mark Fathi Massoud and Kathleen M. Moore

from Boom Winter 2015, Vol 5, No 4

Voices of Islam in California

‘‘Really?’’ Khadija, an elderly Muslim woman in Los Angeles, looked up at us when she heard that California may have more Muslims than any other American state.¹ We were interviewing Khadija for a research project documenting American Muslims’ experiences of shari’a—roughly translated as ‘‘Islamic law.’’ Unconvinced, she probed, ‘‘Even more Muslims than in Michigan?’’ We nodded in reply. Khadija paused, her eyes relaxed, and her lips parted to reveal a smile.

Muslims are the world’s fastest growing religious group, and thousands of American Muslims have chosen to make California home.² But the Golden State is not always a welcoming place. After all, anti-mosque rally organizers in Temecula recently brought dozens of dogs to a Muslim prayer center—behavior considered insulting—and declared that California’s Muslims ‘‘are trained to kill’’ and will ‘‘impose shari’a’’ over a ‘‘Christian’’ state.³

But California is home to a growing number of Islamic faith-based groups. Both of America’s leading Muslim civil rights organizations have Californian roots. The Muslim Public Affairs Council is based in Los Angeles and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, while headquartered in the East, opened its first chapter in the San Francisco Bay Area. Another prominent organization is the Los Angeles–based Muslims for Progressive Values, which runs its own lecture series at the United Nations. Its Grammy award-winning cofounder, Ani Zonneveld, recently celebrated iftar—breaking the day’s fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan—at the White House. America’s first accredited Muslim liberal arts college, Zaytuna College, was founded in Berkeley.⁴ An Islamic graduate school, Bayan Claremont Islamic Graduate School, opened its doors outside of Los Angeles in 2011.

California also marks an important place in Islamic historical records. According to Karen Leonard, an anthropologist and historian of Muslims in America, Muslim immigration to the United States has early twentieth-century roots in California, when Muslim and non-Muslim Punjabi farmers moved to the state from South Asia.⁵ Bi-ethnic marriages generated descendants with names such as John Mohammed and Ricardo Khan.⁶ (Immigrant farmers in California were not the first Muslims in the North America. Muslim slaves were brought to the East Coast as early as the eighteenth century.⁷)

Today, California is arguably the epicenter of a revolution in Islamic political and legal thinking. What we might call a ‘‘California spring’’ flows not from ulama, Islamic scholars and intellectuals, nor from street protests, but from the collective lived experiences of Californian Muslims. California’s Muslims come from many political, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds, and those who shared their stories with us are actively rethinking justice, unpacking identities, and navigating porous boundaries between culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.

Californian Muslims are putting into action a remarkable fusion of diversity and optimism, both for California and for Islam. This diversity and optimism can be found in the same unlikely spaces where Californians have always innovated—at work, at school, at the beach, and in the car stuck in traffic between work, school, and the beach, or simply at home in the living room or in the garage.

With a University of California–based research team, we have spent the last two years talking confidentially with Muslim women and men in at least ten counties across northern and southern California, including younger and older Californian Muslims, married couples (together and separately), divorced Californian Muslims (some with multiple divorces behind them), and Californian Muslims of African American, Arab, European, Latino, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and mixed ancestry, among many others. We have met those born into the faith and those who converted, those who lead Friday prayers at mosques, those who attend Friday prayers, and those whom scholars would label as the ‘‘unmosqued.’’

We knew that the voices and experiences of California’s diverse Muslim communities were rarely considered in academic literature. So we began each of the more than one hundred interviews we conducted by asking people to tell us about how they faced moments of change in their lives and whether and how religion came up in the process of overcoming life’s challenges. Interviewees also discussed how they understood shari’a and their hopes for the future. The interviews were semi-structured and lasted from forty-five minutes to three hours, with most about ninety minutes long.

What follows are three composite sketches of Californian Muslims who have used shari’a to inform their decisions about local politics, social justice, and daily life. These stories illustrate a contemporary Islam that is as diverse and hopeful as California is, and a contemporary California that is as diverse and hopeful as California’s Muslim communities are.

The sketches are largely direct or paraphrased quotes from multiple interview transcripts, with transitions added for context and flow. They reflect a preliminary synthesis of several themes emerging from the interviews. For confidentiality, and because of the composite nature of the characters, names and other identifying characteristics have been changed.

The vignettes, below, cannot purport to represent the full panoply of individuals, experiences, and practices in California’s Muslim communities, or even any permanent change in Islam that may be taking place.⁸ But change begins with everyday stories. These stories of Muslims in California give meaning to shari’a and an insight into the struggles of faith, powers of discernment, and small and large breakthroughs in Islam.

Three photographs from The Most Beautiful Names by Shireen Alihaji, which examines the transition of Muslim names across immigration and socio-political events within the U.S.

Noura: Finding Justice in the Qur’an

What is shari’a to me? It is healthy living. It is caring for the environment and others. It is peace, justice, equality, and freedom. That is what shari’a stands for, and eventually people in California are going to see that.

But some people here do not yet understand Islam, let alone shari’a. Let me give you an example. I was with my father when he was in the hospital before he died. He had come to settle in Los Angeles thirty years earlier with my mother as immigrants from Iran. They started a business here together. It’s now a decades-old family business not far from Griffith Park. So there I was with my father at the hospital and, at one point, I asked the hospital staff if they could lend me a copy of the Qur’an so that I may pray. They only had Christian books, they said. ‘‘No one has donated any copies of the Qur’an to our hospital.’’ So I went back home and returned to the hospital with my personal copy so that I could pray at my father’s bedside. After he died, I left my copy of the Qur’an with the hospital staff. I hope to purchase and donate ten more copies to them.

My parents are actually secular Iranians and never wanted any of their daughters to wear the veil. But two years after I took my shahada, I began to wear the veil. At that time my mother asked me, ‘‘Can’t you be Christian, Jewish, or something else?’’ She and my father had escaped the mullahs of Iran in search of freedom, she told me. To think, I used to be an atheist. She worried I would become like the mullah in their household. I wore the veil because Muslims are misrepresented in the media and I was motivated by my hope that Californians would perceive my niceness and not just my hijab.

In addition to my father’s death, there’s another moment that shaped how I came to understand the power of shari’a. Back in 2008, California voters were deciding whether or not to repeal the law that allowed same-sex marriage. It was called Proposition 8. I was planning to vote yes, which would have repealed that law and banned gay marriage. But I realized that, before I vote, I should educate myself on what my religion says I should do. So I looked more into shari’a. After much study, I realized that, no, ‘‘Islamically,’’ voting yes is not the right thing to do.

I reread parts of the Qur’an and I listened to online sheikhs who spoke about justice. I prayed and thought about it in the car on my way to and from work. I had a lot of time, you know, sitting in traffic on the long commute on the 405 jammed with cars between Long Beach and Orange County. My imam, too, has spoken of the importance of living out principles of justice and equality that are central to shari’a. And I thought, hey, that’s what shari’a is.

Back in 2008 I did not agree with gay marriage. But I still voted no on Prop. 8. It wasn’t an easy decision for me. I felt like I was doing something that was too ‘‘liberal.’’ But my views on gay marriage have changed because of my knowledge of shari’a.

Aisha: Super-Powered in a T-Shirt

I don’t think that God hates me for choosing not to wear a hijab. But some people sure seem like they hate me for it. Last week I went to masjid wearing a T-shirt. A nice, modest, loosely fitting T-shirt. Then some girl, Mona—I don’t know her—said to me, ‘‘Sister, you have to wear a hijab in the mosque or you are going to hell.’’

‘‘Sister, I’m sorry,’’ I replied. ‘‘You can’t say shit about what I’m wearing. That’s between me and God.’’

That’s not quite what I said. Actually, I stopped after the word ‘‘sorry.’’ But I wanted to say the rest.

I wanted to remind my sister Mona that I don’t look like a whore just because I wear a T-shirt. I dress modestly, just like every other girl in my huge, extended South Asian family. My clothing is not considered weird on the streets of Santa Monica, and people don’t sexualize me simply because I’m wearing short sleeves. But as soon as I cross that sidewalk or driveway into the masjid, I become hyperaware of my clothing. Why? Because people in the masjid worry I might be sexualized.

But, guess what, sister? People sexualize me whether I’m wearing the hijab or not. I know what whistling sounds like and what it connotes. I know what those men are doing to women when they whistle at us on the street. So I understand the values of wearing the hijab. At the same time, I don’t wear the hijab because it, too, draws attention. It says, ‘‘Look at me. I’m wearing a hijab. Look at my body.’’ I don’t want attention like that on the streets, but that’s how I’d feel if I wore a hijab. So I wear T-shirts.

Maybe Mona is one of those girls who covers herself on Huntington Beach while her husband soaks in the sunshine in shorts and flip-flops. He doesn’t even have to wear a T-shirt. Does that make it a shari’a-compliant beach?

Why is it that some people tell me I’m going to hell for not wearing the hijab? In my heart of hearts, I know God would not do that to me. Muslims, especially young ones growing up here in California, need to stop thinking of Islam as all the things that we cannot do. Instead, we need to start thinking of all of the things that Islam encourages us to do.

How is our Islam going to inspire us to fight for economic and social justice, to fight for racial equality, to fight against the various forms of inequity we see in our society and our surrounding communities? I’m invested in helping young people like me to make that switch, to see shari’a as more than just words that we use like ma’sha Allah. I want us to see shari’a as a personal and collective fight against injustice. Islamic teachings themselves are my fuel in this process. Shari’a adds passion to my fight to help the underdog.

You know, I’ve spent the last year educating myself about my faith. Actually, I’ve been super-powering my Islamic self. I’ve also been exploring what Islam says about women, from the perspective of women scholars. My friends ask me how I’ve learned so much about Islam. I have read books, watched videos on YouTube, and done a lot of internal studying and reflecting. I have been looking—like, digging and digging—and trying to find spiritual realities to this tradition. It moves my soul to learn about Islam from learned scholars and sheikhs, or simply listening to Surat Baqara on my sound system at home or in the car. I even tweet Hadith, prophetic teachings, to my followers.

One day, I want to have a husband who also has a strong Islamic sense of being, and I want to be able to pass that message of faith on to my kids. And one day in a perfect California, I want to be part of an Islamic enlightenment. This Islamic enlightenment is long overdue.

Ali: Open Source Shari’a

Shari’a is different. It’s like open source coding, where each engineer adds line after line, layer after layer, of code. Each person makes the code stronger and more integrated. We strengthen shari’a in California by being better people to our loved ones, to our coworkers, and to our neighbors, one person at a time.

Shari’a is also finding a smooth flow between the layers of my religious values and the various aspects of my identity, as an Arab Muslim, a father to an adopted child, a professional engineer, and a civic activist speaking in school classrooms about Islamic faith.

Islam is a religion I love. But it’s being hijacked, even here in California. If I don’t stand up and define myself and my religion, then somebody else will do it for me. When the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon Him, practiced the shari’a, you know, it was not the excessively legalistic codes and punishment laws that you hear about in the media. Ninety-nine percent of the shari’a was about personal kindness, generosity, and caring for people. Politically, shari’a was about how to make peace and limit war between adversaries.

Shari’a is about how to do business ethically, how to raise your family morally, how to treat your family with love, and how to treat your neighbors with kindness. That is the example of shari’a that I share with Californians. It’s like a legal system, but it’s so much more personal. It’s an ethical code for living.

Shari’a is not just the five pillars and eating halal meat and refraining from alcohol and going to masjid on Fridays. Shari’a is also not just reeducating my neighbor who once said to me, ‘‘I know you and your wife and your kids are nice people. But are you the exceptions in Islam? Are you Americanized Muslims? Has California tamed you?’’ Shari’a is more than all that.

My advocacy work on behalf of Islam and the example I set in my life urges people—even decent people who are either misinformed or uninformed—to rethink what is shari’a. Islamic values of contributing to society and caring for others help to shape the American system. At the same time, I’m learning about myself. As an American, I do not have to lose my Muslim identity. To be an American, for me, is to be Muslim.

Mark Fathi Massoud is associate professor of politics and legal studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, and visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Affairs. He is the author of Law’s Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan.

Kathleen M. Moore is professor and chair of religious studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on the regulation of religious self-determination in secular-democratic societies, emergent forms of Muslim legality and political engagement, and Islam and gender in diaspora. She is the author of The Unfamiliar Abode: Islamic Law in the United States and Britain.

Notes

Photographs from The Most Beautiful Names by Shireen Alihaji, which examines the transition of Muslim names across immigration and socio-political events within the U.S.

This essay is part of Shari’a Revoiced (www.shariarevoiced.org), a project of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, led by Mark Fathi Massoud and Kathleen M. Moore, with funding from the Henry Luce Foundation. We thank Shahab Malik, who provided valuable research assistance, and Maria Ebrahimji, who provided helpful feedback. Transliterations are our own; simple apostrophes are used to represent diacritical marks. This work would not have been possible without the kindness of many respondents in California.

1 All names have been changed to preserve confidentiality. In 2000, the Association of Religion Data Archives listed approximately 260,000 Muslims in California, more than in any other US state. In 2014, the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life estimated that California and New York each had approximately 400,000 Muslims (1% of Californians and 2% of New Yorkers). See Association of Religion Data Archives, ‘‘ARDA State Membership Report-California,’’ (http://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/reports/state/06_2000.asp) and Pew Research Center, ‘‘America’s Changing Religious Landscape,’’(http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americaschanging-religious-landscape/).

2 Pew Research Center, ‘‘The Future of World Religions: Population Growth, Projections, 2010–2050 – Why Muslims are Rising Fastest and the Unaffiliated are Shrinking as a Share of the World’s Population,’’ 2 April 2015.

3 Phil Whillon, ‘‘California: Facing Off Over Temecula Mosque,’’ Los Angeles Times. 31 July 2010, A3.

4 Zaytuna College received accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges in 2015. See Jack Jenkins, ‘‘America Just Got Its First Accredited Muslim College,’’ available at http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/03/10/3632189/america-just-got-first-accredited-muslim-college/. See also Scott Korb, Light Without Fire: The Making of America’s First Muslim College (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013). American Islamic College opened its doors in Chicago in 1983 but suspended its accreditation candidacy in 1989 and its operations soon thereafter; it reopened earlier this decade. See also Mary Beth Marklein, ‘‘Muslim College Carves Niche in USA,’’ available at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/06/01/muslimcollege-usa/2379261/.

5 Karen I. Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).

6 Ibid., 6.

7 Edward E. Curtis IV, The Call of Bilal: Islam in the African Diaspora (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). According to historian Michael Gomez, ‘‘Of the estimated 481,000 Africans imported into British North America during the slave trade, nearly 255,000 came from areas influenced by Islam. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that Muslims arrived in North America by the thousands, if not tens of thousands.’’ See Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: the Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 166.

8 While many people agreed to share their experiences with us, some declined to participate. In one case, a South Asian man known to be socially conservative in his mosque claimed his perspective would not be suitable for academic study, despite our requests to hear from him.

by Wade Clark Roof
From Boom Spring 2011, Vol. 1, No. 1

During the holiday season of late November and December a traveler exiting Interstate 5 onto La Paz Road toward Mission Viejo, between Los Angeles and San Diego, is soon greeted with a religious display unlike that found in most American cities. What makes it unusual is the diversity of peaceful messages from Jewish, Islamic, Christian, Bahá’i, and, for the first time this past year, Hindu traditions. Located at the intersection of La Paz and Chrisanta Drive—the so-called Four Corners, itself symbolic of many paths—the display reminds us that there is more to this country religiously than the Judeo-Christian heritage, and that globally diverse faith communities can and must coexist. Despite the media’s violent images of religious populations clashing with one another around the globe, here there are neither swords nor the sounds of battle.

But this display is far more unusual than initially meets the eye. Mission Viejo’s residents offer the vision of—or better, experiment with—the possibility of an amicable religious pluralism and have gone further than most other communities to implement it. Decades ago the Four Corners was host to Christmas trees and Santa Claus, but as this upscale, planned residential community grew into a city of roughly 100,000 residents and became more ethnically and religiously diverse, the situation changed. What had been largely an unquestioned Christian space became a contested public site with religious groups vying with one another for a spot to make public their presence within the community.

This occurred in part because of demographics. The city’s religiously affiliated population is reported as 45 percent, less than California’s overall 54 percent. In California generally, Catholics account for 61 percent of the religious population; evangelical Christians 18 percent; mainline Protestants 9 percent; and “other” religious constituencies—mainly Jews, Mormons, Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus—amount to 12 percent. Compared with the country as a whole, Catholics and members of eastern religions have a greater representation both in Mission Viejo and in California as a whole; evangelical Christians and mainline Protestants somewhat less. Plus, a large unaffiliated sector includes varieties of agnostics, atheists, privatized believers, nature lovers, and those who identify themselves as spiritual but nonreligious. Overall, the mix is that of an emerging “new religious America” of increased diversity, as Harvard’s Diana Eck describes it.1 California, it is said, stretches the definition of what constitutes the religious and the spiritual, and there is certainly some truth in this claim in Mission Viejo.

Mission Viejo’s Four Corners, December 2010: at right is a Christian nativity scene, sponsored by a local Evangelical Christian church, with a Bahá’i display in the background. (photograph © Bill Sharpsteen)

Pluralism—that is, a culture that embraces diversity—requires not just believing, but doing: cultivating a spirit of acceptance that moves beyond mere tolerance. Faith groups vary in the ways and degrees to which they buy into a pluralist ideology: exclusivists resist recognition of the truth claims of others; moderates respect others; and the most inclusive celebrate the religious other as contributing to their own spiritual well-being and growth. Of course, always looming in the background of any consideration of the practice of religious pluralism are thorny issues: What are its limits? What defines a group as religious? Where do the nonreligious fit into the scheme of things?

The experiment at Mission Viejo has had its share of challenges. In 2000, city officials decided to allow, for the first time, an Islamic display to accompany Jewish and Christian displays. The following year, there were complaints about including the Muslim decorations (no doubt connected with feelings about the then-recent September 11 terrorist attack) and the planners feared that too many additional groups might demand a presence in the limited space at the Four Corners, so the multifaith display was called off. The city council voted to return to the earlier plan of showcasing Santa Claus, American flags, and a winter scene—all deemed secular and noncontroversial. But they misread the sentiment of the community, and after a week of complaints the city reversed its decision: it would permit religious groups to have displays, but only at a nearby park. But even this was not enough to satisfy the residents. In 2002, pressure from them led to the return of the multifaith celebration to the Four Corners.

The Bahá’i display marks the holiday celebrating the birth of Bahá’u’lláh (photograph © Bill Sharpsteen)

Over the years concerns have arisen from all sides. “Why should the city recognize these religions?” asks an evangelical Christian pastor. “We are a Christian nation. Why are we embarrassed to proclaim it?” Exclusivists find shared space problematic. Secularists and strict interpreters of the legal separation of church and state question why city property is used to showcase religious exhibits of any kind, and still others have wondered if atheists should be allowed to have a display—some saying yes, because their voice should be heard, but most adamantly opposing the idea. Nor has it gone unnoticed that the timing of the holiday celebrations fit Christian and Jewish calendars far better than those of other traditions. (This led the Hindu community in 2010 to put up and take down their exhibit before Thanksgiving.) There have also been acts of vandalism: once the Baby Jesus was stolen and a year ago the Muslim display was defaced, which led to complaints by Muslim organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union about the city’s failure to patrol the exhibits at night.

The Jewish holiday display is a giant dreidel (photograph © Bill Sharpsteen)

But despite setbacks, complaints, and vandalism progress has been made. Over the years, as a Bahá’i told me, “dealing with one another became a public matter, pressure was on us to do something that would be as open as possible to all religions.” Public discussion brought forward practical questions about how to be open to all groups, given the limited space at the Four Corners. In effect, how would the city choose which groups could set up holiday exhibits?

The solution: “Religion by Lottery!” Mission Viejo decided to try to accommodate the growing number of religious groups while retaining the Four Corners as the location of the event. Faith groups desiring a presence on this spot would have to apply for one of eight available spaces. In doing so, they agreed to exhibit seasonal messages within a cooperative multifaith event. The spaces would be assigned by a double lottery system in which numbers identifying spaces were drawn at random from one container and matched with applicant groups drawn at random from another container. If there were more applicants than spaces, those unsuccessful in getting a space at the Four Corners would be selected, again by lottery, to exhibit at a nearby park. Minority religious spokespersons played a big part in pushing for the lottery. Hamid Bahadori, an Iranian-American Muslim resident, was reported to say in 2001, “If we want to celebrate our sense of community, then let’s be as inclusive as possible.”2

Asked recently about how well the system is working, David Cendejas, in the city’s Office of Community Development, responds, “Pretty well. People like the fairness of it, although so far it really hasn’t been all that tested since we haven’t had more than eight groups applying in any year.” If that were to occur, the present relaxed tone of the process might not endure. Imagine a December religious holiday display in Mission Viejo without a Nativity scene. This might well occur, should the number of applicants continue to increase. Based upon what both city officials and clergy have told me, this eventuality would most definitely challenge the lottery system.

Yet the mood of the nation may be working in Mission Viejo’s favor. Despite the tensions created this past year with the proposal to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque in lower Manhattan, not far from the site where the Twin Towers once stood, and threats to burn the Qur’an in several places across the country, a recent Pew Forum survey documents a general tendency among Americans not to assert that “my religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life.”3 This is a shift in mood we might expect in diverse, well-educated communities like Mission Viejo. National surveys point as well to greater openness to gaining spiritual truth from religions of all kinds—perhaps just a matter of curiosity for many, yet for some a genuine interest in learning from other traditions.

Both the city’s effort to embrace religious diversity and the willingness of most religious groups to play by the rules for this holiday celebration signal that a civic-minded culture is widely shared. Despite the unpredictable nature of a lottery—or perhaps because the luck of the draw is perceived as fair to all in the long run—the system appears to be favored by many in the community.

Of course, pluralism is always a fragile culture, easily disrupted by those hostile to it. Yet every year in Mission Viejo, when these rules are followed, when this public experiment is carried out, thousands of citizens and visitors affirm fundamental democratic principles. More than simply trying to avoid conflict, as was the original intention, religion by lottery is a positive force, providing a procedure that reinforces notions of religious equality and freedom; by bringing order and fairness to the process of choosing religious groups to represent the community it also neutralizes fears of Christian dominance and discrimination against other faiths. “I ride up La Paz during the holidays,” says one of the electricians helping to set up the lights at the intersection, “and even though I’m not so religious myself it helps that people here get along pretty well. In fact, I think they are beginning to really like the event.” B

Notes

1. Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2001).

2. The remark was made in the comments to a newspaper article, “Santa In, Religious Symbols Out at Season’s Exhibit; Mission Viejo: Muslim leaders question decision to end three-decade holiday display tradition,” Los Angeles Times, October 31, 2001, online at http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/31/local/me-63863.

3. U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, report of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, February 2008, 174-75; online at http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf.