On the Role of the Mosque in the Land of Uncle Sam!!
First published: April 22, 2018. Republished on Mahjar Post: October 15, 2026
The time for the call to prayer draws near, and one of those present steps up to the mosque's microphone. Moments later the adhan rises in Arabic that you know for certain is not the reciter's native tongue; in the sounds he makes, you can hear his effort to pronounce correctly a language of which he knows only the basics. Minutes pass, then everyone lines up shoulder to shoulder, of every race: Black next to white and yellow, Latino next to Asian and American. The scene is complete, repeated five times every day, and you realize: these are America's mosques.
Here, the mosque is everything; nothing else makes you feel that you are Muslim. Your sense of strength and pride begins the moment you enter the mosque and lasts the whole time you are inside. This feeling may fade when you stay away from the mosque for a long time, but if you form a strong bond with the mosques and make a point of attending all their activities, trust that you will always feel distinguished within a unique community, says Sheikh Muath Abdel Raouf, imam of the Islamic Center in the city of Hackensack in the US state of New Jersey, an Egyptian immigrant who came to the United States nearly five years ago. He adds: “The matter here in the United States is not about a mosque for prayer only; it charts a way of life for the Muslim individual in a non-Muslim society. The challenges here are great for preserving an identity that can melt away quickly if you lose sight of the mosque's role in your life and in your children's lives. So guaranteeing the continued presence of mosques on the American social scene is a guarantee of the continued presence of Muslims themselves in that same society.”
This meaning is confirmed by the behavior of Muslims as they gather around the mosque as the nearly sole entity around which, and within which, their religious lives revolve in the land of Uncle Sam. The mosque in America has freedom to act and a natural reach into Muslims' lives that make its role entirely different from that of the mosque in the Arab countries “from which most immigrants poured in.” Its role is closer to that of the mosque in the early days of Islam: it is the venue for family occasions, the seat of social gatherings, the club for recreational activities, and the council for political discussions. This is what strikes the Arab immigrant with a deep shock, making him quickly discover the missing role of mosques whose influence has been curtailed in the Arab world for many reasons his mind may not grasp nor his heart accept, as Rifaat Obaid tells us, a Tunisian immigrant who settled in New York City more than sixteen full years ago.
Rifaat falls silent for a moment, then carries on with great enthusiasm: “Let me tell you my story from the beginning. Before I traveled to America, when I told my family of my intention to travel, one of my relatives who had lived outside Tunisia for a time said a sentence to me that I have never forgotten and never will. He said: 'You will discover true Islam in America.' At the time I was greatly astonished by the meaning of the sentence, strange to my ears, but from the moment my feet touched the lands of the United States I realized how true that sentence was. I really did feel here that I am living true Islam, and I even felt in many moments that God is closer to me in America than in Tunisia.”
He thinks for a few moments as if searching his memory, then adds: “In Tunisia, for example, the dawn prayer was forbidden in mosques, and mosques are locked right after prayer; some mosques would even combine the noon and afternoon prayers to avoid keeping their doors open for long periods, while in America I saw the house of God open around the clock to receive everyone. In Tunisia, too, state policy was hostile to the mosque and always curtailed its role, yet it would employ it politically when it needed it in service and support of the ruling regime, which at the time was hostile to Islam, ironically enough.
“When I came to America as a young man I was not very religious, but I turned to the mosque to quench the spiritual thirst I had brought with me from Tunisia. That is what the mosque here addresses, fulfilling a broad role that begins with religion and extends to encompass social life and education.” He catches his breath, then continues: “And because America is the land of immigrants from every corner of the earth, I was shocked at first by the clear differences among Muslims in their conduct inside the mosque, as they flocked in from different cultures and religious schools of thought, which taught me to truly accept others who differ from me, enriching my understanding and broadening my horizons.”
Accepting the other seems an intriguing heading for a deep idea driven chiefly by the mosque's very existence in a non-Muslim country, while the pillars and substance of that idea are the millions of Muslims who live in a society that always regards them as the “other” who is perpetually required to integrate, amid a mutual anxiety on both sides that ranges between complete assimilation and rejecting integration altogether. This appears clearly in our conversation with Ms. Ghina Zureikat (غنى زريقات), who immigrated to the United States from her homeland, the Kingdom of Jordan, about nine years ago.
Ghina says with utmost firmness: “Arabic and the Quran are the exception. You can be lenient with your children here about anything, but not about teaching them their mother tongue and having them memorize the Holy Quran. It is not easy of course, but it is also not impossible, and you will not be able to hold on to your children here without always connecting them to the mosque.”
Ghina turns to her little daughter and speaks with her briefly for a few moments, then returns to resume her conversation: “I have three children: two boys aged seven and a half and six and a half, and this daughter of mine who is four. Tell me, I beg you, how will I hold on to them if I do not push them to engage in the mosque's activities? Yes, of course, upbringing at home is the foundation, but the mosque is an essential, important factor in preserving their identity. My children attend a public school, not an Islamic school, which means they are more likely to be influenced by American culture, so I always make sure to enroll them on weekends in the mosque school, where they learn Arabic, memorize the Quran, and take part in the various activities.
“Children's participation in the mosque's activities with an Islamic focus is not up for discussion for me and my husband, and there is no backing down from pushing them to do it until they get past adolescence. So I keep stressing to them constantly that they are special and different when they ask me why they do not take part in some activities that the Islamic religion does not sanction and that their non-Muslim peers join in. The task is hard of course, but the complementary roles of the home and the mosque can raise a Muslim child in this harsh society.”
The hard task in a harsh society: a major challenge in a country founded essentially on blending cultures and integrating immigrants to create a model that demonstrates its ability to absorb all kinds of backgrounds and cultures. It is a difficult balance that may accommodate the uniqueness of its components and the vast differences between them in order to create a homogeneous final product, often in a way that inspires admiration. Dr. Mohamed Elbar, imam of the well-known Musab Ibn Umair Mosque in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of New York, picks up the thread, continuing: “Yes, the challenge is hard, and preserving identity here takes doubled effort, but let us also not forget that the mosque here is unique and not merely a place where religious rites are performed, as is the case in our Arab countries; it has gone beyond that to become a major institution serving Islam and the Muslim community, and the non-Muslim community too, as if it were a charitable organization that cares for the members of the community and helps them, providing material and moral support and aid to all members of American society, Muslim or not. In our mosque, for example, we play a leading role in the educational and cultural fields, social care, family affairs, marriage contracts, resolving marital problems and disputes, as well as family problems and settling quarrels and conflicts between individuals and between institutions, through Islamic legal and customary means.”
Dr. Mohamed, who has completed his thirteenth year abroad after coming from Egypt, goes on: “The mosque also teems with various youth activities and is an attractive place for young people and for the youth activity that concerns them: educational, recreational, social, sports, and other activities. Most mosques here also stand out for their large role in the fields of rights and politics, extending to public relations with government officials and politicians, as well as activities related to awareness of rights, the exercise of public freedoms, and defending against any violations or discrimination suffered by members of the community.” He falls silent for a moment, then adds confidently: “The mosque here is a complete life, not a concrete building with four silent walls, and that requires of us Muslims continuous material and moral support for this life.”
The comparison truly seems thought-provoking: between the bustling life that American mosques offer their Muslim frequenters and the stifled stillness in which mosques and Islamic institutions live in our Arab countries, one wonders when and how the role of the mosque was reduced in the collective memory of our Arab peoples, until the association of the mosque with anything other than prayer became strange and objectionable, even suspect, in the eyes of the peoples “who were made to forget the role of the mosque” before the regimes, and the large presence of mosques in the lives of America's Muslims became a source of clear astonishment for new immigrants?!
We took that comparison to Professor Robert Riggs, professor of comparative religion and history at the University of Bridgeport in the US state of Connecticut, who preferred to open his remarks with a history of how Islam entered America, saying: “Islam came here through slavery; some estimate that up to 30 percent of the slaves brought to America during the transatlantic slave trade from West Africa were Muslims. However, through missionary work and forced conversion, those slaves became thoroughly Christian, so by the time of the American War of Independence all the slaves were Christians. Then came the second wave of immigrants in the late nineteenth century with the early signs of the Ottoman Empire's collapse, then the third wave in the early twentieth century, an internal wave of conversion to Islam that began with the founding of an African American Islamic movement called the 'Nation of Islam' by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad, then the fourth wave, which began in the middle and late twentieth century and continues until now through the influx of Muslim immigrants from different countries all over the world, and through rising birth rates and conversion to Islam a strong presence for Islam has emerged throughout the United States.”
The professor is quiet for a while, then resumes, explaining: “In the United States, most Islamic institutions are called 'Islamic centers' rather than mosques, a very precise expression, since they combine social services, education, and religious services in one place. This is interesting because its roots go back to earlier periods in Islamic history, when mosques in Islamic societies served all these purposes at once. And so in the United States today you find Islamic community centers offering free English lessons for beginners, providing food for the needy, teaching Arabic and the Holy Quran to the children of Muslims growing up in America who do not have the chance to learn the teachings of the Islamic religion in public schools, and these centers also spread the teachings of Islam to the American people on a broader scale through events open to the public.
“All these activities have made the mosques/Islamic community centers the axis of Islamic life in the United States, which contrasts with the role of mosques in the Arab world, where their role in developing and instilling Islamic identity has been marginalized, confining them to acts of worship alone. The reason, in my view, goes back to freedom of religion in America, where the US government plays hardly any role in managing any religious institution in the country, since the Constitution stipulates freedom to practice religion without state interference, which includes a ban on direct government support for any religion.” He smiles the smile of one who knows the inner workings of things, then adds: “By contrast, most countries of the Arab world define themselves as Islamic by including a clause in their constitutions requiring the head of state to be Muslim, or by providing financial backing to mosques and Islamic institutions, while this implicit or explicit support for one religion (Islam) in the Arab world gives governments greater power to intervene in managing mosques, including appointing and paying the salaries of clerics and the consequent imposition of oversight over what goes on in those mosques, and shrinking their strategic role in the lives of Muslims in the Arab world until it becomes utterly marginal.”
Ms. Fatima Abdel Aziz, programs director at the Islamic organization MAS in Brooklyn, New York State, confirms that point. Fatima, of Palestinian origins, has spent thirty-seven full years in the United States, during which she raised three sons aged twenty-one, nineteen, and seventeen respectively. Fatima says: “Indeed, we came from societies where the mosque's role was marginal and uninfluential, so we must take advantage of the climate of openness in these lands for the benefit of our children. And although my experience seems different - I am not only a mother of three teenage young men, I am also responsible for the programs of a large organization striving to build a complete world for Muslim children and young people in a non-Muslim society - I strive to benefit Muslim youth by connecting them to the complete world of the mosque.”
The task of the MAS organization does not seem easy at all. MAS, an acronym for “Muslim American Society” in English, strives to keep up with the deep changes affecting this young community, and although it is the largest Islamic organization in North America, with more than one hundred thousand regular members and three hundred thousand affiliated members, it suffers from weak funding resulting from the main problem facing American mosques and Islamic organizations: that they are based essentially on Muslims' donations. Ms. Fatima points to this, saying: “The mosques here offer their visitors a complete life. MAS in Brooklyn, for example, offers more than seventeen events a week, ranging across religion (Quran memorization and reading), culture (seminars and educational workshops), and sports (training sessions in many sports), and of course continuing to provide those services to the community at nominal, subsidized prices requires a flow of financial support to the institution, which is in fact what happens from many of the organization's mosque-goers, who realize how hard it is to secure their children's future without securing the future of those mosques.”
She falls silent for a moment of reflection that does not last long, then resumes: “But we must also remember that the future of the children here is often in the mother's hands; she is the one who sacrifices her time and comfort and exerts doubled effort to instill the child's identity from a young age, using every form of help available even if that costs her a great deal of the family's time and money. In closing, let me tell you that I know many families here that may find it very difficult to afford the fees for enrolling their children in the Islamic mosque programs, yet they do not consider for even a single moment pulling their children out of those programs, because they clearly realize that without these youngsters' engagement in those mosques, there is no future for them in America... no future for them at all!”
