Understanding Islam in America

Since September 11th, most discussion of Islam has centered on al Qaeda, suicide bombers, and religious violence in Iraq. But we tend to understand less about the 5 to 6 million Muslims who live right here in the United States. Paul Barrett, assistant managing editor at Business Week magazine, was invited on TODAY to discuss his new book, “American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion.” Read an excerpt:

The Activist:
How to Go to America
His roots were anything but radical. On the plane from India to America in 1990, Mustafa Saied, eighteen, made a to-do list: learn to skateboard and bungee jump, go on road trips, and hang out with girls. Although this would be his first time in the United States, he already spoke fluent English, learned from rebroadcasts of Sesame Street and Starsky & Hutch. As a teenager he had read and reread a guidebook titled How to Go to America. He selected the University of Tennessee because its catalog was in the library of the American consulate in his home state of Chennai and happened to include an application. There was a color photo of a quaint red-brick clock tower that reminded him of the clock tower in a favorite American movie import, Back to the Future, the 1985 Michael J. Fox comedy about time travel and teen romance.

In Knoxville he roomed with another outgoing engineering major who, like Saied, came from a highly educated Indian family. “We had many hobbies in common: basketball, football, movies, especially music,” the roommate, Rajesh Juriasingani, recalled. Pop singers George Michael and Paula Abdul were favorites. Religion didn’t come up much, said Juri­asingani, a Hindu.

When the Walt Disney Company recruited on campus for a work-study program, Saied leaped at the chance to spend a semester in an entry-level job at Disney World, taking evening classes on the company’s approach to business. “It was like a dream come true for me,” he said. He left Orlando in 1993 with a “Ducktorate” degree and a formal photograph of himself, in a suit and tie, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse.

Back in Knoxville, he decided on impulse one afternoon to drop by the inconspicuous mosque near campus, even though it wasn’t a Friday. “I don’t know what it was; I just wanted to go there,” he recalled. In the sparsely furnished one-story mosque, he found a small group of students sitting on the floor, discussing verses from the Quran. Never shy, Saied offered a few opinions — showing off, really. His listeners praised his insight and his Arabic pronunciation. They invited him back.

He was deeply flattered. “I knew a couple of things, and they were so impressed,” he said. It wasn’t a deeply spiritual experience. Instead he felt as if he had been invited into an elite club, a semisecret fraternity. Displays of piousness, rather than drinking prowess, established one’s credentials. He decided on the spot to grow a full beard and begin praying five times a day.

Such transformations, if usually not quite so abrupt, aren’t rare on university campuses: the relatively secular young Muslim who tilts toward religious orthodoxy while in a strange environment heavy on beer, dating, and casual sex. In many cases, Islam becomes a shelter from the unfamiliar, an identity taken to extremes as a cure for loneliness. But Saied didn’t fit the model precisely. He had gone to parties and mingled easily with non-Muslims, and when he suddenly got caught up in his faith, he went a big step beyond praying regularly and attending mosque.

He had received a religious education growing up. But his father, a petroleum plant supervisor, and his mother, an electrical engineer who stayed home to raise Mustafa and his older sister, taught their children that as Muslims they weren’t better than their Hindu neighbors, just different. He attended a Hindu school and accompanied friends to Hindu celebrations. As a boy he spent two years with his family in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked for the oil industry. His parents shielded the children from Saudi fundamentalism, leaving young Mustafa with the sense that it was something foreign. He once saw a public beheading from a car window, but his stronger memories were of a shiny American-style shopping mall and the green, well-watered lawns of the gated residential compounds for oil executives.

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