DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: DO MOSLEMS WANT FOREIGN INTERVENTION, AS IN FOREIGN IMAMS & LITERATURE, OR DON'T THEY?!? OR IS THIS JUST SOME TAQIYYA ?!?

US Muslims sign intra-faith code

A group of Muslim Americans in Detroit may have set a trend by signing an intra-faith code of conduct based on respect for all religions and belief systems.

Last week, around 30 Muslim community leaders in the Detroit area, home to the largest Muslim community in the US, almost wholly of Arab origin, signed an “Intra-Faith Code of Honour”. The pact calls for stressing commonalities rather than differences. The code also condemns the use of disparaging or insulting language about other religions or sects and the labelling of others as non-believers or kafirs. To end the Muslim sectarian divide, fuelled by the large number of illiterate mullahs who have come here on religious visas, the code calls on congregations to follow the traditions of the majority in a particular mosque.

The code also calls for avoiding “imported literature that is divisive, inflammatory, and irrelevant to the future of Islam in America.” Materials sent from Saudi Arabia in the past have often denigrated Shias as well as Christians and Jews. The code was initiated by the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. A number of prominent Muslim community leaders in Southern California signed it last month and others are expected to follow the lead.


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Cultures clash in US mosques
Young Muslims steeped in American life are tuning out imams brought in from foreign countries to teach Islam.
By Tom A. Peter

Like any good Muslim, Ali Karjoo-Ravary went to mosque on Friday seeking spiritual inspiration. What the 19-year-old Iranian-American found, however, was something completely different.

At the head of a mosque in upstate New York, a foreign imam was leading the Friday service. Sitting on the floor with the other congregants, Mr. Karjoo-Ravary strained to understand the religious leader's thick accent. Even as he made out the imam's words, the message made little sense. "The entire sermon was about 'Don't let a girl pat your back. It can lead to things,' " Karjoo-Ravary recounts.

The imam's disconnect with American culture shocked Karjoo-Ravary. Trying to gauge the reaction of other young congregants, he spotted a cluster of teen­agers and 20-somethings toward the back of the mosque. They were hunched over and appeared to be earnestly listening to the imam's every word. But looking closer, he realized their attentive postures were meant to conceal cellphones. The entire group had tuned out the sermon and was texting busily.

For many American-born Muslims, experiences like Karjoo-Ravary's are not uncommon. Over the past 40 years, hundreds of thousands of Muslims from around the world have emigrated to the United States, bringing their own cultural interpretations of Islam and electing imams who support their views. This practice worked well until recently, when large numbers of these immigrants' Westernized children reached adulthood, creating a disconnect between faith and culture. Foreign imams are at the center of this fast-growing divide between immigrant Muslims and their American-born children.

When Muslim immigrants flooded into the US from the Middle East and South Asia in the 1960s and '70s, their "first priority was to preserve their cultural integrity," says Johari Abdul-Malik, an American-born imam in Sterling, Va., and president of the Muslim Society of Washington, Inc. "The need for an imam from their background is … to preserve the cultural authenticity of that community."

Immigrant imams have served this purpose well, but the children of this immigrant wave – now adults – identify more with US culture than the one found in their parents' homeland. As a result, they find themselves increasingly at odds with foreign imams, who lead 85 percent of non-African-American mosques in the US, estimates the Islamic Society of North America. A mosque's imam is selected by its congregants, who often want someone fluent in Arabic, which is the language of the Koran.

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Pertinent Links:

1) US Muslims sign intra-faith code

2) Cultures clash in US mosques