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New York Times – June 1, 2007
A growing demand for the rare American imam
Neil MacFarquhar
Sheik Yassir Fazaga regularly uses a standard American calendar to provide inspiration for his weekly Friday sermon.
Around Valentine’s Day this year, he talked about how the Koran endorses romantic love within certain ethical parameters. (As opposed to say, clerics in Saudi Arabia, who denounce the banned saint’s day as a Satanic ritual.)
On World AIDS Day, he criticized Muslims for making moral judgments about the disease rather than helping the afflicted, and on International Women’s Day he focused on domestic abuse.
“My main objective is to make Islam relevant,” said Sheik Fazaga, 34, who went to high school in Orange County, which includes Mission Viejo, and brings a certain American flair to his role as imam in the mosque here.
Prayer leaders, or imams, in the United States have long arrived from overseas, forced to negotiate a foreign culture along with their congregation. Older immigrants usually overlook the fact that it is an uneasy fit, particularly since imported sheiks rarely speak English. They welcome a flavor of home.
But as the first generation of American-born Muslims begins graduating from college in significant numbers, with a swelling tide behind them, some congregations are beginning to seek native imams who can talk about religious and social issues that seem relevant to young people, like dating and drugs. On an even more practical level, they want an imam who can advise them on day-to-day American matters like how to set up a 401(k) plan to funnel the charitable donations known as zakat, which Islam mandates.
“The problem is that you have a young generation whose own experience has nothing to do with where its parents came from,” said Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the Near Eastern studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, who surveys Muslim communities.
But the underlying quandary is that American imams are hard to find, though there are a few nascent training programs. These days, many of the men leading prayers across the United States on any given Friday are volunteers, doctors or engineers who know a bit more about the Koran than everyone else. Scholars point out that one of the great strengths of Islam, particularly the Sunni version, is that there is no official hierarchy….
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/us/01imam.html?_r=1&oref=login
Christian Science Monitor – June 1, 2007
Arabic school in New York City creates stir
Alexandra Marks
In September, New York City will open the nation's first public school dedicated to teaching Arabic and Arab culture.
Named after the Christian Arab poet Khalil Gibran, it's one of 65 specialty dual-language schools in New York. But it's the only one that has sparked a public controversy.
Some conservative critics have warned it could breed home-grown extremists: "A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn," read one provocative headline in The New York Sun. Others have attacked it for balkanizing public education, which has historically played a primary role in helping the nation's many immigrants assimilate.
Supporters deny both claims and say the academy is designed to educate world citizens and bridge Eastern and Western cultures, something sorely needed in today's increasingly global world.
Underlying the controversy, experts say, is a larger question of how the nation and its schools cope with the influx of Arab and Muslim immigrants during a time when the threat of Islamic terrorism sows distrust. It's also a period in which ignorance about Arab culture and Islamic teaching runs high.
At the same time, however, US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies desperately need qualified Arab speakers to navigate the changed world.
"As a country, we still have a certain degree of fear in the aftermath of 9/11, and to a very great degree it exists because there are so many misconceptions still about what it means to be an Arab and what it means to be a Muslim," says Nial Ibrahim, executive director of the Arab American Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. "Arabs and Arab-Americans ultimately look for the same things for their children [as any American]: a chance to get a meaningful education, an ability to improve on what their parents accomplished, and the opportunity to live in peace with their neighbors."
When the New York Department of Education announced in mid-February that one of the new schools slated to open in September would be the Khalil Gibran International Academy, there was little fanfare. But within weeks, some parents at the school that was to share a location with the new academy objected, saying it would create overcrowding. Then conservative columnists at The New York Sun began warning that the new school could breed extremism.
Daniel Pipes, a controversial Middle East scholar, wrote that "Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage." He pointed to a column in the Middle East Quarterly about Middlebury College's prestigious language schools. It contended that the Arab language curriculum there "indoctrinated [students] with a tendentious Arab nationalist reading of Middle Eastern history." …..
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0601/p03s01-ussc.html
June 1, 2007
LeBeau welcomes first American Muslim to open
Connecticut Senate session with a prayer
Sen. Gary D. LeBeau invited Dr. Saud Anwar of South Windsor, who is co-chairman of the American Muslim Peace Initiative, to deliver the the opening prayer in the Connecticut State Senate. (June 1, 2007)
At the urging of state Sen. Gary D. LeBeau (D-East Hartford), an American Muslim made history today as the first Muslim to lead the opening prayer in the Connecticut State Senate. The event comes three days after a Hindu priest on Tuesday became the first non-Christian or non-Jew to open the state Senate session with a prayer.
Dr. Saud Anwar of South Windsor, who is co-chairman of the American Muslim Peace Initiative, delivered the invocation around Noon today (his prayer is attached).
Sen. LeBeau welcomed Dr. Anwar, who read a prayer from the Quran and also read a prayer of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
"Once again I had an opportunity today to help reflect the diversity of our state by inviting Dr. Anwar to open the Senate session with a Muslim prayer. Like Tuesday's Hindu prayer, it's a sign of the inclusiveness and tolerance that Connecticut represents and embraces," Sen. LeBeau said. "Islam is one of the three Abrahamic faiths and a religion which is followed by a large number of Connecticut residents. It's another great example of the various and deep faiths that so many state residents enjoy."
Dr. Anwar is the founder and co-chairman of American Muslim Peace, a network of organizations and leaders of various organizations uniting their voices to articulate the challenges and opportunities for promoting peace in our neighborhoods, our nation and our world. Their work includes strengthening the intra-faith and interfaith understanding of Islam with other religions, and has included help and support to underprivileged communities in United States and peace missions to Middle East and South Asia.
"It is an honor for me to represent my faith today with our leaders in the state Senate and to share a brief prayer," Dr. Anwar said. "My presence here today confirms the true spirit of diversity in America, an integral American value that strengthens the strong bond American Muslims feel with our home America."
Dr. Anwar's Prayer
We Begin with the name of God, Most Gracious and the Most Merciful
O God, Lord of the Heavens, Lord of the earth, and lord of all things! Splitter of the grain of corn and date stone, Revealer of the Torah, the Bible and the Quran, O God, bestow upon us the wisdom, the love and the power to make right choices as you bestowed upon your beloveds Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed (May peace and blessings be upon them all)
O God, Adorn us with the ornament of faith and make us righteous guides and rightly guided. O God set aright our State, Our Country and our world, where we live and also set aright our hereafter where we shall all return.
Ameen
http://www.senatedems.ct.gov/pr/lebeau-070601.html
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