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USINFO – February 5, 2007
First Muslim in U.S. Congress speaks
on faith and democracy
By Lea Terhune
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, Democrat-Minnesota, gestures during an interview on Capitol Hill in Washington January 9. (© AP Images)
Washington – Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison is surprised that his Muslim faith became an issue during his successful campaign for a congressional seat.
“I never bring it up,” he told USINFO, although he discusses it when asked. His first impulse was to downplay religion in favor of discussing the issues, which are his priority. Now he freely discusses Islam, “because it may have the effect of building understanding. I hope it does.”
Ellison, a Democrat and the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, says he was elected for his values. “I have to continue to elevate the common good, the public interest, education, health, peace. These are the things that they want me to work on,” he said. By electing him, he said, his constituents meant, “We don’t really care what your religion is. This is what we are into, if you can promote and execute and advocate these things, you can represent us.”
His values derive from his Christian upbringing and Islam, which he has practiced for nearly 25 years. “The values that underlie Islam are not unique to Islam. They are shared by all faith traditions. Belief in charity, in giving to others in need and facing adversity, the belief in equality and justice -- there is no religion, including Islam, that has a monopoly on these ideas,” he said.
Ellison said true Islamic values harmonize with the democratic process. “These are universal ideas. In fact, they’re not just compatible with democracy; they drive us toward a society in which there is consultation, in which there is input and approval from the populace.” He asks, “How can you have a just society where one person or only a limited set of people make the laws for their benefit and yet other people who had no role in making the law have to abide by it? That’s fundamentally unjust.”
He quoted from memory a Quranic verse, Surah 49:13: “Oh humanity, we created you from a single pair, male and female, and fashioned you into tribes and nations, so that you would know each other and get to know each other and not hate and despise each other. Surely the most honored among you is the one who is most righteous and just.”
“Now that is an English translation of the Quran which essentially affirms the equality of men and women,” he said. Diversity often brings conflict “as we engage in chauvinistic attitudes,” he said, but actually is meant to “spark our curiosity about the difference so we would get to know each other. And the differences are not so that we would find ways to oppress and degrade each other.
“[I]t doesn’t say the most honored man among you, or the most honored whites or the most honored blacks among you, or Asians or even Muslims,” he explained. “It really is an inclusive idea, the intention of the Divine for us to treat each other well, to be curious and inquiring, not to … make distinctions among each other based on sex, race, gender, tribe and things like that. And it says explicitly, in my mind, that this injunction is not only to Muslims but to all people, all humanity.”
“This is fundamental to Islam and fundamental to democracy,” he said. Likewise, he added, the Quran says religion is a matter of choice and not compulsion. “It should be free, voluntary and open.”
When mutual respect and justice are replaced by dictatorship, he said, “It just means that we are putting our desire for domination, power, money, hegemony above the Divine injunction that we should love ye one another, love your neighbor as yourself.”
African Americans long have been attracted to Islam.
As to why, Ellison offered, “[T]here are certain inescapable American realities to look at. People want to be affirmed in their humanity. And during Jim Crow, I think it’s fair to say it was not affirming of African-American humanity.” So-called Jim Crow laws institutionalized inequality, segregating blacks from whites, a situation the civil rights movement fought to rectify.
His Minneapolis constituency includes diverse ethnic groups, among them the largest Somali immigrant community in America, but the people who voted him into office are “overwhelmingly white and Christian,” descendants of Norwegians, Swedish and German immigrants.
When asked who has inspired him in his public service, he immediately named the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, who worked to involve young people, the poor and minorities in politics.
Although he admires Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John Brown and John F. Kennedy, he said, “I never met those people.” He knew Wellstone. “I saw a real life, practical example of somebody who could combine community, grassroots activism and electoral politics,” he continued.
“I used to think if you get elected to office that you couldn’t maintain your value system. You’d get into that meat grinder and get chewed up. You’d end up something else from what you went in. But he proved it’s not true. You can do the right thing.”
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=February&x=20070205144127mlenuhret0.7243769
USINFO- 30 June 2005
Islam has deep roots in America, experts say
By Judy Aita
United Nations -- The roots of Islam have spread wide and deep in the United States and are so much a part of the American experience that many do not even realize the connection, experts in Islamic studies say.
The influence of Islam in America was brought into focus by an exhibition of the 1831 autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, a slave brought to the United States from West Africa. The book is the only known autobiography of a slave written while enslaved, and includes a chapter from the Quran, Surat al-Mulk (Dominion).
The autobiography, written in Arabic, describes some of the events in Omar Ibn Said's life, his steadfast adherence to Islam, and his openness to other "God-fearing people."
The exhibit is on display in the main lobby of the U.N. headquarters building from June 27 to July 1. A panel discussion on "Roots of Islam in America" was held in conjunction with the opening of the exhibit.
Omar Ibn Said was born in Futa Turo region between the Senegal and Gambia Rivers in the 1700s and spent 25 years studying prominent Muslim scholars of the region. In 1807, he was captured during a military conflict, enslaved by his enemies, sold to Europeans, and shipped to North Carolina where he toiled for a plantation owner until his death in 1864.
The autobiography, considered one of the treasures of antebellum literature, had been missing since the 1920s. It was discovered in an old trunk in Virginia in 1995 and sold at an auction in 1998 to Derrick Beard, a collector of 18th, 19th and 20th century Islamic-American and African-American artifacts.
The manuscript, Beard said, shows that Islam is not new to America. The autobiography was originally owned by an abolitionist, who wanted to demonstrate that blacks were not inferior, he added.
The panel, composed of African-American and Islamic-American scholars, moved beyond the exhibit to talk of the legacies and strengths that Muslim immigrants have added to the United States along with the hundreds of other ethnic and religious groups, who came here voluntarily in search of a new life or, like Omar Ibn Said, were shipped here as slaves.
Muslims continue to add to the rich culture of the United States in ways that are now so ingrained that they are thought of as "American." Most Americans have to be reminded that some of their favorite music, or words they use, have their roots in Islam. Omar Ibn Said's descendants and those of other slaves have long been freed, and American Muslims now have a significant presence in the United States and rank among the world's most popular and respected musicians, athletes, scholars, and architects, to name a few professions, the panelists said.
Sylviane Diouf, researcher at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, said that one of the most important legacies from the early Muslims is the "triumph of the human spirit."
"Imagine yourself as a slave cutting cane sun up to sun down, or picking cotton and still you think of yourself as a scholar, as a religious leader, as a student, and you write," Diouf continued. "When you get paper, you copy the Bible or Quran for yourself. You organize schools to teach your children how to read and write and all that while being enslaved. Doing all this is secret. That is the triumph of the human spirit."
Diouf also talked about the traces of Islamic influence on music, cultural traditions and vocabulary in the Americas that remain strong today.
In the music form known as the blues "the Islamic way of chanting, the call to prayer ... is all there," Diouf said.
Zahid Bukhari, fellow at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding of Georgetown University, said that if Muslims worldwide were asked to name the five most beloved Muslim personalities of the 20th century, "I'm confident two personalities from America will be part of those five: Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X."
Bukhari said that through his research he has found that currently the American Muslim community is above the U.S. national average in education, is younger and has a higher percentage of professionals, scholars and experts in all fields than Muslim communities anywhere in the world.
Bukhari also talked of the "horizontal spread and vertical depth" of the roots of American Muslim community.
In the United States today, "35 percent of Muslims were born in the United States; 64 percent were born in 80 different countries. This is the spread of the diversity in the American Muslim community," he said.
"If you are a Muslim from any part of the globe and you would like to see another Muslim from another part of the globe you have only two options in this world: either you go to Hajj so you can find that Muslim or come to America and you will find that Muslim. That is the diversity of the Muslim community," Bukhari said.
Omar Ibn Said transcribed one chapter of the Quran in 1831, he said, but other slaves and free blacks also transcribed the Quran in America. In one incident during the Civil War, a southern city was facing destruction when local college officials asked that the Union Army allow books to be saved. "Only one copy was saved from the whole library and that was a copy of the Quran," Bukhari said.
Beard, owner of the autobiography, said that as he travels throughout the United States in some inner cities he sees "the only true economic vitality and life" in the Muslim communities. "I see commerce, a sense of morality, a sense of respect."
"Islam has created a major, positive impact in the United States," he said.
However, Beard said, after traveling through the Middle East recently he found that Muslims in other parts of the world had little understanding of life in the United States. They have a "totally different perception, no knowledge of the economic phenomenon taking place in America, no knowledge of the ethnic and religious diversity of America," he said.
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m=June&x=20050630112138cpataruK0.9474909
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