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New York Times – January 3, 2007
Muslims in the melting pot:
Portraits of a post-9/11 world
Neil MacFarquhar
American Islam
The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion
By Paul M. Barrett
304 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.
A few weeks ago a conference of accomplished Muslim women gathered at the Westin Hotel near Times Square to debate how women might exert greater influence on the interpretation of Islamic Scriptures. During a panel discussion, an Iranian-born anthropologist from Britain said she seconded the position taken by the Labor politician Jack Straw, that the full facial veils worn by some Muslims have no place in Western society because they erase a woman's humanity.
The conference room seemed to sunder in two. Half the roughly 200 women present erupted in energetic applause, while many of the rest made catcalls, heckling the speaker's opinion with lines like, ''Why doesn't he take off his pants?!''
In the post-9/11 world Muslims have frequently been stereotyped as monolithically murderous, all 1.3 billion worldwide lumped together as extremists bent on destroying the West. The heated debates among Muslims themselves about violence committed under the banner of Islam are often drowned out in the fray.
Paul M. Barrett's timely and engaging new book, ''American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion,'' brings some of those voices in the United States to life.
The book, a series of seven profiles, draws partly from Mr. Barrett's reporting for The Wall Street Journal about Islam in America after the 2001 attacks. (He now works for Business Week.) He sketches a varied cast -- with a pronounced skew toward outspoken moderates -- to try to illustrate the diversity among American Muslims.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian-born law professor and Islamic scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, tries to live the moderation he teaches: adopting stray dogs, for example, although many Muslims believe that Scripture condemns dogs as unclean.
There is Osama Siblani, a secular Lebanese Shiite in his early 50s who publishes a weekly newspaper in Dearborn, Mich. ''Since 9/11 I have felt choked,'' he tells Mr. Barrett, a common sentiment among Muslims, who often find themselves in the contradictory position of loving the freedom offered by the United States while abhorring the way the federal government treats Muslims here and abroad…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/books/03macf.html
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