Slowly their chants gain momentum, their collective voice growing louder and filling the small bookstore that sits hidden behind a faded green wooden storefront on the West Side. They pause, slow down and then rush ahead. Backward and forward, their rhythms shift rapidly. One voice pulls another and they cascade onward.
Some worshipers rock their heads. Some swivel slightly from their crouched positions on carpets set out for the night’s prayer service on the well-worn wooden floors that are a reminder of the days when the building was a neighborhood department store. One man in his 20s, his eyes shut tight, begins to sway from side to side, up and down, as if marking the music with his body so the others gathered around him in a small circle can keep pace.
From strings of words describing the 99 beautiful names for God, they come down to one word, Allah, and they chant the word again and again and again, stretching it out, hammering at it in a discordant chorus of voices.
One of the worshipers is Almir Ovcinc, who never enjoyed the Islamic services his Bosnian immigrant parents took him to as a youngster on Chicago’s North Side. But now he seems propelled into a deep reverie. Tall with a well-trimmed goatee, the 24-year-old DePaul University marketing graduate would easily be lost in the crowd at a rock concert. Outside of friends, he rarely discusses his devotedness, fearing that others would think he might judge them.
Facing him across the small circle is Imam Senad Agic, 40, a soft-spoken spiritual leader who came from his native Bosnia to head a small mosque in Northbrook that traces its roots to 1909 and Chicago’s first Muslim society. Eyes closed, head slightly titled forward, he chants the prayers said by more than 1.2 billion Muslims around the world five times a day. The worshipers-doctors, businessmen, students, teachers, blue-collar workers; Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Americans-seem swept up in a communal quest for grace in the faded light of the dreary bookstore.
Though such daily prayer is one of the five pillars of Islam, not all Muslims pray alike, and the bookstore worshipers are Sufis, a minority who include singing in their services and embrace a philosophy of mysticism. Like much about Islam in the U.S., they offer yet another alternative for Muslims to tread in search of the straight path that their holy book, the Koran, commands them to take.
Finding the straight path is no easy task for American Muslims, who have made Islam one of the nation’s fastest-growing religions. America offers them freedom to worship without any particular orthodoxy and the opportunity to practice a faith repressed or condemned in various places around the world. But America is also Satan, dangling endless temptations-an ambient sexual freedom, a tolerance for drinking and gambling. Americans’ emphasis on individualism runs counter to Islam’s emphasis on making one’s responsibility to family and community the highest priority.
Almost as troubling to Muslims is how America confounds them with mixed messages. On one hand, it reaches out and implores them to become part of society. But at the same time it stereotypes them as religious fundamentalists and views many of their traditions as out of step with American culture and politics. Every violent act by militant Muslims anywhere in the world haunts them, forcing them into public and private denials that they are somehow linked to it. They live with the queasy feeling of being watched, and being judged differently from others.
Despite these drawbacks, more and more Muslims are putting down roots here. Where only several hundred Muslims lived in the Chicago area several decades ago, today there are more than 350,000 in a broad swath stretching between the Indiana and Wisconsin borders, local Muslim leaders estimate. Pakistanis and Indians account for the greatest number of Muslim immigrants, followed by those from the Arab world. They are joined by immigrants from Africa, Turkey, the Balkans and the rest of Asia and by American-born Muslims.
Though the swelling number of new arrivals has reduced Muslims’ sense of social isolation and given confidence to the community, it also has introduced an unaccustomed diversity of Islamic traditions and practices from different parts of the world, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity to a people committed to living their faith.
Imam Agic, one of those gathered for the bookstore prayer service, considered Islam in America to be spiritless when he arrived from Bosnia a decade ago, and his search for something more satisfying led him to the Sufis-a break from traditions he had followed in his home country. So, too, had Ovcinc found a greater spirituality, going from a teenager who rarely picked up books to a voracious reader about Islam.
While they and others have adapted to their new environment, others resist surrendering their old ways, says Aminah McCloud, a Muslim and a professor of Islamic studies at DePaul. “It is not that they are not changing, but they want to slow the need for change, change, change,” she says.
This tension, so common among immigrant groups, often plays out in the lives of their children, who are pulled one way by parents and another by the new world around them. Some respond by rebelling against their religion and some by embracing it even more closely than their parents.
Here is how some Chicago Muslims have coped with the challenge of keeping their religion alive as they claim their place in America’s social landscape.
It’s a cramped, windowless, almost breathless office. There’s a desk, two metal filing cabinets, a small metal bookcase and not much else. But Junaid Afeef has no complaints. He is at the beginning of a journey that looks as though it will turn out well. At 31, he is an attorney with the Chicago Transit Authority, learning the legal ropes and gaining vital courtroom experience. His wife, Nazneen Ahmed, is a doctor, and they have a young daughter, Sahar. He feels somewhat the same about his religion as he does the rest of his life in America-that he is on a journey, moving from somewhere old to somewhere new.
His is not, he says, “the traditional path” that might be taken by other Muslims from Hyderabad, India, where he lived briefly as a child. Rather it is a path he describes as “between the fringes,” between those who live by traditions as if they were still in India and those who have stepped into the American mainstream with both feet and few ties to Islam.
What he knew about Islam growing up in suburban Chicago came from his devout parents and from classes at the mosque his family attended. He learned what he had to, as if he were studying to pass a test. When he prayed, it was a routine ritual.
He felt like an outsider at the all-white suburban schools he attended, but after his studies at the University of Iowa and American University Law School in Washington, D.C., he thought that he had finally conquered his shyness. He thought he had fit in. But that feeling didn’t last. After the Persian Gulf War, he overheard negative remarks about Muslims that he had never heard before. “I just thought, maybe I’m still not an insider,” he recalls. If he was in court on business, people would remark about his foreign-sounding name and then launch into what he considered outlandish questions about Islam, such as whether Muslims got points in heaven for killing Jews.
His reaction was to throw himself into helping other Muslims, doing much of his legal work on their behalf for free. But it eventually dawned on him that his actions were motivated less by religious belief than by his immigrant’s identity crisis, and he decided to explore his Islamic roots. Putting his career on hold, he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and began reading the Koran and studying Islam. Gradually, his attitude began to change: He no longer felt he had to defend an embattled religion, but rather felt drawn to embrace a religion that cares for people.
He again set out to do whatever he could to help others, this time non-Muslims as well as Muslims. One way was to tutor youngsters at the Cook County juvenile detention center, where he was working as an attorney. Another was to help his wife and other Muslim medical professionals set up free clinics through a group known as the Inner-City Muslim Action Network.
The recently organized Council of American Muslim Professionals opened another door for him. When he became its president several years ago, he urged members to act more as a Muslim community-action group than as a social club. To be Muslim, he said, is to do acts of public good, such as collecting food for the homeless and poor. He recently stepped down from his leadership position. “It is still not the kind of group I wanted it to be. But we are on the right path.”
As part of his transformation, he also decided to grow a beard, considering it a gesture toward Islamic custom. Friends have greeted his journey toward Islam differently. Some say he has become too religious, even a bit of a fundamentalist. And some say he has not gone far enough to be a good Muslim. “I see myself somewhere in the middle,” he says quietly from behind his desk in his office. Here, whenever he can squeeze some time amid a hectic courtroom schedule, he lays out a small rug that he purchased not long ago, and prays.
What if you can’t see the way lmost daily, Mustafa Yasin wakes up with such a thought. The feeling took hold of him when he left Chicago for Millikin University in Decatur several years ago, and it has not let go.
Now 22, he is an educational coordinator for the Southwest Youth Collaborative, a non-profit agency that helps youngsters of all races and origins on Chicago’s South Side. He worked before as a youth volunteer at the Arab Community Center on 63rd Street, in the heart of one of Chicago’s Arab communities.
His parents are Palestinians who left Jerusalem in the early 1970s, stopped briefly in Puerto Rico and then settled in Chicago, where his father still owns a grocery. They take a traditional view of Islam, and so did he while growing up. “I didn’t know any better than what my parents told me,” he says.
Beginning in his teenage years, however, he began to rebel, distancing himself from what was considered proper Islamic behavior. He dated. He stayed out late. He “got fed up” with Islamic classes on the weekend and stopped attending them. He did not think that he fit in with the Islam that his parents dutifully practiced. As he got older, he experimented and tasted alcohol.
But then at Millikin, he began a conversion of sorts. As other students in the small Downstate school asked him about his religion, he found himself struggling for answers. He re-examined Islam, wondering how he might find a place within it. “The way I was brought up was not to question,” he says. His questions are not just about doctrine, but about how Muslims live their beliefs. Why, he wonders, do some people who call themselves devout Muslims not seem to be truly religious? Why does it seem that women in the Muslim world are not treated equally?
“I debate. I argue. That’s the only way I’m going to learn,” he says. That can cause problems, however. When he starts asking questions, some Muslims bluntly tell him that he will be go to hell for such doubts. “My mom and dad, they just hope that I come around. They say that I am going through a stage.”
He doesn’t agree. Instead he suspects that “a huge generation gap” exists between himself and his parents’ generation. “It’s like they are here and we are there. It’s transparent. But there’s a split and I am caught in the middle and trying to make a path of my own.”
Luma Mahari’s hand quickly shoots up with a question, one of few so far for teacher Nancy Ali in the girls’ 10th-grade Islamic studies class at the Islamic Foundation School in Villa Park. The school, where her mother also teaches Koranic classes, is one part of Luma’s connection to the faith that her parents brought with them from Syria.
Chatty and outspoken, the 15-year-old seems to have found a haven at the school, not what she expected three years ago when she transferred from a public school.
“In public school I was so confused. I didn’t know how to deal with the situation,” she says. When other students would single her out because she covered her head as a modest Islamic woman, she was not sure how to respond to them. When people ignored her, or stared at her, she felt lonely and upset. She did not talk about being a Muslim, thinking it would only set her further apart.
She especially did not want to go to the Islamic school because she would be wearing not only the hijab, or head covering, but also long, dark dresses that she feared would isolate her even more from others her age. But she went because her parents wanted her to, like many other Muslim parents searching for ways to keep their children grounded in Islamic beliefs and traditions.
This search has been made easier by the massive growth of Muslims in the Chicago area and the creation of nearly 100 mosques and meeting places to serve them. It is said that any Muslim in the area who needs a place to pray does not have to travel more than 15 minutes. At the large and simply designed mosque that sits at the other end of the school that Luma attends, as many as 2,000 people take part in prayers on Fridays, one of the largest such gatherings in the nation.
Along with the proliferation of mosques, schools like Luma’s have sprung up seemingly overnight. So far, there are seven, four of them serving all grades, and nearly every school’s enrollment has been on the rise. The 12-year-old Islamic Foundation School expects its 500-student enrollment to grow by at least 25 percent annually in the next few years. For now, boys and girls learn in the same classrooms, something that wouldn’t happen if space allowed separate facilities. The children are told that it is proper to mix during classes, but not outside of class and especially not socially.
Nearly all the students at the school come from immigrant families, and a common goal for many parents is to give them an Islamic base of learning, school officials say. For some, the desire to shield their children from the “toxic” culture they find in America is so great that they are willing to put aside any educational questions, says school principal Naheed Mazhar. Other parents want a top-notch education for their children and do not put as much emphasis on Islamic instruction. To satisfy both groups, “we constantly walk a fine line,” says Mazhar.
When she encounters parents who say they want to shield their children from non-Muslims and mainstream society, Mazhar urges them to guide the youngsters but not isolate them. When children ask about what they are allowed to do in American society as young Muslims, Mazhar lays out clear boundaries for them. Dating and smoking are beyond the boundaries. So is not dressing or behaving modestly. Likewise, forgetting to pray five times a day is not acceptable behavior. She also tells them it is OK to want to know what’s “out there,” but warns that finding out can be risky. Nonetheless, some will explore, seeing how far they can go, she says.
“This is healthy, but it is confusing and it is a struggle,” she says in a school meeting room where several well-used Korans sit waiting on top of a table.
Luma believes her time at the school has strengthened her identity as a Muslim and she no longer tries to “cocoon” herself from people who stare at her. When she is shopping at a mall, for example, “I will say to a clerk or someone else, ‘Hello. How are you?’ I try to make them ask questions. I try to make conversations with them.”
Their prayer service over, the men and women in the bookshop gather separately in small circles, chatting among themselves. There’s no sign out front announcing the Islamic bookstore, because a mysterious fire burned down a previous location and owner Liaquat Ali does not want to tempt fate again.
As the worshipers talk, Ali walks among them in a patronly fashion. He began the Sufi services five years ago to reflect his own religious interests, and he believes they are going well, drawing a regular though modest following. So, too, has his publishing business been a pleasant surprise for him.
Twenty-eight years ago when he arrived from Pakistan, he opened a handicrafts store on Chicago’s North Side, and book publishing was not on his mind. But he sold Korans, and soon developed a trade among African-American Muslims who wanted to buy the Muslim holy book. Eventually he added another dozen books about Islam that he imported from Pakistan. When customers asked for a book of Islamic names, he decided to put one together and that was the start of Kazi Publications, now the nation’s oldest and largest publisher of Islamic books. Its publishing list has grown to more than 100 books, he carries more than 2,000 titles, and his catalog runs more than 144 pages.
While the book business has been good, three out of four of his customers are non-Muslim. Ali believes that’s because several of his books are about Sufis, some are controversial, and some are written by non-Muslims-reason enough, he says, to discourage the average Muslim book buyer. They shop at more traditional Islamic bookstores, which do not cross the borders that he does.
But the lack of Muslim clients does not trouble him greatly, and he takes pride in being independent and open-minded about the books he sells.
“What I am doing, I could not do in Pakistan or any other Muslim country,” he says.
Growing up in India, Raj Bagewadi had a clear vision of Islam. It was mixed in with his dreams about the vast world that was opening up to him. It would be an endless expanse that would embrace his passion for literature and music and his intense idealism.
So when he married and started a family, he hoped his children would follow the kind of Islam he had learned from his grandfather while growing up in Belgaum, a town in the south Indian state of Karnataka. A tall, handsome and wise man, his grandfather had preached acceptance of all people, non-Muslims included, and moderation.
Bagewadi had an early fascination with America that was fueled by exposure to American literature, and he came to the U.S. 16 years ago. Everything seemed to fall into place: His graduate school training in finance and experience as a banker landed him a job as an insurance agent. With his outgoing and easy-talking manner, his business flourished, nurtured both by native-born Americans and a wide array of immigrants with similar roots. His wife, Vaseem, used her college training in India to become a social worker. They settled in a two-story home in Lombard.
Concerned that Americans did not understand Islam, he helped set up a small Islamic think tank, the International Strategy and Policy Institute, to counter stereotypes about Muslims and show a face of Islam that is moderate, a face that Bagewadi thinks fits the majority of Muslims.
He approaches Islam the same way he approaches the collection of Pablo Neruda’s poetry that sits beside bulging insurance folders sprawled on his desk: What does it do for his soul and intellect? “I look at the transcendental in Islam,” he explains. “Why am I here? What am I doing? What do I need to do?”
When his children-Saba, Zeshan and Aliya-grew old enough, they each began attending weekend classes at the newly founded Islamic school near them in Villa Park. Then Saba began going full time to the Islamic Foundation School and soon tested her father’s commitment to tolerance and diversity. In the 8th grade she began covering her head with a hijab, as women do in many parts of the Muslim world in accordance with the Koranic injunction to lead modest lives. Raj could not believe that his daughter, raised amid such liberal views of Islam, would adopt such a conservative practice. None of his female relatives in India did so.
But she has worn it ever since, through public high school in Lombard and now at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is a freshman majoring in biology and Spanish. Despite her family’s negative views about the veil, and despite some awkward remarks from relatives in India when she visited there with her family, she has not wavered.
“I felt then that it brought me closer to God,” recalls Saba, a tall, soft-spoken young woman, wearing jeans, sneakers and a sweatshirt while home for a weekend from school. “It helped me. I feel a sense of belonging.”
Naturally shy, she found herself driven to open up more over the years as people have asked about her way of dress. “I kind of forced myself into it,” she explains. “I felt I had to get out of my comfort zone.”
Beyond covering her head, however, she has differed from other young Muslim girls who also wear the veil. She listens to music, for example, and has had close friendships with non-Muslims. She will talk with boys when they are in large groups. And she does not disapprove of gays. Such beliefs raise friends’ eyebrows.
But to her way of thinking, what she has done makes sense.
“A lot of my beliefs come from my parents, though they have encouraged us to think for ourselves. They’ve told me go ahead, go have friends. Be a teenager. It all just melts together. My set of beliefs and theirs.”
Her father has likewise learned to adjust to his veiled daughter.
“It is the spirit of tolerance,” he says thoughtfully, crediting the Koran for his inspiration. “I have to let my child disagree.”
