Sectarian Split: U.S. Muslims Speak Out
By Jeca Taudte
The daily images of gruesome sectarian violence have raised fears that rifts between Sunnis and Shiites could spread, sparking more conflicts in the Middle East and increasing sectarian tensions in other countries with sizeable Muslim populations.
Those anxieties are reflected in media reports – such as a February front-page New York Times story headlined “Iraq’s Shadow Widens Sunni-Shiite Split in U.S.” As evidence, the Times story cited recent vandalism at Shiite mosques and businesses in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest U.S. community of Iraqi Muslim immigrants.
The Michigan vandalism happened just days after the controversial execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, that prompted some Shiite Iraqis in Dearborn to celebrate by dancing in the street.
“Obviously, what happened after the hanging of Saddam and the attacks on Shia establishments in Dearborn raised the specter of a spillover,” said Mohamed Nimer, research director of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest American-Muslim advocacy organization.
But just how realistic are the fears that Iraq’s deadly sectarianism is spreading tensions in U.S. Muslim communities? And how deep are the Sunni-Shiite divisions within those communities?
“People tend to look at Muslims these days as, ‘Oh shit, we have to address this problem, otherwise these Muslims are going to go blow themselves up,’” says Zahir Janmohamed, co-founder of the Qunoot Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based Shiite youth-education group. Janmohamed downplays the importance of Iraq’s sectarian violence in predicting the future of Sunni-Shiite relations here. “The larger issue is what does it mean to be a Muslim in the United States,” he says.
Islamic identity in America has grown more complex since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, carried out by Muslims from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. American Muslims say many non-Muslims are now quick to stereotype them.
“America is always concerned there is going to be terrorism here and that the Muslim youth is going to react crazily,” says Saba Malik, a junior at New York University (NYU) who goes to the school’s Islamic center five times a day to pray. “But I don’t think they realize that the Muslim community here is very, very different from the community overseas.”
CAIR, the main U.S. Muslim advocacy group, has 32 chapters and a mandate to “promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America,” according to its Web site. The 12-year-old organization studiously avoids presenting that community as one divided into Sunnis and Shiites. In CAIR’s portrayal, the American Muslim community is unified.
“CAIR is trying to present an American-Muslim identity that is above any sectarian Muslim differences,” says Nimer, the group’s research director. That orientation comes, he says, from “a drive to work with all sides of the community. That is something easier said than done. It’s a struggle that CAIR is taking on.”
CAIR says this approach reflects the thinking of most U.S. Muslims. The group cites a survey it commissioned before the 2006 elections, which showed that the largest group of respondents – 40 percent – chose to self-identify as “just a Muslim,” rather than Sunni (36 per cent of respondents) or Shiite (12 per cent).
But this picture of homogeneity ignores an increasingly vocal cohort of young Shiites, who feel marginalized by Sunni-dominated groups like CAIR, which some younger Muslims say tend to gloss over sectarian identity.
“The entire discourse of the American Muslim identity should not and cannot be framed solely from the Sunni perspective,” says Mohammed Sabur, one of the Qunoot Foundation’s co-founders. One of Qunoot’s goals is to raise awareness of Shiite identity among young American Muslims because, says Sabur, Sunnis have tended to lead Muslim groups in the U.S., leaving the Shiites feeling like a silent minority.
Shiites make up 15 to 20 percent of the global Muslim population. The proportion is believed to be similar in the U.S. Muslim population, which means there are about 1 million American Shiites.
“Being the majority, you don’t really notice how the minority is feeling a lot of the time,” says Maheen Farouqi, a Sunni Muslim and a graduate student at New York University. Farouqi says she easily overlooked this dynamic until she had an argument with her Shiite roommate. “She was like, ‘As much as you would like to think everything is so Shia-friendly, it’s not. We’ve just adapted.’”
Sectarian tensions in the U.S. may be most visible among Muslim groups on college campuses, where many Sunni and Shiite students often meet members of the other sect for the first time. The result can be discordant.
“My contribution to the American Muslim struggle was appreciated, but me bringing my individual faith was not,” Sabur says of his experiences as an activist Shiite in the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at the University of Minnesota.
In fact, conflicts between Sunni and Shiite students have been reported in recent years at Rutgers, the University of Michigan, Rice University, and other schools with MSA chapters.
“It’s pretty good here, the whole Sunni-Shia issue,” says Lina Sayed, a Muslim who attends prayers at the NYU center. “But it’s also not brought up a lot. Once it is brought up, people don’t know how to react to it and get angry way too quickly.”
“There is Sunni-Shia tension in the U.S.,” says Qunoot co-founder Janmohamed. And denying that differences exist, he says, ultimately can jeopardize the melting pot unity that CAIR and other organizations want to present.
But Qunoot’s emphasis on Shiite identity could also be seen as promoting the very type of division that grew into deadly sectarian violence in Iraq.
The founders of Qunoot “never saw ourselves as providing a dialogue with the Sunni community,” Janmohamed says. “We thought this was for internal dialogue within the Shia community.”
But increasingly, says Janmohamed, the rise of sectarian strife in Iraq creates an imperative for Sunni-Shiite dialogue in the U.S. In late February, Qunoot’s Shiite co-founders met with CAIR to discuss promoting sectarian dialogue and collaboration between their organizations. Qunoot will also fund an internship on community relations at CAIR.
“Tolerance is not enough,” says Sabur. “As Muslims we should try for much more than tolerance: Understanding.” |
