Abdul Malik Mujahid wasn’t quite sure where to start when the Council ofIslamic Organizations of Greater Chicago decided to extend its charitablemission beyond Muslims.
So he rented a refrigerated truck, filled it with thousands of pounds ofmeat, and began driving around the city, looking for poor people.
“Finding the poor is not easy; there is no
ZIP code for it,” he said of thelong drives. “It was difficult.”
After a few years doing it the hard way, the council, representing morethan 50 mosques, teamed up with the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Thisweek, to mark the annual celebration of Eid al-Adha, they will give away some25,000 pounds of fresh, organic meat to local pantries.
It’s another step in the evolution of the immigrant Muslim community in theU.S., some say.
For decades Muslim immigrants in the
U.S. focused mainly on their owncommunities, raising funds for local mosques and community centers, or helpingMuslims abroad. But many are now giving food to the homeless – regardless offaith or ethnicity – along with free medical services to the uninsured andaffordable housing to the poverty-stricken.
From its grass-roots origins, typically local efforts in the inner city,the movement has started gaining traction among the major national Islamicinstitutions. Charitable giving is required as one of the five pillars ofIslam, and the broadened focus gives Muslims many new options.
“People are moving now from building Islamic centers to engaging in socialjustice programs outside of the faith,” said Mohamed Elsanousi of the IslamicSociety of North America. “For years,
ISNA was focusing basically on thecommunity development. The work of extending help outside of our community isactually new.”
African-American Muslims have long worked with the indigent of all faiths.But for the immigrant Muslim community, the move is a sign of increasingassimilation into American society, as they trace a path familiar to othergroups of religious immigrants.
“The organizational development of the community is still in its nascencycompared to the Italians or Irish or even the Catholics, Mormons and Jews,”said Salam Al-Marayati, the Los Angeles-based executive director of the MuslimPublic Affairs Council. “I think that the Muslim-American community isinstitutionally 30 to 40 years old at most, and that time frame is still veryearly in terms of organizational development.”
Leading the way are a handful of small organizations, including several inChicago.
The Inner-City Muslim Action Network, founded in Chicago in 1997, offers avariety of services to Muslims and others in the Marquette Park neighborhood.
“We’re trying to move charity not only from the international to the local,but to move from just feeding the homeless to participating in grass-rootsinitiatives working for social justice,” said Rami Nashashibi, executivedirector of the network. “The idea is not to patronize but to empower thecommunities you’re trying to help.”
There are also a handful of Muslim-run food pantries, halfway houses andshelters for abused women in Chicago.
Shyam Sriram, 28, is founder of the local chapter of Project Downtown, anational anti-hunger initiative run through the Muslim Student Association.Every Saturday morning during the month of Ramadan this fall, Sriram and ahandful of other Muslims gathered near the corners of Harrison Street andCalifornia Avenue in Chicago to feed the poor.
Sriram, who also helped found Project Downtown in Atlanta, said he isregularly reminded of the disconnect between urban poverty and the commonpatterns among immigrant Muslims, often including professional parents and asuburban upbringing.
“A lot of people will show up … but about a third will just kind of standthere like they don’t know what to do,” he said. “Like their whole life,they’ve only viewed homeless people as drug addicts, and they’ve neveractually talked to any.”
Those gaps appear across the nation.
“Some of the large organizations, they struggle with being able toconnect,” said Saafir Rabb, founder of Managing Opportunity Inc., a firm thathelps secure affordable housing in Baltimore. “Many of them are professionals,the best and brightest or politically connected or wealthy, and that mind-setoften has a connotation that automatically disconnects from the neighborlyneeds.”
Nadia Roumani, a fellow at the University of Southern California’s Centerfor Religion and Civic Culture, said that many parts of the immigrant Muslimcommunity remain insular. “But you have segments who are reaching out moreactively either to other minority communities or in larger interfaithinitiatives,” she said.
Though most aid still goes overseas, often in response to disasters,experts say a shift has come as second- and third-generation Muslims findtheir identities as Americans.Edward Queen, a director at the Center forEthics at Emory University, says this pattern is typical. As a community movespast the instinctual preservation of religious and cultural identity, andbecomes more stable financially, members are able to question what kind ofwork can be done for others.
Some Muslim leaders suspect another factor contributing to the growth ofdomestic charity is the shutdown of several non-profits that were accused offunding terrorism. That made some donors leery of sending money overseas,unsure of where it would end up, and how it might reflect on them.
Also, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many Muslims felt pressure toarticulate their contributions to American society. At the same time,publicizing outreach struck some Muslims as a cheapening or politicizing ofcharity, which should be undertaken for its own sake.
Omar McRoberts, associate professor of sociology at the University ofChicago, said the importance of making Muslim voices heard is essential, notonly for practicers of the faith, but to the larger society as well.
“These sorts of shifts should be of interest at least as much as peoplehave been interested in and drawn into depictions of Muslims as uniformlyviolent and worthy of suspicion,” said McRoberts. “To pay attention to onlyone kind of depiction and to ignore alternative self-depictions coming out ofMuslim communities is sort of a dereliction of citizenship.”
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aahmed@tribune.com
