Accusations of racism and a lack of cooperation are making a bad situation worse for a Balkanised Muslim American community, writes Jaideep Mukerji Although adversity is often a catalyst in strengthening the solidarity of ethnic and religious communities, recent hardships seem to have had precisely the opposite effect on America's Muslim community. Far from rallying American Muslims, shocks like the arrest of American Muslim activist Abdurraham Al-Amoudi, the vilification of Islam by a high-ranking United States Army general and the detention of three American Muslims for alleged security breaches at Guantanamo Bay have instead exposed a sharply divided and disorganised community. "It's a mess," says Aminah McCloud, author of several books on Islam in the US and professor of Islamic Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. "There is little unity because everybody is fragmented along regional lines," she told Al-Ahram Weekly. Although estimates put the number of Muslims living in the US as high as eight million, American Muslims hardly speak with one voice, nor do they have any unifying body or council. To speak of the Muslim lobby is to speak of many different groups that do not necessarily share the same interests. The divisions primarily run along ethnic lines: Arab Muslims, South Asian Muslims and the largest single group of Muslims in the US -- indigenous African Americans. Abdurraham Al-Amoudi, in an Islam Online interview conducted before his arrest, explained that, "The indigenous community is not necessarily interested in Palestine and Kashmir ... yet, similarly, the immigrant community has shown little enthusiasm in dealing with racism, welfare, gun control, abortion, alcohol, drugs, the budget, voter registration, and so on." The end result is that instead of speaking with a unified voice, each group promotes their own agenda and ethnic-specific interests to the forefront of the American Muslim programme. With little consensus on issues and limited cooperation between groups, the Muslim community is left in an extremely vulnerable position. "We are under siege," McCloud said. "The CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security are still marching into people's houses and taking them out and detaining them. We have somewhere between 15 and 17 thousand Muslims in detention [but] Muslims do not even have an organised group of lawyers [to help them]," she said. While acknowledging that groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have successfully tackled individual cases of human rights abuses, McCloud noted that the Muslim community in general is still slow to take action. She said it does not yet have the organisation needed to be proactive in protecting their civil liberties. "CAIR can only shout over individual discrimination or abuses of civil rights but it doesn't have political clout. And if it tries to claim it has political clout, the South Asian and indigenous Muslims will then rise up and say, 'Well, no you don't'." Community divisions, however, extend far deeper than a simple lack of organisation and diverging interests. Feelings of resentment and bitterness between ethnic groups make the situation far more serious. McCloud said that racism towards African-American Muslims by Arab Muslims has reached "intolerable levels", adding that "the world Muslim community has not helped the indigenous community, so the indigenous community doesn't feel any allegiance to the immigrants at all." CAIR spokesperson Mohammad Nimer dismissed such allegations, telling the Weekly that they were "rhetorical". The South Asian Muslim community's relations with other Muslim groups in the US are also problematic. McCloud points to a recent example of a fundraising dinner for a Radio Islam initiative designed to create a radio show in Chicago for Muslims. According to McCloud the event was a disaster due to sparse attendance. She said that because the impetus for Radio Islam came solely from the South Asian Muslim community, very few Arab Muslims and no African-American Muslims attended, "despite the fact that this is precisely the way to gain political clout in the US". All parties acknowledge that steps must be taken in order to rectify the situation. McCloud suggests that "risk-takers" from all sides should come together and try to hammer out a united front. Al- Amoudi told Islam Online, "The challenge is to establish common ground," adding that the end goal was "not necessarily to unite the Muslim community -- we're too diverse for such idealism -- but to achieve results through coordination. Harmony is much more important than unity." Unity -- or at least a greater degree of harmony -- within the American Muslim community would make it easier to consolidate each group's strengths and put them to good use. The African- American Muslim population, for instance, is politically well- organised and enjoys considerable grassroots support among its members. The Arab Muslim community enjoys a per capita income that is well above the US average and the South Asian Muslim community has shown innovation in launching projects like Radio Islam. These various strengths would be more effective under a coherent lobby. For instance, greater unity would allow Muslims to gain more clout in the political arena. Muslims took a tentative first step towards unity in the 2000 presidential elections when several groups tried to persuade the approximately 1 million eligible Muslim voters in the US to vote as a block. Organisations like CAIR and the American Muslim Council called on Muslims to support Republican candidate George W Bush, a choice many later came to regret. With Bush running for re-election next year in what is shaping up to be a tight race, a more unified Muslim vote and organised political strategy could be an important factor in deciding the election. Despite the obvious benefits a united Muslim community would provide, there seems to be very little being done to encourage it. McCloud said that efforts by individuals from various groups to find common ground have "only created more division within the community". While she hoped the situation would improve, she admitted that she was pessimistic about short-term prospects. Nimer agreed, saying that divisions within the community were "a fact of life" and that little could be done to put an end to them. A fact of life though it may be, it is one that is making life needlessly difficult for American Muslims.
