Writing The Book in Islam in America.

From: The Boston Globe.

By Rich Barlow November 3, 2007

During the Middle Ages, Muslim scholars played a key role in the development of the encyclopedia, attempting to pool all knowledge in one accessible place. Among others, the Brethren of Purity, a group of scholars in what is modern Iraq, compiled an encyclopedia of Greek and Arabic learning in the 900s.
Over the past two years several Harvard-based scholars have been working on a modern American version. Their recently published two-volume "Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States" is the product of a wide scope of contributors - professors and graduate students, Muslim and non-Muslims - from around the country.
"American Islam is built on these two threads: Islam and America. And you need people who know both," says Jocelyne Cesari, the encyclopedia's editor.
Volume One is the encyclopedia proper, with 300 entries from "Abdel-Rahman, Shaykh Omar" to "Zewail, Ahmed." The second volume reprints more than 90 documents important to American Muslims, including speeches, poems, songs, and fatwas, or legal opinions, issued by American Muslim clerics.
Cesari says she has not yet received feedback from Muslim leaders, but one of the nation's major distributors of books and material to libraries gave the work a thumbs-up.
"The entries offer an objective insight for all audiences, from the general reader to the college student, and should be in all library reference collections throughout the United States," according to Ingram Library Services, a Tennessee-based group. The encyclopedia is available to the general public, for $199.95.
"This is the first attempt to produce knowledge from all sides" of the American Muslim experience, says Cesari, who directs Harvard's Islam in the Westprogram, which oversaw the project. "They are providing a great contribution to American culture, American religion, to arts."
And at the same time, "America is a great, great opportunity for Islam and Muslims."
The Sept. 11 terror attacks resulted in some highly publicized anti-Muslim intolerance, in general, but "being in America is a wonderful occasion to be free," Cesari says. "They come from countries where democracy and freedom of expression are not so common." Here, topics taboo in some Muslim countries - homosexuality, the status of women - are accepted.
"All these can be said and discussed outside the control of states or radical groups," Cesari says. "If you write a book today that would look at the Koran as a historical document" rather than God's inspired word, "you can end up in jail" in certain countries.
That discussion is nurtured not only by democratic freedoms, but by the fact that American Muslims represent just about every school of thought in Islam, a situation that fosters discussion among factions and prevents any one from dominating.
"There is only one other place where all Muslims from the world can get together," Cesari says. "It's during the pilgrimage, the hajj, in Mecca. Here, you have everybody - Arabs, Iranians, Asians, Europeans, Africans, everybody. So it gives to the Muslims an occasion to talk to each other . . . in a way that is not possible in Muslim societies."
Time will tell whether Muslim readers will quarrel with the decision to include certain entries and omit others, but the authors have tried to run a thread of objectivity through the subject matter. The "terrorism" entry, for example, notes that it is a "complex issue for the American Muslim community. Since at least the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, political violence by Muslims has become a concern for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Many of these acts have been carried out explicitly in the name of Islam, which a majority of American Muslims view as religiously and morally unacceptable."
On "sexuality," the encyclopedia notes that most Muslims, following the Koran, believe homosexuality is a sin. But the entry also notes that gay, bisexual, and transgender Muslims "find themselves torn between Muslim communities that reject homosexuality and [their own sexual] communities that criticize traditional Islam."
One thing is clear to Cesari from studying American Islam. As potent as any religious doctrine is the power of American culture to shape a religion into a distinctively US brand.
Here, lay people rather than clergy lead and manage Muslim congregations - "They hire the imam, like any congregation hires a pastor," Cesari says - and Muslim mosques are no longer just houses of worship, but often nerve centers of community social programs. Muslims also aggressively participate in interfaith activities.
All of which, Cesari says, "is so American."