The tragedy of ii September 2001, and evidence that Islamic extremists carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon changed the trajectory along which American Muslims were moving. The earlier tenden cies of American Muslim leaders to narrow the boundaries of the community, de emphasise the interpretative breadth of Islamic law and emphasise foreign policy issues at the expense of domestic ones have been reversed. The new tendencies are being strongly shaped by non Muslim politicians and the mainstream American media as Muslims are increasingly drawn into national politics.
American Muslims were initially silent, hoping that Muslims had not been responsible for the murderous attacks. President Bush began meeting with Muslim religious leaders almost immediately and visited the leading mosque in Washington, DC, but it was not one of the new spokespeople whom President Bush chose to stand on the White House lawn with him on 20 September 200i. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, a white convert and a scholar of Islamic law, was one of six religious leaders and the only Muslim to meet with the president that day, lamenting that Islam had been hijacked. The White House and the media called upon scholars and others outside the Muslim political organisations to speak about the true meaning of jihad, Islamic views of terrorism and similar topics,25 while the leaders of American Muslim political organisations found themselves on the defensive.
American Muslim leaders were in a quandary. Some managed to see ii September as an opportunity, citing increased media time and close work with government agencies. Copies of the Qur'an were sold out in bookstores all over the US and many Islamic centres and mosques held open houses. Most Muslims, however, saw ii September as a major setback for Islam in America. Many indigenous converts felt betrayed. W. D. Mohammed, leader of the largest African American Muslim body, renamed his Muslim Society of America the American Society of Muslims and advised his followers to 'blend in’. Then in 2003 he stepped down, leaving the organisation leaderless.
25 These included Professors Ali Asani, Khaled Abou El Fadl and Muqtedar Khan, and Sufi leader Shaykh Muliammad IHisham Kabbani: see Karen Isaksen Leonard, 'American Muslims before and after September ii, 2001,’ Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), 15 June 2002.
World History
