As Ismail talks, his 20-year-old son, Talal, pops in to say he’s heading over to the the mosque — in the basement of a Best Western on Route 7 — for Friday prayers. Talal, in T-shirt, jeans and earrings, is a drummer in a metal band — “progressive metal,” his father qualifies — and works at the flag store.
Talal is what his father sees for the future of Islam in this country, a thoroughly American kid who barbecues burgers with his dad and then stops off for prayer on his way to work.
Your photo story
As part of an ongoing series on the lives of American Muslims, we want to see, in photos, what life is like for Muslims around the country. Send us a photo that represents an aspect of your daily life, whether it's attending daily prayer or hanging out with friends. Describe the photo and tell us how it relates to your life as an American Muslim.
Your Take
"What is it like to be Muslim in the United States in 2011? Tell us your story."
On Faith
“Fitting in,” Fawaz Ismail says.
Osama bin Laden is dead, but his legacy colors the lives of the estimated 2.4 million American Muslims every day. Some have reacted to a decade of stares, cutting comments, airport humiliations and disturbing incidents of homegrown terrorism by drifting away from their religion, some by deepening their faith, and a few by turning to the very extremism that sparked the mistrust they encounter.
In the past 18 months alone, U.S. Muslims have felt compelled to explain — to themselves and their non-Muslim neighbors — the Fort Hood, Tex., massacre, the attempted bombing of Times Square, the backlash against a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, and sting operations that led to the arrests of alleged Muslim proto-terrorists from Portland, Ore., to Ashburn.
The more Muslims feel singled out, the more they focus on painful divisions in their own ranks, between young and old, native and newcomer, secular and devout, militant and moderate. Two-thirds of this country’s Muslims are immigrants, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, hailing from scores of countries.
In the Washington area, Muslims attend mosques with some of the region’s leading professionals in medicine, technology and government. Yet they have also prayed alongside people who were later charged with plotting to blow up Metro stations or traveling to Pakistan to train for jihad against the United States.
Younger Muslims often complain about a blanket of orthodoxy that weighs on them. Many of the country’s large Muslim organizations — religious, civic, educational — are run by immigrants or funded by groups with strong ties to countries with very different cultures.
“In my parents’ generation, there was more of a sense of clinging to a foreign country, and with that, more of a religious orthodoxy,” says Saqib Ali, 36, a software engineer and former Maryland state legislator who lives in Gaithersburg. “People of my generation are much more confident and more assertive of our rights. We’re not just thankful to be allowed in this country. Unfortunately, as younger Muslims fell away from that level of devotion, the people who retained power were the most orthodox.”
Charities preaching an ultraconservative brand of Islam remain important donors to many Muslim schools and mosques. And most U.S. mosques are still led by imams trained overseas, often in the fundamentalist tradition, complicating efforts by the next generation to mold a distinctly American brand of Islam.
At the Giant in Sterling not long ago, a woman looked at Sadaf Iqbal’s oldest daughter, 4-year-old Asiyah, and said: “She has such beautiful curly hair. It’s a shame she’ll have to cover it up.”
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