c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) After experiencing Sept. 11, 2001, firsthand at the Wall Street Journal office in Lower Manhattan, Paul Barrett began writing a series of articles about Muslims in America for the paper.

Those articles evolved into his new book, “American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion,” which profiles seven American Muslims, including an African-American preacher popular among immigrants, a scholar whose interpretations of holy texts earn him death threats, and an Idaho graduate student who simultaneously condemned and promoted terrorism.

Barrett, now the assistant managing editor at BusinessWeek, talked about radicalism, presidential politics and awkward moments for a Jew among Muslims.

Q: Why do you describe American Muslims as an immigration success story?

A: America is famous for providing opportunities for education and economic advancement to people who come from foreign lands. Muslims fit into that pattern.

As a group, Muslims are better educated than Americans generally, their family income is higher, and they even register to vote at a higher rate than Americans do generally.

Q: Your book portrays different American Muslims as having sympathies for terrorist causes and organizations, such as Hezbollah. Are those sympathies the norm?

A: Many Muslims in America have powerful antipathy for Israel, but Israel is one of the United States’ closest allies. It’s fair to say many Muslims in America have some degree of sympathy for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, although they don’t necessarily approve of all their tactics. Bridging that gap will be a challenge, and I’m not sure how it will be done.

Q: How do you draw the line between conservative Islam and a dangerous, radical Islam?

A: Describing someone as a conservative or orthodox, or even fundamentalist, Muslim is not the same as suggesting that person is violent or dangerous. Muslims, like Christians and Jews and Hindus, should be allowed the freedom to practice their religion in the U.S., including if that goes in a fundamentalist direction. That’s their privilege in our country.

Q: How can Americans be sure that an event like the 2005 subway bombings in London, which were carried out by British Muslims, will never happen here?

A: We can’t, but we in the U.S. are in a much better position to prevent such events. There is not the powerful degree of alienation and resentment (among Muslims) common in England and Western Europe.

We have to make sure that any people _ and, let’s be candid, this tends to be younger men, not grandmothers and 5-year-old girls _ who show signs of solving Islam’s problems by blowing something up are pulled into the fold and talked out of bad ideas.

Q: The majority of Americans who convert to Islam are black males. What about the religion appeals to them?

A: What was attractive to Malcolm X remains attractive to some younger black Americans today. It is an expression of a sense of independence in a society that is still sometimes hostile to non-whites. The religion attracts many black Americans the way it attracts people around the world, whether it’s the person of the Prophet (Muhammad), or the Quran. A number of African-Americans I interviewed found an appeal in the way Islam describes the unity of God, as an alternative to the notion of the Holy Trinity.

Q: White Americans often come to Islam through its mystical branch, known as Sufism. Sufis seem to hold a marginal position in the American Muslim community. Why is that?

A: There aren’t that many Americans who would say “I’m a Sufi” because of the powerful disapproval that Sufis suffer in the eyes of many other Muslims. But quite a few Muslims in the U.S. engage in Sufi practices, such as dhikr (chanting or singing holy words) or even just having an admiration for the poetry of Rumi.

Q: Your book describes how many Muslims organized to support President Bush in the 2000 elections. How do you think they’ll vote in 2008?

A: I don’t know, and I don’t think Muslims know.

Q: Six of the seven people you profiled are men. Did you have a hard time getting access to female American Muslims?

A: In fairness to my book, there are women who appear in other chapters. But overall, I did have a harder time getting women to sit down and have sustained, serious conversations with me. They were just shyer.

Q: Was there anything you came to admire or dislike about Islam or Muslims in the U.S.?

A: Certainly there were awkward moments, but the huge majority of the experience was positive. When I looked closely, I saw more of what is familiar than foreign. Particularly among immigrant Muslims, hearing their stories, what they want for their children _ you could have substituted them for my own relatives.

Q: Tell me about one of the awkward moments.

A: People would sometimes ask me if I worked for FBI, and when I said no, they didn’t look like they believed me. I would try to joke my way out, saying, “Do you think the FBI would send someone who looks like me to your mosque?” I think (the FBI) could come up with a better undercover operative than a guy who looks like a Jew. I don’t think I pass for a Pakistani immigrant.

KRE/PH END USEEM

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