Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

2 8 6Islam i n World Cult u r e sdespair and fear. The chapter begins with an analysis of the historical roots ofanti-Muslim prejudice. It then offers a historical overview of Muslim diversityin the United States, focusing on both indigenous and immigrant Muslimcommunities. It concludes with an examination of contemporary Muslim life,exploring such key issues as Muslims and the state, contests over Muslim identi t y, and gender and Islam.Anti-Muslim Prejudice in the United StatesFrom colonial times to the middle of the 1900s, many Americans were alternatelyallured and repulsed by images of the Muslim Orient, which was oftenassociated with political despotism, sexual excess, and cultural backwardness.A surprising number of U.S. literary works and genres discussed various elementsof Islamic history and culture. For example, Washington Irving, the famousauthor of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” wrote abook about Muslim Spain called The Alhambra (1832) and a biography of theProphet Muhammad (1850). During the 1800s, as a number of Americanmale elites journeyed to the Christian Holy Land in Palestine, they alsorecorded their impressions of Middle Eastern Muslims in popular travelogues.For some, the chance to travel to the Middle East became an opportunity to affirmtheir male identities; they fantasized about and even imagined themselvesas Turkish sultans who dominated exotic Oriental women at will. By the 1920s,the exotic Muslim Orient would also serve as an imaginative space for Americanwomen’s sexual fantasy, as well. One of the most popular movies of thatdecade was The Sheik (1921), starring the olive-skinned and sensual RudolfValentino, a movie star who was particularly popular among the liberated “newwomen” of that era.Islam also provided material for the symbolic and ritual acts of U.S. fraternalorganizations. In the late 1800s, thousands of white and later AfricanAmerican males joined the Shriners, a fraternal organization that traced itsimagined lineage to the “Grand Shaykh” of Mecca and to Sufism, the mysticalbranch of Islam. These Shriners, who are famous today both for driving smallcars in the nation’s street parades and for supporting a number of charities,donned Turkish fezzes and used a number of Islamic symbols in their lodger i t e s .Some Christian Americans, however, saw Islam as a misguided religious tradition,a Christian heresy, and even a sign of the anti-Christ. In so doing, Americansreproduced centuries-old stereotypes of Islam that had emerged inChristian Europe at the time of the Crusades. The Prophet Muhammad wasthe object of much of this prejudice, which continued into late medieval andmodern times. For example, Dante, the great Italian author of The Divine Com-