Allah in L.A.
Norden, Edward
Edward Norden Allah in L.A. Will the freedom America extends ,to its third-largest faith teach Islam's adherents to cherish democracy? he interrupting child T zooms into the principal's...
...It has to be guessed, unless you have flipped through the Minaret beforehand...
...Christmas goes unmentioned at New Horizon, but arithmetic is taught, and Halloween, says the principal, offers a chance to learn how Allah makes pumpkins grow...
...Allah," he says, "gave us the luck that when we do our missionizing work, it's not to push people into Islam, but just to make it known...
...Somalia...
...he interrupting child T zooms into the principal's office wearing her Friday best and stands there momentarily catching her breath...
...Yes, he's an Egyptian, an Arab, an Arab-American...
...Hathout does sound a few of the same themes as this younger generation...
...The jeweled button in one of her nostrils, not to mention her sari, tips you off that she probably comes from the Indian subcontinent, and in fact the principal of the center's five-days-a-week school comes from the town of Hyderabad, where an archipelago of Moslems in a sea of Hindus try to get through the day...
...Yet it wasn't the sort of thing one expected Dr...
...Coins, greenbacks, and checks are being slipped into the zakat box...
...What and where is the House of Islam...
...No sign of it here...
...But can Islam be the religion of a permanent minority and simultaneously be authentic...
...It is being planned without Moslem participation...
...some years ago...
...No, he tells them and his Friday listeners as definitely as any old-fashioned rabbi might, it is not all right...
...But this question isn't compelling for him, so without being impolite he changes the subject...
...In the sociable crush following, the New Horizon and other chattering kids get pleasantly underfoot...
...Our response to this is to see to it that there is a vibrant, alive, influential Islamic presence in this country, the one which makes world orders...
...Mohammed," she now announces, "is making fun of me...
...The kids of New Horizon get Arabic as a second language...
...Tortured again, the young doctor was soon released, this time on condition he leave his country...
...This news fails to shock...
...Pakistan...
...Because although Dr...
...And then: "In a polite way, and with a smiling face, and with all due respect, we should tell them that we are astonished and shudder at the idea that God took on human form...
...All the nationalities and skin colors, many hundreds of people gathering together peacefully, no, better than peacefully, with love for each other and submission in their hearts...
...This periphery runs through Sudan and perhaps Sarajevo, but does it also include Los Angeles...
...Tuition is $320 monthly, says Sister Shahida in her lovely accent, and there aren't many scholarships...
...Hathout, like Sister Shahida, is more than patient...
...You can hear a pin drop, the children are so well-behaved, and next the faithful are told to let their fellow Americans know that Islam is not as it is said to be...
...Hath,out...
...But it does seem as if this millennium, which started with the Crusades, may be ending the same way...
...Well, pretty strict but not too, she admits...
...He does say that Christianity is "an illness planning to attack us...
...Still nothing really surprising from this Ob/Gyn...
...You have Arabs and Bangladeshis and Filipinos, Kurds and Turks and Somalis,bare-headed men in suits and skullcapped men in the galabiya, egg-heads and laborers, Anglos with their gentle blue eyes and the posterity of black Africans rounded up by Arab Moslem slavers and traded to the Yankees long, long ago...
...The other was to help minister to the growing number of Moslems here, both immigrants and native-born...
...Would Dr...
...Hathout admits, the Koran allows a man, meaning a Moslem man, to marry a Christian or Jewish woman—he needn't add that according to Islamic law she and her kids automatically become Moslems, nor does he have to tell his flock that intermarriage for a Moslem woman is haram, forbidden...
...We should say that it leads us to believe that your scriptures have been tampered with...
...Schools like New Horizon are multiplying...
...All use English as segregated families are reunited, many to be answered by parents in Arabic or Urdu or Tagalog—how many adults have been able to grasp the khutba...
...You tell Mohammed not to do that," Sister Shahida says...
...They' are the influential minority...
...The implication is that an ultra establishment might not be able to draw even the 97 pupils New Horizon currently does...
...Tell him I said it isn't right...
...If that happens, Islam has a place and a future in this pluralistic country...
...Hathout is very busy accepting respectful greetings...
...All will soon be led in prayer by Dr...
...We can wish our Christian friends a happy holiday, even though the tree shows that it was a pagan holiday originally," he goes on...
...A new world order is being planned today," he concludes...
...But Dr...
...persuade the Soviets to stop mistreating their Jews," the doctor asks, "while the Serbs do what they like to the Moslems in Bosnia...
...The mosques in America," an unsigned piece in the current issue of the Minaret complains, "are degraded by power struggles that divide different families and factions...
...The right life is, if not easy to live in America, then quite possible...
...The twice-exiled doctor admits without the subject having to be explicitly raised that Hollywood alone isn't to blame for ignorance about Islam or for Islam's stubbornly poor image in this country...
...We do not do as the Americans did, who kidnapped the Africans and brought them here as slaves and turned them from Islam to Christianity by force...
...So he teaches and officiates at the center, and gives lectures around the city informing the open-minded that Islam is as profound and benevolent as Judaism and Christianity and demonstrating in his own person that Moslems don't have horns...
...No, to the Cairo earthquake...
...We have to become the influential minority, because what we offer America is not to exploit it or be its masters, or take its billions or its military aid, but to establish a connection to God for it...
...Here the five pillars of the faith—alms-giving, prayer, pilgrimage, the Ramadan fast, profession of God's unity and Mohammed's prophethood—are drummed into little heads...
...Black Americans are steadily converting to Islam—regular Islam, not the Nation of Islam...
...Doesn't it require a theocratic state of its own to actualize its principles...
...The essay was a reminder of how easy-going the doctor's native land is for an Arab country—the leading Arab country, for as Egypt goes so go the Arabs...
...A Bove all, the problem is with "the church," and with, yes, the Pope...
...There are singles and families, born and naturalized U.S...
...The sixth grade, for the moment, is as far as New Horizon goes-62 kindergartners and first-graders here Edward Norden is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator and Commentary...
...Hathout feels exiled in enemy territory here in America, here in L.A...
...Hathout, all the males kneeling and standing, kneeling and standing and bowing towards Mecca, hundreds of foreheads contacting the wall-to-wall carpet together as he chants the words heard from loudspeakers in Beirut, Jerusalem, etc...
...Perhaps...
...Only those people in the quiet, tight-packed crowd who are weighing conversion, Anglos for the most part, have their little coeducational group...
...Shahida Alikhan is a patient, relaxed type of woman, pudgy, with a soft voice and a cast in her eye...
...For example, the kids learn to keep the daylight fast during the month of Ramadan by doing without a snack...
...Iran...
...We will remain a minority—but are the Jews not a minority...
...Yet he finally left, he exiled himself and his wife again, this time voluntarily, leaving that part of the world in which the call to prayer is full-throated and migrating to, of all places, the U.S...
...Therefore the importance of New Horizon, you see...
...ownstairs, the women have segregated themselves D from the men—Sister Shahida and Mrs...
...Most of them have no idea...
...The preacher's anger is all the more impressive for being perfectly controlled...
...The problem isn't so much with the American man-in-the-street, who is "nice," as with the "hard core" of the American political class...
...A Moslem who cares about his faith and whether his children will be raised as good Moslems is better off to choose a Moslem woman...
...Butthere's a long way to go...
...Some hurry to wash their hands, ears, neck and feet...
...Hathout call India and China part of Dar al-Islam...
...The little girls from New Horizon join their mothers, the little boys their fathers...
...before every Christmas season—"Is a tree all right for the children...
...They are told to show them first-hand that Moslems aren't just "brutes and terrorists...
...The Islamic Republic of Sudan...
...They are led in Arabic by Dr...
...Apparently the idea of the New Horizon School is simple...
...says Dr...
...There he was to live for a generation as a resident alien, well paid, becoming a friend to some of the most puissant men in the emirate and physician to their wives and daughters...
...Into just such a crowd of serene humanity as this Malcolm X said he blended during his famous pilgrimage to Mecca...
...He had gone to Kuwait with his wife, his scars, his degree...
...His office is equipped with more than one phone and VCR, and stocked with at least as many of his cassettes as there are on sale in the bookstore...
...And we can and should take the opportunity to educate the Christians, telling them that Jesus is a prophet for us and that we believe in his virgin birth...
...It necessitates, Sister Shahida explains as she glances into a classroom where boys and girls together are being fed before the prayers and Dr...
...Hathout are off in a semi-isolated room with the other members of their gender, none veiled, all kerchiefed...
...Her face is clear of any makeup, and only it and her hands are visible...
...Of course it can survive as a minority religion," he answers...
...And he calls on his listeners to resist by keeping the faith and making it known to others...
...This creates serious logistical problems...
...Much progress, Dr...
...No, no, no...
...But though a man is permitted a wife not born Moslem, Dr...
...Hathout, "but the Pope is very politically minded and he means business...
...Hathout prefers talking about the real as opposed to the caricatured Islam...
...The salesperson this morning is a black American...
...Hathout says, has been and continues to be made in that direction...
...To be sure, Dr...
...We have to reach a critical mass of Moslems who make the supreme effort to educate their children in the faith...
...And so the service is over...
...Most, however—including all the fathers in intermarriages with American-born women—have moved to this country from Dar al-Islam, the sprawling, not-easily-defined House of Islam, and now live all over the medley of towns, the world-in-a-city which is Greater L.A...
...To which your reporter can only answer, "Not really," before Dr...
...And not to worry—every last penny will go to them, not one will go astray...
...Hathout and many other cadres and leaders of the Brotherhood were back in jail...
...Hathout urges the men to stick to their own kind...
...Hathout in a controlled preacher's voice expresses gratitude that the faithful are being tested, exactly as Allah promised Mohammed, peace be upon him, they would be...
...A question, then, of self-respect...
...They are the ones "who really run this country, and they hate Islam becauseIslam stands for justice and against exploitation...
...An Arab is top person at the center, and all the literature at the center's bookstore that is not in English is in Arabic—as the Arabs go, so go the Moslems...
...But so far as meat is concerned, they are taught only' to shun pork they needn't stick to hallal butchers and can eat with their parents at the Sizzler next door or the McDonald's up the street...
...she is asked...
...Hathout's formulation, "the Moslems have requested to be governed by the Koran," show that the Crusades aren't over...
...Yet as graciously as Sister Shahida has done, he makes time for your reporter, sitting him down in his office upstairs...
...It seems as if when it comes to human rights, a different standard applies to the aspirations and sufferings of Moslems, does it not...
...Christmas is not our eid," he says, eid being the Arabic for a Moslem religious occasion or feast...
...Some of their parents are American blacks...
...Presumably the reference is to the Pope's remarks about the Islamic Republic of Sudan, which has been massacring and starving its rebel Christian and animist minority for years...
...The impression you get is of a man who has either given up on the Moslems in their heartland, or realizes that if there is an Islamic revolution in his crucial homeland, it will be made by the younger men who have come of age in his absence and in whose gleaming eyes he and his ilk are wimps...
...It's to instill in these American kids enough Islamic knowledge and habits that by the time they are through the sixth grade and have to transfer to public schools, Madonna won't distract them...
...Hathout says, "One hopes not...
...Hathout reminds his audience of the competition for adherents, the missionizing war, underway on the periphery of Dar al-Islam—the political business the Pope is serious about is the capture of actual or potential Moslem souls...
...Smiling again, Dr...
...Why did the U.S...
...on South Vermont Avenue deep in Latino and Korean territory, 35 older kids in a building in Pasadena...
...Here is the beautiful face of Islam...
...The Christmas khutba continues...
...Another is intermarrying...
...These for now must be inferred, because here is a bare-headed man wearing a smile, a suit, tie, and silvery pencil mustache who, as they say in California, is very much in control of himself and his environment...
...H assan Hathout, M.D., Ph.D., has grievances...
...Not at all, he answers immediately...
...Because of this and the fact that a good part of the intake of Third Worlders in the last few decades has come from Egypt, Pakistan, the West Bank, and other such places, Islam stateside may already have knocked the various combined denominations of Judaism from the distant number three spot behind the various Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church...
...You thus learn from "Living Memories" that when the young Hassan Hathout returned all the way back in 1949 to King Farouk's Cairo from Palestine, where he had been a doctor with the Egyptian army trying to snuff Israel at birth, he was jailed along with thousands of other Ikhwan Muslimin, thousands of other Moslem Brothers, but only lightly tortured by his fellow Egyptians, his fellow Arabs, his fellow Moslems, before being released...
...He would rather, however, talk about Islam, about the fact that Americans know it less for what it is than for what it is not, The call he felt to tell Americans the truth about Islam was, he says, one of two reasons why, after three satisfying decades, he quit a wonderful job as clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Kuwait University and moved to L.A...
...Now is a time when Moslems can prove themselves by rallying to their brethren in need...
...That is the relevance of Moslems in America...
...171...
...y es, she says, there are dozens of Moslem day schools like this one from coast to coast...
...It is our duty to educate mankind...
...His link to the Moslem Brothers certainly isn't brought up by him...
...We should celebrate our eids, not those of others...
...Does this mean that Dr...
...He controls himself and the interview...
...Although trees are discouraged, adult Moslems need not ignore Christmas, indeed are encouraged by Dr...
...Hathout smiles...
...Having a tree is one way of enhancing that risk...
...On the kindergarten floor, mattresses carefully laid out for naps have not yet been rolled up...
...citizens plus aliens legal and illegal, people with good credit and people no doubt on relief, even a couple of Koreans from a nearby strip mall whose curiosity must have gotten the better of them...
...We can help by our presence to make an American order in the same way as America makes a world order...
...How strict, how ultra-orthodox, how fundamentalist, as it were, is the Islamic viewpoint and practice inculcated here...
...To which the principal says no, devout Moslems get up before dawn anyway to say the first prayer of the day...
...First come the prayers...
...Three years passed and Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power, and before long Dr...
...Saudi Arabia...
...They are shedding for an hour all thoughts of the outside world as they shed their shoes and Reeboks at the entrance...
...The school is in back, the bookstore out front, offering among other things material highly unfriendly to Israel...
...And why, he asks, does the West, meaning the U.S., not step in when the results of a democratic election in Algeria favoring the Islamic party are nullified by a junta...
...When you travel in the lands of the old Caliphate it's not uncommon to hear both illiterate and superbly educated Moslems scoff in private and public at the divinity of a flesh-and-blood man...
...We Moslems are a minority in this country, and a minority is at risk of losing its identity...
...Yet was there no country in the Arab or Moslem worlds in which a man of his qualities and beliefs might have felt more at home...
...Hathout...
...His reasons have been noted...
...All donations today into the zakat, the alms box, will go to helping the quake victims, says Dr...
...Statements by the Pope deploring the situation in countries where, in Dr...
...Friday is the biggest day of the week at the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles...
...Throughout that part of the world, he says, the people yearn for democracy—by whigh he means an enlightened Islamic regime—but he doubts whether the various kings and dictators who purport to rule in the name of, or at least with due consideration for, Islam willstep aside...
...The smile probably means that these are the type of ignorant, perhaps unconsciously hostile questions to be expected from an American who most likely gets his information from TV and the movies...
...Hathout to put into so many words, not here in America, not in the semi-publicity of his Friday talk in English...
...You have Korans in Arabic and English, gaily illustrated primers for children, pamphlets and cassettes, Arabic-English dictionaries, how-tos for adult beginners and the center's bimonthly organ,' the Minaret...
...We want the children of the Americans to be clean and pure...
...Her visitor knows that most experts believe Islam to be this country's fastest-growing religion...
...The sickness from which America suffers has its cure in the pharmacy of Islam and we as Moslems should make this known—come and take your medicine...
...He starts the khutba by posing the question he says is posed to him by numbers of Moslem parents in L.A...
...Everyone seems to be a brother or sister to everyone...
...It's not as oppressive as many neighboring countries," he says...
...Hathout, who'll also deliver his khutba, or sermon...
...The old grievance against the West is there in him, bubbling just under the surface, breaking through now and again...
...This does surprise your reporter...
...Concomitantly, females are to be modest, males are to control themselves...
...Hathout's sermon, that parents and children in outlying towns leave home early, practically at dawn, to connect to the bus shuttling between the center and Pasadena...
...Hathout doesn't really enjoy discussing his young manhood with an unknown and possibly hostile American, he has written about it in his "Living Memories" column in the magazine...
...Only think of India, only think of China—Moslems have lived there as minorities for ages...
...Hathout doesn't say...
...But there's a second, a practical reason,why Christmas trees are out...
...In fact, as a Moslem person and personage he actually prefers the freedom of this country, and even if an Islamic government arises in Egypt, he wouldn't go back...
...The implication being that it takes a devout Moslem householder and taxpayer in America to find the money to enroll his kid at New Horizon...
...I say this not in hatred," says Dr...
...That must be hard," her visitor says...
...This is when Sister Shahida's happy, nicely behaved kids come in from all over the megalopolis with uniforms pressed and hair squeaky-clean...
...Is the reference to Bosnia...
...The only limits on the faithful here," he says, "are those imposed by their own laziness and indifference...
...She now announces to the browsers that she's about to close for an hour—the center is beginning to be jammed with a peaceful crowd gathering for devotions, which have priority over business...
...Hathout to mark it in a special way...
...Next, an announcement in English to the totally attentive congregation...
...On the first-grade blackboard, the Arabic characters are as slithery as eels...
...Sister Shahida estimates under questioning that half the kids enrolled have at least one Arab parent...
Vol. 26 • December 1993 • No. 12
