So, A Man Breaks Into A Mosque…

Joanne Freeman: One Friday in 1976 a group of men broke into a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. They didn’t want to vandalize it. All they wanted to do was pray. For the mosques members, it was a regular work day, but Friday is a holy day in Islam and these men, recent immigrants from Yemen and Palestine, were shocked that the mosque was closed. It was the opening salvo in a struggle to control not only the building, but how Islam would be practiced there.

Joanne Freeman: The mosque in Dearborn was called the Dix mosque and was one of just a couple in the area. It had been built in the 1930s by Lebanese immigrants who came to work at the local Ford Factory. Like many Muslim communities in Michigan, the Dearborn congregation had developed a religious practice that was, well, rather different from the Islam practiced in other parts of the world. So you can understand why the newcomers were confused. [Nabeel 00:29:58] Abraham grew up attending the Dix mosque in the 1950s and 60s. And a few years ago, he told Brian what it was like attending the mosque when he was a kid.

Nabeel Abraham: Well, it was really an evolving mosque. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were really like a Protestant church. Nobody wore a headscarf. Instead of Friday prayers, which is the thing that Muslims do around the world, we had Sunday prayers, we had Sunday school. The basement floor, you might say, that was where all the socializing occurred. There were weddings there, and I remember them. And these were Palestinian weddings. These were people from my father’s village. And there would be a fellow with the sword that always caught my attention. There’s this sword comes out of nowhere and he’s brandishing it and doing you like a Zorba, the Greek dance. There’d be a lot of sweat, people moving, and gyrating, and dancing.

Brian: But did you have any sense that that was unusual or you might be violating the religious mores of other worshipers?

Nabeel Abraham: Oh, no, no. To us, it completely seemed normal because as a community, we didn’t have any other places. And it was the life, the center of life, or a small group of mostly Lebanese, and some Palestinian, and a few other miscellanea Muslims, the mosque was accommodated itself to life in America and had been doing so for a while. There was a women’s auxiliary that seemed to be a little bit more modern or progressive.

Brian: And did those women have much of a say in the mosque?

Nabeel Abraham: They did because they were raising funds and they were pushing for Arabic language instruction, religious instruction. And they were the ones that I found out later through my research were the ones who were saying, “Hey, we’re losing our young people to out marriages, who are moving away, who aren’t keeping in the community.

Brian: But the whole time as I understand that even before the new immigrants came in the ’70s, there are these older directors kind of lurking in the background and they already had a lot of issues with those more progressive women. Is that right?

Nabeel Abraham: Yes. Now there were the old men. The old men had a hand in building this mosque and steering it. And they were right wing or let’s put it a crusty, okay? But the guys who were coming in from Yemen, the new immigrants, were looking at the whole picture and saying, “This is not authentic.” In the old country where we just came from mosques didn’t look like this, they were open on Fridays, a lot of men there praying, and what’s with the women running around without headscarves? What’s with them raising their voices and dictating policy or attempting to? What’s with these parties going on? And the old men were looking at these new guys and saying, “Well, we can use them. We can use them to block the women and put them back in their place.”

Brian: So this new blood comes in and it in some ways serves the purposes of these old timers.

Nabeel Abraham: Of the older guys, yeah.

Brian: How does that work out?

Nabeel Abraham: Well, it worked out very badly for them and they were told that by the woman. They said, “You think these guys are your allies, they’re going to have your lunch in the future.” And they said, “Well, we’re in charge and we have the legal documents.” Et cetera. But they had one, let’s call it, weakness. They had elections.

Brian: So was there one key election where the new guys took over?

Nabeel Abraham: Yes, there was. What happened is they out voted the old timers, took over the board, and took possession of the bank account of the mosque, and they started making policy. And they brought in Imam or a Shi’a from Yemen, a real hard, rigid fellow, a puritanical guy.

Nabeel Abraham: And the first thing that guy did is told the women that you’re not welcome here doing what you used to do. You’re going to use a side entrance, we’re going to put up a curtain, there’s going to be gender segregation, and you’re not going to raise your voices in here. Well, it didn’t take very long for the women to feel they weren’t welcome. That’s when they went in, and started their own group, and the old men followed them eventually, and they started a new-

Brian: Hold on. Why did those old man follow the women that they had just tried to get rid of?

Nabeel Abraham: They realized that they would have to sit in the back bench, so to speak, or leave. And eventually they left and joined with the women to form a-

Brian: How did the women treat them when they arrived with their tail between their legs?

Nabeel Abraham: They humiliated and they said, “We told you so.” This is an important point. The women put together this new Islamic center. They put up the money, because their purse, their treasury remained in their hands whereas the men came penniless. They made a falsey bargain and lost.

Brian: What’s the scene today in Dearborn? What is the nature of the Islamic community? If you could make a big generalization.

Nabeel Abraham: Well, there’s an enormous diversity first off, to answer part of that question. What has happened is there’s been this enormous mushrooming of mosques, banquet halls, schools, Arabic parochial schools, Muslim schools with this enormous influx of more Yemenis, more Iraqis who weren’t present at that time, more Lebanese. In the suburbs you would find among the Pakistani professional class of Arabs, say Syrians, Palestinians, you will find less traditional Islam. Although, I mean, they may start shouting, “No, no, we are traditional too.” And I would say, “Yes.”

Brian: We love when people write into our website.

Nabeel Abraham: Well, there’s an enormous diversity. So today Muslims and Islam are part of the norm. And people who don’t agree with the philosophical line think, “We could go to another mosque.”

Brian: And how is that different? The [inaudible 00:36:36] than the standard story of religion throughout American history of congregations fighting over differences of practice, and finally part of the congregation is sent packing. They form their own church, in this case. I’m talking about Protestant in 19th century, and eventually there’s just this proliferation of churches.

Nabeel Abraham: You really hit the nail on the head. It’s part of that trend. It is the Americanization of Islam in America. They’re following in the same steps virtually as the Christian churches and you could probably add the Judaic institutions.

Brian: Nabeel, I want to thank you for joining us on Backstory.

Nabeel Abraham: My pleasure.

Joanne Freeman: Nabeel Abraham is professor emeritus of anthropology at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn.

Joanne Freeman: That’s going to do it for us today. Thanks for joining me on this dip into the Backstory archive. There are thousands of other shows available at backstoryradio.org and you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your questions about history. Send an email to backstory@virginia.edu and we’re also on Facebook and Twitter at Backstory radio. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.

Joanne Freeman: Backstory is produced at Virginia humanities, major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities, and the environment.

Speaker 12: Brian Balogh is professor of history at the University of Virginia. And Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and American studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. Backstory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanities.