part series is based on the book published by the US Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs on Muslims living in America. This week: Part one of ‘Building a Life in America' Immigrants have come to America from every corner of the globe. The people are diverse but their reasons similar: Some sought to escape an old way of life, others to find a new one. Some were escaping violence, others the shackles of custom, poverty, or simple lack of opportunity. They came largely from Europe in the 19th century and from the rest of the world — Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South America — in the 20th and 21st centuary. They arrived with hope, and often little else. Their initial reception was frequently mixed. These new Americans found a vast new land hungry for their labor. But some, unfamiliar with these newcomers' customs and religions, treated the new Americans as outsiders and believed they could never be real Americans. They were wrong. With freedom, faith, and hard work, each successive wave of immigrants has added its distinctive contributions to the American story, enriched our society and culture, and shaped the ever-dynamic, always-evolving meaning of the single word that binds us together: American. And today, this story is the Muslim-American story too. In 1965, a new immigration law reshaped profoundly the inward flow of new Americans. No longer would national-origin quotas determine who could come. In their place were categories based on family relationships and job skills. With this change, immigration numbers soared, bringing the first significant numbers of Muslims from South Asia and the Middle East to the United States. They arrived in a nation very different from the one experienced by 19th-century immigrants, but today's new Americans face the old immigrant challenge of defining their place in America's social, economic, and political fabric. Consider two sisters, Assia and Iman Boundaoui. Their parents are from Algeria, and the girls were raised near Chicago, Illinois, as Muslim Americans. As reported by National Public Radio (NPR), Assia and Imam grew up watching both the children's Nickelodeon station and the news channel Al Jazeera. When they got takeout food, they sometimes chose Kentucky Fried Chicken and some-times their favorite falafel restaurant. “In America, we would say we're Muslim first, because that's what makes us different, I guess,” Assia, age 20, told NPR. “But in another country, like in a Muslim country, we would say we're American.” Their story is both remarkable and not so, for there is nothing more American than new generations — from kaleidoscopic combinations of ethnicity and religion — defining themselves as Americans. “America has always been the promised land for Muslims and non-Muslims,” observes Iranian-American Behzad Yaghmaian, author of “Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Jour- ney West”. She told the New York Times, “They still come here because the United States offers what they're missing at home.” The tales of Muslim Americans track a familiar arc, but individually they add immeasurably to the vibrant diversity of a nation founded not on common ancestry, but on the shared values of freedom, opportunity, and equal rights for all. “In every era of US history, women and men from around the world have opted for the American experience,” writes historian Hasia Diner. “They arrived as foreigners, bearers of languages, cultures, and religions that at times seemed alien to America's essential core. Over time, as ideas about US culture changed, the immigrants and their descendants simultaneously built ethnic communities and participated in American civic life, contributing to the nation as a whole.” Muslim Americans possess a diversity that is extraordinary even by American standards. In sharp contrast to other immigrant groups, Muslim Americans cannot be defined by race or nationality; in this sense, they more closely resemble the Hispanic Americans whose origins lie in Spain, the many nations of Latin America, and the islands of the Caribbean. Muslim American diversity may be greater still, encompassing origins in South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe's Balkan region, and Africa, as well as a small but growing group of Hispanic Muslims. Because the United States does not track population by religion, there is no authoritative count of its Muslim population. Estimates range widely, from 2 million to 7 million or more. Of that number, approximately 34 percent are of Pakistani or South Asian origin and 26 percent are Arab. Another 25 percent of Muslim Americans are indigenous, largely African American, and this adds still more layers to the rich Muslim-American experience. In other words, the Muslim-American saga is not just one of immigration and Americanization, but part of one of the most powerful themes in American history: the struggle for racial equality. There are mosques and Muslim social and cultural institutions throughout the country, in urban centers and rural communities alike. Generalizing about such a diverse a population can obscure more than it explains. Better, perhaps, to study representative experiences. Iman Boundaoui of Chicago, for example, found that freedom involved her decision to wear a head scarf. She recalls a vivid incident during a high school trip to Paris, France, when her group talked with girls at a private Muslim school founded in response to a French law banning head scarves in public schools: “And me and my friends were looking at them,” Boundaoui told NPR, “and at that moment we were like, ‘Thank God we live in America,' that I can walk down the street with my scarf on without having to decide to take it off because I have to go to school.” Today, in a thousand different circumstances, Americans of Islamic faith embrace their heritage as a crucial part of a self-fashioned identity in which they choose from among all the possibilities of freedom that this land bestows upon all its citizens. As they explore the possibilities, they discover that they, too, have become Americans. “We stress the American Muslim identity, that home is where my grandchildren are going to be raised, not where my grandfather is buried,” Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, told California's Sacramento Bee newspaper.
