SOUTH BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- Just off one of the busiest
highways in this rapidly growing suburb sits the new face of Islam in
America.
The Islamic Society of Central Jersey's mosque is tucked in amid the pine
trees and flowering pink dogwoods along the booming high-tech corridor
leading into Princeton. Next door, huge concrete water main pipes lie on the
side of the road, ready to be installed as part of a new housing development.
The mosque's expansive parking lots fill up with mini-vans and SUVs,
disgorging parents and kids hurrying inside for worship between work and
classes.
Scenes like this are playing out across the United States as Muslim
communities spread out from the cities to the suburbs. Definitive statistics
are hard to come by, but some Muslim leaders and sociologists, backed by
anecdotal evidence, say the fastest growth of mosques is occurring in the
suburbs. That was also the conclusion of a 2001 nationwide study of mosques
by the Council on American Islamic Relations.
"This is more and more where Muslims are living," said Ishan Bagby,
a professor at the University of Kentucky who conducted the study.
As was the case with waves of European, Asian and Latino immigrants in past
decades, Muslim immigrants settled in the cities. As they established
businesses and prospered, they, or more commonly, their children, moved to
the suburbs.
"The Muslims are following the exact same pattern," Bagby said.
Out of 800 mosques surveyed, Bagby found that 77 percent of those in suburban
locations saw their congregations grow by 10 percent or more from 1999 to
2000, the most recent statistics available, while only 53 percent of urban
mosques saw similar growth over that same period. The Council plans a second
study in 2005.
The suburban growth is not exclusive to Islam; major Christian and Jewish
organizations also are growing in suburban areas as populations expand
farther from the urban core. That's what is happening with the Islamic
Society of Central Jersey, many of whose members are engineers, researchers
or medical professionals who settled in the area in the 1970s and '80s to be
close to well-paying jobs along the Route 1 corridor.
Now the $1.2 million mosque has about 500 families as active members, most of
them recent immigrant professionals who chose the suburbs over more
established Muslim communities in New Jersey like Paterson or Jersey City.
Its highly sought-after school has more than 200 students and a long waiting
list.
"Not everyone wished to live and educate his kids in Jersey City,"
said the center's imam, Hamad Ahmad Chebli. "They spread out to
different areas. Suburban Muslim families knew each other and put their money
together and started local mosques."
This urban-suburban contrast is beginning to draw the attention of religious
scholars and academics studying the rapid growth of Islam in America.
Professor Sulayman Nyang, chairman of African studies at Howard University in
Washington, D.C., noted several principal differences between urban and
suburban mosques.
He said the inner-city mosques tend to be predominantly African-American,
more inward-looking and focused more intently on addressing neighborhood
concerns like poverty, drug abuse and employment, while those in the suburbs
are more likely to be populated by immigrant Muslims from the Middle East or
south Asia, with a keener interest in world affairs, particularly conditions
in their countries of origin.
This was evident in recent visits to two Washington-area mosques, one in inner-city
D.C., and the other in suburban northern Virginia. Masjid Muhammad is a
community mosque set amid the crowded rowhouses about two miles from the
Capitol. Its well-kept exterior is a distinct contrast to the abandoned gas
station across the street, where rusting metal storage tanks and dilapidated
junker cars sit atop crumbling weed-strewn concrete.
"Like any inner-city church, we are trying to stabilize our
community," said Imam Yusuf Saleem. The mosque sponsors a Boy Scout
troop, has its own school, runs a 12-step substance abuse recovery program,
and recently bought three buildings on a section of Fourth Street known
locally as "Islamic Way" to be used as affordable housing for
community members.
About 11 miles away in Falls Church, Va., the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque is set
among the single-family homes in a quiet neighborhood ablaze in purple azalea
bushes and scarlet-and-white magnolia trees. Its members are doctors,
dentists, engineers and researchers who settled in the Washington suburbs,
but still maintain strong ties to their homelands.
The mosque is solidly middle-class America. Sheikh Muhammed al-Hanouti, the
Grand Mufti of Greater Washington, is the mosque's spiritual leader, and is
constantly called upon by mosque members to issue fatwas, or religious
decrees, on whether certain activities are permitted under Islam.
"Just the other day, I got a call from a man who opened a supermarket
who asked `Can I sell pork or lottery tickets?' These are the things of
everyday life here." (The answer was no, as pork and gambling are
prohibited in Islam.)
Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, director of the mosque's outreach program, said the
growth of the suburban Muslim population in America was greatly influenced by
decisions by the U.S. State Department over the past three decades on who to
accept as immigrants.
"They identified raw talent in the information technology industry, and
quotas went out the window," he said. "As the Islamic experiment
became successful, they wound up moving into the suburbs."
Abdul-Malik said the next logical step for the suburban Muslim community is
one that has happened with other waves of immigrants _ assimilation.
"America has become the crucible for Islam," he said. "The
crucible is a container where you put an element, place it in the fire and
heat it so that you burn away all but the pure element. The Pakistani and
Sudanese and Somali and Afghan parts get burned off and you're left with
American Muslims all standing in the same mosque, all praying together."
