Progressive American Muslims Push for Reinterpretation of Islam

Published: Thu, Oct. 07, 2004

By RACHEL ZOLL

AP Religion Writer

NEW YORK (AP) The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks emboldened many outside the Muslim community to demand Islamic leaders re-examine religious teachings on matters from war to women's rights.

But in the United States, the latest call for reform is coming from within.

On Nov. 15, as the holy month of Ramadan is expected to end, a group of mostly young Muslims plans to launch the Progressive Muslim Union of North America in New York.

As their name suggests, the organization will take positions that conservatives consider objectionable, even heretical: Progressives believe women should have a broader role in mosques; they back gay rights; and they believe Muslims should borrow from traditions as varied as Buddhism and the U.S. civil rights movement to reshape Islam for modern times.

"When you've been taught ever since you can remember that Islam is a certain thing, especially as women ... you reach a certain point where it's not tenable anymore," said Sarah Eltantawi, 28, one of four founders of the Progressive Union. "People need to feel that there is an alternative Islamic space that has some legitimacy that they can turn to."

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EDITORIAL: Dialogue on the Muslim faith

Published: Monday, October 11, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

`You reach a certain point where it's not tenable anymore'

All 19 of the Sept. 11 mass murderers were Muslims -- members of a radical Islamist sect. So it was inevitable their coordinated terror attacks would draw attention to their faith.

Much of that attention was unwelcome, and American Muslims made a plea for understanding.

Understanding is a worthy goal, but there were some things non-Muslim Americans had trouble understanding, even if they came to the subject with open minds.

Surely the vast majority of American Muslims, they assumed, would have no trouble saying, "The killings of defenseless civilians -- as on Sept. 11 -- was not an appropriate expression of the Muslim faith. Those who did that were bad Muslims, or no Muslims at all. They and their actions should be condemned. They disgrace our faith."

But many Muslims insisted on saying something very different: "It's not my place to say that," many replied. "Each Muslim must decide for himself the right way to serve the faith."

Christianity and Judaism have changed and adapted over the centuries. Most of the adherents of those faiths assume a faith can cling to underlying truths, but need not be locked into 1,200-year-old edicts when it comes to dress, grooming, the treatment of unbelievers or the proper role of women.

Now, a similar reform movement seems to be awakening among American Muslims.

Ahmed Nassef, 38, a former marketing consultant and progressive activist who grew up in California, created the Web site muslimwakeup.com with a friend about two years ago, looking for like-minded Muslims.

The site openly criticizes major U.S. Muslim organizations for being too conservative. It hosts discussion boards where Muslims debate the future of their religion. It also includes many provocative articles on topics such as Muslim women's sexuality, while running a "Hug a Jew" feature that profiles progressive Jews with photos of them embracing a Muslim.

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Newsday: Toward a New Muslim Moment

Published in New York Newsday on Wednesday, October 20, 2004

With a savvy Web site, regular social gatherings and an upcoming conference, a new group seeks to shake up Islam's status quo

BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER

October 20, 2004

They looked like any group of hip, young New Yorkers hanging at the Starlight Diner on West 34th Street. But this was no ordinary social hour. Crowded elbow to elbow around a long table strewn with coffee cups were 18 men and women, mostly in jeans and T-shirts. They were thoroughly Muslim and thoroughly Western. And they were brainstorming ideas to transform Islam in America.

"Our mission is to take back our faith and our Muslim identity," said Ahmed Nassef, a tall man in khakis who introduced himself as the co-founder and editor of MuslimWakeUp.com, which sponsored the gathering. "For the first time, you have Muslims who are not afraid to say they disagree with the conservative, dogmatic, literalistic view of Islam propounded by many Muslim groups in this country."

"Right on," murmured one man. Heads nodded in assent.

This was a Progressive Muslim meet-up, part of an embryonic movement capturing the imagination of young Muslims across America, many of whom found each other in cyberspace. "When I came across this group, I thought, 'Oh my God, at last!'" said Mona Eltahawy, 37, the Egyptian-born managing editor of Arabic Women's eNews. "People are questioning the same things as I am and speaking out."

A willingness to question was the thing that united the diner crowd across a spectrum of causes. For one woman, the most urgent goal was to promote the notion of female imams and more women-friendly mosques; for another, it was the need for a dynamic re- engagement with Islamic texts; for a third, it is confronting authoritarian tendencies that have fueled intolerance.

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Minneapolis Star Tribune: A New Vision for Islam

By Susan M. Barbieri
Published: October 30, 2004

They are Muslims without a mosque, believers in a new vision of Islam that's taking root in the safe haven of cyberspace.

Shereen Fakier is a young Muslim-born Indian who immigrated to the United States from South Africa after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Karima Bushnell, Trish Kanous and Erik Kamperschroerer are white Americans and converts to Islam. Hassan El-Bakouri is a Moroccan Muslim who came to America in the 1980s.

This diverse group of Minnesotans, whose ages range from mid-20s on up, are members of the fledgling Progressive Muslim Union (PMU) of North America. Tolerance is the cornerstone of the PMU, which advocates speaking publicly against Muslim practices that members consider harmful and divisive.

The organization takes positions that conservative Muslims consider objectionable, even heretical: Progressives support gay rights, a broader role for women in mosques and the notion of borrowing from traditions such as Buddhism and the U.S. civil-rights movement to reshape Islam for modern times.

Not surprisingly, they often have trouble fitting in with the larger Muslim community.

"One of the problems I have encountered as a Muslim is finding the community that's out there to take you in and make you one of their own," El-Bakouri said. "It has been difficult. I went to several mosques, and I just really never found my place."

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New York Times: A Little Late, but a Stand Against Hate

By Clyde Haberman
Published: 11/16/2004

After the Sept. 11 attacks by Islamic terrorists, Ginan Rauf's 12-year-old son asked a question that shook her, she says, "to the core."

The boy, Sherif Ahmed, was in "deep despair and shock," said Ms. Rauf, a Muslim living in Franklin Lakes, N.J. His question could not have been blunter: "Mom, does anything good ever come out of the Muslim world?"

Her instinctive response, the mother recalled yesterday, was to say that of course there are good things, that people of their religion "have made so many contributions to human civilization."

But there was no avoiding the obvious. Islam, for many, including quite a few born in the faith, had become grim, cramped, exclusionary and - no getting around it - all too often death-embracing.

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Vancouver Sun: Vancouver Muslim Critical of Group Who Backed Her

PMU Note: None of the members of PMU's Board of Advisors or Board of Directors have been supporters of the US invasion of Iraq.

Published: November 27, 2004

By Douglas Todd

A global network called the Progressive Muslim Union has been making international headlines since it was formally launched Nov. 15 in New York City, where it dedicated itself to women's equality, gay rights and religious tolerance.

But immediate criticism of the highly educated progressive Muslim leaders hasn't been as strong from the "reactionary" and "paranoid" conservative imams the new organization is trying to circumvent as it has been from another source.

The most vigorous protest against the group has come from Muslims such as Vancouver's Itrath Syed, who charges the new organization isn't progressive enough.

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Financial Times: I'm ok, you're ok

By Ahmed Nassef and Mark Wallace

Published: November 27 2004

We want to redefine Islam in America. My co-editor, Jawad Ali, and I first got the idea almost 15 years ago when we were students at UCLA, and I was president of the Muslim Students Association. We had a ragtag group that was a thorn in the side of established Muslim organisations. We used to stage protests against Muslim leaders involved in conservative causes. It was the whole young rebel thing - after university we all went our separate ways.

But then two years ago, after spending almost two years based out of Amman, Jordan, and Dubai for the two biggest internet portals in the Middle East, I came back to New York to be with my family. September 11 had had a big impact on civil liberties issues and threats against Muslims' rights. I got back in touch with Jawad and we revived the idea.

We felt there was a big vacuum within the Muslim community in the US. They were just constantly reactive. All we were getting from them were hollow statements about how Islam is a religion of peace.

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W. Fisher: Progressive Islam - Not An Oxymoron

Progressive Islam: Not An Oxymoron

By William Fisher

In the US, many Roman Catholics support a women's right to choose - but remain Catholics.

In Latin America, many priests practice 'liberation theology' - but remain Catholics. American Episcopalians elect a gay Bishop - but remain Episcopalians.

Adherents of many American Protestant denominations want to impeach judges for their 'activism' - but remain Protestants.

And an increasing number of conservative and some Orthodox Jews explore possibilities of reconciling their faith with feminism -- and still remain Jewish.

Why then should we find it so surprising that Muslims are engaged in similar kinds of internal struggles with their more conservative brothers and sisters?

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