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Authors: Leila Ahmed
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Neshat and Lalla el-Sayyedi are today prominent American artists of Muslim background. Both make ample use in their work of the visual resources of their Islamic heritage, often incorporating, for exam- ple, the Arabic script in their art, as well as images of women in hijabs and chadors. Neither artist is herself a hijabi or appears to have been at any point influenced by Islamism. On the basis of her art and films and also of her statements in lectures and interviews, Neshat evidently draws on this heritage as a committed secularist, though she at times gestures too toward some unspecified notion of mysticism. El-Sayyedi’s art in this matter is perhaps even more inscrutable and ambiguous: neither her art nor her statements rule out the possibility that Islam may be for her also a spiritual resource.
Many American Muslims, the majority, according to most statis- tics, are pursuing lives in which, in accordance with another well-estab- lished American tradition for ethnic and religious minorities, they are doing their best to blend and meld as unobtrusively as possible into the fabric of America as they pursue their lives. As one writer, Tariq Ahmad, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, put it in an op- ed column in the New York Times, “We are trying to succeed in life, try- ing to be effective doctors, lawyers, business people, artists and other kinds of professionals.” 54
Some no doubt define themselves, as does the author of these words, simply as secular. However, it is possible—in light of the recent Pew Report indicating that many younger Americans do not belong to religious institutions but nevertheless believe in God, life after death, and the existence of “heaven, hell and miracles” at about the same rate as older generations—that some Muslims are believers who are at the same time non-mosquegoing Muslims. 55
Studying what the term “secular” means exactly when applied to Muslims and Muslim histories in their diversity, as well as exploring shifts in meanings of that word over time, in different locales, and as it crossed borders, is a matter that unquestionably calls for further investigation and more precise understanding of the subject than we currently have. Similarly tracing the word’s specific histories in English when applied to Muslims and Muslim-majority societies, and the origins and provenance of such English usage, is a no less essential task. Notably, the meaning of “secular” implied by the op-ed author just cited, Dr. Ahmad, itself opens up some questions. Describing himself and many other Muslims as secular, he writes, “We do not pray five times a day, do not read the Koran and have not spent much time inside a mosque. We only turn to Islam when a child is born, someone gets married or someone dies.” This description, it should be noted, focusing as it does on the mazhar —the external and outward di- mensions of religion as measures of commitment to religious belief—in fact describes the norms of practice prior to the rise of Islamism of many believing Muslims (in Egypt at any rate, as we saw) who nevertheless con- sidered themselves to be faithful Muslims according to the jawhar or inner and “essential” meanings and rules of living Islam as ground of faith.
Also, as we saw earlier, “secular” in the Middle Eastern context was a term that was applied pejoratively early on in the rise of Islamism to
Muslims who were not Islamists and who did not practice Islam as Is- lamists did: to women, for example, who did not wear hijab even though many such women were, in their own eyes, believing Muslims. And as we also saw, the definitions of Islamists as to what “true” Islam was and what forms of dress and practices were “mandated” by Islam began to gain power in the Middle East in the 1970 s and in America too by the 1990 s. Today it is above all Islamists and Islamist-grounded institutions who are the authorities defining and determining the
Many American Muslims, the majority, according to most statis- tics, are pursuing lives in which, in accordance with another well-estab- lished American tradition for ethnic and religious minorities, they are doing their best to blend and meld as unobtrusively as possible into the fabric of America as they pursue their lives. As one writer, Tariq Ahmad, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, put it in an op- ed column in the New York Times, “We are trying to succeed in life, try- ing to be effective doctors, lawyers, business people, artists and other kinds of professionals.” 54
Some no doubt define themselves, as does the author of these words, simply as secular. However, it is possible—in light of the recent Pew Report indicating that many younger Americans do not belong to religious institutions but nevertheless believe in God, life after death, and the existence of “heaven, hell and miracles” at about the same rate as older generations—that some Muslims are believers who are at the same time non-mosquegoing Muslims. 55
Studying what the term “secular” means exactly when applied to Muslims and Muslim histories in their diversity, as well as exploring shifts in meanings of that word over time, in different locales, and as it crossed borders, is a matter that unquestionably calls for further investigation and more precise understanding of the subject than we currently have. Similarly tracing the word’s specific histories in English when applied to Muslims and Muslim-majority societies, and the origins and provenance of such English usage, is a no less essential task. Notably, the meaning of “secular” implied by the op-ed author just cited, Dr. Ahmad, itself opens up some questions. Describing himself and many other Muslims as secular, he writes, “We do not pray five times a day, do not read the Koran and have not spent much time inside a mosque. We only turn to Islam when a child is born, someone gets married or someone dies.” This description, it should be noted, focusing as it does on the mazhar —the external and outward di- mensions of religion as measures of commitment to religious belief—in fact describes the norms of practice prior to the rise of Islamism of many believing Muslims (in Egypt at any rate, as we saw) who nevertheless con- sidered themselves to be faithful Muslims according to the jawhar or inner and “essential” meanings and rules of living Islam as ground of faith.
Also, as we saw earlier, “secular” in the Middle Eastern context was a term that was applied pejoratively early on in the rise of Islamism to
Muslims who were not Islamists and who did not practice Islam as Is- lamists did: to women, for example, who did not wear hijab even though many such women were, in their own eyes, believing Muslims. And as we also saw, the definitions of Islamists as to what “true” Islam was and what forms of dress and practices were “mandated” by Islam began to gain power in the Middle East in the 1970 s and in America too by the 1990 s. Today it is above all Islamists and Islamist-grounded institutions who are the authorities defining and determining the
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