Being a Muslim in America is a US government publication to present the good-worldly life the Muslims are enjoying in the States. Similar booklets were distributed by the US Information Bureaus for decades. The latest edition is well designed and beautifully illustrated. Approx. 70 pages booklet is divided into seven chapters (Introduction: “I Am an American with a Muslim Soul”, a Photo Essay: Building a Life in America, Profiles of Young Muslims that Make Their Mark, A Statistical Portrait of Neighborhood Mosques, Timeline of Key Events, with a Bibliography, and a Supplement).
As you can see, the two young women pictured on its cover are both Muslim. They live near Detroit, Michigan, in a long established Arab community. One is wearing a dress that fully covers her body and the other a modern gym outfit. They are trying their skill on a basketball court. Other men, women, and children in this publication demonstrate every day what it is like to be Muslim in America.
This is the dream that the American government has of a happy and prosperous American Muslim community in the land of honey and gold. There is no harm if the Muslims practise a few rituals like Eid dinners and distribution of Qurbani meat to the non-Muslim poor in the neighborhood or even distribute free copies of the Qur’ān. What is a No, No is that they should not say Islam is a better system of living than the secular democracy that is practised here in the ugliest form. As long as the Muslims do not work to oppose imperial America’s domination of the world, including the Muslim societies they are free to breathe.
The Muslims in America are divided. There are those who are content with what they have accumulated for a prosperous life and don’t care if their next generation is not even culturally Muslim. A large group consists of “ritual-observant” Muslims. They are busy building mosques and running Islamic centres. They have not learned any lesson from the fate of the abandoned mosques that the early Muslim settlers built in the 20th century. Some very sincere people try to do Dawah work in prisons and distribute free Qur’ān to anyone who is willing to take (even if he throws it in the next garbage bin on his way). Very few are willing to create model Muslim communities and train the new reverts to present the Islam to their compatriots.
The book is indeed a very impressive attempt to present mundane life of the Muslim community in the US, and may attract young Muslims scattered all over the world to reach their dreamland. The real picture, especially after 9/11 is quite different.