ISNA Thugs

By Umbreen Shah

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) has faced tremendous backlash after its 45 Annual convention this labor day weekend, but the bad press was entirely for the wrong reasons. American columnists have chastised the aide of President Bush, Karen Hughes, for attending and endorsing the ISNA convention in Chicago on September 4th 2005.

Warning of the new alliance between the Bush Administration and ISNA, both Democrats and Republican writers have pointed to an untrustworthy ISNA track record. They are nervous that President Bush supports ISNA despite ISNA’s anti-Bush campaign during the 2004 elections. They are also concerned that ISNA denied any Muslim connections with 9/11, glorified Osama Bin Laden in books on their website and funded hate literature in 80% of American mosques controlled via the Saudi-funded, North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

But some of the reservations leveled on Karen Hughes’s attendance of a Muslim Convention are just plain bigoted and Islamophobic; they oppose ISNA simply because it’s Muslim, and thereby stereotype the entire American Muslim community as ISNA goers. The fact is that American Muslims are diverse and multi-ethnic in both ideology and culture.

So it is time ISNA is criticized for the right reasons.

ISNA asserts that it is the “only representative of Muslim Americans from all walks of life” but fails drastically short of representing anyone but a fringe of the Arab community and an even smaller percentage of the South Asian one. Its exclusionary religious perspective successfully alienates the entire Shia Muslim sect. When faced with the challenge of integrating wider representation of Muslims, it takes only token steps.

Run mostly by first generation Immigrant Muslims with cultural baggage from their homelands, ISNA management has been unable to relate to their American-born Muslim constituency which is the future of Islam in America.

African Americans are the most underrepresented of all groups at ISNA. Even while the recent Katrina Hurricane blew across the predominantly African-American regions of the US, ISNA’s relief efforts were ad hoc at best; discussions on hijab (head covering for women), polygamy and countering Islamophobia were the focus amidst the tragedy. Given that African-Americans make up the single largest segment of American Muslims, the fact that they don’t have a sizable stake raises a lot of questions about the validity of ISNA as an American Muslim organization.

There is a tendency in ISNA to enforce a particular religiously conservative philosophy without adapting to the people it serves. Women presenters at ISNA have been routinely asked to wear hijab during presentation even though they don’t normally wear the headscarf. This has promoted either hypocrisy or contention when presenters have refused to wear it.

Women on ISNA’s board of directors are limited to a sample space of one, and she too expressed her elitism on the topic of mixed gender prayers by saying, “Most Muslim women are content with separate prayer space in the mosque,” echoing white supremacists who said blacks have an innate preference for segregation.

In the majority of mosques dominated by African-Americans, women and men pray in one hall, eat in a combined community kitchen during Ramadan and still manage to have few incidents of sexual harassment (or at least, certainly not any more than their Arab or South Asian counterparts). Why is ISNA opposed to a wholesome family feel in mosques and adamant on making it a patriarchal space where women are only “lent” space? Studies conducted by conservative American Muslim groups themselves, and available on the CAIR website, show a negligible level of women’s involvement in decision making in matters of community.

More shocking, a mere 10% of all Muslims in America attend the ISNA-affiliated Mosques and institutions. Apparently, ISNA’s biggest success has been in alienating 90% of American Muslims.

The weekend convention has disclosed a police state mentality among ISNA officials, particularly that of lower level clerks responsible for booth reservations and on-floor management. MuslimWakeup.com’s reporter, Mike Knight, was invited by ISNA to attend a press briefing by Karen Hughes. But during the press briefing, ISNA authorities asked security to get him out. They were suspicious about an image at the back of his jacket; then, they once again told him to go back and attend the briefing.

Malaysian authorities also faced ISNA’s flip flopping in the past, when then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was invited in 2000 to attend the convention, after which ISNA retracted its invitation based on a court case that Mahathir was party to. In response to ISNA’s impropriety and unbecoming behavior, Dr. Mahatir Mohammad responded: “It is their right to invite and then to withdraw the invitation. It clearly showed that ISNA just listens to one side of the story and refuses to get the truth from the other side."

Similarly, the publishers of a Sufi magazine, New Track, were allegedly thrown out of the convention area and a message announced to attendants discouraging alternative voices of Islam.

Particularly questionable was the officials’ behavior with a Muslim website’s volunteers. Flyers promoting an event with Muslim artists, comedian Azhar Usman, Nasheed singers 786 and Malaysian singer, Ani Zonneveld were snatched from volunteers and other attendants who had paid tickets to attend ISNA, and tossed out by ISNA representatives who called it “trash” and “unislamic filth.”

Security was alerted on the volunteers who were treated like criminals and forced off the convention premises. One of the women was so humiliated as a result of ISNA’s security methods that she began weeping as she waited outside for her family. “I have never been stalked like this in my life,” She said. Later ISNA organized its thugs to parade a procession with banners and chants against the website and the event held. They yelled, “Haram! Haram! Haram!”

All of this calls for a questioning of agendas and motives.

It is worth inferring that ISNA wants to promote only non-ideology based businesses like boutiques and halal meat stores. ISNA is in a position to facilitate the formation of an American Muslim identity. However, without more enlightened leadership it may never live up to its potential.