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Becoming American, Keeping My Religion: Religion and Identity Among Second Generation New Immigrant College Students

Pressures from the left and the right are shaping the next generation of American Islam creating new forms of identity and community. This was the argument Haroon Moghul offered in his wide-ranging talk on the Americanization of Islam at the Pugh Hall Ocora on Wednesday, November 6th. In the second Scudder Lecture for this year, Haroon Moghul reflected on his own experience as an undergraduate leader at New York University’s Islamic Center, when 9/11 thrust him into the spotlight as a prominent voice for American Muslims, as well as his subsequent experience as a widely published and interviewed “professional Muslim” commenting on American Muslim affairs.

Today, Moghul argued, American Islam appears to be moving to the left. Where previously the older generation might have voted for a moderate Republican like Mitt Romney, they now are lining up behind Joe Biden. The younger generation, however, is aligning with the social Democrats, much like other young Americans.

Pressure from the progressive left, in turn, has meant a championing of an American Islam stripped of those elements which do not accord with a secular liberal worldview. In effect Muslims are being embraced on the condition that “they render themselves less Islamic.” At the same time, pressure from the right has reduced Muslims to “a single, negative definition of Islam, and indistinguishable from it.”

Moghul finds himself to be a surprised centrist. When Trump was elected he thought the  response would be “ a renewed American Muslim commitment to centrism and a more conciliatory tone.”  American Muslims would work to heal the nation’s divides while, as a demonized minority, would try to make themselves less of a target. Moghul confessed that he now sees something of the immigrant parent in this centrist response. “Immigrants are keen to make better lives for themselves, and often unlikely to make themselves the center of attention, especially when they feel like they don’t fully belong, or their position is precarious.”

In contrast to this centrism, Moghul says that younger American Muslims appear to be much more assertive in embracing oppositional politics, an indication that they feel more confidently American in comparison to the older generation.

Overall Haroon Moghul sees the diversification of American Muslims as a positive development, though he has his concerns. As popular culture has created more space for different kinds of “Muslimness,” Muslim identity which, unlike Judaism does not have an ethnic component, may be difficult to sustain. “I certainly don’t think American Islam is disappearing.” He concludes. However, “I do think it is changing, and may change beyond recognition, beyond what I expect or maybe even, if I’m honest, would have wanted it to be.”

Read the text of Haroon Moghul’s talk HERE

For a video of the lecture click HERE