DePaul University Develops “Islam in America” Archive

By Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

DePaul, Chicago's Roman Catholic University, is rapidly expanding its new Islam in America Archive in the John T. Richardson Library on its Lincoln Park campus. This unique collection of personal papers, institutional records, tapes, photos, letters, diaries and other memorabilia illuminates religious, social and cultural expressions of Islam throughout the United States.

According to Doris R. Brown, DePaul's director of libraries, the idea for the Archive was developed at a meeting of Islamic scholars in Chicago in 1993. She told Sun-Times staff writer Andrew Hermann that she hoped it would become "a fountainhead of American Muslim information for Islamic scholars and researchers."

Muslim Arab navigators, with their astrolabes and pioneering uses of astronomy, were essential to the achievements of Columbus and other explorers who opened the Americas to European development. However, Muslims did not migrate to North America in significant numbers until the early 20th century.

The archive does, indeed, include records of earlier immigrants like Hadj Ali, whom some enterprising Arizonans (who called him "Hi Jolly") brought from Syria in 1855 to oversee an abortive project to use camels as pack animals in the arid Southwest. However, the archive has no evidence of mosques earlier than one built in 1911 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa by families from Syria (which then included Lebanon). North American mosques became more numerous as a result of successive waves of immigration after the two world wars.

Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, displaced by the violence surrounding the 1948 creation of Israel, were soon to join the influx. Including non-immigrant converts, American Muslims now number in the lower millions and are generally considered to be the largest non-Christian religious group in the United States, having already exceeded America's 5.8 million Jews.

Yet, says Moin Kahn, secretary of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, most Americans get their impression of Muslims from journalistic accounts from abroad. He welcomes the archive as "humanizing the Islamic community here." Assad Busool, chairman of Arabic Studies at Chicago's American Islamic College, agrees.

Dale Bishop Reports on National Council of Churches Mideast Views

"Our relationship as American Christians with Middle East Christians plays a central role in shaping our attitudes on many issues," writes the Rev. Dale Bishop, director of the National Council of Churches' Middle East Office, in the current newsletter of the Philadelphia-based U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East. Because of this relationship, he and his colleagues have long emphasized the necessity of pursuing effective "win-win" solutions to the problems that bedevil searchers for peace in the area.

"There is serious content to the Islamic radical critique."

The religion-related tensions surrounding the status of Jerusalem should be a primary focus of Muslim-Jewish-Christian cooperation, he believes, since rival claims on the Holy City generate so many unhealthy emotions. On this and other issues, he asserted, religious bodies must be in the forefront of those looking beyond such traditional ways of settling disputes as drawing boundaries, establishing rigid lines of authority, and declaring national sovereignty over areas of mixed makeup.

On the issue of foreign aid, "mainline" churches working through NCC offices in Washington already are engaged in a process of evaluation based on questions of equity and use of funding: Must funding for military assistance continue to exceed that for development? And should half of our entire bilateral foreign aid budget keep going to just two countries, Israel and Egypt?

The last election reduced the number of mainline Christians in the Congress who espouse NCC's attitudes toward global responsibilities and several other issues. They have been significantly replaced by Christians who, though Bishop doesn't put it this way, belong to churches less involved with international issues. Many of these also tend to see the claims of modern Israel in terms of Biblical Israel.

In a totally different sphere, Bishop noted "the very difficult issue of how to respond to Islamic radicalism." Honoring former Assistant Secretary of State Alfred (Roy) Atherton's call for dialogue, Bishop writes: "Just as, during the Cold War, many churches engaged in dialogue with Marxism—which led to greater understanding on both sides—we need to do the same now with Islamic radicalism. In fact, there is serious content to the Islamic radical critique which a whole range of Middle Eastern intellectuals finds increasingly attractive. We need to be in dialogue with them, whether they be Palestinians, Iranians, Egyptians or Algerians, because this phenomenon is sweeping the entire region and will pose a significant challenge in the future."

Georgetown Muslim-Christian Center Dedicates New Building

Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has actually been functioning for over a year and a half. Its official opening, however, awaited the completion of its own spacious new building on campus. The April 5 dedicatory ceremonies and banquet will be preceded by a succession of panels discussing, in the morning, the "Historical/Regional Background" of Muslim-Christian relations and, in the afternoon, illustrative "Case Studies." Panels on the following day are to deal with "Critical Issues" encountered by Christians and Muslims in today's world and a call for "Reforming Religion for the 21st Century."

The panels include prominent Muslim and Christian scholars representing Europe, Asia and Africa as well as the Western hemisphere. They are suitable venues to consider relations between the varied followers of the two global monotheisms, each of which numbers at least a billion followers—some two-fifths of the planet's growing population.

The opening panel on "Scripture and Tradition" will examine Biblical and Qur'anic passages that have been used to define "the other." Chaired by Dr. Irfan Shahid of Georgetown, an Arab Christian, its papers will be presented by a Lebanese Shi'a, Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub of Temple University, and N.Y.U.'s Dr. Frank Peters, author of textbooks on factors entering into productive interfaith relations.

The second panel, bringing those reflections into the present era, will feature Dr. Sidney Griffith of Catholic University, Dr. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi, specialist in Israeli aspects of Muslim-Christian relationships at Hartford Seminary (United Church of Christ), and Dr. Jane I. Smith of Iliff School of Theology (Methodist), Denver. Dr. Sayyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University will chair the session.

In the afternoon Dr. Ismail Ibrahim of the scholarly Muslim IKIM movement in Malaysia will chair a panel assessing 20th century Islamic-Christian encounters that have led to cooperation and/or confrontations. Presentations will be by Dr. Bert Breiner of the National Council of Churches' Office of Christian-Muslim Relations, Father Thomas Michel of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences in Thailand (formerly with the Vatican Office on Christian-Muslim Relations), and Sudan-conditioned Dr. John O. Voll, who is about to leave the History Department of the University of New Hampshire to join the Center at Georgetown.

The day's final panel will assess relations between Muslims and Christians in the West. Chairman will be Georgetown's Dr. Chester Gillis. Participants will be Dr. Paul Gobel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Georgetown Center; Dr. Jorgen Nielson of Selly Oaks College, Birmingham, England, speaking on Muslims in Europe; and Dr. Suleyman Nyang of Howard University speaking on Islam in North America.

Second-day sessions will discuss Human Rights, Pluralism and Gender. Participants will be Dr. John Borelli of the National Council of Catholic Bishops in the chair; Iranian feminist Dr. Nasrin Hakami, a visiting research professor at Georgetown; Dr. David Little of the U.S. Institute for Peace; and Dr. Mohammed Fathi Osman of Georgetown, editor-elect of Arabia magazine.

The concluding session, chaired by Dr. John L. Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, will consider the options of extremism and moderation and other challenges which the two communities must face separately and together as they enter the 21st century. Participants will be Syria-born Presbyterian Dr. Yvonne Haddad, Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Muslim Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina of the University of Virginia and Dr. Jacques Waardenberg of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

The Rev. L. Humphrey Walz, D.D., retired Associate Executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast, is active in denominational and ecumenical peacemaking activities.