[April isn’t
just National Poetry Month; it’s also National
Arab American Heritage Month. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of the
many compelling Arab American stories & figures I feature in the final
chapter of my book
We the People, leading up to a
weekend post on contemporary Arab American writers!]
On the inspiring
individual who exemplifies the contributions of Arab American communities to
our nation and the world.
While the
figures on whom I’ve focused so far in this series are certainly part of the broad
arc of Arab American history, it’s also fair to say that their circumstances
made them somewhat isolated (especially the system of slavery, which by design
separate families, communities, and cultures). But in my book chapter I also
trace the development of a number of late 19th and early 20th
century Arab American communities that represented an important next stage in
those histories and stories. There were for example the turn of the century
immigrants from the region of the Ottoman Empire known at that time as Syria
(now part of modern-day Lebanon) who settled
in Ross, North Dakota in 1902 and in 1929
built there a mosque that is known as the oldest such dedicated structure
for Muslim worship in American history. And around that same time, another group
of immigrants from the same region settled
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in 1934 constructed what is considered the
oldest mosque still in operation today: the Mother Mosque of
America (also known as The Rose of Fraternity Lodge and the Moslem Temple).
That Iowa community also built the first Muslim National
Cemetery, among other ways that they worked to represent Muslim and Arab
American communities more broadly.
One particular
individual from that Cedar Rapids community truly exemplifies those communal
and national efforts. Abdallah (sometimes Abdullah) Ingram was a World War II
veteran who in 1952 incorporated an organization known first as the
International Muslim Society (IMS; the name would be changed to the Federation of Islamic Associations in
the United States and Canada in 1954) which began to hold annual meetings
to convene Arab and Muslim American (and eventually Canadian) communities. But
during those years Ingram was also pursuing a more personal and striking goal:
convincing President Dwight D. Eisenhower to formally
recognize Islam as an official religion within the U.S. military. After
more than a
year of petitioning the president to that end, Ingram succeeded; Eisenhower’s
1953 recognition of Islam meant that (among many other effects) Muslim
American soldiers or veterans who died could have religious funeral services
(previously they had been forced to be buried as “atheists”). As Ingram wrote
in one of his letters to the president, “I am fighting for my right, and the
right of my people, to be recognized as a religious faith.”
The Muslim and
Arab American communities are not identical, of course; there are Muslims from
many different cultures and nations, and not all Arab Americans are Muslim. But
Ingram’s quest for recognition can and should be connected not just to that
religious community and identity, but to the broader goal of this week’s series
(and of this chapter in my book): to recognize and remember as well these Arab
American individuals and communities that have been a foundational, central,
and ongoing part of American identity at every stage and in every way. Too often,
even those who would celebrate the Arab and/or Muslim American communities see
them as relatively recent additions to our national landscape (often, the
narrative goes, made possible by the 1965
Immigration and Nationality Act and its effects). As with many other
American communities, certainly the number of immigrants from Arab and Muslim
cultures and nations has increased since 1965 (as has the number of distinct
nations included in that mix), but the crucial truth of that trend is that it
represents an amplification of (rather than a change in) our foundational
diversity. Better remembering the long history of Arab American figures,
stories, and communities helps us recognize that crucial truth, while also
celebrating these influential and inspiring lives and legacies.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Arab American figures or stories you’d highlight?
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