18 minute read
In the Shadow of 9/11
Americans, a small number of white and Latino converts, and mostly Rohingya refugees, Milwaukee’s Muslims are diverse yet impressively cohesive, says Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Shah, executive director/secretary general of the Fiqh Council of North America and the religious director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, the metropolitan area’s largest Muslim organization, with three mosques. “There is a sense of mutual love and respect between different segments of the community.”
Muslim physicians, engineers, academics and other professionals move to Milwaukee for opportunities to work in its renowned hospitals and global companies like GE Healthcare Systems, Harley-Davidson and Rockwell Automation, or to teach in one of Greater Milwaukee’s 25 institutions of higher education, including UWM, Marquette University and the Medical College of Wisconsin. “The intellectual orientation of our community makes it unique,” Shah says. “It is characterized by professionalism and the forward-thinking manner of its leadership.”
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Greater Milwaukee’s Muslims number 25,000 - 30,000 in a metropolitan area of about 1.6 million people, local imams say. (Some reports put it at 15,000-20,000; there is widespread consensus that is too low.)
And it continues to grow. “It may have tripled since I came here in 2006,” Shah exclaims. But it shouldn’t be measured by headcount alone, he adds. “The level of collaboration within the community is unique and encouraging. People of different backgrounds are united and work together for the Ummah.”
“Muslims in Milwaukee, despite being a religious minority, have an important presence in the city through active civic leadership and the establishment of many religious and cultural institutions,” states the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. Although there are no Islamic seminaries or other big city amenities of a New York or Chicago, mighty Milwaukee punches above its weight.
It has 10 mosques, two full-time schools and a variety of Islamic organizations, including health clinics, refugee and social services, a library and resource center, a civic alliance, a food pantry, a platform for Muslim artists, a re-entry facility for ex-offenders, a senior center, weekend and Sunday schools, a hifth school for memorizing the Quran, a culturally sensitive domestic violence program and a state-wide newspaper.
BY SANDRA WHITEHEAD
TWENTY YEARS AGO, AIRLINERS WERE HIJACKED AND SLAMMED INTO NEW York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people on U.S. soil – the hijackers had Muslim names.
Aisha Aleiou was a fifth-grader in a public school in suburban Milwaukee, its only Muslim student at the time. Her teacher asked, “Aisha, why did they do it?”
Ever after an apologist for Islam, Aisha prepared to answer questions about her faith, Middle East politics and whatever else classmates and teachers might throw at her.
For a generation of Muslim Americans, adolescence brought more than the usual teenage angst about how to fit in. The tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, brought a decade of surveillance and suspicion, followed by a rise in Islamophobia that culminated in the blatant bigotry of Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign.
Before 9/11, Muslims in Milwaukee were not particularly self-conscious about their faith. Their fellow Midwesterners knew little about Islam and didn’t seem very curious. Then suddenly all eyes were on them.
“U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft repeatedly painted a dark picture of Arab and Muslim Americans,” recalls Marquette University Professor Louise Cainkar, who has conducted extensive research on Arab and Muslim Americans after 9/11. “He would say things like, ‘They are hiding in our own communities, waiting to strike.’”
Some Muslims were angry at the terrorists for “hijacking our religion.” Many felt the need to be more vocal, to be liaisons between their fellow Americans and Islam. The Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition’s Speakers Bureau responded to their fellow citizens’ newfound interest in Islam and sent speakers to schools, churches and community organizations to dispel stereotypes.
Likewise, the Islamic Society of Milwaukee hit the speaking circuit. As Trump’s presidential campaign called for a Muslim ban in 2015, ISM’s strategy was to let fellow Milwaukeeans see how Islam is practiced by someone they know.
Muhammad Isa Sadlon, then ISM executive director and CEO, a convert to Islam, was known by many for his leadership as executive director of the Milwaukee Art Museum for 20 years. He guided its development to international prominence, culminating with the completion of the stunning Santiago Calatrava-designed facility, now an icon of Milwaukee. He was also a former director of Rotary Club and the 2001 Rotary Club “Person of the Year.”
Sadlon spoke to the Rotarians about his “very traditional Catholic background” and the shock of his family, friends and colleagues at his conversion in 1989. He said the suspicions some have about Muslims is to be expected. “I remember seeing old newspapers about the arrival of the Irish in Boston at the beginning of the last century. “People said these people coming in are disruptive … it is just adjustments to new immigrant cultures.
He told them how he finally won his family’s acceptance of his conversion. “I had been the typical young man who went off to (the University of Wisconsin) Madison and seldom came home. I had my own life.
A decade later, his mother was dying. “She had us — my brothers and sisters and me — all together. She said she felt Islam was true because it had transformed our relationships by changing my behavior. For my family, that was a turning point.”
This outreach by Muslim Americans maybe working. In a 2017 survey, Pew Research Center asked respondents to rate Muslims on a “feeling thermometer” ranging from 0 to 100. On average, Americans gave Muslims a rating of 48 degrees, which is 8 degrees warmer than in the first poll in 2014. (Never mind that feelings towards Muslims are cooler than they are for any other “religious” group, including atheists.) ih
Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (2nd right) visits the Eid al Adha festival Rally forPalestine
Muslim-owned businesses sell hijabs and modest apparel, halal meat and groceries, Islamic art and holiday items, and provide restaurants, catering services, youth sports programs, daycare for children and gender-specific salons with privacy for women who cover their hair.
Throughout the 1970s, a few groups formed to provide Islamic instruction for their children and to practice their faith. In 1982, they joined together to create the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, purchased an old, closed elementary school on Milwaukee’s Southside where dozens prayed and families met for potluck dinners in the basement. Eventually, it was remodeled into a beautiful mosque. In the following decade, the ISM grew with the community— expanding, establishing a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade school and hiring a full time imam.
Muslims living on Milwaukee’s Northside decided it was important to maintain a presence in the inner-city. Ayyub Al-Amin and his wife Waheedhah began holding small dawah meetings in their living room in the early 1980s. When they outgrew that space, they met in a Muslim-owned dental office. “Through faith and persistence, it turned into the Milwaukee Islamic Dawah Center (in 1993),” Al-Amin’s daughter explains.
“Their struggle brought services for the underprivileged in the community, regardless of their religion—the food pantry, the Ibrahim House that helps ex-offenders and now a COVID vaccination site,” says Dawah Center board member Rafat Arain.
Al-Amin, with Ali Lubbad, also initiated the Islamic Information Service, manning a dedicated telephone number in a grocery store they owned. The service “bore fruit in liaising with many segments of society: individuals, churches and synagogues as well as the media,” Dr. Waheeduddin Ahmed, the first ISM president, wrote in a history of Milwaukee’s Islamic community. “It became the frontline liaison agency in public relations as well as for dawah in Milwaukee.”
For decades, only these two mosques, the ISM on Southside and the Dawah Center on the Northside, served Milwaukee’s Muslims. Consequently, Muslims of all ethnicities, Sunni and Shia, prayed Jumah together.
Mosques across the city still host Ramadan iftars and all are welcomed. Eid prayers and festivals are massive celebrations for the entire Muslim community, one that’s still small enough that everybody knows almost everybody else by name. After prayers, many stick around, shaking hands and catching up on each other’s news. INCLUSIVE AND INCLUDED Milwaukee’s Muslims also enjoy close relationships in the larger community. Mosques frequently host interfaith dinners and discussions. The Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition’s busy Speaker’s Bureau provides talks to schools, universities and community organizations. The ISM, the Dawah Center and other masjids all collaborate with other faith organizations to address societal issues. The Islamic Resource Center hosts educational programs and a book club with the majority being non-Muslim participants, and offers a lending library to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
The Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance, founded in 2019, encourages Muslims to engage in civic life. It works with allies across the state on mutual concerns, hosts meetand-greets with local candidates, organizes get-out-the-vote drives, takes positions on
Islamic Society of Milwaukee Mosque - the city’s largest mosque
policy issues and endorses candidates. It rallies support for civic initiatives like fair housing and fair voting legislation.
“These past few years, we have become more politically active,” says Qari Noman Hussain, the imam at Masjid Al-Noor in Brookfield, one of Milwaukee’s western suburbs. Imam Hussain serves on the WMCA Leadership Council. “We have been able to create awareness in the community about the importance of voting and being civically engaged. Now we have Muslims serving on three suburban school boards, starting Wisconsin Muslims’ political history in Milwaukee.”
Milwaukee’s Muslims are also “leading in national and international circles on humanitarian and social justice issues through organizations like the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and American Muslims for Palestine,” Shah says.
What’s more, Muslims in Milwaukee “are being asked to be at the table,” Imam Hussain notes. “When it comes to interfaith work, issues of racial disparities in our communities, to speak on panels at different universities, our Muslim leaders are asked to participate.”
This does not mean Milwaukee is an oasis where Muslims can escape the hostile rhetoric of Islamophobia. The ISM’s prominent masjid with its towering minarets has often been the target of anti-Muslim protesters. But through their active engagement in the greater community, Milwaukee’s Muslims have found allies and been embraced by Milwaukee’s interfaith community.
Universities, businesses and Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport all provide interfaith and/or Muslim prayer spaces. The University of Wisconsin, Marquette University, Mount Mary University and other institutions of higher education in Milwaukee advise their instructors to accommodate Muslim students fasting during Ramadan. Progressive organizations like Rockwell Automation strive to create a faith-friendly environment.
A prominent leader in interfaith activism, Imam Hussain represents the ISM on the cabinet of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. Janan Najeeb, a longtime member of the ISM, the MMWC president and a passionate advocate of interfaith relations, led prayers on the floor of the Wisconsin State Assembly in 2016, the first Muslim to have that honor.
Political officials including the mayor, the county executive, the lieutenant governor and governor, and representatives to the Wisconsin Assembly as well as to the U.S. Congress have all visited Milwaukee’s mosques and Islamic organizations. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers made a Ramadan visit to the ISM in 2019 with the message that “as a state, we reject Islamophobia, we reject anti-immigrant biases and we reject bigotry.” In 2020, Gov. Evers officially recognized the observance of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr.
America’s third reporter to wear the hijab on the air, Ubah Ali, joined Milwaukee’s NBC affiliate TMJ4 in March. “Milwaukee has a sizeable Muslim population,” explains news director Tim Vetscher. “It’s important
Groundbreaking for ISM Mosque. Included in the photo are Muhammad Aslam Cheema (far left), Iftekhar Khan (second from right), Mahmoud Atta (third from right), Mahmoud Abdelhafeez (with shovel)
TMJ4 is representative of all our viewers in southeast Wisconsin through both our journalism and our staff. I know we have viewers who wear a hijab in their everyday lives. It’s a good feeling to know they now see someone on TMJ4 who also wears a hijab.”
GROWING PAINS The relatively recent proliferation of masjids and Islamic organizations in Milwaukee, while worthy of celebration, is also raising some alarm. In his “State of the Society” address at the 2015 ISM annual meeting, then ISM president Ahmed Quereshi explained: “Once Milwaukee was a small community. Now, we are a community of thousands that has added two new masjids this past year. There are potential divisions between those who had been here for a long time vs. the refugees, the newcomers including our American-born youth; the wealthy vs. the needy, poor, unemployed, underemployed; wealthy vs. poor masjids; urban vs. suburban masjids; educated vs. those without the opportunity for education. Will our community hold fast altogether or will we descend into tribalism? Will we strive to maintain our sense of community or will we let it go or worse?”
Within one of the most segregated cities in America, this “challenge of the heart” is what faces Milwaukee’s Muslims today.
As Imam Hussain sees it, “The maturity we as a community must have is to understand these organizations are blessings for each other to do the work our prophet taught us to do for our community.” ih
Sandra Whitehead is an author, journalist and a long-time adjunct faculty member of journalism and media studies in the journalism and media studies faculty, J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University.
Showing the World Who Muslim Women Really Are
The Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition Carves a Remarkable Path
BY SANDRA WHITEHEAD
The Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition (MMWC; https:// mmwconline.org) prepared an elaborate Eid Fest this year, during which thousands celebrated the holiday and created memories for their children. As valuable as this service is, don’t think that this women’s organization is relegated to entertaining children and hosting teas.
It operates the Islamic Resource Center, a cultural center that houses the state’s first Islamic public lending library; Our Peaceful Home, a respected culturally specific domestic abuse program; and the MMWC Speakers Bureau. It publishes the Wisconsin Muslim Journal, a twice-weekly online newspaper and produces the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival, one of the nation’s handful of Islamic film festivals.
When MMWC held its 10th anniversary gala last December, praise poured in. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said, “The MMWC has been doing great work promoting understanding, empowering women and advocating for justice and equity throughout Milwaukee and our state.”
“They are truly an essential organization,” Wisconsin’s Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes agreed. “I have seen firsthand their efforts to fight for social justice and civil rights for all people through advocacy, dialogue, education and outreach.”
“It is an organization committed to uplifting communities through education, honest and open conversations, and advocacy that aims to actualize justice and fairness,” noted Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.), as well as “a true community partner” (Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett), “a role model Muslim organization” (Imam Ziad Hamdan, the Islamic Society of Milwaukee), “a champion of Islamic values” (Will Perry, president, Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance) and “a local, regional and national model in countering stereotypes, educating and engaging
ACTIVITIES ➤ The MMWC Speakers Bureau.
“From the beginning, the core of our work has been our Speakers Bureau,” Najeeb said. “Through it, we have had an impact on the image of Muslims and Islam, not only in Greater Milwaukee, but across Wisconsin and, to some extent, across the world.”
In the mid-1990s, they decided on a list of topics they felt comfortable discussing and sent letters to women’s clubs, interfaith organizations, high schools and other groups offering to speak about Islam, the Muslim community and the role of women. Soon they were speaking across the state, especially after 9/11.
Russell Brooker, Ph.D. (professor of political science, Alverno College) invites Najeeb every time he teaches a class on race and ethnicity in America. “I realize Islam is not a race or an ethnicity, but I think Muslims are treated as such by most of American society. That is why I include them,” he said. “Her talk has always helped. Except for some Muslim students, the students know very little about Islam and have been subjected to a steady stream of lies.”
According to MMWC records, Najeeb alone has given more than 2,000 presentations since the speakers bureau began. “I think we were unusual to some people. They had never met Muslim women; it was something that interested them,” she remarked. In 2016, Najeeb was the first Muslim to open the Wisconsin State Assembly with a prayer. ➤ A decade of Catholic-Muslim women’s dialogues.
Two years after the bureau launched, the director of the Milwaukee Archdiocese’s Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith the public, and nurturing attitude-changing relationships” (Tom Heinen, executive director emeritus, Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee).
COUNTERING STEREOTYPES From its beginning in 1994 as a women’s circle, MMWC has been educating the Greater Milwaukee community and
Concerns recruited the MMWC to create Catholic and Muslim women’s dialogues.
“It was an amazing experience that went on for decades,” Najeeb said. “We probably visited every Catholic parish in Milwaukee. For many Catholics, we were the first Muslims they [had] ever met.” ➤ The Catholic-Muslim Healthcare Initiative.
By the early 2000s, the MMWC and
beyond about who Muslims, especially Muslim women, really are. It started with a group of young women getting together for a Sunday circle. Some were newly married, others had young children and most — including a doctor, a nurse, an accountant and a microbiologist — had professional degrees. They gathered at each
WE ARE CONSTANTLY REINVENTING
PHOTOS: © MOUNA RASHID, PRINTED WITH PERMISSION other’s homes and discussed important issues of the day.
“In every discussion, we came back to the same idea — that the image of Muslim women is very problematic, very negative and uninformed. Muslim women were viewed as oppressed,” stated Janan Najeeb (founder and president, MMWC). “We thought we really need to do something about this.”
The early MMWC members sought ways to serve not only Muslims, but also the larger community. That approach helped them become an integral part of Greater Milwaukee, Najeeb said. One early victory came from lobbying the state’s largest newspaper to change the name of its “Church Directory” to “Directory of Worship” and include mosques, synagogues and temples in its list.
GOING FORWARD “We are constantly reinventing ourselves,” noted Najeeb, who says the next focus will be on community youth. “There is definitely a disconnect between generations, between immigrant parents and children who are born and raised here and consider themselves very American.”
It is also seeking new ways to help the many refugees in the Milwaukee area, for “the trauma many of them are carrying with them is untreated. This is affecting their family life, their children and their ability to succeed. What we are trying to do is help people reach the highest potential they can.”
According to Kristin Hansen (executive director, the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance), “The MMWC provides a wide array of services that can be found nowhere else. It has earned its place among the top organizations serving the Muslim community and beyond.” ih
Sandra Whitehead is an author, journalist and a long-time adjunct faculty member of journalism and media studies in the journalism and media studies faculty, J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University.
their Catholic partners decided to help the uninsured or underinsured address their healthcare needs. Parish nurses and Muslim doctors worked together to open a free, mobile healthcare clinic, one of the first of its kind.
“We made little insurance cards with our name on it — The Catholic-Muslim Healthcare Initiative. They would take it to the doctors and would be seen for free. It wasn’t embarrassing to them because they had an insurance card like everybody else,” Najeeb mentioned. ➤ Training immigrant women to be medical assistants.
Another successful service project, the MMWC’s Medical Assistant Training Program, helped immigrant women “find a place to start from which they could move forward,” Najeeb stated.
MMWC hired instructors from Bryant & Stratton College and, over the course of several years, “we had 40-50 individuals who were able to get into full-time jobs and were able to get insurance for their families. Many of them went on from there to go to other levels as physician assistants or X-ray technicians.” ➤ Opening the Islamic Resource Center.
When MMWC incorporated in 2010, it was already a well-known organization. That same year, it built an office that also functions as an Islamic resource and cultural center for the Greater Milwaukee community.
The IRC hosts university classes and community groups for educational programs, films, poetry slams and discussion groups. It also offers a lending library with books about Islam for all ages.
Since then, the MMWC has accomplished numerous other projects, many of them ongoing, including the Wisconsin Muslim Journal, the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival, the IRC Book Club (an interfaith discussion of books with Islamic topics) and a culturally specific domestic violence program known as Our Peaceful Home. It also launched the annual Eid celebration, a joint effort with the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. ih
