jennifer bryan
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profile, in general, the response has been to want to make the Muslim community stronger and
have America see “the true” Islam. How each individual has responded depends on a variety of
factors, including citizenship status, socioeconomic position, ancestry, age and the nature of his
or her transnational and local ties. On the whole, however, there has been a significant swing
toward traditionalism in the city’s Arab Muslim community.
The observation that most Arab Muslims in Jersey City have not attempted to blend in or
downplay their Arab or Muslim appearance presents a challenge to the classic model of
assimilation suggesting that immigrants eventually lose their homeland culture and melt into
mainstream (see Gordon 1966). At the same time, this observation supports what sociologists
noted many years ago: when an identity—ethnic, religious, or cultural—is used to discriminate
against a group, this identity, paradoxically, becomes even more important to defend and
emphasize (see Becker 1963; Goffman 1963; Erikson 1966). In the case of Arab Muslims in
Jersey City, they believe that it is the responsibility of every Muslim to correct perceived
misrepresentations and to follow religious practices that honor their own sense of “the true”
Islam. As an Egyptian Muslim leader put it:
I know there are some people who get the looks and the stares and the curses and
the broken windows…and of course there are the people being detained. And this
is terrible. But we all know this. Everybody knows this. I like to focus on the
positive. It is a terrible situation but I like to see the shining light. You see the
way I look at it, September 11 shook the Muslim community. It shook us to see
who was weak and who was going to survive. And in this way, it made us
stronger…Now we have to make the American society see the true Muslim
community.
In line with this leader’s words, the Arab Muslims I interviewed felt an urgent
responsibility to change the way Islam is represented and understood by the media, political
leaders, and the larger society. It is as if there is a collective ethos professing: if all Muslims just
practice “the true” Islam, its peace and simplicity will shine through so powerfully that it will not
only make the in-group stronger, but enable the rest of society to see “the true.” In this sense,
practicing “the true” Islam, it is believed, will alter the way Americans view Islam, garner
popular support for opposition to the perceived “War on Islam,” and even recruit new Muslims
in the process.
How have Jersey City Arab Muslims sought to emphasize “the true” Islam? One way has
been through renewed interest in a close reading of the Qur’an. Given that many Arab Muslim
Convention