Standing outside on a particularly chilly day in October, a group of young volunteers smiled with bags of food they had just prepared, a passerby kindly snapping their photo. The group of them, not more than six, had one or two plastic bags in hand. Each plastic bag contained four or five paper bags of lunches, filled with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, NutriGrain bars, bananas, water bottles, and other goodies. The bags were ready to be delivered to the needy in Chicago’s Loop district.
After a few photos were taken, the group headed back inside where they handed some bags to Omar, the security guard, who loves to deliver meals. Then the volunteers headed their separate ways from there, catching the L or walking back home, being sure to deliver a paper bag to any homeless person they passed on the way.
These volunteers are part of the Downtown Islamic Center’s weekly meal-making program. Every Sunday morning for two hours, people from all over the city, Muslim or non-Muslim, show up to help make and deliver meals. The center touts the program on their website and social media as one of their biggest service projects. Mohammed Ullah, the manager of the Islamic center, describes it as one of the most worthwhile things they do at the center.
“Ending suffering in the world is my biggest hope,” says Ullah.
“When I see a homeless man or an addict on the street, I always give a little money. I don’t see him as an addict, I see him as a man who has been standing in the cold for hours just short of a dollar.”
It’s not just Ullah that cares deeply about others in Chicago, he has the support of the entire congregation. The congregation’s aspirations exemplify a larger phenomenon of Americanization, as will be discussed later in this piece, according to scholars like Leila Fadel and Nadia Marzouki….
“God loves all people,” says Ullah, “and [the center’s] main purpose is to serve humanity and spread peace.” Ullah is particularly distraught about Chicago’s South Side, which has suffered staggering amounts of violence and poverty.
“Crimes against humanity are occuring on the South Side. It’s my goal to do as much as we can to prevent these crimes and help people caught in the middle of it.” Even if that means providing a refuge for people who have nowhere to go, this is enough of a start for Ullah.
With this goal in mind, the Islamic center also hosts free halal dinners, which are meals that practice meat preparation according to Muslim law. Dinner is provided six days a week for whoever needs a hot meal. Maqsood Quadri, the Chairman of the center, says that the halal meals provide for whoever comes to their door, but the sandwich-making program goes evenfurther.
“The feeding hungry program on Sunday originally began as a specially designed program for homeless people who could come to the center, but over the years it has extended to reach those who cannot reach us,” says Quadri.
“It was a personal intention of mine to help the needy around the Loop area,” says Sanah Khan, the founder of the feeding hungry program. Khan didn’t just want to hand them cash, so she started making meals to deliver to them on her way out of the center.
By bringing the meals outside and delivering to those who are hungry on the streets, the Islamic center can reach even more people. As the well-known saying goes in Islam, “He is not a believer whose stomach is filled while the neighbor to his side goes hungry.”
Giving back is an important tenet of Muslim faith all over the world. According to Islamic Relief USA, charity awakens the soul and blesses those who remember to give in times of both hardship and prosperity. The idea of charity, or zakat in Arabic, is the Third Pillar of Islam, meaning it is considered mandatory for Muslims along with faith, prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca. Although zakat technically pertains to the giving of 2.5% of one’s wealth each year, the Qur’an still stresses the importance of giving back in a non-monetary fashion. In Surah 21 of the Qur’an, the Prophet Mohammed, or founder of the Islamic faith, recites “And We made them leaders guiding by Our command. And We inspired to them the doing of good deeds, establishment of prayer, and giving of zakah; and they were worshippers of Us”.
Many Muslims are inspired by Allah’s rewarding nature to perform volunteerism in the hopes of receiving Allah’s mercy. The Qur’an talks about two types of volunteerism: volunteering one’s money and goods and volunteering one’s person. The Islamic center does both.
To pay for the sandwiches, granola bars, fruit, and water bottles, the sandwich-making program relies entirely on the center’s funds. Quadri says the center provides $250 to $300 per week to keep the program going. This adds up to roughly $14,000 a year.
Then, the center brings in the volunteers.
Bobby, who didn’t give his last name, is the appointed “leader” of the sandwich-making program. He isn’t Muslim and has no other connection to the Islamic center other than through this program. Others in the group tell similar stories. Many of the volunteers heard about the program through Facebook or friends who had done the program for a couple of Sundays. On that particular October morning, some were first-timers, and others said they have been volunteering with the program ever since it started in 2015. Very few are ever Muslim.
“Many volunteers are employees from companies or corporations that promote philanthropy and want to come help us on the weekends” says Quadri.
The common factor among all of the volunteers is that none are doing it for a purpose other than to help others. No one is doing the program to get “volunteering hours” or to add it to their resume. They are all there just because they want to be there.
Maybe that’s why the program is so small. Bobby tells me I “came on a slow day”, but checking the number of people who mark “Going” on the Facebook event, there are usually not more than a handful of people signed up. The only time the program gets large numbers is during the holiday season, around Thanksgiving, and during Ramadan in the spring. Most of the time, the program remains relatively small.
Part of the reason is the structure of the center. The center is tailored toward working Muslims in Chicago’s Loop who need a nearby place to pray during the workday. The Islamic center serves as a convenient quasi-mosque to encourage busy people to take time during the day to remember their faith. Because of this structure, the Islamic center doesn’t have much of a community base that is actively participating in the center’s events. Rather, the center acts as an accessible place for people just looking for a little time to pray and then head back to work.
With this in mind, why is it that the Islamic center actively funds and markets their volunteer programs when they have barely anyone available to volunteer?
It all comes back to the importance of community service in Islam, no matter who is contributing. The center’s ability to provide funds and support those who volunteer is just as important as being a volunteer who commits time and energy. Just because the center doesn’t have a community to work with doesn’t mean they can’t still fulfill their hope of giving back to their neighbors. The center doesn’t have much of a communal base, so they work with the money they have to build a community that creates beneficial programs for Chicago’s hungry.
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Is interfaith, inter-community volunteering a uniquely Muslim-American phenomenon?
Leila Fadel, a correspondent for NPR, talks at length about Muslim exceptionalism in a piece titled How Muslims, Often Misunderstood, Are Thriving in America. Muslim-Americans are seen as the “exception”, the “success story”, the only Muslims in the world who are able to achieve “true freedom”. One reason why, Fadel explains, is that “Community activism is thriving, and Muslim activists are forging alliances with other marginalized communities.”
Quadri discusses interfaith activism at the center, saying “The Islamic center has interfaith partnerships with Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, and Lutheran groups around the downtown area. Over lunch, we usually talk about commonalities between our faiths and how we can help each other grow. Many also help out with our service programs.”
He adds, “We also help each other during difficult times. We host vigils and come together as a community to support all faithful people.”
Does volunteering with and building trust with non-Muslims and people of other faiths make Muslims more “free”? Many scholars seem to think so.
It’s pretty obvious that America likes to tout its version of everything as the best version. American education is the best! American democracy is the best! Even American religion is the best! Therefore, it’s assumed that the Americanized version of Islam must be better than any other version in the world. Any discussions, conversations, and connections that are made outside of “Islam” (such as interfaith lunch panels at the center) is seen as a positive move. It’s a move that benefits Muslims in America because it’s a form of assimilation and conformity to a religious discourse as defined by American policy and socialization. Muslims who build trust with communities outside of Islam are no longer seen as scary terrorists, they are seen as people loyal to American conceptions of religious freedom.
Nadia Marzouki, a scholar whose book Islam: An American Religion explores Islam in American politics, writes, “By insisting on the integration and normalness of Muslim Americans, these studies [on Muslims in America] reassure a nervous public… By seeking to show the exemplary integration of Muslim Americans, the studies reformulate indirectly the theme of America’s exceptional destiny.”
According to scholars, moving towards inter-community volunteerism and away from Islam as an “oriental”, isolated, and othered religion is a form of self-determination and “liberation” from Islam as interpreted by the rest of the world. This is what makes American Islam “better” than the rest of the world’s Islam.
By participating in interfaith alliances as the Islamic center does, Muslims are moving away from Islam and towards an American, Christian-centric ideal of what religion means. For Marzouki, a Christian-centric religious ideal is one that “considers the true place of religion to be in one’s individual, sincere, and authentic faith, and not in an orthodoxy imposed by clergymen.”
Some Muslims agree that Americanized religion is better. Returning to Fadel’s piece, Bakri Musa, a Malaysian-American surgeon, says “‘[America] is the place to be a Muslim, scholarship without intervention… In Malaysia I could go to jail because I have Shiite literature in my house’” but in America he can practice what he wants freely. To him, America gives Muslims the freedom to be authentic. America celebrates Muslim individualism and inclusion. Uniqueness is revered. By coming under the wing of democracy, Islam can truly thrive.
However, America doesn’t celebrate Muslim individualism and inclusion at the expense of American ideals. Islam can only thrive in America if it reinvents itself. This reinvention has to include freedom of religion, building trust, and most importantly, fighting terror.
This last point is rooted in Ullah’s mind.
“We are educated, we are giving, we are hard-working,” he says, “and it makes no sense that an educated, giving, hardworking group of people could do something like terrorism.”
The need for Ullah to defend his religion and his family seems both unnecessary and unfair. Why does he, along with other Muslims, feel the need to defend himself constantly from the dangerously generalized and unfounded rhetoric of American politics?
Maybe it’s because defense is what creates acceptance in America. The good versus bad Muslim narrative is at the forefront of every discussion of Islam in America, and as long as Muslims prove they’re the good ones, they are accepted.
This isn’t to say that what the Islamic center is doing for Chicago is only done in hopes of acceptance. Of course ending suffering is the main priority. But, working with Muslims and non-Muslims alike on a volunteer program, building bridges outside the Muslim community, denouncing terrorism, all of these things make life easier for a Muslim in America.
As Ullah says, “Ignorance only produces fear, and by building friendships with others in the community, we show people we have nothing to hide.”