MORTON GROVE, IL –A quiet moment in the office. Sidewalks near a popular lunch restaurant. Space found in the corner of a sleepy library. The sidelines of a basketball court in between games. In these everyday spaces, Muslims around the country, and the world, find themselves looking for guidance and strength in the form of daily prayer.
“When I’m praying, I know that thousands are doing what I’m doing. I think that’s when I feel the most connected to (my religion),” said Hadessa Plummer, 41, the school nurse at the Muslim Community Center (MCC) Academy campus in Skokie. She makes sure her daughter, Najah, 10, prays daily and is working on getting her son, Idris, 8, used to prayer to raise them to be good Muslims.
But Plummer didn’t grow up attending mosque or reading the Qur’an. Roughly 13 years ago, Plummer was a practicing Christian, frequenting a Bible study group and church weekly. Around this time Plummer met her future husband, Enoch, through a mutual friend. Enoch, a practicing Muslim from Ghana, prompted her to look into the religion to learn more about it and him.
Plummer spoke to her father, who had converted to Islam some years before, and did her own research into the religion before deciding she wanted to marry Enoch. While Enoch had expressed his desire to court a Muslim woman, Plummer was determined to make the decision about her faith her own, separate of anyone else’s wishes.
“I was going back and forth to church while learning about Islam…I was beginning to struggle with some of the things being said in church,” said Plummer. “But I wanted this to be about me, not about my husband. I wanted this to be about me and Islam.”
Plummer converted roughly a year later, around the age of 30. A 2007 Pew Research study estimated that about half of Muslim converts in America were under the age of 21 when they converted, and another third were between the ages of 21 and 35.
The overall Muslim population is growing by around 100,000 annually, according to another Pew Research survey from 2017, and the steady growth has been met with a rise in Islamophobia. A Pew Research analysis of FBI hate crime statistics found that there were 127 reported assaults against Muslims in 2017, compared to 91 the previous year and 56 the year prior to that. Anti-Muslim intimidation was also reported 144 incidents, a number only surpassed by the 296 victims in 2001, in the same survey.
However, there are roughly the same number of converts to Islam as those who leave the religion. About a quarter of converts responding to the survey said they preferred the beliefs and teachings of Islam, including the ease of the conversion process.
In order to convert to Islam, the official process consists of one task: an audible recitation of the Shahada, “testimony” in Arabic. The Shahada is “La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad rasoolu Allah,” which translates in essence to “There is no true god (deity) but God (Allah), and Muhammad is the Messenger (Prophet) of God.”
“Converts (learn) the individual obligations of the faith, which usually starts out with learning about ritual ablution before prayer, that purification,” said Dr. William Caldwell, recent PhD recipient from the Religious Studies department at Northwestern University. Caldwell converted to Islam his senior year of undergraduate studies at Emory University, which he credits with prompting him to pursue higher education in religious studies.
He mentioned that the bulk of a convert’s education about Islam, either through personal or group study, is about purification and other logistical things, like learning to fast during Ramadan. Caldwell also mentioned that interpretation of what Islam looks like in practice is so varied that tenets, like the five pillars of Islam — belief, prayer, charity, fasting and hajj (or pilgrimage) to Mecca — aren’t a universal prescription.
“There are exceptions, not that people are not obligated to try for (the pillars),” said Caldwell. “But in terms of individual engagement with them, there are varying degrees of interaction with (the five pillars).”
Convert members of mosques, such as the ones under the MCC, have the opportunity to participate in courses and groups specifically tailored to converts. Saif Nazhar, 39, a congregant of MCC since the 1980s volunteers to help converts there.
“We constantly have opportunities to welcome new members of the congregation with events for the whole community,” said Nazhar. “I like (volunteering for converts) because it contributes to the openness of the community; it’s really open to everyone.”
Some members of the convert community feel that attempts to have regular meetings of converts lack the consistency needed to create a convert-specific sense of community. Belinda Tibayan, 53, is a Filipino-American convert to Islam who serves as the full-time middle school librarian and runs after-school programs part-time for the Morton Grove location of the MCC Academy. She is working on organizing a regular meeting of converts in the community along with two female, convert friends.
“If I had more time I would (participate more) and we’re trying to start (a group) up again now,” said Tibayan. “I don’t know why a group hasn’t continued. We try to start events and then it falters off. So, while we’re trying this again, we’re still trying to understand why we don’t have that consistent big convert group.”
Before converting, Tibayan met and married her husband, a Muslim immigrant to America from Morocco, in a non-denominational church and continued to practice the Catholic faith that she was raised in for several years. When they decided to have children, Tibayan began to think about converting.
“I had taken religion classes at Loyola and grew up in the city surrounded by diversity, so I was at least familiar with Islam,” said Tibayan. “But I never had any real exposure until attending mosque with my husband (occasionally) and meeting the ladies there, it all seemed to make more sense.” Tibayan attributed a significant portion of her decision to officially convert to the strength and welcoming nature of the women who attended mosque.
A friend of Tibayan’s and fellow convert Jill Alali, 44, also spoke to the inclusivity of the community of women attending MCC. In addition to directing the marketing and communications department of the MCC Academy, Alali sent her four children to the religious school and holds membership in an interfaith group called Morton Grove Women Who Drink Tea.
“Growing up, I went to public school, but my aunt and uncle and my cousins were very involved in our local parochial Lutheran school and I was always envious of that experience that my cousins had,” said Alali. “It was such a tight-knit school community and I just really always loved that my cousins were growing up very close to their faith. Their school community just had this different vibe to it.”
Alali’s positive feelings about parochial school lead her to want to send her children to a private Islamic school. She mentioned how she has noticed that today in Western society less and less people are practicing religion of any kind, another reason she and her husband wanted to send their children to an Islamic school.
“We wanted an experience for our children where they could practice their faith throughout the day in everything that they do,” said Alali. “What is really unique about our kids’ school, whether it be in social studies or science class, is that teachers will often link lesson topics back to our faith. By making connections with Islam at various intervals throughout their day, our children are learning in a full circle context.”
Alali moved from Wisconsin to Chicago to attend journalism school, where she met her husband and married after graduating. Alali and her family have been a part of the MCC community for 16 years, a year after she converted to Islam and five years after marrying her husband. Alali is grateful both for her Chicagoland metropolitan community’s diversity that allows her family to practice freely and for the support of her extended family, namely her parents who still live in Wisconsin, in being accepting of her decision to convert and veil.
“I think it helped that they really liked my husband and they respected us and the way that we were together,” said Alali. “After we had children, my mom said to me on more than one occasion ‘I never have to worry about my grandchildren, your children, because I just see you both working so hard to raise them in such a nice way. AlhumdilAllah (thank God), my parents and my sisters are very supportive of us.”
A 2017 Pew Research survey states that 77 percent of converts to Islam come from a Christian background, as opposed to the 19 percent with no prior religious beliefs. For Plummer and Tibayan, this meant giving rationale to their family and friends in addition to their former congregation.
“I think at first my parents were hesitant… but (after) I made it clear I never felt any pressure to cover or convert, it was really easy,” said Tibayan. Tibayan attributes their support as a product of living and growing up in Chicago. Alali feels similarly about the environment of tolerance her and her family have found in Chicago, in combination with the confidence in their faith that her children feel from attending MCC Academy.
“I think if we lived anywhere else, I’d be telling a very different story,” said Alali. “I notice little slights once in awhile. But my daughter Hana is oblivious to these things. I would go to her track meets and once in awhile I would notice someone kind of looking at her strangely as she was running in her scarf, but she doesn’t notice it. And I’m so thankful for that. I think because she’s always been Muslim she is super confident with herself in the world. She doesn’t notice those occasional looks. But thankfully, here in Chicago, that’s really been the extent of people treating us differently….just a few mean looks here and there. However, I’m very aware that in other less urban parts of the country Muslims have it tough.”
Many of the converts at MCC feel that the diversity of Chicago is mirrored in their congregation. Alali, Tibayan, Plummer and Nazhar all spoke to the variety of nationalities and ethnicities represented along with the variety of programs designed to take the students at the MCC Academy and members of the mosque out of their community to meet people with other sets of beliefs.
“We have a lot of people with questions coming in and, working with the outreach program, we are constantly having opportunities for people to learn from each other,” said Nazhar.
Still, that doesn’t always translate to an incredibly tolerant environment for converts. Tibayan spoke to a feeling among converts that peers perceive them differently.
“I mean they just look at me and can see I’m a convert,” said Tibayan, “I think within the community, with so much diversity (with) covering, when they see me, I don’t know if I get (anything) negative from them but they know I only cover here at school…I know some people feel a little hesitant with converts. Sometimes I feel like you’re getting judged if you don’t cover.”
Others speak to the acceptance and support of the community regardless of how they found their religion. Alali says that it was the strength of the religious education of her children at MCC Academy that gave her peace of mind about her children being strong Muslims able to take on the world. Caldwell thought that his initial worries about being singled out as a convert might be self-created.
“I used to think that I did (get looked at differently) as a convert, but I suppose I was pretty self-conscious,” said Caldwell. He thought that his newness and youth contributed to this feeling of being treated differently, but now he feels that his community at the Ta’leef Collective, an Islamic non-profit with mosques in Chicago, supports him through its diversity and acceptance.
Plummer maintained that it was the simultaneous connection to the rest of her congregation and individual empowering nature of Islam that attracted her to the religion in the first place.
“It’s that connection: you have a mainline connection to God,” said Plummer. “I don’t have to go through anybody else to pray and those prayers are a constant reminder throughout the day that you have to be thinking about God and the hereafter (and) live your life that way.”