Muslims in America

December 4, 2006 8:35 AM

There are many Muslims in America. Are they mostly Shia or Sunni, and do they get along better than they seem to do elsewhere?

There are, we are told millions of Muslims in America,and they are doing better economically than the average American (finacially), and are
in many professions. But since there seems asplitin countries outside America into the two great camps--Shities and Sunnis--is there a clear-cut majority of the one over the other in America, and, if so, which is the predominagte group? Do they "get along" in America or is this division a non-issue?

posted by Postroad to religion & philosophy (27 comments total)

Very briefly-- because I don't know the answer to your specific question-- I'd say that the Sunni vs. Shia issue is much less salient for Muslims here. I don't know of serious fissures on those lines among American Muslims.

Indians and Pakistanis, back at home, are heated and eternal rivals. But here in the US, they join South Asian associations with each other. Ditto Protestants and Catholics, enemies forever in parts of Europe, but often political allies here. When your two groups make up 5% of the population, rather than 95%, the differences just seem less important than the similarities.
posted by ibmcginty at 8:43 AM on December 4, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

This site says:

Islam in America has a unique opportunity to heal these wounds. There are over three million Muslims in America. And there are over a million Iranians, a large majority of whom is Muslim. America has produced Muslim scholars of the first rank who have transcended Shia or Sunni labels and have made lasting contributions to Islamic sciences. The name of the eminent scholar Seyyed Hussein Nasr immediately springs to mind. America is the melting pot of nations. Muslims here are cosmopolitan. Shia-Sunni marriages and familial relations are commonplace in this land.

And this page is all about the issue:

The short answer is that as an import to America, trouble does not travel well.

Local and national Islamic leaders say the conflicts between Sunnis and the Shias, while real and dire in the Middle East, are simply irrelevant to their lives and to the lives of nearly all Muslim Americans...

But neither site gives statistics, which I too would be curious to see.
posted by languagehat at 9:08 AM on December 4, 2006

A fair number of American Muslims are Sufis.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:38 AM on December 4, 2006

FYI... Sufis. (because I didn't know and thought Steven had spelling error)
posted by nimsey lou at 9:46 AM on December 4, 2006

SCdenB: source? I grew up rather near one of the largest concentrations of muslims in the U.S. (Dearborn) and in my experiences with that place and its residents, I did not at all get the impression that there was a major contingent of sufis. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "a fair number," but I'm very curious what evidence there is that sufism is anywhere near as pervasive as sunni or shi'a Islam in the U.S.
posted by rkent at 9:56 AM on December 4, 2006

This article has some useful info on immigration patterns of Muslims into the US, and points out that asking about religious affiliation during both the census and immigration is illegal, which makes gathering such info hard.
posted by occhiblu at 10:15 AM on December 4, 2006

Anecdotally, my recent experience at a mosque is that to many American Muslims, the Sunni/Shia split isn't very salient. Sunnis outnumber Shi'ites worldwide, though, sure, and I've been told "If you ask a Muslim whether he's Sunni or Shia and he doesn't respond immediately and enthusiastically that he's a Shi'ite, he's a Sunni."
posted by electric_counterpoint at 10:57 AM on December 4, 2006

Oh, and (at least most places), both/all ideologies are welcomed at the local mosque.
posted by electric_counterpoint at 10:59 AM on December 4, 2006

Also: the majority of Arab-Americans (and Arab immigrants in the US) are not Muslim, while the majority of Muslims in the US are not Arab in origin.
posted by holgate at 11:11 AM on December 4, 2006

FWIW - I just spoke to one of my best friends from college, who happens to be Shia, and he laughed. He said it isn't an issue at all in the States.

Apparently it's neither here nor there, it just isn't an issue.
posted by ASM at 12:04 PM on December 4, 2006

Extremely anecdotal: When I was in high school (7-8 years ago) I had an Indian-American female friend who had a Pakistani-American boyfriend. Her parents (and his too, IIRC) tolerated the relationship to a reasonable degree but made it very clear that they would never be allowed to marry because one of them was Shia and one was Sunni. (I can't remember which was which).

As I recall, she wasn't pleased about their attitude but she also didn't seem to feel that it was totally out-of-line. It struck me as basically analogous to a strict Jewish or Catholic family wanting their sons and daughters to marry someone of the same faith.

The Shia/Sunni issue has never even come up with any of the other American Muslims I have met since that time, so I tend to agree with most of the above posters that the split is just not that big an deal here.
posted by slenderloris at 12:20 PM on December 4, 2006

IAAS (I am a Sunni).
The Sunnis do outnumber Shias here, and I would say by an amount propotional to the worldwide ratio. Although most of the Iranian Muslims in States are Shias and considering the significant amount of Iranian immigrants it would be interesting to look at the real figures.
There are definitely several differences between the two. For example, a Sunni wouldn't usually pray in a Shia mosque, and vice versa, if he/she has a Sunni mosque available, because of some differences in the prayers (though I see exceptions very often). So the awareness of differences is there, but we do get along quite well here compared to other parts of the world. Phew!
posted by raheel at 12:41 PM on December 4, 2006

I'm far from an expert, but a drive down Ford Rd. (in Dearborn) will confirm what ibmcginty says: even Pakistanis and Indians get along in the US.
posted by dagnyscott at 12:46 PM on December 4, 2006

I've studied with Naqshbandi Sufis and while I doubt you could even say "a fair number"(whatever that means) of Muslims in the US are Sufis, Michigin is a major center for the Naqshbandi in the states. See here, and here.

IIRC, the Naqshbandis are the only Sufis that descend from Abu Bakr and are therefore in the Sunni tradition. The only group I ever heard them express distaste for were the Wahhabi (modern radicals that is, not necessarily the sincere followers of Abdul Wahhab).

Every Masjid I've been to in the US has welcomed anyone who professes to have faith, even Hacidic Jews in one case.
posted by a_green_man at 2:04 PM on December 4, 2006

It seems to me that Sunni vs. Shiite is just a convenient cloak for "Faction 1 that wants to be in control" vs. "Faction 2 that wants to be in charge". In other words, it's about power and control, not religion. In Iraq, for example, they're fighting for control of the country, but since there's not much to be gained by fighting each other in the states, there's no conflict.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 2:17 PM on December 4, 2006

Great insight, Mr. Gunn. To an outsider, the split between Shia and Sunni may appear to be older and deeper than that between Protestant and Catholic, but you intuit that it's actually got all the theological and historical weight as the spat between Sox and Yanks fans.

What. The. Fuck.

From back in reality, or at least wiki-quasi-reality, here's a list of Muslim demography, including in the US. Obviously, I can't vouch for accuracy, but it says that there are 900,000 Shiites and 5,100,000 Sunnis in the US.
posted by ibmcginty at 2:40 PM on December 4, 2006

The problem with that Wikipedia chart is that the sum of the percentages for Sunni and Shia is exactly 100% for every country. So if we believe that chart, there are no Sufis at all.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:20 PM on December 4, 2006

The number of Sufis around the world is generally estimated at around five to ten million. That's one percent of all Muslims. Their exclusion in that wiki chart is defensible.

They are relatively prominent in our minds, though, Steven CDB, because they have a cultural impact disproportionate to their numbers. Their tradition of poetry and mysticism appeals to many in the West.
posted by ibmcginty at 8:01 PM on December 4, 2006

just a guess, but no power to fight over? back in the middle east, there's plenty of governmental power to fight over, with shia and sunni forming party-like organizations in places like iraq. Here, with fewer muslims, there's no possibility of forming nationally significant parties that could rival existing ones. Thus, they don't care?
posted by wuzandfuzz at 9:02 PM on December 4, 2006

The question of counting Sufis in the U.S. is complicated by a lot of things (lots of different orders, etc), but one of the main complications is that many Sufis here aren't Muslim at all:

Non-Islamic Sufi Organizations and Schools in the West

In addition to the various Islamic Sufi orders that now have centers in the West, a number of non-Islamic Sufi organizations have arisen in the West. These groups teach various Sufi doctrines and practices but -- in contrast to nearly all Sufi orders in the Muslim world -- have disconnected their teachings from Islam. Hence followers of these groups are generally not Muslims. Adherents of such schools often assert that Sufism pre-dates Islam and thus in prinicipal is universal and independent of it...

Whatever "fair number" of Sufis there are in the U.S. (and it seems that Steven doesn't have a good guess at what "fair number" means, either), it's a decent bet that many (perhaps like these folks who do an annual Rumi celebration locally) would fit only tenuously in the "Muslim in America" category.
posted by mediareport at 11:53 PM on December 4, 2006

Hope this isn't too much of a derail from the original question, but this article has more about the history of Sufism in the US; scroll down to "Other forms of Western Sufism" for details about the teachers in the 1950s and 1960s (like J.G. Bennett and Idries Shah) who created "a Sufism that was non-Moslem and universal - that is, Sufism is the Islamic name for the True Way and is hence part of Islam only accidentally and not essentially."

For what it's worth (not much, I assure you), my limited and mostly secular experience with Sufis tells me this non-Muslim Sufism, though a later development, is the dominant strain in the U.S. today, and so probably bears little relevance to this question, regardless of the number of its adherents.
posted by mediareport at 12:07 AM on December 5, 2006

ibmcginty: "Great insight, Mr. Gunn. To an outsider, the split between Shia and Sunni may appear to be older and deeper than that between Protestant and Catholic, but you intuit that it's actually got all the theological and historical weight as the spat between Sox and Yanks fans.

What. The. Fuck.

From back in reality, or at least wiki-quasi-reality, here's a list of Muslim demography, including in the US. Obviously, I can't vouch for accuracy, but it says that there are 900,000 Shiites and 5,100,000 Sunnis in the US."

I'm not sure how you got from what I said to what you read, but whatever. Of course, it's an old, long standing split, but as far as the current conflict, it's clear to me that it's a political struggle cloaked in religious terms. This is kinda a derail, however, so I'll just let this one go, OK?
posted by Mr. Gunn at 1:18 PM on December 5, 2006

Some people seem to think "Sufi" is in opposition to both Sunni and Shi'a. It's not; there are Sufis of both sorts.

it's clear to me that it's a political struggle cloaked in religious terms.

Only if you think all religious struggles are "really" political, in which case you simply don't believe there is such a thing as religious belief.
posted by languagehat at 3:48 PM on December 5, 2006

languagehat, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Religion can be used in service of politics, and often is, however, my opinion about whether that's the case in the current conflict or not has no bearing on my opinion about religious belief in general. My point was that the difference in contentiousness of debate among Sunni and Shi'a here and Sunni and Shi'a in the middle east is mostly political, not that the whole debate was political in origin. I knew I should never have posted in this question, because people seem to recreationally misunderstand each other any time these topics come up.

Here's why I think that the reason they have carbombings over there, but get along OK over here is political in nature. Every politician knows that one good way for their group to gain members and influence is to take sides on some controversial issue and declare "you're either with us or against us" based on your opinion on that issue. The effect of this is to change the distribution of people from two small groups on either side of the issue and a whole bunch of people in the middle to two large groups on either side. In order to continue to shrink the middle, the two groups have to become increasingly more and more radical. So it's a political process that's creating the radicalism. In the U.S., the two groups exist, but they have no group leaders who are trying to recruit members through the political process I mentioned above, because there's nothing to gain politically by doing so, and therefore the two groups aren't as radicalized and aren't carbombing each other's places of worship.

If that's a demonstrably stupid misunderstanding, I'd appreciate being educated.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 11:25 AM on December 6, 2006

Every politician knows that one good way for their group to gain members and influence is to take sides on some controversial issue and declare "you're either with us or against us" based on your opinion on that issue. The effect of this is to change the distribution of people from two small groups on either side of the issue and a whole bunch of people in the middle to two large groups on either side. In order to continue to shrink the middle, the two groups have to become increasingly more and more radical

Very true, and I think your explanation of why there's no Sunni-Shi'a problem in the US is correct (if not necessarily the whole truth). But you're confusing different things. The fact that politicians make use of religion, race, ethnicity, and other sensitive issues to get people stirred up for their own political purposes does not mean that those issues don't "really" exist or that the ensuing conflict isn't "really" about them. Politicians stirred up anti-Semitism in Europe and racism in America in the late 19th-century for political purposes, but I don't think you'd want to argue that the pogroms and lynchings weren't about religion and race. What originally sets a phenomenon going doesn't explain everything about it.
posted by languagehat at 12:16 PM on December 6, 2006

"What originally sets a phenomenon going doesn't explain everything about it."

That's exactly what I was thinking. It explains the severity, but not the origin.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 8:09 AM on December 7, 2006

Here's an article in today's Washington Post about Sunnis and Shiites in the DC area.

"We do have a few differences, but at the end of the day, we share the same morals and values. We hate to see war and people dying. We are friends, and we trust each other," said Kadiatu Bah, 17, a senior and Sunni Muslim from Guinea who plans to attend Catholic University in the fall.

"When I go to greet another Muslim, I don't ask if the person is Sunni or Shia. These divisions are political, not religious," said Fatema Mohammadi, 16, a senior and a Shiite from Iran. "At our noon prayer, Sunnis pray behind Shias. At afternoon prayer, Shias pray behind Sunnis. For us, there is absolutely no difference." ...

"The issue of Iraq has opened a Pandora's box," said Haithem al Hassani, a consultant to the nonprofit Iraq Council in Washington. "I am a Shia, and my sister is married to a Sunni. There is still respect between families and colleagues. But there is also fear. Every day, people with neutral positions are lessening, and both sides are justifying wrong acts. We talk a lot about trying to bring people together, but feelings are still too raw."

posted by ibmcginty at 10:09 AM on March 8, 2007