Islam and Assimilation in the West: Religious and Cultural Ingredients in American Muslim Experience

This essay is an exploration into the social inevitabilities of culture shifts within the American Muslim community's self-understanding of their faith. Rather than a theological explication of the reasons Islam may or may not, or can or cannot, assimilate in America, my approach will be strictly sociological, thereby side-stepping the intricate dialectic of theological niceties in deference to the social realities of culture change. As a social psychologist, my duty is to acknowledge the inevitabilities of behavioral shifts brought about by social and cultural pressures resulting from immigration into an alien cultural weltanschauung, i.e., worldview. Therefore in this essay, I will explicate the meaning and nature of de-ethnicization and re-enculturation as I endeavor to disentangle religion from culture, recognizing that much of what goes under the flag of religious orthodoxy is really culturally mandated behavior and worldview. Because the assimilation process bears heavily upon the necessity for Muslim clergy in America to become professional by western standards, this essay explores the complexities of religious secularism as a way of becoming an 'American' Muslim. Finally, I suggest liturgical and architectural 'adjustments' to western modes of public worship and indicate linguistic niceties that will prove helpful in the assimilation process that I call the 'Islamicization of America.'. Adapted from the source document.