Lesley A. Northup, Ph.D., is associate professor and graduate program director in the Department of Religious Studies at Florida International University.

Like other early North American settlers, Muslim pioneers faced and embraced a New World. And yes—Muslims were among the first arrivals to the land. Whether it was true, as some Arabs claimed, that their ancestors had sailed across the Atlantic as early as the twelfth century, Muslims were here by at least the 1600s; a missionary around then had a Moorish guide in the Southwest, we know of Muslims in the Catskills and Appalachians during the same time, and many Africans brought over as slaves were Muslim. For them, as for other newcomers, the continent was truly a new world in which God was ever-present, the possibilities were limitless, and the old rules no longer applied.

Today, a consensus has developed since September 11, 2001 that again we approach a New World, a world with many of the same attributes as the sixteenth century version. Again, the future holds both promise and danger. Again, notions of God are crucial to our self-understanding. Again, Americans of all faiths face the challenges of adaptation, accommodation, and aspiration.

The post-9/11 world has harshly awakened to the presence, influence, and ideas of Islam. Circumscribed by what the media feed us, our knowledge of Islam has, in the past, largely been confined to stereotyped portrayals of megalomaniac dictators, ruthless Palestinians, and crazed religious zealots. In the aftermath of 9/11, the new attention to Islam makes it no longer possible to view Muslims one-dimensionally. The Muslims among us are suddenly visible, both compelling and repelling our interest. Practitioners of Islam now improbably find themselves treated with curiosity and concern as fellow citizens, and the press call for rejection of the notion that “Muslin” equals “terrorist.” Islam now finds itself with a new public voice and an opportunity to set the record straight, as America struggles to avoid fear, prejudice, and disinformation.

If the rest of America now looks at Muslims with new eyes, it is hardly business as usual for Islam, either. Many Muslims believe that there must be a new Islam for a new world, even as they affirm a faith founded with strict beliefs and even stricter rules. To the surprise of many Americans, Islam—at least as it appears in the Q’uran—has been a tolerant and progressive religion, a forerunner in granting economic independence to women, an intellectual wellspring, and a spur to innovation and invention. Yet, Muslims are now facing the gap between the Islam of the Q’uran and the Islam of modern society. Like all religions, especially in the New World, this one will need to recognize and reconcile the difference between Islam de jure and Islam de facto, between an idealistic view of faith and a realistic understanding of how faith is observed and enacted in practice.

Indeed, American Muslims now confront the same unavoidable adjustments that have long plagued Christianity—reconciling the pure life with real life, religious law with civil law, fundamentalism with pragmatism, text with interpretation. Thus, for example, as Christendom has gradually loosened its hold on the governments of the world, disestablishing itself in most countries where once church and state had been coterminous, Islam too will be forced to reconsider the notion of an “Islamic country.” The rise of a more moderate Iranian religious government in recent years and, more dramatically, the fall of the Taliban have both pointed in this direction as Islam absorbs the lesson that the Roman church learned in Europe 500 years ago.

Likewise, Islam will need to confront, as has Christianity, the splintering of its faith—not a new problem, but one that will increasingly lead to conflicts as radical sects presume to speak for the religion as a whole and consequently color national and world opinion. In the future, Muslims will be pressured to define Islam moderately and to disown the more fanatical elements.
Muslim theology will also continue to call for reappraisal. Like all textual fundamentalists, Muslims will increasingly be forced to acknowledge that beliefs cannot be maintained apart from culture, that the sacred text assumes meaning only when it can be applied to the lives of real people in varying societies over multiple eras. Even as the Q’uran itself remains inviolable, its interpretation will need to evolve to stay valued and valuable. In a society that values multiculturalism, Islam will need to become, as have all our imported religions, a distinctively American version of itself.

In an America that continues to reinvent itself, Islam takes its place alongside the many other religions that have defined and been defined by the American experiment. As it writes the story of its own adaptation, it will continue to make a unique contribution to the story of the New World.