American Muslims – Striving Hard To Bridge The Gap

Of all major religions of the world, we see Islam at the very center stage of raging debates and discussions all around the globe, particularly within the geographic confines of the United States of America. When we see this in a much broader perspective of 9/11 tragedy, pieces of the puzzle seem to settle into their respective spaces. What’s not so good about all this, however, is the fact that majority of U.S citizens are quite far from knowing more and better about Islam.   In fact, according to various surveys, about 60 percent of the American population is still unable to understand Islam.

What might be the solution?

Such a situation is not only quite unwanted and unbeneficial for Muslims living in the U.S.A, but it is equally not so good for all other people living there. In fact, one of the reasons behind developing negative perceptions about an issue does not know about it as we should. That means every Muslim living in America should contribute towards the cause of letting other fellow Americans more about Islam.

What Keith Ellison believes

One of the best solutions under such circumstances for Muslims living in America, according to a Keith Ellison (the first Muslim who ever got elected to the U.S Congress), is to positively contribute in letting all communities across the U.S know more about Islam by taking any and every measure that progressive Muslims can. This is how Ellison practically proved. November 2006 was the very first time he got elected to the U.S Congress and ever since then, he has overcome all odds by getting re-elected twice more. It is very important to realize that Ellison, despite living in the post 9/11 era, did his best to achieve this feat. Though it is a task conventionally associated with institutions like Quran Education center to help people know more about Islam, Ellison believes every Muslim living in America should do their best by expressing their actions and beliefs in whatever field they belong to, to help non-Muslims understand the better, softer, and truer side of Islam.

What Wajahat Ali believes

Keith Ellison is not the only positive and happening image of Islam in the United States of America, but there are scores of other positively spirited people who want to bridge the gap between Muslims and rest of America, and Wajahat Ali, a playwright, and director of Pakistani descent serves to be yet another example of positively high spirited Muslim Americans. In fact, quite recently he earned a lot of fame and respect due to one of his works, i.e. The Domestic Crusaders. He believes what’s going on with Muslims in America is quite the same as that what happened with American Jews, Japanese, Blacks, Italians, and some other ethnicities as well sometimes back.

What Hussein Rashid believes

Yet another devoted and passionate American Muslim is Hussein Rashid, who not only lectures in different educational institutions across the United States of America but is also quite renowned as an eager Muslim activist based in New York. What he believes (and quite rightly so) is that one of the reasons why not much people across the U.S are aware of true Islamic ideology is because Muslims lack the ability to tell their stories as they should. This, once again leads us to conclude that not only the innovative concept of online Quran (something that enables people to learn Quran using internet from anywhere they want) is going to be needed to help Americans learn more about Islam, but it will take every individual Muslim to bridge this gap by being true and expressive to whatever they believe in accordance with Islamic theology.

Conclusion

Historically speaking, wherever Muslims used to go, their moral high grounds helped them win hearts, minds, and souls of indigenous populations. It is about time for Muslims living in America to do so yet again, so let’s stay tuned to that.