For mosques with greater resources, as in Bay Ridge, the spike in religious interest and participation has increased worshippers’ sensitivity to the quality and depth of an imam’s teachings.
Azeem Khan, assistant secretary general of the Islamic Circle of North America, a Muslim community development organization based in Queens, said, “bigger Islamic centers are very picky when looking for an imam, so they won't take just anyone, and they might end up looking for months.”
As in the Middle East, many American imams lead the mosque in five prayers a day and deliver the Friday sermon, or khutbah, and answer religious questions. American imams also have expanded social and educational roles that would normally be filled by other figures in Muslim countries. Imams provide lectures to women’s groups and Quranic lessons to children throughout the week. In America, they also are routinely called upon to play matchmaker and settle personal and business disputes.
The imam also must be able to translate his Quranic understanding from the Middle East to America. “What may apply in Egypt, may not work here, in terms of the problems people face,” said Wael Musfar, president of the Arab Muslim Federation and another member of the lay council at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge.
Sheik Shamsi Ali, an Indonesian who serves as imam in four mosques throughout the city, said imams in New York must know how to negotiate different “cultural interpretations” of Islam. One of the mosques he serves, the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens, has a congregation primarily from Bangladesh, where a “fist length” beard is viewed as holy. When Ali arrived at the mosque, he had to convince the patrons that while many Indonesians, like himself, find it impossible to grow a beard, it does not make them any less devout.
According to Zahid Bukhari, president of the American Muslim Studies Program at Georgetown University, this fundamental challenge for American Islam – too few imams qualified to fulfill expanded social roles and to bridge vast ethnic and cultural differences – can be solved by establishing an Islamic school of higher education in America.
“We need to establish an institution to train imams here. It will take some time, but eventually our community needs American-trained and -educated imams,” said Bukhari.
Ali agrees with the need for American-born and -trained imams who will “not feel that there is a clash of Muslim and American values.” He said, “I want future imams in America to be American who have the American mentality and perspective, who know the circumstances we live in here.”
