Chapter 16: Every tradition: services and what they need · Part 3
Islam
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the Nation of Islam describe themselves as Muslim, and the game includes them as they do; most Muslims, and the main Sunni and Shia bodies, don't regard either as Muslim.
Sunni Islamic Center
An independent Sunni mosque or Islamic center of the most common American kind: founded by immigrants, South Asian and Arab above all, now a community of many origins (with African American, Somali, Bosnian, and Turkish families and converts among them), run by a board its dues-paying members elect, and answerable to no body above it. Islam has no denominations and no hierarchy; umbrella bodies such as ISNA and ICNA have no authority over a mosque. The week peaks at Jumu'ah, the Friday congregational prayer at midday, timed by the noon prayer: a khutbah in two parts, mostly in English, then a two-rak'ah prayer, about 45 minutes to an hour, often in two shifts where the hall can't hold everyone. The five daily prayers are prayed in congregation at times that move with the sun; a few come to each. Worship is prayer in straight rows on a carpet facing the qibla, north-east from most of America, with no pews, images, or instruments: the sound of worship is the adhan and the recitation of the Qur'an. Women pray behind the men or in a space of their own: two-thirds of mosques have a divider, a few a balcony, a third none. The imam is usually the board's employee (half of mosques have a full-time paid imam, one in six none), and volunteer khatibs often preach; only men lead mixed prayer or give the khutbah, while women sit on most boards. Money comes from the Friday boxes and from Ramadan, the busiest month and the main fundraising season; zakat is collected separately for the poor; there are no raffles and, by most scholars' rulings, no interest-bearing loans, so buildings go up as money comes in. Food is halal, alcohol is never served, the dead are buried within a day. This center follows the standard (Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali) time for the afternoon prayer; its Hanafi variant, common where South Asian families predominate, prays Asr later. Practice varies from mosque to mosque in all of this, as in when Ramadan and Eid begin.
8 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Community of Imam W. Deen Mohammed
A masjid in the community of Imam W. Deen Mohammed (1933-2008), whose people call themselves Muslim Americans: Sunni Muslims, mostly African American, usually in a city neighbourhood, often in a building that was once a Nation of Islam temple, a church, or a storefront. When Elijah Muhammad died in February 1975 his son Wallace, later Warith Deen, Mohammed succeeded him and at once turned the movement to Sunni Islam: ministers became imams, temples became masjids, the Ramadan fast and the standard prayer were taken up, and the racial teachings were dropped. Since 1985 its masjids have governed themselves, with no authority above them; since his death, a Conveners of Imams coordinates training and announces the community's moon sightings. It prays, fasts, and keeps the year as other Sunni mosques do, but governs, staffs, and funds itself differently. The imam, the Resident Imam, leads the masjid, elected by the dues-paying members and ratified by them each year; he is almost always a volunteer with a day job (85% of African American imams are unpaid), often a prison or hospital chaplain, with assistant imams preaching in turn. Jumu'ah's khutbah is in English, long, and practical; many masjids also hold a Sunday ta'leem, a teaching session carried over from the Sunday meetings of the Nation years (widely described, though not confirmed from the community's own sources; the time here is a choice). Fewer hold all the daily prayers: the noon prayer most often. Women pray behind the men, usually with no barrier at all, and sit on and chair its boards more than in any other group of American mosques. Budgets are small and buildings bought or rented; giving is the Friday collection and sadaqah, with zakat kept as its own fund; dinners and bazaars build the masjid. Converts, many through prison ministry and family, are its growth, and its institutions are the Clara Muhammad and Mohammed schools and a call to community economic empowerment. Its masjids have been closing as the converts of the 1960s and 1970s age. Practice varies from masjid to masjid.
8 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Twelver Shia Islamic Center
An independent Twelver (Ithna 'Ashari) Shia Islamic center: Muslims who follow the Twelve Imams, descendants of the Prophet through 'Ali and Fatima, the twelfth of whom is in occultation and will return, and the Ja'fari school of law. Its families are Arab (Iraqi and Lebanese above all), South Asian (among them the Khoja jamaats of East African and Indian heritage), and Iranian. Each believer follows a living senior jurist, a marja' (most American centers, Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf), whose rulings bind on prayer, law, and the calendar, but who appoints no one and owns nothing: an elected lay board runs the center and hires its resident scholar ('alim, shaykh, or sayyid, trained in the seminaries of Najaf or Qom; fewer than half of centers have one full time), and guest speakers are booked for Muharram and Ramadan. The week's gathering is Thursday night: Maghrib and Isha, the long supplication Du'a Kumayl, a lecture, and Ziyarat Waritha, about two hours. Friday prayer is held at some centers, small where it is, for in the Imam's occultation the noon prayer may be prayed in its place; the daily prayers may be combined into three times, and nearly two-thirds of centers hold none. The year turns on Muharram: ten to twelve nights of majalis, elegies and matam and a free meal for hundreds, then Ashura, and mourning without weddings through Safar to Arba'een; the season's sponsorships can raise half a year's budget. The building needs an imambargah (a hall for the majalis), a ladies' hall, and a big kitchen as much as a prayer hall; 'alams stand in it, and worshippers prostrate on a small tablet of clay. Khums, a fifth of a year's surplus, is the distinctive obligation: half (sahm al-Imam) goes to the marja's office, which must authorise a center to receive any of it; zakat in Ja'fari law is narrow. The khums here is an approximation: a tenth of what people give leaves for the marja's office, and khums allocated back to an authorised center isn't counted. Months begin by naked-eye sighting, announced for North America by the Council of Shia Muslim Scholars, so the Eids often fall a day after the Sunni mosque's. Practice varies by heritage, from the language of the lectures to whether pictures of the Imams hang outside the prayer hall.
9 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
A chapter (jama'at) of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, which describes itself as Muslims who believe in the Messiah, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (1835-1908): the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, a prophet subordinate to Muhammad who brought no new law, followed by a spiritual Khilafat. Its motto is "Love for All, Hatred for None"; it rejects violent jihad and holds loyalty to one's country a religious duty. Its first missionary reached America in 1920, and its early converts were mostly African American; today its members are largely immigrants from Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia, with African American Ahmadis, Africans, and converts, about 20,000 in some 60 chapters. Worship is outwardly the Sunni practice in the Hanafi way: the five daily prayers posted at the mosque, Friday prayer about 1 to 1:30 in the afternoon, with the missionary's khutbah summarising the Khalifa's own Friday sermon, broadcast from London on the community's channel, MTA. Men and women pray in separate halls. Unlike any other Muslim body in America, it is centralised under one living leader: the Khalifatul Masih, elected for life and resident in Britain, and in the United States a national Amir and executive; elected councils (Shura) only recommend. Missionaries (murabbis), trained for seven years at the community's Jamia seminaries and living on a subsistence allowance, are posted and moved by the center; a chapter's elected president and executive run its affairs. Giving is assessed: chanda of a sixteenth of income (a tenth to a third for those who make the Wasiyyat), with a Jalsa contribution and named schemes, all sent to the national headquarters, from which the chapter is given what it needs: the game models this as central funding, with the chapter's budget from above, which is an approximation (how a chapter's budget is set isn't documented). Interest is held forbidden, as the founder taught; mortgages remain, in the Khalifa's words of 2021, under consideration. Everyone belongs to an auxiliary by age and sex (Lajna Ima'illah for women, Khuddam for young men, Ansarullah for older men), and the national Jalsa Salana each July draws about 10,000. Joining is by bai'at, the pledge to the Khalifa. Most Muslims, Sunni and Shia, do not regard Ahmadis as Muslims, and Ahmadis do not pray behind those who reject their founder, so an Ahmadi mosque stands apart from its neighbours' in both directions.
8 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
The Nation of Islam
A Muhammad Mosque of the Nation of Islam, led since 1977-78 by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan from Mosque Maryam, its National Center in Chicago. It describes itself as Muslims following the life-giving teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who led it from 1934 to 1975, and of its founder, Master W. Fard Muhammad, whom it holds to be God in person, born on 26 February 1877; its message is Black self-reliance, discipline, and community. It is distinct from the community of Imam W. Deen Mohammed, which turned from Elijah Muhammad's Nation to Sunni Islam in 1975. Its local congregations are numbered Muhammad Mosques, and smaller study groups; most meet in storefronts, office suites, and converted houses and churches. The heart of its week is not a prayer service but a lecture meeting: the Sunday Message, about two hours by the Student Minister (or a visiting regional minister) in a hall of chairs facing a rostrum, men and women seated apart, guests welcome. Through the week come study meetings on Wednesday and Friday evenings, the men's Fruit of Islam class on Monday, and the women's MGT & GCC class on Saturday morning; Jumu'ah is held at the larger mosques, with prayer facing Mecca on rugs in a space of their own. Every registered man belongs to the Fruit of Islam, which keeps order at meetings and sells The Final Call; every registered woman to the MGT & GCC. Student ministers are appointed by the national leadership, not hired by the congregation; most, it seems, hold other jobs. Members register after orientation classes, give charity and dues, keep a strict code (no pork ever, no alcohol or tobacco, one meal a day by Elijah Muhammad's How to Eat to Live, suits and bow ties for men, long modest dress for women), and can be suspended for breaking it. It keeps the Ramadan fast with other Muslims, and Saviours' Day each February is its national convention. Much of its local practice is little documented outside the Nation; where the research was thin (funerals, interest, holidays, music, pay) the most common American practice is assumed, for a consultant from the Nation to correct. Most Muslims do not regard its theology as orthodox Islam, and the national mosque surveys leave it out.
1 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →