Religious Freedom and Pluralism . . . I Have Seen It!

Thanks to Robbie George for posting the letter (here) that he, William Mumma and Mary Ann Glendon wrote in response to the Thomas More Law Center’s criticism of the Becket Fund for supporting the religious freedom of Muslim Americans.

In a prior post on MOJ (here) I mentioned that I am partially of Arab descent (my maternal grandmother was a Maronite Catholic whose parents immigrated from Lebanon) and proudly so.  When I moved to Chicago from Louisville following my clerkship, my mother said “Never forget who you are and where you come from.”  I have tried to stay true to my mother’s prayer and so have been involved in a number of Arab organizations including serving as a founding member of the Arab American Bar Association of Illinois (AABAR), and now serving as its newly elected president.

The Arab Bar’s membership is about half-Christian and half-Muslim, but the bar association, as such, is neither political nor religious.  In interacting with one another, however, it would be difficult for the membership to ignore the political concerns we have for the various countries in the Middle East (countries of origin and ancestral homelands), and it would be absurd for us to ignore one another’s faith traditions.  In the freedom made possible by the American constitutional order and the openness and mutual respect that it can and often does foster, our bar association is, I would say a model for inter-religious dialogue.

Having said that, despite many years of involvement in the local Arab American community, I had never had occasion to visit a mosque . . . until recently.

Last week, an umbrella organization for the various Arab American groups in and around Chicago, the Council of Arab Organizations of Illinois (CAO), conducted a board meeting at the Mosque Foundation, the primary Islamic house of worship on the Southside.

Following our meeting, the mosque’s president (a lay, volunteer position) hosted me and another Christian representative on CAO on a tour of the mosque.  Although it was a Sunday (not the Muslim Sabbath) a number of men and boys, women and girls stopped by for prayers.  They entered through separate doors that led to separate prayer spaces – large unadorned carpeted areas.  The mosque hosts nearly 3500 people every week for Friday prayers, but it also draws large crowds for sunrise and morning prayers during the week.  Although technically separate, there are two K-12 Islamic schools immediately adjacent to the mosque, the Universal School and the Aqsa School.  The membership at the mosque is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) Palestinian.  The day that I was there the community marked the anniversary of Al Nakba (“The Catastrophe”) when the State of Israel declared its independence followed shortly by the massacre and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs.  (N.B.  The Israeli war of independence is a complex historical event, and I am not here attempting to summarize that conflict in all its complexity, only one important dimension of it that is of special significance to Palestinians).

Now I am keenly aware that there are many, vast differences between Muslims and Christians – spiritual, theological, cultural, intellectual – and that there are enormous differences even within each non-monolithic group.  But what struck me most during my visit was the enormous similarities between the faith community at the mosque and the typical Catholic parish.  Indeed, walking around the mosque grounds I couldn’t help but think that this was us about a hundred years, when so many Catholic parishes were founded, followed in short succession by the building of a parish school and a parish social hall.  This is how Catholic life used to be (and perhaps still is for some parishes) where the parish functions as the center of family life.  It reminded me how ethnic ties and political causes were a source of unity for Catholic immigrants in a country that often viewed them with suspicion (think of the Irish and the cause of Irish independence) and as how the parish served as a vehicle for recognition in the wider community.

I am not waxing nostalgic for the Catholic ghetto.  What I am saying is that it was inspiring to see how religious liberty is vigorously exercised in a non-Christian context by a group of people often vilified in the mainstream culture.  Walking on the grounds of the mosque and recognizing the freedom that made it possible made me proud to be an American.

The threats to religious freedom today are real.  Religious liberty is, as Pope Benedict recently said “that most cherished of American freedoms.”  It would be a shame if faith communities like the Mosque Foundation were denied the opportunity to exercise that freedom to its fullest.  Although it was Catholic institutions were the specific target of the recent HHS mandate, the threat to religious liberty is a threat to us all.  It is a threat that, if realized, will not only fundamentally alter our freedoms but out self-understanding as Americans.