Shiite Muslims Quietly Establish a Foothold in U.S.

By Omar Sacirbey 10-03-2012
4634093993 / Shutterstock
Muslim men singing a lament. 4634093993 / Shutterstock


Al-Qazwini, a descendant of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, soon veered into a theme he had raised before on his two-week visit to the center: the discrimination and violence that Shiite Muslims have suffered at the hands of Sunni Muslims. 

"Some Muslims don't like other Muslims praying on the rock," Al-Qazwini said, referring to a biscuit-sized stone or piece of dried mud that Shiites place their foreheads on when prostrating during prayer. Sunnis do not use this stone, and some believe it goes against Islamic tradition, and is even heresy.

"It's happened to me at least 50 times in Saudi Arabia. They see the rock, they take it away and say that it's shirk, polytheism," Al-Qazwini declared, eliciting gasps from his audience.


"There weren't enough of either to justify the cost of building sectarian mosques, and because in general, early generation immigrants were less focused on establishing formal houses of worship," said Andrea Stanton, a religious studies professor at the University of Denver.

That is changing, however, as American Shiites are increasingly establishing their own mosques. According to "The American Mosque 2011," a survey sponsored by several Muslim American organizations, 7 percent of roughly 2,100 mosques in America are Shiite, and most have been built in the last 20 years.  





The disagreement led to a series of civil wars beginning in 656 and that climaxed in 680 at the Battle of Karbala, in Iraq, where Sunnis routed Shiites and killed Muhammad's grandson, Hussein. The city is sacred to Shiites, and the mosque where Hussein is buried is led by Al-Qazwini's grandfather.

For Shiites, paying reverence to Muhammad's descendants by visiting their graves or observing their birthdays is a deeply ingrained act of devotion. Sunnis, on the other hand, have a more casual historic interest. The Wahhabis, the puritanical Sunni sect that controls Saudi Arabia and Islam's holiest sites, see such reverence as heretical, and have razed many important Islamic sites, including the home where Muhammad grew up, and the Medina grave of his grandson Hasan.


Shiite immigrants started coming to the U.S. in the 1870s, along with Sunni and Christian immigrants, from modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Following Iraq's war with Shiite Iran, Saddam Hussein started persecuting Shiites, triggering another wave of Shiite immigrants.

"They came here as refugees because they could not practice their religion," said Muthanna Waili, whose family was expelled from Kuwait in 1985 and who helped establish the Iman Islamic Center in 2006.

According to "The American Mosque 2011," nearly half — 44 percent  of Shiite mosques in the U.S. opened in the 1990s. 


Human rights reports allege persecution of Shiites in several Muslim countries. The State Department's 2011 human rights report alleges that Bahrain's government fired thousands of Shiite workers from their jobs, barred them from the police force and military, destroyed many Shiite religious sites, and tortured thousands of political prisoners, most of them Shiites.

In Saudi Arabia, the State Department report said, "The Shia minority continued to suffer social, legal, economic, and political discrimination," and accused the government there of arresting Shiite religious leaders. Other Shiites report that many mosques in Saudi Arabia and other countries lace their sermons with anti-Shiite rhetoric.


"They couldn't find mosques that would let them pray the way they wanted to pray," said Waili, 39. "I've personally had people label me as a kafir, an infidel. People look at you like you're trying to change the traditional way."


Rashid Noor, president of the Islamic Center of New England, which runs the Sharon mosque, said he was unaware of hostility toward Shiites. "I don't think we have anyone here like that. We haven't talked about these things," said Noor.

Despite the divisions, Shiite leaders say they still hope to improve relations with Sunnis. "We're good at interfaith work but not intra-faith work," said Al-Qazwini. "The most important thing is to educate the entire Muslim community about the different sects of Islam."


"We're also struggling with internal separation," said Waili. "The center started very strong, but it has slowed down because of the friction within the community."

Omar Sacribey writes for Religion News Service. This story was made possible by a fellowship from the French-American Foundation-United States as part of the Immigration Journalism Fellowship. Via RNS.

Photo Credit: Muslim men singing a lament, by 4634093993 / Shutterstock


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