Arts & Entertainment

A Kaleidoscope Of American Islam

In a new book, Jewish writer profiles subjects across the spectrum of Muslim diversity.

Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News

y

ou don't have to read very far
into American Islam: The
Struggle for the Soul of a
Religion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux;
$25) to get to Dearborn. Author Paul M.
Barrett's first chapter focuses on Osama
Siblani, founder and publisher of the Arab
American News and outspoken supporter
of Hezbollah.
Barrett started writing profiles of
American Muslims while a reporter and
editor at the Wall Street Journal; he
finished things up after becoming direc-
tor of the investigative reporting team at
Business Week. He visited Michigan half
a dozen times, meeting area Muslims and
focusing on Siblani and the nonpoliti-
cal, mystic Sufi leader Shiekh Kabbani,
whose mosque is in Fenton, near Flint.
Together with five other profiles, Barrett
seeks to convey some of the diversity of the
American Muslim experience.
"After Sept. 11',' Barrett says, "I realized
that not only was I ignorant about Al Qaida
and religiously inspired terrorism, I was
ignorant about Muslims who live in the U.S."
So he visited their homes, mosques,

community centers,
hear how they felt about
offices and even a
things, says the author.
prison in an effort to
"They found it intriguing
understand their lives
because they really hadn't
and communities and
had that experience Barrett
what they mean for
says. He shared his negative
TIE MILE cos TIE opinion about Hezbollah,
American Muslims as
SHE IF A MAIO his support of Israel and
well as America.
Barrett found
his grandmother's experi-
Dearborn to be a "fas-
ence living in a displaced
cinating place at every
person's camp after World
level."
War II thinking she was
"Dearborn is both
Catholic, due to her parents'
an ethnic enclave and a
efforts to protect her. But it
Mt M.
place of assimilation:'
was
his willingness to listen
BAUM
he observes. "It's not
that was most appreciated.
a place where people
The impression Barrett
A group portrait told through
have hunkered down
got from his subjects during
the stories of seven American
and never evolved;'
his interviews was, "`I think
Muslims
noting migration pat-
he actually wants to know
terns in the city and neighboring commu-
what I think, know who I am and about
nities. "It is a very dynamic and continuous my family. He's taking me seriously as a
process."
human being."
Barrett, who is Jewish, didn't approach
Barrett interviewed a poor African-
the project from that perspective, but nei-
American man who converted to Islam,
ther did he shy away from it.
as well as a well-educated scientist from
"I made no secret of my Jewish heritage Pakistan making six figures at a major cor-
Barrett says. "Often it was a very helpful
poration, an immigrant from Saudi Arabia,
way to elicit their deeper views." Those he
an Indian Muslim feminist who had been a
interviewed seemed to want to have a Jew
friend of Daniel Pearl and white American

Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News

Woody, Jack & Bob

The Grammy Awards will be handed
out Sunday, Feb.11, and will be broad-
cast 8-11 p.m. on CBS. This week and
next, I will cover some of the Jewish
Grammy nominees.
There's some-
thing wonderful
about the fact
that Bob Dylan,
Ramblin' Jack
Elliott and a
Klezmatics CD fea-
Ramblin' Jack
turing the lyrics of
Elliott
Woody Guthrie are
up for Grammy Awards.
Guthrie, who wrote "This Land Is
Your Land," was the iconic American
folk singer – a working-class WASP
from Oklahoma who wrote songs
about his hard travelin'. A radical left-
ist, he traveled to Manhattan in 1940.
There, he met and married a leftist

34

February 1. 2007

Jewish woman, and they moved to
Brooklyn. Guthrie really liked the then
vibrant Yiddish-speaking New York
Jewish leftist culture, and he wrote
a number of song lyrics and poems
inspired by it.
These writings were discovered
some years back by his daughter,
Nora Guthrie, and she turned them
over to the Klezmatics. Their nomi-
nated CD, Wonder Wheel, features
Guthrie's "New York Jewish" lyrics
put to a Jewish music beat.
Elliott, 75, became Guthrie's musi-
cal sidekick in the late '40s. He
sounded like and looked like Guthrie –
and he appeared to be another Okie.
But Elliott (born Elliot Adnopoz) is a
Jewish doctor's kid from New York
who ran away at 15 to join the rodeo.
When chronic illness stopped
Guthrie from playing in the mid-
'50s, Elliott kept his music alive
and taught Guthrie's tunes to many
other musicians, including Dylan and
Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son. Elliott

never was much of a songwriter, but
his Grammy-nominated CD, I Stand
Alone, with many guest stars, is quite
good.
Elliott long kept his back-
ground secret. Dylan (born Robert
Zimmerman) did so, too. When he hit
New York in 1961, being the son of
a Minnesota Jewish appliance-store
owner didn't seem "authentically"
folkie. Well, Elliott's New York Jewish
origins came out not long after Dylan
hit New York, and nobody laughed
harder than Dylan. A couple of years
later, Dylan's origins came out in the
press.
Dylan and Elliott modeled them-
selves after Woody Guthrie in an
attempt to be "authentic." It is ironic,
therefore, that Guthrie found beauty
and authenticity in Jewish Brooklyn
and celebrated it.
I'd love to hear Dylan and Ramblin'
Jack sing Guthrie's "Jewish" songs.
That would complete some circle.
Meanwhile, Dylan, at 66, is still

converts who follow the Sufi Sheikh
Kabbani.
"The variety really impressed me, and
with it comes a conflict about what the
religion really is in this country," Barrett
says. "It's not about a 'clash of civilizations;
but more about the conflict within the
Muslim community and how they should
live in America.
"Attitudes among American Muslims are
no more monolithic than among American
Jews:' Barrett says. "There is no single
perspective. My view of [them], and life in
general, is that people are complex. They
tend not be paragons of virtue or evil; they
are mixtures of good and bad."
Barrett says the book holds surprises
not just about the American Muslim com-
munity but also about the individuals who
comprise it."[Readers] will find some
positive attributes of characters they don't
like that will surprise them. They'll find
humanity. And they'll find people they
might find entirely appealing."
He points to surveys that show 59 per-
cent of American Muslims are college
graduates — compared with 28 percent of
all Americans — and attain higher median
family income and voter registration rates,
"profound numbers that are profoundly

doing great work and is nominated
for best solo rock performance and
best rock song ("Someday Baby").

Cutie Patootie

I showed some women friends a
photo, and they agree that Gabriel
Macht, 35, is one
of the best-look-
ing Jewish movie
actors around. But,
he's never been
in a mega-hit, so
most people don't
know him by name.
Now is your
Gabriel Macht
chance to check
him out. Macht co-stars in Because
Say So, a romantic comedy opening
Friday, Feb. 2.
Diane Keaton plays the overprotec-
tive mother of three good-looking and
terrific sisters. Mandy Moore plays
the youngest, who is courted by a
bohemian musician, played by Macht.

