AL' AMERICA: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots By Jonathan Curiel

I heard Jonathan Curiel interviewed about his new book this past week on KPOJ. May we all send out ripples in our own ways which inspire understanding, healing, connection, caring, and respect. Peace ~ Molly

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Peace Be Upon Us
Islamic and Arabic traditions have long been part of American culture.

Reviewed by Paul M. Barrett

November 9, 2008

It was a rough election season for American Arabs and Muslims. The McCain-Palin ticket shamelessly amplified the Internet smear that Barak Obama is a crypto-Islamic fanatic who fraternizes with terrorists. Obama responded by insisting, persuasively, on his credentials as an observant Christian. But in the process, he did little to point out the inherent bigotry in the Republican strategy. Colin Powell, during his televised endorsement of Obama, eloquently challenged the assumption that Arabs and Muslims deserve to be held at arm's length. But the former secretary of state couldn't single-handedly do much to change the perception of these groups as a political liability.

Jonathan Curiel intends his book Al' America as an antidote to the fear. Ignorance, unsurprisingly, lies at the heart of it. Start with basic demographics: Most Arab-Americans are Christian, not Muslim, and most American Muslims are not Arab. Private surveys show that the largest segment of the American Muslim population -- about one-third -- traces its roots to South Asia, primarily Pakistan and India. Arabs make up only about a quarter of the Muslims in this country; African Americans, mostly converts and their children, another fifth.

Muslims in America are more varied in background and outlook than their non-Muslim neighbors realize and in many cases have been in the United States longer than is generally understood. Two-thirds of Muslims here are immigrants. Fully one-third are American-born and -schooled. The U.S. Census doesn't count by religion, so there is no reliable Muslim headcount. Private surveys yield estimates ranging from 2.4 million to 6 million.

Curiel, a veteran reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, focuses not so much on the personal stories or sociology of Muslims and Arabs in America as he does on the myriad aspects of American culture that have been influenced by them. His message: When transplanted to American shores, Middle Eastern culture and Islam aren't nearly so foreign or forbidding as portrayed by demagogues and politicians.

Al' America offers a quirky tour of sites, sounds and personalities that are quintessentially American and also reveal fascinating vestiges of Islamic and Arab influence. Musical stops include the Surf Sound of 1960s southern California, the Mississippi Delta blues and the startlingly spiritual confines of Elvis Presley's Graceland. The King, it turns out, kept a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet on his bedroom nightstand.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/06/AR2008110602810.html

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“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I will meet you there.”

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers

within yourself that you have built against it.”

~ Rumi