PRESS RELEASE

By Mahmood Sarram

Beltsville, MD, September 1, 2008. Transplanted: A Memoir of Faith and Vision for American Muslims among the latest books published by Amana publications is the story of an eighteen-year old Iranian boy thrust into a new and strange world in search of a Western education. He returns home after 13 years and becomes a leader in the academic and medical community, working to foster progress. Decades later, and after years of soul-searching in the U.S. as an immigrant Muslim, he passionately shares the wisdom he has gained by living between two cultures. 

     Transplanted is the personal testimony of a man who has succeeded in life on both sides of the cultural line and sees clearly that Islam is compatible with modernity and western civilization. Dr. Mahmood Sarram has written a book for both Muslims and non-Muslims who wonder about such issues. Transplanted is a call to future generations of Muslims in America and Europe not to lose their heritage, but to have the courage to explore it, understand it, cherish it, preserve it, and draw from it inspirations and ideas that they can contribute to the betterment of their adopted homeland.

      Mahmood Sarram was born to a poor family in Isfahan, Iran, and grew up in Tehran. A highly intelligent boy, he won a government-sponsored scholarship to study medicine at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and subsequently fulfilled a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago. After returning home to Iran, he practiced medicine and taught at the Universities of Shiraz and Isfahan, where he also published articles and helped start family planning programs. Dr. Sarram rose to become Vice-Dean of the Medical School at the University of Isfahan, but eventually he became frustrated by cultural problems and political obstacles to his work. At first optimistic about the Islamic Revolution of 1979, he became disillusioned and left Iran in 1983 for a position with the World Health Organization in Bangladesh. Later he emigrated to the U.S. and entered private practice in Washington state. In 1988, Dr. Sarram founded the American Moslem Foundation (AMF) to foster understanding of Islam among Americans and to educate American Muslim children about their cultural and religious heritage. He is also the founder of the House of Mercy Cemetery, a Muslim cemetery, and has plans for developing an Islamic theological school. He is widely read in the literature of Islam, among many other subjects. 

     Transplanted draws from Dr. Sarram’s rich life experiences and his deep understanding of history, culture, and human nature. His account of his youthful experiences abroad and the course of the Islamic Revolution are particularly insightful, and his call for American Muslims to take pride — and take action — for their future is inspiring. 

For more information on the book or to schedule an interview with the author, please contact: 

Amana publications, 10710 Tucker Street, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA 

• Tel. 301-595-5999 • Fax 301-595-5888 

• E-mail: Amana@igprinting.com • www.amana-publications.com

Building and Maintaining Our Own Islamic Institutions

By Mahmood Sarram, M.D.

     Muslims are in America to stay. A steady flow of immigration during the past 50 years has swelled our numbers. We have produced children and, together with Muslims previously in America, grown sizable communities across the U.S. Gradually we have lost some of our characteristics as immigrants and increasingly come to see ourselves as Americans. Some of our brothers and sisters dream of returning to their countries of origin, and perhaps some will, but the majority of us are likely to continue making this land our home and that of our children. We have taken some first steps toward preparing for our future here, but there is a great deal still to do. Our challenge now is to build lasting institutions, confident that over time we will become used to our status as a religious minority and learn to deal with all of the problems that any minority group faces.

     Particularly challenging is the fact that we must do this at a time when our image as a community is not completely formed in the minds of our fellow Americans. Islam and Muslims fall under attack unjustly through negative stories in the media, inflammatory public rhetoric, and muttered private comments. I do not believe that the majority of Americans see the majority of Muslims as radical and militant, but the negative images, repeated so many times, have their effect on public attitudes. What can we do to become fully a part of American society, to demonstrate to ourselves and our American neighbors our values and our worth as a community? And what can we do to help ourselves hold onto those values and pass them on to our descendants in this country?

    The answer lies in building strong institutions that will preserve our culture and religious heritage while teaching the core values of Islam and the high moral codes of behavior to our children. Immigrant communities that came here before us—Germans, Jews, Swedes, Poles, Italians, and many others—built their own places of worship, community centers, and schools as they became accepted and valued citizens. So too, we need to establish our institutions if we are to flourish in the melting-pot that is the United States of America.

Why Institutions?

    We need institutions, first of all, to help us establish and strengthen our sense of cultural and religious identity, and aid us in making our traditions and values accessible to future generations of Muslims. By “religious institutions” I mean not only houses of worship but also educational and social institutions where members of our community come together on a regular basis to reaffirm their core religious values and ethics, encourage each other to uphold those values in their daily lives, and convey them to their children. Our families struggle to stand up to the power of the surrounding culture, with its materialistic values, peer pressure, and media appeal. Strong community institutions are needed to help parents pass on to their children a worldview and life goals that are compatible with our religious and human values.

    In Islamic countries, the extended family structure traditionally served to safeguard and perpetuate our culture and religion, and it continues to do so today. Some of us brought a part of our extended family with us to North America, but none of us have here the entire web of family relationships, let alone the wider network of relationships embodied in kinship systems. In emigration we become aware that we need the strength of extended families to reinforce our cultural values and provide role models and coaches for our younger generations. Where we do not have the full strength of extended families, Islamic community structures must fill the gap. Community institutions can help young people develop and articulate an aspiration for excellence and seek to live their adult lives in ways that reflect modern-day Islamic values.

    Our adult generations, too, can use some help. Many Muslim immigrants arrive in the United States without the education or skills required for good jobs and, as a result, have difficulty supporting themselves and their families. Community institutions can bring them into contact with those who have found success. Career-networking, common among other Americans, is a practice we can learn, and institutional frameworks facilitate networking.

    Yet another challenge confronts the aging members of our communities. In our previous homelands, the elders in a family enjoy a position of respect; children and other relatives make sure their elders do not live in poverty and loneliness. One of the sad realities in the U.S. is that a great many elderly people are left to fend for themselves even as they become incapable of earning a living, and they do not receive sufficient financial and medical benefits from public sources. Poverty and loneliness are an epidemic among America’s “senior citizens.” To our shame, the problem has begun to occur among Muslims in this country. Their old friends die one by one. Their children are busy with their own lives and may not feel obligated to go out of their way to visit their parents; in many cases they move far away in pursuit of jobs. Often for the elders, boredom and depression set in. They look forward with fear to the day when they are put up in nursing homes. Care for the oldest members of our community presents an area of concern just as important as providing for our children.

    All of these challenges remind us of what is the most basic mission of community institutions: instructing us in our moral and ethical obligations. Central to our institution-building concerns should be education programs and a consciousness among our religious leaders of the need to bring home the message of who we are and what the Holy Qur’an teaches us through its rules and guidelines for human behavior. This includes such principles as always telling the truth, fulfilling our promises and contracts, safeguarding and returning all goods entrusted to us by others, working hard, and giving a designated portion of our earnings to the poor and to public welfare projects—as well as giving of our time and money to the struggle of building our communities.

What Kinds of Institutions?

    Our first, and perhaps obvious, need is for strong religious institutions that will bring us together in brotherly trust, educate our children in our faith, and help them develop the strength to live as dutiful Muslims within the surrounding secular environment. We must build mosques by our hands from the resources of our own pocketbooks, and they must be led by persons who are not only well trained in the elements of our faith but also familiar with the circumstances of our lives here within the culture of America. We need schools to train the future leaders of our religious institutions, and after-school programs to contribute to our children’s religious education. And we need Islamic community centers that can serve as a gathering point and support our families.

    The purpose of the community centers is not to segregate our children from non-Muslims, but rather, to provide an atmosphere in which our children find reinforcement for their religious faith and moral values. Given such support, our children will know they are not alone when they interact with children from other backgrounds, and therefore they need not feel “weird” or marginalized.

How Do We Achieve It?

    Building institutions requires money, manpower, planning, and sound management skills. But to get started, we need trust. Any institutions we construct must be accepted and supported by the majority of Muslims in the community. Developing trust requires educating people about the direct benefits they can expect. We build trust, first of all, by listening carefully to members of our community and determining exactly what their needs are. Responding to their needs is crucial to enlisting their active participation in the ownership, financing, and management of the institutions.

    Developing and maintaining mosques, schools, after-school programs, and community centers is an ambitious goal. It cannot happen without personal involvement and community sacrifices. And it cannot happen without the wisdom and ongoing support of activists among us who are willing to “carry the ball” and hand it off to subsequent generations. We are talking about buildings and physical properties, yes; but we are also talking about a vigorous effort on the part of many individuals, beginning now and extending into the future farther than any of us who are alive today can see.

    Do we have the management skills? Every day we see examples of how well Americans run their institutions, religious or otherwise. Many leaders of Islamic institutions in the U.S. are not professional administrators; they do their best in leading their congregations toward success in their communities, but they sometimes have difficulty getting adequate support and cooperation from community members. We have to understand that management skills are crucial. We may need to employ trained experts or consultants in implementing our projects at first until we ourselves learn the skills needed to run our institutions effectively.

    And how will we pay for the effort? Separation of church and state means that, unlike in many of the countries we came from, religious organizations have to go it alone, without financial support from the government. For Christian and Jewish congregations, that translates into family contributions of $1200 to $1500per year on average, with some giving many times more. We Muslims sometimes observe large churches or synagogues going up in our neighborhoods and realize, with a sense of chagrin, that the new building costs millions of dollars while our own community seems unable to raise enough money to build a small mosque. We must ask ourselves this: If Christians and Jews have the dedication to fund their faith communities, why can’t we?

   The answer is that we can do it. We have the dedication; we recognize our religious needs, and we deeply desire to carry our faith into the future. Many of our communities have built mosques and are maintaining them to the best of their capabilities. We read about the construction of mosques in Florida, California, suburban Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Progress is uneven, however, and the majority of our mosques are built either with meager means or with support from overseas. Many suffer from inadequate funds to implement needed functions. We can do better. Our Islamic traditions give us an ample number of models for raising revenues; it remains for us to apply the appropriate means to our contemporary needs.

   Achieving the dream will require us to make a major cultural and attitudinal shift that turns our focus onto the community relationship as a primary purpose in our lives. Building religious institutions must have a high priority—on a par with paying our mortgages, obtaining high-salaried jobs, or sending our children to good schools. We must be prepared to lend our money, time, and attention to maintaining our institutions, and we must use them often. Such a vision will not become a reality overnight, but bringing it into being is vital to the survival and, indeed, the soul, of the American Muslim community.

   We can achieve these goals over time if we have wisdom, patience, and persistence. We cannot expect others to accomplish the task for us—not wealthy benefactors from other countries, not a handful of successful people among us, and not the government. “They” cannot step in and do the work for us; we must do it. Everyone has to give support according to his or her means. There is no free lunch in the USA.

   These are not new ideas; they reflect the experiences on which other religious minorities have built and maintained their institutions in America. We can learn from them. It is up to us to take responsibility for building and maintaining Islamic institutions. The burden of maintaining our faith rests upon the shoulder of every Muslim in America.

   We must be willing to make the sacrifices. We must roll up our sleeves and get to work.