Table Of ContentInventing the American Mosque:
Early Muslims and Their Institutions in Detroit, 1910-1980
by
Sarah F. Howell
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(American Culture)
in The University of Michigan
2009
Doctoral Committee:
Associate Professor Scott T. Kurashige, Chair
Assistant Professor Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany
Assistant Professor Nadine C. Naber
Assistant Professor Amaney Ahmad Jamal, Princeton University
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would first like to thank the many individuals who welcomed me into their homes,
businesses, and mosques, and who shared their memories of the past and their reflections on
the current state of Muslim life in Detroit. Without their trust, generosity, patience, and
encouragement, this project would not have gone forward. Their testimony has filled my
thoughts for several years now as I have listened and re-listened to their recorded interviews,
transcribed them, pondered our conversations, and tried to make sense of the larger narrative
of Muslim American history through their stories. I followed up with many of them as new
evidence and arguments emerged. Their voices do not break through the surface of this
dissertation as frequently as I would like, but the knowledge they shared with me informs
every page of this work. The names of the people I interviewed appear in the bibliography on
pages 314-315.
Over the course of this project, I came to rely on the special assistance and friendship
of several members of the Detroit Muslim community. In particular, Hajj Chuck Alawan,
Hajj Eide Alawan, Akil Fahd, and Hajj Dawud Walid answered my repeated inquiries, put me
in touch with other sources, talked me into buying a cellphone, helped me think through the
challenges I faced in the research, writing, and development of this project, and showed me
around the Muslim community of Detroit as they live and know it. Several of the people I
interviewed for this project, I am sad to say, did not live to see it completed. They include
Abdullah Berry, Gladys Ecie, Hussien El Haje, and Imam Vehbi Ismail. Allah yarhamhum.
My project has been one of reconstructing a history for which there existed no
accessible archive. Fortunately, many of the people I met and spoke with had papers and
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other materials they were willing to share, not just with me, but with posterity. The following
individuals and families have donated papers from their personal collections to the Bentley
Historical Library on the campus of the University of Michigan: Liela Abass, the family of
Essie Abraham, Hajj Chuck Alawan, Joseph Caurdy, Adnan Chirri, the Karoub family, Alice
Karoub, Julia Haragely, and Hajj Hussein Makled. I relied heavily on these collections, and I
thank these individuals for their generous gift to the University of Michigan.
Anyone with an interest in the history of Michigan’s Arab and Muslim communities
will find a valuable resource in the collections of the Bentley Historical Library. I hope my
research will encourage people with historical materials to speak with an archivist at the
Bentley about the possible relevance of their papers to the collection. Pulling the history of
Michigan’s Arab and Muslim communities into one accessible, secure, professional, and
institutionally secure repository will prove to be an invaluable service to the past of these
populations – and also to their futures. I want to thank Ken Scheffel, whom I met in 1990
when he was collecting the papers of Aliya Hassen, an influential Arab Muslim activist from
Detroit, for the Bentley. In some ways, the seeds of this project lie in conversations Ken and I
had about the value of Aliya’s papers. Len Combs has also been of tremendous assistance,
following up on the large and small details of acquisitions, answering endless questions, and
being accessible to donors of collections both large and small.
To the members of my dissertation committee, I owe special gratitude. I thank Scott
Kurashige for his abundant guidance, his generous intellect, and his lived example. He has
suffered through long and meandering drafts of a dissertation with little obvious connection
to his own work, provided a careful and helpful critique at every turn, and challenged me to
address larger audiences within American studies, the history of religion, and ethnic studies
through this work. I thank Amaney Jamal for the special role she has played in guiding my
research and helping me understand how Detroit fits into national and transnational
frameworks of encounter between Islam and the United States. I thank Nadine Naber and
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Evelyn Alsultany for their helpful readings of this dissertation and for the many years of
collegial support they have given to me and my work. I look forward to many more years of
collaboration with each of these mentors and friends.
I also thank the members of the Building Islam in Detroit project, with whom I first
visited many of Detroit’s mosques: Omar Baghdadi, Mucahit Bilici, Mufaddal Kapadia, Mara
Leichtman, Kate McClellan, Elshafei Mohammed, and Andrew Shryock. Their intellectual
curiosity and eagerness to engage with Detroit’s Muslims was invigorating and made my
early stages of my research in the city pleasant and enriching. Given the diverse cultural and
religious backgrounds of this research team, our expeditions made visible and permeable the
cultural and sectarian boundaries that are said to divide American Muslims. Observing and
participating in this project was a transformative experience. Similarly, Yelena Godina, who
designed the project’s website and exhibition, has been a tremendous help, making our
findings available on the web in an intelligible, attractive, accessible format, and helping me
understand how to make computers work for me (and not the other way round). I would like
to thank Saja Alshamary and Ryan Ferris for their help with translations. Ryan was also a
tremendously helpful research assistant when I needed him most.
Finally, I would like to thank Andrew Shryock and Eleanor Howell-Shryock for
enduring this long process with me. Andrew’s intellectual contribution to my work runs deep.
He has also been a great partner in life, taking me places I never would have ventured on my
own and following me into the depths of Arab and Muslim Detroit in ways that go far beyond
the call of duty. These experiences have greatly enriched our lives, and it has been a source of
tremendous comfort and joy to share this journey with someone so sharply insightful, honest,
critical, and filled with humor and warmth. Eleanor is now fourteen, and her years in school
have been spent with a mother who is also a student. She too has shown patience and
endurance, visiting more mosques that most of Detroit’s Muslims have entered, and living
cheerfully in a house turned upside down by deadlines. She has been ever supportive of my
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work and explorations in a world she knows far more about than she cares to. I hope that she
too will see her unusual experiences as enriching. I thank you both.
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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
LIST OF APPENDICES x
CHAPTER
I. Introduction 1
Theoretical Framings 8
Making Muslim American History 23
The Invention of the American Mosque 34
II. The Lost History of America’s First Mosque 42
Life for the early Muslim Immigrants: Making Room for Islam 44
America’s First Imams: Sunni and Shi’i Difference 52
The Moslem Mosque of Highland Park 58
Opening Day and the Days that Followed 66
Murder and Sectarian Conflict 74
The Consequences of Failure 76
III. They are Orientals and they Love the East: Locating
Muslims in the Immigrant Hierarchies of Detroit, 1922-1930 81
Polygamy Again? 83
Muslims, Citizenship, and Ambivalent Racial Categories 87
The Universal Islamic Society: Exploring Pan-Islamism in Detroit 92
Duse Mohammed Ali: Raceman in Detroit 96
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Syrian Nationalism: Translocal Islam? 101
Islam in the Blackamerican Detroit 107
Living as Muslims in the Everyday 111
Conclusion 118
IV. Dearborn’s First Mosques 121
Making Space for the Moral Community of Islam 123
Settling into the City 130
Commitment to Americanization 132
Motives for Organization 136
Two Mosques are Better than One 143
What’s in a Name? 152
A Space of their Own 160
Conclusion 169
V. Doctors of the Soul: Building Detroit’s Mid-Century Mosques 170
The Soul Doctor 172
Albanian Soul Doctor: Vehbi Ismail Comes to Detroit 184
A Clinic for the Soul 192
A Triumphant Return 196
The FIA, the Uslamic Center of America, and Mid-century, Transnational Islam
198
The Islamic Center of America 204
The Jahaliyya and the Umma: Before and After Chirri 207
The Albanian Islamic Center 210
Conclusion: Detroit’s American Mosques 216
VI. Homegrown Muslim Leaders: Convergences of Race and Class 222
Coming of Age: the American Moslem Society and its
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American-born Imam 224
Leading the Charge 230
A Muslim Transit Point in Detroit 239
Journey to the Heart of Islam 245
Brothers from the East 250
Brothers from the East: Take 2 263
On Winners, Losers, and Islamic Sprawl 270
VII. Conclusion 275
APPENDICES 289
REFERENCES CITED 295
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustration 2.1 Poster used to raise funds for the Moslem Mosque of Highland Park. 61
Illustration 2.2 The cover of the Moslem Sunrise, July 1921. 69
Illustration 3.1 Duse Mohammed Ali and Kalil Bazzy embrace after the Eid al Fitr
prayer, Universal Islamic Society of Detroit. 93
Illustration 3.2 Holiday prayer at the New Oriental Hall, led by Shaykh Kalil Bazzy. 95
Illustration 3.3 New Syria Party Convention, Detroit, 1927. 105
Illustration 4.1 Progressive Arabian Hashemie Society, circa 1970. 151
Illustration 4.2. American Moslem Women’s Society in 1952, taken in front of the
American Moslem Society. 154
Illustration 4.3. A memorial service held at Hashmie Hall, late 1950s. 163
Illustration 5.1 The Moslem Mosque of Highland Park, circa 1958. 177
Illustration 5.2 The Albanian American Moslem Society mosque, circa 1955. 191
Illustration 5.3 Federation of Islamic Associations 1957 banquet in Detroit. 199
Illustration 5.4 Federation banquet detail. 199
Illustration 5.5 Mohamad Jawad Chirri meets with Mahmoud Shaltout. 203
Illustration 5.6 The Islamic Center of America. 206
Illustration 5.7 The Albanian Islamic Center in 2008. 213
Illustration 5.8 Imam Vehbi Ismail. 217
Illustration 6.1. The American Moslem Society, circa 1958. 225
Illustration 6.1. Hussien Karoub leads a holiday prayer at the American Moslem Society.
226
Illustration 6.2 Hassanien family at the Muslim Student Association banquet in Detroit,
1963. 253
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LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX A My Advice to the Muhammadans in America
Mufti Mohammed Sadiq 289
APPENDIX B The Future of the New Generation
Mohamad Jawad Chirri 292
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