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 Akbar Ahmed's Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam is a timely, important, and profoundly engaging study of the tensions that exist within the American identity. These tensions are primarily between the pluralistic and predatory identities. The former conceives of the United States as an inclusive experiment in liberalism that can lead the world by example. The latter conceives of the United States as an exclusivist White-Christian nation-state that insists that true loyalty to the state requires the population to posses certain racial, linguistic and religious loyalties. The inclusive tradition finds its spokesperson in the reflective and philosophical Thomas Jefferson while the exclusivist tradition is inspired by the shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach of Andrew Jackson.
To be sure, the two identities contain many sub-groups and contradictions and are never entirely absent from the individual or collective psyche so it is not a question of being one or the other. It is more a question of tendency and the balance between the pluralistic and predatory identities that exists in every American. Thematically, Journey into America is an intense interdisciplinary academic study of the balance of identity within the United States as the country grapples with the prospect of an open-ended conflict against globalized jihadist networks that do not possess a conventional center of power that can be targeted and quickly destroyed by American firepower.
Book Title: Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam
Author: Akbar Ahmed
Publisher: Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. (June 15, 2010)
Price: U.S. $ 29.95
Pages: 528, Hardcover
ISBN-10: 0815703872
ISBN-13: 978-0815703877
The empirical basis for this exploration of American identity includes more than 2000 detailed questionnaires, field research in 75 cities and visits to over 100 mosques and Islamic centers. Regardless, therefore, of whether one agrees with Ahmed's analysis of the contemporary situation in the United States, the sheer volume of data and opinions meticulously marshaled by Journey into America makes it compulsory reading for policy makers and analysts.
Ahmed's analysis is sobering though not bereft of hope. The challenge of Islam to the American identity is not by any means insoluble. Indeed, the pluralistic vision of America has no problem in Americanizing Islam and absorbing it into a broader matrix of multi-layered identities through a gradual process spread over several generations. From this perspective Muslims, be they Arab, Asian, African or South Asian, are simply the latest group of immigrants and welcome to contribute to and participate in American culture. Time and again, Journey into America establishes that there are abundant reserves of tolerance, patience and understanding with deep roots in American society. Historically, the pluralistic vision of America was ascendant from the 1960s to the late 1990s with considerable advances being made in terms of rolling back racism, advancing women's rights, and promoting civil liberties.
This did not, however, mean that the old predatory identity had gone away. It was still there, albeit on the defensive and in visible retreat in most parts of the country. The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon changed the situation dramatically. After decades of being on the defensive unthinking aggressive nationalism started gaining ground. Muslims abroad and the Muslim minority at home became the convenient focus for the predator identity. The relatively benign vision of the United States as a responsible actor trying to craft a global system under its pragmatic leadership gave way to the doctrine of preemptive war, homeland security, unilateralism and delusional optimism about the efficacy of American power. It became acceptable to openly question the loyalty of an entire group of Americans based on their perceived religious affiliations. In short, the terrorists succeeded in unleashing an autocatalytic reaction within the United States that shifted the balance in favor of the predator identity, which, in turn, contributed to military adventurism abroad that destroyed America's international reputation even as it led to the steady erosion of civil liberties at home. It became perfectly acceptable to the point of being mainstream to advocate torture, arbitrary arrest, concentration camps, intrusive surveillance of potential enemies of the state, and the invasion of foreign lands that had nothing to do with the attacks on U.S. soil, albeit behind a veil of semantic sophistry.
By stigmatizing an entire group as potential terrorists the United States government and those that share the predator mindset have increased the chances of terrorists actually emerging from American Muslim communities. These communities, as Journey into America lays bare, are extremely complex and every bit as diverse as the Muslim world they are drawn from. But the vast majority of them have one thing in common. And that commonality is that they value (d) the freedom they enjoy in America to practice (or not to practice) their faith free from the enforced societal orthodoxies and police states of their original homelands. After September 11, 2001, however, many American Muslims are afraid that their freedom as Americans is increasingly incompatible with their religious or cultural identification as Muslims in the eyes of the state and a growing and vocal segment of society. In other words, if religious freedom lies at the heart of what it means to be an American then that essence is being lost and with it one of the greatest and most inspiring aspects of the American story is receding into the background.
The impact of this change is being felt in the American Muslim community. One indicator is the surprising prevalence of Salafi thought in Islamic centers and mosques in the United States. In many cases only a few fanatics are needed to hijack an entire community's formal religious life. Another is voting with one's feet and the decimation of Muslim communities as residents relocate either homewards or to another country. And then there are individual cases of arbitrary arrest and abuse, such as that of Syrian immigrant Abdulraham Zeitoun who, in 2005, risked his own life to save others during Hurricane Katrina only to be hauled off to a special camp for undesirables and kept there in violation of constitutional rights in inhuman conditions, which make the headlines and darken the atmosphere.
That said American Muslims are also partly to blame for their difficulties. In effect, the assumption made by many Muslim immigrants is that economic success is all it takes to be accepted as an American. Ahmed reveals that there is an astonishing lack of intellectual curiosity amongst professional educated Muslims about American political and intellectual traditions. The mainstream Muslim religious leadership is deeply divided and incapable of responding creatively and effectively to the demonization of their community - their response often not going beyond sitting at conference tables and having a picture taken with one or more American politicians or opinion leaders. Journey into America concludes that until there is mutual philosophical curiosity between America and Muslims, within and outside the United States, the outlook for peaceful coexistence does not inspire confidence. Stimulating such curiosity, however, is precisely what Ahmed has set out to do in the enlightened self-interest of the United States, the Muslim world and the world community at large by researching and writing such a balanced and masterful book. 
Reviewed by Ilhan Niaz
Ilhan Niaz is the author of ‘The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan, 1947-2008.'
Ilhan Niaz is the author of ‘The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan, 1947-2008’ and ‘An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent’ He is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
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