I don't think you should delete, the clarifying questions people are asking may be thought provoking or informative themselves.
ObDisclaimer: I'm another American Jew, not Muslim.
Islam absolutely has semi-secular people who still consider themselves Muslim, just like Judaism. There are also 100% secular, purely cultural Muslims in the same way Jewish bacon-eating, Christmas-celebrating atheists are still Jews, but that secular-Islam-identity is likely to be more culturally-specific for a lot of Muslims than it is for Jews. (There are 15-20 million Jews and 2 billion Muslims, so it's a lot easier for our teeny tiny population to have something you could at least vaguely call a single identity than it is for, you know, 25% of the population of the planet.)
But I agree with Conuly that the most important thing is knowing more about your character. There have been Muslims in the US since the sixteenth century. To be clear, the length of time there were Muslims in the US before the American Revolution is at least as long as the time between the American Revolution and today. Muslims have been here for a long time! So you have many, many options.
If you know where your character is from, why don't you look up the mosques/masjids and Islamic community centers in that area? That may help you get more a sense of that community. You'll find relatively different communities in Dearborn, MI; Detroit, MI; Murfreesboro, TN; and Cambridge, MA. Just like the Jewish community around one part of Manhattan might be Chassidic Galitzianer Ashkenazim, a corner of Boston might be Litvak Ashkenazim, a neighborhood of Seattle might be Greek and Sephardic, and one in Queens might be Bukharan.
Some obvious ones to think about (with the caveat that families can easily be a mix of many of these, or something else):
Immigrant themselves
First gen American born
American-born from a family that's been here for a few generations
American-born from a family that's been here much longer (a group that's primarily but certainly not entirely African-American)
Something else
and then
converted themselves
family that converted
Muslim way back
Demographics of Islam in the US and Muslim population by country might be helpful here. If your character is from a family of recent immigrant, then they have a high likelihood of having lived in an ethnic enclave of some kind, just like your own great grandparents. (And possibly grandparents and parents.) Immigrants often do. And there a ton of close-knit communities in the US from countries that don't match the most common US stereotypes of "Muslim country" (the stereotypes being usually Arab and South Asian countries). Don't forget about communities of Somali immigrants, people from central Asian countries and Russian republics, or even people with Indonesian descent. (I don't understand why Americans don't tend to think of Southeast Asian people as Muslim. Indonesia is the 4th most populous country, after the US, and 12% of the world's Muslims live there. Our stereotypes are so odd.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-01-26 07:50 pm (UTC)I don't think you should delete, the clarifying questions people are asking may be thought provoking or informative themselves.
ObDisclaimer: I'm another American Jew, not Muslim.
Islam absolutely has semi-secular people who still consider themselves Muslim, just like Judaism. There are also 100% secular, purely cultural Muslims in the same way Jewish bacon-eating, Christmas-celebrating atheists are still Jews, but that secular-Islam-identity is likely to be more culturally-specific for a lot of Muslims than it is for Jews. (There are 15-20 million Jews and 2 billion Muslims, so it's a lot easier for our teeny tiny population to have something you could at least vaguely call a single identity than it is for, you know, 25% of the population of the planet.)
But I agree with Conuly that the most important thing is knowing more about your character. There have been Muslims in the US since the sixteenth century. To be clear, the length of time there were Muslims in the US before the American Revolution is at least as long as the time between the American Revolution and today. Muslims have been here for a long time! So you have many, many options.
If you know where your character is from, why don't you look up the mosques/masjids and Islamic community centers in that area? That may help you get more a sense of that community. You'll find relatively different communities in Dearborn, MI; Detroit, MI; Murfreesboro, TN; and Cambridge, MA. Just like the Jewish community around one part of Manhattan might be Chassidic Galitzianer Ashkenazim, a corner of Boston might be Litvak Ashkenazim, a neighborhood of Seattle might be Greek and Sephardic, and one in Queens might be Bukharan.
Some obvious ones to think about (with the caveat that families can easily be a mix of many of these, or something else):
and then
Demographics of Islam in the US and Muslim population by country might be helpful here. If your character is from a family of recent immigrant, then they have a high likelihood of having lived in an ethnic enclave of some kind, just like your own great grandparents. (And possibly grandparents and parents.) Immigrants often do. And there a ton of close-knit communities in the US from countries that don't match the most common US stereotypes of "Muslim country" (the stereotypes being usually Arab and South Asian countries). Don't forget about communities of Somali immigrants, people from central Asian countries and Russian republics, or even people with Indonesian descent. (I don't understand why Americans don't tend to think of Southeast Asian people as Muslim. Indonesia is the 4th most populous country, after the US, and 12% of the world's Muslims live there. Our stereotypes are so odd.)