Americans Facing Toward Mecca

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American Muslims have difficulty obeying the traditional practices and moral tenets in a society that is both non-Islamic and highly permissive. Like Christian conservatives, observes Barbara Aswad, an expert on Middle Eastern culture at Wayne State University, devout Muslims "are shocked at what they consider moral problems here, like sexual freedom, drug use, crime and lack of respect for parents." Immigrant parents quarrel with their Americanized offspring about the use of alcohol, which is banned in Islam, and about dating, which the faith forbids. Observing dietary laws is an additional challenge: pork products are strictly off limits.

The most difficult practice to maintain is the prescribed five daily periods of prayers and prostrations conducted while facing Mecca. Laila Al-Marayati, a medical student from Long Beach, Calif., seeks out an empty room at her hospital, but, she admits, "if I was praying and heard someone come in, I'd stop and pretend I was doing something else." Attending weekly prayer services, held on Friday afternoons, is a problem. "Many Muslims who aren't assertive about their faith aren't able to get off from work," says Akil Rahim of Baltimore's Muslim Charities Institute. "One of our major problems is sticking up for our rights."

That is slowly beginning to change as American Muslims feel the need to become more organized and visible. Worshipers at Ramadan services around the U.S. last week heard appeals for greater unity and community participation. "Mutual recognition is starting to dawn among us Muslims," pronounced Talib Abdur-Rashid, a Harlem imam, at Brooklyn's Fatih Mosque, where some 500 faithful -- blacks, whites, converts and a dozen different nationalities -- gathered to pray and break their fast. A similar mix was gathered at the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles, where community leaders have worked hard to reduce tensions between the dominant Sunnis and the more recently arrived Iranian Shi'ites among the 10,000 families the center reaches.

A telling sign of growing cohesion and self-confidence is the number of new mosques that have begun to sprout. An $11 million house of worship is under construction on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and will open for prayers in six months, with plans for a $29 million expansion. Near the campus of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, a 2,000-capacity mosque costing $4 million is due to open next year. The most impressive mosque to date is the splashy $4 million Islamic Center located in the cornfields of Perrysburg, Ohio, outside Toledo. Accommodating 1,200 people for services, the center, opened in 1983, boasts a membership that includes 22 nationality ! groups. Plans call for $40 million more to be spent on an Islamic school, recreation center and other facilities.