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March 7, 2006
An Imam in America
Tending to Muslim Hearts and Islam's Future
Published: March 7, 2006
(Page 3 of 4)
Their years in America have come with great hardship, a subject the imam rarely discusses. The trouble is the illness of his 7-year-old daughter, Rawda, who is severely epileptic. She has dozens of seizures every day and rarely leaves home. No combination of medicine seems to help.
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"Rawda is the wound in my heart," the imam said. Mr. Shata offers long, stubborn theories about the value of marriage, but to observe him at home is to understand the commitment he seeks to foster in other Muslims. The family lives in a spare, dimly lighted apartment two blocks from the mosque. Headscarves are piled over Pokémon cards. The gold-painted words "Allah is Great" are framed over a threadbare couch. In the next room, an "I {sheart} New York" bumper sticker is slapped on the wall. Mr. Shata spends long hours away from his family, lecturing at mosques, settling disputes, whispering the call to prayer in the ears of newborn babies. On his walk home at night, he shops for groceries, never forgetting the Honey Nut Cheerios, a favorite American discovery of his children. When he walks in the door, his face softens. Loud kisses are planted on tender cheeks. Mohammed squeals, the girls smile, sweet laughter echoes. But then there is Rawda. "My beautiful girl," the imam says softly one evening, holding his limp daughter in his lap after a seizure has passed. He places one pill in Rawda's mouth, then another. She looks at him weakly. "There we go," he whispers. "Inshallah." Her lids close with sleep. He lays her in bed and shuts off the light. Hardship, the imam believes — like marriage, like life — is a test from God. Foreign and Familiar It is proof of the imam's uncommon popularity among women that he is |
trusted with roughly 300 female marriage candidates.
The mosque on Fifth Avenue is a decidedly male place. Men occupy every position on the board of directors. They crowd the sidewalk after prayer. Only they may enter the mosque's central room of worship. Only men, they often point out, are required to attend the Friday prayer.
One floor below is the cramped room where the women worship. On Fridays, they sit pressed together, their headscarves itching with heat. They must watch their imam on a closed-circuit television that no one seems to have adjusted in years.
But they listen devotedly. Teenage girls often roll their eyes at foreign imams, who seem to them like extraterrestrials. Their immigrant mothers often find these clerics too strict, an uncomfortable reminder of their conservative homelands.
Mr. Shata is both foreign and familiar. He presides over a patriarchal world, sometimes upholding it, and other times challenging it. In one sermon, he said that a man was in charge of his home and had the right to "choose his wife's friends.
"Another day, to the consternation of his male congregants, he invited a female Arab social worker to lecture on domestic violence. The women were allowed to sit next to the men in the main section of the mosque.
The imam frowns at career women who remain single in their 30's, but boasts of their accomplishments to interest marriage candidates. He employs his own brand of feminism, vetting marriage contracts closely to ensure brides receive a fair dowry and fighting for them when they don't.
Far more than is customary, he spends hours listening to women: to their worries and confessions, their intimate secrets and frank questions about everything from menstruation to infidelity. They line up outside his office and call his home at all hours, often referring to him as "my brother" or "father." He can summon the details of their lives with the same encyclopedic discipline he once used to memorize the Koran.
"Are you separated yet?" Mr. Shata asked a woman he encountered at Lutheran Medical Center one day last July. She nodded. "May God make it easier for you," he said.
A Chaperoned Date
By most standards, the Egyptian bachelor was a catch. He had broad shoulders and a playful smile. He was witty. He earned a comfortable salary as an engineer, and came from what he called "a good family."
But the imam saw him differently, as a young man in danger of losing his faith. The right match might save him.
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