New West Q&A

Colorado Professor: Muslim Community in Rockies Surprisingly Strong

By Tim Sprinkle, 3-30-11

	The Dar al Islam mosque in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Photo by Flickr user mmaier.

The Rocky Mountain West has a reputation as a less-than-diverse part of the country, home to larger-than-average white populations and a few scattered minority communities.

But according to the 2010 census, the West is actually more diverse than it might at first appear. In Colorado, for instance, Black and African American respondents now account for 4 percent of the population, up 22 percent since the 2000 tally, while Latino groups now account for nearly 21 percent of the state’s residents, up a dramatic 41 percent in the last decade. And it’s the same story in Idaho, where African American populations increased nearly 80 percent since 2000 and Latinos increased 73 percent in that time. Clearly, the West isn’t as white-bread as it seems.

But Muslims? Even in the increasingly diverse Western states, it’s still rare to find established Islamic communities, either in cities like Denver or in more isolated mountain towns. It would seem that followers of Islam, for one reason or the other, have simply bypassed the West.

And that’s exactly the kind of misconception that Dr. Nabil Echchaibi, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at the University of Colorado and associate director of the University’s Center for Media, Religion and Culture, is out to correct. Muslims have a rich history in the Mountain West, he says, and he has spent the last two years researching and documenting this legacy as part of a cultural history project co-funded by the Social Science Research Council and CU.

“Obviously, the history of Muslims in this region isn’t going to be as old as it is in Michigan or in the southeast or in New York,” Echchaibi says. “But we’ve found that Muslims had been coming here since the very beginning of the 20th century, some looking for better economic opportunities and others for different reasons. The thing that really surprised us was how little information was out there. Aside from the rare Masters thesis or PhD dissertation, there’s really been little if any disciplined, academic research on this subject, so it’s been an eye-opening project.”

So what does the Muslim picture look like in the West right now?

We’ve just been working with speculative numbers, but for example in the Denver area we think there are between 15,000 and 30,000 Muslims. Obviously, in areas like Arizona, Salt Lake and Albuquerque those numbers are smaller, but in the whole of the Mountain West there could be between 100,000 and 150,000 Muslims living right now.

When were these communities established?

After the early migrants (who came for mine work and other turn-of-the-century opportunities, like many others) it’s a story of what I wouldn’t call a mass immigration, but certainly one of greater numbers. In the ‘70s and ‘80s and more recently it’s been refugees, including a lot of Somalis and people from the Sudan who have been assigned here by the U.S. government.

We have white Muslims, African American Muslims, Muslims who were born here to immigrant parents. There’s a great diversity, and it’s very consistent with the [Muslim America] surveys that the Pew Research Center has been conducting over the years.

Nabil Echchaibi. University of Colorado photo.

What else have you learned about the history of Muslims in the region?

For one thing, we know that it isn’t a story of people who came here just a few years ago, and it certainly isn’t a story of a fresh immigration. It just goes to show that the story of Islam in America is really an American story.

The thing that isn’t here in the Mountain West is a documented oral history of this settlement, which is well established in the south and in other areas. For example, of the slaves that came to the southeast in the 1700s, we know that 30 percent of those from a certain part of Uganda were Muslims. This has been studied for a long time, slavery and its relationship to Islam.

What we do have here in this region are people who are second and third generation Muslims who think of themselves as Coloradans and Arizonans and what not. Just being able to trace that history is important, even if it doesn’t go back very far.

Is part of the problem that some of these people just want to blend in?

Certainly after 9/11, many Muslims didn’t necessarily want to be found. It was more reasonable to lay low and keep a low profile, and a lot of them didn’t want to attract attention. Many of them were afraid that their stories would be misconstrued by the media. Maybe it would seem like there are too many Muslims in the area, and maybe that would spread fear. There are a range of things that have kept attention off of Muslims for a long time.

But as the years went by, many Muslims woke up to the view that they needed to be more active to counter the stereotypes. The most recent poll by Pew showed that 40 percent of Americans hold the view that Muslims are inherently violent, so there’s work to be done, and the best way to do that is by telling your own story.

One thing that I think is fascinating is whenever I present this research, people are surprised to learn just how many Muslims are here in the West since we don’t often hear from them. We like to think that this project is an opportunity to get those voices out there. We know we’re just scratching at the surface.

And confusion is still an issue?

A lot of people just assume that Muslims don’t come here. The assumption is that they’re going places where there are already good networks of other Muslims, and there is some truth to that, a lot of truth to that. If you’re new to the country, you go to Michigan or the West Coast or even Chicago or Texas. But I think the assumption that no Muslims are coming to the Mountain West and that few ever did has gone on for too long.

So what’s the next step?

I think if we feel like there is a positive reception to our findings then we will consider pursuing this further. Here at the center, we continue to organize events and publicize our findings, but this is such a rich and interesting subject that it demands a long-term approach.

And there’s a documentary in the works?

That’s right. What we want to do is profile people who are just your average Muslims. How do they see themselves? We want to document the normalcy of living as a Muslim in the Mountain West, so we’re assembling stories of people who are well integrated, stories of converts who are living in cities like Denver and even stories of people who live in places that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with Islam, like small towns in Wyoming and Montana.

We’re also working on a website that will be up this May that will include podcasts, interviews and videos documenting the experience of living as a Muslim in the Mountain West.

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