Additional Post: Islam in America Documentary

I had a chance to attend Professor Smith’s documentary on Islam in America on Monday.  I found his documentary to be fairly interesting, and I especially liked how he compared two different acclimation responses of Islam to American culture, specifically in Dearborn, MI.  The contrast of Muslim individuals living in a fairly close-knit community with that of a more Americanized version of Islam (what Professor Smith referred to as the mega-churching of Islam, complete with Starbucks) was a helpful comparison.  I think this clearly demonstrates that there are various ways for religion to respond to external pressures, and even in a small community like Dearborn, MI there are multiple ways that a religion can be interpreted to best suit the situation of its followers.

The one portion of the presentation that I was slightly confused with was the question and answer session.  Many of the students seemed to focus on the potential exclusion or discrimination that was mentioned in Professor Smith’s documentary.  Although I’m sure Professor Smith meant to include these accounts as a way of showing the kinds of obstacles that Muslim-Americans have had to overcome, I’m not entirely sure that this was a central point that Professor Smith was trying to make.  To me, it seems that many students zeroed in on this portion of the documentary and missed out on the larger themes that this film conveyed, specifically how a religion acts as a dynamic institution that is simultaneously affecting and being effected by its environment.  This may be a byproduct of the so-called lense that Lawrence instills upon its students, but I was slightly disappointed that more individuals didn’t latch on to some of the more overarching topics that Professor Smith touched on in his documentary.  Overall, I found the documentary to be interesting, informative, and funny (there were few chuckle-worthy moments interspersed throughout), and I’m glad I had a chance to attend.