Asif Umar leads a prayer service at Daar-Ul-Islam mosque on Friday, Jan. 6, 2012, in Ballwin, Missouri. Umar was recently named the new Imam of the mosque. Photo by Johnny Andrews, jandrews@post-dispatch.com

BY TIM TOWNSEND
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Jan 14, 2012

Over the last decade or so, Asif Umar has practiced an unusual Ramadan tradition. The 27-year-old St. Charles native, who started last week as the new imam at the largest mosque in the area, celebrates the end of Islam's holiest month by going to a Blues game with his buddies.

"He's a sports junkie," said Umar's friend Nauman Wadalawala, a third-year law student at St. Louis University. "Whenever we go to a Cards game, he always has to wear his Pujols jersey. It's interesting to see this religious scholar, sitting in good seats, with his beard and Cardinals jersey."

Umar, whose parents came to the United States from India in the 1970s, is the first native St. Louisan to lead the Daar-ul-Islam mosque, also known as the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis. He also represents the ascendence of a distinctly American brand of Islam, a new generation of Muslim-Americans who were born in the United States and who spent their teenage years in the often uncomfortable glare of the post-Sept. 11 spotlight.

Immigrant parents of American-born Muslims who once insisted that their children become doctors and engineers have begun relaxing those expectations for a new crop of young Muslim-American scholars who feel drawn to be faith leaders, said Yvonne Haddad, a professor of the history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University.

"We're beginning to have larger numbers of American kids going into Muslim studies and become imams," Haddad said. She noted a new trend in ads recruiting imams, which once asked for overseas experience in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia or India.

"Now if you look at ads for imams, they ask for candidates who know English, can relate to interfaith groups and communicate with a younger generation," Haddad said. "They don't want to lose the younger generation."

Muslims both young and old hope Umar can be that kind of leader.

They see him as a potential ambassador of the faith in the St. Louis region, one who can challenge Islamophobic notions, and instead present Islam as simply another faith on the American landscape.

And at a time when The Learning Channel's show "American Muslim" — which seeks to portray Muslims as ordinary, normal citizens — has been attacked as terrorist propaganda, younger Muslims hope Umar and new leaders like him can change attitudes.

"He's the kind of guy we want as the face of American Islam," Muhammad Dalal, 20, a student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis said after Umar led his first Friday prayers as Daar-ul-Islam's imam last week. "He was raised here, and he's representative of our Muslim-American experience."

a religious turn

Umar may be utterly familiar to other young American Muslims, but he's not what most non-Muslims might expect in an imam.

As Umar says, "Not every imam went to a Catholic school in the suburbs."

Umar attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic elementary school in St. Charles, through eighth grade. But as his friends headed off to high school, Umar decided to learn more about his faith. Religion was an important factor in the Umar home, said Zohra Umar, Asif's mother, who grew up in Mumbai.

Neither she, nor her husband, Ibrahim — a pediatrician in St. Peters who grew up in the Indian state of Gujarat — were surprised about their youngest child's dream, at age 14, to memorize the entire Quran.

"We were happy about his decision," Zohra said. "We didn't think he would be missing out on anything."

But Umar's friends were taken aback. How could their friend, the funny kid who loved hockey and Nintendo, want to move to a boarding school near Chicago to study religion?

"We were all slightly surprised because I don't recall him talking about taking that kind of route," said Khalid Alam, a childhood friend now studying for a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Missouri-Columbia. "We were surprised, but we were all impressed by him — that he'd choose the more righteous path."

Those who memorize the Quran — a task Muslims regard as a noble, virtuous endeavor looked upon highly by God — receive the title "hafiz." It took Umar 2½ years at the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, Ill., to become a hafiz while also enrolled in typical secular courses in math, science and literature.

Terrorists attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York during Umar's final year in the program.

The school, an hour northwest of Chicago, was shut for two weeks after threats against its facilities and 60 students. Umar was 17.

After graduating as the first native St. Louisan to memorize the Quran, Umar returned to St. Charles, took the test for a GED and thought about whether he should follow in his father's footsteps to medical school. But he had become entranced by the study of his faith, and with his parents' support, returned to Elgin, enrolling in a five-year course of intensive study in Islamic studies.

Umar was attracted to the law and decided to specialize in fiqh, the principles of Islamic jurisprudence derived from the Quran and the sunnah, the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad.

path to imam post

The Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis has a history of hiring imams with a background in jurisprudence. Knowing Islamic law — the rituals and social contracts that make up the daily life of an observant Muslim — is especially useful in a job where regular people come to an imam for answers to everyday problems.

Sheikh Mohammed Nur Abdullah, a former imam at Daar-ul-Islam, is a renowned scholar in Islamic marriage law and is a member of the Fiqh Council of North America. The mosque's most recent imam, Mufti Minhajuddin Ahmed, also is an expert in Islamic law.

With a degree in advanced Islamic studies, or Alim, Umar left for Camperdown, South Africa, in 2008. There, he completed a two-year master's degree in Islamic jurisprudence and earned the title "mufti."

After a six-month stop in Cairo in 2009 to immerse himself in Arabic, Umar moved to Springfield, Va., to teach Islamic law at Madinatul Uloom, an Islamic school similar to the one he graduated from in Elgin. He found he loved teaching, but Ahmed, Daar-ul-Islam's previous imam, had returned to Chicago earlier in the year, and the board needed to hire a new spiritual leader. In December, the board offered Umar the imam job.

"We wanted someone who grew up in the community but also someone who had been overseas and was qualified, and he had it all," said Syed Rahman, a member of the mosque's board at the time, and an Umar family friend. "We went after him hard."

Khalid Shariff, 70, a retired member of the mosque, said Umar's age was also important. "He was educated here, and he knows the culture," Shariff said. "For the young people, he will know the problems they go through."

Umar's friend Nauman Wadalawala said those problems could very well be specific to dealing with being Muslim in a post-Sept. 11 America.

"When it comes to talking to younger kids, and what they're facing in school, he can speak to them from personal experience," Wadalawala said.

Last week, Umar preached his first sermon, or kutbah, as the official imam at Daar-ul-Islam. On Friday, he'll take part in his first interfaith event as imam as a speaker at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event at Temple Emanuel in Creve Coeur. (Rabbi Justin Kerber sat cross-legged as a guest in the mosque's prayer hall last Friday as Umar preached.)

Umar's message for the day — about the theological righteousness of getting to Friday prayers early — was followed by a lot of backslaps, handshakes and congratulations in the mosque's lobby. Umar's father, Ibrahim, stood next to his son and smiled broadly.

"His mother and I are very proud," he said.

Syed Rahman, decked out in a blue-and-yellow Rams hat, put an arm around Ibrahim Umar's shoulders. "You're going straight to paradise now," he said.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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