Making Moderate Islam: Sufism, Service, and the “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy by Rosemary R. Corbett (review)

Who are the “moderate” Muslims? Why don’t “they” speak up? How can “we” partner with the “moderates”? Such questions have become the bread and butter of political pundits, especially in the wake of 9/11 and America’s ongoing “war on terror.” Unfortunately, framings like these have also played a significant role in producing the binaries that pit so-called “good Muslims”–often defined in the West as liberal-secular–against a wide range of supposedly “bad Muslims” who seek modes of being and governing not defined in the liberal-secular terms of the West. Whereas some leaders of Muslim-majority countries eschew the concept of “moderate Islam” as a colonial leftover, other countries such as Indonesia and Morocco have been quite eager to claim the mantle of moderate Islam. Academics and activists have also weighed in on the debate, with little consensus about the origins, possibilities, or perils of the term.¹ Despite the importance of scholarly debates about “moderate Islam,” such analyses are often thick on ideology and thin on actual data, whether historical, theological, ethnographic, or otherwise.

It is precisely for these reasons that Rosemary R. Corbett’s new book Making Moderate Islam: Sufism, Service, and the “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy is so timely and important. Corbett cogently argues that the concept of “moderate Islam” is not simply a projection of American imperialism (although that is certainly part of her story) but also a frame through which some Muslim Americans sought to reconcile the virtues of Islam with the story of America. Further still, Corbett shows that the American infatuation with moderate Islam is not a post-9/11 response, but has deeper historical roots in early twentieth century orientalist understandings of Sufism and post-WWII geopolitical concerns about how to best safeguard the Middle East from communism. The book’s early chapters trace intermingling histories of Sufi musical tours (such as Inayat Khan at Columbia University in 1910) with details of Eisenhower’s covert plans to seduce Muslim-majority nations of the Middle East during the dawn of the Cold War (p. 73). As Corbett argues, American adulation of Sufi forms of Islam rests on orientalist understandings that deemphasized the Islamic aspects of Sufism: “the idea that Sufism is the opposite of dogmatic (some would say ‘fundamentalist’) Islam is as old as the idea that the United States is a true meritocracy” (p.3).

Weaving several historical and contemporary threads together, Corbett makes a unique contribution to both American studies and Islamic studies. Whereas more orthodox scholars of Islamic studies might prefer more devotion to the historical formation of classical theological concepts related to moderation in Islam, Corbett unapologetically maintains that situating this study at the nexus of American studies and Islamic studies is precisely what makes its contributions–especially about religion and race–so important. As Corbett notes in the introduction, “I was not seeking definitive accounts of ‘true’ Islam, Americanness, or moderation. . . . Rather, I was seeking to understand the pressures on Muslims to present themselves in particular ways in America and the creativeness Muslim Americans exercised, as well as the difficulties they encountered” (p. 9). In this respect, Corbett provides an excellent model for innovative scholarship that stretches the boundaries of what “counts” as Islamic studies. Although the author does not set out to define moderate Islam, Corbett does suggest that a more accurate English gloss would be “balanced Islam,” which does not carry the same connotation of moderate Islam as simply the pale reflection of Western liberal-secularism (p. 7).

The book’s title is a bit of a misnomer, at least in the sense that the conceptual, historical, and political scope go well beyond the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy. For those unfamiliar with this religio-political saga, a planned Muslim community center, led by Feisal Abdul Rauf (and others) and located several blocks from the so-called “hallowed ground” of 9...