The "Yankee Mohammedan": Alexander Russell Webb and the quest for an American Islam.

Umar F. Abd-Allah

A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb 

Oxford University Press, 2006. 388 pp. $35.00

With Islam in America a subject of growing interest among Americans of all religious persuasions, the time is surely ripe for the first full-length biography of America's earliest Muslim of note. A certain Alexander Russell Webb--of Hudson, New York--claims the distinction. Webb (1846-1916), "a Victorian from America's Mid-Atlantic cultural zone" [24] whose "life was steeped in Americana," [10] spent the bulk of his early adulthood in Missouri journalism. He made the improbable decision to convert to Islam in the late 1880s while serving as US Consul in Manila, the Philippines, and dedicated the rest of his life to advocating its cause. Webb met with only middling success, his role as spokesperson for Islam at Chicago's World Parliament of Religions in 1893 "mark[ing] his moment of maximum public exposure." [218] Yet it is the journey itself--more than its outcome--that counts as the major attraction here.

Webb was not the first North American convert to Islam, nor can any Muslim community trace its inception to his efforts. He was, however, the first North American to found an Islamic mission and embark upon the rather daunting task of propagating Islam in the United States. Quixotic as such an undertaking might initially appear, Abd-Allah argues that the genesis of Webb's spiritual quest can be located in Victorian society itself, especially in its religious ferment and consequent fascination with Theosophy and Eastern religions. Webb simply took his interest further and, after dabbling in Buddhism as well as Theosophy (to which he remained inclined his entire life), converted to Islam while serving as US Consul in Manila.

The author writes frankly about the usefulness of "Webb's relatively broad-minded spirit, his frank opposition to fanaticism, and his lasting civic commitment" [15] for those seeking to craft a synthesis between American and Muslim identities in a post-9/11 United States. Yet Webb, who "frequently contended that 'the Islamic system' constituted the best alternative for America's future," [183] can hardly be considered the exemplar of such a synthesis. Though never hostile to his country, Webb trod the well-traveled path of innumerable converts, and came to judge his compatriots principally in light of their amenability to his newfound values. While Webb extolled the virtues of Islam before his American audiences, when addressing fellow Muslims his praise for Americans remained strictly commensurate with their perceived willingness to adopt Islam. In other words, Webb was more Islam's ambassador to the US than the latter's ambassador to Islam.

The terminology is apt given his background in diplomacy; Webb served as US Consul in Manila, capital of the (then Spanish-governed) Philippines from 1887 to 1892. In this regard, it is instructive to note that Webb quit his Manila post as soon as he secured funding for his Islamic-mission, thereby consciously choosing to represent Islam in America over representing America in the Philippines. Admittedly, Webb had long been on the lookout for an escape from the intolerable conditions in which he was forced to live during his stint as Consul, yet his eventual choice indicates his ideological priorities. A few years after quitting the Manila consulship, with his Islamic mission in the US (1893-96) foundering, Webb resorted to publishing and disseminating propaganda, albeit anonymously, for the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, his efforts earned him the favor of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who duly recognized Webb for his services. The man who began his diplomatic career as an American Consul ended it as Honorary Ottoman Consul General in New York!

None of this is particularly egregious, of course, but it would appear to demonstrate Webb's unsuitability as avatar of a Muslim identity distinctly American in orientation. In believing that his personal choice was also his country's salvation, Webb hardly differed from other zealous converts. In radically altering his moral outlook so that only those American beliefs and practices compatible with his new faith could be considered acceptable, Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb--the ostensibly unique Victorian American Muslim--actually revealed himself to be quite unremarkable.

To his credit, Abd-Allah does not shrink from criticizing his subject. This is no hagiography, and the author rebukes Webb for the anti-Armenian bigotry of his Ottoman propaganda, his propensity for "paint[ing] an idealized picture of Muslim fraternity," [278] as well as occasional racist comments made about Indians during his travels in the Indian subcontinent. Abd-Allah also points out that when lambasting "Church-Christianity," [278] his favorite target, "Webb was often guilty of a double standard not unlike the one he criticized in Church-Christians." [278] Yet to his credit, Webb generally spurned fanaticism and obscurantism. Webb "accepted, for the most part, Islam as understood by the Aligarh Movement," [274] the Indian reformist current headed by Muslim modernists such as Sayyed Ahmad Khan, Ameer Ali, and Cheragh Ali, who sought to reconcile Islam with Western-style education, and were "Webb's chief mentors and primary sources for Islam." [274]

Perhaps this book's most significant flaw lies in its avoidance of those contentious aspects of Islam that, then and now, have dogged the religion. At one point, Abd-Allah tantalizingly informs us that Webb's booklet Islam and America sets forth the author's views on "a number of controversial topics like slavery, concubinage, and jihad," [201] but no elaboration follows. What, indeed, did Webb think of jihad in its manifestation as holy war, and did he condone slavery and concubinage? Was he inclined, as are many apologists for Islam, to justify such practices in terms of the exigencies of circumstance? Apart from muddled and contradictory views on polygamy and the veiling of women, which he defends on certain occasions and describes as un-Islamic on others, Webb's stance on such thorny issues is never clarified.

We do know that, generally speaking, Webb took the easy way out, ascribing negative perceptions of Islam to ignorance and misunderstanding. At the World Parliament of Religions, he seized the opportunity afforded by his public role to effuse, "I ... will defy any intelligent man to understand Islam and not love it." [4] At another point during the proceedings, he confidently informed an audience in its entirety that "false history has influenced your opinion of Islam." [237] Admittedly, this was likely truer in Webb's era than today, but such an approach nevertheless trivializes the significance and inevitability of religious disagreement. It would have behooved Abd-Allah to cite such naivete as Webb's major weakness; by skirting this issue, the author misses a chance to discuss a persistent impediment to fruitful religious dialogue. Doubtless there are many in the United States and elsewhere whose knowledge of Islam is lacking, but surely this cannot be said of everyone who disagrees with the religion. After all, there is no correlation between

knowledge and admiration; understanding a religion does not lead one ineluctably toward embracing or even respecting it. To dismiss all critics of Islam as ignorant or misinformed, as so many wounded and indignant Muslims do, simply postpones much-needed discussion of very real differences between Islam's advocates and its detractors.