False Sense of Maturity

The United States tends to be an Islamophobic place these days, but that wasn’t always the case. Some surprising aspects of American culture have been influenced by Arab or Muslim customs, as Al’ America, a new book by Jonathan Curiel, chronicles:

Al’ America offers a quirky tour of sites, sounds and personalities that are quintessentially American and also reveal fascinating vestiges of Islamic and Arab influence. Musical stops include the Surf Sound of 1960s southern California, the Mississippi Delta blues and the startlingly spiritual confines of Elvis Presley’s Graceland. The King, it turns out, kept a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet on his bedroom nightstand.

One of Curiel’s most colorful excursions takes him to the fez-festooned conclaves where Shriners still greet each other by declaring, “salaam aleikum” (peace be upon you). At their apogee in the 1920s, when they had 500,000 members, the Shriners paraded through downtown Washington, D.C., were publicly hailed by presidents and drew a welcome committee of Marine Corps musicians dressed in Arab garb. Washington merchants even dressed up their storefronts as ersatz mosques. Those were different times.

Another entertaining digression takes readers to mid-19th-century Bridgeport, Conn., where circus impresario P.T. Barnum built a mansion in quasi-Islamic style and called it Iranistan. The grand house, with its pseudo-minarets, is long gone. But Iranistan Avenue survives, now pronounced “Arn-i-stan,” Curiel reports with the light, bemused tone that makes the book a pleasurable read.

So if Elvis were alive today, he would be accused by Christian fundamentalists as being a Muslim.