The Christian theologian Richard Mouw thinks so. Excerpt:

I read recently that some young Muslims in the United States are complaining that what goes on in their mosques is not “American” enough. They say that the patterns of worship and religious education seem designed to preserve the connections to the countries from which their Muslim communities emigrated, while these young folks want their faith to guide them in their lives in America. Shouldn’t their leaders be doing more, they ask, to help them understand how their faith applies to the country of which they are now citizens?

I say: Good for them. I hope they succeed in getting a positive response from their elders.

I find myself divided on the question. To the extent that young American Muslims can draw their mosques and religious institutions away from the radicalism of the old world, I wish them well. On the other hand, I don’t like seeing religion absorbed by the Moralistic Therapeutic Deist Borg of American individualism and hedonism. I know this blog has some Muslim readers. Please let the rest of us know what you think about Mouw’s remarks.

Of far more interest to me on this point is Charles Featherstone’s recent essay, How Islam Is Different.  Charles, as readers of this blog know, converted to Islam in college in the 1990s, and became pretty radical. He tells the story in his great memoir, The Love That Matters. Islam gave him an answer to the rage he had within at the injustice and cruelty in which he had been raised. Later in his life, Charles had an epiphany that made him turn to Jesus Christ. One thing I especially admire about Charles’s book is that he does not denounce Islam, or denigrate the good and the true things he found there, even though he no longer believes in them. If you are looking for an anti-Muslim Christian polemic, look somewhere else.

But his is a book about how Islam ultimately could not help him live with the problems of suffering and evil. His essay talks a bit about why that is. According to Charles, the most important difference today between Islam and the two earlier Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity, is how they deal with “suffering and the meaning of history.” Excerpts:

The point is, the Hebrew Bible is a long contemplation of the call of God in the face of failure and defeat. God called us, made promises to Abraham — land, patrimony, blessing to the world — and then made promises to David that his kingdom would last forever. What do those promises mean after Assyria and Babylonia? What do those promises mean in the face of defeat, conquest, and exile?

There is no one answer to this. The struggle of Hasmoneans Maccabees against the successors to Alexander (which shows up in part of the Book of Daniel), and the struggles against Rome, show there was messianic and nationalistic component to Israel thought more than 2,000 years ago. Violent struggle is one answer to failure, suffering, and defeat.

But the scripture itself is a meditation on this. What does it mean to be God’s people, to bear God’s promises, given what has happened to us? Note — there are many answers to this question. But one of the brilliant things about the Hebrew Bible is it stares this problem in the face and does not flinch.

The New Testament is an answer to this question. Christianity deals with the problem of promise, suffering, and meaning by flipping everything over. “What do you think you’ve been promised?” the Gospels seem to ask. Yes, you are God’s people and you have been given promises, and they are true — just not in ways that make much rational sense to you. And those promises will be fulfilled, but again, not in ways that make any sense to you. The Savior of the World, the Anointed One who has come to redeem, the King who has come to rule on the throne given to David? He will die upon a cross as a criminal and a rebel. You want to gain the promised Kingdom? Serve and love others.

The point is, both Judaism and Christianity consider what it means to live as faithful to the covenant even in the midst of defeat. (This, by the way, is what the Divine Comedy is about: the pilgrim Dante discovering how he should absorb his utter, and unjust, defeat at the hands of the world, and what he should do with it.) More Featherstone:

In fact, Islam as a faith never really had to stare failure, defeat, conquest, and exile in the face and deal with it theologically, until the 19th century. Until then, Islam never had to face a universal empire that wasn’t itself. And Islam has a different set of theological tools to answer those questions. Revolution, to create a purer world run by Islam as God has promised (and desires), is one answer. And it is, according to the tradition, a faithful one. (This is what the Maccabees did, successfully, against Greek rule, and what the Jewish rebels in AD 70 and again 60 years later failed at.)

Again, I’m not saying Christians and Jews haven’t reached for power, privilege, military might, and statecraft, to try and answer this question of what it means to possess the promises of God. After Constantine, Christendom also never faced a universal empire that wasn’t itself — one of Christendom’s unhappy gifts to secularism.

I disagree with that last statement. The only empire that posed a mortal threat to Christendom was the various Islamic empires. Ask the Christian people of Spain. Ask Charles Martel. Ask the last Byzantine emperor. Ask the King of Poland at the gates of Vienna. Anyway, Featherstone contends that Islam lacks a tragic sense. He writes that, “when faced with adversity, Muslims tended to ask themselves — “What does it mean to have the promises of God given the guarantee of success?” More:

What Islam lacks, however, is a sense that failure, defeat, conquest, and exile might be permanent conditions that we are redeemed in rather than from. That failure, defeat, conquest, and exile might have meaning in and of themselves, and not simply be something to overcome. Christians and Jews, at least some of us, struggle within this understanding. That is an answer, and it is one readily grounded both in scripture and tradition. Islam still expects an eventual earthly human success; it is written into the understanding of what Man is and what God created us for. As long as that expectation demands the establishment of an earthly kingdom of power and might, looks upon the world and sees a need for that kingdom, then we will be stuck with something like Revolutionaries waving black flags, blowing up tall buildings, and waging war.

Read the whole thing. He says that Islam will eventually be domesticated by secular modernity, as the Christian church has. That is not necessarily a good thing, but it seems to be a thing that most of us religious believers cannot easily escape. In one sense, I certainly want Islam to be “domesticated,” to have its sting removed, by the modern liberal order, if only to preserve Europe from turning Muslim before a reconversion to Christianity takes place (if, in fact, it will take place). I do not believe that Islam is true, and I certainly believe that it is a threat to the rebirth of Christianity in Europe, which I pray for.

On the other hand, I cannot help but think that Muslims who say this denatured form of Islam is not true Islam appear to have a point that is hard to refute — and I would likely resist it if I were a Muslim. As Patrick Deneen wrote last year in TAC, some Catholic thinkers are beginning to come to terms with the fundamental irreconcilability of liberalism (understood as secular modernity) with Catholicism. Excerpt:

The “radical” school rejects the view that Catholicism and liberal democracy are fundamentally compatible. Rather, liberalism cannot be understood to be merely neutral and ultimately tolerant toward (and even potentially benefitting from) Catholicism. Rather, liberalism is premised on a contrary view of human nature (and even a competing theology) to Catholicism. Liberalism holds that human beings are essentially separate, sovereign selves who will cooperate based upon grounds of utility. According to this view, liberalism is not a “shell” philosophy that allows a thousand flowers to bloom. Rather, liberalism is constituted by a substantive set of philosophical commitments that are deeply contrary to the basic beliefs of Catholicism, among which (Catholics hold) are the belief that we are by nature relational, social and political creatures; that social units like the family, community and Church are “natural,” not merely the result of individuals contracting temporary arrangements; that liberty is not a condition in which we experience the absence of constraint, but the exercise of self-limitation; and that both the “social” realm and the economic realm must be governed by a thick set of moral norms, above all, self-limitation and virtue.

Because of these positions, the “radical” position—while similarly committed to the pro-life, pro-marriage teachings of the Church—is deeply critical of contemporary arrangements of market capitalism, is deeply suspicious of America’s imperial ambitions, and wary of the basic premises of liberal government. It is comfortable with neither party, and holds that the basic political division in America merely represents two iterations of liberalism—the pursuit of individual autonomy in either the social/personal sphere (liberalism) or the economic realm (“conservatism”—better designated as market liberalism). Because America was founded as a liberal nation, “radical” Catholicism tends to view America as a deeply flawed project, and fears that the anthropological falsehood at the heart of the American founding is leading inexorably to civilizational catastrophe.

I don’t know how Muslims make their peace with modernity without it neutralizing Islam. I am certain that Featherstone is right to say that we non-Muslims have nothing to say in this matter — that this is a struggle within Islam. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a vital interest in its outcome.

UPDATE: Readers, before you dismiss Featherstone’s commentary, read it. I didn’t quote most of it, because I want you to go read what he has to say.

To answer the question in the subject line of this post: it depends on whether it’s more important to be American or Islamic. The assimilation of orthodox Christianity into MTD does not bode well for the future of American Islam.