By MICHELLE MCQUIGGE
TORONTO (CP) – With tensions between the Muslim community and mainstream North American society running high, Canadian Ingrid Mattson considers herself ideally positioned to assume leadership of North America’s largest Muslim organization.
As a woman and a late-in-life convert to Islam, Mattson’s background does not resemble that of many Islamic leaders, but she believes her unique perspective is part of why she was elected last week as the new president of the Islamic Society of North America.
The society’s primary focus is to forge a stronger connection between the Muslim community and North Americans, and for Mattson, much of that work will involve the removal of stereotypes.
“These grand constructs of Islam versus the west are undermined by someone like me in a very concrete way,” she said in an interview. “Unfortunately, these ideas have a lot of currency, even though they’re absurd.”
Mattson said her election sends a clear message that unity and co-existence are high priorities for a faith that has been under fire for several years.
“I do think that our members wanted someone . . .who can reflect the image of the community as a whole, which is a community that finds no contradiction between being Muslim and being North American.”
A mother of two children who grew up in Ontario as a Roman Catholic, Mattson was a late convert to Islam who abandoned her childhood religion as a teenager. She converted to Islam in 1987, months after completing her undergraduate degree in philosophy at the University of Waterloo.
She subsequently devoted her academic career to the study of her newfound faith, going on to receive her PhD in Islamic studies from the University of Chicago.
She was elected to her first executive position with ISNA in 2001, the very year the Sept. 11 attacks deepened existing rifts between Muslims and North Americans.
Mattson conceded that the dream of unifying the two cultures will likely never be fully realized, thanks to the efforts of extremist groups on both sides.
“There are people on both sides of the political spectrum . . .Muslims who espouse a certain political extremism, and then also those in North America who construct some sort of exclusive identity for Westerners. They would like to maintain this fiction of a world that can be neatly divided.”
Mattson said she condemns Muslim extremists involved in terrorist activity, because their violent actions directly conflict with her individual values, as well as ISNA’s agenda.
“I don’t particularly like the counter-cultural form of Islam,” she said. “Some cultural tendencies clearly need to be opposed . . . .Political terrorism, aggression, all of these things are obviously rejected by any people with any morals or ethics.”
One of those “cultural tendencies” Mattson has addressed is the repression of women in certain Muslim states, though she is quick to dispel the notion that the problem is specific to Islamic societies.
She said she sees no contradiction in the fact that a woman is now assuming leadership of such a prominent Muslim organization, citing the fact that four other Muslim nations have elected female heads of state in the past. But as someone who lived in Pakistan for a time to work with refugee women, Mattson acknowledged there is still considerable room for progress on that front.
“Many Muslim societies are still behind many Western nations in terms of their social and technological development, and I think that’s the main reason we might see that women’s situation is not always as advanced.”
She admitted her election is not a popular move in some circles, and said she has received threats both from inside and outside the Muslim community in the past.
“I’ve had more threatening messages from non-Muslims,” she said. “Both white supremacists who consider me a race traitor, and Christian fundamentalists who consider me either a religious apostate or an instrument of the devil.”
