Established a year ago, MakeSpace stresses openness, dialogue, and exploration to "put the unity back in community," as its website states. Friday prayers take place in the banquet hall of a local restaurant, and religious discussion groups known as halaqas convene in a borrowed office space. Imam Zia often leads the service, and his wife, Fatimah Popal, runs the women's halaqa, which on a recent Friday evening attracts some 45 women. They perch on chairs, share a couch, sit on the floor. Two tweens haul out homework, while a fat-cheeked baby gets passed around. Most everybody else is in their 20s and 30s, in college or in jobs. Their headdresses range from tight-fitting hijabs to loose scarves, some in solids – blue, purple, black – some in floral patterns. A handful are bareheaded.
In welcoming the group, Ms. Popal reiterates MakeSpace's only rule: "No judging," she says, smiling. "When someone shares a story, don't judge, or if you do, keep it to yourself. And with time, inshallah [Allah or God willing], you'll do some self-reflection."
The evening's theme is prayer, and after the speaker is done, comments and questions flow. "Prayer is like fiber," Popal chimes in at one point. "It makes you feel full." When some express guilt at not living up to the demand to pray five times a day, Popal again pipes up: "Just a reminder that Islam is not an all-or-nothing faith. It's like if you're failing in math, should you just not even try to do well in social studies? So I'm not wearing a hijab or I just drank yesterday at the club, or I have a boyfriend," she shrugs and smiles. "So we're weak in one area. Doesn't mean we should not try in another."
There is an exchange of advice – tips on how to stay focused and fold prayers into the workday – and the occasional gripe.
One woman says she feels judged at mosques because she is not dressed just right. "Or you're 30 and unmarried, I get that a lot," says another. Meanwhile, outside the mosque, they sometimes feel like anachronisms. "When other Muslims ask, 'Why are you praying? Why are you wearing a scarf?,' that's frustrating," says the economist, Ali, for whom this is a first MakeSpace gathering. "I have enough trouble with non-Muslims."
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One of the motivations behind MakeSpace is to get beyond petty points of etiquette and set aside sectarian divides in order to help Americans be better Muslims. This is very much in line with the approach of the Islamic Center of Southern California, considered one of the country's most progressive mosques.
"The Islam we're taught is for all times," Imam Zia says. "If you have to totally isolate yourself from the larger society, that flies in the face of the argument that Islam is for all times and for all places."
Azhar and many of his peers prefer not to think in terms of assimilating, which presupposes "letting your original identity be supplanted," as Azhar says. Instead, he speaks of himself and other Muslim Americans devising ways of "feeling comfortable and fully part of the social fabric of the US." They are doing this with what Samad calls the "American edge. Growing up in America," he says, "we know, 'go, show who you are.' "
Do not assimilate is not the American way!
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Originally Posted by jafar00
Summer of 69' , however a few years later I found out that I was only "mistaken".. 
--Tyr
