ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the meeting of Asian-Indian Muslim leaders and scholars in a conference at Stanford University. Asian Indians exercised significant leadership in the formation of mosques and in national umbrella organizations during the nascent period of development of Islamic infrastructure. A purpose for the meeting was to survey, understand and evaluate the role of Asian-Indian Muslims in American society and within the House of Islam. Muslims from India wear the label 'Made in the USA' because as a group Asian Indians were created by the preference categories established in the 1965 immigration law and by their personal initiative. The result is that Asian-Indian Muslims are not socially representative either of Muslims in India or of Muslims in general. The complexity of potential elements of identity in group formation results in four types of religious and cultural organizations with typical strategies of adaptation that is not mutually exclusive: ecumenical, national, ethnic, and sectarian.
