Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation

Eboo Patel

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-5

Chapter 6-Conclusion

Key Figures

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Key Figures

Eboo Patel

Patel is an American-born man of Ismaili descent. Acts of Faith traces his path from growing up in Illinois to becoming the founder of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based group seeking to encourage young people to engage in interfaith work and activism. As a boy, Patel is aware that his family is Muslim, but his faith has more to do with rituals than with spirituality. As he matures, he struggles with his lack of identity. Although he belongs to activist groups and various service-based communes, he has no sense of what he considers real community. He visits India, has an audience with the Dalai Lama, and forms the IFYC. Eventually, he experiences a spiritual awakening, marries a Muslim woman, and embraces his identity as a Muslim living in America, seeking to reach young people before they can become radicalized.

His work with young people is important to him because he sees himself in the stories of young Muslims who were radicalized and perform violent acts, like the 9/11 hijackers and the London bombers of 2007. Growing up, Patel feels angry and that he is an outsider with no community or identity of his own. As an adult, he knows too well how it easy it would have been for someone to radicalize him. Only through interactions with peaceful religious leaders like Brother Wayne Teasdale is he able to release his anger. Patel views helping young people with the same struggles as a “calling,” rather than work (124).

Eboo Patel’s Parents

Patel’s parents are emblematic of what Patel views as one common trajectory for Indians who immigrate to America. They arrive in America with much of their Islamic tradition intact but gradually treat the ascension of the American corporate ladder as a new religion. Eboo’s parents are sometimes proud of their Islamic heritage, but they spend more time thinking about success, unless they are trying to impart lessons to Patel by using Muslim folktales or stories about how much his grandfather sacrificed in India to show them how to work. But Patel’s doubts about faith and his burgeoning, directionless anger when he is in high school distress them both. His parents are split on their view of pluralism. Patel’s mother hopes that her son will learn Jewish and Hindu stories and songs at the YMCA, believing they will enrich his life and expand his perspective. His father worries that what Patel learns at the YMCA might take him away from Islam.

Mama

Patel’s grandmother, Mama, lives in India and is Patel’s closest tie to a practicing Muslim who is entirely devoted to the faith. When Patel is a child, Mama is very stern with him when it comes to the tenets of Islam—when Patel is 8 years old, she makes him promise that he will marry an Ismaili, someone from their sect of Islam, or it she will be disappointed. When Patel visits India at 21, he is conflicted about his feelings for her and her perspectives on class. Mama has servants from a lower class of the caste Patel initially views the idea of three people waiting on one as a horrible injustice. He wonders if she understands how selfish it is to have three servants who do nothing but help one person. But when Patel learns that Mama has a forty-year history of taking in at-risk women, though it may be dangerous for her, and that she is viewed as a “living saint” (109) by professors of Islamic history, he is astonished. Far from being an example of intractable arrogance that allows the Indian caste system to persist, Mama is willing to help anyone in need because “that is what Muslims do” (99). She shows Patel what faith in action looks like.