Federation of Islamic Associations
(acronym: FIA)
One of the first organizations created to link dif-
ferent Muslim groups in North America was the
Federation of Islamic Associations. It started in
1952 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, under the name of
the International Muslim Society. Its membership
consisted mostly of people of Syrian and Lebanese
descent living in the Northeast and Midwest. The
mosqUes represented by its early members were
those of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Dearborn, Michigan,
Michigan City, Indiana, and Quincy, Massachu-
setts. The group’s purpose was to promote Muslim
self-awareness and to help Muslims adapt to life in
the United states and canada. At its third annual
meeting in Chicago in 1954, the group’s name
was changed to Federation of Islamic Associa-
tions. During that year, it appealed to the Ameri-
can president, Dwight Eisenhower (r. 1952–60),
for recognition of Islam as a religion by the U.S.
armed forces. As it grew, the FIA offered informa-
tion about Islam to non-Muslims, organized social
events where Muslim youths could meet future
spouses, monitored media coverage of Islam and
Middle Eastern politics, and established full-time
accredited schools for Muslims. The main publica-
tion of the FIA was the Muslim Star. In the 1960s
and 1970s, it worked together with the mUslim
stUdents association (MSA), which was based
on college and university campuses in the United
States and Canada. The FIA attempted in the
1970s to conduct a census of Muslims living in the
United States and to standardize the curriculum
for religious education classes held at mosques and
Islamic centers, but these efforts were not success-
ful. There is still no widely accepted estimate of
the number of Muslims living in the United States.
The FIA’s effectiveness has diminished greatly
since the 1970s. The MSA and the islamic society
oF north america (ISNA) have largely replaced it,
and publication of the Muslim Star has ceased.
Further reading: Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri, Competing
Visions of Islam in the United States: A Study of Los Ange-
les (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997); Jane I.
Smith, Islam in America (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1999).Fez
Fez is a city in northern morocco that has been
the country’s political and intellectual capital for
much of its history and remains famous for its old
city (medina), declared a world heritage site by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) in 1981. Today it has a
population of nearly 1 million (2004), composed
of mostly ethnic Arabs and Berbers. The majority
of residents are Sunni Muslims, though there is a
sizeable Jewish community that has lived there for
centuries. The maliki legal school is the predomi-
nant one in the city, as it is in most of the rest of
North Africa.
The history of Fez began in the late eighth
century, when the first leaders of the Idrisid
dynasty (789–926) established the city at the edge
of the Saiss valley. Possessing a strategic location
in the western corridor between the Mediterra-
nean Sea and the Sahara, Fez became the northern
terminus for the Saharan caravan trade and also
benefited from its location near one of Morocco’s
richest agricultural regions. Over the centuries,
Fez was ruled by a number of different dynas-
ties, none of which left their mark on the city to
the same extent as the berber Marinid dynasty
(1196–1464). Between 1248 and 1465, the Mari-
nids embellished their capital with many of the
exquisite architectural monuments for which it
is known. In addition, Fez was the country’s
intellectual capital, largely due to the presence
of the Qarawiyyin University, which became the
center of learning for western Islamdom. During
this same period, the Spanish Reconquista drove
Andalusian Muslims to North Africa, where many
settled in Fez, making it the repository of the
legacy of Hispano-Islamicate culture.
After the fall of the Marinids, Fez’s fortunes
declined, although it has retained its reputationK 236 Federation of Islamic Associations