“I’ve been here for five years,” he recalls, his tone more of fact than fondness. “To relieve my boredom, I come out of my room and I go to the computer room or the (in-house) library, and there’s a lot of activity there. There’s not a person in this building that I don’t know.”

Shamsudeen is part of a growing demographic in the United States: elderly Muslims who have come to depend on senior care institutions, instead of the traditional family, to survive.

With the rising cost of living and the competitiveness of the American lifestyle, Muslim families, particularly immigrant families, are finding that caring for older parents at home is no longer viable and are increasingly turning to elder care facilities and nursing homes to discharge this sacred trust.

This, coupled with the astonishing lack of programs and services for Muslim seniors in their own communities, has created a sub-ummah of the aged – isolated, lonely and largely forgotten.

The many faces of elder Muslims

In the general non-Muslim society, there are countless programs and services geared toward the oldest members of society. Many are governmental, while others are private or religiously funded by such groups as the Catholic Church or various Jewish and Protestant organizations.

To explain the lack of attention given to Muslim seniors and the challenges they face in the American context is not easy, but one theory suggests it may be because of their relatively small number.

Muslim Americans are significantly younger than the non-Muslims population. More than half of adult Muslims (56 percent) are between the ages of 18 and 39; among non-Muslims, just 40 percent of Americans are in this category.

Only 13 percent of Muslim adults are ages 55 and older in the broader population, while 30 percent of adults fall into this age group, according to a survey on Muslim Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Muslim senior citizens generally fall into three main categories: The first are those who immigrated to the United States at the turn of the last century. The second are indigenous Muslims who converted to Islam and fall into the 55 and older group. The third are the parents of those who came to America during the Muslim immigration wave of the 1960s and ’70s.

Immigrant Muslim seniors

This group is predominantly seniors brought from overseas by their children. Though the intent is for the older parents to be taken care of by their children, as is the custom throughout most of the Muslim world, many in this group find that they quickly become babysitters for their grandchildren or housekeepers for the family, a role many do not mind and that would likely take on even in their native lands.

But the American twist on this scenario is that as their grandchildren grow older and leave home, these seniors become increasing irrelevant.

 “Back home, they would still have close interaction with extended family as well as neighbors,” says Santa Clarita-based Muslim social gerontologist Malikah Adilah. “In

America, the extended family is busy at work, and because of language barriers, they cannot communicate with their neighbors.”

Still, other challenges exist, says Adilah. “You see a lot of intergenerational issues when you have multiple generations living in the same household. You have an older parent, you have a younger parent and then you have their children. The dynamics are that the children are more assimilated into American culture, whereas their parents, the middle group, are rooted in their culture but also trying to assimilate to the new society, while the older parents are completely rooted in their culture ways. This poses many problems.”

Convert Muslim seniors

This group is comprised mainly of African Americans who, like Shamsudeen., converted to Islam during the wave of conversion between 1930 and 1975. These pioneers are now fully entering their golden years and are among the most isolated because many do not have Muslim family members upon whom they can rely.

“I am divorced and have no children. I have no family in California,” says Abdul-Hakeem. “My mother had only four children, and only two of us are Muslim. My middle sister is Muslim. She lives in Philadelphia and owns the Garden of Bilal Restaurant there.  I go visit once a year.”

But Shamsudeen is fortunate in that his living arrangement at the Potiker Senior Residence allows him to be in the company of peers, even though they are non-Muslim.

Not as healthy as he once was, he is still mobile and manages to make it to Friday prayers.

“I’m happy when people call me up and say ‘Shamsudeen, I’m coming over to take you to breakfast.” I love invitations. I don’t push invitations on people, but I love it when people come by like my friend, Luqman. He’ll come by and say ‘I’m coming to get you to spend the weekend with me at my house. I’ll be around his children, and they’ll show me their homework. It’s very, very enjoyable.”  

Caring for the aged

“He said, ’My Lord, the bones have turned brittle in my body, and my hair is aflame with gray…’ ” Qur’an 19:4

The question of caring for the aged is complex and differs little between Muslims and non-Muslims. Pertinent issues include:

• Housing

• Legal help and support

• Help with financial responsibilities

• Arranging resident nursing care or nursing home placement

• Dealing with mental health and medical issues related to aging such as dementia, Alzheimer's, etc.

• Meeting their socialization needs

• Helping the elderly make decisions, including those about dying, i.e. living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc.

At issue is the fact that almost no agencies have been set up within the Muslim community to comprehensively address all of these concerns.

Retirement homes

Though Great Britain is home to “The Muslim Elderly Project,” which provides weekly social and economic activities for older Muslims, and several day care centers specifically tailored to the needs of a skyrocketing population of senior Muslim men and women, such facilities are alien to American Muslim seniors.

Nafisa Wadalawala is the Senior Activity coordinator at Access California Services, a nonprofit social service entity serving Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in Anaheim.

She recalls a conversation that took place some 10 years ago when a man walked into a class she was attending.

“He said, ‘My heart is crying today.’  Everybody asked ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘I just visited a senior home, and I saw a Muslim woman who was being given bath by a man.’ I was shaken. I said ‘Oh my God, this could happen to me in this country.’ So I decided I wanted to do something for the senior community. I thought we should have at least a senior facility for women, so I started looking for a facility.”

Wadalawala is currently seeking funds to rent a wing of the Aliso Viejo Parkway Senior Center in Laguna Niguel that will be dedicated solely to caring for Muslim seniors in need of assisted living.

The comfortable, three-story facility is fully staffed, and Wadalawala has plans for a wide program of activities, health care and, of course, halal food. The facility can hold 86 Muslim men and women.

“Our community needs this kind of service,” she says. “The Iranians have their day care, the Latinos have theirs, the Jewish people have theirs. Only we do not.”

Not everyone shares this opinion. “I hope and pray that we Muslims should do our best to respect the elderly and especially our parents. It is a bad habit to send our elderly to senior citizens homes,” writes Dr. Ahmad H. Sakr. “It is also bad to get rid of our parents and send them to nursing homes. The presence of our parents in our own houses is a blessing from Allah (SWT). Their presence will bring peace, happiness, concord, tranquility, mercy and reward from Allah.”

Wadalawala acknowledges such opinions, but points to reality. “The director of our women’s mortuary organization has told me that she is picking up 80 percent of the seniors of our community from senior citizens homes run by Christians. What are we thinking?”

The golden years

“…And some of you are called to die, and some are sent back to the feeblest of age, so that they know nothing after having known so much …” Qur’an 22:55

Besides health issues, loneliness is probably the biggest problem facing the largest number of Muslim seniors. Loneliness tends to lead to self-neglect and, in many cases, severe depression. Abdul-Hakeem sees a lot of this at his senior complex.

 “A lot of my neighbors get depressed and they get withdrawn. They stay in their rooms. Sometimes a patient dies and that patient is in his room a week or two before they discover his body. This is very, very bad because they have to bring special people in for sanitation purposes to remove the body. This will never happen to me because if someone hasn’t seen me in two weeks, they’ll call the building and ask, ‘Have you seen Shamsudeen? We haven't heard from him in a couple days?’ ”

Programs and support

The mosque is supposed to be the social center of the Muslim community. Now, some Islamic centers and mosques are beginning to address the social needs of their elderly members.

One of these is the Islamic Center of Irvine, where a monthly program for older Muslims has been active since the center was built three years ago.

“We wanted to get the elderly of the community together and provide a platform for them to socialize and to connect with the members of their own age group. They are very isolated and sometimes they meet only in their particular cultural circle. In this way, they can meet in a very relaxed and open atmosphere in the multipurpose room. It's a social event and an educational event as well as health consciousness and to just break bread together,” says Shaikh Sadullah Khan. “They often feel very lost. They feel left by the wayside. They don’t get included much, except at weddings and so on. They are made to feel redundant in some ways, as if they are waiting for death to come. Our community is lacking in this area. We always have many programs for the youth, maybe four or five programs, but for the elderly, how many?”

The group of 15 to 20 seniors meet on the first Saturday of each month over refreshments provided by the center. Khan may give a small Islamic talk or a guest speaker may cover a health-related topic and then an exercise, either mental or physical, will be conducted, after which attendees can mingle.

Akbar Rizvi is a member of the Shura Council of the Islamic Society of Corona/Norco and helps coordinate the ‘Elder’s Group,’ a type of service club that gives seniors the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the masjid and to the larger community.

“A lot of retired Muslims are sitting at home, watching TV,” said Rizvi. “They have a lot of experience and talent. It’s a waste. So we formed a group in September of 2007. We have 25 members, and we meet every other month.”

The ISCN Elder Group members were participants in Humanitarian Day in Los Angeles, where they assisted in the feeding of the homeless. Some of their future plans include cleaning the masjid, volunteering in civic groups and other avenues that will keep older Muslims active and make use of the wealth of talent and experience that they necessarily bring to any project or endeavor.

The Muslim American Society Girl Scout Troop based out of the Islamic Center of San Diego has recently taken on a project that, though not specifically targeting Muslim seniors, might be a step in that direction.

  “The Girl Scout project started last summer when San Diego County began a new program called ‘The Guardian Angel Program’,” says troop leader Lallia Allali. “This program is encouraging the children to spend time with the elderly people in the nursing homes. The Girl Scouts, if they volunteer for three hours a month, will earn a ‘Guardian Angel’ patch (for their uniforms).”

The troop’s first visit was to the Kearney Mesa Convalescent Center, where the scouts’ activities included crafts, making cards and exchanging them with the residents, and reading stories.

“Besides questions about the headscarf, they were very happy the children came to see them,” Allali says.

Maybe some day the Girl Scouts will visit Shamsudeen’s retirement home. For now he will have to be content socializing with his non-Muslim neighbors.

“When you're younger, you have energy to burn. You see little children, they have so much energy and life. Allah speaks about remembering Him in the days of your youth because, you know, you're strong. We become older, we don't have that strength.”

 He also has some sound advice for the younger generation. “One thing we should do when people get elderly is try to understand their situation. If a person is competent, don't be so quick to throw them into a nursing home. If you find that they can no longer hold their urine, put a large diaper under them if they have that problem. Don't call the ambulance and have them sent to a nursing home because you just can't stand that. Understand their situation, because you might be in that same situation one day.”