To those who study the integration of immigrants in Western countries, both Muslims and Canada are seen to be exceptions to the rule. Muslims are often perceived as unable or unwilling to integrate, mostly due to their religious beliefs, and Canada is portrayed as a model for successful integration. This book addresses the intersection of these two types of exceptionalism through an empirical study of the experiences of Muslims in Canada. Replete with practical implications, the analysis shows that instead of fixating on religion, the focus should be on the economic and social challenges faced by Muslims in Canada.

In Producing Islam(s) in Canada, twenty-nine interdisciplinary scholars analyze how academics have thought, researched and written on Islam and Muslims in Canada since the 1970s.

Muslim communities have become increasingly salient in the social, cultural, and political landscape in Canada largely due to the aftermath of 9/11 and the racial politics of the ongoing “war on terror” that have cast Muslims as the new “enemy within.” Islam in the Hinterlands features empirical studies and critical essays by some of Canada’s top Muslim Studies scholars who examine how gender, public policy, media, and education shape the Muslim experience in Canada. Touching on much-debated issues, such as the shar’ia controversy, veiling in public schools, media portrayals of Muslims, and anti-terrorism legislation, this book takes a distinctly anti-racist, feminist standpoint in exploring the reality of the Muslim diaspora. A timely collection addressing some of the most hotly contested issues in recent cultural history, Islam in the Hinterlands will be essential reading for academics as well as general readers interested in Islamic studies, multiculturalism, and social justice.

Uninformed and reactionary responses in the years following the events of 9/11 and the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ have greatly affected ideas of citizenship and national belonging. In Securitized Citizens, Baljit Nagra, develops a new critical analysis of the ideas dominant groups and institutions try to impose on young Canadian Muslims and how in turn they contest and reconceptualize these ideas. Nagra conducted fifty in-depth interviews with young Muslim adults in Vancouver and Toronto and her analysis reveals how this group experienced national belonging and exclusion in light of the Muslim ‘other’, how they reconsidered their cultural and religious identity, and what their experiences tell us about contemporary Canadian citizenship. The rich and lively interviews in Securitized Citizens successfully capture the experiences and feelings of well-educated, second-generation, and young Canadian Muslims. Nagra acutely explores how racial discourses in a post–9/11 world have affected questions of race relations, religious identity, nationalism, white privilege, and multiculturalism.

Why “the Muslim question” is really about the West and its own anxieties—not Islam In this fearless, original book, Anne Norton demolishes the notion that there is a “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam. What is really in question, she argues, is the West’s commitment to its own ideals: to democracy and the Enlightenment trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the most fundamental sense, the Muslim question is about the values not of Islamic, but of Western, civilization.

Religious schooling in Canada has been a controversial subject since the secularization of the public school system, but there has been little scholarship on Islamic education. In this ethnographic study of four full-time Islamic schools, Jasmin Zine explores the social, pedagogical, and ideological functions of these alternative, and religiously-based educational institutions. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork and interviews with forty-nine participants, Canadian Islamic Schools provides significant insight into the role and function that Islamic schools have in Diasporic, Canadian, educational, and gender-related contexts. Discussing issues of cultural preservation, multiculturalism, secularization, and assimiliation, Zine considers pertinent topics such as the Eurocentricism of Canada's public schools and the social reproduction of Islamic identity. She further examines the politics of piety, veiling, and gender segregation paying particular attention to the ways in which gendered identities are constructed within the practices of Islamic schools and how these narratives shape and inform the negotiation of gender roles among both boys and girls. A fascinating and informative study of religious-based education, Canadian Islamic Schools is essential reading for educators, sociologists, as well as those interested in Immigration and Diaspora Studies.

"This book is a critical analysis of a Muslim group in Canada that has been working to challenge Islamophobia in their community. An important part of their anti-racist work involves dealing with the internal conflicts and dilemmas created by the differences among the members of the group. The coalition has been successful in developing several educational initiatives, in part, because they have been able to negotiate internal differences in ways that do not fragment the group. Through discussions with members of the coalition the author explores the tensions that arise from these internal differences, and in doing so demonstrates the diversity of Muslim identity - and challenges the stereotypical image that has permeated the West for centuries."--Pub. desc.