In Varieties of Muslim Experience, anthropologist Lawrence Rosen explores aspects of Arab Muslim life that are, at first glance, perplexing to Westerners. He ranges over such diverse topics as why Arabs eschew portraiture, why a Muslim scientist might be attracted to fundamentalism, and why the Prophet must be protected from blasphemous cartoons. What connects these seemingly disparate features of Arab social, political, and cultural life? Rosen argues that the common thread is the importance Arabs place on the negotiation of interpersonal relationships—a link that helps to explain actions as seemingly unfathomable as suicide bombing and as elusive as Quranic interpretation. Written with eloquence and a deep knowledge of the entire spectrum of Muslim experience, Rosen’s book will interest not only anthropologists and Islamicists but anyone invested in better understanding the Arab world.

On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four airplanes and carried out attacks on the United States, killing more than three thousand Americans and sending the country reeling. Three days after the attacks, President George W. Bush declared, "This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace." Yet in the days following, Bush declared a "War on Terror," which would result in years of Muslims being targeted on the basis of collective punishment and scapegoating. In 2009, President Barack Obama said, "America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace." Instead, Obama perpetuated the War on Terror's infrastructure that Bush had put in place, rendering his words entirely empty. President Donald Trump's overtly Islamophobic rhetoric added fuel to the fire, stoking public fears to justify the continuation of the War his predecessors had committed to. In Innocent Until Proven Muslim, scholar and organizer Dr.Maha Hilal tells the powerful story of two decades of the War on Terror, exploring how the official narrative has justified the creation of a sprawling apparatus of state violence rooted in Islamophobia and excused its worst abuses. Hilal offers not only an overview of the many iterations of the War on Terror in law and policy, but also examines how Muslim Americans have internalized oppression, how some influential Muslim Americans have perpetuated collective responsibility, and how the lived experiences of Muslim Americans reflect what it means to live as part of a "suspect" community. Along the way, this marginalized community gives voice to lessons that we can all learn from their experiences, and to what it would take to create a better future. Twenty years after the tragic events of 9/11, we must look at its full legacy in order to move toward a United States that is truly inclusive and unified.

Muhammad - Islam spreads - What Muslims believe - Mosques - Marriage - Family life - Muslim women - Festivals - Islam today.

This book examines the lives of the Malay and Cham Muslims in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and examines how they co-exist and live in societies that are dominated by an alternative consensus and are illiberal and non-democratic in nature. Focusing on two major Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, both of whom live as minorities in societies that are not democratic and have a history of hostility and repression towards non-conforming ideas, the book explains their circumstances, the choices and life decisions they have to make, and how minorities can thrive in an unfriendly, monocultural environment. Based on original field work and research, the author analyses how people live, and how they adapt to societies which are not motivated by Western liberal ideals of multiculturalism. The book also offers a unique perspective on how Islam develops in an environment where it is seen as alien and disloyal. A useful contribution analyzing historical and post-colonial experiences of Muslim minorities and how they survive and evolve over the course of state monopoly in mainland Southeast Asia, this book will be of interest to academics working on Muslim minorities, Asian Religion and Southeast Asian Studies.

Interviews with young Muslims in Chicago explore the complexity of identities formed at the crossroads of Islam and hip hop This groundbreaking study of race, religion and popular culture in the 21st century United States focuses on a new concept, “Muslim Cool.” Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic US Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between “Black” and “Muslim.” Thus, by countering the notion that Blackness and the Muslim experience are fundamentally different, Muslim Cool poses a critical challenge to dominant ideas that Muslims are “foreign” to the United States and puts Blackness at the center of the study of American Islam. Yet Muslim Cool also demonstrates that connections to Blackness made through hip hop are critical and contested—critical because they push back against the pervasive phenomenon of anti-Blackness and contested because questions of race, class, gender, and nationality continue to complicate self-making in the United States.

This book provides the first in-depth look at Muslim life and institutions forming in North America. It considers the range of Islamic life in North America with its different racial-ethnic and cultural identities, customs, and religious orientations. Issues of acculturation, ethnicity, orthodoxy, and the changing roles of women are brought into focus. The authors provide insight into the lives of recent immigrants who are asking what is Islamically appropriate in a non-Muslim environment. Contrasts are drawn between Sunni and Shi'i groups, and attention is given to the activities of some Sufi organizations. The growing Islamic community among African-American Muslims is examined, including the followers of Warith Deen Muhammed and the sectarians identified with black power, such as the Nation of Islam, Darul Islam, and the Five Percenters. The authors document the challenges and issues that American Muslims face, such as prejudice and racism; pressure from overseas Muslims; dress and education; the influence of Islamic revivalism on the development of the community in this country; and the maintenance of Muslim identity amidst the pressure for assimilation.

In the aftermath of 9/11, many Arab and Muslim Americans came under intense scrutiny by federal and local authorities, as well as their own neighbors, on the chance that they might know, support, or actually be terrorists. As Louise Cainkar observes, even U.S.-born Arabs and Muslims were portrayed as outsiders, an image that was amplified in the months after the attacks. She argues that 9/11 did not create anti-Arab and anti-Muslim suspicion; rather, their socially constructed images and social and political exclusion long before these attacks created an environment in which misunderstanding and hostility could thrive and the government could defend its use of profiling. Combining analysis and ethnography, Homeland Insecurity provides an intimate view of what it means to be an Arab or a Muslim in a country set on edge by the worst terrorist attack in its history. Focusing on the metropolitan Chicago area, Cainkar conducted more than a hundred research interviews and five in-depth oral histories. In this, the most comprehensive ethnographic study of the post-9/11 period for American Arabs and Muslims, native-born and immigrant Palestinians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, and others speak candidly about their lives as well as their experiences with government, public mistrust, discrimination, and harassment after 9/11. The book reveals that Arab Muslims were more likely to be attacked in certain spatial contexts than others and that Muslim women wearing the hijab were more vulnerable to assault than men, as their head scarves were interpreted by some as a rejection of American culture. Even as the 9/11 Commission never found any evidence that members of Arab- or Muslim-American communities were involved in the attacks, respondents discuss their feelings of insecurity—a heightened sense of physical vulnerability and exclusion from the guarantees of citizenship afforded other Americans. Yet the vast majority of those interviewed for Homeland Insecurity report feeling optimistic about the future of Arab and Muslim life in the United States. Most of the respondents talked about their increased interest in the teachings of Islam, whether to counter anti-Muslim slurs or to better educate themselves. Governmental and popular hostility proved to be a springboard for heightened social and civic engagement. Immigrant organizations, religious leaders, civil rights advocates, community organizers, and others defended Arabs and Muslims and built networks with their organizations. Local roundtables between Arab and Muslim leaders, law enforcement, and homeland security agencies developed better understanding of Arab and Muslim communities. These post-9/11 changes have given way to stronger ties and greater inclusion in American social and political life. Will the United States extend its values of freedom and inclusion beyond the politics of "us" and "them" stirred up after 9/11? The answer is still not clear. Homeland Insecurity is keenly observed and adds Arab and Muslim American voices to this still-unfolding period in American history.