Suburban Islam

Download or read book Suburban Islam written by Justine Howe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many American Muslims, the 9/11 attacks and subsequent War on Terror marked a rise in intense scrutiny of their religious lives and political loyalties. In Suburban Islam, Justine Howe explores the rise of "third spaces," social surroundings that are neither home nor work, created by educated, middle-class American Muslims in the wake of increased marginalization. Third spaces provide them the context to challenge their exclusion from the American mainstream and to enact visions for American Islam different from those they encounter in their local mosques. One such third space is the Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb Foundation, a family-oriented Muslim institution in Chicago's suburbs. Howe uses Webb as a window into how Muslim American identity is formed through the interplay of communal interpretive practices, institutional rituals, and everyday life. The diverse Muslim families of the Webb Foundation have transformed hallmark secular suburbanite activities like football games, apple picking, and camping trips into acts of piety--rituals they describe as the enactment of "proper" American Muslim identity. Howe analyzes the relationship between these consumerist practices and the Webb Foundation's adult educational programs, through which participants critique what they call "cultural Islam." They envision creating an "indigenous" American Islam characterized by gender equality, reason, and pluralism. Through changing configurations of ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic class, Webb participants imagine a "seamless identity" that marries their Muslim faith to an idealized vision of suburban middle-class America. Suburban Islam captures the fragile optimism of educated, cosmopolitan American Muslims during the Obama presidency, as they imagined a post-racial, pluralistic, and culturally resonant American Islam. Even as this vision aims to be more inclusive, it also reflects enduring inequalities of race, class, and gender.

Download or read book Suburban Islam written by Justine Howe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many American Muslims, the 9/11 attacks and subsequent War on Terror marked a rise in intense scrutiny of their religious lives and political loyalties. In Suburban Islam, Justine Howe explores the rise of "third spaces," social surroundings that are neither home nor work, created by educated, middle-class American Muslims in the wake of increased marginalization. Third spaces provide them the context to challenge their exclusion from the American mainstream and to enact visions for American Islam different from those they encounter in their local mosques. One such third space is the Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb Foundation, a family-oriented Muslim institution in Chicago's suburbs. Howe uses Webb as a window into how Muslim American identity is formed through the interplay of communal interpretive practices, institutional rituals, and everyday life. The diverse Muslim families of the Webb Foundation have transformed hallmark secular suburbanite activities like football games, apple picking, and camping trips into acts of piety--rituals they describe as the enactment of "proper" American Muslim identity. Howe analyzes the relationship between these consumerist practices and the Webb Foundation's adult educational programs, through which participants critique what they call "cultural Islam." They envision creating an "indigenous" American Islam characterized by gender equality, reason, and pluralism. Through changing configurations of ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic class, Webb participants imagine a "seamless identity" that marries their Muslim faith to an idealized vision of suburban middle-class America. Suburban Islam captures the fragile optimism of educated, cosmopolitan American Muslims during the Obama presidency, as they imagined a post-racial, pluralistic, and culturally resonant American Islam. Even as this vision aims to be more inclusive, it also reflects enduring inequalities of race, class, and gender.

Download or read book Islam in Modern Societies written by Jamel Khermimoun PhD and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2018-07-06 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jamel Khermimoun considers that Muslims born in France and in the West now build their identity not from an imported model but from a strong sense of belonging to the nation, which they claim at the same time as their Islam. He wants to shed light on his reading of texts guided by the spirit of flexibility and openness advocated by Islam. We must listen carefully to what he has to say to us; one must know how to confront ones own point of view with ones own, and thus enter into a process of dialogue which, as he writes himself, creates real issues and is capable of appeasing the spirits (Jean Baubrot, professor emeritus of the Chair History and Sociology of Secularism [Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris] and author of several books). Through this book, the author has the merit of advocating the creation of a field of mutual acquaintance [. . .], a base of common values that can help Westerners and Muslims to get out of the tunnel of reciprocal prejudices, to protect together the true notion of secularism that calls for respect for individual choices and the defense of the right of expression (Claudia Mansueto, doctor of literature, professor at the University of Trieste). Jamel Khermimoun provides answers to the questions raised by the place of the Muslim religion in modern societies. For the author, Islam is not incompatible with secularism because it shares with it the most important values which make possible cohabitation, or even mutual enrichment. Instead of opposing them, it encourages us to reinvest the republican principles that make up our societies. [. . .] It is for those of us who want to understand the world in which they live. The links of Islam to modernity, to knowledge, to the idea of freedom, to the equality of the sexes, to violence, to fanaticism, to racism, are here dealt with frankness and clarity (Victor Loupan, journalist, author, former international reporter at Figaro Magazine).

Download or read book Islam in Black America written by Edward E. Curtis IV and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the most prominent figures in African-American Islam have been dismissed as Muslim heretics and cultists. Focusing on the works of five of these notable figures—Edward W. Blyden, Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Wallace D. Muhammad—author Edward E. Curtis IV examines the origin and development of modern African-American Islamic thought. Curtis notes that intellectual tensions in African-American Islam parallel those of Islam throughout its history—most notably, whether Islam is a religion for a particular group of people or whether it is a religion for all people. In the African-American context, such tensions reflect the struggle for black liberation and the continuing reconstruction of black identity. Ultimately, Curtis argues, the interplay of particular and universal interpretations of the faith can allow African-American Islam a vision that embraces both a specific group of people and all people.

Download or read book Peaceful Families written by Juliane Hammer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Peaceful Families, Hammer chronicles and examines the efforts, stories, arguments, and strategies of individuals and organizations doing Muslim anti-domestic violence work in the U.S.

Download or read book Inequality in the Promised Land written by R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-25 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nestled in neighborhoods of varying degrees of affluence, suburban public schools are typically better resourced than their inner-city peers and known for their extracurricular offerings and college preparatory programs. Despite the glowing opportunities that many families associate with suburban schooling, accessing a district's resources is not always straightforward, particularly for black and poorer families. Moving beyond class- and race-based explanations, Inequality in the Promised Land focuses on the everyday interactions between parents, students, teachers, and school administrators in order to understand why resources seldom trickle down to a district's racial and economic minorities. Rolling Acres Public Schools (RAPS) is one of the many well-appointed suburban school districts across the United States that has become increasingly racially and economically diverse over the last forty years. Expanding on Charles Tilly's model of relational analysis and drawing on 100 in-depth interviews as well participant observation and archival research, R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy examines the pathways of resources in RAPS. He discovers that—due to structural factors, social and class positions, and past experiences—resources are not valued equally among families and, even when deemed valuable, financial factors and issues of opportunity hoarding often prevent certain RAPS families from accessing that resource. In addition to its fresh and incisive insights into educational inequality, this groundbreaking book also presents valuable policy-orientated solutions for administrators, teachers, activists, and politicians.

Download or read book Muslims' Place in the American Public Square written by Zahid Hussain Bukhari and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This, the first volume from the Muslims in the American Public Square research project, gives theoretical and demographic portraits of Muslims in the American civil landscape.