Based on a three-year ethnographic study of a steadily growing suburban Muslim immigrant congregation in Midwest America, this book examines the micro-processes through which a group of Muslim immigrants from diverse backgrounds negotiate multiple identities while seeking to become part of American society in the years following 9/11. The author looks into frictions, conflicts, and schisms within the community to debunk myths and provide a close-up look at the experiences of ordinary immigrant Muslims in the United States. Instead of treating Muslim immigrants as fundamentally different from others, this book views Muslims as multidimensional individuals whose identities are defined by a number of basic social attributes, including gender, race, social class, and religiosity. Each person portrayed in this ethnography is a complex individual, whose hierarchy of identities is shaped by particular events and the larger social environment. By focusing on a single congregation, this study controls variables related to the particularity of place and presents a “thick” description of interactions within small groups. This book argues that the frictions, conflicts and schisms are necessary as much as inevitable in cultivating a “composite culture” within the American Muslim community marked by diversity, leading it onto the path of Americanization.

This book is a collection of essays written over several years. Professor Sulayman S. Nyang has collected them to share with the reading public his insights and research findings on the emerging Muslim community in the United States of America. Working on the assumption that American Muslims are still unknown to most Americans, the author addresses several issues which are relevant to the whole discussion of religious plurality and multiculturalism in American society. Its contents range from Islam and the American Dream to the birth and development of the Muslim press in the United States. -- Publisher description.

Based on a three-year ethnographic study of a steadily growing suburban Muslim immigrant congregation in Midwest America, this book examines the micro-processes through which a group of Muslim immigrants from diverse backgrounds negotiate multiple identities while seeking to become part of American society in the years following 9/11. The author looks into frictions, conflicts, and schisms within the community to debunk myths and provide a close-up look at the experiences of ordinary immigrant Muslims in the United States. Instead of treating Muslim immigrants as fundamentally different from others, this book views Muslims as multidimensional individuals whose identities are defined by a number of basic social attributes, including gender, race, social class, and religiosity. Each person portrayed in this ethnography is a complex individual, whose hierarchy of identities is shaped by particular events and the larger social environment. By focusing on a single congregation, this study controls variables related to the particularity of place and presents a “thick” description of interactions within small groups. This book argues that the frictions, conflicts and schisms are necessary as much as inevitable in cultivating a “composite culture” within the American Muslim community marked by diversity, leading it onto the path of Americanization.

The American Dream is alive and well in this memoir of a Muslim immigrant from India who arrived planning to start a business, working so hard toward his personal goals that he even pumped gas and sold vacuum cleaners door to door. Victor Begg successfully built a thriving, regional chain of furniture stores. Along the way, he discovered that America’s greatest promise lies in building healthy communities with our neighbors. “In one book, I have come to understand much more about Islam, its followers and its teachings,” Rabbi Bruce Benson writes in the book’s Foreword. “I’ve come to realize that the challenges Muslim immigrants have faced are similar to what Jews and many other immigrant groups have experienced as they tried to settle in America. By the end of this book, I hurt with Victor and I laugh with him, because—as Americans—we share so much. We arehim. His journey is our journey. This is our story.” As Victor reached out to others, he used his entrepreneurial skills to co-found a new kind of ethnically diverse mosque as well as influential nonprofits designed to help others. Agreeing to serve as a regional spokesperson for Muslims, he got more than he bargained for—responding to tragedies that included 9/11 and a massacre in a Florida nightclub. “Person by person, friend by friend, good-hearted people change the world,” Victor writes in this memoir. His greatest talents turned out to be his ongoing ability to invite all of us to open our hearts, roll up our sleeves and reach out to help each other. “We need stories of our Muslim neighbors like Victor Begg to break down the walls that separate us and to educate us about those who might seem so strange, at first, but might become heart friends if given the chance,” writes the Rev. Daniel L. Buttry in the book’s Preface. “Along the way, we might discover some true American heroes. Victor is just such a hero: selfless, ordinary, but willing to risk to make our nation and our world a better place.” In this era when media outlets echo with extremist claims demonizing immigrants and Muslims, in particular, readers will discover how much American families share in our diversity of faiths and ethnicities. “A lot of foggy information clouds the American brain concerning Muslims. Victor’s representative story, his steady, 40-year love affair with America, blows much of it away,” writes Michael Wolfe, a filmmaker and author of One Thousand Roads to Mecca. “This book’s importance really is global, considering how often migrants, refugees and Muslims in particular are demonized by extremists around the world,” writes Larbi Mageri, a Muslim journalist based in Algeria who is a co-founder of the International Association of Religion Journalists. “One of the biggest challenges for Muslims who have never visited the U.S. is getting a clear sense of how Muslims live there in these turbulent times. There are so many conflicting claims and stories about life in the U.S. Through reading Victor’s true stories, I was able to experience American life for Muslims—without ever leaving my home. The lasting impression I am left with, after reading Victor’s memoir, is that anyone would be lucky to have a Muslim neighbor like this living next door.” Ultimately, Victor invites readers to pray with him: “God bless America.” As you follow him along this remarkable journey, as you catch his vision of a vibrant America—you are likely to find your own family and your own values mirrored in his story. You’re likely to want to share this book with friends and join in building a better world.

Looks at all aspects--political, religious, and social--of the Arab-American experience.

"Renewing the American Dream" provides a comprehensive analysis of the American condition using a unique three-part Renewal Framework, created by the authors. It frames the dimensions of America's current situation in holistic terms and brings the citizen's voice and the businessperson's perspective to the forefront in a national dialogue.

The inspiring and critically acclaimed all-American story of faith, family, hard work, and perseverance by Olympic fencer, activist, New York Times bestselling author, and Time "100 Most Influential People" honoree Ibtihaj Muhammad At the 2016 Olympic Games, Ibtihaj Muhammad smashed barriers as the first American to compete wearing hijab, and she made history as the first Muslim American woman to win a medal. But before she was an Olympian, activist, and entrepreneur, Ibtihaj was a young outsider trying to find her place. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, Ibtihaj was often the only African American Muslim student in her class. When she discovered and fell in love with fencing, a sport most popular with affluent young white people, she stood out even more. Rivals and teammates often pointed out Ibtihaj's differences, telling her she would never succeed. Yet she powered on, rising above bigotry and other obstacles on the path to pursue her dream. Ibtihaj's inspiring journey from humble beginnings to the international stage is told in her own words and enhanced with helpful advice and never-before-published photographs. Proud is an all-American tale of faith, family, hard work, and self-reliance.

There has never been an America without Muslims--so begins Amir Hussain, one of the most important scholars and teachers of Islam in America. Hussain, who is himself an American Muslim, contends that Muslims played an essential role in the creation and cultivation of the United States. Memories of 9/11 and the rise of global terrorism fuel concerns about American Muslims. The fear of American Muslims in part stems from the stereotype that all followers of Islam are violent extremists who want to overturn the American way of life. Inherent to this stereotype is the popular misconception that Islam is a new religion to America. In Muslims and the Making of America Hussain directly addresses both of these stereotypes. Far from undermining America, Islam and American Muslims have been, and continue to be, important threads in the fabric of American life. Hussain chronicles the history of Islam in America to underscore the valuable cultural influence of Muslims on American life. He then rivets attention on music, sports, and culture as key areas in which Muslims have shaped and transformed American identity. America, Hussain concludes, would not exist as it does today without the essential contributions made by its Muslim citizens. --J. Ryan Parker "The Midwest Book Review"

Muslims began arriving in the New World long before the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Kambiz GhaneaBassiri's fascinating book traces the history of Muslims in the United States and their different waves of immigration and conversion across five centuries, through colonial and antebellum America, through world wars and civil rights struggles, to the contemporary era. The book tells the often deeply moving stories of individual Muslims and their lives as immigrants and citizens within the broad context of the American religious experience, showing how that experience has been integral to the evolution of American Muslim institutions and practices. This is a unique and intelligent portrayal of a diverse religious community and its relationship with America. It will serve as a strong antidote to the current politicized dichotomy between Islam and the West, which has come to dominate the study of Muslims in America and further afield.

Challenging incarceration and policing was central to the postwar Black Freedom Movement. In this bold new political and intellectual history of the Nation of Islam, Garrett Felber centers the Nation in the Civil Rights Era and the making of the modern carceral state. In doing so, he reveals a multifaceted freedom struggle that focused as much on policing and prisons as on school desegregation and voting rights. The book examines efforts to build broad-based grassroots coalitions among liberals, radicals, and nationalists to oppose the carceral state and struggle for local Black self-determination. It captures the ambiguous place of the Nation of Islam specifically, and Black nationalist organizing more broadly, during an era which has come to be defined by nonviolent resistance, desegregation campaigns, and racial liberalism. By provocatively documenting the interplay between law enforcement and Muslim communities, Felber decisively shows how state repression and Muslim organizing laid the groundwork for the modern carceral state and the contemporary prison abolition movement which opposes it. Exhaustively researched, the book illuminates new sites and forms of political struggle as Muslims prayed under surveillance in prison yards and used courtroom political theater to put the state on trial. This history captures familiar figures in new ways--Malcolm X the courtroom lawyer and A. Philip Randolph the Harlem coalition builder--while highlighting the forgotten organizing of rank-and-file activists in prisons such as Martin Sostre. This definitive account is an urgent reminder that Islamophobia, state surveillance, and police violence have deep roots in the state repression of Black communities during the mid-20th century.