Another presidential election is upon us. A known American political adage claims that there is an inherent tendency in the American body politic to hone in toward the center; whenever the pendulum shifts too far in one direction, the political cognoscenti insist, a reversal is inevitable. For the past eight years the policy and political discourse in this country has systematically shifted to the far right. It is time a balance is restored. The tone of politics is often set at th ... » read more

On November 12, 2008, students, scholars, and interested citizens convened in East Lansing to hear perspectives from an array of experts on the greater Middle East. This symposium, "Challenges Facing the Next President in the Middle East," was hosted by Michigan State University's (MSU) Muslim Studies Program with generous cosponsorship by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America ( ... » read more

Muslim community-based health organizations have a history that spans at least two decades in the United States. This study is the first to closely examine how Muslim community-based health organizations (MCBHOs) have developed and are providing free or low-cost primary care services to low-income communities in four cities with large and diverse American-Muslim populations: Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Houston. This analysis of 10 prominent MCBHOs in these cities opens ... » read more

The Pew Research Center with assistance from ISPU conducted the first major national study of American Muslims. Pew conducted more than 55,000 interviews to obtain a national sample of 1,050 Muslims living in the United States.  ISPU and its scholars conducted the focus groups that helped inform the questionnaire for the national survey.  The resulting study, which draws on Pew's survey research among Muslims around the world, finds that Muslim Americans are a h ... » read more

Blaming Islam for the lack of democratic and scientific developments is not a new idea but an old enterprise, rooted in the nineteenth and twentieth century European Orientalism. The late Edward Said succeeded, in the 1980s, in unmasking Orientalist notions within Western academia and exposing its false pretense. In his seminal work, Orientalism, Said demonstrated that Orientalist views of Islam were used to justify the European colonial ambitions in the Muslim world. Said’s ... » read more