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Muslim American Experience Bibliography

Books Addressing Muslims or Islam in the United States (1966–2023)

For a variety of reasons, Muslims in America are in the public spotlight. As a result, the demand for information and analysis on Muslims and Islam in the United States has risen. At ISPU, we conduct objective, solution-seeking research that empowers American Muslims to develop their community and fully contribute to democracy and pluralism in the United States. It is our hope that these materials will allow a host of interested parties to do the same. In an effort to provide a resource for academics, advocates, journalists, students and others, we created this bibliography of over 300 books published between 1966 and 2023 focused on Muslims and Islam in the United States. We did not include books that focus primarily on Islam and/or Muslims outside of the United States. The bibliography is categorized by subject matter and chronologically with the most recent publications first. The categories include anthropology, biography, health, history, law, political science, reference, religious studies, and sociology.

A collage of six books about Muslims or Islam in America, including the cover of " Muslim cool: Race, religion, and hip hop in the United States", which features a Black Muslim woman wearing a blue and yellow hair wrap and large gold hoop earring, staring at the reader

This bibliography was co-authored by Sahar F. Aziz, Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law, and Cynthia Burress, Instructional Assistant Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law. If you find any relevant books are not included in this list, we welcome you contact Professor Aziz (saziz@law.tamu.edu) or Professor Burress (cburress@law.tamu.edu) with the citation of your suggested book addition.

Katrina Daly Thompson, Muslims on the Margins: Creating Queer Religious Community in North America (2022).

Summary: This text draws extensively from conversations and interviews conducted both in person in North America and online in several international communities. Writing in a compelling narrative style that centers the real experiences and diverse perspectives of nonconformist Muslims-New York University Press.

Keywords: LGBTQI, anthropology

 

Anna Bigelow, Islam Through Objects (2021).

Summary: By bringing together a multitude of perspectives and disciplines ranging from social and cultural anthropology to history, from folklore to art history and ecology, the volume offers a very inspiring contribution to widening the scope of Islamic studies-Bloomsbury Academic Press.

Keywords: anthropology, history, folklore, art history

 

Alisa Perkins, Muslim American City: Gender and Religion in Metro Detroit (Press, 2020).

Summary: Muslim American City explores how debates over Muslim Americans’ use of both public and political space have challenged and ultimately reshaped the boundaries of urban belonging. -New York University Press.

Keywords: Women in Islam, Anthropology, Sociology of Religion 

 

Sophia Rose Arjana, Veiled superheroes (2018)

Summary: “This groundbreaking study examines Muslim female superheroes within a matrix of Islamic theology, feminism, and contemporary political discourse. Through a close reading of texts including Ms. Marvel, Qahera, and The 99, Sophia Rose Arjana argues that these powerful and iconic characters reflect independence and agency, reflecting the diverse lives of Muslim girls and women in the world today.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Islam; Feminism; Popular; Culture

 

Merin Shobhana Xavier, Sacred spaces and transnational networks in American Sufism (2018)

Summary: “This book sheds light on the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (BMF), one of North America’s major Sufi movements, and one of the first to establish a Sufi shrine in the region. It provides the first comprehensive overview of the BMF, offering new insight into its historical development and practices, and charting its establishment in both the United States and Sri Lanka. …The book focuses on the transnational spaces and ritual activities of Bawa’s communities, mapping parallel shrines and pilgrimages.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Islamic Shrines; Anthropology; Sufism

 

Lara Mahalingappa et al., Supporting Muslim students: A guide to understanding the diverse issues of today’s classrooms (2017)

Summary: “[P]rovides school professionals – including teachers, principals, counselors, psychologists, and administrators – with a practical guide for supporting Muslim students in PK-12 schools.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Daan Beekers and David Kloos, eds., Straying from the straight path: How senses of failure invigorate lived religion (2017)

Summary: “Straying from the Straight Path breaks with this tendency by examining how self-perceived failure is, in many cases, part and parcel of religious practice and experience. …this volume gives full attention to moral failure as a constitutive and potentially energizing force in the religious lives of both Muslims and Christians in different parts of the world.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Anthropology; Comparative; Religion

 

Jeffrey Einboden, The Islamic lineage of American literary culture: Muslim sources from the Revolution to Reconstruction (2016)

Summary: “Uncovering Islam’s little known yet formative impact on U.S. literary culture, this book traces genealogies of Islamic influence that span America’s earliest generations, reaching from the Revolution to Reconstruction.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Culture

 

Anabel Inge, The making of a Salafi Muslim woman: Paths to conversion (2016)

Summary: “Drawing on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork in London, she [Anabel Inge] examines why Salafism is attracting so many young Somalis, Afro-Caribbean converts, and others. But she also reveals the personal dilemmas they confront.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Salafism; Wahhabism; United Kingdom; Convert

 

Adeline Masquelier, and Benjamin F. Soares, eds., Muslim youth and the 9/11 generation (2016)

Summary: A new cohort of Muslim youth has arisen since the attacks of 9/11, facilitated by the proliferation of recent communication technologies and the Internet… These scholars focus on young Muslims in a variety of settings in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America and explore the distinct pastimes and performances, processes of civic engagement and political action, entrepreneurial and consumption practices, forms of self-fashioning, and aspirations and struggles in which they engage as they seek to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Middle East Studies; Religion

 

Aisha Khan, Islam and the Americas (2015)

Summary: “Together, these essays challenge the typical view of Islam as timeless, predictable, and opposed to Western worldviews and value systems, showing how this religious tradition continually engages with local and global issues of culture, gender, class, and race.” -Amazon.com

Keywords: Ethnography; Muslim minority; Latin America

 

Shabana Mir, Muslim American women on campus: undergraduate social life and identity (2014)

Summary: “Muslim American Women on Campus illuminates the processes by which a group of ethnically diverse American college women, all identifying as Muslim and all raised in the United States, construct their identities during one of the most formative times in their lives.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Youth

 

Ahmed Afzal, Lone star Muslims: transnational lives and the South Asian experience in Texas (2014)

Summary: “Offers an engaging and insightful look at contemporary Muslim American life in Texas. It illuminates the dynamics of the Pakistani Muslim community in Houston, a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in the south and southwestern United States.  …Decentering dominant framings that flatten understandings of transnational Islam and Muslim Americans, such as ‘terrorist’ on the one hand, and ‘model minority’ on the other, Lone Star Muslims offers a glimpse into a variety of lived experiences.” – New York University Press

Keywords: South Asians

 

Sally Howell, Old Islam in Detroit: rediscovering the Muslim American past (2014)

Summary: “Old Islam in Detroit explores the rise of Detroit’s earliest Muslim communities. It documents the culture wars and doctrinal debates that ensued as these populations confronted Muslim newcomers who did not understand their manner of worship or the American identities they had created. Looking closely at this historical encounter, Old Islam in Detroit provides a new interpretation of the possibilities and limits of Muslim incorporation in American life.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan

 

Bayyinah S. Jeffries,A nation can rise no higher than its women: African American Muslim women in the movement for black self determination, 1950-1975 (2014)

Summary: “Challenges traditional notions and interpretations of African American, particularly women who joined the Original Nation of Islam during the Civil Rights-Black Power era. This book is the first major investigation of the subject that engages a wide scope of women from “The Nation” and utilizes a wealth of primary documents and personal interviews to reveal the importance of women in this community.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Anne Rypstat Richards, Muslims and American popular culture (2014)

Summary: “Offering a wide range of information without sacrificing depth, this set examines the ways that Islam and Muslims are depicted in American pop culture. The first volume tackles the entertainment industry, addressing comedy and theater, television, film, popular fiction and poetry, music, and digital culture. The second volume deals with print material and identity in Islam, covering black Muslims, journalism and digital media, societal trends and issues, Islamic-influenced architecture, and memoirs.” – School Library Journal

Keywords: Media

 

Zain Abdullah, Black Mecca: the African Muslims of Harlem (2013)

Summary: “takes us inside the lives of these new immigrants and shows how they deal with being a double minority in a country where both blacks and Muslims are stigmatized. Dealing with this dual identity, Abdullah discovers, is extraordinarily complex. …Abdullah weaves together the stories of these African Muslims to paint a fascinating portrait of a community’s efforts to carve out space for itself in a new country.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Africans; New Immigrants

 

Nahla al Huraibi, Islam, gender and migrant integration: the case of Somali immigrant families (2013)

Summary: “Addresses three questions: how do Somali immigrants negotiate gender notions and practices between those maintained in Somali culture and those adopted from mainstream American culture; how immigrants’ understandings of Islamic writings on gender shape the negotiation process and how the integration process shapes their understanding of Islamic gender discourse; and to what extent resultant gender perceptions and practices reflect the transnational integration and cultural hybridism of two or more cultures.” – LFB Scholarly Publishing

Keywords: Gender; Somalia

 

Zareena Grewal, Islam is a foreign country: American Muslims and the global crisis of authority (2013)

Summary: “By examining the tension between American Muslims’ ambivalence toward the American mainstream and their desire to enter it, Grewal puts contemporary debates about Islam in the context of a long history of American racial and religious exclusions. Probing the competing obligations of American Muslims to the nation and to the umma (the global community of Muslim believers), Islam is a Foreign Country investigates the meaning of American citizenship and the place of Islam in a global age.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Transnational; Youth

 

Yuting Wang, Between Islam and the American Dream: an immigrant Muslim community in Post-9/11 America (2013)

Summary: “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.” – Routledge

Keywords: Civil Rights; Intersectionality

 

Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the media: race and representation after 9/11 (2012)

Summary: “After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Anan Ameri, Daily life of Arab Americans in the 21st century (2012)

Summary: “This much-needed study documents positive Arab-American contributions to American life and culture, especially in the last decade, debunking myths and common negative perceptions that were exacerbated by the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror.” – ABC-CLIO

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Maleeha Aslam, Gender-based explosions: the nexus between Muslim masculinities, jihadist Islamism and terrorism (2012)

Summary: “Aslam argues that gender is a fundamental battleground on which al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their types must be defeated. Issues of regressive radicalism, literalism, militancy, and terrorism can only be solved through people-centered interventions. Therefore, governments and civil society should promote an alternative culture of growth, self-expression, and actualization for Muslim men.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Terrorism

 

Hilal Elver, The headscarf controversy: secularism and freedom of religion (2012)

Summary: “An in-depth study of the escalating controversy over the right of Muslim women to wear headscarves. Examining legal and political debates in Turkey, several European countries including France and Germany, and the United States, Elver shows the troubling exclusion of pious Muslim women from the public sphere in the name of secularism, democracy, liberalism, and women’s rights.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Gender; Hijab

 

Nabeel Abraham, Arab Detroit 9/11: life in the terror decade (2011)

Summary: “In Detroit, new realities of political marginalization and empowerment are evolving side by side. As they explore the complex demands of life in the Terror Decade, the contributors to this volume create vivid portraits of a community that has fought back successfully against attempts to deny its national identity and diminish its civil rights.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights; Michigan

 

Karin Van Nieuwkerk, Muslim rap, halal soaps, and revolutionary theater (2011)

Summary: “The contributors to this volume investigate the historical and structural conditions that impede or facilitate the emergence of a ‘post-Islamist’ cultural sphere. They discuss the development of religious sensibilities among audiences, which increasingly include the well-to-do and the educated young, as well as the emergence of a local and global religious market. At the heart of these essays is an examination of the intersection between cultural politics, performing art, and religion, addressing such questions as where, how, and why pop culture and performing arts have been turned into a religious mission, and whether it is possible to develop a new Islamic aesthetic that is balanced with religious sensibilities.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Music; Movie; Popular Culture; Islam and Art

 

Leila Ahmed, A quiet revolution: the veil’s resurgence, from the Middle East to America (2011)

Summary: “When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil’s return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Hijab

 

Reza Aslan, Muslims and Jews in America: commonalities, contentions, and complexities (2011)

Summary: “This book is an exploration of contemporary Jewish-Muslim relations in the United States and the distinct and often creative ways in which these two communities interact with one another in the American context. Each essay discusses a different episode from the recent twentieth and current twenty-first century American milieu that links these two groups together.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Interfaith Relations

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Becoming American?: the forging of Arab and Muslim identity in pluralist America (2011)

Summary: “Traces the history of Arab and Muslim immigration into Western society during the 19th and 20th centuries, revealing a two-fold disconnect between the cultures―America’s unwillingness to accept these new communities at home and the activities of radical Islam abroad. Urging America to reconsider its tenets of religious pluralism, Haddad reveals that the public square has more than enough room to accommodate those values and ideals inherent in the moderate Islam flourishing throughout the country.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans; Identity

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Muslim women in America: the challenge of Islamic identity today (2011)

Summary: “Centering on Muslims in America, the book investigates Muslim attempts to form a new “American” Islam. Such specific issues as dress, marriage, childrearing, conversion, and workplace discrimination are addressed. The authors also look at the ways in which American Muslim women have tried to create new paradigms of Islamic womanhood and are reinterpreting the traditions apart from the males who control the mosque institutions. A final chapter asks whether 9/11 will prove to have been a watershed moment for Muslim women in America.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Gender

 

Chris Heffelfinger, Radical Islam in America: Salafism’s journey from Arabia to the West (2011)

Summary: “Chris Heffelfinger describes the development of the Islamist movement, examines its efforts and influence in the West, and suggests strategies to reduce or eliminate the threat of Islamist terrorism. The book distinguishes Islamism (the fundamentalist political movement based on Islamic identity and values) from the Muslim faith and explores Islamists’ substantial inroads with Muslims and Muslim educational institutions in the West since the 1960s, as well as the larger relationship between Islamist political activism and militancy.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Terrorism

 

Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: looking toward the third resurrection (2011)

Summary: “Offers a trenchant examination of the career of Islam among the blacks of America. Jackson notes that no one has offered a convincing explanation of why Islam spread among Blackamericans (a coinage he explains and defends) but not among white Americans or Hispanics. The assumption has been that there is an African connection. In fact, Jackson shows, none of the distinctive features of African Islam appear in the proto-Islamic, black nationalist movements of the early 20th century. Instead, he argues, Islam owes its momentum to the distinctively American phenomenon of “Black Religion,” a God-centered holy protest against anti-black racism.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: race and labor in the South Asian diaspora (2011)

Summary: “Highlights how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced, constructed, and represented in the context of American empire and the recent global War on Terror. Drawing on ethnographic research that compares Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States before and after 9/11, Junaid Rana combines cultural and material analyses to chronicle the worldviews of Pakistani labor migrants as they become part of a larger global racial system.” – Duke University Press

Keywords: South Asians; Terrorism

 

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A history of Islam in America: from the New World to the New World Order (2010)

Summary: “…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.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Immigration

 

Jonathan Curiel, Al’ America: travels through America’s Arab and Islamic roots (2009)

Summary: “Curiel demonstrates that many of America’s most celebrated places—including the Alamo in San Antonio, the French Quarter of New Orleans, and the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina—retain vestiges of Arab and Islamic culture. Likewise, some of America’s most recognizable music—the Delta Blues, the surf sounds of Dick Dale, the rock and psychedelia of Jim Morrison and the Doors—is indebted to Arab music. And some of America’s leading historical figures, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Elvis Presley, relied on Arab or Muslim culture for intellectual sustenance.” – The New Press

Keywords: Arabs; History

 

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Homegrown terrorists in the U.S. and U.K.: an empirical examination of the radicalization process (2009)

Summary: “To date, no study has empirically examined the process through which these terrorists are radicalizing, which constitutes a substantial gap in the literature. This study seeks to address that gap through an empirical examination of 117 homegrown “jihadist” terrorists from the U.S. and U.K.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Terrorism

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Educating the Muslims of America (2009)

Summary: “…considered here are other dimensions of American Islamic education and the ways in which Muslims are rising to the task of educating the American public in the face of increasing hostility and prejudice. This timely volume is the first dedicated entirely to the neglected topic of Islamic education in this country.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Jennifer Leila Holsinger, Residential patterns of Arab Americans: race, ethnicity and spatial assimilation (2009)

Summary: “Holsinger examines the ways that race and ethnicity are manifest in the urban landscape by analyzing the segregation and neighborhood characteristics of Arab Americans. …The advantage experienced by this diverse population relative to non-White racial and ethnic minorities suggests that immigration history, racial status and human capital shape the residential experience of Arab Americans.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Hasan Kaplan, Psychology of new Muslim identity in America (2009)

Summary: “Religion appears to be the essential factor influencing the second generation Muslim adolescents’ identity development and their integration into American society. …Very little is known about how they deal with their identity questions and how they more fully integrate or negotiate their multiple allegiances. This study will give you a glimps from the struggle that these young people experience between two conflicting worldviews in order to find their own niche in life.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity

 

Liyakat Nathani Takim, Shi’ism in America (2009)

Summary: “Both tracing the early history and illuminating the more recent past with surveys and interviews, Takim explores the experiences of this community. Filling an important scholarly gap, he also demonstrates how living in the West has impelled the Shi’i community to grapple with the ways in which Islamic law may respond to the challenges of modernity.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Islamic Law; Shi’ite

 

Amaney A. Jamal, Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: from invisible citizens to visible subjects (2008)

Summary: “Transcending multiculturalist discourses that have simply ‘added on’ the category ‘Arab American’ to the landscape of U.S. racial and ethnic studies after the attacks of September 11th, 2001, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than a beginning, in Arab Americans’ diverse engagements with ‘race’.” – Syracuse University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Civil Rights

 

Michael Muhammad Knight, The five percenters: Islam, hip-hop and the gods of New York(2008)

Summary: “With a cast of characters ranging from Malcolm X to 50 Cent, Knight’s compelling work is the first detailed account of the movement inextricably linked with black empowerment, Islam, New York, and hip-hop.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Fiver Percenters; Music; Popular Culture; Black Empowerment; Malcolm X; 50 Cent

 

Akel Ismail Kahera, Deconstructing the American mosque: space, gender and aesthetics (2008)

Summary: “The absence of a single, authoritative model and the plurality of design nuances reflect the heterogeneity of the American Muslim community itself, which embodies a whole spectrum of ethnic origins, traditions, and religious practices ….explores the history and theory of Muslim religious aesthetics in the United States since 1950.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Mosques

 

Jamillah Karim, American Muslim women: negotiating race, class, and gender within the ummah (2008)

Summary: “This ethnographic study of African American and South Asian immigrant Muslims in Chicago and Atlanta explores how Islamic ideals of racial harmony and equality create hopeful possibilities in an American society that remains challenged by race and class inequalities. The volume focuses on women who, due to gender inequalities, are sometimes more likely to move outside of their ethnic Muslim spaces and interact with other Muslim ethnic groups in search of gender justice.” – New York University Press

Keywords: African Americans; Gender; South Asians

 

Gary Paul Nabhan, Arab/American: landscape, culture, and cuisine in two great deserts (2008)

Summary: “In an era when some Arabs and Americans have markedly distanced themselves from one another, Nabhan has been prompted to explore their common ground, historically, ecologically, linguistically, and gastronomically. Arab/American is not merely an exploration of his own multicultural roots but also a revelation of the deep cultural linkages between the inhabitants of two of the world’s great desert regions.” – University of Arizona Press

Keywords: Arabs

 

Michael Nash, Islam among urban blacks: Muslims in Newark, New Jersey – a social history (2008)

Summary: “Examines the evolution of Muslim community development in our nation’s third oldest city, Newark, New Jersey. It is an historical account of the efforts of a diverse community that over several decades grappled with the challenge of establishing a respected place for their Islamic lifestyle within the United States of America. Further, it is a story linked closely to the experience of African Americans who have claimed Islam as their religion and struggled to create and to maintain an identity in the social fabric of Newark’s twentieth-century Black religious culture.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; New Jersey

 

Selcuk R. Sirin, Muslim American youth: understanding hyphenated identities through multiple methods (2008)

Summary: “The volume offers a critical conceptual framework to aid in understanding Muslim American identity formation processes, a framework which can also be applied to other groups of marginalized and immigrant youth.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity; Youth

 

Stephen Young, Being Muslim in Boston: identity in the Islamic Society of Boston (2008)

Summary: “In this book, the author explores the lives of the Muslims of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), a diverse community whose members strive to adapt to the American environment through the embrace of a distinctively Islamic identity. This work examines such subjects as modes of interpretation of Islamic knowledge, attitudes toward religious education for children, marriage within and between ethnic groups, attitudes toward sex and gender, the use of the hijab, and race and ethnic relations, both within and outside the mosque itself.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Boston; Identity

 

Geneive Abdo, Mecca and Main Street: Muslim life in America after 9/11 (2007)

Summary: “Gaining unprecedented access to Muslim communities in America, [Abdo] traveled across the country, visiting schools, mosques, Islamic centers, radio stations, and homes. She reveals a community tired of being judged by American perceptions of Muslims overseas and eager to tell their own stories.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Arab American National Museum, Telling our story: the Arab American National Museum (2007)

Summary:Telling Our Story is a rich visual and narrative collection celebrating the history, culture, and diversity of the Arab American community. The volume chronicles the founding of the Arab American National Museum from several viewpoints, and offers a detailed tour through its major exhibits.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Katherine Bullock, Rethinking Muslim women and the veil: challenging historical & modern stereotypes (2007)

Summary: “This work focuses on the popular Western cultural view that the veil is oppressive for Muslim women and highlights the underlying patterns of power behind this constructed image of the veil.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Gender; Hijab

 

Edward E. Curtis, Black Muslim religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975 (2006)

Summary: “Offers the first comprehensive examination of the rituals, ethics, theologies, and religious narratives of the Nation of Islam, showing how the movement combined elements of Afro-Eurasian Islamic traditions with African American traditions to create a new form of Islamic faith.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Jerald F. Dirks, Muslims in American history: a forgotten legacy (2006)

Summary: “Confronts the prevalent myth that Islam in America is a relatively recent phenomenon. In reality, there is a centuries long history of the Muslim presence in America, which is all too often overlooked or misidentified.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Aminah Beverly McCloud, Transnational Muslims in American society (2006)

Summary: “This in-depth yet accessible guide to Islamic immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa challenges the widely held perception that Islam is monolithic and exclusively Arab in identity and expression. Offering a topical discussion of Islamic issues, the author argues that there is no one immigrant Islam community but a multifaceted and multi-cultural Islamic world.” – University Press of Florida

Keywords: Africans; South Asians; Transnational

 

Rosina J. Hassoun, Arab Americans in Michigan (2005)

Summary: “Despite their considerable presence, Arab Americans have always been a misunderstood ethnic population in Michigan, even before September 11, 2001 imposed a cloud of suspicion, fear, and uncertainty over their ethnic enclaves and the larger community.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab-Americans; Michigan

 

Felicia Miyakawa, Five Percenter rap: God Hop’s music, message, and Black Muslim mission (2005)

Summary: “After establishing the theological and historical underpinnings of Five Percenter Rap, Felicia Miyakawa considers its marketing approaches and its use of specific musical techniques such as sampling, groove, and layering (often in significant numerical groupings). These techniques, she argues, are in service to the greater goal of Five Percenter rappers, who see themselves primarily as teachers.” – Indiana University Press

Keywords: Fiver Percenter; Music; Popular Culture; Islam; Black Nationalism

 

Dennis Walker, Islam and the search for African American nationhood: Elijah Muhammed, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam (2005)

Summary: “The presence of Islam in America is as long-standing as the arrival of the first captive Muslims from Africa, making Islam one of America’s formative religions. But the long-suppressed indigenous Islam didn’t resurface in organized form until the 1930s, when it infused the politico-spiritual drive by the Noble Drew ‘Ali and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to address the appalling social conditions of the ghettoized black masses of the North. Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam would prove to be the most extensive, influential and durable of African-American self-generated organizations.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

JoAnn D’Alisera, An imagined geography: Sierra Leonean Muslims in America (2004)

Summary: “Studying Sierra Leonean Muslims living in greater Washington, D.C., [D’Alisera] shows how these immigrants maintain intense and genuine community ties through weddings, rituals, and travel, across both vast urban spaces and national boundaries. D’Alisera examines two primary issues: Sierra Leoneans’ engagement with their homeland, to which they frequently traveled and often sent their children for upbringing until the outbreak of the civil war; and the Sierra Leonean interaction with a diverse, multicultural, increasingly global Muslim community that is undergoing its own search for identity.” – University of Pennsylvania Press

Keywords: Africans; New Immigrants; Sierra Leone

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Not quite American?: the shaping of Arab and Muslim identity in the United States (2004)

Summary: “In this essay Yvonne Haddad explores the history of immigration and integration of Arab Muslims in the United States and their struggle to legitimate their presence in the face of continuing exclusion based on race, nationalist identity, and religion.” – Baylor University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Identity

 

Bruce B. Lawrence, New faiths, old fears: Muslims and other Asian immigrants in American religious life (2004)

Summary: “The fastest-growing religions in America–faster than all Christian groups combined–are Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. In this remarkable book, a leading scholar of religion asks how these new faiths have changed or have been changed by the pluralist face of American civil society. How have these new religious minorities been affected by the deep-rooted American ambivalence toward foreign traditions? Bruce Lawrence casts a comparativist eye on the American religious scene and explores the ways in which various groups of Asian immigrants have, and sometimes have not, been integrated into the American polity. ” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; South Asians

 

Iftikhar H. Malik, Islam and modernity: Muslims in Europe and the United States (2004)

Summary: “This is not the first time that conflict has arisen between Muslims in the West and their other communities — this book examines a long history of volatile social relations based on extensive travels and research across four continents. Iftikhar H. Malik offers a wealth of case studies ranging from Muslim Spain and the Ottoman Empire to the present day; from the eruptions of anti-Islamic feeling over the Salman Rushdie affair to the demonization of Islam currently running high on the agenda of the ‘war on terror’.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Terrorism; Transnational

 

Jen’nan Ghazal Read, Culture, class and work among Arab-American women (2004)

Summary: “Read’s findings challenge assumptions about variations in ethnic women’s labor force participation. Arab cultural values play an important role in determining the position of women of Arab descent in American society.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Intersectionality

 

Garbi Schmidt, Islam in urban America: Sunni Muslims in Chicago (2004)

Summary: “In this detailed study of an immigrant community in Chicago, Garbi Schmidt considers the formation and meaning of an ‘American Islam.’ This vivid portrait of the people and the institutions that draw them together contributes to the academic literature on ethnic and religious identity at the same time as it depicts an immigrant community’s struggle against bias and forces that threaten its cohesion.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Chicago; New Immigrants

 

Janice Marschner, California’s Arab Americans (2003)

Summary: “Provides sketches of a cross-section of Arab American families in California — both early and later arrivals. The first five chapters summarize geographical, sociological, and historical facts about the Arab world—providing an understanding about why and when immigration occurred. The remaining ten chapters containing the family histories correspond to the typical regional divisions of California” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans; California

 

Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American experience (2nd ed., 2003)

Summary: “Turner places the study of Islam in the context of the racial, ethical, and political relations that influenced the reception of successive presentations of Islam, including the West African Islam of slaves, the Ahmadiyya Movement from India, the orthodox Sunni practice of later immigrants, and the Nation of Islam. This second edition features a new introduction, which discusses developments since the earlier edition, including Islam in a post-9/11 America.” – Indiana University Press

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Edward E. Curtis, Islam in black America (2002)

Summary: “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….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.” – SUNY Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Robert Dannin, Black pilgrimage to Islam (2002)

Summary: “Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted over a period of several years, Dannin provides an unprecedented look inside the fascinating and little understood world of black Muslims. He discovers that the well-known and cult-like Nation of Islam represents only a small part of the picture. Many more African-Americans are drawn to Islamic orthodoxy, with its strict adherence to the Qur’an.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Amina Mohammed-Arif, Salaam America: South Asian Muslims in New York (2002)

Summary: “This study examines the regrouping of the religious community and the reinvention of group identity in first and second-generation immigrants. By transplanting many of their institutions to the US (particularly in New York), Muslim immigrants succeeded in establishing their presence in the American landscape without arousing significant concern in the host community.” – Anthem Press

Keywords: New York; South Asians

 

Museum of the City of New York, A community of many worlds: Arab Americans in New York City (2002)

Summary: “Published in conjunction with an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, this collection of 17 essays ranges from the personal to the academic and covers a wide array of topics, such as Arabic poetry, immigration patterns, community formation and the sustaining of cultural traditions.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Arab Americans; New York

 

Richard Wormser, American Islam: growing up Muslim in America (2002)

Summary: “Young Muslims speak out about everyday concerns — family, school, relationships — revealing how they maintain their identity and adapt their religious and cultural traditions to fit into America’s more permissive society. A historical overview of Islam, an interpretation of the basic tenets of the Quran, and a close look at the growth of Islam in African-American communities rounds out the first-person accounts of daily life.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Youth

 

Asma Gull Hasan, American Muslims: the new generation (2001)

Summary: “Twenty-four-year-old Asma Hassan calls herself a Muslim feminist cowgirl (she was raised in Pueblo, Colorado). Convinced that Muslim Americans are the victims of mistaken identity (our fellow citizens think all Muslims are terrorists and women-oppressors), Hassan breaks through the stereotypes and generalizations to talk about the religion and the believers she knows from the inside.” – Bloomsbury Publishing

Keywords: Youth

 

Nabeel Abraham, Arab Detroit: from margin to mainstream (2000)

Summary: “The volume is divided into six sections – Qualities/Quantities, Work, Religion, Politics, Life Journeys, and Ethnic Futures – each with a cogent introduction by the editors that seeks to draw out larger themes.” – Journal of American Ethnic History

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan

 

Clifton E. Marsh, The lost-found Nation of Islam in America (2000)

Summary: “Sheds light on The Nation of Islam and Minister Louis Farrakhan, from the ideological splits in the Nation of Islam during the 1970s, to the growth and expanding influence in the 1990s.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Garbi Schmidt, American Medina: a study of the Sunni Muslim immigrant communities in Chicago (2000)

Summary: “Schmidt seeks, on basis of two periods of extended fieldwork, to provide a description of some activist strata of these religious communities. The description is framed by the portrayal of a number of Muslim institutions existing within the city and the interpretation of Islam that takes place within them. Accordingly, the book grants us a view of the life and activities of a number of Chicago’s Muslim Sunday Schools, full-time schools, Qur’anic schools, Muslim colleges, students’ associations, major Muslim centers, and “paramosques”, as they appear by the late 1990s.” – Lund University Press

Keywords: Chicago; New Immigrants

 

Sangeeta R. Gupta, Emerging voices: South Asian American women redefine self, family and community (1999)

Summary: “This collection of essays focuses on the experiences of South Asian immigrant women living in North America… The ‘voices’ span different generations of South Asian women, from those who were born in India and moved because of their fathers/husbands, to second generation American-born South Asian girls, being raised in bicultural situations. Similarly, they vary by their religious and regional affiliations. The authors range from feminist scholars who have conducted studies on groups of South Asian women to young graduate students who have presented first-person accounts of their own complex experiences as women of ‘colour’ coming to terms with living on the margins of a dominant culture, and who in their personal lives live with the constant pressure to ’conform to two sets of relational ideals’.” – Indian Journal of Gender Studies

Keywords: Gender; South Asians

 

Sulayman S. Nyang, Islam in the United States of America (1999)

Summary: “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.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in antebellum America: transatlantic stories and spiritual struggles(1997)

Summary: “A condensation and updating of his African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (1984), noted scholar of antebellum black writing and history Dr. Allan D. Austin explores, via portraits, documents, maps, and texts, the lives of 50 sub-Saharan non-peasant Muslim Africans caught in the slave trade between 1730 and 1860.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Africans

 

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Competing visions of Islam in the United States: a study of Los Angeles (1997)

Summary: “This book fills a void in the study of Muslims in the United States, presenting the first in-depth study of the large Muslim population in Los Angeles County. It examines an array of issues facing the American Muslim population, ranging from gender and ethnicity to political and da ‘wa (missionary) activities. This study inquires into the role Muslims see for themselves and their religious tradition in the United States and presents the diverse views of Islam held by Muslims in America today.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: California

 

Jack Shaheen, Arab and Muslim stereotyping in American popular culture (1997)

Summary: “concentrates…on the stereotyping of Muslims in the United States, which in many ways has subsumed the original problem of Arab-American stereotyping. To explain to readers why it is important to distinguish between stereotypes and realities, Shaheen submits a series of meticulously footnoted findings concerning the Muslim presence in the world in general and the United States in particular, as well as the Christian Arab presence in both.” – Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Keywords: Arabs; Media

 

Linda S. Walbridge, Without forgetting the imam: Lebanese Shi’ism in an American community (1997)

Summary: “An ethnographic study of the religious life of the Lebanese Shi’ites of Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Muslim community outside of the Middle East. Based on four years of fieldwork, this book explores how the Lebanese who have emigrated, most in the past three decades, to the United States, have adapted to their new surroundings.” – Wayne State University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Lebanon; Shi’ite

 

Barbara C. Aswad, Family and gender among American Muslims: issues facing Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants (1996)

Summary: “From the social and historical conditions of the Muslim migration to a range of issues affecting Muslim American life, the contributors provide new and valuable information on topics like intergenerational conflict about identity and values, intermarriage, religious and community involvement, gender and family structure, education, the needs of the elderly, and physical and mental health problems, including AIDS.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Family; Gender

 

Mattias Gardell, In the name of Elijah Muhammed: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (1996)

Summary: “Tells the story of the Nation of Islam—its rise in northern inner-city ghettos during the Great Depression through its decline following the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975 to its rejuvenation under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan. Mattias Gardell sets this story within the context of African American social history, the legacy of black nationalism, and the long but hidden Islamic presence in North America.” – Duke University Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Ernest McCarus, The development of Arab-American identity (1994)

Summary: “Looks at all aspects–political, religious, and social–of the Arab-American experience.” – University of Michigan Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Identity

 

Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam (1994)

Summary: “Challenges…myths by contextualizing the experience and history of African American Islamic life. This is the first book to investigate the diverse African American Islamic community on its own terms, in its own language and through its own synthesis of Islamic history and philosophy.” – Routledge

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Al-Hajj Wali Akbar Muhammed, Muslims in Georgia: a chronology and oral history (1994)

Summary: “compiled to serve as a convenient repository of important facts and events related to the presence of Muslims in the United States — more specifically the State of Georgia.” – from the author’s website

Keywords: African-Americans; Georgia

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Mission to America: five Islamic sectarian communities in North America (1993)

Summary: “Islam in the United States has developed a fascinating and diverse range of interpretations. Based in large part on community documents and on interviews and correspondence with community members, this study is the first look at these sectarian movements in the hundred-year history of Muslim religious development in the United States.” – University Press of Florida

Keywords: Sectarian

 

Ron Kelley, Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles (1993)

Summary: “This compelling collection of photographs, essays, and interviews explores…the Iranian presence in Southern California. While capturing the remarkable diversity of this immigrant community, Irangeles also confronts the sprawling metropolis that is increasingly influenced by its large ethnic and immigrant populations. Iranians, too, are inexorably linked to the demographic changes in California—changes that raise questions of assimilation and cultural survival—and that will see minority populations become the majority in the next century.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: California; Iran

 

Omar Khalidi, Indian Muslims in North America (1990)

Summary: A collection of articles about the culture of Indian Muslims in North America, derived from the proceedings of a 1989 conference held by the Islamic Society of North America. Includes an extensive bibliography.

Keywords: India; South Asians

 

Martha Lee, The Nation of Islam: an American millenarian movement (1989)

Summary: “Covering the Black Muslim religion, the Nation of Islam, in America since the turn of the 20th century to 1986, this study documents the transformation of the Nation, after the death of Elijah Mohammed, into two quite different entities.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Raymond Brady Williams, Religions of immigrants from India and Pakistan: new threads in the American tapestry (1988)

Summary: “the first comprehensive study of the religious groups formed in the United States by immigrants from India and Pakistan, of the adaptive and organizational patterns developed by these groups, and of their continuing influence on the fabric of American religion and culture. Through analysis of demographic statistics and information gathered in interviews, the book provides an overview of the variety of religions practiced by Indian and Pakistani Americans, the size of these religious groups, and the range of ecumenical, ethnic, sectarian, and national organizations.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: India; Pakistan

 

Clifton E. Marsh, From black Muslims to Muslims: the transition from separatism to Islam, 1930-1980 (1984)

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Sameer Y. Abraham, Arabs in the New World: studies on Arab-American communities (1983)

Summary: “Brings together the work of ten social scientists who have studied various aspects of the Arab-American immigrant experience…[includes a] historical profile [and] a micro-view of Detroit’s Arabic-speaking communities.” – Middle East Journal

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Earle H. Waugh, The Muslim community in North America (1983)

Summary: “Fourteen scholars examine what it is like to be a Muslim in North America today-the pressures inherent in an increasingly secular society; the need for people from radically different cultures to work together to maintain their religion; and the struggles of black Muslims to graft an indigenous North American branch onto mainline Islam.” – The University of Alberta Press

Keywords: African-Americans; North America

 

Sameer Y. Abraham, The Arab world and Arab-Americans: understanding a neglected minority (1981)

Keywords: Arabs

 

Barbara C. Aswad, Arabic-speaking communities in the United States (1974)

Keywords: Arabs

Wajahat Ali, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American. (2022)


Summary: The book tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy, and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration, and pop culture. In this refreshingly bold, hopeful, and uproarious memoir, Ali offers indispensable lessons for cultivating a more compassionate, inclusive, and delicious America. – W.W. Norton & Company

Keywords: Biography, race and racism, social justice

 

Ayaz Virji M.D., Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor’s Struggle for Home in Rural America (2019)

Summary: “A powerful true story about a Muslim doctor’s service to small-town America and the hope of overcoming our country’s climate of hostility and fear.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: biography, medicine, ethnic demographic studies

 

Ibtihaj Muhammad, Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream (2018)

Summary: “From winning state championships to three-time All-America selections at Duke University, Ibtihaj was poised for success, but the fencing community wasn’t ready to welcome her with open arms just yet. As the only woman of color and the only religious minority on Team USA’s saber fencing squad, Ibtihaj had to chart her own path to success and Olympic glory. . . Proud is a moving coming-of-age story from one of the nation’s most influential athletes and illustrates how she rose above it all.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: women, biography, fencing, sports, Olympics

 

Daisy Khan, Born with Wings: The Spiritual Journey of a Modern Muslim Woman (2018)

Summary: “[Khan] passionately tells her singular life story in this fine

memoir…Khan writes of her early years in a vibrant household in Kashmir and later moving to New York City, where she became a pioneering reformer, campaigner for women’s rights, and advocate for peace and equality. . . . A testament to courage and resilience as well as an important chapter in the story of American Muslims and women of faith.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Keywords: women, immigrants, biography

Connie Lou Shoemaker, Taste the sweetness later: Two Muslim women in America (2018)

Summary: “Author Connie Shoemaker shares the stories of two women living in the grip of murderous dictators…Sharing their stories is a step toward bridging the social and political chasm that divides America today. Just as ignorance of another person condemns us to the bondage of fear, knowledge frees us and makes us more able to function correctly.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Immigrants; Women; Libya; Kurdish; Iraqi

 

Abdi Nor Iftin, Call me American: A memoir (2018)

Summary: “Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar…but when the radical Islamist group al- Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it suddenly became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Now a proud resident of Maine, on the path to citizenship, Abdi Nor Iftin’s dramatic, deeply stirring memoir is truly a story for our time: a vivid reminder of why western democracies still beckon to those looking to make a better life.” – Random House Press

Keywords: Refugee; Immigrant; Muslim; American

 

Kizr Khan, An American family: A memoir of hope and sacrifice (2017)

Summary: “This inspiring memoir by the Muslim American Gold Star father and captivating DNC speaker is the story of one family’s pursuit of the American dream.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Arabs

 

Haroon Moghul, How to be a Muslim: An American story (2017)

Summary: “How to Be a Muslim reveals a young man coping with the crushing pressure of a world that fears Muslims, struggling with his faith and searching for intellectual forebears, and suffering the onset of bipolar disorder. This is the story of the second-generation immigrant, of what it’s like to lose yourself between cultures and how to pick up the pieces.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Youth

 

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, Muslim girl: a coming of age (2016)

Summary: “[An] account of Amani’s journey through adolescence as a Muslim girl, from the Islamophobia she’s faced on a daily basis, to the website she launched that became a cultural phenomenon, to the nation’s political climate in the 2016 election cycle with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Youth

 

Dustin J. Byrd, ed., Malcolm X: From political eschatology to religious revolutionary (2016)

Summary: “[A]n important investigation into the religious and political philosophy of one of the most important African-American and Muslim thinkers of the 20th century. Thirteen different scholars from six different countries and various academic disciplines have contributed to our understanding of why Malcolm X is still important fifty years after his death.” – Brill

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Sabeeha Rehman, Threading my prayer rug: one woman’s journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim (2016)

Summary: “A richly textured reflection on what it is to be a Muslim in America today. It is also the revealing, always hopeful story of an immigrant’s daily struggles, balancing assimilation with preserving heritage, overcoming religious barriers from within and distortions of Islam from without, and confronting issues of children growing up Muslim.” – Arcade Publishing

Keywords: Gender; South Asian

 

Randy Roberts, Blood brothers: the fatal friendship between Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X (2016)

Summary: “Acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith reconstruct the worlds that shaped Malcolm and Clay, from the boxing arenas and mosques, to postwar New York and civil rights-era Miami. In an impressively detailed account, they reveal how Malcolm molded Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali, helping him become an international symbol of black pride and black independence… Blood Brothers is the story of how Ali redefined what it means to be a black athlete in America—after Malcolm first enlightened him.” – Perseus Academic

Keywords: Civil Rights; Nation of Islam

 

Moustafa Bayoumi, This Muslim American life: dispatches from the War on Terror (2015)

Summary: “Reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans, highlighting the profound effect this surveillance  has had on how they live their lives. To be a Muslim American today often means to exist in an absurd space between exotic and dangerous, victim and villain, simply because of the assumptions people carry about you.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Patricia Raybon, Undivided: A Muslim daughter, her Christian mother, their path to peace (2015)

Summary: “Undivided opens a door on the lives of an American Islamic convert, Alana Raybon, a dedicated educator, and her devout Christian mother, Patricia Raybon, an award-winning author, as they struggle to reconcile and heal their family divided by faith.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Christianity; Comparative Religion; Interfaith Family; Convert

 

Keith Ellison, My country, ’tis of thee: my faith, my family, our future (2014)

Summary: “Filled with anecdotes, statistics, and social commentary, Ellison touches on everything from the Tea Party to Obama, from race to the immigration debate and more. He also draws some very clear distinctions between parties and shows why the deep polarization is unhealthy for America. Deeply patriotic, with My Country, ’Tis of Thee, Ellison strives to help define what it means to be an American today.” – Simon & Schuster

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Ranya Tabari Idliby, Burqas, baseball, and apple pie: being Muslim in America (2014)

Summary: “This is the story of one American Muslim family–the story of how, through their lives, their schools, their friends, and their neighbors, they end up living the challenges, myths, fears, hopes, and dreams of all Americans. They are challenged by both Muslims who speak for them and by Americans who reject them. In this moving memoir, Idliby discusses not only coming to terms with what it means to be Muslim today, but how to raise and teach her children about their heritage and religious legacy.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity

 

Najla Said, Looking for Palestine: growing up confused in an Arab-American family (2014)

Summary: “Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her.” – Penguin Books

Keywords: Arabs; Identity; Palestine

 

M. Zuhdi Jasser, A battle for the soul of Islam: an American Muslim patriot’s fight to save his faith (2013)

Summary: “Lays bare the crucial differences between Islam and the spiritual cancer known as Islamism and persuasively calls for radical reformation within the Muslim community in order to preserve liberty for all.” – Simon & Schuster

Keywords: Terrorism

 

Nada Prouty, Uncompromised: the rise, fall, and redemption of an Arab American patriot in the CIA (2011)

Summary: “In the wake of 9/11, at the height of anti-Arab fervor…federal investigators charged Prouty with passing intelligence to Hezbollah. Though the CIA and federal judge eventually exonerated Prouty of all charges, she was dismissed from the agency and stripped of her citizenship. In Uncompromised, Prouty tells her whole story in a bid to restore her name and reputation in the country that she loves.” – MacMillan Publishers

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A life of reinvention (2011)

Summary: “Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America. Reaching into Malcolm’s troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents’ activism as followers of Marcus Garvey through his own work with the Nation of Islam and rise in the world of black nationalism, and culminates in the never-before-told true story of his assassination.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: Malcolm X; Nation of Islam; Advocates; Social change

 

Omar Ibn Said and Ala Alryyes, A Muslim American slave: The fife of Omar Ibn Said (2011)

Summary: “Born to a wealthy family in West Africa around 1770, Omar Ibn Said was abducted and sold into slavery in the United States…producing the only known surviving American slave narrative written in Arabic. The result is an invaluable addition to our understanding of writings by enslaved Americans and a timely reminder that ‘Islam’ and ‘America’ are not mutually exclusive terms.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Autobiography; History; Slavery; Arabic

 

Masood Farivar, Confessions of a mullah warrior (2010)

Summary: “At a time when the war in Afghanistan is the focus of renewed attention, and its outcome is more crucial than ever to our own security, Farivar draws on his unique experience as a native Afghan, a former mujahideen fighter, and a longtime U.S. resident to provide unprecedented insight into the ongoing collision between Islam and the West.” – Grove Press

Keywords: Afghanistan; Terrorism

 

Asma Gull Hasan, Red, white, and Muslim: my story of belief (2009)

Summary: “The book is directed primarily at non-Muslim Americans to show them Qur’anic texts and Islamic beliefs and practices that challenge unfavorable stereotypes. But Hasan also takes on her fellow Muslims, urging them to distinguish cultural mores from religious orthodoxy, especially concerning the treatment of women.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Ferial Masry, Running for all the right reasons: a Saudi-born woman’s pursuit of democracy (2008)

Summary: “Chronicles Masry’s remarkable life, from her childhood in Mecca and her decision to immigrate to the U.S. to her career as an educator and her bold entry into the world of politics.” – Syracuse University Press

Keywords: Gender; Saudi Arabia

 

Sumbul Ali-Karamali, The Muslim next door: The Qur’an, the media, and that veil thing (2008)

Summary: “Written from the point of view of an American Muslim, the book addresses what readers in the Western world are most curious about, beginning with the basics of Islam and how Muslims practice their religion before easing into more complicated issues like jihad, Islamic fundamentalism, and the status of women in Islam. Author Sumbul Ali-Karamali’s vivid anecdotes about growing up Muslim and female in the West, along with her sensitive, scholarly overview of Islam, combine for a uniquely insightful look at the world’s fastest growing religion.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Hassan Qazwini, American crescent: a Muslim cleric on the power of his faith, the struggle against prejudice, and the future of Islam and America (2007)

Summary: “Throughout American Crescent, Qazwini offers a revelatory look at the tenets and history of Islam, defending it as a faith of peace and diversity, and challenging stereotypes and misconceptions promulgated by the media.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Umar F. Abd-Allah, A Muslim in Victorian America: the life of Alexander Russell Webb (2006)

Summary: “In this first-ever biography of Webb, Umar F. Abd-Allah examines Webb’s life and uses it as a window through which to explore the early history of Islam in America. Except for his adopted faith, every aspect of Webb’s life was, as Abd-Allah shows, quintessentially characteristic of his place and time. It was because he was so typically American that he was able to serve as Islam’s ambassador to America (and vice versa).” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: History

 

Maryam Qudrat Aseel, Torn between two cultures: an Afghan-American woman speaks out (2004)

Summary: “Aseel, a first-generation Afghan American, discusses current events–particularly those relating to Afghanistan–and what it means to be a Muslim in America after 9/11. She combines analysis with unique personal stories describing how her family balances ‘two value systems that have grown to signify polar extremes, those of the East and West.’” – School Library Journal

Keywords: Afghan; Gender

 

Asma Gull Hasan, Why I am a Muslim (2004)

Summary: “”Out of all the cultures in the world… true Islamic values, as embodied in the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet Muhammad, most closely resemble American values.” So asserts Hasan, who has devoted much of her adult life—she is not yet 30—to combating anti-Muslim prejudice. As in her first book, American Muslims, she passionately argues against stereotypes and in favor of an Islam that sounds a lot like Reform Judaism or liberal Christianity. This is the Islam she knew growing up in Pueblo, Colo.—an American girl who looked Chicana and attended a Catholic school.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Arabs; Gender

 

Earle H. Waugh and Frederick M. Denny, The shaping of an American Islamic discourse: A memorial to Fazlur Rahman (1998)

Summary: “To encourage the US public to explore Islam beyond the headlines and veils, a dozen Islamic studies specialists (mainly at US universities) honor Rahman’s contribution to such studies by focusing on: Islamic priorities.” – Book Depository

Keywords: Philosophy; Hermeneutics; Biographical References; Historic

 

Raymond G. Hanania, I’m glad I look like a terrorist: growing up Arab in America (1996)

Summary: “Explores the experience of one Palestinian Arab American and his life growing up on Chicago’s South Side, his service in the US Military during the Vietnam War, his beginning career in journalism covering Chicago City Hall, and his expansion into politics and media consulting. It explores Arab-Jewish relations in Chicago and the Chicagoland area, and how Arabs were treated in America before Sept. 11, 2001.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Youth

 

Alex Haley, The autobiography of Malcolm X: As told to Alex Haley (1992)

Summary: “In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: Malcolm; African American Muslims

Louise Cainkar, Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press). Awards: Institute for Social Policy and Understanding Young Scholar Award. Arab American National Museum Adult Non-Fiction Award, 2009.

Summary: Focusing on the metropolitan Chicago area, more than a hundred research interviews and five in-depth oral histories were conducted in this book. 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.

Keywords: Religion, sociology

Farha Bano Ternikar, Intersectionality in the Muslim south Asian-American Middle Class: Lifestyle Consumption Beyond Halal and Hijab. (2021).

Summary: This book uses everyday consumption as a lens to analyze how South Asian Muslim American women negotiate racial, religious, gendered, classed, and often political identities. In particular, Ternikar examines the use of food and clothing as well as social media accounts among this important immigrant population, offering new insight that goes beyond examining Muslim American women through the lens of hijab. This timely and nuanced interdisciplinary study draws on both sociology of consumption theory and intersectional feminism and will be valuable for courses in gender and women’s studies, sociology of consumption, and women and religion. – Lexington Books

Keywords: Women’s Gender Studies, religion, sociology

Jeffrey Guhin, Agents of God: Boundaries and Authority in Muslim and Christian Schools (2020).

Summary: One of the few ethnographic works on either Muslim or Conservative Protestant high schools. – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Culture, sociology, education, and religion

Tahseen Shams, Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (2020)

Summary: “Challenging the commonly held perception that immigrants’ lives are shaped exclusively by their sending and receiving countries, Here, There, and Elsewhere breaks new ground by showing how immigrants are vectors of globalization who both produce and experience the interconnectedness of societies—not only the societies of origin and destination, but also, the societies in places beyond.” Stanford University Press

Keywords: Sociology, Immigration, Asia, Race, Class, and Gender

Qasim Amin Nathari, The State of Islam in Black America: Examing the Past, Assessing the Present, Looking Toward the Future (2019).

Summary: This work offers some insight and understanding of the history, contributions and present state of perhaps the most misunderstood faith tradition in America, and analysis of the challenges and opportunities in the 21st century for the Black American Muslim community and the communities wherein they live, work and serve.

Keywords: Sociology, Communication 

 

Debbie Almontaser, Leading While Muslim: The Experiences of American Muslim Principals after 9/11 (2018)

Summary: “This book examines the lived experiences of American Muslim principals who serve in public schools post-9/11 to determine whether global events, political discourse, and the media coverage of Islam and Muslims have affected their leadership and spirituality.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Education; Leadership

 

Justine Howe, Suburban Islam (2018)

Summary: “In Suburban Islam, Justine Howe explores the rise of ‘third spaces,’ …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… 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.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Third Space

 

Muna Ali, Young Muslim America (2018)

Summary: “Young Muslim America explores the perspectives and identities of the American descendants of immigrant Muslims and converts to Islam … Ali examines how younger Muslims see themselves, their faith community, and their society, and how that informs their daily life and helps them envision an American future.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Muslim Youth; Identity

 

Harold D. Morales, Latino and Muslim in America (2018)

Summary: “Latino and Muslim in America examines how so-called ‘minority groups’ are made, fragmented, and struggle for recognition … Drawing on four years of media analysis, ethnographic and historical research, Morales demonstrates that Latinos embrace Islam within historically specific contexts that include distinctive immigration patterns and new laws, urban spaces, and media technologies that have increasingly brought Latinos and Muslims into contact. ” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Latino; Digitalization; Intersecting Identities

 

Bozena C. Welborne, Aubrey L. Westfall, Özge Çelik Russell, Sarah A. Tobin, The politics of the headscarf in the United States (2018)

Summary: “The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States investigates the social and political effects of the practice of Muslim-American women wearing the headscarf (hijab) in a non-Muslim state. The authors find the act of head covering is not politically motivated in the U.S. setting, but rather it accentuates and engages Muslim identity in uniquely American ways.” – Cornell University Press

KeywordsGender; Identity

 

Hudda Ibrahim, From Somalia to snow: how central Minnesota became home to Somalis (2017)

Summary: “In providing a great understanding of Somali culture, tradition, religion, and issues of integration and assimilation, this book also focuses on why thousands of Somali refugees came to live in this cold, snowy area with people of predominantly European descent.” – Amazon.com

KeywordsNew Immigrants; Minnesota 

 

Edward E. Curtis IV, ed., The practice of Islam in America: An introduction (2017)

Summary: “The Practice of Islam in America introduces readers to the way Islam is lived in the United States, offering vivid portraits of Muslim American life passages, ethical actions, religious holidays, prayer, pilgrimage, and other religious activities. It takes readers into homes, religious congregations, schools, workplaces, cemeteries, restaurants—and all the way to Mecca—to understand the diverse religious practices of Muslim Americans.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Identity

 

Dawn-Marie Gibson & Herbert Berg, New perspectives on the Nation of Islam (2017)

Summary: “Contributes to the ongoing dialogue about the nature and influence of the Nation of Islam (NOI), bringing fresh insights to areas that have previously been overlooked in the scholarship of Elijah Muhammad’s NOI, the Imam W.D. Mohammed community and Louis Farrakhan’s Resurrected NOI.” – Routledge

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Nadia Marzouki, Islam: an American religion (2017)

Summary: “Demonstrates how Islam as formed in the United States has become an American religion in a double sense—first through the strategies of recognition adopted by Muslims and second through the performance of Islam as a faith.” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

John O’Brien, Keeping it halal: The everyday lives of Muslim American teenage boys (2017)

Summary: “[P]rovides a uniquely personal look at the social worlds of a group of young male friends as they navigate the complexities of growing up Muslim in America. Drawing on three and a half years of intensive fieldwork in and around a large urban mosque, John O’Brien offers a compelling portrait of typical Muslim American teenage boys concerned with typical teenage issues.” – Princeton University Press

Keywords: Gender; Youth

 

Ula Yvette Taylor, The promise of patriarchy: Woman and the Nation of Islam (2017)

Summary: “[D]ocuments their struggle to escape the devaluation of black womanhood while also clinging to the empowering promises of patriarchy. Taylor shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in being able to bypass the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Gender; Nation of Islam

 

Timur R. Yuskaev, Speaking Qur’an: An American scripture (2017)

Summary: “[E]xamines how Muslim Americans have been participating in their country’s cultural, social, religious, and political life. Essential to this process…is how the Qur’an has become an evermore deeply American text that speaks to central issues in the lives of American Muslims through the spoken-word interpretations of Muslim preachers, scholars,and activists.” – University of South Carolina Press

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

Rosemary Corbett, Making moderate Islam: Sufism, service, and the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy (2016)

Summary: “Refutes the idea that current demands for Muslim moderation have primarily arisen in response to the events of 9/11, or to the violence often depicted in the media as unique to Muslims. Instead, it looks at a century of pressures on religious minorities to conform to dominant American frameworks for race, gender, and political economy… Calls for Muslim moderation in particular are also colored by racist and orientalist stereotypes about the inherent pacifism of Sufis with respect to other groups.” – Stanford University Press

Keywords: Multiculturalism; Terrorism

 

Steven Fink, Dribbling for dawah: Sports among Muslim Americans (2016)

Summary: ” This is the first book to investigate Muslim American sports at the local level, looking at Muslim basketball leagues, sports programs at mosques and Islamic schools, and sports events hosted by Muslim organizations. Drawing upon personal interviews and observations as well as scholarly sources, this book demonstrates that participation in sports activities plays a vital role in strengthening Islamic piety and fellowship, and in connecting Muslims with non-Muslims in post-9/11 America.” – Mercer University Press

Keywords: Sports

 

Julianne Hazen, Sufism in America: The Alami Tariqa of Waterport, New York (2016)

Summary: “interweaves personal stories and insider views with academic insight to provide a compelling and detailed picture of Sufism as a living and dynamic tradition in America.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Sufism

 

Nahid Afrose Kabir, Muslim Americans: debating the notions of American and un-American (2016)

Summary: “Taking as its point of departure the question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy, this book examines Muslims’ sense of belonging in American society. Based on extensive interview data across seven states in the US, the author explores the question of what it means to be American or un-American amongst Muslims, offering insights into common views of community, culture, and wider society. Through a combination of interviewees’ responses and discourse analysis of print media, Muslim Americans also raises the question of whether media coverage of the issue might itself be considered ‘un-American’.” – Routledge

Keywords: Identity; Media

 

Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, Muslim cool: race, religion, and hip hop in the United States (2016)

Summary: “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 U.S. Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Media; Youth

 

Sunaina Marr Maira, The 9/11 generation: youth, rights and solidarity in the War on Terror (2016)

Summary: “Uses extensive ethnography to understand the meaning of political subjecthood and mobilization for Arab, South Asian, and Afghan American youth. Maira explores how young people from communities targeted in the War on Terror engage with the “political,” forging coalitions based on new racial and ethnic categories, even while they are under constant scrutiny and surveillance, and organizing around notions of civil rights and human rights.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Terrorism; Youth

 

Asad el Malik, Bismillah & bean pies: How black Americans crafted an Islamic expression through nationalism (2016)

Summary: “Although its genesis is in the Nation of Islam, the bean pie has grown to be a part of every African American Islamic expression. It, more than any other item, symbolizes the unique Muslim culture developed by blacks in America. The bean pie in many ways mirrors Islam in black America. Both find their roots in black nationalism and are a deviation from the overarching black culture in the United States.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Christopher A. Bail, Terrified: how anti-Muslim fringe organizations became mainstream (2015)

Summary: “Drawing on cultural sociology, social network theory, and social psychology, [Bail] shows how anti-Muslim organizations gained visibility in the public sphere, commandeered a sense of legitimacy, and redefined the contours of contemporary debate, shifting it ever outward toward the fringe. Bail illustrates his pioneering theoretical argument through a big-data analysis of more than one hundred organizations struggling to shape public discourse about Islam.” – Princeton University Press

Keywords: Media

 

Patrick D. Bowen, A history of conversion to Islam in the United States, volume 1: white American Muslims before 1975 (2015)

Summary: “The first in-depth study of the thousands of white Americans who embraced Islam between 1800 and 1975. Drawing from little-known archives, interviews, and rare books and periodicals, Patrick D. Bowen unravels the complex social and religious factors that led to the emergence of a wide variety of American Muslim and Sufi conversion movements.” – Brill

Keywords: Converts; History

 

Fawzia Reza, The effects of the September 11th terrorist attack on Pakistani-American parental involvement in U.S. schools (2015)

Summary: “Examines the challenges that Pakistani-American families have faced in their attempts to assimilate within the U.S. school culture since the September eleventh terrorist attack. Negative stereotyping has permeated into schools, and affected Pakistani-American students and their families. Reza examines this phenomenon from a parental lens in order to describe how 9/11 has altered the involvement of Pakistani-American parents in their children’s schools, and whether or not schools are appropriately addressing these issues and concerns.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, What is an American Muslim?: embracing faith and citizenship (2014)

Summary: “Muslims, An-Na’im argues, must embrace the full range of rights and responsibilities that come with American citizenship, and participate fully in civic life, while at the same time asserting their right to define their faith for themselves. They must view themselves, simply, as American citizens who happen to be Muslims.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Identity

 

Andrew Garrod, Growing up Muslim: Muslim college students in America tell their life stories (2014)

Summary: “Present[s] fourteen personal essays by college students of the Muslim faith who are themselves immigrants or are the children of immigrants to the United States. In their essays, the students grapple with matters of ethnicity, religious prejudice and misunderstanding, and what is termed Islamophobia. The fact of 9/11 and subsequent surveillance and suspicion of Islamic Americans (particularly those hailing from the Middle East and the Asian Subcontinent) have had a profound effect on these students, their families, and their communities of origin.” – Cornell University Press

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Ayesha Mattu, Salaam, love: American Muslim men on love, sex, and intimacy (2014)

Summary: “Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi provide a space for American Muslim men to speak openly about their romantic lives, offering frank, funny, and insightful glimpses into their hearts—and bedrooms. The twenty-two writers come from a broad spectrum of ethnic, racial, and religious perspectives—including orthodox, cultural, and secular Muslims—reflecting the strength and diversity of their faith community and of America.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Gender; Sex

 

Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation: between black protest and Sunni Islam (2014)

Summary: “Draws on oral histories and interviews with approximately 100 women across several cities to provide an overview of women’s historical contributions and their varied experiences of the NOI, including both its continuing community under Farrakhan and its offshoot into Sunni Islam under Imam W.D. Mohammed. The authors examine how women have interpreted and navigated the NOI’s gender ideologies and practices, illuminating the experiences of African-American, Latina, and Native American women within the NOI and their changing roles within this patriarchal movement.” – New York University Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Women

 

Liz Jackson, Muslims and Islam in U. S. education: reconsidering multiculturalism (2014)

Summary: “Explores the complex interface that exists between U.S. school curriculum, teaching practice about religion in public schools, societal and teacher attitudes toward Islam and Muslims, and multiculturalism as a framework for meeting the needs of minority group students. It presents multiculturalism as a concept that needs to be rethought and reformulated in the interest of creating a more democratic, inclusive, and informed society.” – Routledge

Keywords: Education; Multiculturalism; Youth

 

Nahid Afrose Kabir, Young American Muslims: dynamics of identity (2014)

Summary: “presents a journey into the ideas, outlooks and identity of young Muslims in America today. Based on around 400 in-depth interviews with young Muslims from Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and Virginia, all the richness and nuance of these minority voices can be heard.” – Edinburgh University Press

Keywords: Youth

 

Shabana Mir, Muslim American women on campus: undergraduate social life and identity (2014)

Summary: “Illuminates the processes by which a group of ethnically diverse American college women, all identifying as Muslim and all raised in the United States, construct their identities during one of the most formative times in their lives. …Focuses on key leisure practices–drinking, dating, and fashion–to probe how Muslim American students adapt to campus life and build social networks that are seamlessly American, Muslim, and youthful.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Education; Women; Youth

 

Samina Yasmeen, Muslim citizens in the West: spaces and agents of inclusion and exclusion (2014)

Summary: “Drawing upon original case studies spanning North America, Europe and Australia, Muslim Citizens in the West explores how Muslims have been both the excluded and the excluders within the wider societies in which they live. …The cases examined show how these tendencies span geographical, ethnic and gender divides and can be encouraged by a combination of international and national developments prompting some groups to identify wider society as the ‘other’.” – Routledge

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Transnational

 

Mucahit Bilici, Finding Mecca in America: how Islam is becoming an American religion (2013)

Summary: “Traces American Muslims’ progress from outsiders to natives and from immigrants to citizens. …develops a novel sociological approach and offers insights into the civil rights activities of Muslim Americans, their increasing efforts at interfaith dialogue, and the recent phenomenon of Muslim ethnic comedy.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Interfaith Relations; New Immigrants

 

Scott Korb, Light without fire: the making of America’s first Muslim college (2013)

Summary: “Tells the story of [Zaytuna College’s] founders, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, arguably the two most influential leaders in American Islam, ‘rock stars’ who, tellingly, are little known outside their community. Korb also introduces us to Zaytuna’s students, young American Muslims of all stripes who admire—indeed, love—their teachers in ways college students typically don’t and whose stories, told for the first time, signal the future of Islam in this country.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Samory Rasheed, Black Muslims in the U.S.: history, politics, and the struggle of a community (2013)

Summary: “Seeks to address deficiencies in current scholarship about black Muslims in American society, from examining the origins of Islam among African-Americans to acknowledging the influential role that black Muslims play in contemporary U.S. society.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Wajahat Ali, All-American: 45 American men on being Muslim (2012)

Summary: “A unique collection of stories shattering the misconceptions surrounding American Muslim men through honest, accessible, personal essays.” – White Cloud Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Juliane Hammer, American Muslim women, religious authority, and activism: more than a prayer (2012)

Summary: “Hammer looks at the work of significant female American Muslim writers, scholars, and activists, using their writings as a lens for a larger discussion of Muslim intellectual production in America and beyond. Centered on the controversial women-led Friday prayer in March 2005, Hammer uses this event and its aftermath to address themes of faith, community, and public opinion.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Gender

 

Mustafa Khattab, The Nation of Islam: the history, ideology and development of the Black Muslim movement in America (2012)

Summary: “Explores the origins of the NOI ideology and its impact on other Muslim and black nationalist groups in the US. This book, probably the first scholarly work ever on the NOI by an Arab-Muslim from a prestigious institution of higher learning such as Al-Azhar University, is instrumental in understanding the history, future, and progress of Islam in America & the African-American community.” – Lambert Academic Publishing

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Ayesha Mattu, Love, InshAllah: the secret love lives of American Muslim women (2012)

Summary: “25 American Muslim writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their search for love openly for the first time, showing just how varied the search for love can be–from singles’ events and online dating, to college flirtations and arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist.” – Soft Skull Press

Keywords: Gender; Sex

 

Nadine Christine Naber, Arab America: gender, cultural politics, and activism (2012)

Summary: “Tells the stories of second generation Arab American young adults living in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of whom are political activists engaged in two culturalist movements that draw on the conditions of diaspora, a Muslim global justice and a Leftist Arab movement. Writing from a transnational feminist perspective, Naber reveals the complex and at times contradictory cultural and political processes through which Arabness is forged in the contemporary United States.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Gender; Youth

 

Maria M. Ebrahimji, I speak for myself: American women on being Muslim (2011)

Summary: “40 American women under the age of 40 share their experiences of their lives as Muslim women in America. While their commonality is faith and citizenship, their voices and their messages are very different. …Each personal story is a contribution to the larger narrative of life stories and life work of a new generation of Muslim women.” – White Cloud Press

Keywords: Gender

 

Anouar Majid, Islam and America: building a future without prejudice (2011)

Summary: “Majid, born in Morocco, raised a Muslim, educated in the U.S., and now an American, offers a personal view of the tensions between the U.S. and Islam and the foundation for moving forward. He begins, and ends, with the revolutionary idea that embodies the U.S.: the promise of liberty, free inquiry, new ideas, and a democratic spirit and the hope it engenders. In between, he argues that both sides have used sacred scriptures and unexamined religious beliefs to justify social injustice, misguided foreign-policy choices, and acts of aggression.” – Booklist

Keywords: Biography

 

Peter Morey, Framing Muslims: stereotyping and representation after 9/11 (2011)

Summary: “Dissect[s] the ways in which stereotypes depicting Muslims as an inherently problematic presence in the West are constructed, deployed, and circulated in the public imagination, producing an immense gulf between representation and a considerably more complex reality. Crucially, they show that these stereotypes are not solely the province of crude-minded demagogues and their tabloid megaphones, but multiply as well from the lips of supposedly progressive elites, even those who presume to speak “from within,” on Muslims’ behalf.” – Harvard University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Samir Abu-Absi, Arab Americans in Toledo (2010)

Summary: “Toledo’s Arab American experience is a great American story of an ethnic community finding fertile soil, sinking roots and flourishing. This has been the story of ethnic groups whose American experience predates that of Arab Americans and it is being written anew by more recent immigrant communities.” – University of Toledo Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Ohio

 

Akbar Ahmed, Journey into America: the challenge of Islam (2010)

Summary: “To shed light on this increasingly important religious group and counter mutual distrust, renowned scholar Akbar Ahmed conducted the most comprehensive study to date of the American Muslim community. Journey into America explores and documents how Muslims are fitting into U.S. society, placing their experience within the larger context of American identity. This eye-opening book also offers a fresh and insightful perspective on American history and society.” – Brookings Institution Press

Keywords: Identity; Mosques

 

Stephan Salisbury, Mohamed’s ghosts: an American story of love and fear in the homeland (2010)

Summary: “As he explores events centered on what he calls “the poor streets of Frankford Valley” in Philadelphia, or the empty streets of Brooklyn , or the fear-encrusted precincts of Lodi, California and beyond, Salisbury is constantly reminded of similar incidents in his own past–the paranoia and police activity that surrounded his political involvement in the 1960s, and the surveillance and informing that dogged his father, a well-known New York Times reporter and editor, for half a century.” – Public Affairs Books

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Linda Brandi Cateura, Voices of American Muslims: 23 profiles (2009)

Summary: “American Muslims from all walks of life introduce themselves and the many faces of Islam in America. These individuals include the head of New York’s largest mosque, an actress, a cabdriver and many others. These first-person narratives, drawn from personal interviews conducted by the author, are frank and offer insights rarely experienced in most Americans’ relations with their Muslim neighbours.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity

 

Sarah M.A. Gualtieri, Between Arab and white: race and ethnicity in the early Syrian American diaspora (2009)

Summary: “presents an original analysis of the ways in which people mainly from current day Lebanon and Syria—the largest group of Arabic-speaking immigrants before World War II—came to view themselves in racial terms and position themselves within racial hierarchies as part of a broader process of ethnic identity formation.” – University of California Press

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants; Syria

 

Hamid Reza Kusha, Islam in American prisons: black Muslims’ challenge to American penology (2009)

Summary: “The growth of Islam both worldwide and particularly in the United States is especially notable among African-American inmates incarcerated in American state and federal penitentiaries. …This new study examines this multifaceted phenomenon and makes a powerful argument for the objective examination of the rehabilitative potentials of faith-based organizations in prisons, including the faith of those who convert to Islam.” – Routledge

Keywords: Prisons

 

Sunaina Marr Maira, Missing: youth, citizenship, and empire after 9/11 (2009)

Summary: “Drawing on ethnographic research in a New England high school, Maira investigates the cultural dimensions of citizenship for South Asian Muslim students and their relationship to the state in the everyday contexts of education, labor, leisure, dissent, betrayal, and loss. The narratives of the mostly working-class youth she focuses on demonstrate how cultural citizenship is produced in school, at home, at work, and in popular culture.” – Duke University Press

Keywords: Education; South Asians; Youth

 

Alia Malek, A country called Amreeka: Arab roots, American stories (2009)

Summary: “The history of Arab settlement in the United States stretches back nearly as far as the history of America itself. For the first time, Alia Malek brings this history to life. In each of eleven spellbinding chapters, she inhabits the voice and life of one Arab American, at one time-stopping historical moment.” – Simon & Schuster

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Manning Marable, Black routes to Islam (2009)

Summary: “Starting with the 19th century narratives of African American travelers to the Holy Land, the following chapters probe Islam’s role in urban social movements, music and popular culture, gender dynamics, relations between African Americans and Muslim immigrants, and the racial politics of American Islam with the ongoing war in Iraq.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Zarinah El-Amin Naeem, Jihad of the soul: singlehood and the search for love in Muslim America (2009)

Summary: “An anthropological exploration into the attitudes, experiences and emotions of single Muslim young adults between the ages of 18-40.” – Western Michigan University Press

Keywords: Identity; Youth

 

Christopher M. Stonebanks, Muslim voices in school: narratives of identity and pluralism (2009)

Summary: “The politics and education about Islam, Muslims, Arabs, Turks, Iranians and all that is associated with the West’s popular imagination of the monolithic ‘Middle-East’ has long been framed within problematics. The goal of this book is to push back against the reductive mainstream narratives told about Muslim and Middle Eastern heritage students for generations if not centuries, in mainstream schools. The chapters are each authored by Muslim-acculturated scholars.” – Sense Publishers

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

John Tehranian, Whitewashed: America’s invisible Middle Eastern minority (2009)

Summary: “Unlike many other racial minorities in our country, Middle Eastern Americans have faced rising, rather than diminishing, degrees of discrimination over time; a fact highlighted by recent targeted immigration policies, racial profiling, a war on terrorism with a decided racialist bent, and growing rates of job discrimination and hate crime. Oddly enough, however, Middle Eastern Americans are not even considered a minority in official government data. Instead, they are deemed white by law….Tehranian combines his own personal experiences as an Iranian American with an expert’s analysis of current events, legal trends, and critical theory to analyze this bizarre Catch-22 of Middle Eastern racial classification.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Nader Ayish, Stereotypes and Arab American Muslim high school students (2008)

Summary: “In an effort to better understand this diverse community, this study investigated how five Arab American Muslim high school students perceive and cope with stereotypes and the way their culture and religion is portrayed in film, the media, popular culture, and school curricula.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arabs; Education; Youth

 

Moustafa Bayoumi, How does it feel to be a problem?: being young and Arab in America (2008)

Summary: “Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, home to the largest Arab-American population in the United States. He moves beyond stereotypes and clichés to reveal their often unseen struggles, from being subjected to government surveillance to the indignities of workplace discrimination.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Katherine Pratt Ewing, Being and belonging: Muslims in the United States since 9/11 (2008)

Summary: “Katherine Pratt Ewing leads a group of anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural studies experts in exploring how the events of September 11th have affected the quest for belonging and identity among Muslims in America—for better and for worse. From Chicago to Detroit to San Francisco, Being and Belonging takes readers on an extensive tour of Muslim America—inside mosques, through high school hallways, and along inner city streets.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Dalel B. Khalil, From veils to thongs: an Arab chick’s survival guide to balancing one’s ethnic identity in America (2008)

Summary: “One who is both Arab and American is very often, very confused. Her one foot is planted firmly in a traditional world whose cultural rules haven’t changed in over 2,000 years. Her other foot is skidding on a thin piece of ice, the mega-liberal free-for-all, called America. And she is trying to balance walking on both. This hilarious, lighthearted survival guide explains how to retain one’s sanity in the battle of the ultimate culture clash.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Anjana Narayna, Living our religions: Hindu and Muslim South Asian-American women narrate their experiences (2008)

Summary:Living Our Religions sheds important light on the lives of Hindu and Muslim American women of South Asian origin. As the authors reveal their diverse and culturally dynamic religious practices, describe the race, gender, and ethnic boundaries that they encounter, and document how they resist and challenge these boundaries, they cut through the myths and ethnocentrism of popular portrayals to reveal the vibrancy, courage, and agency of an “invisible” minority.” – Lynne Rienner Publishers

Keywords: Gender; South Asians

 

Paul M. Barrett, American Islam: the struggle for the soul of a religion (2007)

Summary: “Barrett tells seven stories of American Muslims in all their stereotype-defying complexity.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Identity; Media

 

Brigitte L. Nacos, Fueling our fears: stereotyping, media coverage, and public opinion of Muslim Americans (2007)

Summary: “After September 11, many in the American public and media zeroed in on Muslims in America and the world, irresponsibly linking―intentionally or not―Muslims at large with terrorism. This well-researched book explores this focus and its implications. At the same time, the authors do not leave out the opinion of Muslim Americans, exploring their views about the American media and its influence, their attitudes toward non-Muslim Americans and, just as important, their opinions on post–9/11 U.S. counterterrorist policies and practices.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Media; Terrorism

 

Anna Mansson McGinty, Becoming Muslim: Western women’s conversions to Islam (2006)

Summary: “While Islam has become a controversial topic in the West, a growing number of Westerners find powerful meaning in Islam. Becoming Muslim is an ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews with Swedish and American women who have converted to Islam.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Converts; Gender

 

Asra Q. Nomani, Standing alone: an American woman’s struggle for the soul of Islam (2006)

Summary: “Nomani shows how many of the freedoms enjoyed centuries ago have been erased by the conservative brand of Islam practiced today, giving the West a false image of Muslim women as veiled and isolated from the world.” – HarperCollins

Keywords: Gender

 

Karin van Nieuwkerk, Women embracing Islam: gender and conversion in the West (2006)

Summary: “In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam, leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam. Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well as the Nation of Islam, have for women.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Converts; Gender

 

Donna Gehrke White, The face behind the veil: the extraordinary lives of Muslim women in America (2006)

Summary: “Provides a rare, revealing look into the hearts, minds, and everyday lives of Muslim women in America and opens a window on a culture as diverse as it is misunderstood.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Hijab

 

Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, Living Islam out loud: American Muslim women speak (2005)

Summary: “Living Islam Out Loud presents the first generation of American Muslim women who have always identified as both American and Muslim. These pioneers have forged new identities for themselves and for future generations, and they speak out about the hijab, relationships, sex and sexuality, activism, spirituality, and much more.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Shattering the stereotypes: Muslim women speak out (2005)

Summary: “In this ambitious volume that includes essays, poetry, fiction, memoir, plays, and artwork, Muslim women speak for themselves, revealing a complexity of experience and thought that escapes most Western portrayals. Islam is, as editor Fawzia Afzal-Khan puts it, only “one spoke in the wheel of our lives.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Culture; Gender; Identity

 

Loukia K. Sarroub, All American Yemeni girls: being Muslim in a public school (2005)

Summary: “Based on more than two years of fieldwork conducted in a Yemeni community in southeastern Michigan, this unique study examines Yemeni American girls’ attempts to construct and make sense of their identities as Yemenis, Muslims, Americans, daughters of immigrants, teenagers, and high school students.” – University of Pennsylvania Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Yemen; Youth

 

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Muslims in the United States: identity, influence, innovation (2005)

Summary: Proceedings of conferences sponsored by the Division of U.S. Studies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in 2003 and 2005. Topics include issues affecting Muslims in the United States; the impact American Muslims are having around the world; and pluralism and gender in Islam.

Keywords: Identity

 

Mbaye Lo, Muslims in America: race, politics, and community building (2004)

Summary: “Mabye takes the mosque as his paradigm to analyze and synthesize the growth of Muslim communities in Cleveland; how their mosques developed over time, the challenges they faced, in moving to mainstream Islam and developing a multi-ethnic community.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Mosques; Ohio

 

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the roots of terror (2004)

Summary: “Distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to bear on a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen?” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Engaged surrender: African American women and Islam (2004)

Summary: “In Engaged Surrender, Islam becomes a unique prism for clarifying the role of faith in contemporary black women’s experience. Through these women’s stories, Rouse reveals how commitment to Islam refracts complex processes—urbanization, political and social radicalization, and deindustrialization—that shape black lives generally, and black women’s lives in particular. Rather than focusing on traditional (and deeply male) ideas of autonomy and supremacy, the book—and the community of women it depicts—emphasizes more holistic notions of collective obligation, personal humility, and commitment to overarching codes of conduct and belief.” – University of California Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Gender

 

Michael Wolfe, Taking back Islam: American Muslims reclaim their faith (2003)

Summary: “Noted Islamic authority Michael Wolfe moderates 35 expert speakers, writers and leaders, including Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) and Karen Armstrong. They discuss the future of Islam, tear down false stereotypes, review the historical realities that have shaped the religion, and examine paradoxes and schisms within the faith.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Interfaith Relations; Media

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Muslim minorities in the West: visible and invisible (2002)

Summary: “noted scholars Haddad and Smith bring together outstanding essays on the distinct experiences of minority Muslim communities from Detroit, Michigan to Perth, Australia and the wide range of issues facing them. Haddad and Smith in their introduction trace the broad contours of the Muslim experience in Europe, America and other areas of European settlement and shed light on the common questions minority Muslims face of assimilation, discrimination, evangelism, and politics.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Arabs; Identity

 

Muqteda Khan, American Muslims: bridging faith and freedom (2002)

Summary: A collection of essays on a range of topics related to American Muslims.

 

Anan Ameri, Arab Americans in metro Detroit: a pictorial history (2001)

Summary: “Through more than 180 images, this book portrays the challenges and triumphs of Arabs as they preserve their families, and build churches, mosques, restaurants, businesses, and institutions, thus contributing to Detroit’s efforts in regaining its position as a world class city.” – Arcadia Publishing

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan

 

Ihsan Bagby, The mosque in America: a national portrait (2001)

Summary: “This report presents findings from the Mosque Study Project 2000, the largest, most comprehensive survey of mosques ever to be conducted in the United States. The purpose of the Study is twofold: to provide a comprehensive, detailed portrait of mosques, which can be subsequently used by mosque leaders and Muslim scholars to envision ways to strengthen mosques. Secondly the Study provides a public profile of mosques that will hopefully further the understanding of the Muslim presence in America.” – from document introduction

Keywords: Mosques

 

Paul Findley, Silent no more: confronting America’s false images of Islam (2001)

Summary: “Paul Findley, a 22-year veteran of Congress, chronicles his long, far-flung trail of discovery through the World Of Islam: the false stereotypes that linger in the minds of the American people, the corrective actions that the leaders of America’s seven million Muslims are undertaking, and the community’s remarkable progress in mainstream politics.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Muslims on the Americanization path? (2000)

Summary: “Like all religious minorities in America, Muslims must confront a host of difficult questions concerning faith and national identity…While the Muslims of America are indeed on the path to Americanization, what that means and what that will yield remains uncertain.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Identity

 

Michael W. Suleiman, Arabs in America: building a new future (1999)

Summary: “The contributors discuss an assortment of different communities…in order to illustrate the range of Arab emigre experience. More broadly, they examine Arabs in the legal system, youth and family, health and welfare, as well as Arab-American identity, political activism, and attempts by Arab immigrants to achieve respect and recognition in their new homes. They address both the present situation for Arab-Americans and prospects for their future.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Gisela Webb, Windows of faith: Muslim women scholar-activists of North America (1999)

Summary: “These essays by Islamic women scholars in the USA give voice to and are evidence of the growing network of Muslim women involved with the issues of women’s human rights through scholarship activism.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Human Rights

 

Shamita Das Dasgupta, A patchwork shawl: chronicles of South Asian women in America (1998)

Summary: “Sheds light on the lives of a segment of the U.S. immigrant population that has long been relegated to the margins. It focuses on women’s lives that span different worlds: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and the United States. This collection of essays by and about South Asian women in America challenges stereotypes by allowing women to speak in their own words. Together they provide discerning insights into the reconstruction of immigrant patriarchy in a new world, and the development of women’s resistance to that reconstruction.” – Rutgers University Press

Keywords: Gender; South Asians

 

Khalid M. Alkhazraji, Immigrants and cultural adaptation in the American workplace: a study of Muslim employees (1997)

Summary: “This book presents a model of employee acculturation, investigating how Muslim employees adapt to U.S. national and organizational cultures. …Responses from 339 Muslims revealed that most were inclined to retain their original culture rather than adopting U.S. national culture. In contrast, most accepted U.S. organizational cultures.” – Google Books

Keywords: New Immigrants

 

Evelyn Shakir, Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American women in the United States (1997)

Summary: “While attempting to correct stereotypes that picture Arab women as passive, mindless, and downtrodden, Shakir gives voice to women caught in a tug of war, usually waged within the family, between traditional values and the social and sexual liberties permitted women in the West. Complicating that battle has been the American suspicion of Arab peoples, which has sometimes pushed women―as guardians of a culture under attack―to resist the blandishments of American society.” – ABC-CLIO/Praeger

Keywords: Arabs; Gender

 

Carol L. Anway, Daughters of another path: experiences of American women choosing Islam (1995)

Summary: “Includes portions of stories from fifty-three American born women who have chosen to become Muslim. Why and how they came to Islam; what their lives are like as a result of that choice; How non-Muslims can relate to Muslims that are relatives, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.” – Midwest Book Review

Keywords: Converts; Gender

 

Steven Barboza, American jihad: Islam after Malcolm X (1995)

Summary: “Introduces 50 members of the growing American Muslim population. With gentle proselytizing, the narratives and interviews relate conversion memories, immigrant tales, and other anecdotes about the U.S. Islamic experiences… Barboza conveys the impact of Malcolm X on Islam’s rapid growth and the American Muslims’ struggle for acceptance while trying to cultivate our understanding of the religion through conversations with diverse practitioners.” – Library Journal

Keywords: African-Americans

 

C. Eric Lincoln, The black Muslims in America (3rd ed. 1994)

Summary: “This classic sociological study gives a concise, accessible introduction to Islam for Americans whose knowledge of religion is limited primarily to Judeo-Christianity. The book succinctly details the formation and development of the Black Muslim movement through its wide-ranging expressions in America today — a movement born as an organized form of religious and social protest against a society sharply divided by race. This edition includes a new foreword by Aminah B. McCloud, a new preface, and an extensive postscript by Lincoln in which he outlines the course of the Nation of Islam since the death of its formative leader, Elijah Muhammad … A section highlighting the public career of Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad’s famous spokesperson turned cultural icon, is also included. ” – Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Muslims of America (1993)

Summary: “Focusing on the manner in which American Muslims adapt their institutions as they become increasingly an indigenous part of America, the essays discuss American Muslim self-images, perceptions of Muslims by non-Muslim Americans, leading American Muslim intellectuals, political activity of Muslims in America, Muslims in American prisons, Islamic education, the status of Muslim women in America, and the impact of American foreign policy on Muslims in the United States.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Prisons

 

Hakim Muhammed Rashid, In search of the path: socialization, education and the African-American Muslim (1989)

Keywords: African-Americans; Education

 

Viviane Douche-Boulos, Cedars by the Mississippi: Lebanese-Americans in the Twin Cities (1978)

Summary: A history of Lebanese immigrants in Minnesota. A sociological study of immigrants from Lebanon who relocated to the Mid-West of the United States.

Keywords: Arabs; Lebanon; Minnesota

 

Elaine Hagopian, Arab Americans: a study in assimilation (1969)

Summary: A collection of papers including “The New Arab-American Community,” “The Woman’s Role in the Socialization of Syrian Americans in Chicago,” and “Nationalism and Traditional Preservations.”

Keywords: Arabs

Peter Gottschalk, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Sentiment: Picturing the Enemy (2019).

Summary: This book explores anti-Muslim racism through political cartoons and film––media with immediate and important impact. After providing a background on Islamic traditions and their history with America, it graphically shows how political cartoons and films reveal Americans’ casual demeaning and demonizing of Muslims and Islam––a phenomenon common among both liberals and conservatives. (Google Books) – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Psychology, public opinion, popular culture

 

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Fatima Husain, & Basia Spalek, Islam and social work: culturally sensitive practice in a diverse world (2017)

Summary: “The only book specifically addressing social work with Muslim communities, Islam and Social Work provides an essential toolkit for culturally sensitive social work practice.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Family

 

Manijeh Daneshpour, Family therapy with Muslims (2016)

Summary: Family Therapy with Muslims is the first guide for mental health professionals who work with Muslims in the family therapy setting. The book opens with a section defining the similarities across Muslim cultures, the effects of postcolonialism on Muslims, and typical Muslim family dynamics. The author then devotes a chapter to different models of family therapy and how they can specifically be applied to working with Muslim families. Case studies throughout the book involve families of many different backgrounds living in the West―including both immigrant and second generation families―that will give professionals concrete tools to work with clients of their own.” – Routledge

Keywords: Family; Mental Health

 

Mona M. Amer, Handbook of Arab American psychology (2015)

Summary: “Contains a comprehensive review of the cutting-edge research related to Arab Americans and offers a critical analysis regarding the methodologies and applications of the scholarly literature. It is a landmark text for both multicultural psychology as well as for Arab American scholarship.” – Routledge

Keywords: Arab Americans; Multiculturalism

 

Sylvia Nassar-McMillan, Biopsychosocial perspectives on Arab Americans: culture, development, and health (2015)

Summary: “Introduces an interdisciplinary lens by bringing together vital research on culture, psychosocial development, and key aspects of health and disease to address a wide range of salient concerns. Its scholarship mirrors the diversity of the Arab American population, exploring ethnic concepts in socio-historical and political contexts before reviewing findings on major health issues, including diabetes, cancer, substance abuse, mental illness, and maternal/child health.” – Springer

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Sameera Ahmed and Mona M. Amer, Counseling Muslims: Handbook of mental health issues and interventions (2011)

Summary: “Reflects interventions ranging from the individual to community levels, and includes chapters that discuss persons born in the West, converts to Islam, and those from smaller ethnic minorities. It is the only guide practitioners need for information on effective service delivery for Muslims, who already bypass significant cultural stigma and shame to access mental health services.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Mental Health

 

Sylvia Nassar-McMillan, Counseling & diversity: Arab Americans (2010)

Summary: “This monograph represents a comprehensive primer on counseling issues among Arab American clients” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Maha B. Alkhateeb and Salma Elkadi Abugideiri, Change from within: Diverse perspectives on domestic violence in Muslim communities (2007)

Summary: “This book is one of the first edited volumes to focus on domestic violence in Muslim families. Bringing the experiences of diverse domestic violence advocates to the table, voices in this text include religious leaders, service providers, and researchers from multiple disciplines. Four survivors also share their stories, illustrating some of the challenges they faced, as well as their paths to healing. This volume illuminates unique domestic violence issues that Muslims face, and emphasizes Islam s intolerance to abuse.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Family; Mental Health

 

Ahmed Nezar Kobeisy, Counseling American Muslims: understanding the faith and helping the people (2004)

Summary: “Author Kobeisy explains the range of true Muslim faith, shows us how unfair discrimination threatens and scars the mental health of American Muslims, and also demonstrates what counselors, teachers, social workers, and other helping professionals can do to understand the faith as well as help these people recover to live strong in the face of prejudice.” – Praeger

Keywords: Civil Rights; Mental Health

 

Earle H. Waugh, The Islamic tradition: religious beliefs and healthcare decisions (1999)

Summary: Summarizes Islamic beliefs affecting health care in the areas of doctor-patient relations, sexuality and procreation, reproductive health, genetics, transplants, mental health, and end-of-life care.

Keywords: Health

Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (2022).

Summary: Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them. – New York University Press.

Keywords: History, Islamic studies, American studies

 

Caleb Iyer Elfenbein, Fear in Our Hearts: What Islamophobia Tells Us about America (2021). Summary: Examines Islamophobia in the United States, positing that rather than simply being an outcome of the 9/11 attacks, anti-Muslim activity grows out of a fear of difference that has always characterized US public life. Elfenbein examines the effects of this fear on American Muslims, as well as describing how it works to shape and distort American society (Amazon.com). – New York University Press.

Keywords: History, Politics, Social Science, Religious Studies

 

Jeffrey Einboden, Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, Their Arabic Letters, and an American President (2020).

Summary: Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives reveals the untold story of two escaped West Africans in the American heartland whose Arabic writings reached a sitting U.S. President, prompting him to intervene on their behalf (Google books) – Oxford University Press. 

Keywords: African Americans, slavery, history 

 

Munawar Ali Karim, Liberty’s Jihad: African Muslim Slaves and the Meaning of America (2019).

Summary: Starting in pre-Islamic Arabia and deepest Africa, following the lives, adventures, and writings of three Muslim slaves through antebellum America and the world of trans-Atlantic slavery, Liberty’s Jihad takes us on a fascinating journey spanning centuries, continents and characters (Google Books) – Diptote Books.

Keywords: African Americans, slavery, history 

 

Karem Bayraktaroglu, The Muslim World in Post/9/11 American Cinema: A Critical Study, 2001- 2011 (2018)

Summary: Focusing on the decade following 9/11, this critical analysis examines the various portrayals of Muslims in American cinema (Google Books). – McFarland & Company, Inc.

Keywords: History, popular culture, stereotypes

 

Sylvia Chan-Malik, Being Muslim: A cultural history of women of color in American Islam (2018)

Summary: “In negotiating the histories of anti-Blackness, U.S. imperialism, and women’s rights of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Being Muslim explores how U.S. Muslim women’s identities are expressions of Islam as both Black protest religion and universal faith tradition.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Gender; History; Intersectionality; Feminism

 

Abdur Raheem Kidwai, Images of the Prophet Muhammad in English literature (2018)

Summary: “Images of the Prophet Muhammad in English Literature seeks to promote a better understanding between the Muslim world and the West against the backdrop of the Danish cartoons and the deplorable tragedy of 9/11, which has evoked a general interest in things Islamic. This book recounts and analyzes the image of Prophet Muhammad, as reflected in English literary texts from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Prophet Muhammad; Literature

 

Jerusha Tanner Lamptey, Divine words, female voices (2018)

Summary: “This book is distinctive in its responsiveness to calls for new approaches in Islamic feminist theology, its use of the method of comparative theology, its focus on Muslim and Christian feminist theology in comparative analysis, and its constructive articulation of Muslima theological perspectives.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Feminism; Theology

 

Summary: “This book aims to bring Muslim theology into the present day. Rather than a purely academic pursuit, Modern Muslim Theology argues that theology is a creative process and discusses how the Islamic tradition can help contemporary practitioners negotiate their relationships with God, with one another, and with the rest of creation.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Islamic Studies; Religion; Theology; History; Comparative

 

Jerusha Tanner Lamptey, Never wholly Other: A Muslima theology of religious pluralism (2016)

Summary: “How does the Qurʾān depict the religious Other? Throughout Islamic history, this question has provoked extensive and intricate debate about the identity, nature, and status of the religious Other and the religious self… This book critically engages this emergent contemporary discourse, highlighting a pervasive inability to account for both religious commonalities and religious differences without resorting to models that depict religions as isolated entities or models that arrange religions in a static, evaluative hierarchy.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Religious Pluralism; Feminist Theology; Semantic Analysis

 

Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslim Americans in the military: centuries of service (2016)

Summary: “Illuminates the long history of Muslim service members who have defended their country and struggled to practice their faith. Profiling soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors since the dawn of our country, Curtis showcases the real stories of Muslim Americans, from Omer Otmen, who fought fiercely against German forces during World War I, to Captain Humayun Khan, who gave his life in Iraq in 2004.” – Indiana University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; History

 

Amir Hussein, Muslims and the making of America (2016)

Summary: “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.” – Baylor University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; History

 

Nuri Madina, Yes, I am your Brother: Understanding the indigenous African American Muslim (2016)

Summary: “Muslims and African Americans are the two most misunderstood groups in America today, yet both groups have been a part of American life from its beginning… It is this people, the African American Muslim, that represents those ideals and who presents a model for humanity going forward.” – Barnes and Noble

Keywords: Intersectional identity; History

 

Maria del Mar Logroño Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, and John Tofik Karam, Crescent over another horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA (2015)

Summary: “In the first book to comprehensively examine the Islamic experience in Latina/o societies—from Columbian voyages to the post-9/11 world—more than a dozen luminaries from nations throughout the Western Hemisphere explore how Islam indelibly influenced the making of the Americas.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: History; Latin America

 

Debra Majeed, Polygyny: What it means when African American Muslim women share their husbands (2015)

Summary: Polygyny explores the practice of multiple-wife marriage among African American Muslims who follow the leadership of Imam W. D. Mohammed… Majeed examines the choices available to African American Muslim women who are considering polygyny or who are living it. She calls attention to the ways in which interpretations of Islam’s primary sources are authorized or legitimated to regulate the rights of Muslim women.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Women in Islam; Polygyny; Marriage; Family

 

Karine V. Walther, Sacred interests: the United States and the Islamic world, 1821-1921 (2015)

Summary: “Excavates the deep history of American Islamophobia, showing how negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims shaped U.S. foreign relations from the Early Republic to the end of World War I. …a vital exploration of the crucial role the United States played in the Islamic world during the long nineteenth century–an interaction that shaped a historical legacy that remains with us today.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Orientalism; Transnational

 

Hani J. Bawardi, The making of Arab Americans: from Syrian nationalism to U.S. citizenship (2014)

Summary: “Hani Bawardi examines the numerous Arab American political advocacy organizations that thrived before World War I, showing how they influenced Syrian and Arab nationalism. He further offers an in-depth analysis exploring how World War II helped introduce a new Arab American identity as priorities shifted and the quest for assimilation intensified.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Arabs; Transnational

 

Denise Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson’s Quran: Islam and the founders (2013)

Summary: “Recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

Jacob Rama Berman, American Arabesque: Arabs and Islam in the nineteenth century imaginary (2012)

Summary: “Examines representations of Arabs, Islam and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we  understand them today.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Orientalism

 

Mahmoud Andrade Ibrahim al Amreeki, The Dar ul Islam Movement: An American odyssey revisited (2010)

Summary: “Dar, as it was known by its membership, began and organized itself with the object of establishing the religion of Islam in America. The ‘establishment’ of Islam was understood by its membership, as a semi-autonomous way of living in America with the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Shariah) as legitimate tools for governing the Muslim American Community… Sh. Mahmoud Ibrahim gives some valuable insights into the inner workings of the headquarters of the ‘movement’, Yasin Mosque, and the Imam’s commitment to the Sunnah or practices of Muhammad (pboh) in an urban environment.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: Darul Islam Movement; African American Muslims

 

Kamal Hassan Ali, Dar-ul-Islam: Principle, praxis, movement (2010)

Summary: “This seminal work by Dr. Kamal Hassan Ali is rooted in his personal involvement with the largest indigenous effort to promote the religious and social remedies of Islam in America.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Dar-ul-Islam; Sunni Muslim

 

Nathaniel Deutsch, Inventing America’s “worst” family: eugenics, Islam, and the fall and rise of the Tribe of Ishmael (2009)

Summary: “In what becomes a profoundly unsettling counter-history of the United States, Nathaniel Deutsch traces how the Ishmaels, whose patriarch fought in the Revolutionary War, were discovered in the slums of Indianapolis in the 1870s and became a symbol for all that was wrong with the urban poor. The Ishmaels, actually white Christians, were later celebrated in the 1970s as the founders of the country’s first African American Muslim community.” – University of California Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Sylviane A. Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The slave ship Clotilda and the story of the last Africans brought to America (2007)

Summary: This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women. After emancipation, the group reunited from various plantations, bought land, and founded their own settlement, known as African Town.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Slavery; Slave Trade

 

Timothy Marr, The cultural roots of American Islamicism (2006)

Summary: “Analyzes the historical roots of how the Muslim world figured in American prophecy, politics, reform, fiction, art and dress. Marr argues that perceptions of the Muslim world, long viewed not only as both an anti-Christian and despotic threat but also as an exotic other, held a larger place in domestic American concerns than previously thought.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Orientalism; Transnational

 

Michael A. Gomez, Black crescent: The experience and legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (2005)

Summary: “Beginning with Latin America in the fifteenth century, this book comprises a social history of the experiences of African Muslims and their descendants throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean….The second part of the book traces the emergence of Islam among U.S. African descendants in the twentieth century, featuring chapters on Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X to explain how orthodoxy arose from varied unorthodox roots.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African American Muslims; Slavery

 

Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: a history (2005)

Summary: “Orfalea gives a detailed and highly readable account of the three major waves of Arab immigration to America, from 1878 to 1924, 1947 to 1966, and 1967 to the present” – Library Journal

Keywords: Arab Americans; New Immigrants

 

Ami Marvasti, Middle Eastern lives in America (2004)

Summary: “The place of Middle Easterners in the racial hierarchy of the United States remains relatively unexplored in scholarly research. In this book this authors present the everyday experiences of this population by specifically focusing on Arab and Iranian Americans. …Through concrete descriptions and analysis of how Arab and Iranian Americans are confronted with matters of ethnic and racial inequality, this work’s primary aim is to debunk entrenched stereotypes by bringing to the forefront the human complexity of the Middle Eastern experience.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Arabs; Iranian-Americans

 

Elizabeth Boosahda, Arab-American faces and voices: the origins of an immigrant community (2003)

Summary: “Draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the  Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants. Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester’s links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Massachusetts; New Immigrants

 

Sajida Alvi, Homa Hoodfar, and Sheila McDonough, eds., The Muslim veil in North America: Issues and debates (2003)

Summary: “Beginning in 1996, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women invited scholars from various fields to carry out a systematic study of issues surrounding different practices relating to the hijab among Muslims. This provocative book also discusses the current issues surrounding opening up the interpretation of the Qur’an and the Hadith to a woman’s perspective.” – Amazon.com

Women’s Press

Keywords: Veils; North America Social aspects; Muslim Women; Customs

 

Robert J. Allison, The crescent obscured: the United States and the Muslim world, 1776-1815 (2000)

Summary: “Focusing on America’s encounter with the Barbary states of North Africa from 1776 to 1815, Robert Allison traces the perceptions and mis-perceptions of Islam in the American mind as the new nation constructed its ideology and system of government.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Orientalism

 

Alixa Naff, Becoming American: the early Arab immigrant experience (1993)

Summary: “Naff focuses on the pre-World War I pioneering generation of Arabic-speaking immigrants, the generation that set the patterns for settlement and assimilation.” – Southern Illinois University Press

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Fuad Shaban, Islam and Arabs in early American thought: roots of Orientalism in America (1990)

Summary: Examines American perceptions of Islam and the Islamic world during the Barbary Wars, as demonstrated in contemporary scholarly writings and popular discourse.

Keywords: Arabs; Orientalism

 

Gregory Orfalea, Before the flames: a quest for the history of Arab Americans (1988)

Summary: “Select Arab American individuals and personalities receive special attention in short vignettes. Yet the book is substantively organized around the analysis of three successive groups of Arab immigration to the United States, all within the last one hundred years.” – Oral History Review

Keywords: Arabs

 

Eric J. Hooglund, Crossing the waters: Arab-speaking immigrants to the United States before 1940 (1987)

Summary: “More than 125,000 Arabs immigrated to the United States between 1890 and 1940. They came largely from villages in what is now Lebanon and Syria. Most of them were adherents of traditional Arab Christian denominations such as Maronite and Melkite rites Catholicism and the Greek Orthodox Church, but there were also small numbers of Arab Muslims. They established ethnic communities in industrial cities throughout the country, and like other immigrants, contributed to the evolution of American culture and society.” – arabamericanhistory.org

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Abdo A. Elkholy, The Arab Moslems in the United States: religion and assimilation (1966)

Summary: “This study was written to explore the variables associated with the differences in the degree of assimilation and religiosity between two Arab-Muslim communities in Toledo, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan, both of whom share identical religio-ethnic backgrounds. In the analysis of the data the author attempts to point out the fallacy of the previously assumed negative correlation between the two factors of religiosity and assimilation.” – Yale University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan; Ohio

Sahar Aziz. The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom (2021).

Summary: Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. – University of California Press.

Keywords: Law; Islamophobia; Critical Race Theory; American Studies

Asma T. Uddin, When Islam is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom (2019)

Summary: Through weaving personal narrative, legal training, and historical grounding into her book, Asma breaks down prevailing stereotypes about Muslims and Islam, details the various mechanisms and consequences of religious bigotry and animus, and underscores the importance of religious liberty for all communities in a highly accessible and graceful language. – Pegasus Books

Keywords: Law, history, religion

 

Gary R. Bunt, Hashtag Islam (2018)

Summary: “Bunt explores the diverse and surprising ways digital technology is shaping how Muslims across vast territories relate to religious authorities in fulfilling spiritual, mystical, and legalistic agendas.” – University of North Carolina Press, Pentagon Press

 

Keywords: media, technology, cyberspace 

Spearit, American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam. (2017) 

Summary: “This book is a critical exploration of prisons in contemporary America. Paying special attention to race and Islam, the work draws on a range of data and sources, including interviews and written correspondence with current and ex-prisoners, documentary research, and congressional hearings on topics that include criminal justice and religion, culture, conversion, radicalization, and reform.” – First Edition Design

 

Keywords: Law, religion studies, Islam, prisons, race, criminal justice

 

Salim Farrar & Ghena Krayem, Accommodating Muslims under common law: a comparative analysis (2016)

Summary: “The book explores the relationship between Muslims, the Common Law and Shariah post-9/11. The book looks at the accommodation of Shariah Law within Western Common Law legal traditions and the role of the judiciary, in particular, in drawing boundaries for secular democratic states with Muslim populations who want resolutions to conflicts that also comply with the dictates of their faith… Acknowledging the inherent pragmatism, flexibility and values of the Common Law, the authors argue that the controversial issue of accommodation of Shariah is not necessarily one that requires the establishment of a separate and parallel legal system.” – Routledge

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Amy Benson, Federal civil rights engagement with America’s Arab and Muslim communities (2015)

Summary: “This book examines the methods, goals and effectiveness of the federal government’s engagement with Arab and Muslim-American individuals and communities. Specifically, the book focuses on actions taken by the federal government to address, prevent and eradicate violations of civil rights laws against the Arab and Muslim-American communities, as well as efforts taken to ameliorate, eliminate or reduce religious, national-origin, and ethnic bias.” – Nova Publishers

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Malachi D. Crawford, Black Muslims and the law: civil liberties from Elijah Muhammad to Muhammed Ali (2015)

Summary: “Reveals the Nation of Islam’s strategic efforts to engage governmental officials from a position of power, and suggests the federal executive, congressmen, judges, lawyers, law enforcement officials, prison administrators, state governments, and African American civic leaders held a common understanding of what it meant to be and not to be African American and religious in the period between World War II and the Vietnam War.” – Lexington Books

Keywords: African-Americans; Civil Rights; Nation of Islam

 

Khurram Dara, Contracting fear: Islamic law in the Middle East and Middle America (2015)

Summary: “Explains not only the history and origins of Islamic law but also the interesting role it has played in the politics of the Middle East and Middle America. Challenging the conventional wisdom that Islamic law is rigid and permanent, Dara argues that the political and cultural realities of its formation suggest otherwise and should change how Islamic law is thought of and discussed in both the East and the West.” – Cascade Publishers

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Azizah al-Hibri, Islamic jurisprudence: an American Muslim perspective (2014)

Summary: “Provides both the Muslim and non-Muslim reader with a basic understanding of the legal foundations of Islam. It introduces the sources of Islamic law and their significance in the hierarchy of Islamic jurisprudence while presenting Dr. al-Hibri’s articulation of the Islamic worldview, developed in light of modern day concerns, such as those relating to gender, race and class.” – American Bar Association

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Maurits Berger, Applying Sharia in the West: facts, fears and the future of Islamic rules on family relations in the West (2013)

Summary: “Examines in depth how Muslims in the West shape their normative behavior on the basis of Shari’a and how Western societies and legal systems react thereto.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Marinos Diamantides, Islam, law and identity  (2012)

Summary: “Addresses broader and over-arching concerns about relationships between religion, human rights, law and modernity. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches, the collection presents law as central to the complex ways in which different Muslim communities and institutions create and re-create their identities around inherently ambiguous symbols of faith.” – Routledge

Keywords: Human Rights; Identity

 

Julie MacFarlane, Islamic divorce in North America: a Shari’a path in a secular society (2012)

Summary: “The most common way North American Muslims relate to shari’a is in their observance of Muslim marriage and divorce rituals; recourse to traditional Islamic marriage and, to a lesser extent, divorce is widespread. Julie Macfarlane has conducted hundreds of interviews with Muslim couples, as well as with religious and community leaders and family conflict professionals. Her book describes how Muslim marriage and divorce processes are used in North America, and what they mean to those who embrace them as a part of their religious and cultural identity.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Family; Islamic Law

 

Mark E. Hanshaw, Muslim and American?: straddling Islamic law and U.S. justice (2010)

Summary: “Explores the often competing demands that confront American Muslims from Islamic religious law and secular law. The conflict extends into many aspects of daily life, ranging from issues concerning divorce and child custody to the interpretation of contracts. …At the heart of Hanshaw’s legal analysis lies the very personal question of whether weaknesses in U.S. judicial processes serve to inhibit the free and full exercise of the Islamic faith.” – LFB Scholarly Publishing

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Kathleen M. Moore, The unfamiliar abode: Islamic law in the United States and Britain (2010)

Summary: “Explores the development of new forms of Islamic law and legal reasoning in the US and Great Britain, as well the Muslims encountering Anglo-American common law and its unfamiliar commitments to pluralism and participation, and to gender, family, and identity. The underlying context is the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the two attacks that arguably recast the way the West views Muslims and Islam.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Tony Gaskew, Policing Muslim American communities: A compendium of post 9/11 interviews (2009)

Summary: “Examines the experiences and social conflicts facing Muslim Americans in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. It provides insight on how the highly politicized and tense atmosphere following the events of 9/11 impacted the relationship between law enforcement agencies and Muslim American communities.” – Edwin Mellen Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Robert F. Cochran, Faith and law: how religious traditions from Calvinism to Islam view American law (2008)

Summary: “Legal scholars from sixteen different religious traditions contend that religious discourse has an important function in the making, practice, and adjudication of American law, not least because our laws rest upon a framework of religious values. The book includes faiths that have traditionally had an impact on American law, as well as new immigrant faiths that are likely to have a growing influence.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Islamic Law; New Immigrants

 

Bill Maurer, Pious property: Islamic mortgages in the United States (2006)

Summary: “the Qur’an forbids the payment of interest, which places conventional home financing out of reach for observant Muslims. To meet the growing Muslim demand for home purchases, a market for home financing that would be halal, or permissible under Islamic law, has emerged. In Pious Property, anthropologist William Maurer profiles the emergence of this new religiously based financial service and explores the ways it reflects the influence of Muslim practices on American economic life and vice versa.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

California Senate Office of Research, The Patriot Act, other post-9/11 enforcement powers and the impact on California’s Muslim communities (2004)

Summary: “the Senate Office of Research has examined the USA PATRIOT Act and associated federal powers that the government acquired to protect the country against domestic terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The office has looked at these issues from the perspective of members of Muslim communities in California. A broad cross-section of those communities, we discover, find the force of these new powers to be aimed against Muslims innocent of any connection to terrorist acts or known terrorist intentions.” – from the document’s executive summary

Keywords: California; Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Kathleen M. Moore, al-Mughtaribun: American law and the transformation of Muslim life in the United States (1995)

Summary: “Explores the influence of American law on Muslim life in the United States. It examines pluralism and religious toleration in America, viewed from the vantage point offered by the experiences of Muslims in the United States, a significant and growing part of an increasingly pluralistic society.” – SUNY Press

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Islamic values in the United States: a comparative study (1987)

Summary: “This ethnography of immigrant Muslims considers five Northeastern communities in detail. Including numerous interviews with members of these communities, this investigation provides a highly personal look at what it means to be a believing, practicing Muslim in America at a time when Islam is under the critical scrutiny of international news.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Identity; New Immigrants

Maha Hilal, Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience since 9/11 (2021).

Summary: This book provides a historical account of the United States rhetoric and narrative of democracy as a virtue that has been used throughout its existence and legitimized after the tragic events of the terrorists’ attacks on September 11, 2001. These narratives have had a wider impact on the Muslim community both in the US and globally. Dr. Hilal has inverted the impacts of the War on Terror to vividly detail the Islamophobia and brutality that became the Terror of War on Islam throughout the world and forever labeled Muslims as outsiders in the US. This book is useful for those interested in understanding the legal and historical antecedents of the War on Terror narrative; it should be a required reading for us all (RH).- Broadleaf Books

Keywords: Political science, social science, ethnic studies 

 

Nazita Lajevardi, Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia (2020)

Summary: Discrimination against Muslim Americans has soared over the last two decades with hostility growing especially acute since 2016 –in no small part due to targeted attacks by policymakers and media. Outsiders at Home offers the first systematic, empirically driven examination of status of Muslim Americans in US democracy, evaluating the topic from a variety of perspectives (Amazon).-Cambridge University Press.

Keywords: Religion, spirituality, political science.

 

Brian Robert Calfano and Nazita Lajevardi, Understanding Muslim Political Life in America: Contested Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century (2019).

Summary: “In this timely volume, leading scholars cover a variety of topics assessing the Muslim American experience in the post-9/11 and pre-Trump era, including law enforcement; identity labels used in Muslim surveys; the role of gender relations; recognition; and how discrimination, tolerance, and politics impact American Muslims.” – Temple University Press.

Keywords: Political aspects, social conditions, ethnic identity 

 

Edward E. Curtis, IV, Muslim American Politics and the Future of US Democracy (2019).

Summary: This volume argues that the future of American democracy depends on whether Muslim Americans are able to exercise their political rights as citizens and whether they can find acceptance as social equals (Google Books). – New York University Press.

Keywords: Political activity, political culture

 

Khalil, Mohammad Hassan. Muslims and US Politics Today: A Defining Moment (2019)

Summary: “Muslims of the United States now find themselves at a historic crossroads. In Muslims and US Politics Today: A Defining Moment, various leading scholars examine new ways in which Muslims are (a) being represented in contemporary US politics; (b) themselves being affected and shaped by contemporary US politics; and (c) engaging politics on individual and community levels. Contributors to this timely volume include Evelyn Alsultany, Donna Auston, Mucahit Bilici, Sylvia Chan-Malik, Edward E. Curtis IV, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Juliane Hammer, Salah D. Hassan, Sally Howell, Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher, Alisa Perkins, and Junaid Rana.” – Harvard University Press and ILEX,

Keywords: US politics, Muslim representation, social science, Islamic studies

 

Todd H. Green, Presumed guilty: Why we shouldn’t ask Muslims to condemn terrorism (2018)

Summary: “Renowned expert on Islamophobia Todd Green shows us how this line of questioning is riddled with false assumptions that say much more about ‘us’ than ‘them.’ This book is an invitation for self-examination when it comes to the questions we ask of Muslims and ourselves about violence. It will open the door to asking better questions of our Muslim neighbors, questions based not on the presumption of guilt but on the promise of friendship.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Islamophobia; Western

 

Michael Fischbach, Black power and Palestine: Transnational countries of color (2018)

Summary: “Americans first heard pro-Palestinian sentiments in public through the black freedom struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. Michael R. Fischbach uncovers this hidden history of the Arab–Israeli conflict’s role in African American activism and the ways that distant struggle shaped the domestic fight for racial equality.” – Stanford University Press

Keywords: Activism; Transnational; Middle East

 

Saher Selod, Forever suspect: Racialized surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror (2018)

Summary: “Forever Suspect underscores how this newly racialized religious identity changes the social location of Arabs and South Asians on the racial hierarchy further away from whiteness and compromises their status as American citizens.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: “War on Terror”; Surveillance; Governmental Policy

 

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia: Understanding the roots and rise of fear (2018)

Summary: “Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the United States.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Islamophobia; Public Policy

 

Emmanuel Karagiannis, The new political Islam: Human rights, democracy, and justice (2017)

Summary: “Emmanuel Karagiannis offers a sophisticated analysis of the different manifestations of contemporary Islamism. In a context of global economic and social changes, he finds local manifestations of Islamism are becoming both more prevalent and more diverse… The New Political Islam seeks to explain the processes and factors leading to distinctive fusions of ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ across the landscape of contemporary political Islam… He looks closely at the ways in which  Islamist activists, politicians, and militants have utilized the language of human rights, democracy, and justice to gain influence and popular support and to contend for power.” – Barnes & Noble

Keywords: Public Policy

 

Erik Love, Islamophobia and racism in America (2017)

Summary: “Erik Love draws on in-depth interviews with Middle Eastern American advocates. He shows that, rather than using a well-worn civil rights strategy to advance reforms to protect a community affected by racism, many advocates are choosing to bolster universal civil liberties in the United States more generally, believing that these universal protections are reliable and strong enough to deal with social prejudice. In reality, Love reveals, civil rights protections are surprisingly weak, and do not offer enough avenues for justice, change, and community reassurance in the wake of hate crimes, discrimination, and social exclusion.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Juris Pupcenoks, Western Muslims and conflicts abroad: conflict spillover to diasporas (2015)

Summary: “Based on survey data, statistical datasets, more than sixty interviews with Muslim community leaders and activists, ethnographic research in London and Detroit, and open-source data, this book develops a theoretical explanation for how both differences in government policies and features of migrant-background communities interact to influence the nature of foreign-policy focused activism in migrant communities. Utilizing rigorous, mixed-methods case study analysis, the author comparatively analyses the reactions of the Pakistani community in London and the Arab Muslim community in Detroit to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during the decade following 9/11. ” – Routledge

Keywords: Terrorism; Transnational

 

Jeffrey L. Thomas, Scapegoating Islam: intolerance, security, and the American Muslim (2015)

Summary: “Exploring the experience of Muslims in America following 9/11, this book assesses how anti-Muslim bias within the U.S. government and the larger society undermines American security and democracy.” – Praeger

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Edan Ganie, How I became a terrorist: Islamophobia and the oppressive aftermath of 9/11 on the Muslim community (2014)

Summary: “September 11, 2001 was a day that shook the United States to its core. Often when Americans consider the many victims of the attacks, there is one group that few acknowledge as the on-going sufferers of the tragedy; that group is the Muslim community.” – Tate Publishing

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America: the anatomy of intolerance (2013)

Summary: “The contributors document the history of anti-Islamic sentiment in American culture, the scope of organized anti-Muslim propaganda, and the institutionalization of this kind of intolerance.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Robert Booth Fowler, Religion and politics in America: faith, culture, and strategic choices (5th ed., 2013)

Summary: “Incorporating the best and most up-to-date scholarship, the authors assess the politics of Roman Catholics; evangelical, mainline, and African American Protestants; Jews; Muslims and other conventional and not-so-conventional American religious movements. The author team also examines important subjects concerning religion and its relationship to gender, race/ethnicity, and class.” – Westview Press

Keywords: Interfaith Relations

 

Stuart Croft, Securitizing Islam: identity and the search for security (2012)

Summary: “Examines the impact of 9/11 on the lives and perceptions of individuals, focusing on the ways in which identities in Britain have been affected in relation to Islam. ‘Securitization’ describes the processes by which a particular group or issue comes to be seen as a threat, and thus subject to the perceptions and actions which go with national security.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the politics of empire (2012)

Summary: “In response to the events of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a “war on terror” ushering in an era of anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia. However, 9/11 did not create Islamophobia, an ideology which has become the handmaiden of imperialism. This book examines the historic relationship between Islamophobia and the agenda of empire-building.” – Haymarket Books

Keywords: Civil Rights; Orientalism

 

Nathan Chapman Lean, The Islamophobia industry: how the right manufactures fear of Muslims (2012)

Summary: “In recent years, Muslim-led terrorist attacks have declined yet anti-Muslim prejudice has soared to new peaks. The fear that the Islamophobia Industry has manufactured is so fierce in its grip on some populations that it drives them to do the unthinkable. This powerful and provocative book explores the dark world of monster making, examining in detail an interconnected, and highly organized cottage industry of fear merchants.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Mumtaz Ahmad, Zahid Bukhari, and Sulayman Nyang, Observing the observer: The state of Islamic studies in American universities (2012)

Summary: “The collection of papers in this volume documents the study of Islam in American Universities… Although there is increasing recognition that the study of Islam and the role of Muslims is strategically essential in a climate of global integration, multiculturalism, and political turmoil, nevertheless, the state of Islamic Studies in America is far from satisfactory.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Academic; Economic Relations; Migration Convert; 9/11; Multiculturalism

 

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Moving the mountain: beyond Ground Zero to a new vision of Islam in America (2012)

Summary: “Muslims in America who reject extremist or fundamentalist expressions of Islam at home and abroad feel the urgent need for a voice that can represent them in the current debate about Islam, America, and the West. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf—the so-called Ground Zero Imam—has become that voice. This is his vision for a new, American Islam.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Transnational

 

Alia Malek, Patriot acts: narratives of post-9/11 injustice (2011)

Summary: “tells the stories of men and women who have been needlessly swept up in the War on Terror. In their own words, narrators recount personal experiences of the post-9/11 backlash that have deeply altered their lives and communities.” – McSweeney’s

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Lori A. Peek, Behind the backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11 (2011)

Summary: “Letting the voices of 140 ordinary Muslim American men and women describe their experiences…presents moving accounts of prejudice and exclusion. Muslims speak of being subjected to harassment before the attacks, and recount the discrimination they encountered afterwards. Peek also explains the struggles of young Muslim adults to solidify their community and define their identity during a time of national crisis.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Irum Shiekh, Detained without cause: Muslims’ stories of detention and deportation in America after 9/11 (2011)

Summary: “Presents the first-person narratives of six Muslim men detained on flimsy or invented charges and ultimately deported after September 11, 2001. Shiekh is methodical about her research methods and explicit about her communication with detainees, who were humiliated, lied to, and abused in prison.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Stephen Sheehi, Islamophobia: the ideological campaign against Muslims (2010)

Summary: “Examines the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments in the West following the end of the Cold War through GW Bush’s War on Terror to the Age of Obama. Using ‘Operation Desert Storm’ as a watershed moment, Stephen Sheehi examines the increased mainstreaming of Muslim-baiting rhetoric and explicitly racist legislation, police surveillance, witch-trials and discriminatory policies towards Muslims in North America and abroad.” – Clarity Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Anny P. Bakalian, Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans respond (2009)

Summary: “This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of the post-9/11 events on Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans as well as their organized response. Through fieldwork and interviews with community leaders, Anny Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr show how ethnic organizations mobilized to demonstrate their commitment to the United States while defending their rights and distancing themselves from the terrorists.” – University of California Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Louise Cainkar, Homeland insecurity: the Arab American and Muslim American experience after 9/11 (2009)

Summary: “[Cainkar] 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.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Jocelyne Cesari, Muslims in the West after 9/11: religion, politics, and law (2009)

Summary: “Based on empirical studies of Muslims in the US and Western Europe, this edited volume posits the situation of Muslim minorities in a broader reflection on the status of liberalism in Western foreign policies. It also explores the changes in immigration policies, multiculturalism and secularism that have been shaped by the new international context of the ‘war on terror’.” – Routledge

Keywords: Civil Rights; Transnationalism

 

Detroit Arab American Study Team, Citizenship and crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11 (2009)

Summary: “A groundbreaking study of social life, religious practice, cultural values, and political views among Detroit Arabs after 9/11, Citizenship and Crisis argues that contemporary Arab American citizenship and identity have been shaped by the chronic tension between social inclusion and exclusion that has been central to this population’s experience in America.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Arabs; Identity; Michigan

 

Steven Salaita, The uncultured wars: Arabs, Muslims, and the poverty of liberal thought (2008)

Summary: “Through twelve stylish essays, Steven Salaita returns again and again to his core themes of anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia and the inadequacy of critical thought among the “chattering classes,” showing how racism continues to exist in the places where we would least expect it. …Salaita explores why Arabs are marginalized, and who seeks to benefit from this.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Peter Gottschalk, Islamophobia: making Muslims the enemy (2007)

Summary: “This book shows graphically how political cartoons dramatically reveal Americans’ casual demonizing and demeaning of Muslims and Islam. And the villainizing is shown to be as common among liberals as conservatives. Islamophobia also discusses the misunderstanding of the Muslim world more generally, such as the assumption that Islam is primarily a Middle Eastern religion, whereas the majority of Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia, and the misperception that a significant portion of Muslims are militant fundamentalists, whereas only a small proportion are.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Melody Moezzi, War on error: real stories of American Muslims (2007)

Summary:War on Error brings together the stories of twelve young people, all vastly different but all American, and all Muslim.” – University of Arkansas Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Youth

 

Steven Salaita, Anti-Arab racism in the USA: where it comes from and what it means for politics (2006)

Summary: “Since 9/11 there has been a lot of criticism of America’s involvement in the middle east. Yet there has been little analysis of how America treats citizens of Arab or middle eastern origin within its own borders. Steven Salaita explores the reality of Anti-Arab racism in America. He blends personal narrative, theory and polemics to show how this deep-rooted racism affects everything from legislation to cultural life, shining a light on the consequences of Anti-Arab racism both at home and abroad. ” – Pluto Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Michael Welch, Scapegoats of September 11th: hate crimes and state crimes in the war on terror (2006)

Summary: “Drawing on topics such as ethnic profiling, the Abu Ghraib scandal, Guantanamo Bay, and the controversial Patriot Act, Welch looks at the significance of knowledge, language, and emotion in a post-9/11 world. In the face of popular and political cheerleading in the war on terror, this book presents a careful and sober assessment, reminding us that sound counterterrorism policies must rise above, rather than participate in, the propagation of bigotry and victimization.” – Rutgers University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Katherine Bullock, Muslim women activists in North America: speaking for ourselves (2005)

Summary: “In the eyes of many Westerners, Muslim women are hidden behind a veil of negative stereotypes that portray them as either oppressed, subservient wives and daughters or, more recently, as potential terrorists. Yet many Muslim women defy these stereotypes by taking active roles in their families and communities and working to create a more just society. This book introduces eighteen Muslim women activists from the United States and Canada who have worked in fields from social services, to marital counseling, to political advocacy in order to further social justice within the Muslim community and in the greater North American society.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Gender

 

Tram Nguyen, We are all suspects now: untold stories from immigrant communities after 9/11 (2005)

Summary: “Tram Nguyen reveals the human cost of the domestic war on terror and examines the impact of post-9/11 policies on people targeted because of immigration status, nationality, and religion. Nguyen’s evocative narrative reporting-about the families, detainees, local leaders, community advocates, and others-is from those living and suffering on the front lines.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam rising: Muslim extremism in the West (2005)

Summary: “one of the first systematic attempts to explain why Westerners join radical Islamic groups. Quintan Wiktorowicz details the mechanisms that attract potential recruits, the instruments of persuasion that convince them that radical groups represent “real Islam,” and the socialization process that prods them to engage in risky extremism.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Terrorism; Transnational

 

Zahid H. Bukhari, Muslims’ place in the American public square: hopes, fears, and aspirations (2004)

Summary: “Project MAPS (Muslims in the American Public Square) began in 1999 to provide much-needed information on this understudied and immensely diverse group of six million Americans. This first volume emerging from the project, Muslims’ Place in the American Public Square, shows where the American Muslim community fits into the American religious and civic landscape both before and after 9/11.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Identity

 

Aladdin Elaasar, Silent victims: the plight of Arab and Muslim Americans in post 9/11 America (2004)

Summary: “The increasing public’s curiosity about the Arabs, Muslims and the Arab and Muslim Americans in the United States has been unprecedented. This book explains the phenomenon of stereotypes stigmatizing Arabs and Muslims, and how it has affected their lives, a phenomenon that demonized and dehumanized almost two billion people in this world.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Elaine Catherine Hagopian, Civil rights in peril: the targeting of Arabs and Muslims (2004)

Summary: “Muslims and Arab-Americans are increasingly under attack as a result of the US ‘war on terror’ – at home, as well as abroad. Since the tragic events of September 11, Arab and Muslim Americans have faced a major assault on their civil liberties. While targeting vulnerable groups and drawing on racist stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims, these measures threaten millions of people, including immigrants, activists, trade unionists, academics, writers, and anyone who the government wishes to define as a ‘threat’ to national security.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Nadia Batool Ahmad, Unveiling the real terrorist mind (2002)

Summary:  An interdisciplinary anthology that provides an analytic perspective on the 9/11 cataclysm. This collection of essays, poems, and articles explores issues of terrorism, genocide, race, and war from the view of 66 academics and peace activists from six continents. Contributing authors include Nobel Laureate Betty Williams, NYU law professor Derrick Bell, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Georgetown professor John Esposito, author Howard Zinn, human rights activist Sara Flounders, former U.S. Congressman Paul Findley, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, U.S. Congressional candidate Bob Bowman, and others. 

Keywords: Terrorism

Emily Cury, Claiming Belonging: Muslim American Advocacy in an Era of Islamophobia (2021)

Summary: This book offers an ever-timely insight into the place of Muslims in American political life and, in the process, sheds light on one of the fastest-growing and most internally dynamic – Cornel University Press.

Keywords: Political activity, Islamophobia, social conditions

 

Rachel Gullum, Muslims in a post-9/11 America: A Survey of Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for U.S. National Security Policy (2018)

Summary: This book examines how public fears about Muslims in the United States compare with the reality of American Muslims’ attitudes on a range of relevant issues. While most research on Muslim Americans focuses on Arab Muslims, a quarter of the Muslim American population, Rachel Gillum includes perspectives of Muslims from various ethnic and national communities—from African Americans to those of Pakistani, Iranian, or Eastern European descent. – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Islamophobia, social conditions

 

Mohammed Seddon & Raana Bokhari, The complete illustrated guide to Islam (2016)

Summary: “This book comprehensively explores the life and work of Muhammad, the history of Islam, Islamic beliefs and doctrine, and religious practices and worship…it offers a comprehensive introduction to and overview of a complex and often misunderstood religion.” – Google Books

Keywords: Culture; History

 

Edward E. Curtis (ed.), The Bloomsbury reader on Islam in the West (2015)

Summary: “Brings together some of the most important, up-to-date scholarly writings published on this subject. The Reader explores not only the presence of Muslim religious practitioners in Europe and the Americas but also the impact of Islamic ideas and Muslims on Western politics, societies, and cultures.” – Bloomsbury Publishing

Keywords: History; Multiculturalism

 

Jane I. Smith, The Oxford handbook of American Islam (2015)

Summary: “covers the growth of Islam in America from the earliest Muslims to set foot on American soil to the current wave of Islamophobia. Topics covered include the development of African American Islam; pre- and post-WWII immigrants; Sunni, Shi`ite, sectarian and Sufi movements in America; the role and status of women, marriage, and family; and the Americanization of Islamic culture. Throughout these chapters the contributors explore the meaning of religious identity in the context of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics, both within the American Islamic community and in relation to international Islam.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: History

 

Juliane Hammer, The Cambridge companion to American Islam (2013)

Summary: “Offers a scholarly overview of the state of research on American Muslims and American Islam. The book presents the reader with a comprehensive discussion of the debates, challenges, and opportunities that American Muslims have faced through centuries of American history.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Bibliography

 

Edward E. Curtis, The Columbia sourcebook of Muslims in the United States (2010)

Summary: “Sampling from speeches, interviews, editorials, stories, song lyrics, articles, autobiographies, blogs, and other sources, Curtis creates a patchwork narrative of Muslims from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds, religious orientations, and political affiliations. He begins with a history of Muslims in the United States, featuring the voices of an enslaved African Muslim, a Syrian Muslim sodbuster, a South Asian mystic-musician, and Malcolm X. Then he explores contemporary issues concerning Islam and gender, the involvement of Muslims in American politics, and emerging forms of Islamic spirituality.” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: Culture; History

 

Edward E. Curtis, Encyclopedia of Muslim-American history (2010, 2 volumes)

Summary: “…provides a new and broader, more inclusive approach to American history. Including nearly 300 articles, this two-volume reference book is the first to focus on this critical subject, covering all the historical and contemporary issues, events, people, court cases, themes, and activism relating to Muslim Americans.” – Infobase/Facts on File

Keywords: History; Bibliography

 

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Arab American bibliography (2009)

Summary: A non-comprehensive bibliography of books on Arab-Americans and their experiences.

Keywords: Bibliography

 

Edward E. Curtis, Muslims in America: a short history (2009)

Summary: “Muslims are neither new nor foreign to the United States. They have been a vital presence in North America since the 16th century. Muslims in America unearths their history, documenting the lives of African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, European, black, white, Hispanic and other Americans who have been followers of Islam. …Showing how Muslim American men and women participated in each era of U.S. history, the book explores how they have both shaped and have been shaped by larger historical trends.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: History

 

Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (2nd ed. 2009)

Summary: “This richly textured, critically acclaimed portrait of American Muslims introduces the basic tenets of the Muslim faith, surveys the history of Islam in North America, and profiles the lifestyles, religious practices, and worldviews of Muslims in the United States. The volume focuses specifically on the difficulty of living faithfully and adhering to tradition while adapting to an American way of life and addresses the role of women in Muslim culture, the raising and education of children, appropriate dress and behavior, and incidences of prejudice and unfair treatment.” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: History

 

Jocelyne Cesari, Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States (2007)

Summary: “Today, Islam and American Muslim populations are growing in importance in this country, and demand for information about them is high, especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. This A-to-Z encyclopedia will help students and other readers get a fast grip on pertinent holidays, terms, beliefs, practices, notables, and sects of the Islamic faith and Muslim practitioners in the United States.” – ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press

Keywords: Reference

 

George W. Braswell Jr., Islam and America: answers to the 31 most-asked questions (2005)

Summary: “George Braswell is a recognized expert on the religion of Islam and on the Muslim beliefs and practices that Americans need to understand. This book will give readers the information they want and answer the questions they are asking. Beyond the media portrayals, Islam & America accurately reports the truth about this religion and its adherents.” – B&H Publishing

Keywords: Reference

 

Frederick Denny, Muslims in America (2004)

Summary: “From colonial sailors and adventurers to 19th-century peddlers and factory workers to post-World War II immigration, Muslims in America is a sweeping chronicle of Islamic religion and culture in the United States.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Culture; History

 

Karen Isaksen Leonard, Muslims in the United States: the state of research (2003)

Summary: “While many cursory press accounts dealing with Muslims in the United States have been published since 9/11, few people are aware of the wealth of scholarly research already available on the American Islamic population. In Muslims in the United States: The State of Research, Karen Isaksen Leonard mines this rich vein of research to provide a fascinating overview of the history and contemporary situation of American Muslim communities.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Bibliography

 

James Beverly, Islamic faith in America (2002)

Summary: “Explores the impact of Muslims on American culture, social issues, and politics and offers a glimpse into the lives of the most important and influential Muslims in this country. Readers will be introduced to the daily lifestyle of Muslims in America, their connections to other Muslims around the world, the influence of Islamic nations on the shape of Muslim life in the United States, and Islam’s role in American history.” – Infobase/Facts on File

Keywords: Reference

 

Mohamed Nimor, The North American Muslim resource guide: Muslim community life in the United States and Canada (2002)

Summary: “In addition to providing an extensive directory of mainstream Muslim community organizations, The North American Muslim Resource Guide offers an overview of Muslim values and institutions, briefly traces the history of Islam in North America, and includes useful tables depicting the growth of the American Muslim population, as well as that of centers, organizations, and ethnic associations serving Islamic communities.” – Routledge

Keywords: Reference

 

Yvonne Hazbeck Haddad, The contemporary Islamic revival: a critical survey and bibliography (1991)

Summary: “This partially annotated bibliography lists available literature on the Islamic revival published in English between 1970 and 1988. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and her colleagues also provide background information and a special bibliography on women, Islamic banking, and Muslims in Europe and the United States.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Bibliography

Jonathan A.C. Brown. Islam and Blackness (2022).

Summary: The text examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism, and history to comprehensively interrogate this claim and determine how and why it emerged. Locating its origins in conservative politics, modern Afrocentrism, and the old trope of Barbary enslavement, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition- Oneworld Academic Publishing.

Keywords: Religion, African American Studies

 

James L. Conyers and Christel N. Temple, Muhammad Ali in Africana Cultural Memory (2022).

Summary: This is a comprehensive study of Ali’s identity and superlative impact framed in terms of the discipline’s subfield of Africana cultural memory studies. This critical approach challenges us to itemize Ali’s influential legacy with precise conceptual value wherein his mythological structure is illuminated as an inheritance. – Anthem Press.

Keywords: History, Popular culture

 

Farha Bano Ternikar, Intersectionality in the Muslim South Asian-American Middle Class: Lifestyle Consumption beyond Halal and Hijab (2021).

Summary: This book uses everyday consumption as a lens to analyze how South Asian Muslim American women negotiate racial, religious, gendered, classed, and often political identities. Ternikar examines the use of food and clothing as well as social media accounts among this important immigrant population, offering new insight that goes beyond examining Muslim American women through the lens of hijab. – Lexington Books.

Keywords: Social Science, Gender Studies, Religion, Ethnic Studies

 

Pamela J. Prickett, Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels (2021).

Summary: An ethnographic study of an African American Muslim community in South Central Los Angeles, the book explores how they help each other combat poverty, job scarcity, violence, and racial injustice. – University of Chicago

Keywords: Religious studies, ethnography, anthropology, sociology, geography, feminist studies

 

Mahwash Shoaib ed. Muslim American Hyphenations: Cultural Production and Hybridity in the Twenty-first Century (2021)

Summary: The book contests the lack of nuance in the public debates about American Islam and reclaim a self-determined identity by twenty-first century Muslim American writers, artists, and performers. The editor presents critical perspectives on the diverse compositions of hyphenated Muslim American identities in literary, artistic, and performative texts. – Lexington Books.

Keywords: Popular culture, social conditions, identity formation

 

Nazia Kazi, Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics, (2021)

Summary: The text provides a powerful introduction to the topic of the anti-Muslim landscape in the U.S. In it, Kazi shows that Islamophobia is not a set of anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudices. Instead, this book shows how Islamophobia is part of a greater reality: systemic U.S. racism. In other words, Islamophobia is neither a blip nor a break with a racially harmonious American social order, but rather the outcome of destructive foreign policy practices and an enduring history of white supremacy. – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Islamophobia, social conditions

 

Anna Piela, Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US (2021).

Summary: Bringing niqab wearers’ voices to the fore, discussing their narratives on religious agency, identity, social interaction, community, and urban spaces, Anna Piela situates women’s accounts firmly within UK and US socio-political contexts as well as within media discourses on Islam (Amazon). – Bloomsbury Visual Arts; Illustrated edition.

Keywords: Women in Islam, women’s studies, fashion studies.

 

Michael Abraham, Engaging Muslim Students in Public Schools: What Educators Need to Understand (2020).

Summary: “taught in a prose that is specifically written for the public-school educator with the goal of not only offering new and practical insights, but also ideas and consideration for practice that would take culturally relevant pedagogy of Muslim students out of the nominal and superficial and into the authentic.” (Ama-,zon). – Abraham Education Publisher.

Keywords: Education, students, public school

 

Tahseen Shams, Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (2020).

Summary: Tahseen Shams posits a new concept for thinking about these places that are neither the immigrants’ homeland nor hostland—the “elsewhere.” Drawing on rich ethnographic data, interviews, and analysis of the social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, Shams uncovers how different dimensions of the immigrants’ ethnic and religious identities connect them to different elsewheres in places as far-ranging as the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. – Stanford University Press.

Keywords: Ethnic relations, social conditions, identity, politics

 

Debbie Almontaser, Leading While Muslim: The Experiences of American Muslim Principals After 9/11 (2019).

Summary: This book examines the lived experiences of American Muslim principals who serve in public schools post-9/11 to determine whether global events, political discourse, and the media coverage of Islam and Muslims have affected their leadership and spirituality. Such a study is intended to help readers to gain an understanding of the adversities that American Muslim principals have experienced post-9/11 and how to address these adversities, particularly through decisions about educational policy and district leadership. – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Race Relations, social conditions, school principals

 

Nicole Nguyen, Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror (2019).

Summary: This book is a powerful reassessment of the U.S. government’s “countering violent extremism” (CVE) program that has arisen in major cities across the United States since 2011. By undertaking this analysis, Nicole Nguyen offers a vital window into the inner workings of the U.S. security state and the devastating impact of the CVE program on local communities. – University of Minnesota Press

Keywords: Ethnography, geographer, education

 

Robert Rozehanal, Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (2019).

Summary: Rozehnal highlights how “cyber Sufis” create complex identities both on- and offline, all the while evading any easy categorizations of Sufism, Islam, and new age spirituality. Some of the noted digital transformations unfolding within the Inayati Order are in many ways, not novel, but rather reflective of historical legacies, such as in the case of South Asian Sufism of the Chishtis that influences the Inayati Order. Methodologically, the book is deeply sensitive of and also models how to conduct digital ethnography and highlights the significance of studying digital religions, especially from an Islamic studies perspective. – One World Academic

Keywords: digital religions, ritual studies, media studies, American Islam, and Sufism

 

Julianne Hammer, Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence (2019).

Summary: The book provides an excellent overview of the ways that Muslim Americans address domestic violence in their communities. Through rich, detailed ethnographic interviews with Muslim advocates, service providers, imams and other religious leaders, and organizations, Hammer explores the stories, struggles, and anxieties of Muslims as they face the intersections of a range of issues, including anti-Muslim hostility and patriarchy. Peaceful Families will be of interest to anyone interested in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Islam in America, the relationship between Islam and gender, and anyone generally interested in working against domestic violence. – Princeton University Press

Keywords: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Islam in America

 

Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid. Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal, (2020).

Summary: With essays from and about diverse voices on an array of topics from fashion to immigration history to fandom, this volume includes an exclusive interview with Ms. Marvel author and co-creator G. Willow Wilson by gender studies scholar Shabana Mir. – University of Mississippi Press

Keywords: Comics Studies, Popular Culture, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies

 

James L. Conyers and Abul Pitre (Eds.). Africana Islamic Studies. (2016).

Summary: This book highlights the diverse contributions that African Americans have made to the formation of Islam in the United States. It specifically focuses on the Nation of Islam and its patriarch Elijah Muhammad with regards to the African American Islamic experience. Contributors explore topics such as gender, education, politics, and sociology from the African American perspective on Islam. This volume offers a unique view of the longstanding Islamic discourse in the United States and its impact on the American cultural landscape. – Lexington Books

Keywords: Africana Studies, history, popular culture

ANTHROPOLOGY

Katrina Daly Thompson, Muslims on the Margins: Creating Queer Religious Community in North America (2022).

Summary: This text draws extensively from conversations and interviews conducted both in person in North America and online in several international communities. Writing in a compelling narrative style that centers the real experiences and diverse perspectives of nonconformist Muslims-New York University Press.

Keywords: LGBTQI, anthropology

 

Anna Bigelow, Islam Through Objects (2021).

Summary: By bringing together a multitude of perspectives and disciplines ranging from social and cultural anthropology to history, from folklore to art history and ecology, the volume offers a very inspiring contribution to widening the scope of Islamic studies-Bloomsbury Academic Press.

Keywords: anthropology, history, folklore, art history

 

Alisa Perkins, Muslim American City: Gender and Religion in Metro Detroit (Press, 2020).

Summary: Muslim American City explores how debates over Muslim Americans’ use of both public and political space have challenged and ultimately reshaped the boundaries of urban belonging. -New York University Press.

Keywords: Women in Islam, Anthropology, Sociology of Religion 

 

Sophia Rose Arjana, Veiled superheroes (2018)

Summary: “This groundbreaking study examines Muslim female superheroes within a matrix of Islamic theology, feminism, and contemporary political discourse. Through a close reading of texts including Ms. Marvel, Qahera, and The 99, Sophia Rose Arjana argues that these powerful and iconic characters reflect independence and agency, reflecting the diverse lives of Muslim girls and women in the world today.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Islam; Feminism; Popular; Culture

 

Merin Shobhana Xavier, Sacred spaces and transnational networks in American Sufism (2018)

Summary: “This book sheds light on the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (BMF), one of North America’s major Sufi movements, and one of the first to establish a Sufi shrine in the region. It provides the first comprehensive overview of the BMF, offering new insight into its historical development and practices, and charting its establishment in both the United States and Sri Lanka. …The book focuses on the transnational spaces and ritual activities of Bawa’s communities, mapping parallel shrines and pilgrimages.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Islamic Shrines; Anthropology; Sufism

 

Lara Mahalingappa et al., Supporting Muslim students: A guide to understanding the diverse issues of today’s classrooms (2017)

Summary: “[P]rovides school professionals – including teachers, principals, counselors, psychologists, and administrators – with a practical guide for supporting Muslim students in PK-12 schools.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Daan Beekers and David Kloos, eds., Straying from the straight path: How senses of failure invigorate lived religion (2017)

Summary: “Straying from the Straight Path breaks with this tendency by examining how self-perceived failure is, in many cases, part and parcel of religious practice and experience. …this volume gives full attention to moral failure as a constitutive and potentially energizing force in the religious lives of both Muslims and Christians in different parts of the world.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Anthropology; Comparative; Religion

 

Jeffrey Einboden, The Islamic lineage of American literary culture: Muslim sources from the Revolution to Reconstruction (2016)

Summary: “Uncovering Islam’s little known yet formative impact on U.S. literary culture, this book traces genealogies of Islamic influence that span America’s earliest generations, reaching from the Revolution to Reconstruction.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Culture

 

Anabel Inge, The making of a Salafi Muslim woman: Paths to conversion (2016)

Summary: “Drawing on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork in London, she [Anabel Inge] examines why Salafism is attracting so many young Somalis, Afro-Caribbean converts, and others. But she also reveals the personal dilemmas they confront.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Salafism; Wahhabism; United Kingdom; Convert

 

Adeline Masquelier, and Benjamin F. Soares, eds., Muslim youth and the 9/11 generation (2016)

Summary: A new cohort of Muslim youth has arisen since the attacks of 9/11, facilitated by the proliferation of recent communication technologies and the Internet… These scholars focus on young Muslims in a variety of settings in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America and explore the distinct pastimes and performances, processes of civic engagement and political action, entrepreneurial and consumption practices, forms of self-fashioning, and aspirations and struggles in which they engage as they seek to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Middle East Studies; Religion

 

Aisha Khan, Islam and the Americas (2015)

Summary: “Together, these essays challenge the typical view of Islam as timeless, predictable, and opposed to Western worldviews and value systems, showing how this religious tradition continually engages with local and global issues of culture, gender, class, and race.” -Amazon.com

Keywords: Ethnography; Muslim minority; Latin America

 

Shabana Mir, Muslim American women on campus: undergraduate social life and identity (2014)

Summary: “Muslim American Women on Campus illuminates the processes by which a group of ethnically diverse American college women, all identifying as Muslim and all raised in the United States, construct their identities during one of the most formative times in their lives.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Youth

 

Ahmed Afzal, Lone star Muslims: transnational lives and the South Asian experience in Texas (2014)

Summary: “Offers an engaging and insightful look at contemporary Muslim American life in Texas. It illuminates the dynamics of the Pakistani Muslim community in Houston, a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in the south and southwestern United States.  …Decentering dominant framings that flatten understandings of transnational Islam and Muslim Americans, such as ‘terrorist’ on the one hand, and ‘model minority’ on the other, Lone Star Muslims offers a glimpse into a variety of lived experiences.” – New York University Press

Keywords: South Asians

 

Sally Howell, Old Islam in Detroit: rediscovering the Muslim American past (2014)

Summary: “Old Islam in Detroit explores the rise of Detroit’s earliest Muslim communities. It documents the culture wars and doctrinal debates that ensued as these populations confronted Muslim newcomers who did not understand their manner of worship or the American identities they had created. Looking closely at this historical encounter, Old Islam in Detroit provides a new interpretation of the possibilities and limits of Muslim incorporation in American life.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan

 

Bayyinah S. Jeffries,A nation can rise no higher than its women: African American Muslim women in the movement for black self determination, 1950-1975 (2014)

Summary: “Challenges traditional notions and interpretations of African American, particularly women who joined the Original Nation of Islam during the Civil Rights-Black Power era. This book is the first major investigation of the subject that engages a wide scope of women from “The Nation” and utilizes a wealth of primary documents and personal interviews to reveal the importance of women in this community.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Anne Rypstat Richards, Muslims and American popular culture (2014)

Summary: “Offering a wide range of information without sacrificing depth, this set examines the ways that Islam and Muslims are depicted in American pop culture. The first volume tackles the entertainment industry, addressing comedy and theater, television, film, popular fiction and poetry, music, and digital culture. The second volume deals with print material and identity in Islam, covering black Muslims, journalism and digital media, societal trends and issues, Islamic-influenced architecture, and memoirs.” – School Library Journal

Keywords: Media

 

Zain Abdullah, Black Mecca: the African Muslims of Harlem (2013)

Summary: “takes us inside the lives of these new immigrants and shows how they deal with being a double minority in a country where both blacks and Muslims are stigmatized. Dealing with this dual identity, Abdullah discovers, is extraordinarily complex. …Abdullah weaves together the stories of these African Muslims to paint a fascinating portrait of a community’s efforts to carve out space for itself in a new country.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Africans; New Immigrants

 

Nahla al Huraibi, Islam, gender and migrant integration: the case of Somali immigrant families (2013)

Summary: “Addresses three questions: how do Somali immigrants negotiate gender notions and practices between those maintained in Somali culture and those adopted from mainstream American culture; how immigrants’ understandings of Islamic writings on gender shape the negotiation process and how the integration process shapes their understanding of Islamic gender discourse; and to what extent resultant gender perceptions and practices reflect the transnational integration and cultural hybridism of two or more cultures.” – LFB Scholarly Publishing

Keywords: Gender; Somalia

 

Zareena Grewal, Islam is a foreign country: American Muslims and the global crisis of authority (2013)

Summary: “By examining the tension between American Muslims’ ambivalence toward the American mainstream and their desire to enter it, Grewal puts contemporary debates about Islam in the context of a long history of American racial and religious exclusions. Probing the competing obligations of American Muslims to the nation and to the umma (the global community of Muslim believers), Islam is a Foreign Country investigates the meaning of American citizenship and the place of Islam in a global age.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Transnational; Youth

 

Yuting Wang, Between Islam and the American Dream: an immigrant Muslim community in Post-9/11 America (2013)

Summary: “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.” – Routledge

Keywords: Civil Rights; Intersectionality

 

Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the media: race and representation after 9/11 (2012)

Summary: “After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Anan Ameri, Daily life of Arab Americans in the 21st century (2012)

Summary: “This much-needed study documents positive Arab-American contributions to American life and culture, especially in the last decade, debunking myths and common negative perceptions that were exacerbated by the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror.” – ABC-CLIO

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Maleeha Aslam, Gender-based explosions: the nexus between Muslim masculinities, jihadist Islamism and terrorism (2012)

Summary: “Aslam argues that gender is a fundamental battleground on which al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their types must be defeated. Issues of regressive radicalism, literalism, militancy, and terrorism can only be solved through people-centered interventions. Therefore, governments and civil society should promote an alternative culture of growth, self-expression, and actualization for Muslim men.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Terrorism

 

Hilal Elver, The headscarf controversy: secularism and freedom of religion (2012)

Summary: “An in-depth study of the escalating controversy over the right of Muslim women to wear headscarves. Examining legal and political debates in Turkey, several European countries including France and Germany, and the United States, Elver shows the troubling exclusion of pious Muslim women from the public sphere in the name of secularism, democracy, liberalism, and women’s rights.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Gender; Hijab

 

Nabeel Abraham, Arab Detroit 9/11: life in the terror decade (2011)

Summary: “In Detroit, new realities of political marginalization and empowerment are evolving side by side. As they explore the complex demands of life in the Terror Decade, the contributors to this volume create vivid portraits of a community that has fought back successfully against attempts to deny its national identity and diminish its civil rights.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights; Michigan

 

Karin Van Nieuwkerk, Muslim rap, halal soaps, and revolutionary theater (2011)

Summary: “The contributors to this volume investigate the historical and structural conditions that impede or facilitate the emergence of a ‘post-Islamist’ cultural sphere. They discuss the development of religious sensibilities among audiences, which increasingly include the well-to-do and the educated young, as well as the emergence of a local and global religious market. At the heart of these essays is an examination of the intersection between cultural politics, performing art, and religion, addressing such questions as where, how, and why pop culture and performing arts have been turned into a religious mission, and whether it is possible to develop a new Islamic aesthetic that is balanced with religious sensibilities.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Music; Movie; Popular Culture; Islam and Art

 

Leila Ahmed, A quiet revolution: the veil’s resurgence, from the Middle East to America (2011)

Summary: “When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil’s return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Hijab

 

Reza Aslan, Muslims and Jews in America: commonalities, contentions, and complexities (2011)

Summary: “This book is an exploration of contemporary Jewish-Muslim relations in the United States and the distinct and often creative ways in which these two communities interact with one another in the American context. Each essay discusses a different episode from the recent twentieth and current twenty-first century American milieu that links these two groups together.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Interfaith Relations

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Becoming American?: the forging of Arab and Muslim identity in pluralist America (2011)

Summary: “Traces the history of Arab and Muslim immigration into Western society during the 19th and 20th centuries, revealing a two-fold disconnect between the cultures―America’s unwillingness to accept these new communities at home and the activities of radical Islam abroad. Urging America to reconsider its tenets of religious pluralism, Haddad reveals that the public square has more than enough room to accommodate those values and ideals inherent in the moderate Islam flourishing throughout the country.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans; Identity

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Muslim women in America: the challenge of Islamic identity today (2011)

Summary: “Centering on Muslims in America, the book investigates Muslim attempts to form a new “American” Islam. Such specific issues as dress, marriage, childrearing, conversion, and workplace discrimination are addressed. The authors also look at the ways in which American Muslim women have tried to create new paradigms of Islamic womanhood and are reinterpreting the traditions apart from the males who control the mosque institutions. A final chapter asks whether 9/11 will prove to have been a watershed moment for Muslim women in America.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Gender

 

Chris Heffelfinger, Radical Islam in America: Salafism’s journey from Arabia to the West (2011)

Summary: “Chris Heffelfinger describes the development of the Islamist movement, examines its efforts and influence in the West, and suggests strategies to reduce or eliminate the threat of Islamist terrorism. The book distinguishes Islamism (the fundamentalist political movement based on Islamic identity and values) from the Muslim faith and explores Islamists’ substantial inroads with Muslims and Muslim educational institutions in the West since the 1960s, as well as the larger relationship between Islamist political activism and militancy.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Terrorism

 

Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: looking toward the third resurrection (2011)

Summary: “Offers a trenchant examination of the career of Islam among the blacks of America. Jackson notes that no one has offered a convincing explanation of why Islam spread among Blackamericans (a coinage he explains and defends) but not among white Americans or Hispanics. The assumption has been that there is an African connection. In fact, Jackson shows, none of the distinctive features of African Islam appear in the proto-Islamic, black nationalist movements of the early 20th century. Instead, he argues, Islam owes its momentum to the distinctively American phenomenon of “Black Religion,” a God-centered holy protest against anti-black racism.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: race and labor in the South Asian diaspora (2011)

Summary: “Highlights how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced, constructed, and represented in the context of American empire and the recent global War on Terror. Drawing on ethnographic research that compares Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States before and after 9/11, Junaid Rana combines cultural and material analyses to chronicle the worldviews of Pakistani labor migrants as they become part of a larger global racial system.” – Duke University Press

Keywords: South Asians; Terrorism

 

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A history of Islam in America: from the New World to the New World Order (2010)

Summary: “…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.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Immigration

 

Jonathan Curiel, Al’ America: travels through America’s Arab and Islamic roots (2009)

Summary: “Curiel demonstrates that many of America’s most celebrated places—including the Alamo in San Antonio, the French Quarter of New Orleans, and the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina—retain vestiges of Arab and Islamic culture. Likewise, some of America’s most recognizable music—the Delta Blues, the surf sounds of Dick Dale, the rock and psychedelia of Jim Morrison and the Doors—is indebted to Arab music. And some of America’s leading historical figures, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Elvis Presley, relied on Arab or Muslim culture for intellectual sustenance.” – The New Press

Keywords: Arabs; History

 

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Homegrown terrorists in the U.S. and U.K.: an empirical examination of the radicalization process (2009)

Summary: “To date, no study has empirically examined the process through which these terrorists are radicalizing, which constitutes a substantial gap in the literature. This study seeks to address that gap through an empirical examination of 117 homegrown “jihadist” terrorists from the U.S. and U.K.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Terrorism

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Educating the Muslims of America (2009)

Summary: “…considered here are other dimensions of American Islamic education and the ways in which Muslims are rising to the task of educating the American public in the face of increasing hostility and prejudice. This timely volume is the first dedicated entirely to the neglected topic of Islamic education in this country.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Jennifer Leila Holsinger, Residential patterns of Arab Americans: race, ethnicity and spatial assimilation (2009)

Summary: “Holsinger examines the ways that race and ethnicity are manifest in the urban landscape by analyzing the segregation and neighborhood characteristics of Arab Americans. …The advantage experienced by this diverse population relative to non-White racial and ethnic minorities suggests that immigration history, racial status and human capital shape the residential experience of Arab Americans.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Hasan Kaplan, Psychology of new Muslim identity in America (2009)

Summary: “Religion appears to be the essential factor influencing the second generation Muslim adolescents’ identity development and their integration into American society. …Very little is known about how they deal with their identity questions and how they more fully integrate or negotiate their multiple allegiances. This study will give you a glimps from the struggle that these young people experience between two conflicting worldviews in order to find their own niche in life.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity

 

Liyakat Nathani Takim, Shi’ism in America (2009)

Summary: “Both tracing the early history and illuminating the more recent past with surveys and interviews, Takim explores the experiences of this community. Filling an important scholarly gap, he also demonstrates how living in the West has impelled the Shi’i community to grapple with the ways in which Islamic law may respond to the challenges of modernity.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Islamic Law; Shi’ite

 

Amaney A. Jamal, Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: from invisible citizens to visible subjects (2008)

Summary: “Transcending multiculturalist discourses that have simply ‘added on’ the category ‘Arab American’ to the landscape of U.S. racial and ethnic studies after the attacks of September 11th, 2001, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than a beginning, in Arab Americans’ diverse engagements with ‘race’.” – Syracuse University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Civil Rights

 

Michael Muhammad Knight, The five percenters: Islam, hip-hop and the gods of New York(2008)

Summary: “With a cast of characters ranging from Malcolm X to 50 Cent, Knight’s compelling work is the first detailed account of the movement inextricably linked with black empowerment, Islam, New York, and hip-hop.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Fiver Percenters; Music; Popular Culture; Black Empowerment; Malcolm X; 50 Cent

 

Akel Ismail Kahera, Deconstructing the American mosque: space, gender and aesthetics (2008)

Summary: “The absence of a single, authoritative model and the plurality of design nuances reflect the heterogeneity of the American Muslim community itself, which embodies a whole spectrum of ethnic origins, traditions, and religious practices ….explores the history and theory of Muslim religious aesthetics in the United States since 1950.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Mosques

 

Jamillah Karim, American Muslim women: negotiating race, class, and gender within the ummah (2008)

Summary: “This ethnographic study of African American and South Asian immigrant Muslims in Chicago and Atlanta explores how Islamic ideals of racial harmony and equality create hopeful possibilities in an American society that remains challenged by race and class inequalities. The volume focuses on women who, due to gender inequalities, are sometimes more likely to move outside of their ethnic Muslim spaces and interact with other Muslim ethnic groups in search of gender justice.” – New York University Press

Keywords: African Americans; Gender; South Asians

 

Gary Paul Nabhan, Arab/American: landscape, culture, and cuisine in two great deserts (2008)

Summary: “In an era when some Arabs and Americans have markedly distanced themselves from one another, Nabhan has been prompted to explore their common ground, historically, ecologically, linguistically, and gastronomically. Arab/American is not merely an exploration of his own multicultural roots but also a revelation of the deep cultural linkages between the inhabitants of two of the world’s great desert regions.” – University of Arizona Press

Keywords: Arabs

 

Michael Nash, Islam among urban blacks: Muslims in Newark, New Jersey – a social history (2008)

Summary: “Examines the evolution of Muslim community development in our nation’s third oldest city, Newark, New Jersey. It is an historical account of the efforts of a diverse community that over several decades grappled with the challenge of establishing a respected place for their Islamic lifestyle within the United States of America. Further, it is a story linked closely to the experience of African Americans who have claimed Islam as their religion and struggled to create and to maintain an identity in the social fabric of Newark’s twentieth-century Black religious culture.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; New Jersey

 

Selcuk R. Sirin, Muslim American youth: understanding hyphenated identities through multiple methods (2008)

Summary: “The volume offers a critical conceptual framework to aid in understanding Muslim American identity formation processes, a framework which can also be applied to other groups of marginalized and immigrant youth.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity; Youth

 

Stephen Young, Being Muslim in Boston: identity in the Islamic Society of Boston (2008)

Summary: “In this book, the author explores the lives of the Muslims of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), a diverse community whose members strive to adapt to the American environment through the embrace of a distinctively Islamic identity. This work examines such subjects as modes of interpretation of Islamic knowledge, attitudes toward religious education for children, marriage within and between ethnic groups, attitudes toward sex and gender, the use of the hijab, and race and ethnic relations, both within and outside the mosque itself.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Boston; Identity

 

Geneive Abdo, Mecca and Main Street: Muslim life in America after 9/11 (2007)

Summary: “Gaining unprecedented access to Muslim communities in America, [Abdo] traveled across the country, visiting schools, mosques, Islamic centers, radio stations, and homes. She reveals a community tired of being judged by American perceptions of Muslims overseas and eager to tell their own stories.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Arab American National Museum, Telling our story: the Arab American National Museum (2007)

Summary:Telling Our Story is a rich visual and narrative collection celebrating the history, culture, and diversity of the Arab American community. The volume chronicles the founding of the Arab American National Museum from several viewpoints, and offers a detailed tour through its major exhibits.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Katherine Bullock, Rethinking Muslim women and the veil: challenging historical & modern stereotypes (2007)

Summary: “This work focuses on the popular Western cultural view that the veil is oppressive for Muslim women and highlights the underlying patterns of power behind this constructed image of the veil.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Gender; Hijab

 

Edward E. Curtis, Black Muslim religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975 (2006)

Summary: “Offers the first comprehensive examination of the rituals, ethics, theologies, and religious narratives of the Nation of Islam, showing how the movement combined elements of Afro-Eurasian Islamic traditions with African American traditions to create a new form of Islamic faith.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Jerald F. Dirks, Muslims in American history: a forgotten legacy (2006)

Summary: “Confronts the prevalent myth that Islam in America is a relatively recent phenomenon. In reality, there is a centuries long history of the Muslim presence in America, which is all too often overlooked or misidentified.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Aminah Beverly McCloud, Transnational Muslims in American society (2006)

Summary: “This in-depth yet accessible guide to Islamic immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa challenges the widely held perception that Islam is monolithic and exclusively Arab in identity and expression. Offering a topical discussion of Islamic issues, the author argues that there is no one immigrant Islam community but a multifaceted and multi-cultural Islamic world.” – University Press of Florida

Keywords: Africans; South Asians; Transnational

 

Rosina J. Hassoun, Arab Americans in Michigan (2005)

Summary: “Despite their considerable presence, Arab Americans have always been a misunderstood ethnic population in Michigan, even before September 11, 2001 imposed a cloud of suspicion, fear, and uncertainty over their ethnic enclaves and the larger community.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab-Americans; Michigan

 

Felicia Miyakawa, Five Percenter rap: God Hop’s music, message, and Black Muslim mission (2005)

Summary: “After establishing the theological and historical underpinnings of Five Percenter Rap, Felicia Miyakawa considers its marketing approaches and its use of specific musical techniques such as sampling, groove, and layering (often in significant numerical groupings). These techniques, she argues, are in service to the greater goal of Five Percenter rappers, who see themselves primarily as teachers.” – Indiana University Press

Keywords: Fiver Percenter; Music; Popular Culture; Islam; Black Nationalism

 

Dennis Walker, Islam and the search for African American nationhood: Elijah Muhammed, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam (2005)

Summary: “The presence of Islam in America is as long-standing as the arrival of the first captive Muslims from Africa, making Islam one of America’s formative religions. But the long-suppressed indigenous Islam didn’t resurface in organized form until the 1930s, when it infused the politico-spiritual drive by the Noble Drew ‘Ali and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to address the appalling social conditions of the ghettoized black masses of the North. Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam would prove to be the most extensive, influential and durable of African-American self-generated organizations.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

JoAnn D’Alisera, An imagined geography: Sierra Leonean Muslims in America (2004)

Summary: “Studying Sierra Leonean Muslims living in greater Washington, D.C., [D’Alisera] shows how these immigrants maintain intense and genuine community ties through weddings, rituals, and travel, across both vast urban spaces and national boundaries. D’Alisera examines two primary issues: Sierra Leoneans’ engagement with their homeland, to which they frequently traveled and often sent their children for upbringing until the outbreak of the civil war; and the Sierra Leonean interaction with a diverse, multicultural, increasingly global Muslim community that is undergoing its own search for identity.” – University of Pennsylvania Press

Keywords: Africans; New Immigrants; Sierra Leone

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Not quite American?: the shaping of Arab and Muslim identity in the United States (2004)

Summary: “In this essay Yvonne Haddad explores the history of immigration and integration of Arab Muslims in the United States and their struggle to legitimate their presence in the face of continuing exclusion based on race, nationalist identity, and religion.” – Baylor University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Identity

 

Bruce B. Lawrence, New faiths, old fears: Muslims and other Asian immigrants in American religious life (2004)

Summary: “The fastest-growing religions in America–faster than all Christian groups combined–are Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. In this remarkable book, a leading scholar of religion asks how these new faiths have changed or have been changed by the pluralist face of American civil society. How have these new religious minorities been affected by the deep-rooted American ambivalence toward foreign traditions? Bruce Lawrence casts a comparativist eye on the American religious scene and explores the ways in which various groups of Asian immigrants have, and sometimes have not, been integrated into the American polity. ” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; South Asians

 

Iftikhar H. Malik, Islam and modernity: Muslims in Europe and the United States (2004)

Summary: “This is not the first time that conflict has arisen between Muslims in the West and their other communities — this book examines a long history of volatile social relations based on extensive travels and research across four continents. Iftikhar H. Malik offers a wealth of case studies ranging from Muslim Spain and the Ottoman Empire to the present day; from the eruptions of anti-Islamic feeling over the Salman Rushdie affair to the demonization of Islam currently running high on the agenda of the ‘war on terror’.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Terrorism; Transnational

 

Jen’nan Ghazal Read, Culture, class and work among Arab-American women (2004)

Summary: “Read’s findings challenge assumptions about variations in ethnic women’s labor force participation. Arab cultural values play an important role in determining the position of women of Arab descent in American society.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Intersectionality

 

Garbi Schmidt, Islam in urban America: Sunni Muslims in Chicago (2004)

Summary: “In this detailed study of an immigrant community in Chicago, Garbi Schmidt considers the formation and meaning of an ‘American Islam.’ This vivid portrait of the people and the institutions that draw them together contributes to the academic literature on ethnic and religious identity at the same time as it depicts an immigrant community’s struggle against bias and forces that threaten its cohesion.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Chicago; New Immigrants

 

Janice Marschner, California’s Arab Americans (2003)

Summary: “Provides sketches of a cross-section of Arab American families in California — both early and later arrivals. The first five chapters summarize geographical, sociological, and historical facts about the Arab world—providing an understanding about why and when immigration occurred. The remaining ten chapters containing the family histories correspond to the typical regional divisions of California” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans; California

 

Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American experience (2nd ed., 2003)

Summary: “Turner places the study of Islam in the context of the racial, ethical, and political relations that influenced the reception of successive presentations of Islam, including the West African Islam of slaves, the Ahmadiyya Movement from India, the orthodox Sunni practice of later immigrants, and the Nation of Islam. This second edition features a new introduction, which discusses developments since the earlier edition, including Islam in a post-9/11 America.” – Indiana University Press

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Edward E. Curtis, Islam in black America (2002)

Summary: “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….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.” – SUNY Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Robert Dannin, Black pilgrimage to Islam (2002)

Summary: “Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted over a period of several years, Dannin provides an unprecedented look inside the fascinating and little understood world of black Muslims. He discovers that the well-known and cult-like Nation of Islam represents only a small part of the picture. Many more African-Americans are drawn to Islamic orthodoxy, with its strict adherence to the Qur’an.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Amina Mohammed-Arif, Salaam America: South Asian Muslims in New York (2002)

Summary: “This study examines the regrouping of the religious community and the reinvention of group identity in first and second-generation immigrants. By transplanting many of their institutions to the US (particularly in New York), Muslim immigrants succeeded in establishing their presence in the American landscape without arousing significant concern in the host community.” – Anthem Press

Keywords: New York; South Asians

 

Museum of the City of New York, A community of many worlds: Arab Americans in New York City (2002)

Summary: “Published in conjunction with an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, this collection of 17 essays ranges from the personal to the academic and covers a wide array of topics, such as Arabic poetry, immigration patterns, community formation and the sustaining of cultural traditions.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Arab Americans; New York

 

Richard Wormser, American Islam: growing up Muslim in America (2002)

Summary: “Young Muslims speak out about everyday concerns — family, school, relationships — revealing how they maintain their identity and adapt their religious and cultural traditions to fit into America’s more permissive society. A historical overview of Islam, an interpretation of the basic tenets of the Quran, and a close look at the growth of Islam in African-American communities rounds out the first-person accounts of daily life.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Youth

 

Asma Gull Hasan, American Muslims: the new generation (2001)

Summary: “Twenty-four-year-old Asma Hassan calls herself a Muslim feminist cowgirl (she was raised in Pueblo, Colorado). Convinced that Muslim Americans are the victims of mistaken identity (our fellow citizens think all Muslims are terrorists and women-oppressors), Hassan breaks through the stereotypes and generalizations to talk about the religion and the believers she knows from the inside.” – Bloomsbury Publishing

Keywords: Youth

 

Nabeel Abraham, Arab Detroit: from margin to mainstream (2000)

Summary: “The volume is divided into six sections – Qualities/Quantities, Work, Religion, Politics, Life Journeys, and Ethnic Futures – each with a cogent introduction by the editors that seeks to draw out larger themes.” – Journal of American Ethnic History

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan

 

Clifton E. Marsh, The lost-found Nation of Islam in America (2000)

Summary: “Sheds light on The Nation of Islam and Minister Louis Farrakhan, from the ideological splits in the Nation of Islam during the 1970s, to the growth and expanding influence in the 1990s.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Garbi Schmidt, American Medina: a study of the Sunni Muslim immigrant communities in Chicago (2000)

Summary: “Schmidt seeks, on basis of two periods of extended fieldwork, to provide a description of some activist strata of these religious communities. The description is framed by the portrayal of a number of Muslim institutions existing within the city and the interpretation of Islam that takes place within them. Accordingly, the book grants us a view of the life and activities of a number of Chicago’s Muslim Sunday Schools, full-time schools, Qur’anic schools, Muslim colleges, students’ associations, major Muslim centers, and “paramosques”, as they appear by the late 1990s.” – Lund University Press

Keywords: Chicago; New Immigrants

 

Sangeeta R. Gupta, Emerging voices: South Asian American women redefine self, family and community (1999)

Summary: “This collection of essays focuses on the experiences of South Asian immigrant women living in North America… The ‘voices’ span different generations of South Asian women, from those who were born in India and moved because of their fathers/husbands, to second generation American-born South Asian girls, being raised in bicultural situations. Similarly, they vary by their religious and regional affiliations. The authors range from feminist scholars who have conducted studies on groups of South Asian women to young graduate students who have presented first-person accounts of their own complex experiences as women of ‘colour’ coming to terms with living on the margins of a dominant culture, and who in their personal lives live with the constant pressure to ’conform to two sets of relational ideals’.” – Indian Journal of Gender Studies

Keywords: Gender; South Asians

 

Sulayman S. Nyang, Islam in the United States of America (1999)

Summary: “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.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in antebellum America: transatlantic stories and spiritual struggles(1997)

Summary: “A condensation and updating of his African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (1984), noted scholar of antebellum black writing and history Dr. Allan D. Austin explores, via portraits, documents, maps, and texts, the lives of 50 sub-Saharan non-peasant Muslim Africans caught in the slave trade between 1730 and 1860.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Africans

 

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Competing visions of Islam in the United States: a study of Los Angeles (1997)

Summary: “This book fills a void in the study of Muslims in the United States, presenting the first in-depth study of the large Muslim population in Los Angeles County. It examines an array of issues facing the American Muslim population, ranging from gender and ethnicity to political and da ‘wa (missionary) activities. This study inquires into the role Muslims see for themselves and their religious tradition in the United States and presents the diverse views of Islam held by Muslims in America today.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: California

 

Jack Shaheen, Arab and Muslim stereotyping in American popular culture (1997)

Summary: “concentrates…on the stereotyping of Muslims in the United States, which in many ways has subsumed the original problem of Arab-American stereotyping. To explain to readers why it is important to distinguish between stereotypes and realities, Shaheen submits a series of meticulously footnoted findings concerning the Muslim presence in the world in general and the United States in particular, as well as the Christian Arab presence in both.” – Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Keywords: Arabs; Media

 

Linda S. Walbridge, Without forgetting the imam: Lebanese Shi’ism in an American community (1997)

Summary: “An ethnographic study of the religious life of the Lebanese Shi’ites of Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Muslim community outside of the Middle East. Based on four years of fieldwork, this book explores how the Lebanese who have emigrated, most in the past three decades, to the United States, have adapted to their new surroundings.” – Wayne State University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Lebanon; Shi’ite

 

Barbara C. Aswad, Family and gender among American Muslims: issues facing Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants (1996)

Summary: “From the social and historical conditions of the Muslim migration to a range of issues affecting Muslim American life, the contributors provide new and valuable information on topics like intergenerational conflict about identity and values, intermarriage, religious and community involvement, gender and family structure, education, the needs of the elderly, and physical and mental health problems, including AIDS.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Family; Gender

 

Mattias Gardell, In the name of Elijah Muhammed: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (1996)

Summary: “Tells the story of the Nation of Islam—its rise in northern inner-city ghettos during the Great Depression through its decline following the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975 to its rejuvenation under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan. Mattias Gardell sets this story within the context of African American social history, the legacy of black nationalism, and the long but hidden Islamic presence in North America.” – Duke University Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Ernest McCarus, The development of Arab-American identity (1994)

Summary: “Looks at all aspects–political, religious, and social–of the Arab-American experience.” – University of Michigan Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Identity

 

Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam (1994)

Summary: “Challenges…myths by contextualizing the experience and history of African American Islamic life. This is the first book to investigate the diverse African American Islamic community on its own terms, in its own language and through its own synthesis of Islamic history and philosophy.” – Routledge

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Al-Hajj Wali Akbar Muhammed, Muslims in Georgia: a chronology and oral history (1994)

Summary: “compiled to serve as a convenient repository of important facts and events related to the presence of Muslims in the United States — more specifically the State of Georgia.” – from the author’s website

Keywords: African-Americans; Georgia

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Mission to America: five Islamic sectarian communities in North America (1993)

Summary: “Islam in the United States has developed a fascinating and diverse range of interpretations. Based in large part on community documents and on interviews and correspondence with community members, this study is the first look at these sectarian movements in the hundred-year history of Muslim religious development in the United States.” – University Press of Florida

Keywords: Sectarian

 

Ron Kelley, Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles (1993)

Summary: “This compelling collection of photographs, essays, and interviews explores…the Iranian presence in Southern California. While capturing the remarkable diversity of this immigrant community, Irangeles also confronts the sprawling metropolis that is increasingly influenced by its large ethnic and immigrant populations. Iranians, too, are inexorably linked to the demographic changes in California—changes that raise questions of assimilation and cultural survival—and that will see minority populations become the majority in the next century.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: California; Iran

 

Omar Khalidi, Indian Muslims in North America (1990)

Summary: A collection of articles about the culture of Indian Muslims in North America, derived from the proceedings of a 1989 conference held by the Islamic Society of North America. Includes an extensive bibliography.

Keywords: India; South Asians

 

Martha Lee, The Nation of Islam: an American millenarian movement (1989)

Summary: “Covering the Black Muslim religion, the Nation of Islam, in America since the turn of the 20th century to 1986, this study documents the transformation of the Nation, after the death of Elijah Mohammed, into two quite different entities.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Raymond Brady Williams, Religions of immigrants from India and Pakistan: new threads in the American tapestry (1988)

Summary: “the first comprehensive study of the religious groups formed in the United States by immigrants from India and Pakistan, of the adaptive and organizational patterns developed by these groups, and of their continuing influence on the fabric of American religion and culture. Through analysis of demographic statistics and information gathered in interviews, the book provides an overview of the variety of religions practiced by Indian and Pakistani Americans, the size of these religious groups, and the range of ecumenical, ethnic, sectarian, and national organizations.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: India; Pakistan

 

Clifton E. Marsh, From black Muslims to Muslims: the transition from separatism to Islam, 1930-1980 (1984)

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Sameer Y. Abraham, Arabs in the New World: studies on Arab-American communities (1983)

Summary: “Brings together the work of ten social scientists who have studied various aspects of the Arab-American immigrant experience…[includes a] historical profile [and] a micro-view of Detroit’s Arabic-speaking communities.” – Middle East Journal

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Earle H. Waugh, The Muslim community in North America (1983)

Summary: “Fourteen scholars examine what it is like to be a Muslim in North America today-the pressures inherent in an increasingly secular society; the need for people from radically different cultures to work together to maintain their religion; and the struggles of black Muslims to graft an indigenous North American branch onto mainline Islam.” – The University of Alberta Press

Keywords: African-Americans; North America

 

Sameer Y. Abraham, The Arab world and Arab-Americans: understanding a neglected minority (1981)

Keywords: Arabs

 

Barbara C. Aswad, Arabic-speaking communities in the United States (1974)

Keywords: Arabs

BIOGRAPHY

Wajahat Ali, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American. (2022)


Summary: The book tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy, and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration, and pop culture. In this refreshingly bold, hopeful, and uproarious memoir, Ali offers indispensable lessons for cultivating a more compassionate, inclusive, and delicious America. – W.W. Norton & Company

Keywords: Biography, race and racism, social justice

 

Ayaz Virji M.D., Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor’s Struggle for Home in Rural America (2019)

Summary: “A powerful true story about a Muslim doctor’s service to small-town America and the hope of overcoming our country’s climate of hostility and fear.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: biography, medicine, ethnic demographic studies

 

Ibtihaj Muhammad, Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream (2018)

Summary: “From winning state championships to three-time All-America selections at Duke University, Ibtihaj was poised for success, but the fencing community wasn’t ready to welcome her with open arms just yet. As the only woman of color and the only religious minority on Team USA’s saber fencing squad, Ibtihaj had to chart her own path to success and Olympic glory. . . Proud is a moving coming-of-age story from one of the nation’s most influential athletes and illustrates how she rose above it all.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: women, biography, fencing, sports, Olympics

 

Daisy Khan, Born with Wings: The Spiritual Journey of a Modern Muslim Woman (2018)

Summary: “[Khan] passionately tells her singular life story in this fine

memoir…Khan writes of her early years in a vibrant household in Kashmir and later moving to New York City, where she became a pioneering reformer, campaigner for women’s rights, and advocate for peace and equality. . . . A testament to courage and resilience as well as an important chapter in the story of American Muslims and women of faith.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Keywords: women, immigrants, biography

Connie Lou Shoemaker, Taste the sweetness later: Two Muslim women in America (2018)

Summary: “Author Connie Shoemaker shares the stories of two women living in the grip of murderous dictators…Sharing their stories is a step toward bridging the social and political chasm that divides America today. Just as ignorance of another person condemns us to the bondage of fear, knowledge frees us and makes us more able to function correctly.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Immigrants; Women; Libya; Kurdish; Iraqi

 

Abdi Nor Iftin, Call me American: A memoir (2018)

Summary: “Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar…but when the radical Islamist group al- Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it suddenly became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Now a proud resident of Maine, on the path to citizenship, Abdi Nor Iftin’s dramatic, deeply stirring memoir is truly a story for our time: a vivid reminder of why western democracies still beckon to those looking to make a better life.” – Random House Press

Keywords: Refugee; Immigrant; Muslim; American

 

Kizr Khan, An American family: A memoir of hope and sacrifice (2017)

Summary: “This inspiring memoir by the Muslim American Gold Star father and captivating DNC speaker is the story of one family’s pursuit of the American dream.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Arabs

 

Haroon Moghul, How to be a Muslim: An American story (2017)

Summary: “How to Be a Muslim reveals a young man coping with the crushing pressure of a world that fears Muslims, struggling with his faith and searching for intellectual forebears, and suffering the onset of bipolar disorder. This is the story of the second-generation immigrant, of what it’s like to lose yourself between cultures and how to pick up the pieces.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Youth

 

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, Muslim girl: a coming of age (2016)

Summary: “[An] account of Amani’s journey through adolescence as a Muslim girl, from the Islamophobia she’s faced on a daily basis, to the website she launched that became a cultural phenomenon, to the nation’s political climate in the 2016 election cycle with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Youth

 

Dustin J. Byrd, ed., Malcolm X: From political eschatology to religious revolutionary (2016)

Summary: “[A]n important investigation into the religious and political philosophy of one of the most important African-American and Muslim thinkers of the 20th century. Thirteen different scholars from six different countries and various academic disciplines have contributed to our understanding of why Malcolm X is still important fifty years after his death.” – Brill

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Sabeeha Rehman, Threading my prayer rug: one woman’s journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim (2016)

Summary: “A richly textured reflection on what it is to be a Muslim in America today. It is also the revealing, always hopeful story of an immigrant’s daily struggles, balancing assimilation with preserving heritage, overcoming religious barriers from within and distortions of Islam from without, and confronting issues of children growing up Muslim.” – Arcade Publishing

Keywords: Gender; South Asian

 

Randy Roberts, Blood brothers: the fatal friendship between Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X (2016)

Summary: “Acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith reconstruct the worlds that shaped Malcolm and Clay, from the boxing arenas and mosques, to postwar New York and civil rights-era Miami. In an impressively detailed account, they reveal how Malcolm molded Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali, helping him become an international symbol of black pride and black independence… Blood Brothers is the story of how Ali redefined what it means to be a black athlete in America—after Malcolm first enlightened him.” – Perseus Academic

Keywords: Civil Rights; Nation of Islam

 

Moustafa Bayoumi, This Muslim American life: dispatches from the War on Terror (2015)

Summary: “Reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans, highlighting the profound effect this surveillance  has had on how they live their lives. To be a Muslim American today often means to exist in an absurd space between exotic and dangerous, victim and villain, simply because of the assumptions people carry about you.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Patricia Raybon, Undivided: A Muslim daughter, her Christian mother, their path to peace (2015)

Summary: “Undivided opens a door on the lives of an American Islamic convert, Alana Raybon, a dedicated educator, and her devout Christian mother, Patricia Raybon, an award-winning author, as they struggle to reconcile and heal their family divided by faith.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Christianity; Comparative Religion; Interfaith Family; Convert

 

Keith Ellison, My country, ’tis of thee: my faith, my family, our future (2014)

Summary: “Filled with anecdotes, statistics, and social commentary, Ellison touches on everything from the Tea Party to Obama, from race to the immigration debate and more. He also draws some very clear distinctions between parties and shows why the deep polarization is unhealthy for America. Deeply patriotic, with My Country, ’Tis of Thee, Ellison strives to help define what it means to be an American today.” – Simon & Schuster

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Ranya Tabari Idliby, Burqas, baseball, and apple pie: being Muslim in America (2014)

Summary: “This is the story of one American Muslim family–the story of how, through their lives, their schools, their friends, and their neighbors, they end up living the challenges, myths, fears, hopes, and dreams of all Americans. They are challenged by both Muslims who speak for them and by Americans who reject them. In this moving memoir, Idliby discusses not only coming to terms with what it means to be Muslim today, but how to raise and teach her children about their heritage and religious legacy.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity

 

Najla Said, Looking for Palestine: growing up confused in an Arab-American family (2014)

Summary: “Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her.” – Penguin Books

Keywords: Arabs; Identity; Palestine

 

M. Zuhdi Jasser, A battle for the soul of Islam: an American Muslim patriot’s fight to save his faith (2013)

Summary: “Lays bare the crucial differences between Islam and the spiritual cancer known as Islamism and persuasively calls for radical reformation within the Muslim community in order to preserve liberty for all.” – Simon & Schuster

Keywords: Terrorism

 

Nada Prouty, Uncompromised: the rise, fall, and redemption of an Arab American patriot in the CIA (2011)

Summary: “In the wake of 9/11, at the height of anti-Arab fervor…federal investigators charged Prouty with passing intelligence to Hezbollah. Though the CIA and federal judge eventually exonerated Prouty of all charges, she was dismissed from the agency and stripped of her citizenship. In Uncompromised, Prouty tells her whole story in a bid to restore her name and reputation in the country that she loves.” – MacMillan Publishers

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A life of reinvention (2011)

Summary: “Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America. Reaching into Malcolm’s troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents’ activism as followers of Marcus Garvey through his own work with the Nation of Islam and rise in the world of black nationalism, and culminates in the never-before-told true story of his assassination.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: Malcolm X; Nation of Islam; Advocates; Social change

 

Omar Ibn Said and Ala Alryyes, A Muslim American slave: The fife of Omar Ibn Said (2011)

Summary: “Born to a wealthy family in West Africa around 1770, Omar Ibn Said was abducted and sold into slavery in the United States…producing the only known surviving American slave narrative written in Arabic. The result is an invaluable addition to our understanding of writings by enslaved Americans and a timely reminder that ‘Islam’ and ‘America’ are not mutually exclusive terms.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Autobiography; History; Slavery; Arabic

 

Masood Farivar, Confessions of a mullah warrior (2010)

Summary: “At a time when the war in Afghanistan is the focus of renewed attention, and its outcome is more crucial than ever to our own security, Farivar draws on his unique experience as a native Afghan, a former mujahideen fighter, and a longtime U.S. resident to provide unprecedented insight into the ongoing collision between Islam and the West.” – Grove Press

Keywords: Afghanistan; Terrorism

 

Asma Gull Hasan, Red, white, and Muslim: my story of belief (2009)

Summary: “The book is directed primarily at non-Muslim Americans to show them Qur’anic texts and Islamic beliefs and practices that challenge unfavorable stereotypes. But Hasan also takes on her fellow Muslims, urging them to distinguish cultural mores from religious orthodoxy, especially concerning the treatment of women.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Ferial Masry, Running for all the right reasons: a Saudi-born woman’s pursuit of democracy (2008)

Summary: “Chronicles Masry’s remarkable life, from her childhood in Mecca and her decision to immigrate to the U.S. to her career as an educator and her bold entry into the world of politics.” – Syracuse University Press

Keywords: Gender; Saudi Arabia

 

Sumbul Ali-Karamali, The Muslim next door: The Qur’an, the media, and that veil thing (2008)

Summary: “Written from the point of view of an American Muslim, the book addresses what readers in the Western world are most curious about, beginning with the basics of Islam and how Muslims practice their religion before easing into more complicated issues like jihad, Islamic fundamentalism, and the status of women in Islam. Author Sumbul Ali-Karamali’s vivid anecdotes about growing up Muslim and female in the West, along with her sensitive, scholarly overview of Islam, combine for a uniquely insightful look at the world’s fastest growing religion.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Hassan Qazwini, American crescent: a Muslim cleric on the power of his faith, the struggle against prejudice, and the future of Islam and America (2007)

Summary: “Throughout American Crescent, Qazwini offers a revelatory look at the tenets and history of Islam, defending it as a faith of peace and diversity, and challenging stereotypes and misconceptions promulgated by the media.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Umar F. Abd-Allah, A Muslim in Victorian America: the life of Alexander Russell Webb (2006)

Summary: “In this first-ever biography of Webb, Umar F. Abd-Allah examines Webb’s life and uses it as a window through which to explore the early history of Islam in America. Except for his adopted faith, every aspect of Webb’s life was, as Abd-Allah shows, quintessentially characteristic of his place and time. It was because he was so typically American that he was able to serve as Islam’s ambassador to America (and vice versa).” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: History

 

Maryam Qudrat Aseel, Torn between two cultures: an Afghan-American woman speaks out (2004)

Summary: “Aseel, a first-generation Afghan American, discusses current events–particularly those relating to Afghanistan–and what it means to be a Muslim in America after 9/11. She combines analysis with unique personal stories describing how her family balances ‘two value systems that have grown to signify polar extremes, those of the East and West.’” – School Library Journal

Keywords: Afghan; Gender

 

Asma Gull Hasan, Why I am a Muslim (2004)

Summary: “”Out of all the cultures in the world… true Islamic values, as embodied in the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet Muhammad, most closely resemble American values.” So asserts Hasan, who has devoted much of her adult life—she is not yet 30—to combating anti-Muslim prejudice. As in her first book, American Muslims, she passionately argues against stereotypes and in favor of an Islam that sounds a lot like Reform Judaism or liberal Christianity. This is the Islam she knew growing up in Pueblo, Colo.—an American girl who looked Chicana and attended a Catholic school.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Arabs; Gender

 

Earle H. Waugh and Frederick M. Denny, The shaping of an American Islamic discourse: A memorial to Fazlur Rahman (1998)

Summary: “To encourage the US public to explore Islam beyond the headlines and veils, a dozen Islamic studies specialists (mainly at US universities) honor Rahman’s contribution to such studies by focusing on: Islamic priorities.” – Book Depository

Keywords: Philosophy; Hermeneutics; Biographical References; Historic

 

Raymond G. Hanania, I’m glad I look like a terrorist: growing up Arab in America (1996)

Summary: “Explores the experience of one Palestinian Arab American and his life growing up on Chicago’s South Side, his service in the US Military during the Vietnam War, his beginning career in journalism covering Chicago City Hall, and his expansion into politics and media consulting. It explores Arab-Jewish relations in Chicago and the Chicagoland area, and how Arabs were treated in America before Sept. 11, 2001.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Youth

 

Alex Haley, The autobiography of Malcolm X: As told to Alex Haley (1992)

Summary: “In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: Malcolm; African American Muslims

SOCIOLOGY

Louise Cainkar, Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press). Awards: Institute for Social Policy and Understanding Young Scholar Award. Arab American National Museum Adult Non-Fiction Award, 2009.

Summary: Focusing on the metropolitan Chicago area, more than a hundred research interviews and five in-depth oral histories were conducted in this book. 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.

Keywords: Religion, sociology

Farha Bano Ternikar, Intersectionality in the Muslim south Asian-American Middle Class: Lifestyle Consumption Beyond Halal and Hijab. (2021).

Summary: This book uses everyday consumption as a lens to analyze how South Asian Muslim American women negotiate racial, religious, gendered, classed, and often political identities. In particular, Ternikar examines the use of food and clothing as well as social media accounts among this important immigrant population, offering new insight that goes beyond examining Muslim American women through the lens of hijab. This timely and nuanced interdisciplinary study draws on both sociology of consumption theory and intersectional feminism and will be valuable for courses in gender and women’s studies, sociology of consumption, and women and religion. – Lexington Books

Keywords: Women’s Gender Studies, religion, sociology

Jeffrey Guhin, Agents of God: Boundaries and Authority in Muslim and Christian Schools (2020).

Summary: One of the few ethnographic works on either Muslim or Conservative Protestant high schools. – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Culture, sociology, education, and religion

Tahseen Shams, Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (2020)

Summary: “Challenging the commonly held perception that immigrants’ lives are shaped exclusively by their sending and receiving countries, Here, There, and Elsewhere breaks new ground by showing how immigrants are vectors of globalization who both produce and experience the interconnectedness of societies—not only the societies of origin and destination, but also, the societies in places beyond.” Stanford University Press

Keywords: Sociology, Immigration, Asia, Race, Class, and Gender

Qasim Amin Nathari, The State of Islam in Black America: Examing the Past, Assessing the Present, Looking Toward the Future (2019).

Summary: This work offers some insight and understanding of the history, contributions and present state of perhaps the most misunderstood faith tradition in America, and analysis of the challenges and opportunities in the 21st century for the Black American Muslim community and the communities wherein they live, work and serve.

Keywords: Sociology, Communication 

 

Debbie Almontaser, Leading While Muslim: The Experiences of American Muslim Principals after 9/11 (2018)

Summary: “This book examines the lived experiences of American Muslim principals who serve in public schools post-9/11 to determine whether global events, political discourse, and the media coverage of Islam and Muslims have affected their leadership and spirituality.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Education; Leadership

 

Justine Howe, Suburban Islam (2018)

Summary: “In Suburban Islam, Justine Howe explores the rise of ‘third spaces,’ …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… 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.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Third Space

 

Muna Ali, Young Muslim America (2018)

Summary: “Young Muslim America explores the perspectives and identities of the American descendants of immigrant Muslims and converts to Islam … Ali examines how younger Muslims see themselves, their faith community, and their society, and how that informs their daily life and helps them envision an American future.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Muslim Youth; Identity

 

Harold D. Morales, Latino and Muslim in America (2018)

Summary: “Latino and Muslim in America examines how so-called ‘minority groups’ are made, fragmented, and struggle for recognition … Drawing on four years of media analysis, ethnographic and historical research, Morales demonstrates that Latinos embrace Islam within historically specific contexts that include distinctive immigration patterns and new laws, urban spaces, and media technologies that have increasingly brought Latinos and Muslims into contact. ” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Latino; Digitalization; Intersecting Identities

 

Bozena C. Welborne, Aubrey L. Westfall, Özge Çelik Russell, Sarah A. Tobin, The politics of the headscarf in the United States (2018)

Summary: “The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States investigates the social and political effects of the practice of Muslim-American women wearing the headscarf (hijab) in a non-Muslim state. The authors find the act of head covering is not politically motivated in the U.S. setting, but rather it accentuates and engages Muslim identity in uniquely American ways.” – Cornell University Press

KeywordsGender; Identity

 

Hudda Ibrahim, From Somalia to snow: how central Minnesota became home to Somalis (2017)

Summary: “In providing a great understanding of Somali culture, tradition, religion, and issues of integration and assimilation, this book also focuses on why thousands of Somali refugees came to live in this cold, snowy area with people of predominantly European descent.” – Amazon.com

KeywordsNew Immigrants; Minnesota 

 

Edward E. Curtis IV, ed., The practice of Islam in America: An introduction (2017)

Summary: “The Practice of Islam in America introduces readers to the way Islam is lived in the United States, offering vivid portraits of Muslim American life passages, ethical actions, religious holidays, prayer, pilgrimage, and other religious activities. It takes readers into homes, religious congregations, schools, workplaces, cemeteries, restaurants—and all the way to Mecca—to understand the diverse religious practices of Muslim Americans.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Identity

 

Dawn-Marie Gibson & Herbert Berg, New perspectives on the Nation of Islam (2017)

Summary: “Contributes to the ongoing dialogue about the nature and influence of the Nation of Islam (NOI), bringing fresh insights to areas that have previously been overlooked in the scholarship of Elijah Muhammad’s NOI, the Imam W.D. Mohammed community and Louis Farrakhan’s Resurrected NOI.” – Routledge

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Nadia Marzouki, Islam: an American religion (2017)

Summary: “Demonstrates how Islam as formed in the United States has become an American religion in a double sense—first through the strategies of recognition adopted by Muslims and second through the performance of Islam as a faith.” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

John O’Brien, Keeping it halal: The everyday lives of Muslim American teenage boys (2017)

Summary: “[P]rovides a uniquely personal look at the social worlds of a group of young male friends as they navigate the complexities of growing up Muslim in America. Drawing on three and a half years of intensive fieldwork in and around a large urban mosque, John O’Brien offers a compelling portrait of typical Muslim American teenage boys concerned with typical teenage issues.” – Princeton University Press

Keywords: Gender; Youth

 

Ula Yvette Taylor, The promise of patriarchy: Woman and the Nation of Islam (2017)

Summary: “[D]ocuments their struggle to escape the devaluation of black womanhood while also clinging to the empowering promises of patriarchy. Taylor shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in being able to bypass the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Gender; Nation of Islam

 

Timur R. Yuskaev, Speaking Qur’an: An American scripture (2017)

Summary: “[E]xamines how Muslim Americans have been participating in their country’s cultural, social, religious, and political life. Essential to this process…is how the Qur’an has become an evermore deeply American text that speaks to central issues in the lives of American Muslims through the spoken-word interpretations of Muslim preachers, scholars,and activists.” – University of South Carolina Press

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

Rosemary Corbett, Making moderate Islam: Sufism, service, and the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy (2016)

Summary: “Refutes the idea that current demands for Muslim moderation have primarily arisen in response to the events of 9/11, or to the violence often depicted in the media as unique to Muslims. Instead, it looks at a century of pressures on religious minorities to conform to dominant American frameworks for race, gender, and political economy… Calls for Muslim moderation in particular are also colored by racist and orientalist stereotypes about the inherent pacifism of Sufis with respect to other groups.” – Stanford University Press

Keywords: Multiculturalism; Terrorism

 

Steven Fink, Dribbling for dawah: Sports among Muslim Americans (2016)

Summary: ” This is the first book to investigate Muslim American sports at the local level, looking at Muslim basketball leagues, sports programs at mosques and Islamic schools, and sports events hosted by Muslim organizations. Drawing upon personal interviews and observations as well as scholarly sources, this book demonstrates that participation in sports activities plays a vital role in strengthening Islamic piety and fellowship, and in connecting Muslims with non-Muslims in post-9/11 America.” – Mercer University Press

Keywords: Sports

 

Julianne Hazen, Sufism in America: The Alami Tariqa of Waterport, New York (2016)

Summary: “interweaves personal stories and insider views with academic insight to provide a compelling and detailed picture of Sufism as a living and dynamic tradition in America.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Sufism

 

Nahid Afrose Kabir, Muslim Americans: debating the notions of American and un-American (2016)

Summary: “Taking as its point of departure the question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy, this book examines Muslims’ sense of belonging in American society. Based on extensive interview data across seven states in the US, the author explores the question of what it means to be American or un-American amongst Muslims, offering insights into common views of community, culture, and wider society. Through a combination of interviewees’ responses and discourse analysis of print media, Muslim Americans also raises the question of whether media coverage of the issue might itself be considered ‘un-American’.” – Routledge

Keywords: Identity; Media

 

Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, Muslim cool: race, religion, and hip hop in the United States (2016)

Summary: “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 U.S. Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Media; Youth

 

Sunaina Marr Maira, The 9/11 generation: youth, rights and solidarity in the War on Terror (2016)

Summary: “Uses extensive ethnography to understand the meaning of political subjecthood and mobilization for Arab, South Asian, and Afghan American youth. Maira explores how young people from communities targeted in the War on Terror engage with the “political,” forging coalitions based on new racial and ethnic categories, even while they are under constant scrutiny and surveillance, and organizing around notions of civil rights and human rights.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Terrorism; Youth

 

Asad el Malik, Bismillah & bean pies: How black Americans crafted an Islamic expression through nationalism (2016)

Summary: “Although its genesis is in the Nation of Islam, the bean pie has grown to be a part of every African American Islamic expression. It, more than any other item, symbolizes the unique Muslim culture developed by blacks in America. The bean pie in many ways mirrors Islam in black America. Both find their roots in black nationalism and are a deviation from the overarching black culture in the United States.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Christopher A. Bail, Terrified: how anti-Muslim fringe organizations became mainstream (2015)

Summary: “Drawing on cultural sociology, social network theory, and social psychology, [Bail] shows how anti-Muslim organizations gained visibility in the public sphere, commandeered a sense of legitimacy, and redefined the contours of contemporary debate, shifting it ever outward toward the fringe. Bail illustrates his pioneering theoretical argument through a big-data analysis of more than one hundred organizations struggling to shape public discourse about Islam.” – Princeton University Press

Keywords: Media

 

Patrick D. Bowen, A history of conversion to Islam in the United States, volume 1: white American Muslims before 1975 (2015)

Summary: “The first in-depth study of the thousands of white Americans who embraced Islam between 1800 and 1975. Drawing from little-known archives, interviews, and rare books and periodicals, Patrick D. Bowen unravels the complex social and religious factors that led to the emergence of a wide variety of American Muslim and Sufi conversion movements.” – Brill

Keywords: Converts; History

 

Fawzia Reza, The effects of the September 11th terrorist attack on Pakistani-American parental involvement in U.S. schools (2015)

Summary: “Examines the challenges that Pakistani-American families have faced in their attempts to assimilate within the U.S. school culture since the September eleventh terrorist attack. Negative stereotyping has permeated into schools, and affected Pakistani-American students and their families. Reza examines this phenomenon from a parental lens in order to describe how 9/11 has altered the involvement of Pakistani-American parents in their children’s schools, and whether or not schools are appropriately addressing these issues and concerns.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, What is an American Muslim?: embracing faith and citizenship (2014)

Summary: “Muslims, An-Na’im argues, must embrace the full range of rights and responsibilities that come with American citizenship, and participate fully in civic life, while at the same time asserting their right to define their faith for themselves. They must view themselves, simply, as American citizens who happen to be Muslims.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Identity

 

Andrew Garrod, Growing up Muslim: Muslim college students in America tell their life stories (2014)

Summary: “Present[s] fourteen personal essays by college students of the Muslim faith who are themselves immigrants or are the children of immigrants to the United States. In their essays, the students grapple with matters of ethnicity, religious prejudice and misunderstanding, and what is termed Islamophobia. The fact of 9/11 and subsequent surveillance and suspicion of Islamic Americans (particularly those hailing from the Middle East and the Asian Subcontinent) have had a profound effect on these students, their families, and their communities of origin.” – Cornell University Press

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Ayesha Mattu, Salaam, love: American Muslim men on love, sex, and intimacy (2014)

Summary: “Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi provide a space for American Muslim men to speak openly about their romantic lives, offering frank, funny, and insightful glimpses into their hearts—and bedrooms. The twenty-two writers come from a broad spectrum of ethnic, racial, and religious perspectives—including orthodox, cultural, and secular Muslims—reflecting the strength and diversity of their faith community and of America.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Gender; Sex

 

Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation: between black protest and Sunni Islam (2014)

Summary: “Draws on oral histories and interviews with approximately 100 women across several cities to provide an overview of women’s historical contributions and their varied experiences of the NOI, including both its continuing community under Farrakhan and its offshoot into Sunni Islam under Imam W.D. Mohammed. The authors examine how women have interpreted and navigated the NOI’s gender ideologies and practices, illuminating the experiences of African-American, Latina, and Native American women within the NOI and their changing roles within this patriarchal movement.” – New York University Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Women

 

Liz Jackson, Muslims and Islam in U. S. education: reconsidering multiculturalism (2014)

Summary: “Explores the complex interface that exists between U.S. school curriculum, teaching practice about religion in public schools, societal and teacher attitudes toward Islam and Muslims, and multiculturalism as a framework for meeting the needs of minority group students. It presents multiculturalism as a concept that needs to be rethought and reformulated in the interest of creating a more democratic, inclusive, and informed society.” – Routledge

Keywords: Education; Multiculturalism; Youth

 

Nahid Afrose Kabir, Young American Muslims: dynamics of identity (2014)

Summary: “presents a journey into the ideas, outlooks and identity of young Muslims in America today. Based on around 400 in-depth interviews with young Muslims from Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and Virginia, all the richness and nuance of these minority voices can be heard.” – Edinburgh University Press

Keywords: Youth

 

Shabana Mir, Muslim American women on campus: undergraduate social life and identity (2014)

Summary: “Illuminates the processes by which a group of ethnically diverse American college women, all identifying as Muslim and all raised in the United States, construct their identities during one of the most formative times in their lives. …Focuses on key leisure practices–drinking, dating, and fashion–to probe how Muslim American students adapt to campus life and build social networks that are seamlessly American, Muslim, and youthful.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Education; Women; Youth

 

Samina Yasmeen, Muslim citizens in the West: spaces and agents of inclusion and exclusion (2014)

Summary: “Drawing upon original case studies spanning North America, Europe and Australia, Muslim Citizens in the West explores how Muslims have been both the excluded and the excluders within the wider societies in which they live. …The cases examined show how these tendencies span geographical, ethnic and gender divides and can be encouraged by a combination of international and national developments prompting some groups to identify wider society as the ‘other’.” – Routledge

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Transnational

 

Mucahit Bilici, Finding Mecca in America: how Islam is becoming an American religion (2013)

Summary: “Traces American Muslims’ progress from outsiders to natives and from immigrants to citizens. …develops a novel sociological approach and offers insights into the civil rights activities of Muslim Americans, their increasing efforts at interfaith dialogue, and the recent phenomenon of Muslim ethnic comedy.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Interfaith Relations; New Immigrants

 

Scott Korb, Light without fire: the making of America’s first Muslim college (2013)

Summary: “Tells the story of [Zaytuna College’s] founders, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, arguably the two most influential leaders in American Islam, ‘rock stars’ who, tellingly, are little known outside their community. Korb also introduces us to Zaytuna’s students, young American Muslims of all stripes who admire—indeed, love—their teachers in ways college students typically don’t and whose stories, told for the first time, signal the future of Islam in this country.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

Samory Rasheed, Black Muslims in the U.S.: history, politics, and the struggle of a community (2013)

Summary: “Seeks to address deficiencies in current scholarship about black Muslims in American society, from examining the origins of Islam among African-Americans to acknowledging the influential role that black Muslims play in contemporary U.S. society.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Wajahat Ali, All-American: 45 American men on being Muslim (2012)

Summary: “A unique collection of stories shattering the misconceptions surrounding American Muslim men through honest, accessible, personal essays.” – White Cloud Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Juliane Hammer, American Muslim women, religious authority, and activism: more than a prayer (2012)

Summary: “Hammer looks at the work of significant female American Muslim writers, scholars, and activists, using their writings as a lens for a larger discussion of Muslim intellectual production in America and beyond. Centered on the controversial women-led Friday prayer in March 2005, Hammer uses this event and its aftermath to address themes of faith, community, and public opinion.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Gender

 

Mustafa Khattab, The Nation of Islam: the history, ideology and development of the Black Muslim movement in America (2012)

Summary: “Explores the origins of the NOI ideology and its impact on other Muslim and black nationalist groups in the US. This book, probably the first scholarly work ever on the NOI by an Arab-Muslim from a prestigious institution of higher learning such as Al-Azhar University, is instrumental in understanding the history, future, and progress of Islam in America & the African-American community.” – Lambert Academic Publishing

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Ayesha Mattu, Love, InshAllah: the secret love lives of American Muslim women (2012)

Summary: “25 American Muslim writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their search for love openly for the first time, showing just how varied the search for love can be–from singles’ events and online dating, to college flirtations and arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist.” – Soft Skull Press

Keywords: Gender; Sex

 

Nadine Christine Naber, Arab America: gender, cultural politics, and activism (2012)

Summary: “Tells the stories of second generation Arab American young adults living in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of whom are political activists engaged in two culturalist movements that draw on the conditions of diaspora, a Muslim global justice and a Leftist Arab movement. Writing from a transnational feminist perspective, Naber reveals the complex and at times contradictory cultural and political processes through which Arabness is forged in the contemporary United States.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Gender; Youth

 

Maria M. Ebrahimji, I speak for myself: American women on being Muslim (2011)

Summary: “40 American women under the age of 40 share their experiences of their lives as Muslim women in America. While their commonality is faith and citizenship, their voices and their messages are very different. …Each personal story is a contribution to the larger narrative of life stories and life work of a new generation of Muslim women.” – White Cloud Press

Keywords: Gender

 

Anouar Majid, Islam and America: building a future without prejudice (2011)

Summary: “Majid, born in Morocco, raised a Muslim, educated in the U.S., and now an American, offers a personal view of the tensions between the U.S. and Islam and the foundation for moving forward. He begins, and ends, with the revolutionary idea that embodies the U.S.: the promise of liberty, free inquiry, new ideas, and a democratic spirit and the hope it engenders. In between, he argues that both sides have used sacred scriptures and unexamined religious beliefs to justify social injustice, misguided foreign-policy choices, and acts of aggression.” – Booklist

Keywords: Biography

 

Peter Morey, Framing Muslims: stereotyping and representation after 9/11 (2011)

Summary: “Dissect[s] the ways in which stereotypes depicting Muslims as an inherently problematic presence in the West are constructed, deployed, and circulated in the public imagination, producing an immense gulf between representation and a considerably more complex reality. Crucially, they show that these stereotypes are not solely the province of crude-minded demagogues and their tabloid megaphones, but multiply as well from the lips of supposedly progressive elites, even those who presume to speak “from within,” on Muslims’ behalf.” – Harvard University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Samir Abu-Absi, Arab Americans in Toledo (2010)

Summary: “Toledo’s Arab American experience is a great American story of an ethnic community finding fertile soil, sinking roots and flourishing. This has been the story of ethnic groups whose American experience predates that of Arab Americans and it is being written anew by more recent immigrant communities.” – University of Toledo Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Ohio

 

Akbar Ahmed, Journey into America: the challenge of Islam (2010)

Summary: “To shed light on this increasingly important religious group and counter mutual distrust, renowned scholar Akbar Ahmed conducted the most comprehensive study to date of the American Muslim community. Journey into America explores and documents how Muslims are fitting into U.S. society, placing their experience within the larger context of American identity. This eye-opening book also offers a fresh and insightful perspective on American history and society.” – Brookings Institution Press

Keywords: Identity; Mosques

 

Stephan Salisbury, Mohamed’s ghosts: an American story of love and fear in the homeland (2010)

Summary: “As he explores events centered on what he calls “the poor streets of Frankford Valley” in Philadelphia, or the empty streets of Brooklyn , or the fear-encrusted precincts of Lodi, California and beyond, Salisbury is constantly reminded of similar incidents in his own past–the paranoia and police activity that surrounded his political involvement in the 1960s, and the surveillance and informing that dogged his father, a well-known New York Times reporter and editor, for half a century.” – Public Affairs Books

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Linda Brandi Cateura, Voices of American Muslims: 23 profiles (2009)

Summary: “American Muslims from all walks of life introduce themselves and the many faces of Islam in America. These individuals include the head of New York’s largest mosque, an actress, a cabdriver and many others. These first-person narratives, drawn from personal interviews conducted by the author, are frank and offer insights rarely experienced in most Americans’ relations with their Muslim neighbours.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Identity

 

Sarah M.A. Gualtieri, Between Arab and white: race and ethnicity in the early Syrian American diaspora (2009)

Summary: “presents an original analysis of the ways in which people mainly from current day Lebanon and Syria—the largest group of Arabic-speaking immigrants before World War II—came to view themselves in racial terms and position themselves within racial hierarchies as part of a broader process of ethnic identity formation.” – University of California Press

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants; Syria

 

Hamid Reza Kusha, Islam in American prisons: black Muslims’ challenge to American penology (2009)

Summary: “The growth of Islam both worldwide and particularly in the United States is especially notable among African-American inmates incarcerated in American state and federal penitentiaries. …This new study examines this multifaceted phenomenon and makes a powerful argument for the objective examination of the rehabilitative potentials of faith-based organizations in prisons, including the faith of those who convert to Islam.” – Routledge

Keywords: Prisons

 

Sunaina Marr Maira, Missing: youth, citizenship, and empire after 9/11 (2009)

Summary: “Drawing on ethnographic research in a New England high school, Maira investigates the cultural dimensions of citizenship for South Asian Muslim students and their relationship to the state in the everyday contexts of education, labor, leisure, dissent, betrayal, and loss. The narratives of the mostly working-class youth she focuses on demonstrate how cultural citizenship is produced in school, at home, at work, and in popular culture.” – Duke University Press

Keywords: Education; South Asians; Youth

 

Alia Malek, A country called Amreeka: Arab roots, American stories (2009)

Summary: “The history of Arab settlement in the United States stretches back nearly as far as the history of America itself. For the first time, Alia Malek brings this history to life. In each of eleven spellbinding chapters, she inhabits the voice and life of one Arab American, at one time-stopping historical moment.” – Simon & Schuster

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Manning Marable, Black routes to Islam (2009)

Summary: “Starting with the 19th century narratives of African American travelers to the Holy Land, the following chapters probe Islam’s role in urban social movements, music and popular culture, gender dynamics, relations between African Americans and Muslim immigrants, and the racial politics of American Islam with the ongoing war in Iraq.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: African-Americans

 

Zarinah El-Amin Naeem, Jihad of the soul: singlehood and the search for love in Muslim America (2009)

Summary: “An anthropological exploration into the attitudes, experiences and emotions of single Muslim young adults between the ages of 18-40.” – Western Michigan University Press

Keywords: Identity; Youth

 

Christopher M. Stonebanks, Muslim voices in school: narratives of identity and pluralism (2009)

Summary: “The politics and education about Islam, Muslims, Arabs, Turks, Iranians and all that is associated with the West’s popular imagination of the monolithic ‘Middle-East’ has long been framed within problematics. The goal of this book is to push back against the reductive mainstream narratives told about Muslim and Middle Eastern heritage students for generations if not centuries, in mainstream schools. The chapters are each authored by Muslim-acculturated scholars.” – Sense Publishers

Keywords: Education; Youth

 

John Tehranian, Whitewashed: America’s invisible Middle Eastern minority (2009)

Summary: “Unlike many other racial minorities in our country, Middle Eastern Americans have faced rising, rather than diminishing, degrees of discrimination over time; a fact highlighted by recent targeted immigration policies, racial profiling, a war on terrorism with a decided racialist bent, and growing rates of job discrimination and hate crime. Oddly enough, however, Middle Eastern Americans are not even considered a minority in official government data. Instead, they are deemed white by law….Tehranian combines his own personal experiences as an Iranian American with an expert’s analysis of current events, legal trends, and critical theory to analyze this bizarre Catch-22 of Middle Eastern racial classification.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Nader Ayish, Stereotypes and Arab American Muslim high school students (2008)

Summary: “In an effort to better understand this diverse community, this study investigated how five Arab American Muslim high school students perceive and cope with stereotypes and the way their culture and religion is portrayed in film, the media, popular culture, and school curricula.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arabs; Education; Youth

 

Moustafa Bayoumi, How does it feel to be a problem?: being young and Arab in America (2008)

Summary: “Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, home to the largest Arab-American population in the United States. He moves beyond stereotypes and clichés to reveal their often unseen struggles, from being subjected to government surveillance to the indignities of workplace discrimination.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Katherine Pratt Ewing, Being and belonging: Muslims in the United States since 9/11 (2008)

Summary: “Katherine Pratt Ewing leads a group of anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural studies experts in exploring how the events of September 11th have affected the quest for belonging and identity among Muslims in America—for better and for worse. From Chicago to Detroit to San Francisco, Being and Belonging takes readers on an extensive tour of Muslim America—inside mosques, through high school hallways, and along inner city streets.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Dalel B. Khalil, From veils to thongs: an Arab chick’s survival guide to balancing one’s ethnic identity in America (2008)

Summary: “One who is both Arab and American is very often, very confused. Her one foot is planted firmly in a traditional world whose cultural rules haven’t changed in over 2,000 years. Her other foot is skidding on a thin piece of ice, the mega-liberal free-for-all, called America. And she is trying to balance walking on both. This hilarious, lighthearted survival guide explains how to retain one’s sanity in the battle of the ultimate culture clash.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Anjana Narayna, Living our religions: Hindu and Muslim South Asian-American women narrate their experiences (2008)

Summary:Living Our Religions sheds important light on the lives of Hindu and Muslim American women of South Asian origin. As the authors reveal their diverse and culturally dynamic religious practices, describe the race, gender, and ethnic boundaries that they encounter, and document how they resist and challenge these boundaries, they cut through the myths and ethnocentrism of popular portrayals to reveal the vibrancy, courage, and agency of an “invisible” minority.” – Lynne Rienner Publishers

Keywords: Gender; South Asians

 

Paul M. Barrett, American Islam: the struggle for the soul of a religion (2007)

Summary: “Barrett tells seven stories of American Muslims in all their stereotype-defying complexity.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Identity; Media

 

Brigitte L. Nacos, Fueling our fears: stereotyping, media coverage, and public opinion of Muslim Americans (2007)

Summary: “After September 11, many in the American public and media zeroed in on Muslims in America and the world, irresponsibly linking―intentionally or not―Muslims at large with terrorism. This well-researched book explores this focus and its implications. At the same time, the authors do not leave out the opinion of Muslim Americans, exploring their views about the American media and its influence, their attitudes toward non-Muslim Americans and, just as important, their opinions on post–9/11 U.S. counterterrorist policies and practices.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Media; Terrorism

 

Anna Mansson McGinty, Becoming Muslim: Western women’s conversions to Islam (2006)

Summary: “While Islam has become a controversial topic in the West, a growing number of Westerners find powerful meaning in Islam. Becoming Muslim is an ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews with Swedish and American women who have converted to Islam.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Converts; Gender

 

Asra Q. Nomani, Standing alone: an American woman’s struggle for the soul of Islam (2006)

Summary: “Nomani shows how many of the freedoms enjoyed centuries ago have been erased by the conservative brand of Islam practiced today, giving the West a false image of Muslim women as veiled and isolated from the world.” – HarperCollins

Keywords: Gender

 

Karin van Nieuwkerk, Women embracing Islam: gender and conversion in the West (2006)

Summary: “In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam, leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam. Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well as the Nation of Islam, have for women.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Converts; Gender

 

Donna Gehrke White, The face behind the veil: the extraordinary lives of Muslim women in America (2006)

Summary: “Provides a rare, revealing look into the hearts, minds, and everyday lives of Muslim women in America and opens a window on a culture as diverse as it is misunderstood.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Hijab

 

Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, Living Islam out loud: American Muslim women speak (2005)

Summary: “Living Islam Out Loud presents the first generation of American Muslim women who have always identified as both American and Muslim. These pioneers have forged new identities for themselves and for future generations, and they speak out about the hijab, relationships, sex and sexuality, activism, spirituality, and much more.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity

 

Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Shattering the stereotypes: Muslim women speak out (2005)

Summary: “In this ambitious volume that includes essays, poetry, fiction, memoir, plays, and artwork, Muslim women speak for themselves, revealing a complexity of experience and thought that escapes most Western portrayals. Islam is, as editor Fawzia Afzal-Khan puts it, only “one spoke in the wheel of our lives.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Culture; Gender; Identity

 

Loukia K. Sarroub, All American Yemeni girls: being Muslim in a public school (2005)

Summary: “Based on more than two years of fieldwork conducted in a Yemeni community in southeastern Michigan, this unique study examines Yemeni American girls’ attempts to construct and make sense of their identities as Yemenis, Muslims, Americans, daughters of immigrants, teenagers, and high school students.” – University of Pennsylvania Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Yemen; Youth

 

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Muslims in the United States: identity, influence, innovation (2005)

Summary: Proceedings of conferences sponsored by the Division of U.S. Studies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in 2003 and 2005. Topics include issues affecting Muslims in the United States; the impact American Muslims are having around the world; and pluralism and gender in Islam.

Keywords: Identity

 

Mbaye Lo, Muslims in America: race, politics, and community building (2004)

Summary: “Mabye takes the mosque as his paradigm to analyze and synthesize the growth of Muslim communities in Cleveland; how their mosques developed over time, the challenges they faced, in moving to mainstream Islam and developing a multi-ethnic community.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Mosques; Ohio

 

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the roots of terror (2004)

Summary: “Distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to bear on a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen?” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Engaged surrender: African American women and Islam (2004)

Summary: “In Engaged Surrender, Islam becomes a unique prism for clarifying the role of faith in contemporary black women’s experience. Through these women’s stories, Rouse reveals how commitment to Islam refracts complex processes—urbanization, political and social radicalization, and deindustrialization—that shape black lives generally, and black women’s lives in particular. Rather than focusing on traditional (and deeply male) ideas of autonomy and supremacy, the book—and the community of women it depicts—emphasizes more holistic notions of collective obligation, personal humility, and commitment to overarching codes of conduct and belief.” – University of California Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Gender

 

Michael Wolfe, Taking back Islam: American Muslims reclaim their faith (2003)

Summary: “Noted Islamic authority Michael Wolfe moderates 35 expert speakers, writers and leaders, including Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) and Karen Armstrong. They discuss the future of Islam, tear down false stereotypes, review the historical realities that have shaped the religion, and examine paradoxes and schisms within the faith.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Interfaith Relations; Media

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Muslim minorities in the West: visible and invisible (2002)

Summary: “noted scholars Haddad and Smith bring together outstanding essays on the distinct experiences of minority Muslim communities from Detroit, Michigan to Perth, Australia and the wide range of issues facing them. Haddad and Smith in their introduction trace the broad contours of the Muslim experience in Europe, America and other areas of European settlement and shed light on the common questions minority Muslims face of assimilation, discrimination, evangelism, and politics.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Arabs; Identity

 

Muqteda Khan, American Muslims: bridging faith and freedom (2002)

Summary: A collection of essays on a range of topics related to American Muslims.

 

Anan Ameri, Arab Americans in metro Detroit: a pictorial history (2001)

Summary: “Through more than 180 images, this book portrays the challenges and triumphs of Arabs as they preserve their families, and build churches, mosques, restaurants, businesses, and institutions, thus contributing to Detroit’s efforts in regaining its position as a world class city.” – Arcadia Publishing

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan

 

Ihsan Bagby, The mosque in America: a national portrait (2001)

Summary: “This report presents findings from the Mosque Study Project 2000, the largest, most comprehensive survey of mosques ever to be conducted in the United States. The purpose of the Study is twofold: to provide a comprehensive, detailed portrait of mosques, which can be subsequently used by mosque leaders and Muslim scholars to envision ways to strengthen mosques. Secondly the Study provides a public profile of mosques that will hopefully further the understanding of the Muslim presence in America.” – from document introduction

Keywords: Mosques

 

Paul Findley, Silent no more: confronting America’s false images of Islam (2001)

Summary: “Paul Findley, a 22-year veteran of Congress, chronicles his long, far-flung trail of discovery through the World Of Islam: the false stereotypes that linger in the minds of the American people, the corrective actions that the leaders of America’s seven million Muslims are undertaking, and the community’s remarkable progress in mainstream politics.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Muslims on the Americanization path? (2000)

Summary: “Like all religious minorities in America, Muslims must confront a host of difficult questions concerning faith and national identity…While the Muslims of America are indeed on the path to Americanization, what that means and what that will yield remains uncertain.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Identity

 

Michael W. Suleiman, Arabs in America: building a new future (1999)

Summary: “The contributors discuss an assortment of different communities…in order to illustrate the range of Arab emigre experience. More broadly, they examine Arabs in the legal system, youth and family, health and welfare, as well as Arab-American identity, political activism, and attempts by Arab immigrants to achieve respect and recognition in their new homes. They address both the present situation for Arab-Americans and prospects for their future.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Gisela Webb, Windows of faith: Muslim women scholar-activists of North America (1999)

Summary: “These essays by Islamic women scholars in the USA give voice to and are evidence of the growing network of Muslim women involved with the issues of women’s human rights through scholarship activism.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Gender; Human Rights

 

Shamita Das Dasgupta, A patchwork shawl: chronicles of South Asian women in America (1998)

Summary: “Sheds light on the lives of a segment of the U.S. immigrant population that has long been relegated to the margins. It focuses on women’s lives that span different worlds: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and the United States. This collection of essays by and about South Asian women in America challenges stereotypes by allowing women to speak in their own words. Together they provide discerning insights into the reconstruction of immigrant patriarchy in a new world, and the development of women’s resistance to that reconstruction.” – Rutgers University Press

Keywords: Gender; South Asians

 

Khalid M. Alkhazraji, Immigrants and cultural adaptation in the American workplace: a study of Muslim employees (1997)

Summary: “This book presents a model of employee acculturation, investigating how Muslim employees adapt to U.S. national and organizational cultures. …Responses from 339 Muslims revealed that most were inclined to retain their original culture rather than adopting U.S. national culture. In contrast, most accepted U.S. organizational cultures.” – Google Books

Keywords: New Immigrants

 

Evelyn Shakir, Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American women in the United States (1997)

Summary: “While attempting to correct stereotypes that picture Arab women as passive, mindless, and downtrodden, Shakir gives voice to women caught in a tug of war, usually waged within the family, between traditional values and the social and sexual liberties permitted women in the West. Complicating that battle has been the American suspicion of Arab peoples, which has sometimes pushed women―as guardians of a culture under attack―to resist the blandishments of American society.” – ABC-CLIO/Praeger

Keywords: Arabs; Gender

 

Carol L. Anway, Daughters of another path: experiences of American women choosing Islam (1995)

Summary: “Includes portions of stories from fifty-three American born women who have chosen to become Muslim. Why and how they came to Islam; what their lives are like as a result of that choice; How non-Muslims can relate to Muslims that are relatives, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.” – Midwest Book Review

Keywords: Converts; Gender

 

Steven Barboza, American jihad: Islam after Malcolm X (1995)

Summary: “Introduces 50 members of the growing American Muslim population. With gentle proselytizing, the narratives and interviews relate conversion memories, immigrant tales, and other anecdotes about the U.S. Islamic experiences… Barboza conveys the impact of Malcolm X on Islam’s rapid growth and the American Muslims’ struggle for acceptance while trying to cultivate our understanding of the religion through conversations with diverse practitioners.” – Library Journal

Keywords: African-Americans

 

C. Eric Lincoln, The black Muslims in America (3rd ed. 1994)

Summary: “This classic sociological study gives a concise, accessible introduction to Islam for Americans whose knowledge of religion is limited primarily to Judeo-Christianity. The book succinctly details the formation and development of the Black Muslim movement through its wide-ranging expressions in America today — a movement born as an organized form of religious and social protest against a society sharply divided by race. This edition includes a new foreword by Aminah B. McCloud, a new preface, and an extensive postscript by Lincoln in which he outlines the course of the Nation of Islam since the death of its formative leader, Elijah Muhammad … A section highlighting the public career of Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad’s famous spokesperson turned cultural icon, is also included. ” – Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Muslims of America (1993)

Summary: “Focusing on the manner in which American Muslims adapt their institutions as they become increasingly an indigenous part of America, the essays discuss American Muslim self-images, perceptions of Muslims by non-Muslim Americans, leading American Muslim intellectuals, political activity of Muslims in America, Muslims in American prisons, Islamic education, the status of Muslim women in America, and the impact of American foreign policy on Muslims in the United States.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Gender; Identity; Prisons

 

Hakim Muhammed Rashid, In search of the path: socialization, education and the African-American Muslim (1989)

Keywords: African-Americans; Education

 

Viviane Douche-Boulos, Cedars by the Mississippi: Lebanese-Americans in the Twin Cities (1978)

Summary: A history of Lebanese immigrants in Minnesota. A sociological study of immigrants from Lebanon who relocated to the Mid-West of the United States.

Keywords: Arabs; Lebanon; Minnesota

 

Elaine Hagopian, Arab Americans: a study in assimilation (1969)

Summary: A collection of papers including “The New Arab-American Community,” “The Woman’s Role in the Socialization of Syrian Americans in Chicago,” and “Nationalism and Traditional Preservations.”

Keywords: Arabs

HEALTH

Peter Gottschalk, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Sentiment: Picturing the Enemy (2019).

Summary: This book explores anti-Muslim racism through political cartoons and film––media with immediate and important impact. After providing a background on Islamic traditions and their history with America, it graphically shows how political cartoons and films reveal Americans’ casual demeaning and demonizing of Muslims and Islam––a phenomenon common among both liberals and conservatives. (Google Books) – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Psychology, public opinion, popular culture

 

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Fatima Husain, & Basia Spalek, Islam and social work: culturally sensitive practice in a diverse world (2017)

Summary: “The only book specifically addressing social work with Muslim communities, Islam and Social Work provides an essential toolkit for culturally sensitive social work practice.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Family

 

Manijeh Daneshpour, Family therapy with Muslims (2016)

Summary: Family Therapy with Muslims is the first guide for mental health professionals who work with Muslims in the family therapy setting. The book opens with a section defining the similarities across Muslim cultures, the effects of postcolonialism on Muslims, and typical Muslim family dynamics. The author then devotes a chapter to different models of family therapy and how they can specifically be applied to working with Muslim families. Case studies throughout the book involve families of many different backgrounds living in the West―including both immigrant and second generation families―that will give professionals concrete tools to work with clients of their own.” – Routledge

Keywords: Family; Mental Health

 

Mona M. Amer, Handbook of Arab American psychology (2015)

Summary: “Contains a comprehensive review of the cutting-edge research related to Arab Americans and offers a critical analysis regarding the methodologies and applications of the scholarly literature. It is a landmark text for both multicultural psychology as well as for Arab American scholarship.” – Routledge

Keywords: Arab Americans; Multiculturalism

 

Sylvia Nassar-McMillan, Biopsychosocial perspectives on Arab Americans: culture, development, and health (2015)

Summary: “Introduces an interdisciplinary lens by bringing together vital research on culture, psychosocial development, and key aspects of health and disease to address a wide range of salient concerns. Its scholarship mirrors the diversity of the Arab American population, exploring ethnic concepts in socio-historical and political contexts before reviewing findings on major health issues, including diabetes, cancer, substance abuse, mental illness, and maternal/child health.” – Springer

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Sameera Ahmed and Mona M. Amer, Counseling Muslims: Handbook of mental health issues and interventions (2011)

Summary: “Reflects interventions ranging from the individual to community levels, and includes chapters that discuss persons born in the West, converts to Islam, and those from smaller ethnic minorities. It is the only guide practitioners need for information on effective service delivery for Muslims, who already bypass significant cultural stigma and shame to access mental health services.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Mental Health

 

Sylvia Nassar-McMillan, Counseling & diversity: Arab Americans (2010)

Summary: “This monograph represents a comprehensive primer on counseling issues among Arab American clients” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Arab Americans

 

Maha B. Alkhateeb and Salma Elkadi Abugideiri, Change from within: Diverse perspectives on domestic violence in Muslim communities (2007)

Summary: “This book is one of the first edited volumes to focus on domestic violence in Muslim families. Bringing the experiences of diverse domestic violence advocates to the table, voices in this text include religious leaders, service providers, and researchers from multiple disciplines. Four survivors also share their stories, illustrating some of the challenges they faced, as well as their paths to healing. This volume illuminates unique domestic violence issues that Muslims face, and emphasizes Islam s intolerance to abuse.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Family; Mental Health

 

Ahmed Nezar Kobeisy, Counseling American Muslims: understanding the faith and helping the people (2004)

Summary: “Author Kobeisy explains the range of true Muslim faith, shows us how unfair discrimination threatens and scars the mental health of American Muslims, and also demonstrates what counselors, teachers, social workers, and other helping professionals can do to understand the faith as well as help these people recover to live strong in the face of prejudice.” – Praeger

Keywords: Civil Rights; Mental Health

 

Earle H. Waugh, The Islamic tradition: religious beliefs and healthcare decisions (1999)

Summary: Summarizes Islamic beliefs affecting health care in the areas of doctor-patient relations, sexuality and procreation, reproductive health, genetics, transplants, mental health, and end-of-life care.

Keywords: Health

HISTORY

Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (2022).

Summary: Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them. – New York University Press.

Keywords: History, Islamic studies, American studies

 

Caleb Iyer Elfenbein, Fear in Our Hearts: What Islamophobia Tells Us about America (2021). Summary: Examines Islamophobia in the United States, positing that rather than simply being an outcome of the 9/11 attacks, anti-Muslim activity grows out of a fear of difference that has always characterized US public life. Elfenbein examines the effects of this fear on American Muslims, as well as describing how it works to shape and distort American society (Amazon.com). – New York University Press.

Keywords: History, Politics, Social Science, Religious Studies

 

Jeffrey Einboden, Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, Their Arabic Letters, and an American President (2020).

Summary: Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives reveals the untold story of two escaped West Africans in the American heartland whose Arabic writings reached a sitting U.S. President, prompting him to intervene on their behalf (Google books) – Oxford University Press. 

Keywords: African Americans, slavery, history 

 

Munawar Ali Karim, Liberty’s Jihad: African Muslim Slaves and the Meaning of America (2019).

Summary: Starting in pre-Islamic Arabia and deepest Africa, following the lives, adventures, and writings of three Muslim slaves through antebellum America and the world of trans-Atlantic slavery, Liberty’s Jihad takes us on a fascinating journey spanning centuries, continents and characters (Google Books) – Diptote Books.

Keywords: African Americans, slavery, history 

 

Karem Bayraktaroglu, The Muslim World in Post/9/11 American Cinema: A Critical Study, 2001- 2011 (2018)

Summary: Focusing on the decade following 9/11, this critical analysis examines the various portrayals of Muslims in American cinema (Google Books). – McFarland & Company, Inc.

Keywords: History, popular culture, stereotypes

 

Sylvia Chan-Malik, Being Muslim: A cultural history of women of color in American Islam (2018)

Summary: “In negotiating the histories of anti-Blackness, U.S. imperialism, and women’s rights of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Being Muslim explores how U.S. Muslim women’s identities are expressions of Islam as both Black protest religion and universal faith tradition.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Gender; History; Intersectionality; Feminism

 

Abdur Raheem Kidwai, Images of the Prophet Muhammad in English literature (2018)

Summary: “Images of the Prophet Muhammad in English Literature seeks to promote a better understanding between the Muslim world and the West against the backdrop of the Danish cartoons and the deplorable tragedy of 9/11, which has evoked a general interest in things Islamic. This book recounts and analyzes the image of Prophet Muhammad, as reflected in English literary texts from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Prophet Muhammad; Literature

 

Jerusha Tanner Lamptey, Divine words, female voices (2018)

Summary: “This book is distinctive in its responsiveness to calls for new approaches in Islamic feminist theology, its use of the method of comparative theology, its focus on Muslim and Christian feminist theology in comparative analysis, and its constructive articulation of Muslima theological perspectives.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Feminism; Theology

 

Summary: “This book aims to bring Muslim theology into the present day. Rather than a purely academic pursuit, Modern Muslim Theology argues that theology is a creative process and discusses how the Islamic tradition can help contemporary practitioners negotiate their relationships with God, with one another, and with the rest of creation.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Islamic Studies; Religion; Theology; History; Comparative

 

Jerusha Tanner Lamptey, Never wholly Other: A Muslima theology of religious pluralism (2016)

Summary: “How does the Qurʾān depict the religious Other? Throughout Islamic history, this question has provoked extensive and intricate debate about the identity, nature, and status of the religious Other and the religious self… This book critically engages this emergent contemporary discourse, highlighting a pervasive inability to account for both religious commonalities and religious differences without resorting to models that depict religions as isolated entities or models that arrange religions in a static, evaluative hierarchy.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Religious Pluralism; Feminist Theology; Semantic Analysis

 

Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslim Americans in the military: centuries of service (2016)

Summary: “Illuminates the long history of Muslim service members who have defended their country and struggled to practice their faith. Profiling soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors since the dawn of our country, Curtis showcases the real stories of Muslim Americans, from Omer Otmen, who fought fiercely against German forces during World War I, to Captain Humayun Khan, who gave his life in Iraq in 2004.” – Indiana University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; History

 

Amir Hussein, Muslims and the making of America (2016)

Summary: “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.” – Baylor University Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; History

 

Nuri Madina, Yes, I am your Brother: Understanding the indigenous African American Muslim (2016)

Summary: “Muslims and African Americans are the two most misunderstood groups in America today, yet both groups have been a part of American life from its beginning… It is this people, the African American Muslim, that represents those ideals and who presents a model for humanity going forward.” – Barnes and Noble

Keywords: Intersectional identity; History

 

Maria del Mar Logroño Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, and John Tofik Karam, Crescent over another horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA (2015)

Summary: “In the first book to comprehensively examine the Islamic experience in Latina/o societies—from Columbian voyages to the post-9/11 world—more than a dozen luminaries from nations throughout the Western Hemisphere explore how Islam indelibly influenced the making of the Americas.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: History; Latin America

 

Debra Majeed, Polygyny: What it means when African American Muslim women share their husbands (2015)

Summary: Polygyny explores the practice of multiple-wife marriage among African American Muslims who follow the leadership of Imam W. D. Mohammed… Majeed examines the choices available to African American Muslim women who are considering polygyny or who are living it. She calls attention to the ways in which interpretations of Islam’s primary sources are authorized or legitimated to regulate the rights of Muslim women.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Women in Islam; Polygyny; Marriage; Family

 

Karine V. Walther, Sacred interests: the United States and the Islamic world, 1821-1921 (2015)

Summary: “Excavates the deep history of American Islamophobia, showing how negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims shaped U.S. foreign relations from the Early Republic to the end of World War I. …a vital exploration of the crucial role the United States played in the Islamic world during the long nineteenth century–an interaction that shaped a historical legacy that remains with us today.” – University of North Carolina Press

Keywords: Orientalism; Transnational

 

Hani J. Bawardi, The making of Arab Americans: from Syrian nationalism to U.S. citizenship (2014)

Summary: “Hani Bawardi examines the numerous Arab American political advocacy organizations that thrived before World War I, showing how they influenced Syrian and Arab nationalism. He further offers an in-depth analysis exploring how World War II helped introduce a new Arab American identity as priorities shifted and the quest for assimilation intensified.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Arabs; Transnational

 

Denise Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson’s Quran: Islam and the founders (2013)

Summary: “Recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics.” – Penguin Random House

Keywords: Multiculturalism

 

Jacob Rama Berman, American Arabesque: Arabs and Islam in the nineteenth century imaginary (2012)

Summary: “Examines representations of Arabs, Islam and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we  understand them today.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Orientalism

 

Mahmoud Andrade Ibrahim al Amreeki, The Dar ul Islam Movement: An American odyssey revisited (2010)

Summary: “Dar, as it was known by its membership, began and organized itself with the object of establishing the religion of Islam in America. The ‘establishment’ of Islam was understood by its membership, as a semi-autonomous way of living in America with the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Shariah) as legitimate tools for governing the Muslim American Community… Sh. Mahmoud Ibrahim gives some valuable insights into the inner workings of the headquarters of the ‘movement’, Yasin Mosque, and the Imam’s commitment to the Sunnah or practices of Muhammad (pboh) in an urban environment.” –Amazon.com

Keywords: Darul Islam Movement; African American Muslims

 

Kamal Hassan Ali, Dar-ul-Islam: Principle, praxis, movement (2010)

Summary: “This seminal work by Dr. Kamal Hassan Ali is rooted in his personal involvement with the largest indigenous effort to promote the religious and social remedies of Islam in America.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Dar-ul-Islam; Sunni Muslim

 

Nathaniel Deutsch, Inventing America’s “worst” family: eugenics, Islam, and the fall and rise of the Tribe of Ishmael (2009)

Summary: “In what becomes a profoundly unsettling counter-history of the United States, Nathaniel Deutsch traces how the Ishmaels, whose patriarch fought in the Revolutionary War, were discovered in the slums of Indianapolis in the 1870s and became a symbol for all that was wrong with the urban poor. The Ishmaels, actually white Christians, were later celebrated in the 1970s as the founders of the country’s first African American Muslim community.” – University of California Press

Keywords: African-Americans; Nation of Islam

 

Sylviane A. Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The slave ship Clotilda and the story of the last Africans brought to America (2007)

Summary: This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women. After emancipation, the group reunited from various plantations, bought land, and founded their own settlement, known as African Town.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Slavery; Slave Trade

 

Timothy Marr, The cultural roots of American Islamicism (2006)

Summary: “Analyzes the historical roots of how the Muslim world figured in American prophecy, politics, reform, fiction, art and dress. Marr argues that perceptions of the Muslim world, long viewed not only as both an anti-Christian and despotic threat but also as an exotic other, held a larger place in domestic American concerns than previously thought.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Orientalism; Transnational

 

Michael A. Gomez, Black crescent: The experience and legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (2005)

Summary: “Beginning with Latin America in the fifteenth century, this book comprises a social history of the experiences of African Muslims and their descendants throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean….The second part of the book traces the emergence of Islam among U.S. African descendants in the twentieth century, featuring chapters on Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X to explain how orthodoxy arose from varied unorthodox roots.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: African American Muslims; Slavery

 

Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: a history (2005)

Summary: “Orfalea gives a detailed and highly readable account of the three major waves of Arab immigration to America, from 1878 to 1924, 1947 to 1966, and 1967 to the present” – Library Journal

Keywords: Arab Americans; New Immigrants

 

Ami Marvasti, Middle Eastern lives in America (2004)

Summary: “The place of Middle Easterners in the racial hierarchy of the United States remains relatively unexplored in scholarly research. In this book this authors present the everyday experiences of this population by specifically focusing on Arab and Iranian Americans. …Through concrete descriptions and analysis of how Arab and Iranian Americans are confronted with matters of ethnic and racial inequality, this work’s primary aim is to debunk entrenched stereotypes by bringing to the forefront the human complexity of the Middle Eastern experience.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Arabs; Iranian-Americans

 

Elizabeth Boosahda, Arab-American faces and voices: the origins of an immigrant community (2003)

Summary: “Draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the  Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants. Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester’s links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Arab Americans; Massachusetts; New Immigrants

 

Sajida Alvi, Homa Hoodfar, and Sheila McDonough, eds., The Muslim veil in North America: Issues and debates (2003)

Summary: “Beginning in 1996, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women invited scholars from various fields to carry out a systematic study of issues surrounding different practices relating to the hijab among Muslims. This provocative book also discusses the current issues surrounding opening up the interpretation of the Qur’an and the Hadith to a woman’s perspective.” – Amazon.com

Women’s Press

Keywords: Veils; North America Social aspects; Muslim Women; Customs

 

Robert J. Allison, The crescent obscured: the United States and the Muslim world, 1776-1815 (2000)

Summary: “Focusing on America’s encounter with the Barbary states of North Africa from 1776 to 1815, Robert Allison traces the perceptions and mis-perceptions of Islam in the American mind as the new nation constructed its ideology and system of government.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Orientalism

 

Alixa Naff, Becoming American: the early Arab immigrant experience (1993)

Summary: “Naff focuses on the pre-World War I pioneering generation of Arabic-speaking immigrants, the generation that set the patterns for settlement and assimilation.” – Southern Illinois University Press

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Fuad Shaban, Islam and Arabs in early American thought: roots of Orientalism in America (1990)

Summary: Examines American perceptions of Islam and the Islamic world during the Barbary Wars, as demonstrated in contemporary scholarly writings and popular discourse.

Keywords: Arabs; Orientalism

 

Gregory Orfalea, Before the flames: a quest for the history of Arab Americans (1988)

Summary: “Select Arab American individuals and personalities receive special attention in short vignettes. Yet the book is substantively organized around the analysis of three successive groups of Arab immigration to the United States, all within the last one hundred years.” – Oral History Review

Keywords: Arabs

 

Eric J. Hooglund, Crossing the waters: Arab-speaking immigrants to the United States before 1940 (1987)

Summary: “More than 125,000 Arabs immigrated to the United States between 1890 and 1940. They came largely from villages in what is now Lebanon and Syria. Most of them were adherents of traditional Arab Christian denominations such as Maronite and Melkite rites Catholicism and the Greek Orthodox Church, but there were also small numbers of Arab Muslims. They established ethnic communities in industrial cities throughout the country, and like other immigrants, contributed to the evolution of American culture and society.” – arabamericanhistory.org

Keywords: Arabs; New Immigrants

 

Abdo A. Elkholy, The Arab Moslems in the United States: religion and assimilation (1966)

Summary: “This study was written to explore the variables associated with the differences in the degree of assimilation and religiosity between two Arab-Muslim communities in Toledo, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan, both of whom share identical religio-ethnic backgrounds. In the analysis of the data the author attempts to point out the fallacy of the previously assumed negative correlation between the two factors of religiosity and assimilation.” – Yale University Press

Keywords: Arabs; Michigan; Ohio

LAW

Sahar Aziz. The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom (2021).

Summary: Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. – University of California Press.

Keywords: Law; Islamophobia; Critical Race Theory; American Studies

Asma T. Uddin, When Islam is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom (2019)

Summary: Through weaving personal narrative, legal training, and historical grounding into her book, Asma breaks down prevailing stereotypes about Muslims and Islam, details the various mechanisms and consequences of religious bigotry and animus, and underscores the importance of religious liberty for all communities in a highly accessible and graceful language. – Pegasus Books

Keywords: Law, history, religion

 

Gary R. Bunt, Hashtag Islam (2018)

Summary: “Bunt explores the diverse and surprising ways digital technology is shaping how Muslims across vast territories relate to religious authorities in fulfilling spiritual, mystical, and legalistic agendas.” – University of North Carolina Press, Pentagon Press

 

Keywords: media, technology, cyberspace 

Spearit, American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam. (2017) 

Summary: “This book is a critical exploration of prisons in contemporary America. Paying special attention to race and Islam, the work draws on a range of data and sources, including interviews and written correspondence with current and ex-prisoners, documentary research, and congressional hearings on topics that include criminal justice and religion, culture, conversion, radicalization, and reform.” – First Edition Design

 

Keywords: Law, religion studies, Islam, prisons, race, criminal justice

 

Salim Farrar & Ghena Krayem, Accommodating Muslims under common law: a comparative analysis (2016)

Summary: “The book explores the relationship between Muslims, the Common Law and Shariah post-9/11. The book looks at the accommodation of Shariah Law within Western Common Law legal traditions and the role of the judiciary, in particular, in drawing boundaries for secular democratic states with Muslim populations who want resolutions to conflicts that also comply with the dictates of their faith… Acknowledging the inherent pragmatism, flexibility and values of the Common Law, the authors argue that the controversial issue of accommodation of Shariah is not necessarily one that requires the establishment of a separate and parallel legal system.” – Routledge

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Amy Benson, Federal civil rights engagement with America’s Arab and Muslim communities (2015)

Summary: “This book examines the methods, goals and effectiveness of the federal government’s engagement with Arab and Muslim-American individuals and communities. Specifically, the book focuses on actions taken by the federal government to address, prevent and eradicate violations of civil rights laws against the Arab and Muslim-American communities, as well as efforts taken to ameliorate, eliminate or reduce religious, national-origin, and ethnic bias.” – Nova Publishers

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Malachi D. Crawford, Black Muslims and the law: civil liberties from Elijah Muhammad to Muhammed Ali (2015)

Summary: “Reveals the Nation of Islam’s strategic efforts to engage governmental officials from a position of power, and suggests the federal executive, congressmen, judges, lawyers, law enforcement officials, prison administrators, state governments, and African American civic leaders held a common understanding of what it meant to be and not to be African American and religious in the period between World War II and the Vietnam War.” – Lexington Books

Keywords: African-Americans; Civil Rights; Nation of Islam

 

Khurram Dara, Contracting fear: Islamic law in the Middle East and Middle America (2015)

Summary: “Explains not only the history and origins of Islamic law but also the interesting role it has played in the politics of the Middle East and Middle America. Challenging the conventional wisdom that Islamic law is rigid and permanent, Dara argues that the political and cultural realities of its formation suggest otherwise and should change how Islamic law is thought of and discussed in both the East and the West.” – Cascade Publishers

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Azizah al-Hibri, Islamic jurisprudence: an American Muslim perspective (2014)

Summary: “Provides both the Muslim and non-Muslim reader with a basic understanding of the legal foundations of Islam. It introduces the sources of Islamic law and their significance in the hierarchy of Islamic jurisprudence while presenting Dr. al-Hibri’s articulation of the Islamic worldview, developed in light of modern day concerns, such as those relating to gender, race and class.” – American Bar Association

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Maurits Berger, Applying Sharia in the West: facts, fears and the future of Islamic rules on family relations in the West (2013)

Summary: “Examines in depth how Muslims in the West shape their normative behavior on the basis of Shari’a and how Western societies and legal systems react thereto.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Marinos Diamantides, Islam, law and identity  (2012)

Summary: “Addresses broader and over-arching concerns about relationships between religion, human rights, law and modernity. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches, the collection presents law as central to the complex ways in which different Muslim communities and institutions create and re-create their identities around inherently ambiguous symbols of faith.” – Routledge

Keywords: Human Rights; Identity

 

Julie MacFarlane, Islamic divorce in North America: a Shari’a path in a secular society (2012)

Summary: “The most common way North American Muslims relate to shari’a is in their observance of Muslim marriage and divorce rituals; recourse to traditional Islamic marriage and, to a lesser extent, divorce is widespread. Julie Macfarlane has conducted hundreds of interviews with Muslim couples, as well as with religious and community leaders and family conflict professionals. Her book describes how Muslim marriage and divorce processes are used in North America, and what they mean to those who embrace them as a part of their religious and cultural identity.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Family; Islamic Law

 

Mark E. Hanshaw, Muslim and American?: straddling Islamic law and U.S. justice (2010)

Summary: “Explores the often competing demands that confront American Muslims from Islamic religious law and secular law. The conflict extends into many aspects of daily life, ranging from issues concerning divorce and child custody to the interpretation of contracts. …At the heart of Hanshaw’s legal analysis lies the very personal question of whether weaknesses in U.S. judicial processes serve to inhibit the free and full exercise of the Islamic faith.” – LFB Scholarly Publishing

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Kathleen M. Moore, The unfamiliar abode: Islamic law in the United States and Britain (2010)

Summary: “Explores the development of new forms of Islamic law and legal reasoning in the US and Great Britain, as well the Muslims encountering Anglo-American common law and its unfamiliar commitments to pluralism and participation, and to gender, family, and identity. The underlying context is the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the two attacks that arguably recast the way the West views Muslims and Islam.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Tony Gaskew, Policing Muslim American communities: A compendium of post 9/11 interviews (2009)

Summary: “Examines the experiences and social conflicts facing Muslim Americans in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. It provides insight on how the highly politicized and tense atmosphere following the events of 9/11 impacted the relationship between law enforcement agencies and Muslim American communities.” – Edwin Mellen Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Robert F. Cochran, Faith and law: how religious traditions from Calvinism to Islam view American law (2008)

Summary: “Legal scholars from sixteen different religious traditions contend that religious discourse has an important function in the making, practice, and adjudication of American law, not least because our laws rest upon a framework of religious values. The book includes faiths that have traditionally had an impact on American law, as well as new immigrant faiths that are likely to have a growing influence.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Islamic Law; New Immigrants

 

Bill Maurer, Pious property: Islamic mortgages in the United States (2006)

Summary: “the Qur’an forbids the payment of interest, which places conventional home financing out of reach for observant Muslims. To meet the growing Muslim demand for home purchases, a market for home financing that would be halal, or permissible under Islamic law, has emerged. In Pious Property, anthropologist William Maurer profiles the emergence of this new religiously based financial service and explores the ways it reflects the influence of Muslim practices on American economic life and vice versa.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

California Senate Office of Research, The Patriot Act, other post-9/11 enforcement powers and the impact on California’s Muslim communities (2004)

Summary: “the Senate Office of Research has examined the USA PATRIOT Act and associated federal powers that the government acquired to protect the country against domestic terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The office has looked at these issues from the perspective of members of Muslim communities in California. A broad cross-section of those communities, we discover, find the force of these new powers to be aimed against Muslims innocent of any connection to terrorist acts or known terrorist intentions.” – from the document’s executive summary

Keywords: California; Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Kathleen M. Moore, al-Mughtaribun: American law and the transformation of Muslim life in the United States (1995)

Summary: “Explores the influence of American law on Muslim life in the United States. It examines pluralism and religious toleration in America, viewed from the vantage point offered by the experiences of Muslims in the United States, a significant and growing part of an increasingly pluralistic society.” – SUNY Press

Keywords: Islamic Law

 

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Islamic values in the United States: a comparative study (1987)

Summary: “This ethnography of immigrant Muslims considers five Northeastern communities in detail. Including numerous interviews with members of these communities, this investigation provides a highly personal look at what it means to be a believing, practicing Muslim in America at a time when Islam is under the critical scrutiny of international news.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Identity; New Immigrants

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Maha Hilal, Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience since 9/11 (2021).

Summary: This book provides a historical account of the United States rhetoric and narrative of democracy as a virtue that has been used throughout its existence and legitimized after the tragic events of the terrorists’ attacks on September 11, 2001. These narratives have had a wider impact on the Muslim community both in the US and globally. Dr. Hilal has inverted the impacts of the War on Terror to vividly detail the Islamophobia and brutality that became the Terror of War on Islam throughout the world and forever labeled Muslims as outsiders in the US. This book is useful for those interested in understanding the legal and historical antecedents of the War on Terror narrative; it should be a required reading for us all (RH).- Broadleaf Books

Keywords: Political science, social science, ethnic studies 

 

Nazita Lajevardi, Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia (2020)

Summary: Discrimination against Muslim Americans has soared over the last two decades with hostility growing especially acute since 2016 –in no small part due to targeted attacks by policymakers and media. Outsiders at Home offers the first systematic, empirically driven examination of status of Muslim Americans in US democracy, evaluating the topic from a variety of perspectives (Amazon).-Cambridge University Press.

Keywords: Religion, spirituality, political science.

 

Brian Robert Calfano and Nazita Lajevardi, Understanding Muslim Political Life in America: Contested Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century (2019).

Summary: “In this timely volume, leading scholars cover a variety of topics assessing the Muslim American experience in the post-9/11 and pre-Trump era, including law enforcement; identity labels used in Muslim surveys; the role of gender relations; recognition; and how discrimination, tolerance, and politics impact American Muslims.” – Temple University Press.

Keywords: Political aspects, social conditions, ethnic identity 

 

Edward E. Curtis, IV, Muslim American Politics and the Future of US Democracy (2019).

Summary: This volume argues that the future of American democracy depends on whether Muslim Americans are able to exercise their political rights as citizens and whether they can find acceptance as social equals (Google Books). – New York University Press.

Keywords: Political activity, political culture

 

Khalil, Mohammad Hassan. Muslims and US Politics Today: A Defining Moment (2019)

Summary: “Muslims of the United States now find themselves at a historic crossroads. In Muslims and US Politics Today: A Defining Moment, various leading scholars examine new ways in which Muslims are (a) being represented in contemporary US politics; (b) themselves being affected and shaped by contemporary US politics; and (c) engaging politics on individual and community levels. Contributors to this timely volume include Evelyn Alsultany, Donna Auston, Mucahit Bilici, Sylvia Chan-Malik, Edward E. Curtis IV, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Juliane Hammer, Salah D. Hassan, Sally Howell, Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher, Alisa Perkins, and Junaid Rana.” – Harvard University Press and ILEX,

Keywords: US politics, Muslim representation, social science, Islamic studies

 

Todd H. Green, Presumed guilty: Why we shouldn’t ask Muslims to condemn terrorism (2018)

Summary: “Renowned expert on Islamophobia Todd Green shows us how this line of questioning is riddled with false assumptions that say much more about ‘us’ than ‘them.’ This book is an invitation for self-examination when it comes to the questions we ask of Muslims and ourselves about violence. It will open the door to asking better questions of our Muslim neighbors, questions based not on the presumption of guilt but on the promise of friendship.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Islamophobia; Western

 

Michael Fischbach, Black power and Palestine: Transnational countries of color (2018)

Summary: “Americans first heard pro-Palestinian sentiments in public through the black freedom struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. Michael R. Fischbach uncovers this hidden history of the Arab–Israeli conflict’s role in African American activism and the ways that distant struggle shaped the domestic fight for racial equality.” – Stanford University Press

Keywords: Activism; Transnational; Middle East

 

Saher Selod, Forever suspect: Racialized surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror (2018)

Summary: “Forever Suspect underscores how this newly racialized religious identity changes the social location of Arabs and South Asians on the racial hierarchy further away from whiteness and compromises their status as American citizens.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: “War on Terror”; Surveillance; Governmental Policy

 

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia: Understanding the roots and rise of fear (2018)

Summary: “Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the United States.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Islamophobia; Public Policy

 

Emmanuel Karagiannis, The new political Islam: Human rights, democracy, and justice (2017)

Summary: “Emmanuel Karagiannis offers a sophisticated analysis of the different manifestations of contemporary Islamism. In a context of global economic and social changes, he finds local manifestations of Islamism are becoming both more prevalent and more diverse… The New Political Islam seeks to explain the processes and factors leading to distinctive fusions of ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ across the landscape of contemporary political Islam… He looks closely at the ways in which  Islamist activists, politicians, and militants have utilized the language of human rights, democracy, and justice to gain influence and popular support and to contend for power.” – Barnes & Noble

Keywords: Public Policy

 

Erik Love, Islamophobia and racism in America (2017)

Summary: “Erik Love draws on in-depth interviews with Middle Eastern American advocates. He shows that, rather than using a well-worn civil rights strategy to advance reforms to protect a community affected by racism, many advocates are choosing to bolster universal civil liberties in the United States more generally, believing that these universal protections are reliable and strong enough to deal with social prejudice. In reality, Love reveals, civil rights protections are surprisingly weak, and do not offer enough avenues for justice, change, and community reassurance in the wake of hate crimes, discrimination, and social exclusion.” – New York University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Juris Pupcenoks, Western Muslims and conflicts abroad: conflict spillover to diasporas (2015)

Summary: “Based on survey data, statistical datasets, more than sixty interviews with Muslim community leaders and activists, ethnographic research in London and Detroit, and open-source data, this book develops a theoretical explanation for how both differences in government policies and features of migrant-background communities interact to influence the nature of foreign-policy focused activism in migrant communities. Utilizing rigorous, mixed-methods case study analysis, the author comparatively analyses the reactions of the Pakistani community in London and the Arab Muslim community in Detroit to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during the decade following 9/11. ” – Routledge

Keywords: Terrorism; Transnational

 

Jeffrey L. Thomas, Scapegoating Islam: intolerance, security, and the American Muslim (2015)

Summary: “Exploring the experience of Muslims in America following 9/11, this book assesses how anti-Muslim bias within the U.S. government and the larger society undermines American security and democracy.” – Praeger

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Edan Ganie, How I became a terrorist: Islamophobia and the oppressive aftermath of 9/11 on the Muslim community (2014)

Summary: “September 11, 2001 was a day that shook the United States to its core. Often when Americans consider the many victims of the attacks, there is one group that few acknowledge as the on-going sufferers of the tragedy; that group is the Muslim community.” – Tate Publishing

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America: the anatomy of intolerance (2013)

Summary: “The contributors document the history of anti-Islamic sentiment in American culture, the scope of organized anti-Muslim propaganda, and the institutionalization of this kind of intolerance.” – Palgrave MacMillan

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Robert Booth Fowler, Religion and politics in America: faith, culture, and strategic choices (5th ed., 2013)

Summary: “Incorporating the best and most up-to-date scholarship, the authors assess the politics of Roman Catholics; evangelical, mainline, and African American Protestants; Jews; Muslims and other conventional and not-so-conventional American religious movements. The author team also examines important subjects concerning religion and its relationship to gender, race/ethnicity, and class.” – Westview Press

Keywords: Interfaith Relations

 

Stuart Croft, Securitizing Islam: identity and the search for security (2012)

Summary: “Examines the impact of 9/11 on the lives and perceptions of individuals, focusing on the ways in which identities in Britain have been affected in relation to Islam. ‘Securitization’ describes the processes by which a particular group or issue comes to be seen as a threat, and thus subject to the perceptions and actions which go with national security.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the politics of empire (2012)

Summary: “In response to the events of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a “war on terror” ushering in an era of anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia. However, 9/11 did not create Islamophobia, an ideology which has become the handmaiden of imperialism. This book examines the historic relationship between Islamophobia and the agenda of empire-building.” – Haymarket Books

Keywords: Civil Rights; Orientalism

 

Nathan Chapman Lean, The Islamophobia industry: how the right manufactures fear of Muslims (2012)

Summary: “In recent years, Muslim-led terrorist attacks have declined yet anti-Muslim prejudice has soared to new peaks. The fear that the Islamophobia Industry has manufactured is so fierce in its grip on some populations that it drives them to do the unthinkable. This powerful and provocative book explores the dark world of monster making, examining in detail an interconnected, and highly organized cottage industry of fear merchants.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Mumtaz Ahmad, Zahid Bukhari, and Sulayman Nyang, Observing the observer: The state of Islamic studies in American universities (2012)

Summary: “The collection of papers in this volume documents the study of Islam in American Universities… Although there is increasing recognition that the study of Islam and the role of Muslims is strategically essential in a climate of global integration, multiculturalism, and political turmoil, nevertheless, the state of Islamic Studies in America is far from satisfactory.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Academic; Economic Relations; Migration Convert; 9/11; Multiculturalism

 

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Moving the mountain: beyond Ground Zero to a new vision of Islam in America (2012)

Summary: “Muslims in America who reject extremist or fundamentalist expressions of Islam at home and abroad feel the urgent need for a voice that can represent them in the current debate about Islam, America, and the West. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf—the so-called Ground Zero Imam—has become that voice. This is his vision for a new, American Islam.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Transnational

 

Alia Malek, Patriot acts: narratives of post-9/11 injustice (2011)

Summary: “tells the stories of men and women who have been needlessly swept up in the War on Terror. In their own words, narrators recount personal experiences of the post-9/11 backlash that have deeply altered their lives and communities.” – McSweeney’s

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Lori A. Peek, Behind the backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11 (2011)

Summary: “Letting the voices of 140 ordinary Muslim American men and women describe their experiences…presents moving accounts of prejudice and exclusion. Muslims speak of being subjected to harassment before the attacks, and recount the discrimination they encountered afterwards. Peek also explains the struggles of young Muslim adults to solidify their community and define their identity during a time of national crisis.” – Temple University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Irum Shiekh, Detained without cause: Muslims’ stories of detention and deportation in America after 9/11 (2011)

Summary: “Presents the first-person narratives of six Muslim men detained on flimsy or invented charges and ultimately deported after September 11, 2001. Shiekh is methodical about her research methods and explicit about her communication with detainees, who were humiliated, lied to, and abused in prison.” – Publishers Weekly

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Stephen Sheehi, Islamophobia: the ideological campaign against Muslims (2010)

Summary: “Examines the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments in the West following the end of the Cold War through GW Bush’s War on Terror to the Age of Obama. Using ‘Operation Desert Storm’ as a watershed moment, Stephen Sheehi examines the increased mainstreaming of Muslim-baiting rhetoric and explicitly racist legislation, police surveillance, witch-trials and discriminatory policies towards Muslims in North America and abroad.” – Clarity Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Anny P. Bakalian, Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans respond (2009)

Summary: “This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of the post-9/11 events on Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans as well as their organized response. Through fieldwork and interviews with community leaders, Anny Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr show how ethnic organizations mobilized to demonstrate their commitment to the United States while defending their rights and distancing themselves from the terrorists.” – University of California Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Louise Cainkar, Homeland insecurity: the Arab American and Muslim American experience after 9/11 (2009)

Summary: “[Cainkar] 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.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Jocelyne Cesari, Muslims in the West after 9/11: religion, politics, and law (2009)

Summary: “Based on empirical studies of Muslims in the US and Western Europe, this edited volume posits the situation of Muslim minorities in a broader reflection on the status of liberalism in Western foreign policies. It also explores the changes in immigration policies, multiculturalism and secularism that have been shaped by the new international context of the ‘war on terror’.” – Routledge

Keywords: Civil Rights; Transnationalism

 

Detroit Arab American Study Team, Citizenship and crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11 (2009)

Summary: “A groundbreaking study of social life, religious practice, cultural values, and political views among Detroit Arabs after 9/11, Citizenship and Crisis argues that contemporary Arab American citizenship and identity have been shaped by the chronic tension between social inclusion and exclusion that has been central to this population’s experience in America.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Arabs; Identity; Michigan

 

Steven Salaita, The uncultured wars: Arabs, Muslims, and the poverty of liberal thought (2008)

Summary: “Through twelve stylish essays, Steven Salaita returns again and again to his core themes of anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia and the inadequacy of critical thought among the “chattering classes,” showing how racism continues to exist in the places where we would least expect it. …Salaita explores why Arabs are marginalized, and who seeks to benefit from this.” – University of Chicago Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Peter Gottschalk, Islamophobia: making Muslims the enemy (2007)

Summary: “This book shows graphically how political cartoons dramatically reveal Americans’ casual demonizing and demeaning of Muslims and Islam. And the villainizing is shown to be as common among liberals as conservatives. Islamophobia also discusses the misunderstanding of the Muslim world more generally, such as the assumption that Islam is primarily a Middle Eastern religion, whereas the majority of Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia, and the misperception that a significant portion of Muslims are militant fundamentalists, whereas only a small proportion are.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Civil Rights; Media

 

Melody Moezzi, War on error: real stories of American Muslims (2007)

Summary:War on Error brings together the stories of twelve young people, all vastly different but all American, and all Muslim.” – University of Arkansas Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Youth

 

Steven Salaita, Anti-Arab racism in the USA: where it comes from and what it means for politics (2006)

Summary: “Since 9/11 there has been a lot of criticism of America’s involvement in the middle east. Yet there has been little analysis of how America treats citizens of Arab or middle eastern origin within its own borders. Steven Salaita explores the reality of Anti-Arab racism in America. He blends personal narrative, theory and polemics to show how this deep-rooted racism affects everything from legislation to cultural life, shining a light on the consequences of Anti-Arab racism both at home and abroad. ” – Pluto Press

Keywords: Arabs; Civil Rights

 

Michael Welch, Scapegoats of September 11th: hate crimes and state crimes in the war on terror (2006)

Summary: “Drawing on topics such as ethnic profiling, the Abu Ghraib scandal, Guantanamo Bay, and the controversial Patriot Act, Welch looks at the significance of knowledge, language, and emotion in a post-9/11 world. In the face of popular and political cheerleading in the war on terror, this book presents a careful and sober assessment, reminding us that sound counterterrorism policies must rise above, rather than participate in, the propagation of bigotry and victimization.” – Rutgers University Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Katherine Bullock, Muslim women activists in North America: speaking for ourselves (2005)

Summary: “In the eyes of many Westerners, Muslim women are hidden behind a veil of negative stereotypes that portray them as either oppressed, subservient wives and daughters or, more recently, as potential terrorists. Yet many Muslim women defy these stereotypes by taking active roles in their families and communities and working to create a more just society. This book introduces eighteen Muslim women activists from the United States and Canada who have worked in fields from social services, to marital counseling, to political advocacy in order to further social justice within the Muslim community and in the greater North American society.” – University of Texas Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Gender

 

Tram Nguyen, We are all suspects now: untold stories from immigrant communities after 9/11 (2005)

Summary: “Tram Nguyen reveals the human cost of the domestic war on terror and examines the impact of post-9/11 policies on people targeted because of immigration status, nationality, and religion. Nguyen’s evocative narrative reporting-about the families, detainees, local leaders, community advocates, and others-is from those living and suffering on the front lines.” – Beacon Press

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam rising: Muslim extremism in the West (2005)

Summary: “one of the first systematic attempts to explain why Westerners join radical Islamic groups. Quintan Wiktorowicz details the mechanisms that attract potential recruits, the instruments of persuasion that convince them that radical groups represent “real Islam,” and the socialization process that prods them to engage in risky extremism.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Terrorism; Transnational

 

Zahid H. Bukhari, Muslims’ place in the American public square: hopes, fears, and aspirations (2004)

Summary: “Project MAPS (Muslims in the American Public Square) began in 1999 to provide much-needed information on this understudied and immensely diverse group of six million Americans. This first volume emerging from the project, Muslims’ Place in the American Public Square, shows where the American Muslim community fits into the American religious and civic landscape both before and after 9/11.” – Rowman & Littlefield

Keywords: Identity

 

Aladdin Elaasar, Silent victims: the plight of Arab and Muslim Americans in post 9/11 America (2004)

Summary: “The increasing public’s curiosity about the Arabs, Muslims and the Arab and Muslim Americans in the United States has been unprecedented. This book explains the phenomenon of stereotypes stigmatizing Arabs and Muslims, and how it has affected their lives, a phenomenon that demonized and dehumanized almost two billion people in this world.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights

 

Elaine Catherine Hagopian, Civil rights in peril: the targeting of Arabs and Muslims (2004)

Summary: “Muslims and Arab-Americans are increasingly under attack as a result of the US ‘war on terror’ – at home, as well as abroad. Since the tragic events of September 11, Arab and Muslim Americans have faced a major assault on their civil liberties. While targeting vulnerable groups and drawing on racist stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims, these measures threaten millions of people, including immigrants, activists, trade unionists, academics, writers, and anyone who the government wishes to define as a ‘threat’ to national security.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Civil Rights; Terrorism

 

Nadia Batool Ahmad, Unveiling the real terrorist mind (2002)

Summary:  An interdisciplinary anthology that provides an analytic perspective on the 9/11 cataclysm. This collection of essays, poems, and articles explores issues of terrorism, genocide, race, and war from the view of 66 academics and peace activists from six continents. Contributing authors include Nobel Laureate Betty Williams, NYU law professor Derrick Bell, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Georgetown professor John Esposito, author Howard Zinn, human rights activist Sara Flounders, former U.S. Congressman Paul Findley, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, U.S. Congressional candidate Bob Bowman, and others. 

Keywords: Terrorism

REFERENCE

Emily Cury, Claiming Belonging: Muslim American Advocacy in an Era of Islamophobia (2021)

Summary: This book offers an ever-timely insight into the place of Muslims in American political life and, in the process, sheds light on one of the fastest-growing and most internally dynamic – Cornel University Press.

Keywords: Political activity, Islamophobia, social conditions

 

Rachel Gullum, Muslims in a post-9/11 America: A Survey of Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for U.S. National Security Policy (2018)

Summary: This book examines how public fears about Muslims in the United States compare with the reality of American Muslims’ attitudes on a range of relevant issues. While most research on Muslim Americans focuses on Arab Muslims, a quarter of the Muslim American population, Rachel Gillum includes perspectives of Muslims from various ethnic and national communities—from African Americans to those of Pakistani, Iranian, or Eastern European descent. – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Islamophobia, social conditions

 

Mohammed Seddon & Raana Bokhari, The complete illustrated guide to Islam (2016)

Summary: “This book comprehensively explores the life and work of Muhammad, the history of Islam, Islamic beliefs and doctrine, and religious practices and worship…it offers a comprehensive introduction to and overview of a complex and often misunderstood religion.” – Google Books

Keywords: Culture; History

 

Edward E. Curtis (ed.), The Bloomsbury reader on Islam in the West (2015)

Summary: “Brings together some of the most important, up-to-date scholarly writings published on this subject. The Reader explores not only the presence of Muslim religious practitioners in Europe and the Americas but also the impact of Islamic ideas and Muslims on Western politics, societies, and cultures.” – Bloomsbury Publishing

Keywords: History; Multiculturalism

 

Jane I. Smith, The Oxford handbook of American Islam (2015)

Summary: “covers the growth of Islam in America from the earliest Muslims to set foot on American soil to the current wave of Islamophobia. Topics covered include the development of African American Islam; pre- and post-WWII immigrants; Sunni, Shi`ite, sectarian and Sufi movements in America; the role and status of women, marriage, and family; and the Americanization of Islamic culture. Throughout these chapters the contributors explore the meaning of religious identity in the context of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics, both within the American Islamic community and in relation to international Islam.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: History

 

Juliane Hammer, The Cambridge companion to American Islam (2013)

Summary: “Offers a scholarly overview of the state of research on American Muslims and American Islam. The book presents the reader with a comprehensive discussion of the debates, challenges, and opportunities that American Muslims have faced through centuries of American history.” – Cambridge University Press

Keywords: Bibliography

 

Edward E. Curtis, The Columbia sourcebook of Muslims in the United States (2010)

Summary: “Sampling from speeches, interviews, editorials, stories, song lyrics, articles, autobiographies, blogs, and other sources, Curtis creates a patchwork narrative of Muslims from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds, religious orientations, and political affiliations. He begins with a history of Muslims in the United States, featuring the voices of an enslaved African Muslim, a Syrian Muslim sodbuster, a South Asian mystic-musician, and Malcolm X. Then he explores contemporary issues concerning Islam and gender, the involvement of Muslims in American politics, and emerging forms of Islamic spirituality.” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: Culture; History

 

Edward E. Curtis, Encyclopedia of Muslim-American history (2010, 2 volumes)

Summary: “…provides a new and broader, more inclusive approach to American history. Including nearly 300 articles, this two-volume reference book is the first to focus on this critical subject, covering all the historical and contemporary issues, events, people, court cases, themes, and activism relating to Muslim Americans.” – Infobase/Facts on File

Keywords: History; Bibliography

 

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Arab American bibliography (2009)

Summary: A non-comprehensive bibliography of books on Arab-Americans and their experiences.

Keywords: Bibliography

 

Edward E. Curtis, Muslims in America: a short history (2009)

Summary: “Muslims are neither new nor foreign to the United States. They have been a vital presence in North America since the 16th century. Muslims in America unearths their history, documenting the lives of African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, European, black, white, Hispanic and other Americans who have been followers of Islam. …Showing how Muslim American men and women participated in each era of U.S. history, the book explores how they have both shaped and have been shaped by larger historical trends.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: History

 

Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (2nd ed. 2009)

Summary: “This richly textured, critically acclaimed portrait of American Muslims introduces the basic tenets of the Muslim faith, surveys the history of Islam in North America, and profiles the lifestyles, religious practices, and worldviews of Muslims in the United States. The volume focuses specifically on the difficulty of living faithfully and adhering to tradition while adapting to an American way of life and addresses the role of women in Muslim culture, the raising and education of children, appropriate dress and behavior, and incidences of prejudice and unfair treatment.” – Columbia University Press

Keywords: History

 

Jocelyne Cesari, Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States (2007)

Summary: “Today, Islam and American Muslim populations are growing in importance in this country, and demand for information about them is high, especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. This A-to-Z encyclopedia will help students and other readers get a fast grip on pertinent holidays, terms, beliefs, practices, notables, and sects of the Islamic faith and Muslim practitioners in the United States.” – ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press

Keywords: Reference

 

George W. Braswell Jr., Islam and America: answers to the 31 most-asked questions (2005)

Summary: “George Braswell is a recognized expert on the religion of Islam and on the Muslim beliefs and practices that Americans need to understand. This book will give readers the information they want and answer the questions they are asking. Beyond the media portrayals, Islam & America accurately reports the truth about this religion and its adherents.” – B&H Publishing

Keywords: Reference

 

Frederick Denny, Muslims in America (2004)

Summary: “From colonial sailors and adventurers to 19th-century peddlers and factory workers to post-World War II immigration, Muslims in America is a sweeping chronicle of Islamic religion and culture in the United States.” – Oxford University Press

Keywords: Culture; History

 

Karen Isaksen Leonard, Muslims in the United States: the state of research (2003)

Summary: “While many cursory press accounts dealing with Muslims in the United States have been published since 9/11, few people are aware of the wealth of scholarly research already available on the American Islamic population. In Muslims in the United States: The State of Research, Karen Isaksen Leonard mines this rich vein of research to provide a fascinating overview of the history and contemporary situation of American Muslim communities.” – Russell Sage Foundation

Keywords: Bibliography

 

James Beverly, Islamic faith in America (2002)

Summary: “Explores the impact of Muslims on American culture, social issues, and politics and offers a glimpse into the lives of the most important and influential Muslims in this country. Readers will be introduced to the daily lifestyle of Muslims in America, their connections to other Muslims around the world, the influence of Islamic nations on the shape of Muslim life in the United States, and Islam’s role in American history.” – Infobase/Facts on File

Keywords: Reference

 

Mohamed Nimor, The North American Muslim resource guide: Muslim community life in the United States and Canada (2002)

Summary: “In addition to providing an extensive directory of mainstream Muslim community organizations, The North American Muslim Resource Guide offers an overview of Muslim values and institutions, briefly traces the history of Islam in North America, and includes useful tables depicting the growth of the American Muslim population, as well as that of centers, organizations, and ethnic associations serving Islamic communities.” – Routledge

Keywords: Reference

 

Yvonne Hazbeck Haddad, The contemporary Islamic revival: a critical survey and bibliography (1991)

Summary: “This partially annotated bibliography lists available literature on the Islamic revival published in English between 1970 and 1988. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and her colleagues also provide background information and a special bibliography on women, Islamic banking, and Muslims in Europe and the United States.” – Amazon.com

Keywords: Bibliography

RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Jonathan A.C. Brown. Islam and Blackness (2022).

Summary: The text examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism, and history to comprehensively interrogate this claim and determine how and why it emerged. Locating its origins in conservative politics, modern Afrocentrism, and the old trope of Barbary enslavement, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition- Oneworld Academic Publishing.

Keywords: Religion, African American Studies

 

James L. Conyers and Christel N. Temple, Muhammad Ali in Africana Cultural Memory (2022).

Summary: This is a comprehensive study of Ali’s identity and superlative impact framed in terms of the discipline’s subfield of Africana cultural memory studies. This critical approach challenges us to itemize Ali’s influential legacy with precise conceptual value wherein his mythological structure is illuminated as an inheritance. – Anthem Press.

Keywords: History, Popular culture

 

Farha Bano Ternikar, Intersectionality in the Muslim South Asian-American Middle Class: Lifestyle Consumption beyond Halal and Hijab (2021).

Summary: This book uses everyday consumption as a lens to analyze how South Asian Muslim American women negotiate racial, religious, gendered, classed, and often political identities. Ternikar examines the use of food and clothing as well as social media accounts among this important immigrant population, offering new insight that goes beyond examining Muslim American women through the lens of hijab. – Lexington Books.

Keywords: Social Science, Gender Studies, Religion, Ethnic Studies

 

Pamela J. Prickett, Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels (2021).

Summary: An ethnographic study of an African American Muslim community in South Central Los Angeles, the book explores how they help each other combat poverty, job scarcity, violence, and racial injustice. – University of Chicago

Keywords: Religious studies, ethnography, anthropology, sociology, geography, feminist studies

 

Mahwash Shoaib ed. Muslim American Hyphenations: Cultural Production and Hybridity in the Twenty-first Century (2021)

Summary: The book contests the lack of nuance in the public debates about American Islam and reclaim a self-determined identity by twenty-first century Muslim American writers, artists, and performers. The editor presents critical perspectives on the diverse compositions of hyphenated Muslim American identities in literary, artistic, and performative texts. – Lexington Books.

Keywords: Popular culture, social conditions, identity formation

 

Nazia Kazi, Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics, (2021)

Summary: The text provides a powerful introduction to the topic of the anti-Muslim landscape in the U.S. In it, Kazi shows that Islamophobia is not a set of anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudices. Instead, this book shows how Islamophobia is part of a greater reality: systemic U.S. racism. In other words, Islamophobia is neither a blip nor a break with a racially harmonious American social order, but rather the outcome of destructive foreign policy practices and an enduring history of white supremacy. – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Islamophobia, social conditions

 

Anna Piela, Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US (2021).

Summary: Bringing niqab wearers’ voices to the fore, discussing their narratives on religious agency, identity, social interaction, community, and urban spaces, Anna Piela situates women’s accounts firmly within UK and US socio-political contexts as well as within media discourses on Islam (Amazon). – Bloomsbury Visual Arts; Illustrated edition.

Keywords: Women in Islam, women’s studies, fashion studies.

 

Michael Abraham, Engaging Muslim Students in Public Schools: What Educators Need to Understand (2020).

Summary: “taught in a prose that is specifically written for the public-school educator with the goal of not only offering new and practical insights, but also ideas and consideration for practice that would take culturally relevant pedagogy of Muslim students out of the nominal and superficial and into the authentic.” (Ama-,zon). – Abraham Education Publisher.

Keywords: Education, students, public school

 

Tahseen Shams, Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (2020).

Summary: Tahseen Shams posits a new concept for thinking about these places that are neither the immigrants’ homeland nor hostland—the “elsewhere.” Drawing on rich ethnographic data, interviews, and analysis of the social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, Shams uncovers how different dimensions of the immigrants’ ethnic and religious identities connect them to different elsewheres in places as far-ranging as the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. – Stanford University Press.

Keywords: Ethnic relations, social conditions, identity, politics

 

Debbie Almontaser, Leading While Muslim: The Experiences of American Muslim Principals After 9/11 (2019).

Summary: This book examines the lived experiences of American Muslim principals who serve in public schools post-9/11 to determine whether global events, political discourse, and the media coverage of Islam and Muslims have affected their leadership and spirituality. Such a study is intended to help readers to gain an understanding of the adversities that American Muslim principals have experienced post-9/11 and how to address these adversities, particularly through decisions about educational policy and district leadership. – Rowman & Littlefield.

Keywords: Race Relations, social conditions, school principals

 

Nicole Nguyen, Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror (2019).

Summary: This book is a powerful reassessment of the U.S. government’s “countering violent extremism” (CVE) program that has arisen in major cities across the United States since 2011. By undertaking this analysis, Nicole Nguyen offers a vital window into the inner workings of the U.S. security state and the devastating impact of the CVE program on local communities. – University of Minnesota Press

Keywords: Ethnography, geographer, education

 

Robert Rozehanal, Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (2019).

Summary: Rozehnal highlights how “cyber Sufis” create complex identities both on- and offline, all the while evading any easy categorizations of Sufism, Islam, and new age spirituality. Some of the noted digital transformations unfolding within the Inayati Order are in many ways, not novel, but rather reflective of historical legacies, such as in the case of South Asian Sufism of the Chishtis that influences the Inayati Order. Methodologically, the book is deeply sensitive of and also models how to conduct digital ethnography and highlights the significance of studying digital religions, especially from an Islamic studies perspective. – One World Academic

Keywords: digital religions, ritual studies, media studies, American Islam, and Sufism

 

Julianne Hammer, Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence (2019).

Summary: The book provides an excellent overview of the ways that Muslim Americans address domestic violence in their communities. Through rich, detailed ethnographic interviews with Muslim advocates, service providers, imams and other religious leaders, and organizations, Hammer explores the stories, struggles, and anxieties of Muslims as they face the intersections of a range of issues, including anti-Muslim hostility and patriarchy. Peaceful Families will be of interest to anyone interested in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Islam in America, the relationship between Islam and gender, and anyone generally interested in working against domestic violence. – Princeton University Press

Keywords: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Islam in America

 

Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid. Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal, (2020).

Summary: With essays from and about diverse voices on an array of topics from fashion to immigration history to fandom, this volume includes an exclusive interview with Ms. Marvel author and co-creator G. Willow Wilson by gender studies scholar Shabana Mir. – University of Mississippi Press

Keywords: Comics Studies, Popular Culture, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies

 

James L. Conyers and Abul Pitre (Eds.). Africana Islamic Studies. (2016).

Summary: This book highlights the diverse contributions that African Americans have made to the formation of Islam in the United States. It specifically focuses on the Nation of Islam and its patriarch Elijah Muhammad with regards to the African American Islamic experience. Contributors explore topics such as gender, education, politics, and sociology from the African American perspective on Islam. This volume offers a unique view of the longstanding Islamic discourse in the United States and its impact on the American cultural landscape. – Lexington Books

Keywords: Africana Studies, history, popular culture

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