Islam Is a Foreign Country
American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority
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Considers the question: what does it mean to be Muslim and American?
In Islam Is a Foreign Country, Zareena Grewal explores some of the most pressing debates about and among American Muslims: what does it mean to be Muslim and American? Who has the authority to speak for Islam and to lead the stunningly diverse population of American Muslims? Do their ties to the larger Muslim world undermine their efforts to make Islam an American religion?
Offering rich insights into these questions and more, Grewal follows the journeys of American Muslim youth who travel in global, underground Islamic networks. Devoutly religious and often politically disaffected, these young men and women are in search of a home for themselves and their tradition. Through their stories, Grewal captures the multiple directions of the global flows of people, practices, and ideas that connect U.S. mosques to the Muslim world. 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.
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4 released booksNation of Nations: Immigrant History as American History
Nation of Nations: Immigrant History as American History is a 4-book series with 4 released primary works first released in 2002 with contributions by Ji-Yeon Yuh, Lisa Marie Cacho, and Zareena Grewal.
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A fascinating book about Islam in America and its relationship to global Islam in light of controversies within the religion about who has authority to speak for Islam. This is very much an academic book, with 30 pages of notes, and technical language that was hard for me, an outsider to the field, to understand. It is also highly engaging, though, because the academic arguments are illustrated with narratives about several American Muslim “student travelers” who are studying at overseas Islamic universities and in more informal settings, in hopes of bringing back knowledge and authority to their American mosques. In most cases, the Americans feel they have been enriched by their study experiences but that they have not accomplished what they had hoped. Their voices and their stories were my doorway into this totally unfamiliar subject.
Alongside the academic argument about American Islam's relationship to global Islam, there is a nice history of the development of Islam in America, including the Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple of America. I learned more about Malcolm X than I had known before, and learned about some of the most notable American Muslim leaders and organizations. One of the themes of this book is that Islam had presented itself as an egalitarian refuge to black Americans struggling with the racism of American society, so that a racially aware Islam developed in the US as a specifically American strain. The specific needs of black American Muslim communities are apparently not well understood when people from those communities go overseas to traditionally Muslim countries for study. Also, there appears to be tension (or lack of understanding) between immigrant Muslim congregations and predominantly black American congregations.
This was a challenging but rewarding read. I scratched the surface of what there is to know about Islam and its history in the US, but what I learned is important stuff.
