Without Forgetting The Imam

Without Forgetting the Imam is 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. Anthropologist Linda Walbridge delves into the ways in which politics and religion have converged as the Lebanese Shi'i community has remade its identity and accommodated itself to a new environment. She captures a broad picture of religious life within the realm of community living and within the mosques which have proliferated in Dearborn. Walbridge explains how Shi'ites, affected in one way or another by Islamic revivalism, have brought different notions of how their religion should be expressed and carried out in America. These differences are reflected in mosque rituals, social functions, sermons, and educational activities. She also explores how contemporary Middle Eastern politics and the religious leadership in Iran and Iraq influence the functioning of the mosques.

In this astounding account, a leading sociologist demonstrates that religion in America has become so tamed and softened that it hardly serves any of its original functions.

Contributors Introduction 3 1 Islamophobia and Muslim Recognition in Britain 19 2 Islam in France: The Shaping of a Religious Minority 36 3 The Turks in Germany: From Sojourners to Citizens 52 4 Islam in Switzerland: Fragmented Accommodation in a Federal Country 72 5 Integration through Islam? Muslims in Norway 88 6 From "People's Home" to "Multiculturalism": Muslims in Sweden 101 7 Globalization in Reverse and the Challenge of Integration: Muslims in Denmark 121 8 Muslims in Italy 131 9 Islam in the Netherlands 144 10 Islam and Muslims in Europe: A Silent Revolution toward Rediscovery 158 11 Muslims in American Public Life 169 12 Representation of Islam in the Language of Law: Some Recent U.S. Cases 187 13 Interface between Community and State: U.S. Policy toward the Islamists 205 14 Multiple Identities in a Pluralistic World: Shi'ism in America 218 15 South Asian Leadership of American Muslims 233 16 Continental African Muslim Immigrants in the United States: A Historical and Sociological Perspective 250 17 Crescent Dawn in the Great White North: Muslim Participation in the Canadian Public Sphere 262 18 Mexican Muslims in the Twentieth Century: Challenging Stereotypes and Negotiating Space 278 Bibliography 293 Index 311.

Nabih Barri is a key figure in the Lebanese and Shi'ite politics for the last three decades. As the leader of the Shi'ite Amal movement since 1980 and as the Lebanese Speaker since 1992, Barri played a major role in all political events and processes in Lebanon between the early 1980's and today, including the current severe Lebanese crisis.

This first systematic study of a wide range of Persian and European archival and primary sources, analyzes how the Muharram rituals changed from being an orginally devotional practice to public events of political significance, setting the stage for the emergence of the early modern Iranian public sphere in the Safavid period.

This useful resource provides basic information about Islamic life in the United States. Coverage includes population statistics and analysis, as well as immigration information that tracks the settlement of Islamic people in the America. The guide contains contact information for mosques, community organizations, schools, women's groups, media, and student groups. Recent Islamic-American events over the past five years are also reviewed. To see the Introduction, the table of contents, a generous selection of sample pages, and more, visit the The North American Muslim Resource Guide website.

Across North America, Islam is portrayed as a religion of immigrants, converts, and cultural outsiders. Yet Muslims have been part of American society for much longer than most people realize. This book documents the history of Islam in Detroit, a city that is home to several of the nation's oldest, most diverse Muslim communities. In the early 1900s, there were thousands of Muslims in Detroit. Most came from Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and British India. In 1921, they built the nation's first mosque in Highland Park. By the 1930s, new Islam-oriented social movements were taking root among African Americans in Detroit. By the 1950s, Albanians, Arabs, African Americans, and South Asians all had mosques and religious associations in the city, and they were confident that Islam could be, and had already become, an American religion. When immigration laws were liberalized in 1965, new immigrants and new African American converts rapidly became the majority of U.S. Muslims. For them, Detroit's old Muslims and their mosques seemed oddly Americanized, even unorthodox. 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. It shows how Islam has become American in the past and how the anxieties many new Muslim Americans and non-Muslims feel about the place of Islam in American society today are not inevitable, but are part of a dynamic process of political and religious change that is still unfolding.

Provides an overview of America's Shi'i community, tracing its history, describing its composition in the twenty-first century, and explaining how they have created an identity for themselves in the American context.