New Books Look at Muslim Life Here

by Andrea Useem, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 2/28/2007

Islam means peace, right? That's what many American Muslims insisted, when microphones were thrust in front of them after 9/11. No, Islam is inherently violent, shot back right-wing commentators like Pat Robertson.

The post-Sept. 11 contention over how to understand Islam involved the hurling back and forth of Qur'anic verses, but lost in the noise was the lived reality of Islam in America today. Three new titles try to map that ground, inviting readers into the mosques, courtrooms and living rooms where the lives of American Muslims unfold today.

Paul Barrett, a veteran reporter and editor at BusinessWeek, doesn't so much resolve the competing narratives about Islam as allow the reader to walk into that divide and explore it for themselves. In American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, Dec.), Barrett chooses seven American Muslim figures—some prominent, others portrayed here for the first time—and details their many contradictions.

"There is a duality to Muslim life in America that's fascinating," Barrett told RBL, pointing to his portrait of an Arab-American newspaper publisher in Dearborn, Mich., who has openly endorsed the Lebanese Hezbollah militia—and has served as a consultant for the White House. Barrett argues that American Muslims are struggling with one another—and sometimes within themselves—to define what it means to be American and Muslim at the same time.

Geneive Abdo, also a journalist, told RBL she wrote Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 (Oxford, Sept.) to fill a gap in the literature about Islam in America. "Most of what is written about it comes from the 1990s. The whole community has changed dramatically since 9/11," she said.

Bypassing secular Muslims, whom Abdo says many Americans wrongly focus on, Abdo looks at the lives of young, religious Muslims. She argues that the harassment and hostility American Muslims have faced since 9/11 has driven young people to embrace Islam as their primary identity—a move she says parallels trends among Muslims overseas.

But like Barrett, Abdo is quick to point out that being a religious, even fundamentalist, Muslim does not make one a violent terrorist. "Most Americans either know nothing about Islam in America, or assume there is no difference between their Muslim neighbor and a militant in Baghdad," she said. "It's important to reframe the public debate."

Given that Barrett is from a Jewish background and Abdo hails from an Arab Christian one, it seems only fitting that the other recent title in this category comes from two Muslims, Ilyas Ba-Yunus and Kassim Kone, both professors at the State University of New York, Cortland. Their book, Muslims in the United States, (Greenwood, Sept.) takes a more academic—and apologetic—look at the Muslim culture and organizations in the U.S.

Has the topic been exhausted? Not so, said Abdo: Expect to see more titles from American Muslims who want to tell their own stories.