Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past
Sally Howell
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world
Description
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.Product Details
Price
$88.55
Publisher
Oxford Univ PR
Publish Date
August 28, 2014
Pages
384
Dimensions
6.3 X 9.3 X 1.4 inches | 1.4 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780199372003
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliateAbout the Author
Sally Howell is assistant professor of history and Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She is co-author of Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11 and editor of Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade.
Reviews
"Sally Howell's book makes a substantial and impressive contribution to scholarship and in particular to those studies that address early twentieth-century Muslim communities . [A] rich analysis of early Detroit Old Islam in Detroit is a valuable contribution to scholarship on American Islam. It is thoroughly researched and includes interviews with early Muslim settlers and their families. Such rich sources enhance the book and provide insights into the experiences of Detroit's early Muslim pioneers. Howell's work offers a comprehensive and rich analysis of Muslim life in Detroit in the twentieth century."--Journal of American History"The early twentieth century witnessed the institutionalization of mainstream Islam in America. Its history, however, has been overlooked until recently. I can think of no place more central than Detroit to understanding the complex racial, sectarian, civic, and political relations of American Muslims in this era. And no scholar is more familiar with Detroit's Muslims than Howell. Her book is a major step forward in the study of American Islam." --Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Associate Professor of Religion and Humanities, Reed College"Only in the twenty-first century have scholars begun to provide full and accurate histories of Muslim communities. Sifting through previously unexplored archives and interviewing elders to complete this saga, Howell's well-written, richly illustrated text provides students of Islam in America with a story of multiple communities, their interactions and their formation of American Muslim identities. It will become a classroom staple for teaching about Islam in America." --Aminah Beverly McCloud, Professor, Islamic Studies, DePaul University"Howell recovers a lost chapter of U.S. religious history. This highly-readable analysis explains why Muslims and non-Muslims alike have forgotten about the first American mosques. Old Islam in Detroit is a major contribution to the study of Muslim America." --Edward E. Curtis, IV, author of Muslims in America: A Short History"This book challenges almost everything we thought we knew about the early history of Muslims in Detroit and beyond, transforming our understanding of the American Muslim past and present. Howell's thorough research, including priceless interviews with early settlers, shows that those first mosques were mosques, that they were both translocal and transcommunal, and that women played key roles in building them. Howell provides particularly significant material relating to gender issues, African American Sunnis, and the recurring criticism of, and then accommodation to, Muslim American institutions by successive cohorts of Muslim immigrants." --Karen Leonard, author of Muslim Identities in North America: the State of Research