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Using arguments that borrow from the themes and forms of European disputes, Islam: An American Religion demonstrates how, paradoxically, Islam as built 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 formatting of Islam as a faith. In Islam: An American Religion, Nadia Marzouki investigates how Islam has developed a major stake in American politics. Focusing on the period from 2008 to 2013, she revisits the uproar over the construction of mosques, legal disputes around the prohibition of Islamic law and foreign law, and the overseas promotion of religious freedom. She argues that public controversies over Islam in the United States primarily reflects the American public's profound divisions and ambivalence toward the meaning and legitimacy of liberal secular democracy.

Explores how Muslim Americans test the boundaries of American pluralismIn 2004, the al-Islah Islamic Center in Hamtramck, Michigan, set off a contentious controversy when it requested permission to use loudspeakers to broadcast the adhān, or Islamic call to prayer. The issue gained international notoriety when media outlets from around the world flocked to the city to report on what had become a civil battle between religious tolerance and Islamophobic sentiment. The Hamtramck council voted unanimously to allow mosques to broadcast the adhān, making it one of the few US cities to officially permit it through specific legislation.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. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic research in Hamtramck, which boasts one of the largest concentrations of Muslim residents of any American city, Alisa Perkins shows how the Muslim American population has grown and asserted itself in public life. She explores, for example, the efforts of Muslim American women to maintain gender norms in neighborhoods, mosques, and schools, as well as Muslim Americans' efforts to organize public responses to municipal initiatives. Her in-depth fieldwork incorporates the perspectives of both Muslims and non-Muslims, including Polish Catholics, African American Protestants, and other city residents. Drawing particular attention to Muslim American expressions of religious and cultural identity in civil life—particularly in response to discrimination and stereotyping—Perkins questions the popular assumption that the religiosity of Muslim minorities hinders their capacity for full citizenship in secular societies. She shows how Muslims and non-Muslims have, through their negotiations over the issues over the use of space, together invested Muslim practice with new forms of social capital and challenged nationalist and secularist notions of belonging

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Note on Transliteration -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. A Woman- Led Friday Prayer -- 2. Women Leading Prayers -- 3. Gender Justice and Qurʾanic Exegesis -- 4. History, Women's Rights, and Islamic Law -- 5. Authority, Tradition, and Community -- 6. Space, Leadership, and Voice -- 7. Media, Representation(s), Politics -- 8. Memoirs, Narratives, and Marketing -- 9. Covers and Other Matters -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index

2. The Making of the Last ProphetSources; Muhammad at Mecca; Muhammad at Medina; Muhammad and the Jews of Medina; Muhammad's Wives; The Return to Mecca and Death of Muhammad; The Making of the Last Prophet; Polemical Literature Against Muhammad; The Deeds and Sayings of Muhammad: The Genre of Hadith; Representing Muhammad; 3. The Quran: The Base Narrative; Overview; Traditional Accounts; The Critical View; The Linguistic Matrix of the Ancient Near East; Why Don't Muslims Have an "Old Testament"?; Messages and Contents; The Inimitability of the Quran; The Quran in Muslim Life

Introduction / Paul Nesbitt-Larking 1. - Reflections on the Journey / Nawaz Tahir16. - 1. Democracy and Islam: The Incompatible Puzzle / Maryam A. al-Sayyed 20. - 2. Islam and Democracy in the Thought of Fazlur Rahman and Sayyid Abuʻl-A'la Mawdudi / Jon Armajani 37. - 3. Beyond Jamaat-e-Islami: The Political Rise of the Deobandis, the Mystic Leaders, and Islamism in Bangladesh / Humayun Kabir 50. - 4. From the Canadian Shari'a Debates to the Arab World: Developing a Qurʻan-Based Theology of Democracy / Nevin Reda 78. - 5. Kharijites and Qarmatians: Islamic Pre-Democratic Thought, a Political-Theological Analysis / Marco Demichelis101. - 6. Could Civil Marriage Help "Preserve Religion" in Muslim-Majority Countries? / Ingrid Mattson128. - 7. Fragmented Egyptian Islamism: Contesting Islamist Theories and Practice / Gillian Kennedy 147. - 8. Framing Islam and Democracy: Civic Engagement in a Canadian Muslim Organization / Katherine Bullock 171. - 9. Islam and Democracy: The Political Culture of Muslims in Europe / Sabrina de Regt 195. - 10. Islam and Democracy: Voices of Muslims amongst Us / Davide Tacchini and Amédée Turner 228. - 11. Islam and Democracy: Prospects and Pathways / Susan Khazaeli and Daniel Stockemer 242. - 12. Religiosity and Support for Democracy: A Contribution to the Compatibility Debate Through a Comparative Perspective / Nazli Çağin Bilgili 263. - Closing Reflection / Mahdi Tourage and Jonathan Geen 292. - Conclusion / Nawaz Tahir and Ingrid Mattson 296

In this book, economist Jean-Philippe Platteau addresses the question: does Islam, the religion of Muslims, bear some responsibility for a lack of economic development in the countries in which it dominates? In his nuanced approach, Platteau challenges the widespread view that the doctrine of Islam is reactionary in the sense that it defends tradition against modernity and individual freedom. He also questions the view that fusion between religion and politics is characteristic of Islam and predisposes it to theocracy. He disagrees with the substantivist view that Islam is a major obstacle to modern development because of a merging of religion and the state, or a fusion between the spiritual and political domains. But he also identifies how Islam's decentralized organization, in the context of autocratic regimes, may cause political instability and make reforms costly

Muslims in China: incompatibility between Islam and the Chinese order -- Ahung and Literatus: a Muslim elite in Confucian China -- Muslim minorities under non-Islamic rule -- Ethnicity, religion, nationality, and social conflict: the case of Chinese Muslims -- Myth as memory: Muslims in China between myth and history -- Established Islam and marginal Islam: from eclecticism to syncretism -- Islamization and sinicization in Chinese Islam -- Naqshbandiyya and factionalism in Chinese Islam -- Is there Shi'a in Chinese Islam? -- Translation as exegesis: the opening S¿±ra of the Qur'#n in Chinese -- Muslim rebellions in Muslim China: a part of, or a counterpart to, the Chinese revolution -- The Islamic republics in central Asia and the Middle East -- The cross battles the crescent: a century of missionary work among Chinese Muslims (1850-1950) -- The Muslim minority in the people's republic of China -- A new wave of Muslim revivalism in China -- Al-sin -- Islam in China -- Islam in the Chinese environment