Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Anthropology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

In a time when “traditional” Islam and Islamic education are seen as incommensurable with American society and ideals, American Muslims are mobilizing traditions of Islamic scholarship within liberal arts institutional frameworks to articulate and establish the future possibilities of Islam and being Muslim in North America. This research shows how the Islamic discursive tradition is being critically engaged by the scholars and students of Zaytuna College to craft an “American Islam” based on a shared moral and ethical system that draws from and is relevant to the heterogeneous experiences of diverse Muslims and their material circumstances. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, and in the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area, this study’s methodological approach is grounded in participant-observation, interviews, and visual ethnography.

In a time when “traditional” Islam and Islamic education are seen as incommensurable with American society and ideals, American Muslims are mobilizing traditions of Islamic scholarship within liberal arts institutional frameworks to articulate and establish the future possibilities of Islam and being Muslim in North America. This research shows how the Islamic discursive tradition is being critically engaged by the scholars and students of Zaytuna College to craft an “American Islam” based on a shared moral and ethical system that draws from and is relevant to the heterogeneous experiences of diverse Muslims and their material circumstances. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, and in the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area, this study’s methodological approach is grounded in participant-observation, interviews, and visual ethnography.

This dissertation explores two inter-related questions: a) how US born Muslim Americans (converts, second generation and African American individuals) negotiate national and transnational belonging in the post- 9/11 context and b) how competing discursive practices around the concept of umma (transnational Muslim community) influence the way in which American Muslims negotiate an American-Muslim identity. The research presented in the dissertation is based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in six ethno-racially and socio-economically diverse American Muslim communities in Boston and San Francisco Bay Area, including mosque communities, educational institutions and third-space organizations. By contrast to work focused on organized political movements, the interviews in this research focused on the way in which ordinary American Muslims give meaning to their identity as Muslims through everyday discursive practices and quotidian understandings of community, belonging, and identity. The 22 months-long data collection reveals that rather than primarily through saliently foreign policy related or “ideological” considerations, American Muslims negotiate transnational and national belonging through i) simultaneous considerations of inclusion and exclusion in the wider American religious landscape, ii) citizenship practices that respond to voices that seek to marginalize American Muslims, and iii) through the medium of cultural belonging and identity. The discourse analysis and ethnographic fieldwork suggests that American Muslims primarily utilize cultural notions of belonging an identity rather than political considerations relating to national or international developments in giving meaning to their dual identity. The dissertation also notes some differences across and within research sites in Boston, San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. American Muslims imagine themselves a particular micro-community with particular needs, priorities, and cultural outlook that is different from other Muslim populations, in both Muslim majority and minority contexts. On the other hand a hybrid set of factors, not simple political considerations, shape American Muslims’ understanding of transnational Muslim identity. This is also reflected in their internal debates about questions of inclusion and exclusion (gender- based or racial), and whether unity requires uniformity regarding contentious domestic and international developments. / 2018-02-01T00:00:00Z

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-76). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-76). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2009. / Title from title page (Digital Archive@GSU, viewed July 27, 2010) Amira Jarmakani, committee chair; Layli Phillips, Margaret Mills Harper, committee members. Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-99).

The contested backlash phenomenon assumes that changes to the status quo in favor of minorities will be met with resistance and resentment from majority groups. However, previous research has yielded ambiguous results. This has resulted in a continuous confusion regarding if, when and how backlashes occur. This thesis will attempt to enhance the understanding of this phenomenon through the use of a survey experiment. The experiment tests whether it is possible to detect a backlash in public opinion through the use of a treatment text. The text presents a fictive Supreme Court decision that approves outdoor broadcasting of the Islamic call to prayer in the US. The experiment tests whether this will create an increase in resentment directed towards Muslim Americans. The experiment tests a number of hypotheses regarding when and where backlash might occur and could not find any support of the backlash hypothesis. The results instead indicated that the treatment induced a decrease in the level of resentment reported by the respondents. These unexpected results have a number of possible explanations, ranging from social desirability bias to the possibility of a legitimizing effect stemming from the treatment. The findings are in line with a growing number of researches that have failed to statistically find any proof of the backlash theory.

Based on observational fieldwork and interviews carried out in Boston in ten Islamic community centers and mosques, supplemented by archival research in Suffolk County court records and surveys of relevant literature, this ethnography investigates how various communities and sects of Sunni Muslims in the Boston area utilize and conceptualize Islamic law. The presence and operation of Islamic law in the US (as well as in Europe) has increasingly become a center of interest and conflict. Some commentators have portrayed the operation of Sharia in non-majority Islamic countries as a victory for cultural pluralism and for an open, even expanding, global community. Others see Sharia as a threat to basic and ancient lifeways that have traditionally been characterized by the predominance of “Judeo-Christian” religion. This ethnography seeks to move beyond these poles to examine what role Islamic law actually plays in the lives and religion of a cross-section of American Muslims. Through a combination of interviews, the examination of legal records and local government activities, such as courts and public hearings I use the microcosm of the Islamic community in Boston to understand how American disestablishmentarianism, or the American relation between the church and the state, creates an environment that allows Muslims to seek and gain public recognition and accommodation for their faith. Moreover, I examine how these laws allow Boston’s Muslims, and in turn the Muslims of the United States at large, to build lives that are distinctly Islamic while simultaneously incorporating themselves within the larger American cultural milieu, which has historically been characterized by primarily Christian and less prominently Jewish religious cultural practice. The thesis also examines the role Islamic law plays in building both accommodations and distinctions between the Islamic community and its American neighbors. It analyzes which aspects of the Sharia various communities of Muslims consider most important and how they reconcile differences and conflicts between aspects of American culture and law that present obstacles to realizing the ideal Islamic life according to Sharia. Far from a draconian code that demands complete obedience, the data shows that Sharia is actually a flexible tool that makes accommodation possible. At the same time, the discourse and praxis of Sharia also divides American Muslims along lines that often have nothing to do with the law per se but rather reflect the basic tensions and divisions of American society at large. In particular, it considers the differences between African-American Muslim communities and Muslims originated from the Middle East and elsewhere.

Thesis advisor: Peter Skerry / This thesis is a further study of Peter Skerry’s 2011 article, “the Muslim-American Muddle,” in which he argues that not only non-Muslim Americans are worrying about Muslims’ loyalty issue due to the fear of radical Islamism and terrorism, but also Muslims are confused. My basic argument is that Muslims are still suffering from their muddled loyalty. It is not because they are disloyal but because, in light of Grodzins, their organizations guide them in different directions which are not always en route to national loyalty as non-Muslims expect. Inspired by Morton Grodzins’s theory on social structure and national loyalty in liberal democracies and James Q. Wilson’s insightful study on political organizations, this research has sought to understand the Muslim muddle with an in-depth inquiry and examination on one of the most common and important Islamic organizations—Islamic centers and mosques with an ethnographical method. The evidence of this thesis was collected between April 2016 and December 2017. In fact, I almost visited every mosque in Massachusetts. However, I was not always lucky to build strong connections with many centers for various reasons. In this thesis, I only select those mosques that I had visited more than three times. And I try my best to interview as many leaders as possible. I also manage to keep a geographical and sectarian balance in my sample. I hope to cover all types of mosques in Boston area. My findings are interesting, though of course often confusing and may contradicting with each other but I am duty-bound to report them even if it may had negative impact on the generalization power of my argument. I find that Islamic centers have different goals and offer different incentives to overcome collective actions problems. Both solidarity and political engagement are valued by Islamic centers in general, but individual organizations have different preferences which are results of divergent immigrant experiences. So the organizational aspect of Muslims community is fragmented. However, the increasing external political pressure in the post 9/11 period did not overcome the problem but aggravated it by simply empowering purposive mosques like ISBCC in public sphere. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.