The Oxford Handbook of American Islam
Edited by Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane I. Smith
2014, Oxford University Press
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-american-islam-9780199862634

· Provides up to date information on the millennial generation of Muslims in America.

Islam has been part of the increasingly complex American religious scene for well over a century, and was brought into more dramatic focus by the attacks of September 11, 2001. American Islam is practiced by a unique blend of immigrants and American-born Muslims. The immigrants have come
from all corners of the world; they include rich and poor, well-educated and illiterate, those from upper and lower classes as well as economic and political refugees. The community’s diversity has been enhanced by the conversion of African Americans, Latina/os, and others, making it the most heterogeneous Muslim community in the world.

With an up-to-the-minute analysis by thirty of the top scholars in the field, this handbook covers the growth of Islam in America from the earliest Muslims to set foot on American soil to the current wave of Islamophobia. Topics covered include the development of African American Islam; pre- and post-WWII immigrants; Sunni, Shi`ite, sectarian and Sufi movements in America; the role and status of women, marriage, and family; and the Americanization of Islamic culture.

Throughout these chapters the contributors explore the meaning of religious identity in the context of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics, both within the American Islamic community and in relation to international Islam.

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Secularism, Religion, and Politics: India and Europe
Edited by Peter Losonczi, Walter Van Herck
Routledge India – 2014

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138796003/

This book highlights the relationship between the state and religion in India and Europe. It problematizes the idea of secularism and questions received ideas about secularism. It also looks at how Europe and India can learn from each other about negotiating religious space and identity in this globalised post-9/11 world.

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Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas
Ahmed Afzal
288 pages
5 tables illustrations
December, 2014
ISBN: 9781479844807

Link to title on NYU Press online catalog:
http://nyupress.org/books/9781479844807/

Lone Star Muslims offers an engaging and insightful look at contemporary Muslim American life in Texas. It illuminates the dynamics of the Pakistani community in Houston, a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in the south and southwestern United States.

Using a multi-sited approach, the volume examines Pakistani diasporic public cultures and everyday life to demonstrate the complexity of the South Asian Muslim American experience. Drawing on interviews and participant observation at Pakistani festivals and parades, radio programs, and ethnic businesses, it develops the concept of a transnational Muslim heritage economy, illuminating the increasingly central role of Islam in shaping consumption patterns and public cultures among Pakistani communities in Houston.

Importantly, the volume incorporates a range of narratives, including stories from the Pakistani corporate workforce; Pakistani ethnic entrepreneurs, the working class, and the working poor employed in Pakistani ethnic businesses; second generation youth; Muslim American gay men; community activists; and radio program hosts and producers. Critiquing dominant understandings of Muslim Americans, such as “terrorist” on the one hand, and “model minority” on the other, Lone Star Muslims offers a glimpse into a variety of lived experiences that belie generalizations. It shows how specificities of class, Islamic sectarian affiliation, citizenship status, gender, and sexuality shape transnational identities and mediate racism, marginalities and abjection.

Link to title on NYU Press online catalog:
http://nyupress.org/books/9781479844807/

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BEING GERMAN, BECOMING MUSLIM: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe by Esra Özyürek
Princeton University Press

“Through thoughtful portraits, Özyürek explores the dilemmas faced by converts to Islam in Germany, where new Muslims are seeking nonethnic forms of the religion. She shows how these converts are finding an original way to be German through their Islam–a discovery that seems dangerous to some in the German state. A clear, convincing account of new Muslims in a European land.”
—John Bowen, author of Can Islam Be French?

Every year more and more Europeans, including Germans, are embracing Islam. It is estimated that there are now up to one hundred thousand German converts—a number similar to that in France and the United Kingdom. What stands out about recent conversions is that they take place at a time when Islam is increasingly seen as contrary to European values. BEING GERMAN, BECOMING MUSLIM: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe, by Esra Özyürek, explores how Germans come to Islam within this antagonistic climate, how they manage to balance their love for Islam with their society’s fear of it, how they relate to immigrant Muslims, and how they shape debates about race, religion, and belonging in today’s Europe.

Esra Özyürek looks at how mainstream society marginalizes converts and questions their national loyalties. In turn, converts try to disassociate themselves from migrants of Muslim-majority countries and promote a denationalized Islam untainted by Turkish or Arab traditions. Some German Muslims believe that once cleansed of these accretions, the Islam that surfaces fits in well with German values and lifestyle. Others even argue that being a German Muslim is wholly compatible with the older values of the German Enlightenment.  BEING GERMAN, BECOMING MUSLIM provides a fresh window into the connections and tensions stemming from a growing religious phenomenon in Germany and beyond.

Given the current position of Islam in Europe, why do Europeans convert? What do the experiences of converts reveal about contemporary life, particularly in Germany? This rich book offers a new perspective and entrée into the discussion of religion in Europe.”
—Damani J. Partidge, University of Michigan

About the Author:
Esra Özyürek is an associate professor at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. She is the author of Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey.

PRINCETON STUDIES IN MUSLIM POLITICS
Dale F. Eickelman and Augustus Richard Norton, Series Editors
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10404.html

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After Integration: Islam, Conviviality and Contentious Politics in Europe.

Edited by Marian Burchardt and Ines Michalowski,
Springer 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-02593-9, € 38,86
http://www.springer.com/springer+vs/politikwissenschaft/book/978-3-658-02593-9

The integration of Muslims into European societies is often seen as a major challenge that is yet to be confronted. This book, by contrast, starts from the observation that on legal, political and organizational levels integration has already taken place. It showcases the variety of theoretical approaches that scholars have developed to conceptualize Muslim life in Europe, and provides detailed empirical analysis of ten European countries. Demonstrating how Muslim life unfolds between conviviality and contentious politics, the contributors describe demographic developments, analyze legal controversies, and explore the action of government and state, Muslim communities and other civil society actors. Driving forces behind the integration of Islam are discussed in detail and compared across countries.

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Religious Transformation in Modern Asia: A Transnational Movement

edited by David W. Kim (Australian National University)
Brill, March 2015

http://www.brill.com/products/book/religious-transformation-modern-asia

This volume explores the religious transformation of each nation in modern Asia. When the Asian people, who were not only diverse in culture and history, but also active in performing local traditions and religions, experienced a socio-political change under the wave of Western colonialism, the religious climate was also altered from a transnational perspective.

• Part One explores the nationals of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan, focusing on the manifestations of Japanese religion, Chinese foreign policy, the British educational system in Hong Kong in relation to Tibetan Buddhism, the Korean women of Catholicism, and the Scottish impact in late nineteenth century Korea.
• Part Two approaches South Asia through the topics of astrology, the works of a Gujarātī saint, and Himalayan Buddhism.
• The third part is focused on the conflicts between ‘indigenous religions and colonialism,’ ‘Buddhism and Christianity,’ ‘Islam and imperialism,’ and ‘Hinduism and Christianity’ in Southeast Asia.

The volume will certainly impress those who are interested in modern Asian history and religion, particularly with the colonial experiences of India, Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. By directing attention to the study of religions in Asia, David Kim’s Religious Transformation in Modern Asia goes some distance towards redressing the imbalance in Religious Studies, which, even in the study of the major religions of Asia, has favoured approaches that reflect topics of primary concern to students of religion in the West. This collection of essays written by experts in Northeast, South and Southeast Asia offers a rare insight into themes and issues that confront both practitioners as insiders as well as academics and informed outsiders. As such, it promises to contribute to the understanding of the study of religions in Asia, both historically and in contemporary settings, while at the same time offering important theoretical advances in the academic study of religions generally.

Contributors are: Carole M. Cusack, Catharina Blomberg, Christopher Hartney, Daniel Ahn, David W. Kim, Joshua Esler, Kevin N. Cawley, Laurens de Rooij, Lawrence C. Reardon, Lionel Obadia, Martin Wood, Nicholas Campion, and Ronnie Gale Dreyer.

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NEUTRALITÉ ET FAITS RELIGIEUX

ACTUALITÉ SOCIALE ET POLITIQUE RELIGIONSOCIOLOGIE EUROPE

Luan Abedinaj, Laurence Blésin, Dominique Cabiaux, Françoise Wibrin

La question du port de signes religieux dans les services publics se rencontre partout. L’équilibre historique atteint dans les sociétés d’Europe continentale entre institutions publiques et religion est aujourd’hui bousculé. Il devient souvent objet de conflit. Ce volume réunit les contributions de spécialistes – sociologues, philosophes, juristes, politologues – qui interrogent de manière critique la notion de « neutralité », ainsi que des analyses de situations concrètes du monde du travail.

EAN : 9782806101563 • 224 pages
Prix éditeur : 19,5 €
Voir la fiche de ce livre

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Religion and AIDS Treatment in Africa: Saving Souls, Prolonging Lives Edited by Rijk van Dijk, Hansjörg Dilger, Marian Burchardt and Thera Rasing Ashgate September 2014 http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409456698 This book critically interrogates emerging intertconnections between religion and biomedicine in Africa in the … Continue reading →

American Jewish Year Book 2013 The Annual Record of the North American Jewish Communities Series: American Jewish Year Book, Vol. 113 Editors: Arnold Dashefsky, Ira Sheskin http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/population+studies/book/978-3-319-01657-3 Presents continuation of a century-old reference work Provides access to major review articles … Continue reading →