A compilation of recent acquisitions by the MSU Libraries. Note: Also includes related titles related to Lebanese Americans, Iranian Americans,Muslim Americans, etc.
Arab American and Middle Eastern Christians. Arab American National Museum.
Arab American Arts and Literature. Arab American National Museum.
Arab American Immigration and General History. Arab American National Museum.
Arab Americans and the Post-9/11 Environment. . Arab American National Museum.
Arab and Muslim Women in the U.S. and Arab American Family Life. . Arab American National Museum.
Muslims in the United States. . Arab American National Museum.
Regional Studies of Arab Americans. . Arab American National Museum.
Representations and Perceptions. . Arab American National Museum.
The Arab-American experience in the United States and Canada : a classified, annotated bibliography / by Michael W. Suleiman. Ann Arbor, MI : Pierian Press, [2006], ©2006. 604pp. Main Library E184.A65 S85 2006
For more possibilities, check the Arab American Bibliography offered by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Arab America : gender, cultural politics, and activism
Al' America : travels through America's Arab and Islamic roots
Arab-American faces and voices : the origins of an immigrant community
Arab/American : landscape, culture, and cuisine in two great deserts
Arab American literary fictions, cultures, and politics
Arab-American women's writing and performance : Orientalism, race and the idea of the Arabian nights
The Arab Americans : A History
Arab & Arab American feminisms : gender, violence, & belonging
Arab and Jewish women in Kentucky : stories of accommodation and audacity
Arab Detroit 9/11 : Life in the Terror Decade
Arab Detroit : From Margin to Mainstream
Arabs and Muslims in the media : race and representation after 9/11
Arabs in America : building a new future
Becoming American : the early Arab immigrant experience
Becoming American? : the forging of Arab and Muslim identity in pluralist America
Behind the backlash : Muslim Americans after 9/11
Being and belonging : Muslims in the United States since 9/11
Between Arab and White : Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora
Bint Arab : Arab and Arab American women in the United States
Burqas, baseball, and apple pie : being Muslim in America
Citizenship and Crisis : Arab Detroit After 9/11
Contemporary Arab-American literature : transnational reconfigurations of citizenship and belonging
A Country Called Amreeka : Arab Roots, American Stories
Daily Life of Arab Americans in the 21st Century
Homeland Insecurity : the Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? : Being Young and Arab in America
The Lebanese Diaspora : the Arab Immigrant Experience in Montreal, New York, and Paris
Muslim women in America : the challenge of Islamic identity today
Muslims in America : A Short History
My dream of stars : from daughter of Iran to space pioneer
Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11 : from invisible citizens to visible subjects
Residential patterns of Arab Americans : race, ethnicity and spatial assimilation
Running For All the Right Reasons : a Saudi-Born Woman's Pursuit of Democracy
Silent victims : the plight of Arab & Muslim Americans in post 9/11 America
Transnational Muslims in American society
Uncompromised: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA
Whitewashed : America's Invisible Middle Eastern Minority
Young American Muslims : dynamics of identity
Recently acquired books in the MSU Libraries. Note : always check the online catalog for the latest information on location and status. If a book says "in process", you can ask for it at the Circulation Desk.
Al' America : travels through America's Arab and Islamic roots / Jonathan Curiel. New York : New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. 246pp. Main Library E169.1 .C853 2008 : Four out of ten Americans say they dislike Muslims, according to a Gallup poll. "Muslims," a blogger wrote on www.freerepublic.com, "don't belong in America." In a lively, funny, and revealing riposte to these sentiments, journalist Jonathan Curiel offers a tour through the little-known Islamic past, and present, of American culture. From highbrow to pop, from lighthearted to profound, this book reveals the Islamic and Arab influences before our eyes, under our noses, and ringing in our ears. Curiel demonstrates that many of America's most celebrated places retain vestiges of Arab and Islamic culture. Likewise, some of America's most recognizable music is indebted to Arab music. And some of America's leading historical figures, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Elvis Presley, relied on Arab or Muslim culture for intellectual sustenance. Part travelogue, part cultural history, this book confirms a continuous pattern of give-and-take between America and the Arab-Muslim world.--From publisher description.
All-American : 45 American men on being Muslim / edited by Wajahat M. Ali & Zahra T. Suratwala ; foreword by Congressman Keith Ellison. Ashland, Ore : White Cloud Press, 2012. 255pp. Main Library E184.M88 A46 2012 : 40 American Muslim men dismantle stereotypes of what it means to be a Muslim man in America.Follow up work to White Cloud's successful and highly acclaimed May 2011 book 'I Speak For Myself: American Women on Being Muslim'. With this second book in the 'I Speak For Myself' series, American Muslim men speak out on their lives and how their Muslim beliefs play out in private and on the public stage. Contributors include high profile figures in the American Muslim community, representinga new generation that is making a profound impact inside and outside the Muslim world.
America's Arab Refugees : Vulnerability and Health on the Margins. / Marcia Inhorn. Palo Alto, Cal. : Stanford University Press, 2018. 232pp. on order :
Arab America : gender, cultural politics, and activism / Nadine Naber. New York : New York University Press, c2012. 310pp. Main Library E184.A65 N335 2012 : Arab Americans are one of the most misunderstood segments of the U.S. population, especially after the events of 9/11. In Arab America, Nadine Naber tells the stories of second generation Arab American young adults living in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of whom are political activists engaged in two culturalist movements that draw on the conditions of diaspora, a Muslim global justice and a Leftist Arab movement. Writing from a transnational feminist perspective, Naber reveals the complex and at times contradictory cultural and political processes through which Arabness is forged in the contemporary United States, and explores the apparently intra-communal cultural concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality as the battleground on which Arab American young adults and the looming world of America all wrangle. As this struggle continues, these young adults reject Orientalist thought, producing counter-narratives that open up new possibilities for transcending the limitations of Orientalist, imperialist, and conventional nationalist articulations of self, possibilities that ground concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality in some of the most urgent issues of our times: immigration politics, racial justice struggles, and U.S. militarism and war.
Arab-American faces and voices : the origins of an immigrant community / Elizabeth Boosahda. Austin : University of Texas Press, 2003. 284pp. Main Library F74.W9 B67 2003 : As Arab Americans seek to claim their communal identity and rightful place in American society at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the Middle East, an understanding look back at more than one hundred years of the Arab-American community is especially timely. In this book, Elizabeth Boosahda, a third-generation Arab American, draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants....Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester's links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America. Using the voices of Arab immigrants and their families, she explores their entire experience, from emigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the present-day lives of their descendants. This rich documentation sheds light on many aspects of Arab-American life, including the Arab entrepreneurial motivation and success, family life, education, religious and community organizations, and the role of women in initiating immigration and the economic success they achieved.
The Arab-American Handbook : a Guide to the Arab, Arab-American & Muslim Worlds / By Nawar Shora. Seattle : Cune Press, 2010. 2nd edition, 311pp. Main Library E184.A65 S56 2010 : Tune up your knowledge of the Arab and Muslim worlds with this easy to read text. The Arab-American Handbook contains useful reference material and comment by a wide variety of participants and observers. ...The book includes: a thumbnail history; the essentials of Islam; social insights & cultural norms. The perfect tool for : teachers, employers, travelers, law enforcement.... Government workers and the general public will find that they can quickly penetrate the stereotypes and misconceptions to appreciate the tenor and nuance of Arab and Muslim life. Without a better grasp of this subject, the citizens of liberal democracies are unsafe at home and at a disadvantage in the global competition for hearts and minds.
Arab/American : landscape, culture, and cuisine in two great deserts / Gary Paul Nabhan. Tucson : University of Arizona Press, c2008. 141pp. Main Library F787 .N33 2008 : The landscapes, cultures, and cuisines of deserts in the Middle East and North America have commonalities that have seldom been explored by scientists—and have hardly been celebrated by society at large. Sonoran Desert ecologist Gary Nabhan grew up around Arab grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in a family that has been emigrating to the United States and Mexico from Lebanon for more than a century, and he himself frequently travels to the deserts of the Middle East. In an era when some Arabs and Americans have markedly distanced themselves from one another, Nabhan has been prompted to explore their common ground, historically, ecologically, linguistically, and gastronomically. Arab/American is not merely an exploration of his own multicultural roots but also a revelation of the deep cultural linkages between the inhabitants of two of the world’s great desert regions. Here, in beautifully crafted essays, Nabhan explores how these seemingly disparate cultures are bound to each other in ways we would never imagine. With an extraordinary ear for language and a truly adventurous palate, Nabhan uncovers surprising convergences between the landscape ecology, ethnogeography, agriculture, and cuisines of the Middle East and the binational Desert Southwest. There are the words and expressions that have moved slowly westward from Syria to Spain and to the New World to become incorporated—faintly but recognizably—into the language of the people of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. And there are the flavors—piquant mixtures of herbs and spices—that have crept silently across the globe and into our kitchens without our knowing where they came from or how they got here. And there is much, much more. We also learn of others whose work historically spanned these deserts, from Hadji Ali (“Hi Jolly”), the first Moslem Arab to bring camels to America, to Robert Forbes, an Arizonan who explored the desert oases of the Sahara. These men crossed not only oceans but political and cultural barriers as well. We are, we recognize, builders of walls and borders, but with all the talk of “homeland” today, Nabhan reminds us that, quite often, borders are simply lines drawn in the sand.
Arab American literary fictions, cultures, and politics / Steven Salaita. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, c2007. 196pp. Main Library PS153.A73 S25 2007 : Using a mix of literary and social analysis, this book examines a broad range of modern Arab American literary fiction and illustrates how numerous socio-political phenomena have affected the development of the Arab American novel. Salaita argues that in the United States a variety of fictions about Arabs and Islam circulate frequently in both popular and academic cultures. He endeavors in turn to highlight the diversities inscribed in the Arab American community that render it more complex than generally is acknowledged in public discussion, an endeavor undertaken through critique of a cross-section of modern Arab American novelists, including Etel Adnan, Rabih Alameddine, Joseph Geha, and Laila Halaby. Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics is the first original book of Arab American literary criticism and offers reflections on the viability of developing an Arab American Studies.
Arab-American women's writing and performance : Orientalism, race and the idea of the Arabian nights / Somaya Sami Sabry. London ; New York : I.B. Tauris, c2011. 208pp. Main Library PS153.A73 S237 2011 : The public image of Arabs in America has been radically affected by the 'war on terror'. But stereotypes of Arabs, manifested for instance in Orientalist representations of Sheherazade and The Arabian Nights in Hollywood and American popular culture, have prevailed for much longer. Here Somaya Sami Sabry traces the powerful effects of racial discourse and nineteenth-and twentieth-century American Orientalism on the Arab-American experience, setting the stage for a discussion of contemporary Arab-American women's responses. She shows how Arab-American women writers and performers confront and subvert racial stereotypes in this charged context, which is further complicated today by hostility towards Arabs in post-9/11 America....Sabry suggests that the figure of Sheherazade and the idea of the Nights, with their themes of transformation and change, offer a common cultural space for the exploration and reinterpretation of these stereotypes across the work of contemporary writers and performers, from Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent to Mohja Kahfs E-Mails from Scheherazad, and from Laila Farah's Living in the Hyphen-Nation to Maysoon Zayid's stand-up comedy. Through close readings and critical analyses Sabry reveals how each of these writers and performers engage in varying ways with Sheherazadian narrative and orality, and thus forge a location for cultural translation and negotiation, interrogating stereotypes of oppressed Muslim/Arab women at the same time that they navigate belonging and identity in a hostile or ambivalent environment.
The Arab Americans / Randa A. Kayyali. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2006. 177pp. Main Library E184.A65 K39 2006 : Americans of Arab heritage have made major contributions to U.S. society, and this is a timely and unique overview of their immigration patterns, settlement, adaptation, and assimilation for a general audience. The first wave of Arab immigrants, mostly Christian men from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1925. This book discusses their history as it looks at the successive waves of immigrants, including the post-1965 immigrants, who have brought more diversity to the Arab American community. The latest immigrants have included more Muslims, many are from Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. The continuing interest in the Middle East, Islam, and the Muslim way of life make this a must-have source for those seeking to understand current events and our multicultural society.
The Arab Americans : A History / Gregory Orfalea. Northampton, Mass. : Olive Branch Press, 2006. 500pp. Main Library E184.A65 O738 2006 : In this work, third-generation Arab-American Orfalea (Pitzer College) combines conventional historical narrative, personal memoir, and individual profiles based on interviews into a portrait of the Arab-American experience from the mid-19th century to the present. Much of his treatment is concerned with the interactions between Middle Eastern politics and the historical experience of Arab-Americans, such as the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians and its impact on Arab immigration or the 9-11 attacks and the climate of fear it spurred in the United States.
Arab & Arab American feminisms : gender, violence, & belonging / edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, c2011. 389pp. Main Library HQ1729.5 .A73 2011 : The three editors began talking about assembling a collection of writings in 2002; their project got legs in 2005, via a special issue of the MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies. This remarkable anthology will not only be a rich core work for students involved with the myriad of intersecting topics it addresses, but it will no doubt be a well-loved, enduring companion for individuals outside of academia lucky enough to encounter it. Thirty-two essays, excerpts, poems, and personal accounts are arranged in sections on living in diaspora, defying categories, power and political action, mobilization, and memories and exile.
Arab and Jewish women in Kentucky : stories of accommodation and audacity / Nora Rose Moosnick. Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, c2012. 208pp. Main Library HQ1172 .M66 2012 : Outwardly it would appear that Arab and Jewish immigrants comprise two distinct groups with differing cultural backgrounds and an adversarial relationship. Yet, as immigrants who have settled in communities at a distance from metropolitan areas, both must negotiate complex identities. Growing up in Kentucky as the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, Nora Rose Moosnick observed this traditionally mismatched pairing firsthand, finding that, Arab and Jewish immigrants have been brought together by their shared otherness and shared fears. Even more intriguing to Moosnick was the key role played by immigrant women of both cultures in family businesses -- a similarity which brings the two groups close together as they try to balance the demands of integration into American society....In Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Audacity and Accomodation, Moosnick reveals how Jewish and Arab women have navigated the intersection of tradition, assimilation, and Kentucky's cultural landscape. The stories of ten women's experiences as immigrants or the children of immigrants join around common themes of public service to their communities, intergenerational relationships, running small businesses, and the difficulties of juggling family and work. Together, their compelling narratives challenge misconceptions and overcome the invisibility of Arabs and Jews in out of the way places in America.
The Arab diaspora : voices of an anguished scream / edited by Zahia Smail Salhi, Ian Richard Netton. London : Routledge, 2006. 179pp. Main Library DS36.8 .A59 2006 : The Arab Diasporaexamines the range of roles the Arab world has played to various audiences on the modern and postmodern stage and the issues which have arisen as a result. The variety of roles explored reflects the diversity of Arab culture. With particular focus placed on political, diplomatic and cultural issues, the book explores the relationship between the Arab world and the West, covering topics including: Islam and its common ancestry and relationship with Christianity the varying forms of Arab civilization and its inability in more modern times to fulfil the dreams of nineteenth and twentieth century reformers continued stereotyping of the Arab world within the media. The Arab Diasporais essential reading for those with interests in Arabic and Middle East studies, and cultural studies.
Arabs and Muslims in the media : race and representation after 9/11 / Evelyn Alsultany. New York : New York University Press, 2012. 227pp. Main Library PN1992.8.A7 A58 2012 : After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of "the enemy" during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as "simplified complex representations." This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a "positive" representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as West Wing, The Practice, 24, Threat Matrix, The Agency, Navy NCIS, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.
Arabs in America : building a new future / edited by Michael W. Suleiman. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1999. 355pp. Main Library E184.A65 A72 1999 : Also available online. For many North Americans, Arab-Americans are invisible, recalled only when words like 'terrorism' or 'anti-American sentiments' arise. However, people of Arab descent have been contributing to U.S. and Canadian culture since the 1870's in fields as diverse as literature, science, politics, medicine, and commerce witness surgeon Michael DeBakey, former Oregon governor Victor Atiyeh, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and Canadian M.P. Mac Harb. Yet, while Arab-American contributions to our society are significant and Arab-Americans surpass the U.S. average in both education and economics, they still struggle for recognition and acceptance. In this volume, editor Michael Suleiman brings together 21 prominent scholars from a wide range of perspectives including anthropology, economics, history, law, literature and culture, political science, and sociology to take a close look at the status of Arabs in North America. Topics range from the career of Arab-American singer, dancer, and storyteller Wadeeha Atiyeh to a historical examination of Arab-Americans and Zionism. The contributors discuss an assortment of different communities a Palestinian refugee community in Detroit, a group of well-educated Jordanian men, and the Shi'a Muslims in order to illustrate the range of Arab emigre experience. More broadly, they examine Arabs in the legal system, youth and family, health and welfare, as well as Arab-American identity, political activism, and attempts by Arab immigrants to achieve respect and recognition in their new homes. They address both the present situation for Arab-Americans and prospects for their future. "Arabs in America" will engage anyone interested in Arab-American studies, ethnic studies, and American studies. Michael W. Suleiman is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Kansas State University. He has written and co-edited numerous works in the field of Arab American studies, including "U.S. Policy on Palestine from Wilson to Clinton" and "Arab Americans: Continuity and Change".
Arabs in the New World : studies on Arab-American communities / edited by Sameer Y. Abraham and Nabeel Abraham. Detroit, Mich. : Wayne State University, Center for Urban Studies, 1983. 208pp. Main Library E184.A65 A73 1983 : Contents: A historical overview of Arabs in America / Alixa Naff -- Emigration from Syria / Najib E. Saliba -- Arab Christians in the United States / Philip M. Kayal -- Arab Muslims and Islamic institutions in America / Yvonne Haddad -- Detroit’s Arab-American community / Sameer Y. Abraham -- The Yemeni immigrant community of Detroit / Nabeel Abraham -- Detroit’s Iraqi-Chaldeans / Mary C. Sengstock -- The Lebanese Maronites / May Ahdab-Yehia -- The Southend / Sameer Y. Abraham, Nabeel Abraham, and Barbara Aswad -- A select bibliography on Arab-American immigration and settlement / Mohammed Sawaie, p. 187-199.
Recently acquired books in the MSU Libraries. Note : always check the online catalog for the latest information on location and status. If a book says "in process", you can ask for it at the Circulation Desk.
Backlash 9/11 : Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond / Anny Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2009. 348pp. Main Library HV6431 .B3348 2009 : For most Americans, September 11, 2001, symbolized the moment when their security was altered. For Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans, 9/11 also ushered in a backlash in the form of hate crimes, discrimination, and a string of devastating government initiatives. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of the post-9/11 events on Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans as well as their organized response. Through fieldwork and interviews with community leaders, Anny Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr show how ethnic organizations mobilized to demonstrate their commitment to the United States while defending their rights and distancing themselves from the terrorists.
Becoming American : the early Arab immigrant experience / Alixa Naff. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, c1985. 376pp. Main Library E184.S98 N26 1985 Also available as online book : Naff focuses on the pre-World War I pioneering generation of Arabic-speaking immigrants, the generation that set the patterns for settlement and assimilation. Unlike many immigrants who were drawn to the United States by dreams of industrial jobs or to escape religious or economic persecution, most of these artisans and owners of small, disconnected plots of land came to America to engage in the enterprise of peddling. Most planned to stay two or three years and return to their homelands.
Becoming American? : the forging of Arab and Muslim identity in pluralist America / Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad. Waco, Tex. : Baylor University Press, 2011. 124pp. Main Library E184.A65 H325 2011 : Haddad (history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, Georgetown U.) documents the Americanization of Arab-Muslims and their experiences forging an identity in the US. She traces the history of Arab and Muslim immigration to the US in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, considers what constitutes an Arab or a Muslim, and examines the ideological constructs of diaspora Islam since the beginning of emigration. She discusses the context of their discourse on religious pluralism in Islam, the need to emphasize the diversity of Muslims, and the shaping of a moderate North American Islam, including policies and measures implemented since 9/11 by the Bush administration and their impact on the American Muslim community, as well as the pressures from government and political lobbies attempting to create a moderate Islam.
Before the flames : a quest for the history of Arab Americans / by Gregory Orfalea. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1988. 354pp. E184.A65 O74 1988 : Traces one hundred years of Arab American history in the United States as the author attempts to seek insight into his own past through interviews with other Arab Americans and a visit to his family's ancestral village in Syria.
Behind the backlash : Muslim Americans after 9/11 / Lori Peek. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2011. 214pp. Main Library E184.M88 P44 2011 : In Behind the Backlash, Lori Peek weaves together the voices of American Muslims who tell of life lived in a post-9/11 world with the demagoguery of the media, official reports, and history. Her finished tapestry is a compelling dialogue between the human experiences of bigotry and the abstract forces that drive it. Behind the Backlash challenges each of us to reexamine the importance of tolerance in a civilized society.
Being and belonging : Muslims in the United States since 9/11 / Katherine Pratt Ewing, editor. New York : Russell Sage Foundation, c2008. 215pp. Main Library E184.M88 B45 2008 : The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, instantly transformed many ordinary Muslim and Arab Americans into suspected terrorists. In the weeks and months following the attacks, Muslims in the United States faced a frighteningly altered social climate consisting of heightened surveillance, interrogation, and harassment. In the long run, however, the backlash has been more complicated. In Being and Belonging, Katherine Pratt Ewing leads a group of anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural studies experts in exploring how the events of September 11th have affected the quest for belonging and identity among Muslims in America--for better and for worse....From Chicago to Detroit to San Francisco, Being and Belonging takes readers on an extensive tour of Muslim America--inside mosques, through high school hallways, and along inner city streets. Jen'nan Ghazal Read compares the experiences of Arab Muslims and Arab Christians in Houston and finds that the events of 9/11 created a "cultural wedge" dividing Arab Americans along religious lines. While Arab Christians highlighted their religious affiliation as a means of distancing themselves from the perceived terrorist sympathies of Islam, Muslims quickly found that their religious affiliation served as a barrier, rather than a bridge, to social and political integration. Katherine Pratt Ewing and Marguerite Hoyler document the way South Asian Muslim youth in Raleigh, North Carolina, actively contested the prevailing notion that one cannot be both Muslim and American by asserting their religious identities more powerfully than they might have before the terrorist acts, while still identifying themselves as fully American. Sally Howell and Amaney Jamal distinguish between national and local responses to terrorism. In striking contrast to the erosion of civil rights, ethnic profiling, and surveillance set into motion by the federal government, well-established Muslim community leaders in Detroit used their influence in law enforcement, media, and social services to empower the community and protect civil rights. Craig Joseph and Barnaby Riedel analyze how an Islamic private school in Chicago responded to both September 11 and the increasing ethnic diversity of its student body by adopting a secular character education program to instruct children in universal values rather than religious doctrine. In a series of poignant interviews, the school's students articulate a clear understanding that while 9/11 left deep wounds on their community, it also created a valuable opportunity to teach the nation about Islam....The rich ethnographies in this volume link 9/11 and its effects to the experiences of a group that was struggling to be included in the American mainstream long before that fateful day. Many Muslim communities never had a chance to tell their stories after September 11. In Being and Belonging, they get that chance.
Between Arab and White : Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora / Sarah M.A. Gualtieri. Berkeley, Calif. ; London : University of California Press, c2009. 270pp. Main Library E184.S98 G835 2009 : This multifaceted study of Syrian immigration to the United States places Syrians-- and Arabs more generally--at the center of discussions about race and racial formation from which they have long been marginalized. Between Arab and White focuses on the first wave of Arab immigration and settlement in the United States in the years before World War II, but also continues the story up to the present. It presents an original analysis of the ways in which people mainly from current day Lebanon and Syria--the largest group of Arabic-speaking immigrants before World War II--came to view themselves in racial terms and position themselves within racial hierarchies as part of a broader process of ethnic identity formation.
Bint Arab : Arab and Arab American women in the United States / Evelyn Shakir. Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1997. 226pp. Main Library E184.A65 S48 1997 : Based largely on interviews with recent arrivals from the Arabic world and with Arab-Americans of the second and third generations, including family stories of her own Lebanese grandmothers, Shakir explores the experience of women in the first major wave of immigration, 1875-1925, their descendants of the next two generations, and the second wave since the end of World War II. Many of the chapters focus on a particular women, but others consider such groups as peddlers, students and teachers; and such aspects as making a match, fighting racism, feminism, and color and religion.
Burqas, baseball, and apple pie : being Muslim in America / Ranya Tabari Idliby. New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 239pp. Main Library E184.M88 I35 2014 : "For many Americans, the words 'American' and 'Muslim' simply do not marry well; for many the combination is an anathema, a contradiction in values, loyalties, and identities. This is the story of one American Muslim family--the story of how, through their lives, their schools, their friends, and their neighbors, they end up living the challenges, myths, fears, hopes, and dreams of all Americans. They are challenged both by Muslims who speak for them and by Americans who reject them. In this moving memoir, Idliby discusses not only coming to terms with what it means to be Muslim today, but how to raise and teach her children about their heritage and religious legacy. She explores life as a Muslim in a world where hostility towards Muslims runs rampant, where there is an entire industry financed and supported by think tanks, authors, film makers, and individual vigilantes whose sole purpose is to vilify and spread fear about all things Muslim. Her story is quintessentially American, a story of the struggles of assimilation and acceptance in a climate of confusion and prejudice--a story for anyone who has experienced being an "outsider" inside your own home country"
Contemporary Arab-American literature : transnational reconfigurations of citizenship and belonging / Carol Fadda-Conrey. New York ; London : New York University Press, [2014] 243pp. Main Library PS153.A73 F34 2014 : The last couple of decades have witnessed a flourishing of Arab-American literature across multiple genres. Yet, increased interest in this literature is ironically paralleled by a prevalent bias against Arabs and Muslims that portrays their long presence in the US as a recent and unwelcome phenomenon. Spanning the 1990s to the present, Carol Fadda-Conrey takes in the sweep of literary and cultural texts by Arab-American writers in order to understand the ways in which their depictions of Arab homelands, whether actual or imagined, play a crucial role in shaping cultural articulations of US citizenship and belonging. By asserting themselves within a US framework while maintaining connections to their homelands, Arab-Americans contest the blanket representations of themselves as dictated by the US nation-state. Deploying a multidisciplinary framework at the intersection of Middle-Eastern studies, US ethnic studies, and diaspora studies, Fadda-Conrey argues for a transnational discourse that overturns the often rigid affiliations embedded in ethnic labels. Tracing the shifts in transnational perspectives, from the founders of Arab-American literature, like Gibran Kahlil Gibran and Ameen Rihani, to modern writers such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Joseph Geha, Randa Jarrar, and Suheir Hammad, Fadda-Conrey finds that contemporary Arab-American writers depict strong yet complex attachments to the US landscape. She explores how the idea of home is negotiated between immigrant parents and subsequent generations, alongside analyses of texts that work toward fostering more nuanced understandings of Arab and Muslim identities in the wake of post-9/11 anti-Arab sentiments.
A Country Called Amreeka : Arab Roots, American Stories / Alia Malek. New York : Free Press, c2009. 305pp. Main Library E184.A65 M35 2009 : Among the surfeit of narratives about Arabs that have been published in recent years, surprisingly little has been reported on Arabs in America -- an increasingly relevant issue. This book is the most powerful approach imaginable: it is the story of the last forty-plus years of American history, told through the eyes of Arab Americans. It begins in 1963, before major federal legislative changes seismically transformed the course of American immigration forever. Each chapter describes an event in U.S. history -- which may already be familiar to us -- and invites us to live that moment in time in the skin of one Arab American. The chapters follow a timeline from 1963 to the present, and the characters live in every corner of this country. These are dramatic narratives, describing the very human experiences of love, friendship, family, courage, hate, and success. There are the timeless tales of an immigrant community becoming American, the nostalgia for home, the alienation from a society sometimes as intolerant as its laws are generous. A Country Called Amreeka's snapshots allow us the complexity of its characters' lives with an impassioned narrative normally found in fiction. Read separately, the chapters are entertaining and harrowing vignettes; read together, they add a new tile to the mosaic of our history. We meet fellow Americans of all creeds and colors, among them the Alabama football player who navigates the stringent racial mores of segregated Birmingham, where a church bombing wakes a nation to the need to make America a truly more equal place; the young wife from Ramallah -- now living in Baltimore -- who had to abandon her beautiful home and is now asked by a well-meaning American, "How do you like living in an apartment after living in a tent?"; the Detroit toughs and the potsmoking suburban teenagers, who in different decades become politicized and serious about their heritage despite their own wills; the homosexual man afraid to be gay in the Arab world and afraid to be Arab in America; the two formidable women who wind up working for opposing campaigns in the 2000 presidential election; the Marine fighting in Iraq who meets villagers who ask him, "What are you, an Arab, doing here?" We glimpse how America sees Arabs as much as how Arabs see America. We revisit the 1973 oil embargo that initiated the American perception of all Arabs as oil-rich sheikhs; the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis that heralded the arrival of Middle Eastern Islam in the American consciousness; bombings across three decades in Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, and New York City that bring terrorism to American soil; and both wars in Iraq that have posed Arabs as the enemies of America. In a post-9/11 world, Arabic names are everywhere in America, but our eyes glaze over them; we sometimes don't know how to pronounce them or understand whence they come. A Country Called Amreeka gives us the faces behind those names and tells the story of a community it has become essential for us to understand. We can't afford to be oblivious.
Crossing the waters : Arabic-speaking immigrants to the United States before 1940 / edited by Eric J. Hooglund. Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Press, c1987. 188pp. Main Library E184.A65 C76 1987 : More than 125,000 Arabs immigrated to the United States between 1890 and 1940. They came largely from villages in what is now Lebanon and Syria. Most of them were adherents of traditional Arab Christian denominations such as Maronite and Melkite rites Catholicism and the Greek Orthodox Church, but there were also small numbers of Arab Muslims. They established ethnic communities in industrial cities throughout the country, and like other immigrants, contributed to the evolution of American culture and society.
Daily Life of Arab Americans in the 21st Century / Anan Ameri. Santa Barbara : Greenwood Press, 2012. 261pp. Main Library E184.A65 D35 2012 : The term "Arab American" is often used to describe a broad range of people who are ethnically diverse and come from many countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Some Arab Americans have been in the United States since the 1880s. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 did serve to highlight the necessity for Americans to better understand the discrete nations and ethnicities of the Middle East....This title documents the key aspects of contemporary Arab American life, including their many contributions to American society. It begins with an overview of the immigrant experience, but focuses primarily on the past decade, examining the political, family, religious, educational, professional, public, and artistic aspects of the Arab American experience. Readers will understand how this unique experience is impacted by political events both here in America and in the Arab world.
For stars and stripes : American-Arabs in the U.S. military since the revolutionary war / by Aladdin Elaasar. Palatine, Il. : Beacon Press, c2010. 279pp. Main Library E184.A65 E53 2010
Growing up Muslim : Muslim college students in America tell their life stories / edited by Andrew Garrod and Robert Kilkenny ; introduction by Eboo Patel. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2014. 214pp. Main Library LD1435.45 .G76 2014 : "While 9/11 and its aftermath created a traumatic turning point for most of the writers in this book, it is telling that none of their essays begin with that moment. These young people were living, probing, and shifting their Muslim identities long before 9/11. . . . I've heard it said that the second generation never asks the first about its story, but nearly all the essays in this book include long, intimate portrayals of Muslim family life, often going back generations. These young Muslims are constantly negotiating the differences between families for whom faith and culture were matters of honor and North America's youth culture, with its emphasis on questioning, exploring, and inventing one's own destiny."--from the Introduction by Eboo Patel In Growing Up Muslim, Andrew Garrod and Robert Kilkenny present fourteen personal essays by college students of the Muslim faith who are themselves immigrants or are the children of immigrants to the United States. In their essays, the students grapple with matters of ethnicity, religious prejudice and misunderstanding, and what is termed Islamophobia. The fact of 9/11 and subsequent surveillance and suspicion of Islamic Americans (particularly those hailing from the Middle East and the Asian Subcontinent) have had a profound effect on the lives of these students. The shift in official policies and everyday habits that occurred subsequent to the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. has had an influence on the lives of these undergraduates, their families, and their communities of origin.
Homeland conflict and identity for Palestinian and Jewish Israeli Americans / Julianne Weinzimmer. El Paso [Tex.] : LFB Scholarly Pub., 2011. 192pp. Main Library F265.I7 W45 2011 : Weinzimmer (sociology, Wright State U.) argues that perceptions of group conflict are a constitutive element of diasporic identity for both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians living in the United States. He structures the four chapters of his study around the following themes, the ways in which collective memories and dominant narratives about historical oppression and discrimination are used to frame the current conflict and the diasporic relation to the conflict; the use of personal conflict narratives and shared family memories for the same purposes; the influence of media and alternative information consumption on attitudes about the conflict; and how experiences and relationships within the host country shape identity in relation to perceptions of conflict in the homeland.
Homeland Insecurity : the Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11 / Louise A. Cainkar. New York : Russell Sage Foundation, c2009. 325pp. Main Library E184.A65 C35 2009 : Contents - Little is monolithic : five oral histories -- The social construction of the Arab (and Muslim) American -- Whose homeland security? -- The security spotlight and the conduct of everyday life -- Hate acts, local mobilizations, and the crisis point -- Gendered nativism, boundary setting, and cultural sniping : women as embodiments of the perceived cultural threat of Islam -- Conclusion : insiders/outsiders in America.
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? : Being Young and Arab in America / Moustafa Bayoumi. New York : Penguin Books, 2009. 290pp. Main Library E184.A65 B35 2009 : An eye-opening look at how young Arab- and Muslim- Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy....Just over a century ago , W.E.B. Du Bois posed a probing question in his classic The Souls of Black Folk: How does it feel to be a problem? Now, Moustafa Bayoumi asks the same about AmericaÂ's new “problem”—Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, home to the largest Arab-American population in the United States. He moves beyond stereotypes and clichés to reveal their often unseen struggles, from being subjected to government surveillance to the indignities of workplace discrimination. Through it all, these young men and women persevere through triumphs and setbacks as they help weave the tapestry of a new society that is, at its heart, purely American.
I speak for myself : American women on being Muslim / co-editors, Maria M. Ebrahimji and Zahra T. Suratwala. Ashland, Or. : White Cloud Press, 2011. 236pp. Main Library BP67.A1 I2 2011 : 40 women under the age of 40, born and raised in the United States, dismantle stereotypes of what it means to be a Muslim woman in America. Muslim American women are the subject of endless discussions regarding their role in society, their veils as symbols of oppression or of freedom, their identity, their patriotism, their womanhood. Yet the voices and life experiences of Muslim American women themselves are rarely heard in the loud rhetoric surrounding the question of Muslims in America. Finally, in 'I Speak for Myself,' 40 American women under the age of 40, share their experiences of their lives as Muslim women in America. While their commonality is faith and citizenship, their voices and their messages are very different.Readers of 'I Speak for Myself' are presented with a kaleidoscope of stories, artfully woven together around the central idea of limitlessness and individuality. A common theme linking these intimate self-portraits will be the way each woman uniquely defies labeling, simply by defining for herself what it means to be American and Muslim and female. Each personal story is a contribution to the larger narrative of life stories and life work of a new generation of Muslim women.There are approximately six million Muslims living in the United States and over one billion around the world. While the events of 9/11 certainly engaged Americans with the religion of Islam, many enduring stereotypes continue to belittle the Muslim American experience; this often leads to a monolithic interpretation of Islam. Such a treatment is especially inappropriate when reflecting on the Muslim American identity, which is by far one of the most culturally, ethnically, and socially diverse of any in the Islamic world. Women of the Muslim community in America could be described as both patriots and practitioners (of faith). Their experiences call for a body of literature that reflects how they celebrate and live Islam in distinctive ways.In the wake of the current rising tide of Islamophobia (see 'Time Magazine,' Aug. 30, 2010), 'I Speak for Myself' is a must read for Americans seeking understanding of Islam from young women who were all born in the USA.
Islamophobia in America : the anatomy of intolerance / edited by Carl W. Ernst. New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 205pp. E184.M88 I65 2013 : Islamophobia in America offers new perspectives on prejudice against Muslims, which has become increasingly widespread in the USA in the past decade. The contributors document the history of anti-Islamic sentiment in American culture, the scope of organized anti-Muslim propaganda, and the institutionalization of this kind of intolerance.
The Lebanese Diaspora : the Arab Immigrant Experience in Montreal, New York, and Paris / Dalia Abdelhady. New York : New York University Press, 2011. 231pp. Main Library DS80.6 .A23 2011 : The Lebanese are the largest group of Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States, and Lebanese immigrants are also prominent across Europe and the Americas. Based on over eighty interviews with first-generation Lebanese immigrants in the global cities of New York, Montreal and Paris, this book shows that the Lebanese diasporaolike all diasporasoconstructs global relations connecting and transforming their new societies, previous homeland and world-wide communities. Taking Lebanese immigrants' forms of identification, community attachments and cultural expression as manifestations of diaspora experiences, Dalia Abdelhady delves into the ways members of Lebanese diasporic communities move beyond nationality, ethnicity and religion, giving rise to global solidarities and negotiating their social and cultural spaces. The Lebanese Diaspora explores new forms of identities, alliances and cultural expressions, elucidating the daily experiences of Lebanese immigrants and exploring new ways of thinking about immigration, ethnic identity, community, and culture in a global world. By criticizing and challenging our understandings of nationality, ethnicity and assimilation, Abdelhady shows that global immigrants are giving rise to new forms of cosmopolitan citizenship.
Recently acquired books in the MSU Libraries. Note : always check online catalog for latest information on location and status.
Mecca and Main Street : Muslim life in America after 9/11 / Geneive Abdo. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006. 214pp. E184.M88 A22 2006 : Islam is America's fastest growing religion, with more than six million Muslims in the United States, all living in the shadow of 9/11. Who are our Muslim neighbors? What are their beliefs and desires? How are they coping with life under the War on Terror? In Mecca and Main Street, noted author and journalist Geneive Abdo offers illuminating answers to these questions. Gaining unprecedented access to Muslim communities in America, she traveled across the country, visiting schools, mosques, Islamic centers, radio stations, and homes. She reveals a community tired of being judged by Americans' perceptions of Muslims overseas and eager to tell their own stories. Abdo brings these stories vividly to life, allowing us to hear their own voices and inviting us to understand their hopes and their fears. The younger generation of Muslims in particular is charting a different way of life. They are following new imams and placing their Muslim identity before their American one. And unlike their parents, they do not define themselves by their ethnic background, as Pakistani, Palestinian, or Yemeni. Instead they see themselves as belonging to a universal faith. Through their new organizations and websites, they exchange ideas about how to create a more Islamic lifestyle. Inspiring, insightful, tough-minded, and even-handed, this book will appeal to those curious (or fearful) about the Muslim presence in America. It will also be warmly welcomed by the Muslim community that it depicts.
Middle Eastern lives in America / Amir Marvasti and Karyn D. McKinney. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, [2004], ©2004. 171pp. E184.A65 M37 2004 : The place of Middle Easterners in the racial hierarchy of the United States remains relatively unexplored in scholarly research. In this book this authors present the everyday experiences of this population by specifically focusing on Arab and Iranian Americans. Using focus groups and interviews, respondents were asked to comment on their everyday experiences in the realms of public spaces, educational settings, work, housing, and family. Through concrete descriptions and analysis of how Arab and Iranian Americans are confronted with matters of ethnic and racial inequality, this work's primary aim is to debunk entrenched stereotypes by bringing to the forefront the human complexity of the Middle Eastern experience. Marvasti and McKinney argue that the discrimination and exclusion faced by this group cannot be fully understood using the existing paradigm of minority-majority group interactions. The political tensions between the U.S. and various Islamic countries in the Middle East combined with the September 11th terrorist attacks have cast Arab and Iranian Americans as a unique minority group. These facts have created a condition of hostility and suspicion in the daily interactions between Middle Eastern Americans and other Americans that is not faced by any other ethnic group today. At the same time, while there is a growing recognition in the sociological study of race and ethnicity of the so-called 'browning of America,' the research literature does not address how Middle Easterners figure into this demographic shift. This text will fill these general gaps in the race and ethnicity literature by making visible this minority group's everyday experiences and their strategies for coping with and resisting discrimination.
Modern Arab American fiction : a reader's guide / Steven Salaita. Syracuse : Syracuse University Press, 2011. 154pp. Main Library PS153.A73 S33 2011 : Within the spectrum of American literary traditions, Arab American literature is relatively new. Writing produced by Americans of Arab origin is mainly a product of the twentieth century and only started to flourish in the past thirty years. While this young but thriving literature varies widely in content and style, it emerges from a common community and within a specific historical, political, and cultural context. In Modern Arab American Fiction, Salaita maps out the landscape of this genre as he details rather than defines the last century of Arab American fiction....Exploring the works of such best-selling authors as Rabih Alameddine, Mohja Kahf, Laila Halaby, Diana Abu-Jaber, Alicia Erian, and Randa Jarrar, Salaita highlights the development of each author’s writing and how each has influenced Arab American fiction. He examines common themes including the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90, the representation and practice of Islam in the United States, social issues such as gender and national identity in Arab cultures, and the various identities that come with being Arab American. Combining the accessibility of a primer with in-depth critical analysis, Modern Arab American Fiction is suitable for a broad audience, those unfamiliar with the subject area, as well as scholars of the literature.
Muslim communities in North America / edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith. Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, [1994], ©1994. 545pp. BP67.U6 M86 1994 : This book provides the first in-depth look at Muslim life and institutions forming in North America. It considers the range of Islamic life in North America with its different racial-ethnic and cultural identities, customs, and religious orientations. Issues of acculturation, ethnicity, orthodoxy, and the changing roles of women are brought into focus. The authors provide insight into the lives of recent immigrants who are asking what is Islamically appropriate in a non-Muslim environment. Contrasts are drawn between Sunni and Shi i groups, and attention is given to the activities of some Sufi organizations. The growing Islamic community among African-American Muslims is examined, including the followers of Warith Deen Muhammad and the sectarians identified with black power, such as the Nation of Islam, Darul Islam, and the Five Percenters. The authors document the challenge and issues which American Muslims face, such as pressure from overseas Muslims; dress and education; the influence of Islamic revivalism on the development of the community in this country; and the maintenance of Muslim identity amidst the pressures for assimilation."
Muslim women in America : the challenge of Islamic identity today / Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Jane I. Smith, Kathleen M. Moore. New York : Oxford University Press, 2006. 190pp. Main Library E184.M88 H34 2006 : The treatment and role of women are among the most discussed and controversial aspects of Islam. The rights of Muslim women have become part of the Western political agenda, often perpetuating a stereotype of universal oppression. Muslim women living in America continue to be marginalized and misunderstood since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet their contributions are changing the face of Islam as it is seen both within Muslim communities in the West and by non-Muslims. In their public and private lives, Muslim women are actively negotiating what it means to be a woman and a Muslim in an American context....Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Jane I. Smith, and Kathleen M. Moore offer a much-needed survey of the situation of Muslim American women, focusing on how Muslim views about and experiences of gender are changing in the Western diaspora. Centering on Muslims in America, the book investigates Muslim attempts to form a new "American" Islam. Such specific issues as dress, marriage, childrearing, conversion, and workplace discrimination are addressed. The authors also look at the ways in which American Muslim women have tried to create new paradigms of Islamic womanhood and are reinterpreting the traditions apart from the males who control the mosque institutions. A final chapter asks whether 9/11 will prove to have been a watershed moment for Muslim women in America....This groundbreaking work presents the diversity of Muslim American women and demonstrates the complexity of the issues. Impeccably researched and accessible, it broadens our understanding of Islam in the West and encourages further exploration into how Muslim women are shaping the future of American Islam.
Muslims and the Making of America / Amir Hussain. Bayor University Press, 2016. 142pp. on order : "There has never been an America without Muslims"―so begins Amir Hussain, one of the most important scholars and teachers of Islam in America. Hussain, who is himself an American Muslim, contends that Muslims played an essential role in the creation and cultivation of the United States. Memories of 9/11 and the rise of global terrorism fuel concerns about American Muslims. The fear of American Muslims in part stems from the stereotype that all followers of Islam are violent extremists who want to overturn the American way of life. Inherent to this stereotype is the popular misconception that Islam is a new religion to America.
Muslims in America / Allen Verbrugge, book editor. Detroit : Greenhaven Press, [2005], ©2005. 159pp. Main Library E184.M88 M86 2005
Muslims in America : A Short History / Edward E. Curtis IV. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009. 144pp. Main Library E184.M88 C877 2009 : Muslims are neither new nor foreign to the United States. They have been a vital presence in North America since the 16th century. Muslims in America unearths their history, documenting the lives of African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, European, black, white, Hispanic and other Americans who have been followers of Islam....The book begins with the tale of Job Ben Solomon, a 18th century African American Muslim slave, and goes on to chart the stories of sodbusters in North Dakota, African American converts to Islam in the 1920s, Muslim barkeepers in Toledo, the post-1965 wave of professional immigrants from Asia and Africa, and Muslim Americans after 9/11. The book reveals the richness of Sunni, Shi'a, Sufi and other forms of Islamic theology, ethics, and rituals in the United States by illustrating the way Islamic faith has been imagined and practiced in the everyday lives of individuals. Muslims in America recovers the place of Muslims in the larger American story, too. Showing how Muslim American men and women participated in each era of U.S. history, the book explores how they have both shaped and have been shaped by larger historical trends such as the abolition movement, Gilded Age immigration, the Great Migration of African Americans, urbanization, religious revivalism, the feminist movement, and the current war on terror. It also shows how, from the very beginning of American history, Muslim Americans have been at once a part of their local communities, their nation, and the worldwide community of Muslims....The first single-author history of Muslims in America from colonial times to the present, this book fills a huge gap and provides invaluable background on one of the most poorly understood groups in the United States. Note: Also available online.
Muslims in American History: A Forgotten Legacy / Jerald F. Dirks. Amana Publications, 2006. 400pp. On order : Muslims in American History: A Forgotten Legacy confronts the prevalent myth that Islam in America is a relatively recent phenomenon. In reality, there is a centuries long history of the Muslim presence in America, which is all too often overlooked or misidentified. Written documentation, linguistic evidence, and reports of early Spanish explorers of the New World suggest Muslim contact with the Americas prior to Columbus. Muslims and Moriscos sailed with Columbus and were part of many of the Spanish explorations of the New World. Muslims comprised a significant percentage of the enslaved Africans who were brought to the Americas, and many Islamic residuals have found their way into contemporary African-American life and culture. At least one Muslim fought for American independence during the Revolutionary War, and many other Muslims were prepared to fight to keep American independence during the War of 1812. Another prominent Muslim was part of the taming! of the Wild West. Beginning in the late 19th century, successive waves of Muslim immigrants enriched America, and the phenomenon of Americans converting to Islam became increasingly widespread. In reviewing this history, the author presents a series of brief biographies of individual Muslims to illustrate the Muslim presence at each stage in American history. These biographies provide valuable role models with which Muslim youth in America can identify as they search for their identities as both Americans and Muslims.
My dream of stars : from daughter of Iran to space pioneer / Anousheh Ansari ; with Homer Hickam. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 234pp. Main Library CT275.A736 A3 2010 : Anousheh Ansari tells of her childhood in Iran and her family's exodus to America after the Islamic Revolution. After settling down in Texas, Anousheh built a computer technology firm from the ground up, which eventually allowed her to achieve her childhood dream of spaceflight. As the first-ever female commercial spaceflight participant, her story became politicized, culminating in a debate over whether she would be allowed to display both the American and Iranian flags on the sleeve of her spacesuit. Later, Anousheh started The Ansari Foundation, a nonprofit which supports social entrepreneurship, and is especially committed to ensuring the freedom of women around the world and supporting female entrepreneurs. Ultimately, this is the story of a woman who has become a role model to people around the globe struggling to overcome economic and cultural barriers, as well as those dreamers who look upon the stars.
Not quite American? : the shaping of Arab and Muslim identity in the United States / Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad. Waco, Tex. : Baylor University Press, c2004. 58pp. Main Library E184.A65 H34 2004 : Haddad's lecture is a reflection on Muslim and Arab identity in the United States and the profound impact that the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 had, and will continue to have, in shaping this identity.
Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11 : from invisible citizens to visible subjects / edited by Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2008. 378pp. Main Library E184.A65 R33 2008 : Jamal (Princeton Univ.) and Naber (Univ. of Michigan) bring together eight social scientists to examine Arab Americans through the lens of race theory. The result is a volume with a consistent theme--the "racialization process" of Arab Americans after 9/11--and a rich discursive analysis of "whiteness," "blackness," and "otherization." Several chapters are based on survey data about the perceptions of Arab Americans by themselves and the general public. "Contrary to the stereotype that it is mostly an immigrant Muslim population, over one-half of Arab Americans are U.S.-born, 82 percent are U.S. citizens, and estimated two-thirds are Christian," the book states. The reader also finds data about discrimination, from lynching in 1929 to racial profiling in the aftermath of 9/11. The analysis of misrepresentations in The New York Times is particularly interesting. Some contributors successfully examine the impact of international factors, such as 1967 Arab-Israeli War, on Arab Americans. The missing part is a set of explicit recommendations to policy makers and social activists to solve problems listed in the book.
Residential patterns of Arab Americans : race, ethnicity and spatial assimilation / Jennifer Leila Holsinger. El Paso : LFB Scholarly Pub., 2009. 202pp. Main Library E184.A65 H65 2009 : While immigrants from Arab countries have been coming to American for over one hundred years, there has been a change since 1965 in both the numbers and the country of origin. Earlier arrivals came from the Mediterranean Near East: Syria, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine. Recently there have been more from Iraq, Iran and the Arabian peninsula. Holsinger (sociology, Whitworth University) looks at the assimilation patterns of Arab immigrants by studying residential settlement patterns. She notes that Arab immigrants, especially recent ones, have the advantage of being well-educated and financially secure when they arrive. Many go to American universities and remain to work in well-paying professions. Holsinger found few real Arab-American neighborhoods. Due to their socio-economic level and their governmental designation as White, they are able to integrate into any neighborhood. The paradox she observes, evident even before 9/11, is that there is still prejudice against people of Arab descent, especially if they retain cultural practices that are unfamiliar to mainstream America. The experience of Arab immigrants signals a change in traditional patterns of assimilation. In her conclusions, Holsinger offers suggestions for further study.
Running For All the Right Reasons : a Saudi-Born Woman's Pursuit of Democracy / Ferial Masry & Susan Chenard ; with a foreword by James Zogby. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2008. 191pp. Main Library F868.V5 M37 2008 : In 2004, Ferial Masry, born in Mecca, became the first Saudi American to run for political office in U.S. history. A recent immigrant and naturalized citizen with a heavy Middle Eastern accent, Masry made a spirited run for the California State Assembly seat in a staunchly Republican district, which sparked worldwide interest. She was ABC's Person of the Week, was interviewed by Peter Jennings, and made headlines in the New York Times and Associated Press. Against all odds, her grassroots campaign succeeded in winning the write-in vote, a historic victory for all Arab Americans....Running for All the Right Reasons chronicles Masry's remarkable life, from her childhood in Mecca and her decision to emigrate to the United States to her career as an educator and her bold entry into the world of politics. Masry's story, as well as her passionate belief in democracy and commitment to her community, is the stuff of legends.
Shi'ism in America / Liyakat Nathani Takim. New York : New York University Press, c2009. 285pp. Main Library BP192.7.U6 T35 2009 : Shi'ism in America provides the first general overview of the Shi'i community in America, tracing its history, its current composition, and how Shi'a have negotiated their identity in the American context. There are over two million Shi'is, who differ from Sunni Muslims in their understandings of the early line of succession after Muhammad, in the United States. With community roots going back sometimes close to one hundred years, Shi'is can be found in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and Dearborn, Michigan. Early in the century, Shi'is and Sunnis sometimes arrived at the same time, worshipped together, shared similar experiences, and confronted the same challenges despite their sectarian differences. Both tracing the early history and illuminating the more recent past with surveys and interviews, Takim explores the experiences of this community. Filling an important scholarly gap, he also demonstrates how living in the West has impelled the Shi'i community to grapple with the ways in which Islamic law may respond to the challenges of modernity. Shi'ism in America provides a much-needed overview of the history of this United States religious community, from religious, cultural, and political institutions to inter-group relations, to the experience of African American Shi'is.
Silent victims : the plight of Arab & Muslim Americans in post 9/11 America / by Aladdin Elaasar. Bloomington, Ind. : AuthorHouse, c2004. 227pp. Main Library E184.A65 E37 2004 : Whenever people face sadness and tragedy then complimenting something that comes out of it becomes harder. This book provides the nation with a rich detailed lived history, which did not begin with September 11, 2001. It is an excellent compilation of events, reports and lived experiences. This documented collection of story will give readers a new chance to fill in the gaps within a historical context that Arabs and Muslims Americans have lived in. In the wake of the events of 9/11, since the tears flooded our faces, we have been forced to recount the events that created the bias and hostility toward Muslims, Arabs, and Islam. This book is a must read for those who are willing to consider the possibility that Arab and Muslim Americans should not become the scapegoats for the world''s disharmony." Dr. Sima Imam, Professor of Education at National Louis University, Illinois, and President of American Muslim Civil Rights.The increasing public's curiosity about the Arabs, Muslims and the Arab and Muslim Americans in the United States has been unprecedented. This book explains the phenomenon of stereotypes stigmatizing Arabs and Muslims, and how it has affected their lives, a phenomenon that demonized and dehumanized almost two billion people in this world.
This Muslim American Life : dispatches from the War on Terror / Moustafa Bayoumi. New York : New York University Pres, [2015] 309pp. Main Library E184.M88 B39 2015 : "Over the last few years, Moustafa Bayoumi has been an extra in Sex and the City 2 playing a generic Arab, a terrorist suspect (or at least his namesake 'Mustafa Bayoumi' was) in a detective novel, the subject of a trumped-up controversy because a book he had written was seen by right-wing media as pushing an 'anti-American, pro-Islam' agenda, and was asked by a U.S. citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed. Others have endured far worse fates. Sweeping arrests following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the incarceration and deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, based almost solely on their national origin and immigration status. The NYPD, with help from the CIA, has aggressively spied on Muslims in the New York area as they go about their ordinary lives, from noting where they get their hair cut to eavesdropping on conversations in cafés. In This Muslim American Life, Moustafa Bayoumi reveals what the War on Terror looks like from the vantage point of Muslim Americans, highlighting the profound effect this surveillance has had on how they live their lives. To be a Muslim American today often means to exist in an absurd space between exotic and dangerous, victim and villain, simply because of the assumptions people carry about you. In gripping essays, Bayoumi exposes how contemporary politics, movies, novels, media experts and more have together produced a culture of fear and suspicion that not only willfully forgets the Muslim-American past, but also threatens all of our civil liberties in the present"
Transnational Muslims in American society / Aminah Beverly McCloud. Gainesville : University Press of Florida, c2006. 161pp. Main Library E184.M88 M38 2006 : McCloud presents profiles of immigrant Muslims and their US-born children. The book focuses primarily on Muslims who have migrated from the Middle East (Palestinians, Egyptians, Sudanese, and Iranians) and South Asia (India and Pakistan), and others from China and Somalia. Using informal interviews, the author demonstrates the cultural diversity of immigrant Muslim communities in the US, dispelling the myth of homogenous diaspora Muslims. McCloud provides a brief introduction to Islam followed by historical backgrounds on each ethnic Muslim community: family values, beliefs, and practices; language and culture; social and professional organizations. She includes not only Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, but also Ismailis, Sufis, and so forth; and deals with issues such as the status of women, gender separation, patriarchy, leadership, legitimacy, and patterns of adaptation at school and workplace. McCloud reviews for accuracy and authenticity stereotypes and imaginations about Islam and Muslims as depicted in various US media and in studies by non-Muslim authors. Stressing that Muslims of many ethnic groups are one of the world's largest diasporas in the US, the author outlines some of the challenges encountered by them since 9/11. Informative, interesting, and timely, this book is an important contribution to understanding the cultural diversity of immigrant Muslim communities in the US.
Uncompromised: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA / Nada Prouty. Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. 288pp. Main Library JK468.I6 P78 2011 : When Nada Prouty came to the United States as a young woman, she fell in love with the democracy and freedom of her new home. After a childhood in war-torn Lebanon with an abusive father and facing the prospect of an arranged marriage, she jumped at the chance to forge her own path in America-a path that led to exciting undercover work in the FBI, then the CIA. As a leading agent widely lauded by her colleagues, she worked on the most high-profile terrorism cases in recent history, including the hunt for Saddam Hussein and the bombing of the USS Cole, often putting her life on the line and usually getting her man....But all this changed in the wake of 9/11, at the height of anti-Arab fervor, when federal investigators charged Prouty with passing intelligence to Hezbollah. Lacking sufficient evidence to make their case in court, prosecutors went to the media, suggesting that she had committed treason. Prouty, dubbed “Jihad Jane” by the New York Post, was quickly cast as a terrorist mastermind by the relentless 24-hour news cycle, and a scandal-hungry public ate it up....Though the CIA and federal judge eventually exonerated Prouty of all charges, she was dismissed from the agency and stripped of her citizenship. In Uncompromised, Prouty tells her whole story in a bid to restore her name and reputation in the country that she loves. Beyond a thrilling story of espionage and betrayal, this is a sobering commentary on cultural alienation, the power of fear, and what it means to truly love America.
We too sing America : South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants shape our multiracial future / Deepa Iyer. New York : The New Press, [2015] 229pp. E184.A1 I94 2015 : "Many of us can recall the targeting of South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh people in the wake of 9/11. We may be less aware, however, of the ongoing racism directed against these groups in the past decade and a half. In We Too Sing America, nationally renowned activist Deepa Iyer catalogs recent racial flashpoints, from the 2012 massacre at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, to the violent opposition to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and to the Park 51 Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Iyer asks whether hate crimes should be considered domestic terrorism and explores the role of the state in perpetuating racism through detentions, national registration programs, police profiling, and constant surveillance. She looks at topics including Islamophobia in the Bible Belt; the "Bermuda Triangle" of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim hysteria; and the energy of new reform movements, including those of "undocumented and unafraid" youth and Black Lives Matter. In a book that reframes the discussion of race in America, a brilliant young activist provides ideas from the front lines of post-9/11 America."
Whitewashed : America's Invisible Middle Eastern Minority / John Tehranian. New York : New York University Press, c2009. 246pp. Main Library E184.A65 T45 2009 : This book is a compelling study of one of the critical issues of our time: the debate regarding the issues of assimilation, immigration, and national identity. Tehranian (Chapman Univ.) is a professor of law, a litigator, and a Middle Eastern American who has experienced the stigma of his origins and thus writes knowledgeably about the problem. Citing numerous court cases, Tehranian leads readers through the labyrinth of white identity in the US and discusses where Middle Eastern citizens fit in this puzzle. He challenges the civil rights problems that still exist and offers some possible solutions, such as reforming media images of Middle Eastern people. The increasing interaction between the Middle East and the US indicates that it is crucial to recognize the social forces that drive people and to deconstruct those images in order to free members of the public to create their own images based upon individual impressions. Tehranian raises many questions concerning Americans' identity and racial consciousness. A well-written and extremely readable book suited to general readers as well as faculty and researchers.
Young American Muslims : dynamics of identity / Nahid Afrose Kabir. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, c2013. 229pp. Main Library E184.M88 K33 2013 : Many young Americans cherish an American dream, "that all men are created equal," and the election of America's first black president in 2008 has shown that America has moved forward. Yet since 9/11 Muslim Americans have faced renewed challenges, with their loyalty and sense of belonging questioned....This book presents a journey into the ideas, outlooks, and identity of young Muslims in America today. Based on nearly four hundred in-depth interviews with young Muslims from Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Virginia, all the richness and nuance of these minority voices can be heard.
Zeitoun / by Dave Eggers. San Francisco : Mcsweeney's Books, 2009. 351pp. Main Library E184.A65 E34 2009 : When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers’s riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun’s roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy — an American who converted to Islam — and their children, and the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible. Like What Is the What, Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research — in this case, in the United States, Spain, and Syria.
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