Post-9/11: Making Islam an American Religion
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2014, Vol 5, Issue 2
Abstract
This article explores several key events in the last 12 years that led to periods of heightened suspicion about Islam and Muslims in the United States. It provides a brief overview of the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiment known as “Islamophobia”, and it investigates claims that American Muslims cannot be trusted to be loyal to the United States because of their religion. This research examines American Muslim perspectives on national security discourse regarding terrorism and radicalization, both domestic and foreign, after 9/11. The article argues that it is important to highlight developments, both progressive and conservative, in Muslim communities in the United States over the last 12 years that belie suspicions of widespread anti-American sentiment among Muslims or questions about the loyalty of American Muslims. The article concludes with a discussion of important shifts from a Muslim identity politics that disassociated from American identity and ‘American exceptionalism’ to a position of integration and cultural assimilation.
Authors and Affiliations
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Nazir Nader Harb
Spiritual Identity: Personal Narratives for Faith and Spiritual Living
In this article we outline a theoretical and methodological framework for spiritual identity as meaning in folk psychology. Identity is associated with psychological elements of personality that help people manage a ti...
Hindu Students and Their Missionary Teachers: Debating the Relevance of Rebirth in the Colonial Indian Academy
This essay provides a meta-narrative for the philosophical dialogues that took place in colonial India between Scottish missionary philosophers and philosophers of Vedanta on the topic of ¯ karma and rebirth. In partic...
“Getting Along” in Parkchester: A New Era in Jewish–Irish Relations in New York City 1940–1970
The history of conflict between New York City’s Irish Americans and east European Jews dates back to the close of the 19th century. They disputed over jobs, union memberships, housing, and frequently over politics. The...
What Are the “Long Nostrils” of YHWH?
The mention of YHWH’s “nostrils” (ʾapayīm) in the Bible is classically interpreted as a metonymy of the face and/or a metaphor for anger. The reference to their length and even to their elongation, however, rules out any...
Transcendentalism and Chinese Perceptions of Western Individualism and Spirituality
The article presents essential aspects of the intellectual debates in China over the theoretical achievement of Transcendentalism to generate a conception of individualism that bears the mark of Confucian and Daoist in...