Suburban Islam

[a] masterfully written ethnographic study ... Howe paints an artful portrait of one community coping in ordinary ways with an extraordinary assault on their cultural citizenship. Howe's book will appeal to both scholars and advanced students in the humanistic and social scientific study of Islam and other American religions. She writes as an embodied ethnographer ... Howe offers a compelling discussion of how contemporary non-Muslim and Muslim academics' production of knowledge * including her ownbecomes a resource for intra-Muslim identity work ... Howe's book provokes us to resist reifying the shifting ground of religious lives in multiple and unexpected spaces.Lance D. Laird, Journal of Religion *
From spatial analysis and lived religion, to consumer culture and immigration studies, Suburban Islam makes more interventions than its brief title suggests. It is a delight to read, and students and scholars of Islam in America, religion and space, and religion and consumer culture will find Howe's work particularly useful. * Michael McLaughlin, Reading Religion *
Howe's work is important in the scholarship of Muslim Americans, giving us a view into what Islam looks like for young professionals in suburban America. Her discussion of the community's attempt at separating culture and religion is a theme that exists beyond the Muslim American community ... Howe provides a key component in better understanding Muslims in America by contributing a thorough case study of suburban Islam. * Iman Ahmad-Sediqe, Review of Religious Research *
A tour de force! This beautifully written ethnography analyzes a suburban Islam fashioned in the context of American gender relations, consumer culture, racialization, socioeconomic privilege, and above all, Islamophobia. Howe richly depicts the religious culture of this 'third space,' where Muslims study and debate the Qur'an and Islamic ethics, form meaningful personal relationships, and celebrate the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. The book reveals a unique portrait of the multiple and contested meanings of being Muslim and being American in our era. * Edward E. Curtis IV, author of Muslims in America: A Short History *
This book provides a theoretically nuanced and multilayered exposition of the construction of Islamic spaces and religious authority among middle-class American Muslims whose beliefs and practices * until nowhad eluded critical examination because very few of them affiliate with mosques or national Muslim organizations. Howe has given us a model for understanding how everyday practices produce spaces where religious traditions and notions of national belonging are negotiated.-Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, author of A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order *
Ethnographically rich and analytically powerful, Suburban Islam explores how the upper-middle-class members of Chicago's Webb Foundation navigate and negotiate religious and national belonging in the post-9/11, pre-Trump era. Justine Howe analyzes racialized identieids, including whiteness, and shows how participants demonstrate their Americanness through commitments to the nuclear family, gender equality, and religious pluralism. Suburban Islam is essential reading for both scholars and students. * Kecia Ali, author of The Lives of Muhammad *