The Performance of Multilingual and ‘Ultralingual’ Devotional Practices by Young British Muslims

This meticulously researched and insightfully conceived work successfully captures, for the first time, the complexity of the processes of re-contextualization and construction of the Muslim identity of the culturally and linguistically ‘superdiverse’ youth in the current rapidly globalizing diasporic community in the UK. The author’s impressive multidisciplinary framework for analyzing Muslim devotional practices presents a powerful model for the study of similar phenomena across the world. * Rajeshwari Vijay Pandharipande, Professor Emerita, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA *
This richly layered study is a timely contribution to the fields of religious studies and sociolinguistics. In clear, lissome prose, Rosowsky guides the reader through the portal of certain Islamic devotional practices into matters of faith, language, identity, and social change. His theorization of ‘ultralingual’ performance is particularly valuable and this book is now the gold standard in the Sociology of Language and Religion. * Brian Bennett, Niagara University, USA *

I strongly recommend this book in which Rosowsky provides understanding for the importance of liturgical literacy, where the ability to memorize, recite, and make appropriate use of the content is often more important than understanding the content itself. He elegantly shows us that reading, in this sense, is not only for the purpose of obtaining knowledge; rather it is the very form and process – the embodiment – of religious worship.

* Jenny Berglund, Stockholm University, Sweden *