REFLECTIONS ON MUSLIMS IN AMERICA

Zareena Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority (New York & London: NYU Press, 2014) (From the backcover: "Islam Is A Foreign Country explores some of the most pressing debates about and among American Muslim: what does it mean to be Muslim and American? Who has the authority to speak for Islam and to lead the stunningly diverse population of American Muslims? Do their ties to the larger Muslim world world undermine their efforts to make Islam an American religion? [] By examining the tension between American Muslims' ambivalence toward the American mainstream and their desire to enter it, Grewal puts contemporary debates about Islam in the context of a long history of American racial and religious exclusions. Probing the competing obligations of American Muslims to the nation and to the umma (the global community of Muslim believers), Islam is a Foreign Country investigates the meaning of American citizenship and the place of Islam in a global age.").