Islam in America: Making Muslim Life and Community in the U.S

Catalog description

Muslims make up a little over 1% of the U.S. population yet Islam is one of the key issues in contemporary U.S. politics. This course offers a framework to understand Islam as a minority religious tradition which has become in recent decades a site of political contestation. Our approach will contextualize the history of Muslim communities through two crucial processes, the Transatlantic slave trade and immigration, in order to understand the formation of Muslim communities and practices. We will look at how Islam becomes integrated in Black religious imagination across the decades of the twentieth century while simultaneously tracing the way in which Islam becomes an anchor for people and families across the immigrant experience. We will look at the lingering effects of the War on Terror and the politics of Islamophobia on democracy. As we chart the historical development of Muslim life in the United States, we will pay attention to the question of political representation as well as new forms of Muslim religious reflection and cultural expression, particularly jazz music, comedy, fashion, forms of spiritual community for women, critiques of supremacy, and discourses of sexuality. A focus on the United States allows us to see Islam in relation to questions of equality and religious pluralism, such that Islam becomes a window on to the democratic project writ large. No prior experience necessary: all are welcome.