Islam Is a Foreign Country

A fascinating book about Islam in America and its relationship to global Islam in light of controversies within the religion about who has authority to speak for Islam. This is very much an academic book, with 30 pages of notes, and technical language that was hard for me, an outsider to the field, to understand. It is also highly engaging, though, because the academic arguments are illustrated with narratives about several American Muslim “student travelers” who are studying at overseas Islamic universities and in more informal settings, in hopes of bringing back knowledge and authority to their American mosques. In most cases, the Americans feel they have been enriched by their study experiences but that they have not accomplished what they had hoped. Their voices and their stories were my doorway into this totally unfamiliar subject.

Alongside the academic argument about American Islam's relationship to global Islam, there is a nice history of the development of Islam in America, including the Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple of America. I learned more about Malcolm X than I had known before, and learned about some of the most notable American Muslim leaders and organizations. One of the themes of this book is that Islam had presented itself as an egalitarian refuge to black Americans struggling with the racism of American society, so that a racially aware Islam developed in the US as a specifically American strain. The specific needs of black American Muslim communities are apparently not well understood when people from those communities go overseas to traditionally Muslim countries for study. Also, there appears to be tension (or lack of understanding) between immigrant Muslim congregations and predominantly black American congregations.

This was a challenging but rewarding read. I scratched the surface of what there is to know about Islam and its history in the US, but what I learned is important stuff.