Search Results

The forms of interaction mediated by the internet brings society closer to the transformations of distinct forms of socialization and the contemporary idea of community. There exists a construction of an imagined community with ethnic and religious borders located in the United States and on the internet. Islamic on one side and Latino on the other side are characteristics expressed in that imagined community that in virtual space can take the form of a cyberenvironment of Islam Latino. Latinx Muslims sought to be represented in front of other Muslims and civil society itself, such as the Latino community in the United States. The internet allows the creation of an extensive community based on the universal ummah and Islamic discourse. However, while the internet allows Islam to reach to minorities such as Latinos, it also enables the creation of cyberspaces where Latinx Muslims can express their needs as a community and claim their Muslim identity; what could form a flexible and changeable cyberenvironment according to their needs. Therefore, the margins that shape the cyberenvironment are a hybridization between Islamic and ethnic aspects.

Even among those most invested in defining “terrorism,” there is an inability to agree on a shared definition. This suggests the political nature of the concept. Terrorism is best understood in relation to other social phenomena, particularly colonialism and capitalism. This essay discusses several questions on the topic of terrorism and violence: What is at stake in the definition of terrorism? What is the relationship of Muslims and Islam to terrorism? What is the scope of counterterrorism? In addressing these questions, the article discusses a range of topics including Black Power, paper terrorism, “Barbary” pirates, the Christian Identity Movement, black identity extremism, racially motivated violent extremism, and the permeation of terrorism concerns into sectors, including education and natural disaster management.

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is arguably the most influential of organizations and institutions that represent and serve the interests of the growing community of Muslims in the United States and Canada. ISNA evolved in the early 1980s from the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada (MSA), founded in 1963 by international students on North American college campuses. ISNA has secured its place among Muslim Americans by opening its membership to all Muslim Americans, regardless of ethnicity or sectarian persuasion. Further, its member-elected leadership facilitates timely and relevant responses to the changing civic and political environment. Headquartered in suburban Plainfield, Indiana, ISNA is governed by a board of directors and managed by an executive director as its chief executive officer. As an Internal Revenue Service–designated tax-exempt charity, ISNA is funded by contributions from members and donors and by revenues from its conventions and conferences. ISNA claims and promotes leadership and service as its guiding principles and draws from those themes for its most visible activities: an annual convention, its flagship bimonthly publication, two annual education forums, and its active engagement with governmental and religious institutions. A vibrant youth program, an inclusive orientation, a stewardship outlook, and membership open to Muslims of all sectarian persuasions have earned ISNA a prominent place in the American Muslim community. ISNA’s comprehensive work in many areas of Muslim-American life has enabled it to initiate and lead collaborative initiatives among Muslim organizations to advance common goals. Yet, during the nearly sixty years of their existence, MSA and ISNA have endured a few financial and operational challenges. Funding by core supporters and diligence by committed officers helped strengthen ISNA’s resilience and reinforce its ingrained appeal to North American Muslims. By thoughtfully collaborating with faith-based organizations, civic-minded activist groups, and governmental entities at national levels, ISNA has secured a preeminent position as the representative voice of Muslim Americans. ISNA’s annual conventions and flagship magazine are recognized as significant contributions to the maturity of the Muslim American presence in North America.

Arabic-speaking peoples, including Palestinians mostly Christian from Ottoman-controlled lands and later living under European mandates in greater Syria, migrated to the Americas, during the last quarter of the 19th century and until the end of the World War II. The creation of the State of Israel in May 1948 meant the expulsion and forced migration of yet more Palestinians, some settling in refugee camps in the region and others moving to distant countries, such as Colombia. This new wave of Palestinian immigrants was overwhelmingly Muslim. The Palestinian diaspora in the 21st century comprises about ten million people around the world and is highly diverse in terms of religious identity. Some communities have organized around supporting the development of their host countries and homeland; nonetheless, not many people are aware of these stories. Also, it is common in the “West” to witness accusations that Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs in general are violent by nature, as a result of a series of orientalist misconceptions about a people and a religion that, despite exceeding 1,600 billion believers around the world, remains misunderstood. Something similar happens with the Palestinian diaspora in Colombia, where little research has been undertaken to historicize their presence and interactions. Primary and secondary sources illustrate how the Palestinian Muslim immigrant community in Colombia has integrated into the local society and strengthened its ties on a social level beyond the political and economic issues, with consideration of its religious identity and minority condition.

Diverse Sunni, Shia, Ahmadiyya, Sufi, and other Muslims have lived in Canada since before its Confederation in 1867. The first were likely slaves being moved along the country's Atlantic coast, but there is little historical record to date. Settlers to Alberta have been examined to a greater extent, in part because there are more records of their presence. The first Canadian census in 1871 documented eight Muslims in Northern Alberta who likely worked as merchants and fur traders. There were, however, surely more than eight; Canadian Muslim minorities have long had reason to not be counted. The first officially recognized mosque followed, also in Alberta, in 1938. Immigration policies have long shaped Canadian Muslim life. War Measures Acts in 1914 and 1939 and policies that overtly preferred British Protestant subjects (until 1952) sharply limited Canadian religious diversity, including for Muslims. Initially, most of the early Muslim community were of Middle Eastern origin, but post–World War II immigration policy shifts meant that, beginning in 1968, Muslim Canadians became the country’s most ethnically, racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse religious group. The largest Muslim population growth to date in Canada came in the 1990s, with a 130-percent increase, the same period in which there was greater institutionalization of Muslim organizations across the country. In 2021, Canadian Muslims made up approximately 4.8 percent of the national population. Most Muslim Canadians have settled in Canada’s largest and most cosmopolitan urban regions in and surrounding Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. While statistical data show a growth in population, data on the different sectarian branches among the traditions of Islam have been largely inferred based on individual Muslims’ countries of origin. The largest group are Sunnis. Notable Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism have been charted since 2001; the number of reported Islamophobic incidents escalated sharply beginning in 2015, when federal-level anti-niqab policies were introduced. In 2019, anti-niqab laws were established in the province of Quebec.

Many scholars cite Edward Said’s concepts of Orientalism and Othering that drew on West-East binaries that position the West as civilized and the East as barbaric. Such Othering is represented in various Western media through the association of Muslims and Islam with violence, fundamentalism, and terrorism. While such representations were being developed within public discourse through early mass media during the post–World War II period, such discriminatory and reductionist representations of Muslims were more clearly seen within the US media during the Iranian Hostage Crisis and Gulf War periods. Said effectively outlines the various ways in which news coverage presented Arabs and Muslims as an imagined Other, reduced to specters of “Islam”—a constructed idea of the religion as violently opposed to American rights, values, and democracy. There is no doubt that the largest shift in nuance in the public discourse and media representation of Muslims occurred after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with hate speech, violence, racism, and fear toward Muslim communities increasing across North America. The main discourses on the Muslim communities in North America continued to be Orientalist in nature but more obviously racialized regardless of the varied geographical regions and ethnic heterogeneity of the peoples that make up these various Muslim groups. As a result, Islam itself was racialized and generally used as a pretext to oppress Muslims. Other major themes that emerge from the news coverage of Islam in North America include Islam as being oppressive, and the gendered representations of Muslims, especially veiled women as needing to be rescued.

In many respects, the sizeable Muslim populations in the United States and Canada have integrated well into the social and political mainstream. Most of them are first-generation immigrants, and face Islamophobic prejudice based on race as well as religious affiliation. Still, they are a comparatively well-educated population, and identify strongly with the countries they now call home. Exploring the response of these communities to sexual diversity, and to growing claims for recognition by queer Muslims themselves, goes to the heart of questions about the place of this growing community in North American settings. This inevitably raises questions about gender relations within those communities, in part because discrimination against Muslims is often justified with reference to their adherence to what are thought to be unchanging patriarchal values. Doubts about social and cultural integration are easily intensified by the racialized “otherness” of Muslim populations in the West generally, and these two North American countries in particular. The Pew Research Center in the United States and the Environics Institute in Canada have conducted surveys of the Muslim populations in their countries, permitting a comparison of attitudes in those communities with those in the general population, and in some cases also providing a view of cross-country differences. What this polling reveals is that Muslims are on balance more politically progressive than non-Muslim populations, and are strongly averse to supporting conservative parties. However, it also reveals relatively negative views of homosexuality, and this is echoed in the public statements, or silence, of the largest Muslim advocacy groups. The strength of such views owes much to the fact that the majority of North American Muslims have emigrated from regions of the world where such opinions are deeply embedded in social and cultural life. Traditionalist views of gender and sexuality are also reinforced by high levels of religiosity, which in other faith currents is also associated with what might be called traditionalist views of family. In the case of Muslims, their religious leadership in Muslim communities remains almost unanimous in its condemnation of homosexuality as an example of “Western” permissiveness. Mosque life, too, retains important elements of gender inequity. There are, however, important indications of change, induced in part by the urban environments where the great majority of Muslims live, and the increasing willingness of queer Muslims to assert their presence within their ethno-religious communities as well as in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) networks. Younger Muslims are more inclined than their elders to hold inclusive attitudes, particularly if they have been educated in North America. In the United States, too, the latest of the Pew surveys has shown an important overall shift toward more LGBTQ-positive attitudes. This is in part a result of Muslims’ recognition that exclusionary attitudes on issues related to sexuality are often held by those who are also harbor Islamophobic views, and that policies designed to protect one community are also necessary to protect them.

The so-called “Global War on Terror” shows the tense relationships between mainstream media and Muslims around the world. Islam and Arab culture serve as a contrasting otherness in the construction of Western identity. Orientalism allowed first Europe and then the United States to carry on their civilizing missions and expand their culture through the Arab and Muslim world. Since the 19th century, an Orientalist narrative was built to describe an “oriental other” that justifies domination. This tense relationship can be seen in the way mainstream media reproduces an Orientalist narrative that has “migrated” from the global North to the global South. Here, “mainstream media” refers to the most prominent European and American media, including newspapers, TV broadcasting, and news agencies with global reach such as: The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Independent, The Guardian, Le Monde, Figaro, CNN, the BBC, France 24, DW, the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and Agence France Press (AFP). Since the beginning of the 21st century the Orientalist narrative in mainstream media changed from being discriminatory speech into hate speech or Islamophobia. Peripheral media sources reproduce this narrative, as is the case with Mexico’s leading newspapers El Universal, Reforma, and La Jornada. Analysis of the treatment that these newspapers have offered of specific events such as the Second Intifada, 9/11, and the American invasion of Iraq illustrates how the Orientalist-Islamophobic narrative from mainstream media is reproduced to a large degree in the global South. Findings from a current postdoctoral research study involving interviews of Arabs and Muslims living in Mexico make it possible to establish how and to what extent the Orientalist-Islamophobic narrative spread by the mainstream media from the global North affects Arabs and Muslims in the global South.

Religion is front and center in the early 21st century. The United States not only has experienced an explosion of religious diversity on its own shores in the past five decades, but also is functioning in a world where the 20th century’s duel of political theories has given way to political and social movements driven by or making use of expressly religious identities and themes. All the while, the United States is trying the perfect the experiment in religious pluralism started by the framers of the US Constitution more than two centuries ago. Today, most people would say we have “freedom of religion,” guaranteed by the First Amendment. In reality, religious freedom and religious pluralism are something we have been struggling with since the inception of this country for a variety of reasons, including the presence of white and Christian normativity that is enshrined in our laws and policies and extends religious liberties haltingly, belatedly, and incompletely. The experiences of three immigrant cohorts that are both racial and religious minorities in the United States (South Asian American Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus) illustrate the dynamic nature of religion in public life, and the unfulfilled promise of complete equality. By illustrating the complexities of how racial status and religious background have impacted the perception and reception of these immigrant communities, it offers untold stories and discusses the lessons they offer for those who aspire to a genuinely equal and pluralistic America.

There is a relatively small yet emerging community of scholars working toward the development of Latinx Muslim studies. While the field itself is in its early development, Latinx Muslims across the Americas are, in fact, not new populations to these regions. Transnationally, both Islam and Muslims in the Americas have held influence on both the cultural and religious lives of Latinx peoples, including impacts on material and cultural practices such as food, language, architecture, and the like. These transnational cultural exchanges and developments are not limited to one-way interactions, as Muslim peoples in the Americas have equally been influenced by their social, cultural, and geographical surroundings. Despite this influence and history, the field of Latinx Muslim studies is still in its comparatively early formations. The area itself has notably risen out of the scholarship from religious studies spaces where scholars have focused mainly on questions of why contemporary Latinx persons convert (or, as some say, revert) to Islam. Though questions on conversion and demographics will continue, the area of Latinx Muslim Studies has begun to delve deeper into these communities, reflecting their richness and diversity that go beyond founding narratives surrounding conversion. Additionally, with such a strong focus on conversion, the stories and histories of generational Latinx Muslims continue to remain at the margins. The challenge following conversion is that of otherization experienced by Latinx Muslims, even from their own communities. Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s concept of nepantleras, those who exist amongst several cultures or “forces that clash,” is appropriate here, as Latinx Muslims are traversing in between spaces, and it is in this sometimes painful space in between where societal change occurs. Latinx Muslims act as nepantleras because they refuse “either/or” binaries and consider “and” as critical to their selfhood. Latinx Muslims thus typically identify as both Latinx and Muslim, an identity formation that rejects binary otherization or notions of needing to pick between the cultures they have inherited as well as those they chose to take part in. Many scholars have argued that racializations of Latinx peoples and Muslims have led to binary thinking of these populations as inherently separate, further contributing to nationalist dialogues. How can the study of the intersection of “Latinx” and “Muslim” contribute to the fields of religious studies, Latino studies, Muslim studies, and broader ethnic studies? Why is the study of these intersections only a recent development in the literature? It can be argued that academic silos have unintentionally mirrored the societal binary constructions of “either/or” that Anzaldúa described, and how those that exist within “and” continue to remain at the margins due to the institutional structure of academic disciplines. Engagement in interdisciplinarity—a continuing trend in religious studies—is often a means of addressing those communities at the margins and in-between spaces of society.