A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1: White American Muslims before 1975 is the first in-depth study of the thousands of white Americans who embraced Islam between 1800 and 1975. Drawing from little-known archives, interviews, and rare books and periodicals, Patrick D. Bowen unravels the complex social and religious factors that led to the emergence of a wide variety of American Muslim and Sufi conversion movements. While some of the more prominent Muslim and Sufi converts--including Alexander Webb, Maryam Jameelah, and Samuel Lewis--have received attention...

The public debate on Shariʿa councils in Britain has been heavily influenced by the assumption that the councils exist as religious authorities and that those who use them exercise their right to religious freedom. In Shariʿa Councils and Muslim Women in Britain Tanya Walker draws on extensive fieldwork from over 100 cases to argue for a radically different understanding of the setting and dynamics of the Shariʿa councils. The analysis highlights the pragmatic manoeuvrings of Muslim women, in pursuit of defined objectives, within limited space - holding in tension both...

In A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 2: The African American Islamic Renaissance, 1920-1975 Patrick D. Bowen offers an in-depth account of African American Islam as it developed in the United States during the fifty-five years that followed World War I. Having been shaped by a wide variety of intellectual and social influences, the ‘African American Islamic Renaissance’ appears here as a movement that was characterized by both great complexity and diversity. Drawing from a wide variety of sources—including dozens of FBI files, rare books and periodicals,...

In Home and Migrant Identity in Dialogical Life Stories of Moroccan and Turkish Dutch, Femke J. Stock explores the multivoiced life stories of Dutch adults of Moroccan and Turkish descent. Focusing on stories about ‘home’, this book deals with social relationships and being oneself, countries and houses, discrimination and Islamophobia, family and religion, and how these feature in personal narratives. Through microanalysis of case study material using Dialogical Self Theory, this book formulates and substantiates clear insights into descendants of migrants’ roots and routes, their...

In Islamic Leadership in the European Lands of the Former Ottoman and Russian Empires the history and contemporary development of Islamic leadership in over a dozen of Eastern European countries is analysed. The studies are presented through a double prism: the institutional structures of the Muslim communities and the place of the muftiates in the current national constellations on one hand, and the dimension of the spiritual guidance emanating from the muftiates on the other. The latter includes aspects such as the muftiates’ powers and role in supervision of mosques and other religious...

In 2006 against the background of the increasing problematization of Muslims and Islam in German public debate, the German government established the German Islam Conference. In a post 9/11 world, this was a time period shaped by the global war on terror, changes in the German naturalization law, the proliferation of racism targeting Muslims, and the expansion of security apparatuses. In Governing Muslims and Islam in Contemporary Germany Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar critically analyzes the institutionalization of the Conference and the different projects this institution has set in motion...

In Exploring the Multitude of Muslims in Europe a number of friends and colleagues of Jørgen S. Nielsen have joined together to celebrate his life and work by reflecting his more than forty years of scholarly contributions to the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe. The fourteen articles move through conceptualisations, productions and explorations of the multitudes of Muslims in Europe, and the authors draw on Jørgen S. Nielsen’s own work on the history and challenges of the Muslim community in Europe, critical thinking, ethnicities and theologies of Muslims in Europe, Muslim...

Islam in Spain has been transformed from a historical to a social matter in recent decades, attracting the attention of experts from a variety of disciplines. However, contributions to the field have been somewhat disperse. The multidisciplinary nature of the research done -mainly by specialists in Islamic Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and Law- has not been conducive to debates between specialists or to the publication of comprehensive works that recognize the wealth of views and findings. Observing Islam in Spain contains the keys to understanding current debates about the presence of...

Where is dār al-islām, and who defines its boundaries in the 21st century? In Dār al-Islām Revisited. Territoriality in Contemporary Islamic Legal Discourse on Muslims in the West, Sarah Albrecht explores the variety of ways in which contemporary Sunni Muslim scholars, intellectuals, and activists reinterpret the Islamic legal tradition of dividing the world into dār al-islām, the “territory of Islam,” dār al-ḥarb, the “territory of war,” and other geo-religious categories. Starting with an overview of the rich history of debate about this tradition, this book traces how and...

The edited volume Both Muslim and European: Diasporic and Migrant Identities of Bosniaks scrutinizes some of the new aspects of the Bosniak history and identity and connects them with the experience of migration and diaspora formation. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, to volume tackles a variety of important questions and issues such as: the impact of migration waves on the Bosniak identity; dealing with the experience of war, genocide and forced displacement; the dual cultural code of being “in-between the two worlds”; the role of religion, language and culture in everyday life;...