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American and Muslim Worlds before 1900 challenges the prevailing assumption that when we talk about "American and Muslim worlds", we are talking about two conflicting entities that came into contact with each other in the 20th century. Instead, this book shows there is a long and deep seam of history between the two which provides an important context for contemporary events -- and is also important in its own right. Some of the earliest American Muslims were the African slaves working in the plantations of the Carolinas and Latin America. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder himself, was frequently called an "infidel" and suspected of hidden Muslim sympathies by his opponents. Whether it was the sale of American commodities in Central Asia, Ottoman consuls in Washington, orientalist themes in American fiction, the uprisings of enslaved Muslims in Brazil, or the travels of American missionaries in the Middle East, there was no shortage of opportunities for Muslims and inhabitants of the Americas to meet, interact and shape one another from an early period.

Repositioning mosques as social, cultural and political spaces, The Contemporary British Mosque provides new insights on key contemporary debates, the religious identity of Britain, secularisation, the far-right and terrorism, and gender equality.The book explores the story of the British mosque, from humble house conversions to grand works of architecture, and the increasingly important role they play in public life and the religious devotions of millions of British Muslims. It draws on a sociological approach based on fieldwork and ethnographic case-studies, combined with reviews of databases and historical documents to provide a perspective on the British mosque based on the Muslim congregants who worship at them.Abdul-Azim Ahmed details the establishment of early mosques in Britain during the era of Empire, and the more rapid growth in the years following the Second World War. It answers the question of what a mosque does, and what role it has for Muslims and the wider society. The case of the Muslim congregation, a poorly understood and often overlooked dimension of religion in Britain, is detailed, and through the congregation, issues of diversity, denomination, sacredness, and society are explored.

This book interrogates the patterns and discursive structures that have generated the seeming urgency of Muslims' integration. Focusing on Germany, it problematizes the grounds on which politics of integration are justified and reasoned upon, and thereby investigates divergent operations of power vis-à-vis Muslims and Islam in a formally liberal-secular society. The integration paradigm in Germany has been predicated on an imperial knowledge regime, in which Islam figures as the external friend or enemy of an imagined Christian secular. This book analyzes three kinds of integration practices as symptomatic sites for the multifaceted dimensions of power in this paradigm: the scientific measurement of Muslims' degrees of integration which are correlated with their degrees of religiosity; the politics of recognition promoted by state-organized dialogue with Muslims; and the threat of sanction, found in the regulations of citizenship and explicitly in citizenship tests. Centrally, the book argues that the paradigm of integration navigates between universalist claims and particularistic-racial and religious-re-enactments of a secular nation-state framework at moments in which this very framework is crumbling.

Drawing on original fieldwork, Carl Morris examines Muslim cultural production in Britain, with a focus on the performance-based entertainment industries: music, comedy, film, television and theatre. It is a seminal study that charts the growing agency and involvement of British Muslims in cultural production over the last two decades. Morris sets this discussion within the context of wider religious, social and cultural change, with important insights concerning the sociological profile, religious lives and public visibility of Muslims in contemporary Britain. Morris draws on theoretical considerations concerning the mediatization of religion and cosmopolitanization in a globally-connected world. He argues that a new generation of media-savvy and internationalist Muslim cultural producers in Britain are constructing counter narratives in the public sphere and are reshaping everyday religious lives within their own communities. This is having a profound impact upon areas that range from Islamic authority and religious practice, to political and public debate, and understandings of Muslim identity and belonging.

"Through a comparative ethnographic analysis of divergent French Muslim and Catholic experiences of (non)belonging and civic engagement, this book offers new insights into the consequences of majoritarian national identity upon the lives of variously positioned pious citizens. Drawing upon 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Paris, Lille, and Lyon, France within spaces of religious education and interfaith dialogue, the book illustrates the constraints that Muslims face as compared to their more privileged Catholic co-citizens"--