Search Results (55)

This article investigates Black American Islam as a semiotically mediated New Religious Movement (NRM), hybrid in nature and emerging from conditions of racialized governance, state surveillance, and social marginalization. Focused on the intersection of NRMs and political environments, the work engages in the reconstruction of a historical and conceptual lineage between Black Muslim movements and their mediated negotiation by Hip Hop artists. Grounded in Hall’s model of encoding/decoding and Hebdige’s subcultural theory, the transition of Islam-inspired semiotic markers from esoteric subcultural opacity to explicit orthodox adherence is demonstrated using historical analysis and close reading of symbolic expression in lyrics. The findings support a consideration of religious illegibility as aesthetic negotiation and strategy for political survival in circumstances of state scrutiny, with the subsequent consolidation of orthodox interpretations in Hip Hop signifying a recalibration of religious legibility in the securitized climate of a post-9/11 world. The contribution asserts that Black American Islam exemplifies NRMs’ instrumentalization of doctrinal elasticity and semiotic mediation in challenging socio-political surroundings, and its impact on negotiations of citizenship, political opposition, and religious identity. Full article

Objectives: Government surveillance of American Muslims has grown following 9/11, yet little scholarship has analyzed how this activity impacts political participation. We examine racial and ethnic variation in American Muslims’ experiences of state surveillance, as well as the connection between those experiences and voter turnout. Methods: Using a survey of 1000 American Muslims, we identify racial and ethnic patterns in being singled out in airports and by the police. We then analyze how being stopped in these venues shaped turnout behavior in the 2016 presidential election. Results: Black Muslims are more likely to encounter surveillance from the police, while Muslims who identify as Asian report the highest degree of monitoring in airports. We find that police encounters are linked to decreased electoral participation, but being singled out by airport security is not tied to a change in turnout. Conclusions: These findings provide a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of who is impacted by surveillance in the US and how that surveillance shapes American democracy. Full article

Cultured meat holds the potential to reduce environmental impacts and offer ethical advantages while replicating the nutritional, taste, and texture attributes of conventional meat. To date, most research on consumer acceptance of meat has focused on European and North American markets. In contrast, Muslim-majority countries remain underexplored, particularly regarding the compatibility of cultured meat with Islamic dietary laws. These societies are experiencing rising meat consumption, and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia rely heavily on meat imports. This narrative perspective article aims to systematically examine how specific stages of cultured meat production align with, or challenge, Islamic dietary (halal) principles. To this end, we adopt a stage-based analytical approach, mapping key technological steps in cultured meat production onto core requirements of Islamic jurisprudence. To this end, we critically and comprehensively examine the intersection between cultured meat production methods and the Islamic concept of halal, which extends beyond ingredient permissibility to encompass ethical, spiritual, and hygienic dimensions of food production. Key challenges to halal certification include the origin and status of starter cells, whether donor animals were slaughtered according to Islamic law, the permissibility of biopsied tissue, and the use of fetal bovine serum in growth media. The analysis indicates that while halal-compliant cultured meat is scientifically feasible, its adoption remains constrained by unresolved religious interpretations, regulatory fragmentation, and limited availability of halal-certified inputs. We emphasize the need for interdisciplinary collaboration among Islamic scholars, food scientists, certification bodies, and policymakers. From a policy perspective, harmonized halal standards, targeted investment in serum-free and animal-free culture media, and early regulatory engagement with Islamic authorities are essential to facilitate responsible market entry. Therefore, we suggest a multi-level governance and stage-gated halal decision framework for cultured meat. Proactive regulation and open dialogue with religious leaders are vital to ethically introduce cultured meat into Muslim markets, aligning innovation with Islamic values while supporting national sustainability and food security goals. Full article

Over the past few decades, conversions to Islam in Colombia have increased significantly, with Latin American “indigenous” Muslims (converts or direct descendants of converts) now forming the majority in most mosques, congregations and Islamic centers. These conversions arise from various motivations, including spiritual exploration, intellectual curiosity, and relational or emotional factors, often intertwined. A distinction can be drawn between “collective conversions,” where dozens of individuals in a given area embrace Islam together, and “individual conversions,” which are more dispersed and numerous. This article goes beyond examining the motivations and conditions of these conversions to explore the emergence of an “indigenous Islam” in Colombia and the dynamics surrounding the development and assertion of local Muslim communities, primarily composed of converts. Key challenges for these communities include negotiating knowledge and legitimacy within mixed groups of migrants and “indigenous” Muslims, constructing a plural identity that blends local (Latin American) social and cultural elements with Islamic references, including a sense of belonging to the universal Ummah, and contextualizing religious norms and discourses in light of the local social realities. Furthermore, this study delves into the critical issue of sustaining these small, often fragile communities over time. Drawing on fieldwork and qualitative analysis, this paper aims to provide insights into how Islam is being understood, lived, and rooted in a predominantly Catholic and secular Colombian society, contributing to broader discussions on religion, identity, and social change in Latin America. Full article

Practical theology is the application of theological reflection to concrete human experience—how faith is interpreted and embodied within shifting social realities. In the article, I examine how Islamic practical theology was interpreted amid the extensive crisis in light of the Gaza war in post-October 7 America, connecting it to the Islamic concept of da’wa (call to Islam). As a case study, I explore the doctrine of Sheikh Yasir Qadhi, one of the most prominent clerics in the US, who emerged as part of a new generation of young American imams who burst into the Western public sphere during the post-9/11 era. The rise of social media gained him prestige and solidified his global influence, amplifying his impact on shaping contemporary Islamic discourse to millions in America and the West. Similar to Qadhi’s post-9/11 use of da’wa as a practical theology that transformed Islamophobia into a means of strengthening faith and American Muslim identity, his post-October 7 da’wa discourse is a clear case of Islamic practical theology in response to crisis. Following the October 7 events, Qadhi framed the chaotic situation in Gaza as both a spiritual and activist catalyst. His emphasis on da’wa promoted personal piety, repentance, and communal solidarity, while also urging political activism, interfaith dialogue, and advocacy for global Muslim causes. This dual strategy—spiritual renewal intertwined with socio-political mobilization—illustrates how da’wa functions as a flexible instrument of Islamic practical theology addressing individual, communal, and national concerns. By comparing Qadhi’s post-9/11 and post-October 7 discourses, the article highlights a shift from defensive apologetics shaped by Islamophobia to a more assertive public theology intertwined with political engagement. This evolution illustrates how American Muslim leadership employs a living, crisis-responsive theology to redefine faith, identity, and responsibility in moments of profound upheaval. Full article

Recent global conflicts have amplified long-standing patterns of religion-related bias and discrimination in the U.S. The continuing war on Gaza has led to bias, hostility, and violence against both Muslims and Jews in the U.S. We present an overview of results from a new 1308-person national survey data collection gathered through NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel with oversamples of Jews and Muslims. Our findings reveal important reversals, asymmetries, polarities, and solidarities in perceptions and experiences of bias among Jews and Muslims and experiences of and responses to the war among religious groups. Jews were the most likely group to report experiences of religious bias and hostility in the U.S. and the most likely to register fear about future bias, followed by Muslims, a reversal of patterns from earlier research. Jews were the most likely religious group to report experiencing an increase in religious bias or hostility after October 7, 2023. Americans reported warm feelings towards Jews, Muslims, Israelis, and Palestinians but cool feelings towards the Israeli government and Hamas, suggesting that across most religious groups, Americans demonstrate more sympathy towards religious identities when compared to national identities and political entities. Full article

A substantial body of literature has examined the factors predicting happiness among various groups; however, few studies have systematically focused on happiness and related factors among Muslim Americans. Within the framework of the stress-process paradigm, this current study addresses fundamental arguments regarding job insecurity as a key predictor of happiness and the role of religious involvement as a buffering factor against the deleterious effects of job insecurity as a structural stressor. Thus, our work contributes to the literature by examining the potential relationships between religious covariates and job insecurity with happiness. Using data from the 2007 Pew Survey of Muslim Americans, we test the study hypotheses accordingly. Findings from the binary logistic regression models demonstrate that (a) job insecurity is a negative predictor of happiness for both males and females; (b) religious involvement is positively associated with happiness for both males and females; and remarkably (c) religious involvement buffers the adverse effects of job insecurity on happiness for females, not males. We discuss the study findings and address implications, limitations, and future research avenues. Full article

Emerging from the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in the riverine environments of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, the Miya Poetry movement is a unique environmentalism of the marginalized in contemporary Assam, India. Writing as a native scholar of Assam, I look at how the poetry movement displays the ethos of an ecopolitical spirituality that embodies the riverine ecology, environmental politics, and sacrality and how it challenges the majoritarian state’s narrative of the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers being denigrated as the “environmental waste producers”. My concept of “ecopolitical spirituality” is in tandem with Carol White’s ‘African American religious naturalism’, which elucidates the remembrance and evocation of traditional environmental relationships of and by the marginalized communities with the purpose of healing and rehumanizing themselves. I begin with a short history of the Miya Poetry movement among the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in Assam. It narrates how the leading Miya poets adopt the local “Miya” dialect to express the traditional and continued relationships of Bengali Muslim char-dwellers who find themselves entangled with and nurtured by the land, rivers, plants, and animals. I then examine how Bengali Muslims have been framed by the majoritarian state and Assamese society as “environmental waste producers”. With climate change-induced destructive floods, along with post-colonial state’s rampant building of embankments leading to violent floods and erosion, Bengali Muslim char-dwellers are forced to migrate to nearby government grazing reserves or national parks. There, the majoritarian state projects them to be damaging the environment and issues violent evictions. In state reports too, the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers have been equated with “rats”, “crows”, and “vultures”. I use the concept of “environmental racism” to show how this state-led denigration justifies the allegation of the Muslim char-dwellers as “environmental waste producers” and how the Miya Poetry movement counters the racist allegation with new metaphors by highlighting the traditional relationships of the marginalized community with the riverine environment. In the final section, I look in detail at the characteristics and reasons that make the poetry movement ecopolitically spiritual in nature. I thus lay out an argument that the ecopolitical spirituality of the Miya Poetry movement resists the statist dehumanization and devaluation of Miya Muslims by not mocking, violating, or degrading the majoritarian Assamese but by rehumanizing themselves and their relationship with the environment. Full article

The number of refugees across the world is increasing rapidly, as is the prevalence of Islamophobia. This flow of people and changing perceptions of them usually result in negative attitudes and hostility toward Muslims and refugees since they are perceived as the “outgroup”. This globally prevalent trend is usually attributable especially to refugees being perceived as a social, economic, or security threat. The goal of this paper is to understand Americans’ perception of outgroups and how they are related to anti-refugee and anti-Muslim sentiment by using a data-driven approach. We used latent class analysis (LCA) to determine whether there were any latent classes concerning outgroup attitudes in the US. Our results showed that people fall into four different categories regarding how they perceive Muslims, refugees, and minorities. At the same time, there were five different latent classes regarding how they perceive immigrants. This paper aims to explore this complex issue and help to reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict, ameliorate negative attitudes, and provide these groups with a stable social support system. Full article

The architecture of Jerusalem has for centuries been defined by its being a space sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The end of World War I marked the beginning of British Mandatory rule, which lasted until 1948. During this period, Jerusalem witnessed a proliferation of architectural projects that repositioned religion within modern typologies representing the city’s communities. This research investigates four such buildings: the British Rockefeller Museum, the Palestinian Palace Hotel, the American YMCA Building, which functioned as a community center and hostel, and the new Zionist Executive Building. The integration of religious elements into these edifices is examined using the concept of inter-religious engagement and by applying the theory of purification and hybridization. The research demonstrates that British and American Christians, Zionist Jews, and Muslim Palestinians, used different strategies to produce inter-religious engagement—either intentionally or because of British-dictated political constructs. British and American Christians embedded religious elements within modern typologies to reflect peaceful co-existence, while Zionist Jews and Muslim Palestinians used them to construct national identity. Although conceived as “purely” secular, these modern typologies were hybridized by the integration of religious spaces or emblems, revealing further dimensions to our understanding and assessment of 20th-century urban secular architecture and its intersection with religions. Full article

This article investigates the evolving landscape of religious agitation in the digital age, focusing specifically on the religious propaganda activities of female bloggers in the USA and Europe. In today’s society, religious discourse is increasingly being held on various social media channels, shaping a new trend in religious agitation. Muslim female bloggers are emerging as influential voices on these platforms, employing diverse preaching methods and discussing certain feminine topics aimed at Muslim women. This research employs a mix of quantitative, qualitative, and empirical methodologies to discover the peculiarities of the sermons delivered by them. An extensive analysis was performed to evaluate their rising influence, audience interaction, and how they differ from their male counterparts. Additionally, this study examines how Muslim female bloggers are transforming the face of the Islamic call in the USA and Europe by adopting a feminist approach. Importantly, our research work highlights the activities of non-hijabi Muslim bloggers who are influencing Western Muslim women in social media. We examine the religious discourse of Western female and male Muslim bloggers by juxtaposing their preaching activities. Besides, a comparison is made between the female Muslim bloggers in Western regions and the Islamic world. This article underscores the profound influence of social media on religious discourse and highlights their contributions to religious discourse in the digital age. Full article

Objective: The present study explores the cross-cultural validation of neuropsychological assessments and their clinical applications in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), focusing on culturally adapted CBT (CA-CBT) across diverse populations and settings. Methods: Following the PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive search was conducted in multiple academic databases, including PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. Keywords related to cognitive behavioral therapy, cultural adaptation, and specific populations were used. The inclusion criteria encompassed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and pilot studies that assessed CA-CBT for various mental health conditions. Results: The review included studies involving Chinese Americans, Latino caregivers, Syrian refugees, Jordanian children, Malaysian Muslims, Afghan refugees, Iraqi women, Japanese children and adolescents, and Tanzanian and Kenyan children. CA-CBT demonstrated significant effectiveness in reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and psychosis. For instance, research has shown that CA-CBT is more effective than standard CBT in reducing depressive symptoms among Chinese Americans and in significantly lowering PTSD symptoms in Syrian refugee women. This method has been well-received and is feasible for use in diverse populations, such as Jordanian children and Afghan refugees. The long-term benefits are promising, with sustained improvements being reported in various studies. Additionally, digital and remote delivery methods have demonstrated potential for expanding the accessibility of CA-CBT. Conclusions: CA-CBT is a valuable and effective intervention for diverse cultural populations, significantly improving mental health outcomes. However, future research must address limitations such as small sample sizes, short follow-up periods, and variability in assessment tools. Future studies should include larger and more diverse sample sizes, longer follow-up periods, rigorous control groups, and comprehensive outcome measures to further validate and enhance the application of CA-CBT across different cultural contexts. Full article

Breast cancer mortality rates vary across ethnic groups in Israel, where protective factors such as high fertility and breastfeeding rates may be moderated by socioeconomic factors and mammography rates. We aim to investigate disparities in breast cancer mortality between Jewish and Muslim Arab women in Israel and examine how sociodemographic variables and number of children are associated with mortality. Our retrospective follow-up study uses data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and multivariable Cox regression models, adjusting for age, number of children, country of origin, locality size, and socioeconomic status. Compared to Jewish women, Muslim Arab women exhibited lower breast cancer mortality rates. However, after adjusting for multiple sociodemographic variables, no significant differences persisted between Jewish and Muslim Arab women. Having more than three children was associated with lower mortality among Muslim Arab women but not among Jewish women. European/American origin, larger localities, and medium socioeconomic status were associated with higher mortality. Sociodemographic factors may therefore explain the disparities in breast cancer mortality between Jewish and Muslim Arab women in Israel. Targeted intervention programs that consider the unique characteristics and risk factors of different ethnic groups are needed to reduce disparities and improve outcomes. Full article

This study explores the relationship between linguistic behaviors of Americans of Southwest Asian or North African descent (SWANA Americans) and their ethnic rootedness, religion, and locality. SWANA Americans are an understudied community in the field of sociolinguistics but could be highly visible in society. SWANA Americans have historically and legally been classified as white in the US despite the social perception that they are not white. The linguistic analysis in the present paper will reflect the social discrepancies between the top-down perspective of assigning all SWANA Americans a statistical race category versus the bottom-up perspective of examining the social implications of this community’s nuanced internal composition differences. Labovian Sociolinguistic Interviews were conducted with 54 SWANA Americans in the Upper Midwest and Southern California, and an ethnic rootedness metric was designed to measure individual speakers’ ethnic rootedness. The results show that higher ethnic rootedness, being a Muslim (in the more careful speech style), and being from Dearborn, MI, are significant predictors of higher rates of “reracializing” indexically bleached ethnically affiliated lexicon (words such as Ali, Muslim, Iraq, Mohammad, etc.) in the speakers’ English speech. Full article

This study sheds light on the identity negotiation processes inside the African American Muslim communities and the post-1960s immigrant Muslim communities both before and after 9/11, and the various hurdles that have impeded the development of a pluralistic American Muslim identity. It locates the American Muslim experience within the omnibus context of religious pluralism and draws on Barbara McGraw’s “the American Sacred Ground” theoretical framework (2003) to gauge advances and setbacks in such identity negotiation processes. While gleaning insights from the works of scholars of Islam and religious pluralism in America, this study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the USA between 2002 and 2006. After 9/11, both communities came to realize that it is vital to engage in a process of self-critique and confront the challenges of reinventing themselves on the American pluralistic tapestry. While the African American Sunni communities tried to reinvent themselves as ‘new Muslims’, the immigrant communities found themselves compelled to reinvent themselves as “new Americans”. In studying some facets of such an inter- and intracommunity identity (re)negotiation process, this article argues that perennial internal factionalism and the promotion of changing US foreign policy agendas in the Muslim world still represent a major stumbling block towards developing an American Muslim identity that draws on its many streams. Full article