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"Homegrown, radicalized Islamists have set off bombs in Madrid and London; could it happen here? Given rising anxiety about the possible alienation of American Muslims, a readable book offering a responsible yet sympathetic profile of that community should be welcomed. Five years after 9/11, Geneive Abdo, who has reported skillfully on Islamism in Egypt and Iran, has produced just such a book.
Her reporting shows that Muslim immigrants have much in common with Americans from other lands and cultures. Traditional Muslims arriving from the Middle East and South Asia fear that their children will succumb to the allure of big-city life and abandon the faith. Such newcomers are embracing the same strategies adopted by Jewish immigrants a century ago: setting up religious schools, charities and houses of worship that double as community centers."
—Steven Simon, The Washington Post, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
co-author of "The Age of Sacred Terror" and "The Next Attack."
"Honest, perceptive, and nuanced.... Introduces a Muslim community that is both an American immigration success story and a population struggling to define itself under unprecedented circumstances."
—
Christian Science Monitor
The New Statesman, Andrew Stephen
Published 05 July 2007
Muslims living in the US enjoy a better life than those in Britain, says new research. Can Bush teach Brown a lesson?
By no means all commentators and experts on Islam, in fact, believe that the Pew study is an accurate reflection of the situation here. Geneive Abdo, a US-born Maronite Christian of Lebanese origin who is author of the acclaimed Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 - tells me Pew makes "false comparisons" between the US and Europe. She also estimates the Muslim population of the US to be six million.
"You can't compare Muslims in different cultures and from different ethnic backgrounds," she says. In her book, Abdo paints Islam in the United States as an "enclave culture", a religious community that sees itself as beleaguered, and is thus divided - between men and women, us and them, genuine Muslims and ersatz believers, and so on.
The result, she concludes, is that a post-9/11, more religious Islamic population in the US is accelerating towards alienation and separatism from mainstream America - "a people apart", in her words. The Pew study reflects American wishful thinking, she suggests, that "Europe" is getting everything wrong while America is doing everything right.
Islam means peace, right? That's what many American Muslims insisted, when microphones were thrust in front of them after 9/11. No, Islam is inherently violent, shot
Geneive Abdo, also a journalist, told RBL she wrote Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 (Oxford, Sept.) to fill a gap in the literature about Islam in America. "Most of what is written about it comes from the 1990s. The whole community has changed dramatically since 9/11," she said.
Bypassing secular Muslims, whom Abdo says many Americans wrongly focus on, Abdo looks at the lives of young, religious Muslims. She argues that the harassment and hostility American Muslims have faced since 9/11 has driven young people to embrace Islam as their primary identity—a move she says parallels trends among Muslims U.S.
"Geneive Abdo’s work captures in great detail the
immense hardships Muslim face in the post-September-11th
world and offers hope for their success and co-existence
in America. Her book shatters stereotypes about Muslims
and teaches us that more understanding of Islam is
needed for global peace."
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
"There is no better time and no better book to understand
the American Muslim experience today than Mecca and
Main Street. Abdo has written an important, insightful
and provocative book. ‘Must reading’ for anyone who
wishes to engage American Muslims in their faith and
rich diversity."
—John L. Esposito,
University Professor and Founding Director of the Alwaleed
Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown
University,
and author of What Everyone Needs to Know About
Islam
"Islam is the fastest growing religion in America,
yet for most Americans the lives of their Muslim neighbors
remain shrouded in mystery. In this rich and probing
book Geneive Abdo provides an intimate account of American
Islam; its roots, beliefs and the challenges that confront
it today. With an eye for detail and nuance, sharpened
during years of reporting from Egypt and Iran, Abdo
lays bare the diversity of this community of migrants
and converts as it balances faith with modernity in
post-9/11 America. Well-written, engaging and sophisticated,
this is a must read for all Americans and Muslims."
—Vali Nasr, author
of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam
Will Shape the Future
"Going beyond abstract debates about what Islam does
or doesn’t say, Geneive Abdo vividly describes the
many concrete ways in which American Muslims practice
their religion. Shunning the clichéd opposition of ‘good’ liberal
Muslims to ‘bad’ fundamentalist or conservative Muslims,
Abdo shows how the new generation is shaping a truly
Western, yet still orthodox, Islam. Contradictions,
compromises, and tensions between US-born and immigrant
Muslims accompany an ongoing shift from diverse ethnic
communities to a common faith community—a faith community
that is definitively Western. Mecca and Main Street
fills a vacuum in the study of American Muslims."
—Olivier Roy, author
of Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah
"Abdo has written a book that succeeds in striking
a very difficult balance; it is simultaneously honest,
highly informative, critical, thought provoking, entertaining,
and very readable-in fact once picked up, the reader
will have a hard time putting the book down. This is
one of the few studies on the subject that is firmly
grounded in the realities and dreams of American Muslims.
The author insightfully elucidates both the internal
and external strifes and challenges that plague Muslims
living in the United States in particular, but also
more generally, those living in the West. Muslims and
non-Muslims alike will benefit greatly from reading
Mecca and Main Street."
—Khaled Abou El Fadl,
Prof. of Law,
UCLA School of Law,
and author of The Search for Beauty in Islam and
The Great Theft |
