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Religious Book Store > Religious books beginning with M
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Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America after 9/11 |
Author: Geneive Abdo
Published: 2007-08-10 |
List price: $15.95
Our price: $10.85
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Much needed addition to the body of books about Islam
Because of the short sighted view of Muslims presented on, say, the evening news, far too many Americans are unaware of the diversity of the ummah
in this society. Mecca and Main Street provides a substantive glimpse of the aforementioned, and does so in a compelling fashion.
Best yet on American Muslims since 9-11
A previous study of "American Muslims" sketched examples simplified as an American reporter largely ignorant of Islam and Arabic and an outsider was not a bad introduction. Abdo ads knowlege of Arabic, years living in Egypt studying Islamist parties, and in Iran wearing Chador has much better depth and understanding and is better organized to analyse the issues anong Muslims: not just ptofiling and persecution, but also generational conflict, multicultul Islam developing from the universities, dealing with the real social and personal issues wihin the community itself. Better understanding the role of women and differences from integration in the US versus Europe are clarified. We still don't have a thorough study by a Muslim but the knowlege and empathy here achieves much credibility. Should be read and discussesd by interested Americans including student and Mosque reading groups.
She deserves lots of credit
It is seldom seen that a non-muslim has to say anything positive about muslims, specially in the Unites States. Lot of credit goes to Ms. Abdo for her fair and balanced view of Muslim life in America. Americans really need to open up their hearts and minds about muslims and stop judging through a tainted glass of hate and right wing brain washing. Don't judge the whole muslim "umma" due to the actions of 0.000001 %fanatics who think they are doing it in the name of religion.
The only complaint I have is that she didn't discuss much about muslims in America from the Indo-Pak sub continent, as they make up a substantial number in this country.
 Mildly interesting.
If Abdo wrote this book to increase non-Muslims understanding of, and empathy towards, American Muslims, her work is hardly a resounding success. Why would young people growing up in a free country want some religious figure to tell them how to organize the minute details of their lives: how much to sleep, what to eat, what to watch on TV? Reading this book made me wonder whether the differences between Muslims, Christians, and secular Americans aren't insurmountable after all. Abdo doesn't deal with the most pressing issues that non-Muslims have with Islam, but does provide a history of Muslims in America. Somewhat illuminating, but not a page turner.
 A Serious Piece of Scholarship
"Mecca and Mainstreet" is must reading for Americans casually curious about Muslims (those who follow the religion of Islam) in America, researchers formally studying the topic, and especially Muslim Americans - a burgeoning community of six million - seeking to discover and learn about their own complex but understudied history in the United States. Geneive Abdo has undertaken an impressive amount of primary source research: the book is the culmination of three years of extensive mixing and interviews with members of the Muslim community primarily in Chicago and to a lesser extent in other major cities such as New York, San Francisco, and LA. Moreover, her writing style is smooth and highly accessible - a key quality that is desperately lacking in most serious academic scholarship. Indeed, the presentation of "Mecca and Mainstreet" is as solid as the content.
Abdo has separate chapters on the Muslim Students' Associations within various universities, new and rising imams (religious guides) - including interviews with some of the most well known spiritual figures within the Muslim American community such as Imam Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir - and Muslims taking Islam to the streets by providing social services. This latter section zooms in on the creative activities of Rami Nashashibi of IMAN (the Inner-City Muslim Action Network) in inner-city Chicago. There are also chapters on the experiences of Muslim Latino converts, culturally conservative Muslims in certain parts of Michigan, the changing and contested role of women in the mosque, and a concise and informative history that carefully traces the evolution of Islam in America.
The work also has problems. It is ISNA-centric. (ISNA, an acronym for the Islamic Society of North America, is the largest Muslim organization in the United States with immigrant Islam constituting the brunt of its economic base). For example, Arabs and South Asians are the Movers and Shakers of "Mecca and Mainstreet"; the Afro-American Muslim community is portrayed as somewhat stagnant and passive. Although Abdo, commendably, exposes the tension and thus distance that exists between immigrant and Afro-American Muslims - an important issue that is rarely discussed among Muslims - she fails to elaborate upon the significant wealth disparity that clearly exists between both communities. It seems pretty obvious to me that, generally at least, the Arab and South Asian Muslim community is highly-educated and saturated with professionals (doctors, engineers) that in turn give them greater resources to establish themselves - through the creation of mosques, Islamic schools, and other institutions - as the authoritative and representative voice of Muslims in America. The most impressive aspect of Abdo's narrative is that she has a firm grasp of how Muslim American society is transforming as second generation Muslims struggle to create an Islamic identity that transcends race, ethnicity, and petty nationalism - a core theme in her work. I must admit, however, that at times she over-romanticizes this Islamic universalism; there are also a fair share of Muslim youth who still uphold the tradition of their parents by rigidly identifying with their national and especially racial and ethnic baggage.
I highly recommend this book. As a history student of the Islamic revival - that has swept through the Muslim world since the 1970s - I had already been exposed to Abdo's work through her rigorously researched and vigorously written account of political Islamic activism in contemporary Egypt, "No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam" (Oxford University Press, 2004). "Mecca and Mainstreet" is just as solid, and in its oral research, path breaking. At a time when mainstream journalists consistently manipulate images of Islam and Muslims to concur with, reinforce, and recreate racist assumptions about the religion's alleged "backwardness" and "barbarity", Abdo - as a journalist and a non-Muslim (she is of Lebanese Christian descent) writing for such major papers as the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune - is to be commended and applauded by both the Muslim and the academic community for her objectivity, and the sheer courage and integrity that must come with that.
Shadaab H. Rahemtulla
M.A. Candidate
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, Canada
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