American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender Within the Ummah by Jamillah Karim
نویسنده
چکیده
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5915/44-1-10586 JIMA: Vol 44, 2012, Page 1 of 2 Over the last forty years, there has been a dramatic growth in the number of Muslims in the United States. Estimates place the Muslim population at somewhere around 6 million, which makes Islam the second largest religion in the country. Islam today is not just in the international news, but it is an integral part of the landscape of America. Despite this, the Muslim community in America is not one, rather it is somewhat divided and that division is usually based upon race or ethnic origin. The two largest racial groups of Muslims in the United States are Black Americans and South Asians. Jamillah Karim, a professor in religious studies at Spelman College, explores these two Muslim groups within the context of gender in her book, American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class and Gender Within the Ummah. Dr. Karim conducted interviews with several women from the Black American and South Asian Muslim communities of Atlanta and Chicago, cities which boast two of the largest Muslim populations in the USA. Throughout her work, Dr. Karim injects her ethnographic research with aspects of history, feminist theory and contemporary race relations. She notes that according to the ideal, the ummah, the Muslim community, must be united and just. However, her book illustrates that one must make a distinction between the ideal and the social reality in which people live. Thus, on one level, there is not one ummah, rather there are many ummahs and these are travelling in parallel worlds to one another. Class and race are the key factors that Dr. Karim focuses on to explain the lack of unity among the two communities. South Asian immigrants have Book Review
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