Muslims in the United States: The State of Research

8. Contemporary Research Agendas

Chapter 8 Contemporary Research Agendas A LTHOUGH I have been suggesting all along the scholarly work that needs to be done, this chapter attempts a more general and theoretical overview of research agendas that will further knowledge about Muslims in the United States. I do this comparatively, first and very broadly by contrasting the state of research on Muslims in Europe and the United States. Then I advocate more inclusive and comparative work on Muslim groups in the United States. Following a consideration of the ways in which Islamic studies and religious studies scholars are moving closer together, I return to the impact of September 11, 2001, on American Muslim activists and their writings and on scholarly research on American Muslims. In conclusion, I discuss the importance of Islam and Muslims for American religious and political history in the twenty-first century and ways of relating the work on Muslims to that on more general patterns of changing religious affiliation and practice, ethno-racial affiliation, and cosmopolitanism and pluralism in the United States. The State of Research on Muslims in Europe and the United States Scholarship on Islam and Muslims in the United States is said to be less developed than scholarship on Islam and Muslims in Europe, but I am not so sure. This perception seems to be the result of looking only at immigrant Muslims in both places. The balance shifts markedly and acquires greater historical depth when we take into account African American Muslims and the long, rich tradition of scholarship on them. Certainly there are limitations to U.S. scholarship on Islam and Muslims and differences from what is being done in Europe. Muslims are among the most-studied contemporary immigrants in Europe, 129 and culture, especially religion, is a major focus of scholarly attention in immigration and ethnic studies there. The North American academic scene was configured differently, but it is now changing. In the United States before the 1990s, Muslims were divided into two categories, African American and immigrant, and studies of them were seldom connected. Studies of African American Muslims stressed black nationalism and racial issues, and studies of immigrants focused on ethnic identity, ethnic entrepreneurship, and gender and generational issues. There was very little, if any, scholarly dialogue across these boundaries. Prior to the 1990s, scholarly divisions of labor often overlooked Muslims in the United States altogether. Although scholars of the Muslim world were established in North America, most were area specialists who seldom looked at Islam in the United States. Scholars who were writing about Muslims in this country tended to be not only very specialized but descriptive and atheoretical; as a result, their studies neither crossed disciplines nor reached a wide audience. Scholars of a variety of Muslim subjects were based in American universities, but except for African American Muslims, noticeably few of those writing and speaking on signi ficant American Muslim issues were themselves Muslim. Scholars and funding institutions began transcending these limitations in the 1990s, and the radical Islamist terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, confirmed the importance of comparative and theoretical work. Leading research and funding institutions are setting new priorities today. In contrast to the European research agenda, the American research agenda has four special features. First, the United States is home to signi ficant, indigenous, largely African American Muslim communities, whose importance in both numbers and challenges to Old World concepts of Islam I have established. African American Muslims present immigrant Muslims with an opportunity to realize Islam’s potential to overcome ethno-racial divisions, and together the two Muslim communities present the United States with a challenge and an opportunity to realize its potential as a postethnic society and nation-state. Second, a strong case can be made for the “Americanization” of Islam in the United States. Following Talal Asad’s (1996) suggestion that core assumptions that guide conceptions and practices can be termed “Islamic” in origin, and looking at the new versions of Islam being constituted from American ways of being Muslim, we can try to see what is “Islamic” and what is contextual about American Muslim discourses and practices. “Islamic” themes include: self-placement in the West and as one of three “religions of the book”; Qur’anic reading and recitation practices that emphasize the transmission of knowledge through oral instruction and 130 Muslims in the United States links to specific teachers and...