This groundbreaking volume explores how Islamic discourse and practice intersect with gender relations and broader political and economic processes to shape women's geographies in a variety of regional contexts. Contributors represent a wide range of disciplinary subfields and perspectives--cultural geography, political geography, development studies, migration studies, and historical geography--yet they share a common focus on bringing issues of space and place to the forefront of analyses of Muslim women's experiences. Themes addressed include the intersections of gender, development and religion; mobility and migration; and discourse, representation, and the contestation of space. In the process, the book challenges many stereotypes and assumptions about the category of "Muslim woman," so often invoked in public debate in both traditional societies and the West.

In recent years, geographies of identities, including those of ethnicity, religion, 'race' and gender, have formed an increasing focus of contemporary human geography. The events of September 11th, 2001 particularly illustrated the ways in which identities can be transformed across time and space by both global and local events of a social, cultural, political and economic nature. Such transformations have also demonstrated the temporal and spatial construction of hate and fear, and of increasing incidences of 'Islamophobia' through the construction of Muslims as 'the Other'. As the social scientific study of religion continues to be marginalized within mainstream scholarship, there remains an important gap in the literature. This timely book addresses this gap by collecting a range of cutting-edge contributions from the social, cultural, political, historical and economic sub-disciplines of geography, together with writings from gender studies, cultural studies and leisure studies where research has revealed a strong spatial dimension to the construction, representation, contestation and reworking of Muslim identities. The contributors illustrate the ways in which such identities are constructed, represented, negotiated and contested in everyday life in a wide variety of international contexts, focusing upon issues connected with diaspora, gender and belonging.

This groundbreaking volume explores how Islamic discourse and practice intersect with gender relations and broader political and economic processes to shape women's geographies in a variety of regional contexts. Contributors represent a wide range of disciplinary subfields and perspectives--cultural geography, political geography, development studies, migration studies, and historical geography--yet they share a common focus on bringing issues of space and place to the forefront of analyses of Muslim women's experiences. Themes addressed include the intersections of gender, development and religion; mobility and migration; and discourse, representation, and the contestation of space. In the process, the book challenges many stereotypes and assumptions about the category of "Muslim woman," so often invoked in public debate in both traditional societies and the West.

This groundbreaking volume explores how Islamic discourse and practice intersect with gender relations and broader political and economic processes to shape women's geographies in a variety of regional contexts. Contributors represent a wide range of disciplinary subfields and perspectives--cultural geography, political geography, development studies, migration studies, and historical geography--yet they share a common focus on bringing issues of space and place to the forefront of analyses of Muslim women's experiences. Themes addressed include the intersections of gender, development and religion; mobility and migration; and discourse, representation, and the contestation of space. In the process, the book challenges many stereotypes and assumptions about the category of "Muslim woman," so often invoked in public debate in both traditional societies and the West.

In recent years, geographies of identities, including those of ethnicity, religion, 'race' and gender, have formed an increasing focus of contemporary human geography. The events of September 11th, 2001 particularly illustrated the ways in which identities can be transformed across time and space by both global and local events of a social, cultural, political and economic nature. Such transformations have also demonstrated the temporal and spatial construction of hate and fear, and of increasing incidences of 'Islamophobia' through the construction of Muslims as 'the Other'. As the social scientific study of religion continues to be marginalized within mainstream scholarship, there remains an important gap in the literature. This timely book addresses this gap by collecting a range of cutting-edge contributions from the social, cultural, political, historical and economic sub-disciplines of geography, together with writings from gender studies, cultural studies and leisure studies where research has revealed a strong spatial dimension to the construction, representation, contestation and reworking of Muslim identities. The contributors illustrate the ways in which such identities are constructed, represented, negotiated and contested in everyday life in a wide variety of international contexts, focusing upon issues connected with diaspora, gender and belonging.

Considers the question: what does it mean to be Muslim and American? In Islam Is a Foreign Country, Zareena Grewal explores some of the most pressing debates about and among American Muslims: what does it mean to be Muslim and American? Who has the authority to speak for Islam and to lead the stunningly diverse population of American Muslims? Do their ties to the larger Muslim world undermine their efforts to make Islam an American religion? Offering rich insights into these questions and more, Grewal follows the journeys of American Muslim youth who travel in global, underground Islamic networks. Devoutly religious and often politically disaffected, these young men and women are in search of a home for themselves and their tradition. Through their stories, Grewal captures the multiple directions of the global flows of people, practices, and ideas that connect U.S. mosques to the Muslim world. By examining the tension between American Muslims’ ambivalence toward the American mainstream and their desire to enter it, Grewal puts contemporary debates about Islam in the context of a long history of American racial and religious exclusions. Probing the competing obligations of American Muslims to the nation and to the umma (the global community of Muslim believers), Islam is a Foreign Country investigates the meaning of American citizenship and the place of Islam in a global age.