Download or read book Women Places and Spaces in Contemporary American Mosque written by Maryam Eskandari (S.M.) and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an ever-present demand for Mosques in American cities to accommodate the more than 8 percent of the American population that are Muslims; the majority of which are American-born Muslims or American converts. However, Muslim-American communities have implemented the same architectural vocabulary of mosques seen in the Middle East into their American neighborhoods. Nevertheless, this architectural transplantation from the Middle East to America does not come without problems. The weaving of Middle Eastern architectural culture with an American application of Islam, which is prominent within Modern American society, gives rise to internal tensions felt within the community, in particular to the issue of Muslim women's' place in community mosques. Through the numerous case studies and investigations of the American Mosques that I documented, it is clear that the community does not provide adequate spaces for their women members. My thesis explores the process of modifying and developing a new architectural vocabulary for the American mosques within the confinements and boundaries in Islam, in particular, creating an adequate space for women. A lack of attention to the needs of American Muslim women in the states has caused a gender conflict over the adequacy of spaces for Muslim women within American mosques. For example, in the 2006 controversial documentary titled the "Mosque of Morgantown"1 , located in West Virginia, a significant dilemma was created dividing the Muslim community residing in the United States. The "Mosque of Morgantown" set the social precedent for some Muslim women to question some of the religious rulings regarding prayers and set the tone for numerous other protests, of which the most recent occurred at the Islamic Center of Washington DC. In early part of 2010, the Islamic Center of Washington D.C.2 had an outburst of escalating tensions between genders. Thirty Washington D.C. women united in protest and refused to pray in the basement of the mosque, which was their designated area of worship. Instead they decided to attend prayers under the same roof as the men during worship. This seemingly simple act of protest was frowned upon. The Imam of the mosque declared that the allocated rows were for men only. The presence of women in the rows resulted in the delay of the obligatory Friday prayer that is mandatory for men in Islam. Through these incidences, it is clear that an investigation of a new architectural expression, within the confinement of the religion, for women-driven spaces needs to be conducted.
Download or read book Women Leadership and Mosques written by Masooda Bano and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-11-25 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first to bring together analysis of contemporary female religious leadership in ideologically-diverse Muslim communities in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, with chapters discussing the emergence, consolidation, and impact of female Islamic authority.
Download or read book The Women s Mosque of America written by Tazeen M. Ali and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Women's Mosque of America analyzes how American Muslim women cultivate new forms of Islamic authority that contend with gender inequality, anti-Blackness, and global Islamophobia by approaching the Qur'an as a tool for social justice and community building, providing insights on Islamic authority at the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging"--
Download or read book Deconstructing the American Mosque written by Akel Ismail Kahera and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2002-08 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This text will be the classic work in the field.... It will be extremely useful for general Islamic studies, for studies of religion in America, and for the study of Islam in America." —Aminah Beverly McCloud, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, DePaul University, Chicago From the avant-garde design of the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City to the simplicity of the Dar al-Islam Mosque in Abiquiu, New Mexico, the American mosque takes many forms of visual and architectural expression. The absence of a single, authoritative model and the plurality of design nuances reflect the heterogeneity of the American Muslim community itself, which embodies a whole spectrum of ethnic origins, traditions, and religious practices. In this book, Akel Ismail Kahera explores the history and theory of Muslim religious aesthetics in the United States since 1950. Using a notion of deconstruction based on the concepts of "jamal" (beauty), "subject," and "object" found in the writings of Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), he interprets the forms and meanings of several American mosques from across the country. His analysis contributes to three debates within the formulation of a Muslim aesthetics in North America—first, over the meaning, purpose, and function of visual religious expression; second, over the spatial and visual affinities between American and non-American mosques, including the Prophet's mosque at Madinah, Arabia; and third, over the relevance of culture, place, and identity to the making of contemporary religious expression in North America.
Download or read book Women Leadership and Mosques written by Masooda Bano and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-11-25 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first to bring together analysis of contemporary female religious leadership in ideologically-diverse Muslim communities in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, with chapters discussing the emergence, consolidation, and impact of female Islamic authority.
Download or read book The Women s Mosque of America written by Tazeen M. Ali and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Women's Mosque of America analyzes how American Muslim women cultivate new forms of Islamic authority that contend with gender inequality, anti-Blackness, and global Islamophobia by approaching the Qur'an as a tool for social justice and community building, providing insights on Islamic authority at the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging"--
Download or read book The Contemporary British Mosque written by Abdul-Azim Ahmed and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Repositioning mosques as social, cultural and political spaces, this book provides new insights on key contemporary debates, the religious identity of Britain, secularisation, the far-right and terrorism, and gender equality. Exploring the story of the British mosque, from house conversions to grand works of architecture, and the role they play in public life, Abdul-Azim Ahmed details the establishment of early mosques during the era of Empire, and the rapid growth in the years following the Second World War. Ahmed takes a sociological approach to this study, drawing on fieldwork and ethnographic case-studies, alongside reviews of databases and historical documents to provide perspectives on the British mosque from the congregants themselves. The Muslim congregation, a poorly understood and often overlooked dimension of religion in Britain, is examined, and issues of diversity, denomination, sacredness, and society are explored.
Download or read book Muslim Women in Contemporary North America written by Meena Sharify-Funk and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muslim Women in Contemporary North America is a provocative study of how strongly held and divergent opinions, values, and beliefs, as well as misconceptions, overgeneralizations, and political agendas pertaining to Muslim women in the region, enter the public frame of reference. Interrogating contested topics in a series of case studies from both Canada and the United States, this book probes below the surface in pursuit of deeper understanding and more productive dialogue. Chapters analyze controversies over "clash" literature, dissident reformists, female religious leadership, veils, and the nature of emancipation in a compelling examination of the ways in which "Muslim," "American," and "Canadian" identities and values are being defined, differentiated, and projected. By pinpointing both sources of dissonance and unexpected patterns of resonance among complex, composite, and at times overlapping identity constellations, this book uncovers the impact of controversies on broader cultural negotiations in the United States and Canada. Transforming controversy and cliché into genuine conversation, Muslim Women in Contemporary North America is an invaluable resource for scholars and students in the fields of Islamic and Muslim Studies, Gender Studies, International Relations, Political Science, and Sociology.
Download or read book The Women s Mosque of America written by Tazeen M. Ali and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes how American Muslim women assert themselves as religious actors in the US and beyond, using the Qur'an as a tool for social justice and community buildingThe Women's Mosque of America (WMA), a multiracial, women-only mosque in Los Angeles, is the first of its kind in the United States. Since 2015, the WMA has provided a space for Muslim women to build inclusive communities committed to gender and social justice, challenging the dominant mosque culture that has historically marginalized them through inadequate prayer spaces, exclusion from leadership, and limited access to religious learning. Tazeen M. Ali explores this congregation, focusing on how members contest established patriarchal norms while simultaneously contending with domestic and global Islamophobia that renders their communities vulnerable to violence. Drawing on textual analysis of WMA sermons and ethnographic interviews with community members, and utilizing Black feminist and womanist frameworks, Ali investigates how American Muslim women create and authorize new conceptions of Islamic authority. Whereas the established model of Islamic authority is rooted in formal religious training and Arabic language expertise, the WMA is predicated on women's embodied experiences, commitments to social and racial justice, English interpretations of the Qur'an, and community building across Islamic sects and in an interfaith context. Situating the US at the center rather than at the margins of debates over Islamic authority and showing how American Muslim women assert themselves as meaningful religious actors in the US and beyond, Ali's work offers new insights on Islamic authority as it relates to the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging.
Download or read book Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism written by Merin Shobhana Xavier and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds light on the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (BMF), one of North America's major Sufi movements, and one of the first to establish a Sufi shrine in the region. It provides the first comprehensive overview of the BMF, offering new insight into its historical development and practices, and charting its establishment in both the United States and Sri Lanka. Through ethnographic research, Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism shows that the followers of Bawa in the United States and Sri Lanka share far more similarities in the relationships they formed with spaces, Bawa, and Sufism, than differences. This challenges the accepted conceptualization of Sufism in North America as having a distinct “Americanness”, and prompts scholars to re-consider how Sufism is developing in the modern American landscape, as well as globally. The book focuses on the transnational spaces and ritual activities of Bawa's communities, mapping parallel shrines and pilgrimages. It examines the roles of culture, religion, and gender and their impact on ritual embodiment, drawing attention to the global range of a Sufi community through engagement with its distinct Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and Christian followers.
Download or read book Women Religion and Space in China written by Maria Jaschok and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What enables women to hold firm in their beliefs in the face of long years of hostile persecution by the Communist party/state? How do women withstand daily discrimination and prolonged hardship under a Communist regime which held rejection of religious beliefs and practices as a patriotic duty? Through the use of archival and ethnographic sources and of rich life testimonies, this book provides a rare glimpse into how women came to find solace and happiness in the flourishing, female-dominated traditions of local Islamic women’s mosques, Daoist nunneries and Catholic convents in China. These women passionately – often against unimaginable odds – defended sites of prayer, education and congregation as their spiritual home and their promise of heaven, but also as their rightful claim to equal entitlements with men.
Download or read book Women in the Mosque written by Marion Holmes Katz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juxtaposing Muslim scholars' debates over women's attendance in mosques with historical descriptions of women's activities within Middle Eastern and North African mosques, Marion Holmes Katz shows how over the centuries legal scholars' arguments have often reacted to rather than dictated Muslim women's behavior. Tracing Sunni legal positions on women in mosques from the second century of the Islamic calendar to the modern period, Katz connects shifts in scholarly terminology and argumentation to changing constructions of gender. Over time, assumptions about women's changing behavior through the lifecycle gave way to a global preoccupation with sexual temptation, which then became the central rationale for limits on women's mosque access. At the same time, travel narratives, biographical dictionaries, and religious polemics suggest that women's usage of mosque space often diverged in both timing and content from the ritual models constructed by scholars. Katz demonstrates both the concrete social and political implications of Islamic legal discourse and the autonomy of women's mosque-based activities. She also examines women's mosque access as a trope in Western travelers' narratives and the evolving significance of women's mosque attendance among different Islamic currents in the twentieth century.
Download or read book American Muslim Women written by Jamillah Karim and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Focusing on women, who sometimes move outside of their ethnic Muslim spaced and interact with other Muslim ethnic groups in search of gender justice, this ethnographic study of African American and South Asian immigrant Muslims in Chicago and Atlanta explores how Islamic ideas of racial harmony amd equality create hopeful possibilities in an American society that remains challenged by race and class inequalities."--Page 4 of cover.
Download or read book Women Religion and Space in China written by Maria Jaschok and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What enables women to hold firm in their beliefs in the face of long years of hostile persecution by the Communist party/state? How do women withstand daily discrimination and prolonged hardship under a Communist regime which held rejection of religious beliefs and practices as a patriotic duty? Through the use of archival and ethnographic sources and of rich life testimonies, this book provides a rare glimpse into how women came to find solace and happiness in the flourishing, female-dominated traditions of local Islamic women’s mosques, Daoist nunneries and Catholic convents in China. These women passionately – often against unimaginable odds – defended sites of prayer, education and congregation as their spiritual home and their promise of heaven, but also as their rightful claim to equal entitlements with men.
Download or read book The Masjid in Contemporary Islamic Africa written by Michelle Moore Apotsos and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the emergence of alternative spaces and architectural landscapes of Islamic practice in contemporary Africa through the lens of the masjid, whose definition as a "place of prostration" has enabled Muslim populations across the continent to navigate the murky waters of the contemporary condition through a purposeful renovation of spiritual space. Drawing from multiple disciplines and utilizing a series of diverse case studies, Michelle Apotsos reflects on the shifting realities of Islamic communities as they engage in processes of socio-political and cultural transformation. Illustrated through the growth of forward-thinking and in flexible environments that highlight how Muslim communities have developed unique solutions to the problem of performing identity within diverse contexts across the continent, she re-imagines the major themes surrounding definitions of Islamic architectural space in the contemporary period in Africa and the nature of the "modernity" as it has unfolded across diverse contexts on the continent.
Download or read book Cities and Spaces written by Petra Y. Kuppinger and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2023-03-01 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global cities like New York City and Tokyo, national capitals like Cairo and Dakar, and regional centers like Bangalore and Barcelona are powerful economic, political, and cultural hubs. Cities and Spaces surveys the development, transformation, and role of cities in a globalized world while exploring the history, methods, classic texts, and current discussions in urban anthropology. Chapters examine urban dwellers’ lives, work, culture, and experiences in different yet closely linked cities worldwide. This concise introductory treatment illustrates how anthropologists address a wide range of questions like: What does it mean to work in an informal market in Lomé? How does gentrification affect a Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago? How do people experience urban environmental degradation and injustice? How do race and ethnicity shape the experiences of urbanites? How do immigrants create new urban religious communities?
Download or read book Claiming Belonging written by Emily Cury and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claiming Belonging dives deep into the lives of Muslim American advocacy groups in the post-9/11 era, asking how they form and function within their broader community in a world marked by Islamophobia. Bias incidents against Muslim Americans reached unprecedented levels a few short years ago, and many groups responded through action—organizing on the national level to become increasingly visible, engaged, and assertive. Emily Cury draws on more than four years of participant observation and interviews to examine how Muslim American organizations have sought to access and influence the public square and, in so doing, forge a political identity. The result is an engaging and unique study, showing that policy advocacy, both foreign and domestic, is best understood as a sphere where Muslim American identity is performed and negotiated. Claiming Belonging offers ever-timely insight into the place of Muslims in American political life and, in the process, sheds light on one of the fastest-growing and most internally dynamic American minority groups.
