Muslim Students and the Making of American Islam, 1963-present

FAIN: FT-270390-20

Justine Howe
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH 44106-1712)

Research and writing two chapters of a history of the Muslim Student Association and its role in shaping modern American Islam.

Founded in 1963, the Muslim Students’ Association has played a crucial role in shaping American Islam on a national scale. This book-length project demonstrates how the ostensibly secular American university has served as an indispensable site for the coalescence of American Muslim community and identity from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Muslim Students and the Making of American Islam closely analyzes six case studies to explore the imaginaries and strategies through which Muslim students have enacted their visions for Islam, as they negotiated their relationship to other activist projects in the U.S. and to global Muslim revivalist movements. Through these processes, I argue, the MSA made the ideal of a unified American umma (community) into a key and contested project for American Muslims writ large.