Salaam America: South Asian Muslims in New York

Description

Brought into sharp focus by the events of 11 September 2001 in New York, this study examines the regrouping of the religious community and the reinvention of group identity in first and second-generation immigrants. By transplanting many of their institutions to the US (particularly in New York), Muslim immigrants succeeded in establishing their presence in the American landscape without arousing significant concern in the host community.

Aminah Mohammad-Arif is currently a Research Fellow at the Centre d'Etudes de l'Inde et de l'Asie de Sud (CNRS/EHESS, Paris); she also teaches at the Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales.

"Salaam America is a substantial ethnographic study of the South Asian Muslim community in New York in which Aminah Mohammad-Arif examines patterns and challenges of migration, the process of adaptation, and the transformation of religious practices for South Asian Muslims in New York. This book is a timely one because, after 9/11, the lives of South Asian Muslims in New York have been dramatically transformed. Muslims (both South Asian and non-South Asian) in the United States, particularly in the New York City area, have experienced difficulties with the Immigration and Naturalization Services, been victims of hate crimes, and had to live with increased scrutiny of their lives and beliefs. This book was researched and written before the catastrophic events of 11 September 2001, but Mohammad-Arif has appended a chapter in which she attempts to examine the impact of 9/11 on South Asians in the region. ...This book is important because it is one of the first to provide a detailed historical and ethnographic study of South Asian Muslims in North America. ... Mohammad-Arif's work makes an important contribution to South Asian studies in the United States. Salaam America examines the heterogeneity of the South Asian community and the heterogeneity of the Muslim community, and provides the reader with a substantial understanding of the impact of immigration on the religious and cultural identity of a people."--Contemporary South Asia