Stephen Young

Being Muslim in Boston: Identity in the Islamic Society of Boston: a Two-year Ethnographic Study of a Growing Muslim Community of Faith in the Northeast United States Stephen Young

The American Muslim community continues to grow and seek its self-definition. Increasingly, American Muslims do not merely recreate the experiences of older immigrant groups, but rather face unique challenges that demand investigation. In this book, the author explores the lives of the Muslims of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), a diverse community whose members strive to adapt to the American environment through the embrace of a distinctively Islamic identity. This work examines such subjects as modes of interpretation of Islamic knowledge, attitudes toward religious education for children, marriage within and between ethnic groups, attitudes toward sex and gender, the use of the hijab, and race and ethnic relations, both within and outside the mosque itself. The outcome of the author's two-year study helps shed light on what it means to be both Muslim and American at the dawn of the 21st century. This book will interest those in the fields of anthropology and Islamic studies as well as sociology and immigrant studies, not to mention individuals who simply want to know more about their Muslim neighbors.