Lone Star Muslims

Lone Star Muslims PDF Author: Ahmed Afzal
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479855340
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Lone Star Muslims offers an engaging and insightful look at contemporary Muslim American life in Texas. It illuminates the dynamics of the Pakistani Muslim community in Houston, a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in the south and southwestern United States. Drawing on interviews and participant observation at radio stations, festivals, and ethnic businesses, the volume explores everyday Muslim lives at the intersection of race, class, profession, gender, sexuality, and religious sectarian affiliation to demonstrate the complexity of the South Asian experience. Importantly, the volume incorporates narratives of gay Muslim American men of Pakistani descent, countering the presumed heteronormativity evident in most of the social science scholarship on Muslim Americans and revealing deeply felt affiliations to Islam through ritual and practice. It also includes narratives of members of the highly skilled Shia Ismaili Muslim labor force employed in corporate America, of Pakistani ethnic entrepreneurs, the working class and the working poor employed in Pakistani ethnic businesses, of community activists, and of radio program hosts. Decentering dominant framings that flatten understandings of transnational Islam and Muslim Americans, such as “terrorist” on the one hand, and “model minority” on the other, Lone Star Muslims offers a glimpse into a variety of lived experiences. It shows how specificities of class, Islamic sectarian affiliation, citizenship status, gender, and sexuality shape transnational identities and mediate racism, marginalities, and abjection.

Lone Star Muslims

Lone Star Muslims PDF Author: Ahmed Afzal
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479855340
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Lone Star Muslims offers an engaging and insightful look at contemporary Muslim American life in Texas. It illuminates the dynamics of the Pakistani Muslim community in Houston, a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in the south and southwestern United States. Drawing on interviews and participant observation at radio stations, festivals, and ethnic businesses, the volume explores everyday Muslim lives at the intersection of race, class, profession, gender, sexuality, and religious sectarian affiliation to demonstrate the complexity of the South Asian experience. Importantly, the volume incorporates narratives of gay Muslim American men of Pakistani descent, countering the presumed heteronormativity evident in most of the social science scholarship on Muslim Americans and revealing deeply felt affiliations to Islam through ritual and practice. It also includes narratives of members of the highly skilled Shia Ismaili Muslim labor force employed in corporate America, of Pakistani ethnic entrepreneurs, the working class and the working poor employed in Pakistani ethnic businesses, of community activists, and of radio program hosts. Decentering dominant framings that flatten understandings of transnational Islam and Muslim Americans, such as “terrorist” on the one hand, and “model minority” on the other, Lone Star Muslims offers a glimpse into a variety of lived experiences. It shows how specificities of class, Islamic sectarian affiliation, citizenship status, gender, and sexuality shape transnational identities and mediate racism, marginalities, and abjection.

God Save Texas

God Save Texas PDF Author: Lawrence Wright
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525520112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—and a Texas native—takes us on a journey through the most controversial state in America. • “Beautifully written…. Essential reading [for] anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country.” —NPR Texas is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.

Yes, I'm Hot in This

Yes, I'm Hot in This PDF Author: Huda Fahmy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1507209355
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
“Fahmy uses humor to work through stereotypes and tell stories about nuanced hijabi characters.” —The Washington Post Popular Instagram cartoonist and Muslim-American Huda Fahmy presents a hilarious, relatable, and painfully honest new collection of comics that break down barriers and show how universal our everyday problems, worries, and joys actually are. At some point in our lives, we’ve all felt a little out of place. Huda Fahmy has found it’s a little more difficult to fade into the crowd when wearing a hijab. In Yes, I’m Hot in This, Huda navigates the sometimes-rocky waters of life from the unique perspective of a Muslim-American woman, breaking down misconceptions of her culture one comic at a time. From recounting the many questions she gets about her hijab every day (yes, she does have hair) and explaining how she runs in an abaya (just fine, thank you) to dealing with misconceptions about Muslims, Yes, I’m Hot in This tackles universal feelings from an point of view we don’t hear from nearly enough. Every one of us have experienced love, misunderstanding, anger, and a deep desire for pizza. In Yes, I’m Hot in This, Huda’s clever comics demonstrate humor’s ability to bring us together, no matter how different we may appear on the surface.

Muslims on the Margins

Muslims on the Margins PDF Author: Katrina Daly Thompson
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479814350
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
"Through multi-sited ethnography in face-to-face North American groups and global online communities of the contemporary marginalized Muslims who emerged from the earlier progressive Muslim movement, Thompson examines the role of language, affect, embodiment, queerness, religious pluralism, and futurity in the creation of inclusive communities"--

America Alone

America Alone PDF Author: Mark Steyn
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596980761
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
"Mark Steyn is a human sandblaster. This book provides a powerful, abrasive, high-velocity assault on encrusted layers of sugarcoating and whitewash over the threat of Islamic imperialism. Do we in the West have the will to prevail?" - MICHELLE MALKIN, New York Times bestselling author of Unhinged "Mark Steyn is the funniest writer now living. But don't be distracted by the brilliance of his jokes. They are the neon lights advertising a profound and sad insight: America is almost alone in resisting both the suicide of the West and the suicide bombing of radical Islamism." - JOHN O'SULLIVAN, editor at large, National Review IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT..... Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn--the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world--shows to devastating effect. The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope. Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny--but it will also change the way you look at the world.

How Muslims Shaped the Americas

How Muslims Shaped the Americas PDF Author: Omar Mouallem
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501199218
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
*Winner of the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction* *Selected as a Most Anticipated Book of Fall by The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star* An insightful and perspective-shifting new book, from a celebrated journalist, about reclaiming identity and revealing the surprising history of the Muslim diaspora in the west—from the establishment of Canada’s first mosque through to the long-lasting effects of 9/11 and the devastating Quebec City mosque shooting. “Until recently, Muslim identity was imposed on me. But I feel different about my religious heritage in the era of ISIS and Trumpism, Rohingya and Uyghur genocides, ethnonationalism and misinformation. I’m compelled to reclaim the thing that makes me a target. I’ve begun to examine Islam closely with an eye for how it has shaped my values, politics, and connection to my roots. No doubt, Islam has a place within me. But do I have a place within it?” Omar Mouallem grew up in a Muslim household, but always questioned the role of Islam in his life. As an adult, he used his voice to criticize what he saw as the harms of organized religion. But none of that changed the way others saw him. Now, as a father, he fears the challenges his children will no doubt face as Western nations become increasingly nativist and hostile toward their heritage. In Praying to the West, Mouallem explores the unknown history of Islam across the Americas, traveling to thirteen unique mosques in search of an answer to how this religion has survived and thrived so far from the place of its origin. From California to Quebec, and from Brazil to Canada’s icy north, he meets the members of fascinating communities, all of whom provide different perspectives on what it means to be Muslim. Along this journey he comes to understand that Islam has played a fascinating role in how the Americas were shaped—from industrialization to the changing winds of politics. And he also discovers that there may be a place for Islam in his own life, particularly as a father, even if he will never be a true believer. Original, insightful, and beautifully told, Praying to the West reveals a secret history of home and the struggle for belonging taking place in towns and cities across the Americas, and points to a better, more inclusive future for everyone.

The Urban Refugee

The Urban Refugee PDF Author: Bülent Batuman
Publisher: Intellect Books
ISBN: 1789389011
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
The presence of the refugee in the contemporary metropolis is marked by precarity, a quality that has become a characteristic feature of the neoliberal urban milieu. Bringing together essays from diverse disciplines, from architectural history to cultural anthropology and urban planning, this collection sheds light on both the specificities of the contemporary urban condition that affects the refugees and the multi-dimensional impact that the refugees have on the city. The authors propose investigating this connection through three interlinked themes: identity (informality, imagination and belonging); place (transnational homemaking practices); and site (the navigation of urban space). In recent years, there has been a significant growth in scholarship on forced migration, particularly on the relationship between displacement and the built environment. Scholars have focused on spatial practices and forms that arise under conditions of displacement, with much attention given to refugee camps and the social and political aspects of temporariness. While these issues are important, the essays in this volume aim to contribute to a less explored aspect of displacement, namely the interaction between refugees and the cities they inhabit. In this respect, the volume underlines the specificity of the urban refugee as well as their spatial agency and investigates the irreversible effect they have on the contemporary urban condition. The authors argue that viewing urban refugees solely as dislocated individuals outside the camp-like spaces of containment fails to understand the agency of the urban refugee and the blurred boundaries of identity that result. The term "refugee crisis" objectifies and denies active agency to refugees, homogenizing dislocated individuals and groups. The neoliberalization of the past four decades has led to the precarization of labour and the displacement of refugees, who frequently blend into the urban environment as hidden populations. Refugees are subjected to constant surveillance and the state's attempts to control them. However, these attempts are not uncontested, and the involvement of activist interventions further politicizes the urban refugee.

Asian American Sporting Cultures

Asian American Sporting Cultures PDF Author: Stanley I. Thangaraj
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479840165
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fields Through a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities. This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men’s attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the “Orientalism” evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.

Redefining the Immigrant South

Redefining the Immigrant South PDF Author: Uzma Quraishi
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469655209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In the early years of the Cold War, the United States mounted expansive public diplomacy programs in the Global South, including initiatives with the recently partitioned states of India and Pakistan. U.S. operations in these two countries became the second- and fourth-largest in the world, creating migration links that resulted in the emergence of American universities, such as the University of Houston, as immigration hubs for the highly selective, student-led South Asian migration stream starting in the 1950s. By the late twentieth century, Houston's South Asian community had become one of the most prosperous in the metropolitan area and one of the largest in the country. Mining archives and using new oral histories, Uzma Quraishi traces this pioneering community from its midcentury roots to the early twenty-first century, arguing that South Asian immigrants appealed to class conformity and endorsed the model minority myth to navigate the complexities of a shifting Sunbelt South. By examining Indian and Pakistani immigration to a major city transitioning out of Jim Crow, Quraishi reframes our understanding of twentieth-century migration, the changing character of the South, and the tangled politics of race, class, and ethnicity in the United States.

Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia

Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia PDF Author: Tiantian Zheng
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824852974
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In globalizing Asia, sexual mores and gender roles are in constant flux. How have economic shifts and social changes altered and reconfigured the cultural meanings of gender and sexuality in the region? How have the changing political economy and social milieu influenced and shaped the inner workings and micro-politics of family structure, gender relationships, intimate romance, transactional sex, and sexual behaviors? This volume offers up-to-date, grounded, critical analysis of the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, and political economy across a diverse array of Asian societies: China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. Based on intense ethnographic fieldwork, the chapters disentangle the ways in which gendered and sexual experiences are impinged upon by state policies, economic realities, cultural ideologies, and social hierarchies. Whether highlighting intimate relationships between elite businessmen and their mistresses in China; nightclub performances by Thai men in Bangkok; single women’s views of romance, motherhood, and marriage in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo; or male same-sex relationships in Pakistan—each chapter centers around the stories of the gendered subjects themselves and how they are shaped by outside forces. Taken together they provide a provocative entrée into the cultural politics of gender and sexuality in Asia. By foregrounding cross-cultural ethnographic research, this volume sheds light on how configurations of gender and sexuality are constituted, negotiated, contested, transformed, and at times, perpetuated and reproduced in private, intimate experiences. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, political science, and women’s and LGBTQ studies.