Book Reviews

The Oxford Handbook
of American Islam

Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane I Smith, eds.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 560 pages.

Shortly after publishing Jocelyne Cesari’s edited Handbook of European Islam
(Oxford University Press: 2014), Oxford University Press more or less rounds
off the topic of Muslims in the western world with this volume on the United
States. The editors, Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane I Smith, have made ample
contributions on this topic during the last twenty years at least. This volume,
to some extent, updates their previous works that have followed the evolution
and changes seen by the country’s Muslim communities (e.g., Muslim Com-
munities in North America [Albany: SUNY Press, 1994], edited by both, and
The Muslims of America [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991], edited
by Haddad). This may not be the last step in this direction, but it is certainly
the most comprehensive and ambitious one so far.

The titles of their previous works, and indeed of this volume, touch on a
preliminary problem. As a matter of fact, the volume should have borne the
title Islam in the USA, since Central and Latin America and even Canada are
not mentioned. Many reasons, in any case, justify this circumscribed focus.
As rightly pointed out in the “Introduction” (p. 4), American Islam is the most
heterogeneous in the world and no doubt constitutes the main issue when deal-
ing with Islam in North, Central, and South America. It is also the most het-
erogeneous and the most complex. As a matter of fact, these complex lines of
evolution of the West’s Islamic communities are exemplified by a simple com-
parison between the two handbooks. Whereas Cesari’s edited European Islam
was described with an extensive first part that introduced the history and evo-
lution of Muslim communities in European countries plus some thematic
chapters, in this book the approach is different. 

The thirty chapters deal with a number of specific topics identified as
significant, not to say fundamental, and are, furthermore, organized in three



sections that touch on foundation, institutionalization, and, finally, integra-
tion and assimilation. The names given to these parts, and above all the last
one, are not mere descriptions of facts but also perspectives or even wishful
thinking of yesterday, today, and even tomorrow. The pivotal point is, of
course, 9/11 and the changes that those events brought for the Muslim com-
munity in the United States. The perception, identification, and display of
Islam in the American public sphere were no doubt radically changed by
9/11, and the relation of Muslims and Islam to American identity, as well as
the new strategies developed to respond to the American reactions, stand as
implicit or explicit references behind many of the chapters.

This volume deals with a wealth of issues and topics. The exhaustiveness
aimed at is well reflected in some cases, but not in all. However, this is not to
depreciate the volume as a whole, for it is the subject itself and its complexity
that determine that once an approach is chosen, some points stand out while
others remain out of focus. The first section, for example, includes an analyt-
ical inquiry into early history, from slavery and immigrants, and goes on to
deal with the organizations, above all the African American ones, before com-
ing to a traditional portrait of Sunni, Shi‘i, Sufi, and other Muslims in North
America. The chapters describe the specific topics, the situation in the United
States, and the respective capacity to engage with American society. One fea-
ture rightly emerges from this analysis: Although the histories and attitudes
of the various expressions and communities are different, the growing process
toward Islamic orthodoxy tends to diminish their capacity to interact with
American styles (and not only in the reception of Sufism, as rightly maintained
by M. Hermansen, cf. p. 125). 

The problem in some of the other chapters is that defining certain Islamic
concepts takes up some space, sometimes too much. For example, in M. H.
Siddiqi’s chapter on religious practices (pp. 159-73), the description of prayer
and ritual takes up more room than that of the American specificity and re-
lated questions. Another problem raised by this approach is making sense of
movements and associations that owe their role to American developments
rather than to Islamic history. The role of the Ahmadiyya (pp. 145f.) and the
definition of the Qur’anists (pp.150f.) are two cases in point, for they are an-
alyzed together with traditional sectarian movements, even though they owe
their relevance more to a western environment than to Islamic history. Evi-
dently, this does not contribute to clarity and runs the risk of producing a list
of sects or associations without a clear capacity to confer upon the many ac-
tors in play their proper role and highlight the relations among these various
elements in the differing situations.

98 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 32:4



But also because of this the volume as a whole, and particularly in the
other two sections, lays out a comprehensive and exhaustive mapping of how
Muslims interact with social, political, and economic conditions, as well as
with institutions in various American environments, especially after 1965. So
we have chapters on the Shari‘ah, women, marriage, mosques, Islamic edu-
cation and youth organizations, da‘wah, prisons, and volunteerism in the sec-
ond part. The topics dealt with and thus defined in the third and last part on
integration and assimilation are also compelling: the political system, five
Muslims scholars, Muslim-Christian relations, the media and Muslims, arts,
architecture, fashion, health and medicine, filmmaking and Muslims in films,
American Islam and global Islam, the effects of the “war on terror,” and, fi-
nally, a chapter on Islamophobia. 

The mix between ways of life, consumer cultures prompted by the Amer-
ican lifestyle, and the dynamics of integration or rejection in American soci-
eties are all well represented. Indeed, this may be the main merit of this
approach. In fact, the clarity aimed at in each chapter helps to set the pieces
within a larger picture where American Islam’s many aspects interact with the
variety of American societies in motion. In this picture, sharpening the focus
on particular moments or themes enables one to convey which Muslims are
in the United States today, how they conceive of themselves, and how Amer-
icans perceive them.

Some elements emerge from the composite picture. First of all is the ten-
dency since 1965 toward orthodoxy and thus to homogenization, doubtless
following the lines taken in all Muslim communitites. However, in the United
States this appears more closely connected with the new waves of immigrants
and the distance taken by them, but also by the new African American organ-
izations, from previous organizations and beliefs. The process is significant
and promises further change that will connect American Muslims with global
Islam. Moreover, at the same time this removal of old unorthodox styles leads
to the loss of originality, which is a problem even for the perception of Islam
in American societies. Notwithstanding, this volume offers a clear discussion
on specific topics and, as a whole, conveys the idea of a complexity that is
impossible to reduce to unity, as is the history of the Muslims and Islam in
the United States.

Roberto Tottoli
Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo

Università di Napoli L’Orientale, Naples, Italy

Book Reviews 99