Half of faith: American Muslim marriage and divorce in the twenty-first century

This work gathers previously published and newly written material on American Muslim weddings, marriage, and divorce.Half of Faith gathers a selection of resources on, and reflections and analyses of, Muslim marriage and divorce in twenty-first century America. In the United States as elsewhere, marriage is central to ongoing Muslim conversations about belonging, identity, and the good life. The articles collected here, written over the course of two decades, provide a window onto moments in American Muslim life and thought. Though far from comprehensive, topics covered include diversity in Islamic legal thought, marriage contracts, wedding customs, dower norms, divorce practices, and experiences of polygyny. Contributors engage—and disagree—with each other, and sometimes with their past selves. By bringing together and making more widely available existing publications alongside a few purpose-written essays, this reader aims to enrich current conversations and to help document scholarly debates and community activism

Redeeming Slavery: The 'Islamic State' and the Quest for Islamic Morality

Engaging texts produced by the so-called Islamic State and some of its Muslim opponents, particularly as they treat the enslavement and sexual use/abuse of female captives, this essay argues for a nuanced account of how actors invoke and claim tradition. The Islamic State’s capture, sale, and rape of Yazidi women and girls have garnered media attention. It has also generated attempts by IS to justify their deeds as religiously legitimate—not just permissible but actively good—a triumphalist reflection of the Islamic State’s authority, its enactment of a continuous Muslim legal tradition, and a proving ground for the moral improvement of its adherents. I assess the disparate ways IS presents enslavement in its English-language propaganda and its Arabic legal manuals and compare its appeals to authority and precedent with those of its Muslim opponents. Muslims confronted with IS’s actions and proclamations engage in disaffirmation, distancing, and denial, ranging from the rejection of IS’s claim to be Islamic to more sophisticated attempts to rebut its interpretation of sacred sources and historical precedent. Both IS and its Muslim opponents propose historically-grounded notions of legitimacy that affirm their actions as properly Islamic to a variety of audiences, Muslim and non-Muslim

Troubleshooting Post-9/11 America: Religion, Racism, and Stereotypes in Suzanne Brockmann’s Into the Night and Gone Too Far

American imperialism and the war on terror loom large in today’s popular romances. Military romances featuring spec-ops warriors and their terrorist enemies appeal to, reflect on, and sometimes critique patriotic ideals. Sheikh heroes and monstrous Muslim men provide seemingly opposed yet actually interdependent Orientalist fantasies of racialized Arab/Middle Eastern masculinity. Bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann, known for her inclusive characters and plotlines, addresses these themes in her Troubleshooters series (2000-present). Troubleshooters centers on Navy SEALs and FBI counterterrorism agents. Brockmann simultaneously deploys and undercuts stereotypes of Muslim men while appealing to pro-American sentiment. An al-Qaeda attack and the hunt for its perpetrator structure the suspense plots of the first two post-9/11 installments, Into the Night (2002) and Gone Too Far (2003), while interracial romance storylines grapple with anti-Arab bigotry and anti-black racism. Like authors of sheikh novels, Brockmann appeals to knowledge and relationships as a means of overcoming prejudice. Yet rather than white feminism integrating Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern heroes into neoliberal modernity, Brockmann displaces the setting for social reform from a fictionalized Middle East to America, signaling prejudice as a crucial threat to America’s safety as well as to individuals’ well-being. For Brockmann, stereotypes imperil national security if real threats go unnoticed while racialized Muslims are stigmatized as violent and fanatical. Moreover, she claims, positive as well as negative stereotypes prevent intimacy and love from flourishing. Ultimately, while taking cognizance of larger social norms and discourses and critiquing anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-black racism, Brockmann emphasizes individual inner transformation resulting from intimate human connections across racial-ethnic differences

Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn Hain, eds., Concubines and Courtesans

I n this exciting new volume, co-editors Matthew Gordon and Kathryn Hain provide scholars and students an important resource for the study of slavery and enslaved women. The book comprises fifteen substantive articles plus a useful introductory overview by Gordon and an interpretive epilogue by Hain. It ranges from the seventh century through the eighteenth, across Andalusia and the Maghreb, through Arabia and the Levant, to Turkey, Iran, and Central Asia. “The shared aim,” Gordon writes, “is a reconstruction of the lives, careers, and representations of women across this same expanse of time, social organization, and political drama” (“Introduction: Producing Songs and Sons,” 1)

The Islamic State in Historical and Comparative Perspective

This is a stable archival PDF of an open-access, peer-reviewed journal volume originally published at www.mizanproject.org/journal/