Browsing by Subject "Muslim Americans"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Integrating Islam and Muslims into the U.S. History Survey
    (Oxford University Press, 2008) Curtis, Edward E., IV
    By some estimates, there are only two to three million Muslims in the United States, and yet their vulnerability to state surveillance and mob violence, their symbolic importance to the so-called clash of civilizations between Islam and America—and their remarkable stories and lives—demand coverage in the U.S. history survey. Though no one lesson plan can cover an entire religious group, this teaching strategy suggests how instructors can build on students' own experiences and knowledge of key events and themes in the history of ethnic and religious groups and U.S. foreign policy to integrate Islam and Muslims into the survey. Many scholars of Islamic studies and history believe that, due to overwhelmingly negative news coverage associated with Islam and Muslims, teachers need to begin any lesson on Islam and Muslims with some discussion of the stereotypes and cultural baggage that color most American discourse on the subject. This teaching strategy goes a step further, asking students to think comparatively about the stereotyping of religious and ethnic minorities in U.S. history and to locate some of the historical roots of stereotypes about Islam and Muslims in the twentieth century. It concludes with suggestions and resources geared toward introducing students to the diversity of Islam and Muslims in the contemporary United States.
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    Muslim American Giving Report: Motivations of Giving
    (Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, 2023-05-29) Siddiqui, Shariq; Cheema, Jehanzeb; Noor, Zeeshan; Hughes, Micah; Wasif, Rafeel; Samad, Abdul; Mofawaz, Mohannad
    This report evaluates an adaptive self-report scale regarding what motivates people in the United States to give to charitable causes or organizations by using a theoretical framework of perceived benefits. An exploratory factor analysis on charity motivation scales revealed that religion, in addition to basic socioeconomic demographics such as gender, age, education, race, income, marital status, and geographic location, significantly influence Americans’ motivation to give. The other notable factors were found to be political leaning, civic participation, political conservatism, and involvement in nonprofit service, as they all have an important effect on giving motivation. For this purpose, a representative sample of 1,733 U.S. adults (866 Muslims and 867 non-Muslims) from various ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds were polled to discover more about their giving patterns and what motivates them to contribute. The findings, which mostly aligned with the Muslim American Giving Report 2021 (Siddiqui & Wasif, 2021), indicated Muslims and non-Muslims evidently have different motivations for contributing.
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    The Islamophobic History of the United States
    (Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2011) Curtis, Edward E., IV
    This article offers an history survey of Islamophobic attitudes in the United States. It locates the roots of Islamophobia in colonial views of the Muslim Anti-Christ, early republican fears of the Barbary pirates and Oriental despotism, antebellum fascination with Muslim American slaves, and nineteenth-century fantasies of the Turkish harem. The article also explains how the functions and meanings of Islamophobia have changed during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, emphasizing the clash of interests that developed between Muslim political groups abroad and U.S. foriegn policy after 9/11.
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    United States, Muslim Politics in the
    (Oxford University Press, 2022-05-19) Curtis, Edward E., IV
    In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Muslim Americans became a more vulnerable and visible group. Representing only 1 to 2 percent of the total U.S. population, during the first decade of the twenty-first century they were swept into national debates about U.S. foreign policy, civil rights and religious liberties, racial and religious equality, and cultural assimilation and integration. Their symbolic value to such critical national discussions often trumped their role as political actors in their own right. The myopic lens of the twenty-first-century war on terrorism obscured their long-standing presence in and contributions to political life in the United States. Though Muslim Americans did not engage formally in electoral politics until the twentieth century, they have been participants in U.S. politics, broadly conceived, since the birth of the republic. This article recovers the lost political voices of Muslim Americans from 1776 to the present, focusing first on the era of slavery, and then exploring the roots and flowering of formal Muslim politics among American- and foreign-born Muslims in the twentieth century. It concludes with a discussion of Muslim politics in the United States after September 11, 2001.
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    Why Muslims Matter to American Religious History, 1730 - 1945
    (Cambridge University Press, 2000) Curtis, Edward E., IV
    Long before the American Revolution, Muslims were a vital presence in the thirteen colonies and throughout the Americas. Though Muslim explorers from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula may have been among the first Mediterranean peoples to arrive in the Americas, it was slaves from sub-Saharan Africa who composed the first significant population of Muslim Americans. No sidebar to United States history, Muslims at home and abroad became a vital symbolic force in national debates over slavery, the defining of American political identity, the shaping of evangelical Christianity, and the emergence of American consumer culture. As a religious and for the most part racial minority, Muslim Americans in nineteenth- and twentieth-century history helped to define the center of cultural and political power in the United States. The history of Muslim Americans also illuminates the simultaneous local, national, and global nature of American religious history from the colonial age to the early twentieth century. Shaped by voluntary and coerced travel and resettlement, most Muslims lived both as Americans and as persons whose identities crossed national and regional boundaries. In addition to Muslim slaves from Africa, Muslim practitioners in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included immigrants who came largely from the Balkans and the Middle East, but also from Eastern Europe and South Asia. These were the first Muslims to establish mutual aid societies and other formal Muslim American associations.