Harold Morales, Latino and Muslim in America

Abstract

American Religion 1, no. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 148–150 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.1.2.13 Book Review Harold Morales. Latino and Muslim in America (New York: Oxford University Press, March 2018) Hussein Rashid Independent Scholar, New York City, USA One of the most exciting parts of researching Muslims in America is the inherent multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of the work. One cannot engage with a simple history of Muslims in the United States. One has to contend with the history and structures of racism in the country. Questions of gender and sexuality should permeate the conversations. Perhaps most importantly, the scholar must address how one responsibly incorporates voices of Muslims themselves into the research. In some instances, inclusion may mean interviews or ethnographies. In other instances, inclusion may mean incorporating cultural artifacts produced by Muslims. Latino and Muslim in America by Harold Morales is a strong example of how to present the experiences of American Muslims in a meaningful context. The book is seven chapters, with an introduction and conclusion, and is structured chronologically. The historical framing is useful for organizing the material, and Morales makes sure that the structure does not limit him. He returns to ideas and concepts repeatedly, but views the same material through a new lens. He layers analyses, and folds back to points to start conversations anew. This approach gives him the ability to use history to tell his story, while also highlighting the limits of a purely historical narrative. Hussein Rashid 149 The introduction establishes that the book will focus on race, religion, and the media (3). The connections between race and religion are well-known in American religious history. Examining how those connections manifest amongst Latine Muslim communities is important. The addition of the media constructions of Latine and Muslim adds a depth to Morales’ analysis that is welcome. Since race and religion are discursive categories (8-9), understanding the role media has in shaping those identities is an important intervention. Morales points out that there are a diversity of Latine and Muslim identities (3), which may seem self-evident, but then highlights that the narrative flattening of those identities makes it hard to count Latine Muslims. The relationship between race and religion appears as a question of whether one can be Latine and Muslim, a theme that reemerges throughout the book. The first chapter makes history messy. Morales talks about conversion in Latine communities. His first point of departure is the Civil Rights era, when he says Latine individuals converted for similar reasons as African-Americans (16). He also points to the history of Muslims in Spain. The chapter focuses on the cultural memory of this latter point—on the “connection between Islamic Spain, memories of it, and the first Latino Muslim group in the United States, La Alianza Islámica” (17). One of the most striking things Morales points out in the chapter is the ways in which Islam in Spain is forgotten because it complicates the idea of Europe. In a similar way, the idea of why conversion happens in the US is important at the individual level, but by focusing on that issue, we miss the ways in which Latine and Muslim identities complicate the idea of the United States. As the story develops beyond La Alianza Islámica, Morales gets into the particularities of the formation of three other organizations in his second chapter. Here, he establishes the foundation for work in later chapters, including gender, online organizing, and relationships with non-Latine Muslim communities. In particular , he points out the anti-Latine sentiment among certain immigrant Muslim communities, which mirror the broader American disdain of Latine communities. In terms of use of language, Morales uses the phrase “Latina Muslimah” several times. While he does not elaborate on his choices, I thought it was a notable construction. The phrase double-genders the person in question. It seems that “Latina Muslim” would be sufficient. It raises the question for researchers as to how we should approach and deploy language, as we engage with overlapping expressions of identity that do not operate only in English. In particular, with gendered languages, sentences...