Muslim American Politics and the Future of US Democracy

Abstract

The future of US democracy depends on the question of whether Muslim Americans can become full social and political citizens. Though many Muslims have worked toward full assimilation since the 1950s, it has mattered little whether they have expressed dissent or supported the political status quo. Their efforts to assimilate have been futile because the liberal terms under which they have negotiated their citizenship have simultaneously alienated Muslims from the body politic. Focusing on both electoral and grassroots Muslim political participation, this book reveals Muslim challenges to and accommodation of liberalism from the Cold War to the war on terror. It shows how the Nation of Islam both resisted and made use of postwar liberalism, and then how Malcolm X sought a political alternative in his Islamic ethics of liberation. The book charts the changing Muslim American politics of the late twentieth century, examining how Muslim Americans fashioned their political participation in response to a form of US nationalism tied to war-making against Muslims abroad. The book analyzes the everyday resistance of Muslim American women to an American identity politics that put their bodies at the center of US public life and it assesses the attempts of Muslim Americans to find acceptance through military service. It concludes with an examination of the role of Muslim American dissent in the contemporary politics of the United States.