Suburban Islam (By Justine Howe)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Suburban Islam by Justine Howe Emily Regan Wills (bio) Suburban Islam Justine Howe New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 230 Pages. In Suburban Islam, Justine Howe provides a compelling and readable ethnographic portrait of the Muhammad Webb Foundation, a Muslim community organization located in the suburbs of Chicago. The Webb Foundation is structurally distinct from many other sorts of Muslim community institutions. It is not a mosque, though it does host religious educational spaces for adults and children, as well as religious events. It is neither an activist organization nor a political advocacy group that aims to speak for a Muslim community, although its members are highly engaged in the task of thinking about how to speak as Muslims in the public sphere. It is a multi-ethnic and multi-generational foundation that is not organized through a geographically concentrated urban community, whose members are primarily drawn from the large but scattered Muslim communities of the greater Chicago area, particularly those living in the suburbs. The organization aims to move beyond the conservative perspectives and narrow cultural boundaries associated with many Muslim community institutions. Only some members, [End Page 111] however, would describe themselves, or the institution, as progressive or feminist. Since the Webb Foundation is such a unique place, it is a particularly interesting field site for Howe to ask questions about how ordinary Muslims interrogate and/or integrate religious traditions and practices into their daily lives. The book as a whole, shows how the Webb Foundation’s members view it as a space for creating a particularly American Islamic-culture and practice. Howe makes a convincing case that Webb is a forum for its members to create new identities and opportunities for dialogue and spiritual growth. Its members have substantial social capital (and usually financial capital), but they also have good reason to be reluctant to engage with mosque-based Muslim spaces, which they critique as being excessively ethnocentric, disconnected from American reality, and limited in their ability to educate children, and support spiritual guidance sought by their members. Webbies, as they call themselves, share a strong critique of what they call “ Wahhabism” and what Howe calls “ revivalism” (p. 55), the theologically conservative brand of Islamic theology that is primarily supported by Saudi Arabia. However, they are equally unwilling to allow this criticism to authorize an Islamophobic rejection of Islam; instead, their goal is to create an “indigenous” American Islam which is grounded in rationality that fits within the rubric of American religious pluralism, and can support them in their own daily lives and help them represent themselves to outsiders. The community that gathers around the Webb Foundation is diverse in some ways, particularly with regards to ethnicity, but largely homogenous in terms of class position and educational levels, which combines with their shared theological goals to produce a strong bond, even as members continue to interact with other institutions within the Muslim community in the Chicago area. Howe explores the Webb community through a variety of lenses. Her individual interviews and observation at Webb events, particularly its annual mawlid, show that the community is actively self-reflective and engaged in the broader project of representing Islam to others in an American conflict. They struggle with what I have elsewhere called “discursive misrecognition,”1 the inability to speak from their own subject position without being forced into limiting or changing their dialogical position to satisfy powerful interlocutors. But they also struggle with how to find a form of Islamic practice that is authentic to them and that addresses the purposes they want Islam to represent in their own lives. Through detailed observation at adult education classes on Qur’an and fiqh, Howe is able to see how the members engage with text and tradition to find how their ways and daily lifestyles adapt to that sort of practice. The book integrates analysis of gender dynamics throughout, and also dedicates a full chapter to exploring some of the particularities of gendered-practices and contestation within the community. The picture she paints is of a thriving community that is meaningfully engaged with [End Page 112] each other, with scripture, and with the demands of living as Muslims in...