The Women's Mosque of America : authority and community in US Islam / Tazeen M. Ali.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ali, Tazeen M., author.

Series:

NYU Press scholarship online.

NYU Press scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women's Mosque of America.

Muslim women--United States.

Muslim women.

Muslim women--United States--Los Angeles.

Women in Islam.

Muslim women--Religious life--United States.

Women's rights--Religious aspects--Islam.

Women's rights.

United States.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : 4 b/w illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2023]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The Women's Mosque of America, a multiracial women-only mosque in Los Angeles, is the first of its kind in the United States. Since 2015, the WMA has provided a space for Muslim women to build inclusive communities committed to gender and social justice, challenging the dominant mosque culture that has historically marginalized them through inadequate prayer spaces, exclusion from leadership, and limited access to religious learning. Tazeen M. Ali explores this congregation, focusing on how members contest established patriarchal norms while simultaneously contending with domestic and global Islamophobia that renders their communities vulnerable to violence. Drawing on textual analysis of WMA sermons and ethnographic interviews with community members, and utilizing Black feminist and womanist frameworks, Ali investigates how American Muslim women create and authorize new conceptions of Islamic authority. Whereas the established model of Islamic authority is rooted in formal religious training and Arabic language expertise, the WMA is predicated on women's embodied experiences, commitments to social and racial justice, English interpretations of the Qur'an, and community building across Islamic sects and in an interfaith context. Situating the US at the center rather than at the margins of debates over Islamic authority and showing how American Muslim women assert themselves as meaningful religious actors in the US and beyond, Ali's work offers new insights on Islamic authority as it relates to the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging. [back cover]

"The Women's Mosque of America analyzes how American Muslim women cultivate new forms of Islamic authority that contend with gender inequality, anti-Blackness, and global Islamophobia by approaching the Qur'an as a tool for social justice and community building, providing insights on Islamic authority at the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

1. Ritual Authority: Beyond Legal Debates on Woman-Led Prayer

2. Interpretive Authority: Reading the Qur'an in English

3. Embodied Authority: Women's Experiences as Exegesis

4. Authority through Activism: Islamophobia, Social Justice, and Black Lives Matter

5. The Politics of Community Building: Intrafaith Inclusivity and Interfaith Solidarity

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author.

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2022.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4798-1131-9

OCLC:

1343250990