The Oxford Handbook of American Islam By Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane I Smith, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 560 pages.)

Abstract

Shortly after publishing Jocelyne Cesari’s edited Handbook of European Islam
(Oxford University Press: 2014), Oxford University Press more or less rounds
off the topic of Muslims in the western world with this volume on the United
States. The editors, Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane I Smith, have made ample
contributions on this topic during the last twenty years at least. This volume,
to some extent, updates their previous works that have followed the evolution
and changes seen by the country’s Muslim communities (e.g., Muslim Communities
in North America [Albany: SUNY Press, 1994], edited by both, and
The Muslims of America [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991], edited
by Haddad). This may not be the last step in this direction, but it is certainly
the most comprehensive and ambitious one so far.
The titles of their previous works, and indeed of this volume, touch on a
preliminary problem. As a matter of fact, the volume should have borne the
title Islam in the USA, since Central and Latin America and even Canada are
not mentioned. Many reasons, in any case, justify this circumscribed focus.
As rightly pointed out in the “Introduction” (p. 4), American Islam is the most
heterogeneous in the world and no doubt constitutes the main issue when dealing
with Islam in North, Central, and South America. It is also the most heterogeneous
and the most complex. As a matter of fact, these complex lines of
evolution of the West’s Islamic communities are exemplified by a simple comparison
between the two handbooks. Whereas Cesari’s edited European Islam
was described with an extensive first part that introduced the history and evolution
of Muslim communities in European countries plus some thematic
chapters, in this book the approach is different.
The thirty chapters deal with a number of specific topics identified as
significant, not to say fundamental, and are, furthermore, organized in three ...