The Women's Mosque of America: Authority and Community in US Islam

Analyzes how American Muslim women assert themselves as religious actors in the US and beyond, using the Qur'an as a tool for social justice and community buildingThe Women's Mosque of America (WMA), a multiracial, women-only mosque in Los Angeles, is the first of its kind in the United St...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ali, Tazeen M. (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
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Published: New York, NY New York University Press [2022]
In:Year: 2022
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B USA / Islam / Woman
Further subjects:B Islamic authority
B American religions
B Female imams
B Women's interpretive communities
B Women's Mosque of America
B Patriarchal mosque culture
B Prayer leadership
B Islamophobia
B Women's khutbahs (sermons)
B Black lives matter movement
B Anti-Blackness
B Legal debates on ritual authority
B Women's religious authority
B Muslim Women Religious life (United States)
B Women's Rights Religious aspects Islam
B Woman led prayer
B Social justice
B Women in Islam
B American Islam
B Interfaith solidarity
B Women's khutbahs / sermons
B Islam in the United States
B amina wadud
B allyship
B Vulnerability
B Global Islamophobia
B Intra Muslim racism
B Surveillance
B Ahmadi
B Qur'anic literacy
B Islam in America
B Intrafaith
B Lay Muslim authority
B Religious pluralism
B Religious authority
B pluralism
B Gendered Islamic authority
B Arabic language hegemony
B Wives of Muhammad
B Embodied authority
B Jummah
B Exegesis
B Sunni-Shia
B Women's experiences as exegesis
B American Muslim women
B Muslim Women (United States)
B Islam / Religion / Generals
B English translations of the Qur'an
B Islam and gender
B Anti-Muslim racism
B Gendered Islamophobia
B Islamic tradition
B Qur'an
B American mosques
B Latinx Muslims
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Summary:Analyzes how American Muslim women assert themselves as religious actors in the US and beyond, using the Qur'an as a tool for social justice and community buildingThe Women's Mosque of America (WMA), 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
ISBN:1479811319
Access:Restricted Access
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.18574/nyu/9781479811311.001.0001