Muslim American

The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant community at its very heart. Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them.

By the time he was twelve, Taymullah Abdur-Rahman (born Tyrone Sutton) was a rising pop star, recruited as part of the RB group Perfect Gentlemen, with a top-ten hit, national teen magazine covers, and an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. However, after his music career peaked, Abdur-Rahman found himself back home, with little to show for his success. He quickly became a teen father struggling to survive in Roxbury, MA. Seeing Islam as a way out of his hard-scrabble environment, he happily converted.

The Princess and the Prophet tells the story of the Black Broadway performer who, among the world of Arabian acrobats and equestrians, Muslim fakirs, and Wild West shows, discovered in Islam a greater measure of freedom and dignity, and a rebuttal to the racism and parochialism of white America.

This powerful, inspiring book tells the story of an ambitious Afghan girl who seeks to fulfill her promise to her mother, fight for the right to education, and empower girls. Zynab lives in a small village in Afghanistan where education is deemed unnecessary for girls and even frowned upon. But Zaynab's family and life are very different from those of other girls in her village. Her father is a teacher who began teaching her Rumi's poetry when she was only five. One poem, in particular, inspires and encourages her: "You were born with potential. You were born with divine energy You were ...

Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the US.

He waited decades to find someone like her. Now, he must have her! Growing up, Brandon was an observant Muslim. In law school, he focused on his education and career. Having built a firm filled with wealthy clients, he is now looking for someone with whom he can share his success. It’s not easy. Hawwah Did everything right in her life, except marrying the wrong man. Now she is constantly on the run, afraid that her abusive ex will catch up to her. Brandon falls deeply for Hawwah, releasing years of pent-up desire. He must have her, but what price will he pay to be with her? Will he be ...

Haroon Moghul was thrust into the spotlight after 9/11, becoming an undergraduate leader at New York University's Islamic Center and forced into appearances everywhere: on TV, before interfaith audiences, in print. Moghul was becoming a prominent voice for American Muslims even as he struggled with his relationship to Islam. In high school he was barely a believer and entirely convinced he was going to hell. He sometimes drank. He didn't pray regularly. All he wanted was a girlfriend. But as he discovered, it wasn't so easy to leave religion behind.

Whispers of the Minaret in the Empire of Noise By Muhammad Abdelwahid How do you stay rooted in a world built to unmoor you? We live in an empire of noise—where algorithms shape our desires, self-worship is sanctified, and distraction is the dominant currency. Amid this chaos, the quiet call of the minaret still echoes, inviting us back to the only truth that liberates: La ilāha illa Allah. In Whispers of the Minaret in the Empire of Noise, Muhammad Abdelwahid delivers a powerful and poetic critique of modernity through the lens of Islamic spirituality. This book is not simply a ...

Imagine a United States in which registries and detainment camps for Muslim-Americans are a reality. Fifteen-year-old Sarah-Mary Williams of Hannibal, Missouri, lives in this world, and though she has strong opinions on almost everything, she isn't concerned with the internments because she doesn't know any Muslims. She assumes that everything she reads and sees in the news is true and that these plans are better for everyone's safety.

Making Moros offers a unique look at the colonization of Muslim subjects during the early years of American rule in the southern Philippines. Hawkins argues that the ethnological discovery, organization, and subsequent colonial engineering of Moros was highly contingent on developing notions of time, history, and evolution, which ultimately superseded simplistic notions about race. He also argues that this process was highly collaborative, with Moros participating, informing, guiding, and even investing in their configuration as modern subjects.

An American high school student was given the homework assignment to interview someone from a different faith, and he chose Muslims. This latest edition of He Asked About Islam features the teen’s twenty questions about Islam and Umm Zakiyyah’s answers. Questions include: What are your views on Christianity and other religions? What are your views on Jesus and who he is? How was the Universe and the world created? Who is your God and why do you worship Him? Where do you go after you die and how do you get there? If you do something bad and sin, what happens and how do you get forgiven? ...

The year is 1991. When Jasira's mother finds out what has been going on between her boyfriend and her 13-year-old daughter, she has to make a choice—and chooses to send Jasira off to Houston, Texas, to live with her father. A remote disciplinarian prone to explosive rages, Jasira's father is unable to show his daughter the love she craves—and far less able to handle her feelings about her changing body.

The Terrorist Next Door is a fiction about Jack's new neighbors who happen to be Moslems. In his attempt to be patriotic Jack finds out interesting things about his neighbors thinking that he would keep the homeland safe. However, in the process he finds himself conflicted between his stereotypes and his new found 'friends.' This motivates him to improve his own life and in the process becomes the man he never thought he could be. The Terrorist Next Door is the first in a series of books I intend on writing following along the same theme. It highlights the various cultural nuances amongst ...

For centuries, the story of Black America has been one of resilience, resistance, and relentless faith. Ummah Rising uncovers a powerful and often overlooked thread in that story—the enduring relationship between Islam and Black identity in the United States. From the whispered prayers of enslaved African Muslims to the revolutionary sermons of Malcolm X and the transformative leadership of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, this book traces a legacy of spiritual defiance and divine reclamation. It explores how Islam provided Black Americans with not only a new faith but also a restored identity,...

Islam is often associated with and limited to the worst of the world—extremism, obscurantism, misogyny, bigotry. So why would so many people associate with such a fundamentalist faith? Two Billion Caliphs advocates for a way of being Muslim in the world, ready for today and prepared for tomorrow.

From best-selling and National Book Award-nominated author Tahereh Mafi comes a stunning novel about love and loneliness, navigating the hyphen of dual identity, and reclaiming your right to joy - even when you’re trapped in the amber of sorrow.

Prayers from the Far Quarter is Roger DeBlanck’s most memorable and essential novel to date. Its historical breadth and sweep traverse three continents to chronicle the extraordinary life of Isa Muhammad Rahman, an African Muslim. Isa’s unforgettable voice and distinct prose style narrate his journey that begins in 1850 from the Bornu kingdom of sub-Saharan Africa. From his capture in his homeland, to his sojourn in Victorian England, to his enslavement on a cotton plantation in the antebellum South, to his work with the American Anti-Slavery Society in the North, and finally through ...

From Gold Star father and beloved Democratic National Convention speaker Khizr Khan comes a book for young people about the Constitution - what it says and why it matters for everyone. Our Founding Fathers created the US Constitution and Bill of Rights as a blueprint for American government and the rights of American citizens. This document is not merely a piece of parchment but a living, breathing promise of our deepest democratic values.

AT THEIR FEET is a rare opportunity to both pay homage to, and learn from, one of the most unique communities to ever grace the planet: African-American Muslim Elders born in the 1930s-1950s. To sit “at the feet” indicates an exchange between student and teacher. Sage and apprentice. Master and disciple. Inside, you’ll learn and read stories on a variety of life experiences. You’ll read how some of our elders accepted Islam as their way of life on their own in their early teens. You’ll read about experiences traversing Jim Crow. You’ll read about family and business and building...

This three-book edition of His Other Wife—Umm Zakiyyah’s popular online series turned novel—is a story about love and betrayal, faith and personal crisis, and withstanding deep emotional wounds. Jacob is a successful businessman and college professor, and his wife Deanna is a renowned marriage counselor and author. Together they are their Muslim community’s power couple. Aliyah is Deanna’s recently divorced best friend who has just accepted a position at the college where Jacob works—and who is the unwilling recipient of Deanna’s constant unsolicited relationship advice, ...