Islam and America: Building a Future without Prejudice

by Anouar Majid

Overview

Islam and America argues that the current animosity between the U.S. and Muslim world should be understood through the often-overlooked history between the two. Tracing the genealogy of this conflicted relationship from the Pilgrims to the present, author Anouar Majid weaves personal stories with historical narratives to offer a critical view of both cultures and to suggest a path towards future peace.

The paperback edition features a new preface that connects Majid’s argument with recent events, from the growth of ISIS to the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Islam and America makes a provocative argument against faith-based prejudices and offers inspiring suggestions for the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442214132
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/23/2015
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Anouar Majid is the author of several critically acclaimed books on Islam and the West, including A Call for Heresy and We Are All Moors. His work has been featured in the Bill Moyers Journal and on Al Jazeera television. Majid is founding director of the Center for Global Humanities and vice president for Global Affairs at the University of New England.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition
Preface
Introduction: Why America Matters
Chapter 1: America’s View of Islam
Chapter 2: Holy Land for a Chosen People
Chapter 3: How Islam Shaped America
Chapter 4: America’s Gifts to Muslims and Arabs
Chapter 5: Failing Civilizations
Chapter 6: Future without Prejudice

What People are Saying About This

Pankaj Mishra

Possessed of a profound knowledge of several societies, Anouar Majid is that very rare writer in our noisily polemical culture—someone who offers true wisdom and understanding.

Daniel Martin Varisco

Most books on Islam these days stress the negative, but Majid builds a highly personal and well documented blueprint for proudly being American and Muslim at the same time. Beneath the media-hyped 'clash of civilizations' there is far too much 'trash talking' and not near enough reasoned exploration of the principles that should unite the best values of both the United States and the Islamic World. As the current 'Arab Spring' demonstrates, the future belongs to those who challenge the status quo rather than pandering to past prejudice and perpetuating the injustice that tarnishes all sides. What make this book stand out from the rest are both Majid's self reflection as a Muslim from Morocco and his passion for retelling the principles that at one time made the American experiment the envy of the world. As Majid persuasively argues, Americans and Muslims do not straddle a rigid cultural divide but can build on shared values if everyone recognizes that past prejudice is the enemy of future progress.

Robert J. Allison

Anouar Majid's Islam and America is a bold and courageous book, putting a millennium of history, theology, and culture into context and challenging assumptions on all sides. Islam and America should be read by all who are perplexed at the catastrophic relations between the United States and the Muslim world, between Israel and her neighbors—who might come away with renewed faith that we still have it in our power to begin the world anew.

Editorial Reviews

Anouar Majid's Islam and America is a bold and courageous book, putting a millennium of history, theology, and culture into context and challenging assumptions on all sides. Islam and America should be read by all who are perplexed at the catastrophic relations between the United States and the Muslim world, between Israel and her neighbors—who might come away with renewed faith that we still have it in our power to begin the world anew.

Robert J. Allison

Majid’s work is brave, controversial, and passionately argued. He challenges the easy stereotypes in American and Muslim societies, constantly asking for ‘heretics’ on all sides to reach out to each other. The ‘heretic’ in Majid’s account is an individual with the moral and intellectual tenacity to speak out and weave new narratives of existence out of the opulent cloth of ambiguity and complexity.

Dawn

Most books on Islam these days stress the negative, but Majid builds a highly personal and well documented blueprint for proudly being American and Muslim at the same time. Beneath the media-hyped 'clash of civilizations' there is far too much 'trash talking' and not near enough reasoned exploration of the principles that should unite the best values of both the United States and the Islamic World. As the current 'Arab Spring' demonstrates, the future belongs to those who challenge the status quo rather than pandering to past prejudice and perpetuating the injustice that tarnishes all sides. What makes this book stand out from the rest are both Majid's self reflection as a Muslim from Morocco and his passion for retelling the principles that at one time made the American experiment the envy of the world. As Majid persuasively argues, Americans and Muslims do not straddle a rigid cultural divide but can build on shared values if everyone recognizes that past prejudice is the enemy of future progress.

Daniel Martin Varisco

As the Moroccan American scholar Anouar Majid reminds us on the first page of his latest book, Islam and America: Building a Future without Prejudice, we are drowning in information about the relationships of Muslims and the West but are not yet being rescued by this expanding corpus. This and his earlier We Are All Moors come as close to any books I have read recently that hold out promise for such a rescue, at least in the forward-thinking rhetoric that outlasts the general effluvium of political punditry.. .. Islam and America is a narrative that harnesses anecdotes and historical trivia to produce a text that is accessible to a wide range of readers and at the same time entertains as it informs. The unique aspect of the book is the reflective experience of a Muslim-born American from Morocco.. .. The value of Majid’s writing is that it argues for a focus on the common humanity that can shine through ethnic and religious filters, but a focus that is not shy about exposing the ugly side or prejudice on all sides.. .. Majid provides a compelling portrait, much abridged from the available literature he had read, on how Muslims viewed Americans and were viewed by Americans long before the tragedy of 9/11 and initiation of two wars costly both in lives and American prestige.

Springer Science + Business Media

Once upon a time, heretics were burned at the stake. You’re about to meet a man who would put a microphone in their hand and have all of us listen to them. Heresy, says Anouar Majid, just might save us from an apocalyptic future.. .. A Call for Heresy: I hope a lot of people read it.

Bill Moyers

We Are All Moors excited me for its implications. The range is superb and reading it is a pleasure—Anouar Majid dances across continents, taking a thread and seeing what comes of it. It reminds us of histories long forgotten, and provides a useful way to look back to help understand the present.

Vijay Prashad

Possessed of a profound knowledge of several societies, Anouar Majid is that very rare writer in our noisily polemical culture—someone who offers true wisdom and understanding.

Pankaj Mishra

Majid’s book is a magnificent discussion of critical issues.. .. It is an important find for the most uninformed to the most sophisticated reader.

Choice Reviews

Open-minded readers will gain many insights from Islamic and early American ‘heretics’ bestowing a rich appreciation for the value that voices of dissent bring to any society.

Foreword Reviews

A towering Islamic intellectual.

Cornel West

A Call to Heresy is analytically fruitful and handles works in Arabic and French adeptly. The book should be useful to an audience in need of less cantankerous and more productive ways to look at the ground that Islam and the West share.

Digest of Middle East Studies

Majid, born in Morocco, raised a Muslim, educated in the U.S., and now an American, offers a personal view of the tensions between the U.S. and Islam and the foundation for moving forward. He begins, and ends, with the revolutionary idea that embodies the U.S.: the promise of liberty, free inquiry, new ideas, and a democratic spirit and the hope it engenders. In between, he argues that both sides have used sacred scriptures and unexamined religious beliefs to justify social injustice, misguided foreign-policy choices, and acts of aggression. Although both sides need to rethink their relationship to their respective traditions, reevaluate their own assumptions, and reexamine their place in the world today, the U.S. needs, in particular, to return to its revolutionary roots—roots planted in the soil of reason, not divine providence. The path forward will require speaking the truth. Forthright and fair, Majid’s analysis will not satisfy everyone. But that’s exactly the point. ‘Conversations humanize us; unyielding certitudes turn us into warring tribes and killing machines.’

Booklist

Issues are addressed in an even-handed manner, all the more remarkable given the politically charged nature of interpretations of events and situations taking place in the past decades.

Multicultural Review

By offering a brilliant and scintillating examination of how the identity of ‘Moor’ served the Western imagination of enemies for centuries, the book provides a critical history of xenophobia and the persecution of minorities in Europe and America.

Borderlands

Islam and America is a narrative that harnesses anecdotes and historical trivia to produce a text that is accessible to a wide range of readers and at the same time entertains as it informs.

Contemporary Islam

Majid’s book is a magnificent discussion of critical issues.. .. It is an important find for the most uninformed to the most sophisticated reader.

Choice

Majid’s book is a magnificent discussion of critical issues.. .. It is an important find for the most uninformed to the most sophisticated reader.

CHOICE

Majid, born in Morocco, raised a Muslim, educated in the U.S., and now an American, offers a personal view of the tensions between the U.S. and Islam and the foundation for moving forward. He begins, and ends, with the revolutionary idea that embodies the U.S.: the promise of liberty, free inquiry, new ideas, and a democratic spirit and the hope it engenders. In between, he argues that both sides have used sacred scriptures and unexamined religious beliefs to justify social injustice, misguided foreign-policy choices, and acts of aggression. Although both sides need to rethink their relationship to their respective traditions, reevaluate their own assumptions, and reexamine their place in the world today, the U.S. needs, in particular, to return to its revolutionary roots—roots planted in the soil of reason, not divine providence. The path forward will require speaking the truth. Forthright and fair, Majid’s analysis will not satisfy everyone. But that’s exactly the point. ‘Conversations humanize us; unyielding certitudes turn us into warring tribes and killing machines.’

Booklist

Praise for A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam:

"A Call to Heresy is analytically fruitful and handles works in Arabic and French adeptly. The book should be useful to an audience in need of less cantankerous and more productive ways to look at the ground that Islam and the West share."

Digest Of Middle East Studies