Latino and Muslim in America (Book report)
The title is a book by Harold D. Morales and published by Oxford University Press. The full title of the book is “Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority”. The following is a report of the book.[1]
Overview
• First academic study to critically engage religious lives, organizations, and representations of Latino Muslims in America
• Follows the lives of several Latino Muslim leaders from the 1970's to the present
• Argues that race, religion, and media are inextricably intertwined
Description
Latino and Muslim in America examines how so called "minority groups" are made, fragmented, and struggle for recognition in the U.S.A. The U.S. is currently poised to become the first nation whose collective minorities will outnumber the dominant population, and Latinos play no small role in this world changing demographic shift. Even as many people view Latinos and Muslims as growing threats, Latino Muslims celebrate their intersecting identities both in their daily lives and in their mediated representations online.
In this book, Harold Morales follows the lives of several Latino Muslim leaders from the 1970's to the present, and their efforts to organize and unify nationally in order to solidify the new identity group's place within the public sphere. Based on four years of ethnography, media analysis and historical research, Morales demonstrates how the phenomenon of Latinos converting to Islam emerges from distinctive immigration patterns and laws, urban spaces, and new media technologies that have increasingly brought Latinos and Muslims in to contact with one another. He explains this growing community as part of the mass exodus out of the Catholic Church, the digitization of religion, and the growth of Islam. Latino and Muslim in America explores the racialization of religion, the framing of religious conversion experiences, the dissemination of post-colonial histories, and the development of Latino Muslim networks, to show that the categories of race, religion, and media are becoming inextricably entwined.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Experience and Mediation of Race-Religion
Chapter 1
The First Wave: From Islam in Spain to the Alianza in New York
Chapter 2
The Second Wave: Spanish Dawah to Women, Online and in Los Angeles
Chapter 3
Reversion Stories: The Form, Content, and Dissemination of a Logic of Return
Chapter 4
The 9/11 Factor: Latino Muslims in the News
Chapter 5
Radicals: Latino Muslim Hip Hop and the "Clash of Civilizations Thing"
Chapter 6
The Third Wave: Consolidations, Reconfigurations and the 2016 News Cycle
Conclusion
Author Information
Harold D. Morales, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Morgan State University
Harold D. Morales is Assistant Professor of Religion at Morgan State University.
Reviews and Awards
"Latino and Muslim in America by Harold Morales is a strong example of how to present the experiences of American Muslims in a meaningful context... Morales' book is a welcome addition to the study of Muslims in the US. It is theoretically rich and grounded in the experiences of Latine Muslims. He integrates a wide variety of perspectives and weaves many narrative threads together. The text is written in an approachable way and could easily be used in undergraduate courses." - Hussein Rashid, Inedpendent Scholar, American Religion
"Overall...I strongly recommend Morales' work for scholars, graduate students, and upper level undergraduate stuednts who possess an interest in the fields of American religious history and ethnic or race studies." - Jacob Hicks, Grand Canyon University, Nova Religio
"The book also serves as a reference for the study of analogous non-conventional religious groups which must assert their position within the pluralistic US-American society or other countries ... unquestionable descriptive and analytical merits" - Frank Usarski, International Journal of Latin American Religions
"Having worked with, learned from, and researched Latino Muslims since 2012, I am pleased with Morales's addition to the fine work done by various scholars in the past... This type of book has been in need for years, and it is a welcome supplement to the diversifying field of American religious studies." - Ken Chitwood, Reading Religion