Muslim Diaspora in the West Negotiating Gender, Home, and Belonging By Haideh Moghissi and Halleh Ghorashi, eds. (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2011. 228 pages.)

Abstract

This excellent edited collection unpicks and disputes multifarious and intricate

processes that underpin the homogenization, otherization, and vilification of

immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Muslim citizens, and individuals

with a Muslim cultural background in the group of countries known as “the

West.” It does so through presenting a selection of essays that offer an insight

into the localized, day-to-day realities of people whose lives are currently defined

by their link to Islam. The focus on gender, home, and belonging emphasizes

the particular challenge faced by Muslim women: Their bodies are

the battleground for the ideological wars fought by western governments on

the one hand, and by political Islamists on the other (pp. 30-31).

At the same time, media outlets and governmental policies portray and

essentialize all Muslims as a single, uniform community defined exclusively

by their Muslimness, thereby ignoring any of their differences based on “national

origin, rural-urban roots, class, gender, language, lifestyle and degree

of religiosity, as well as political and moral conviction” (p. 2). As all of the

essays demonstrate, these concerns about representation remain valid, despite

the critiques of historical and contemporary orientalism published by Edward

Said over thirty years ago notwithstanding: Orientalism (1979) and Covering

Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of

the World (1981).

The collection is a result of two conferences held in Toronto (2006) and

Amsterdam (2008) to discuss these issues. It is organized around four themes:

discourse, organizations, and policy; sexuality and family; youth; and space

and belonging. The first theme is represented by different perspectives from

the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Halleh Ghorashi

analyzes the disempowering effects of supposedly “empowering courses” for

immigrant women of Muslim backgrounds and indicates how women themselves

critique the terms on which such courses are delivered. Fauzia Erfan

Ahmed writes about the deteriorating situation for female American Muslim

community leaders who are forced into silence despite a long history of female

leadership since the time of slavery. Cassandra Balchin’s chapter focuses on

Muslim women’s refusal to cede the discourse of their legal rights to both the

governments and to patriarchal males within Muslim communities, who are ...