Being Muslim on Campus

What does it mean to be Muslim at a university that imagines itself as secular? Drawing on three years of immersive ethnographic research at an elite and ostensibly secular institution, Being Muslim on Campus reexamines how religion and secularity take shape within American higher education. While universities often imagine themselves as neutral spaces--either wholly secular or lately "post-secular"--this book reveals how Protestant norms quietly shape the very categories of religion and secularity and thus continue to structure university life and diversity on campus. Through nuanced portraits of Muslim students navigating academic life, student spaces, and campus diversity initiatives, Being Muslim on Campus shows that what passes as "secular" is, in fact, deeply inflected by liberal Protestant assumptions about religion--one that privileges privatization, individual belief, and voluntarism. For Muslim students whose experiences and practices often look very different, being "religious" on campus requires constant negotiation. Offering a compelling rethinking of religion's place and its legibility in higher education, Being Muslim on Campus exposes how even the most inclusive institutions reproduce a Protestant legacy--and how Muslim students creatively inhabit, resist, and redefine what it means to belong. Their everyday efforts to live their faith challenge prevailing ideas about religion, secularity, and diversity on campus, inviting readers to reconsider what inclusion and pluralism truly mean in the modern university.

Abiya Ahmed is a scholar-practitioner whose work centers on higher education philosophy and practice, with particular attention to religious and racial minorities. She is currently a student affairs professional at Stanford University, where she also teaches courses on the American Muslim experience.