A01=Zaid Adhami
American Muslim communities
American religion
Author_Zaid Adhami
believing as ourselves
Category=JBSR
Category=QRP
community belonging
crisis of faith
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ex-Muslims
faith and individuality
iman
ISBCC (Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center)
Islam and reform
Islamic faith and belief
Islamic revivalism
justification of faith
liberal Muslims
losing my religion
Muslims in Boston
personal authenticity
personal experience
progressive Muslims
religion and personal autonomy
religious ambivalence
religious belief and trust
religious commitment
religious disillusionment
religious doubt
religious individualism
religious questioning
secularity
secularization
shakk
the Yaqeen Institute
unmosqued Muslims
yaqin
Product details
- ISBN 9781469685564
- Dimensions: 155 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 20 May 2025
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The past two decades have witnessed pervasive anxieties in US Muslim communities around a perceived crisis of faith. As Zaid Adhami argues in this richly textured ethnography, these concerns are fundamentally about the pressures and dilemmas of authenticity—what it really means to be a Muslim. While discussions about authenticity in Islam typically focus on maintaining tradition and competing claims to "true Islam," Adhami focuses instead on the powerful idea of being true to one's own self and what it means to have genuine belief. Drawing on extensive conversations with American Muslims and careful readings of broader communal discourse, Adhami shows that this drive for personal authenticity plays out in complicated ways. It can produce deep doubt while also serving as the grounds to affirm tradition. It can converge with revivalist modes of piety, but it can also prompt emphatic challenges to communal orthodoxies.
Through vivid storytelling and sensitive analysis, Adhami illuminates why religious doubt is often a source of intense anxiety in today's world and how people maintain their faith despite such unsettling uncertainty.
Through vivid storytelling and sensitive analysis, Adhami illuminates why religious doubt is often a source of intense anxiety in today's world and how people maintain their faith despite such unsettling uncertainty.
Zaid Adhami is assistant professor of religion at Williams College.
