New Releases

Engaging Muslim Students in Public Schools: What Educators Need to Understand

Michael Abraham 2020. Pp. 370 PB. $24.99 Kindle. $19.99 Abraham Education, Mahtomedi, Minn.

Michael Abraham designed his book with his training program designed for public school educators in mind. Thus, it is a learning continuum that builds on itself as it goes, so those who seek to benefit from it must read it cover to cover.

He stresses the importance of knowing the students’ home culture and practicing culturally relevant pedagogy. Teachers, he says, rarely feel that they have an inside view of these two realities and how they follow the students into the classroom.

This book is a unique journey in which Islam, Muslim culture, the history of Muslims in America and the learning structures in mosques are all taught in a prose specifically written for the public school educator. It offers new and practical insights, as well as ideas and considerations for practice, that take the culturally relevant pedagogy of Muslim students out of the nominal and superficial and into the authentic.

The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World

Jamil Zaki 2020. Pp. 288. HB. $20.49. PB. $15.39 Crown, New York, N.Y.

Stanford psychology professor Zaki argues that empathy is in short supply. Even though people struggle to understand those who aren’t like them, they find it easy to hate them. Studies show that Americans are less caring than they were even 30 years ago.

But, the author argues, it doesn’t have to be this way. Sharing his own lab’s cutting-edge research, he shows that empathy is not an inherent trait, but a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, people who are fighting for kindness in the most difficult circumstances. In essence, he states that empathy can be developed and shows how, when it happens, it changes people, relationships, organizations and cultures. In short, he offers a practical guide to making the world a better place.

Handing down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation

Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk 2021. Pp. 264. HB. $29.95 Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.

Working from the well-accepted norm that parents have the most influence on shaping their children’s religious and spiritual lives, the authors use new empirical evidence from more than 230 interviews to answer how and why religious parents seek to pass on religion. How were they influenced by their own childhood experiences in this regard? What do they look for in their houses of worship?

The interviewees allow them to identify the primary cultural models that inform how religiously observant Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons and Hispanic Catholics try to attain this goal.

The authors conclude that many factors influence this process, from parenting styles, the parents’ own levels of involvement with religion, how and if they talk about religion with their children to the parents’ immigrant status, race and ethnicity, background and nationality, as well as their own religious tradition. They also explore how religions are both reproduced and transformed across the generations.

This book will interest scholars of religion; social scientists interested in the family, parenting and socialization; clergy, religious educators and leaders; and religious parents themselves.

Ascending Adversity: The Journey of a Polio Survivor Dealing with Disability and Discrimination

Mohammed Yousuf 2020. Pp. 206. PB. $18.99 New Degree Press, Potomac, Md.

Imagine being told that you can’t do something, even if that something is your dream. Mohammed Yousuf, who proved that you can, shares his journey in his “Ascending Adversity.” Yousuf travels back to when he was first diagnosed with polio (aged 2) and his subsequent journey to adulthood, all the while facing unimaginable hardships. After obtaining an engineering degree, he left India to pursue higher education in the U.S., where he found more opportunity, encouragement and acceptance for people with disabilities. He studied at Wayne State University, spent his career working in both the private and public sectors, and contributed to the state of the practice and innovation in ways he couldn’t have imagined.

Through his memoir, he seeks to inspire others who are on a similar journey by sharing how he overcame what seemed like never-ending rejection and exclusion.

Writing as a polio survivor, immigrant, researcher, husband, father and disability activist compelled Yousuf to reflect on the moments, communities and ideas that transformed his life. In reading this book, people may find themes and stories that relate to their own life.

The Art and Technique of the Friday Khutbah

Dr. Munir El-Kassem 2021.Pp. 109+ iii. PB. CDN$ 16.00 Compass Books (https://compassbooks.ca), London, Ont., Canada

This is a ‘how-to’ guide for imams and aspiring khatībs who want to perfect their khutbah. With over forty years’ experience, El-Kassem takes the reader through the essentials of how to deliver a meaningful khutbah, including practical exercises at the end of each chapter.

This was a much-overlooked by how-to publishing sector. In nine chapters, he begins with his personal story based on forty years’ experience giving khutbahs, and addresses crucial aspects of public speaking as well as delivering khutbahs. A much-needed book for effective communication with one’s congregation, especially in the West. Designed as a practical guide, notably the book includes exercises at the end of each chapter for the reader to practice implementing the lessons learned. It should be a welcome how-to guide for both the experienced, and the up-and-coming, khatib.

The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America: Today’s Threat to Religion and Religious Freedom

Asma T. Uddin 2021. Pp. 336. HB. $27.95 Pegasus Books, New York, N.Y.

Asma T. Uddin presents a unique perspective on the complex sociopolitical factors that contribute to the Muslim-Christian divide. She asks what underlying drivers cause otherwise good people to do — or believe — bad things? Why do people who value faith support measures that limit the rights, among them that of religious freedom, for Muslims and other faith groups?

She contends that many conservative Christians fear that the Left is trying to replace traditional “Christian America” with an Islamized America, a conspiracy theory that has given rise to an “evangelical persecution complex” — a politicized vulnerability.

The author reveals the interconnection between Islamophobia and other aspects of the conservative Christian movement. She reveals where hate comes from, how it can be conquered and argues that we can begin to heal the divide only by addressing the underlying factors of this politics of vulnerability.

No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis

Serena Parekh 2020. Pp. 272. HB. $24.95 Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.

Parekh, a philosophy professor at Northeastern University, presents a well-grounded moral case for helping refugees by offering original and lucid ways of thinking about our moral obligations to them. She analyzes the politics of this global crisis as well as the largely invisible narrative of a second crisis: those refugees who have been stuck for decades in the dehumanizing and hopeless limbo of camps or urban slums. She states that only 2% of refugees will ever find a permanent home either through resettlement or returning home, whereas the rest will spend an average of 17 years in a period of uncertainty and without access to the basic conditions of human dignity. Her argument for resolving this nightmare emphasizes their humanity and the challenges that states face when they accept refugees.

Her accessible explanation of ethical approaches to this global crisis helps us deepen our understanding of its ethical dimensions. She also highlights the crisis faced by contemporary refugees who can’t find refuge in any of the three options given to them: refugee camps, urban settlements or dangerous asylum journeys.

The Invisible Muslim: Journeys Through Whiteness and Islam

Medina Tenour Whiteman 2020. Pp. 288. HB. $19.95. Kindle. $9.99 Hurst & Co., London

Whiteman, a writer, poet, translator and musician, stands at the margins of whiteness and Islam. An Anglo-American born to Sufi converts, she feels perennially out of place — not fully at home in Western or Muslim cultures.

In her analysis of what it means to be an invisible Muslim, the author examines the pernicious effects of white Muslim privilege and explores what Muslim identity can mean in lands of religious diversity and cultural insularity, from Spain (Andalusia), Bosnia and Turkey to Zanzibar, India and Iran.

She remarks that talking to minorities made her aware that white people are, on the whole, clueless. Through her travels, she unearths experiences familiar to both Western Muslims and anyone of mixed heritage: a life-long search for belonging and the joys and crises of inhabiting more than one identity.

The Unknown Fallen: The Global Allied Muslim Contribution in the First World War

2020. Pp. 112 (14 maps and 200+ photos) HB. £49.50 Forgotten Heroes 14-19 Foundation, London, U.K.

This interesting project documents the Muslims who died while serving in the armies of their colonial masters, Britain and France, during WWI (1914-19). Occupied and made dependent by their enslavers, the military was one source of employment. During this six-year war, some 2.5 million Muslims — convenient gun fodder — were drafted and transported to Europe’s battlefields.

This coffee-table book, produced in high-grade color with more than 200 unique illustrations accompanied by informative text, highlights how these colonized Muslims from around the world contributed to Europe’s history.

Foundation chair Luc Ferier explains, “Muslims are portrayed as the enemy within, that they are recent arrivals who have never made a valuable contribution to Europe. But we can show that they have sacrificed their lives for a free Europe, have helped to make it what it is and that they have a right to be here.” ih