Intensifying Islamic Identity
Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11
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Journalist and analyst Geneive Abdo, author of Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11, discusses how the Muslim community in the United States has changed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
SinceSeptember 11, Abdo explains, Muslims in the United States faceprejudice and hostility, not only from their neighbors, but also fromthe U.S. government. New generations are withdrawing from mainstreamAmerican life, choosing instead to create a community apart from theirsurroundings, where they can practice their faith without beingridiculed or judged. She explores parallels between U.S. Muslimcommunities and Muslim communities abroad. Is an increase in mosqueattendance in the United States related to an increase in mosqueattendance in Europe? Can we conclude that Muslims who live asminorities in Western societies behave predictably? Will there be acertain pattern of immigration? Furthermore, Abdo asks, “Has what’sbeen happening here — this intensification of an Islamic identity —been due to global events? Are United States Muslims responding tobehavior from Muslims abroad or trying to distinguish themselves fromMuslims abroad?”
April 18, 2008, noon
The Castle
About the speaker:
Authorand journalist Geneive Abdo is a liaison for the United NationsAlliance of Civilizations, a project that seeks to improve relationsbetween Western and Islamic societies. Her most recent book, Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11, investigates how the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks affected the Muslim community in the United States. She also wrote No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam,which documents the social and political transformation of Egypt intoan Islamic society. She cowrote, along with Jonathan Lyons, Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First Century Iran.
Before joining the United Nations, Abdo was the Iran correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian and a regular contributor to The Economist.She was the first American journalist to be based in Tehran after theUnited States severed ties with Iran following the 1979 IslamicRevolution. Her stories, which included interviews with jaileddissidents, student rebels, and clerics under house arrest, madeinternational headlines and prompted threats of imprisonment by thegovernment. She was forced to flee Iran in 2001 and is not permitted toreturn.
From 2001 to 2002, Abdo was a Nieman Fellow at HarvardUniversity. The same year she received a John Simon Guggenheimfellowship. She has earned research grants from the Ford Foundation andthe U.S. Institute of Peace.
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