AMERICAN MUSLIMS : THE NEW GENERATION BY ASM A GULL HASAN [PAPERBACK]

Twenty-four-year-old Asma Hassan calls herself "a Muslim feminist cowgirl" (she was raised in Pueblo, Colorado). Convinced that Muslim Americans are "the victims of mistaken identity" ("our fellow citizens think all Muslims are terrorists and women-oppressors"), Hassan breaks through the stereotypes and generalizations to talk about the religion and the believers she knows from the inside. While the book packs a lot of basic information about Islam in America - the major tenets, the different sects ("like Baptist Christians and Catholic Christians"), the various ethnic groups, including African Americans - the major emphasis is on the sheer normalcy of American Muslims. Like other Americans, they are very keen on family values, religious freedom, and the opportunities the U.S. has always afforded new immigrants. Moreover, says Hassan, American Islam, as it grows and evolves, will offer a model to Islam in the rest of the world: a purer Islam, one more conscious of the difference between the essence of Islam and its accommodations to various cultures over time.