Shabana Mir's powerful ethnographic study of women on Washington,
D.C., college campuses reveals that being a young female Muslim in
post-9/11 America means experiencing double scrutiny—scrutiny
from the Muslim community as well as from the dominant non-Muslim
community.
Muslim American Women on Campus illuminates the
processes by which a group of ethnically diverse American college
women, all identifying as Muslim and all raised in the United
States, construct their identities during one of the most formative
times in their lives.
Mir, an anthropologist of education, focuses on key leisure
practices--drinking, dating, and fashion--to probe how Muslim
American students adapt to campus life and build social networks
that are seamlessly American, Muslim, and youthful. In this lively
and highly accessible book, we hear the women's own often poignant
voices as they articulate how they find spaces within campus
culture as well as their Muslim student communities to grow and
assert themselves as individuals, women, and Americans. Mir
concludes, however, that institutions of higher learning continue
to have much to learn about fostering religious diversity on
campus.