Islam

There has been a proliferation of interest in youth issues in recent years, and Muslim youth in particular. Young Muslims have been thrust into the global spotlight in relation to questions about security, employment, migration, multiculturalism, conflict, human rights, and citizenship. This book interrogates the cultures and politics of Muslim youth in the global South and North to understand their trajectories, conditions, and choices. It shows that although the majority of young Muslims share many common social, political, and economic misfortunes, they exhibit remarkably diverse responses to their situations. Although groups of them are drawn into radical Islam, others embrace their religion more as an identity marker. Although some take Islam as a normative frame and subvert it to express and reclaim their youthfulness, their counterparts may exert themselves through a music of rage or via collective action using the tools of new media and communications technologies. Far from being “exceptional,” young Muslims in reality have as much in common with their non-Muslim global generational counterparts as they share among themselves. They permeate the spaces of culture and politics to navigate between being Muslim, modern, and young.

As Senegal prepares to celebrate fifty years of independence from French colonial rule, academic and policy circles are engaged in a vigorous debate about its experience in nation building. An important aspect of this debate is the impact of globalization on Senegal, particularly the massive labor migration that began directly after independence. From Tokyo to Melbourne, from Turin to Buenos Aires, from to Paris to New York, 300,000 Senegalese immigrants are simultaneously negotiating their integration into their host society and seriously impacting the development of their homeland. This book addresses the modes of organization of transnational societies in the globalized context, and specifically the role of religion in the experience of migrant communities in Western societies. Abundant literature is available on immigrants from Latin America and Asia, but very little on Africans, especially those from French speaking countries in the United States. The book offers a case study of the growing Senegalese community in New York City. By pulling together numerous aspects (religious, ethnic, occupational, gender, generational, socio-economic, and political) of the experience of the Senegalese migrant community into an integrated analysis, linking discussion of both the homeland and host community, this book contributes to the debate about postcolonial Senegal, Muslim globalization and diaspora studies in the United States.

This book is the story of how in six different locations indentured workers from India were able to design Hindu communities for themselves, and how those communities continue to thrive in those postcolonial societies. In the colonial era, the recruitment of workers had many of the features of the earlier slave trade. As the late nineteenth century wore on, however, the colonial regimes in these places lost interest in governing and the workers were largely left to design a culture for themselves. In each location, the Hindu majority among the Indians developed a style of worship that linked their memories of home with the opportunities available in their new social environment. This was the first large‐scale diaspora of Hindus from the Indian subcontinent, and because they did not have religious specialists with them, they had to create a sense of community for themselves and then determine the ritual forms they would use to sustain that community. Because of the energy needed to initiate and sustain this kind of religious community, the Hindus in these locations are unusually proud of their religious traditions and have taught these new traditions to succeeding generations as authoritative traditions. When the author and his family lived among them in 1995–96 and in 2000, the Hindus in these societies eagerly assisted with the field work and showed great pride in what they considered their new homeland.