Geographies of Muslim Identities: Diaspora, Gender and Belonging

This book is a timely examination of the geographies and diversities of Muslim identities. Critical contemporary issues surrounding Muslim identities are handled with sensitivity, sound theoretical grounding and rich empirical detail, including issues about diasporic and gender identities. It is a must-read for all who seek a nuanced understanding of Muslim identities in all their historic and geographic specificities.'Lily Kong (Professor of Geography and Vice-Provost (Education), National University of Singapore Geographies of identities, including those of ethnicity, religion, 'race' and gender, have formed an increasing focus of contemporary human geography over the last decade. To date, however, there has been a gap in the literature to support research focussing on geographies of Muslim identities and this book fills this gap by bringing together a range of cutting-edge research from the social, cultural, political, historical and economic sub-disciplines of geography together with writings from gender studies, cultural studies and leisure studies where research has revealed a strong spatial dimension to the construction, representation, contestation and reworking of Muslim identities.The events of September 11th 2001 served to provide an illustration of the ways in which identities can be transformed across time and space by both global and local events of a social, cultural, political and economic nature. Such transformations have also illustrated the temporal and spatial construction of hate and fear and of increasing incidences of 'Islamophobia' through the construction of Muslims as 'the Other'. This book seeks to illustrate the ways in which such identities are constructed, represented, negotiated and contested in everyday life in a wide variety of international contexts. The aim of the book is thus to increase geographers' understanding of Muslim identities as difference or diversity without division. To this end, the book includes chapters that explore Muslim identities in many different parts of the world as well as identities that are reshaped through the movement of people from predominantly Muslim nations to non-Muslim nations.Contents: Introduction, Peter E. Hopkins, Mei-Po Kwan and Cara Carmichael Aitchison; Beyond the mosque: Turkish immigrants and the practice and politics of Islam in Duisburg-Marxloh, Germany, Patricia Ehrkamp; Visible minorities; constructing and deconstructing the 'Muslim Iranian' diaspora, Cameron McAuliffe; 'The other within the same': some aspects of Scottish-Pakistani identity in suburban Glasgow, Sadiq Mir; Migration and construction of women's identity in Northern Ireland, Gabriele Marranci; Reconstructing 'Muslimness': new bodies in urban Indonesia, Sonja van Wichelen;'Safe and risky spaces': gender, ethnicity and culture in the leisure lives of young South Asian women, Eileen Green and Carrie Singleton; Daughters of Islam, sisters in sport, Tess Kay; Cultural muslims: the evolution of Muslim identity in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia, William Rowe; Islam and national development: a cross-cultural comparison of the role of religion in the process of economic development and cultural change, Samuel Zalanga; Young Muslim men's experiences of local landscapes after 11 September 2001, Peter E. Hopkins; Index.About the Author: Cara Aitchison is Professor in the Geography Research Unit of the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of the West of England, UK. Peter Hopkins is Lectrurer in the Department of Geography at Lancaster University, UK. Mei-Po Kwan is Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography at Ohio State University, USA.