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This paper examines the effects of different percentages of Muslim population and their interactions with non-Muslims on their religious views and intergroup attitudes. By analyzing three different datasets of Pew Research Center, with an aggregation of more than 39,000 Muslims' responses from 40 different countries, this paper offers a counter-argument against the use of the previously mentioned approach. This will be presented by analyzing these datasets from three different levels of analyses. Unlike the present social contact literature in which the primary focus is on the host/majority population's nature of interaction with minorities and its effects on the former's intergroup attitudes, this research focuses on minorities' contact with majority members and its impact on their religious and intergroup views. Consequently, our findings indicate a more meaningful and factual understanding of Muslim minorities' religious views and intergroup attitudes emerges when their social experiences are taken into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates American-Muslims' perceptions of the police. With regard to studies of the police and Muslim communities, much of the focus has centered on evaluating police officers' perceptions of the Muslim community. Attitudes toward the police reflect an important measure of police legitimacy for minority communities. The current study analyzes responses from a convenience sample (N = 142) collected from around the United States. Our t test analysis of first-and-second generation American Muslims found no significant differences between attitudes toward the police. However, our OLS Regression models suggest that education, fear of negative treatment due to race, ethnicity, or religion, fear of victimization, negative media portrayal, and neighborhood factors significantly affected perceptions of the police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how a predominantly immigrant interview sample of 62 Muslim physicians articulate their cultural citizenship and sense of “belonging” in the USA. Many Muslim physicians who have come as international medical graduates (IMGs) share the challenges, obstacles, and assets of their IMG peers. Yet within the context of rising Islamophobia after the September 11 (9/11) attacks in the USA, immigrant Muslim physicians encounter “racialized” religious discrimination in the workplace and in local communities. This paper examines how this group actively builds a sense of belonging at multiple levels through the family, community, ethnic and religious institutions; and “represents” Islam in the USA and abroad. We also suggest that integration into the American medical profession facilitates cultural citizenship, and perhaps the “disciplining” of Muslim IMGs into broader American society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The civil war in Somalia forced many Somalis to migrate to other countries where they had to adapt to new cultures and learn new languages. At the same time, they retained the identity and culture that were important to them throughout the process of migration. These first-generation Somali immigrants may feel strong allegiance to their country of origin along with a “sense of belonging” to their clan/kinship. They may also hope that one day they will be able to return “home”. But do second-generation Somalis feel the same way? This paper is based on 23 interviews with Somali immigrants in Australia, the UK and the USA. Out of the 23 participants, two were first-generation and the rest were second-generation. I seek to understand the participants' identity and their sense of belonging to their ethnicity and host country in the wake of pertinent moments of local, national and international anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present article is a research work on available modern Western literature, which has provided a very negative picture of Islam to its readers particularly in the European countries. Similarly, there is a reactionary response from the Muslim intellectuals and writers, who have criticized Western concepts of life, governance and materialism. Such literatures are definitely causing a huge rift between Muslim societies and the West. The paper finally suggests that politically dominating West needs to improve its understanding of Islam and the Muslim world. Fair and just understanding of Islam and Muslim societies according to their custom and belief has become inevitable for the Western scholarship. There is enough literature available, which has been written by the Western scholars with real spirit of research and is based on justified evaluation of Islam and Muslims; this gives original pictures of Islam. This is required to be reviewed by the modern Western scholars. The increasing mistrust only can be restored to trusting and peaceful co-existence with a justified and true depiction of the religion, and a search for common ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first of two articles based on small-scale empirical research involving several hundred Muslim university students in Britain that was conducted between December 2003 and April 2004. In this paper first I will explain how the data was collected: a written survey concentrating on the West/Muslim world dialectic, followed by in-depth interviews with some of the survey respondents. Second, I delineate three strategies undertaken by British Muslims to express their religio-political identities: turning away from Islam by assimilating entirely into British society; subscribing to a culturally transcendental form of Islam by arguing that British cultural outputs are alien and threatening to Islam; and accepting that Islam is practiced differently in different contexts, and that British Muslims must understand their religion in light of their context. Finally, I discuss competing claims on the students' political loyalty: from the Muslim ummah and the British state. Part II of the research to be published in the next issue of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs , Volume 25, Number 3, will present the major survey findings including students' views of the events of September 11, 2001 and the influence of these events on the lives of Muslims in Britain as well as an analysis of their views of the West/Muslim world dialectic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While media and the government often focus on the supposed “radicalization” of Muslim youth in Canada, our research explores the more complicated and nuanced political identities among 20 young Canadian Muslims. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with these youth in the Greater Toronto Area and in London, Ontario, we explore these young citizens' concepts of political participation; conceptions of the self as a political actor; formal, informal, and civic political involvement; and the relationship between their religious and Canadian identities. Our research is grounded in a positive and pluralistic politics of care, respect, and engagement. We treated Muslim youth as similar to other Canadian youth and designed our study guided by other contemporary research into Canadian youth and political participation. While our interviewees noted the impact of negative public discourse about Muslims and some experiences of racism, the research results revealed an overwhelming commitment to Canada and political engagement among Muslim youth, evidenced most fully by a high level of civic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents information on a study on the emergence of feminist ideas and ideology among Muslim women. Muslim women's organizations; Hallmark of Islamist women worldwide; Issue on segregation of sexes; Muslim women's support for Islamism; Islamist gender activism; Conclusion.