When Islam Is Not a Religion: America's Religious Freedom Struggle - Perfect for Religious Studies & Civil Rights Discussions

Americans began to challenge and persecute Muslims after 9-11. In 2010, for example, assailants burned a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In 2017 and 18, President Trump tried to institute a travel ban for Muslim majority countries. And in 2015, three Muslims student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, were gunned down in their apartment.In an excellent new book called “When Islam is not a Religion," Asma Uddin, a religious liberty lawyer, systemically demonstrates how Americans attempt to define Islam as a political system instead of a religion.Uddin outlines early attempts to portray Islam as a political system in the early chapters of the book. She reviews speeches and interviews by commentators, television hosts, and political leaders and shows how they cast Islam as a terrorist organization. For example, Bill Mahr, a television host, argues that Islam is not a religion of peace and compares it to a Mafia organization. Michael Flynn, President Trump’s National Security Advisor, called Islam a political ideology. Steve Bannon, a conservative who served in President Trump’s early administration as a chief strategist, called Islam “a religion of submission.” And President Trump told a campaign audience that “Islam hates us.”In chapter three, perhaps the best chapter in the book, Uddin traces the development of religious liberty and shows how bias against Islam creeps into judicial decision-making. Muslims face hurdles in the legal system that others do not. In early 2019, for example, prison authorities in Alabama refused to allow a Muslim death row inmate to have an imam present. The Supreme Court supported the lower court. In another prison, an inmate wanted to grow a half-inch beard according to his religion. Prison authorities refused. Lower courts deferred to the prison, but the Supreme Court overruled the lower courts. Bias? Uddin argues that stereotypes about Muslims colored these early cases.Uddin addresses hot button issues like Sharia Law and the hijab in the latter chapters of the book. She dispels the stereotypes that have led forty-three states to consider bans against Sharia Law. She notes, for example, that Sharia Law is not a political system but rather a code by which Muslims live in order to achieve salvation. Just as Christians live by a code called the Ten Commandments, Muslims live by universal maxims that enhance their spiritual life.In Chapter 7, Uddin explores how the hijab has become a political symbol. She notes that some Muslim women take off their headscarf because they fear for their safety. Uddin, a Muslim whose family came here from Pakistan, writes that politicization of the hijab eroded her spirituality “because it tied me indelibly to the world and how it saw me.”Uddin’s book is both readable and engaging. On one level, it is a terrific review of the many ways in which the media and courts attempt to portray Islam as a political or terrorist organization. It’s also an excellent review of the development of religious liberty in this country. Uddin has a knack for boiling down complex but seminal court cases like Sherbert v. Verner from which the idea of strict scrutiny developed.Finally, Uddin helps us to understand Sharia Law as a religious law rather than a political law and how the politicization of the hijab has frightened many Muslim women and forced them to take off their headscarves.