Introduction

The introduction lays out the central assertions of the study: that Muslims’ experiences in urban America test pluralism as a model of secular inclusion, and that Muslims and non-Muslims expand the boundaries of belonging together by engaging in social, spatial, and material exchanges across lines of difference. Because anxieties over Muslim minorities are often expressed through the idiom of gender, this study further asserts that contestations over Muslim women’s visibility and queer Muslim visibility provide significant opportunities for the elaboration of difference. After describing the context of the study and its interlocutors, the introduction discusses the challenges faced by scholars who focus on Muslim American identity as an object of analysis in the post-9/11 age. These challenges include representational dilemmas inherent in studying individuals from many backgrounds under a unified signifier, and in offering counter-representations of a group that is often stereotyped in media and popular accounts marked by Islamophobia.