[Review of] Garbi Schmidt, Islam in Urban America: Sunni Muslims in Chicago

Islam in Urban America: Sunni Muslims in Chicago is a well-researched, carefully nuanced, and timely contribution to our understanding of Muslim Americans and an excellent corrective to the all-too-common tendency to homogenize both Islam and Muslims. This study stresses the multiple elements of diversity in American Islam by focusing on how ethnicity, class, gender, class, age, and ideology have influenced the presentation and practice of Sunni Islam among immigrant communities in Chicago during the 1990s. Garbi Schmidt is currently a researcher in the ethnic minorities program at the Danish National Institute of Social Research in Copenhagen. This book is a revision of her Ph.D. dissertation and is the result of fieldwork among immigrant Muslim Americans that she conducted in the Chicago area over the course of a year and a half in 1995 and 1996