Al Rashid Mosque: Building Canadian Muslim Communities by Earle H. Waugh
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Written with a historical perspective, this book is a good addition to the literature on Muslim institutions in North America.Earle H Waugh has offered a close examination of Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada.The Al Rashid mosque, built by the Lebanese in the 1930s, offers a unique window through which to examine the origins and growth of 20th-and 21st-century Islam in Canada.As Waugh points out, the story of the Al Rashid mosque is one of "highs and lows, of weathering storms, and of becoming a beacon for a religion of great depth and significance" (p.xvii).He points out that the main challenges it has gone through include the accomodation it has had to make, to create a balance between "secularist ideologies and genuine piety, and in contemporary Canada, to accommodate to a new status of a distinctive Canadian voice for Islam" (p.xvii).As scholars such as Kambiz Ghaneabassiri (2010) and Shariq Siddiqui (2014) have pointed out, institution-building has been a key part of creating Muslim American identity.Written in an easy to read, non-scholarly tone, this book is accessible to a wide audience.The book has five chapters that deal with various aspects of the mosque and community evolution.Chapter 1 discusses the issue of sojourning-a phenomenon well-known to
Author: Sabith Khan
Institution: California Lutheran University
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2948670437