Zoning Faith - by Sultan Tepe

Book Synopsis

An intriguing look at how the city's built environment influences the shape of Muslim communities in Chicago

Zoning Faith offers a rare in-depth look at three distinct Muslim communities in Chicago, one Shia Muslim, one Sunni, and one Black Muslim community. The volume explores how these communities navigate their social and political environments, and how their experiences in urban settings help to explain the emergence of new Islamic organizations, practices, and theologies in America.

Zoning Faith provides the first comprehensive spatial examination of Muslims' experiences in global cities. Although cities play a crucial role in the enactment of faith, they are often treated as places Muslims happen to live, or as places that are transformed as many Muslims come to inhabit them. Little attention has been paid to the ways in which cities may transform faith groups in meaningful ways, from zoning regulations and debates about where a mosque can be situated to how a building's structure can influence prayer and communal life. This book pays careful attention to the intersections of urban space and religion, approaching "built spaces" as profoundly political and particularly illuminating of the experiences of minority faiths.

Drawing on a multi-year and multi-site ethnography, the volume provides a previously unobtainable, in-depth look at how Muslim communities in Chicago defy the expectations of conventional places of worship. Crossing the boundaries of urban studies, theological studies, architecture, and public policy, Zoning Faith offers new insights into how Islam is vernacularized and grounded in the US in many different ways.

Review Quotes

"A superb critical analysis of American Muslims in the global city of Chicago, ably narrated not top down from the city hall, but bottom up from the streets, capturing the agency of ordinary Shia, Sunni and Black Muslims as they create religious spaces of their own against many challenges including the common imaginary of American Muslims in cities as being either misplaced or displaced."--Fatma Müge Göçek, author of Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and the Collective Violence against Armenians, 1789-2009

"A masterful book analyzing the reciprocal relationship between cities and their Muslim populations. Tepe argues that only from a street-level view of Muslim encounters and engagements with the City can one fully appreciate the ways in which cities mold its minority communities and these communities simultaneously shape the contours of the City. The work is original and insightful and an important contribution to the scholarship on the political engagement of minority communities."--Amaney A. Jamal, Edwards S. Sandford Professor of Politics, Princeton University

"A great book that introduces the reader to the intersection of Islam, urban space and the American experience. Tepe's meticulous research, ethnographer's eye and sharp analytical repertoire make this a unique contribution to the field of American Muslim Studies. It offers a distinctive window onto the urban history of American Islam."--Mucahit Bilici, author of Finding Mecca in America: How Islam is Becoming an American Religion

About the Author

Sultan Tepe is Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is the author of Beyond Sacred and Secular: Politics of Religion in Israel and Turkey, the co-editor chief of Political and Religion, and recipient of several awards, including the Choice Outstanding National Title and Weber Best Paper in Religion and Politics.