Maryam Jameelah and the Global Muslim Imagination
Hardcover
Paperback
- Price:
- $29.95/拢25.00
- ISBN:
- Published:
- Oct 13, 2026
- Copyright:
- 2026
- Pages:
- 248
- Size:
- 5.5 x 8.5 in.
- 10 b/w illus.
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Maryam Jameelah (1934鈥2012)鈥攂orn Margaret Marcus in White Plains, New York鈥攆ollowed an unlikely journey, from comfortable suburban childhood to influential voice of the twentieth-century global Islamic Revival. Jameelah鈥檚 more than twenty books and pamphlets, translated into a dozen languages, were notable for their unrelenting critique of modernity and arguments for the superiority of Islam in opposition to the West. In this exploration of her like and work, Justine Howe shows how Jameelah harnessed negative emotions鈥 what Howe calls an 鈥渁ntimodern affect鈥濃攖o call attention to what she saw as the catastrophes wrought by materialism and secularism. For Jameelah, galvanizing these emotions formed the basis of global Muslim solidarity that could be mobilized for a reinvigorated Islamic future.
Tracing Jameelah鈥檚 successive incarnations鈥攆rom Reform Jew to highly mobile spiritual seeker and finally to fervent Muslim polemicist鈥擧owe analyzes how women, gender, and family became the central nodes of Jameelah鈥檚 vision. Projecting herself as an embodiment of Muslim femininity as she pursued a career as a public intellectual, Jameelah subverted the very boundaries and prescriptions she sought to impose on others. Howe鈥檚 exploration of the multivalent threads that animated Jameelah鈥檚 religious imagination reveals unexpected entanglements of American Judaism, global Islam, feminism, and anticolonialism.