Muslim Volunteering in the West

“The words Islam and volunteering rarely go in tandem, especially in the West. This book proves how wrong we are. From Australia to America, the chapters demonstrate the scope and intricacies of Muslim diaspora volunteering. A must read for anyone interested in the intersection of religion and volunteering.” — Ram A. Cnaan, Professor and Director, Program for Religion and Social Policy Research, University of Pennsylvania, USA 

“This book identifies the ways in which religious Muslimness is akin to participatory citizenship in the secular sense. The collection is a significant contribution to a discussion in relation to the norms and values that Muslims derive from readings within Islam.”—Tahir Abbas, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, The Netherlands  

“This volume opens an important conversation on the nature and multiple ethical configurations of Islamic volunteering in the West, as it is caught between various political, secular and security constraints. The contributions offer important insights into how Muslim activists navigate these different constraints, thereby raising important questions on citizenship, solidarity and ethical self-making.” —Nadia Fadil, Associate Professor, KU Leuven, Belgium

This edited volume explores various facets of Muslims’ civic engagement in Western post-secular societies, fundamentally challenging simplistic boundaries between Islamic ethical conduct and liberal-democratic norms and practice.

Bringing together scholars from sociology, anthropology, and Islamic theology, the collection offers sound theoretical and empirical elaborations on the complex ways in which Islamic piety, principles and norms interact with, and shape, Muslims’ everyday practice of volunteering as a performance of active citizenship in liberal societies.

The contributions cover diverse manifestations of Muslim volunteering in North America, Europe and Australia, from environmentalism to mental health volunteering, and critically examine the national and global socio-political context within which certain forms of Muslims’ civic engagement are viewed with skepticism and suspicion. It will be of use to students and scholars across sociology, political science, community studies and Islamic studies, with a focus on migrant integration, diaspora studies, and inter-ethnic relations.