Situation (Intentionality and Gender)

128 ISLAMIC AFRICA situation (intentionality and gender). The case of Mariam and Abdulma- lik, which is at the center of this dispute over intent to divorce (and which appears in different moments throughout the book), highlights gendered agency at work in the vein of Susan Hirsch, Judith Tucker, Laura Fair, and Ziba Mir- Hosseini. An Islamic Court in Context contributes new case studies to support established theoretical claims regarding the situated process of Islamic le- gal reasoning and the importance of attending to gender roles and perfor- mance in Islamic family courts. At times, the book reads very much like its original dissertation form, which does not serve the strength of the original contributions that Stiles is making (again, her points on intentionality are quite compelling). Stiles’s arguments about the intersection of document production, gender position, and judicial reasoning could be drawn to the fore in more substantial ways throughout the chapters. The book’s market price at $95.00 is near prohibitive, making it diffi cult to assign the mono- graph in classes. Still, Erin Stiles presents some useful points of analysis and observation of the situated meaning of judicial reasoning in an Islamic court, and this reader looks forward to more from Stiles in the future. Emily Burrill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Zain Abdullah. Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. viii, 294. $35.00 “The morning air crackles with excitement as the courtyard at the Har- lem State Offi ce Building swells with hundreds of African Muslims— men, women, and children decked out in their best boubou wear and head- wraps. As they maneuver into position, one can still hear prayers humming with the circular motion of thikr beads” (107). These sentences, with which Zain Abdullah introduces the fi fth chapter of Black Mecca, deliver a good sense of one of the main characteristics of the author’s method, namely to get the reader right into the scene. In fact, reading this book is a pleasure not the least due to the thickness of its ethnography, which leads the reader directly into the streets, shops, and mosques of Harlem, those places where West African immigrants struggle in their daily lives and try to make sense of the manifold experiences resulting from their migration. Zain Abdullah’s book is based to a very large extent on interviews and participant observation. Discussion of other literature on the subjects he BOOK REVIEWS 129 engages with, of empirical and theoretical sorts, remains subordinate to the primary voices of the men and women who are the main protagonists of this story of migration, which is told through tropes of loss, diaspora, and exile, but also tropes of reinvention, arrival, and emancipation. The book is organized in nine chapters (including prologue and epi- logue) and also contains a glossary, which is helpful in particular for those readers not acquainted with Islamic terms, as well as a very detailed index. Relating and integrating the experiences of recent Muslim West African immigrants to Harlem into the larger history of black peoples in America, the author suggests understanding the former as another “Blues People” (a notion attributed to LeRoi Jones): “For me, the blues is a metaphor. It is a way to begin a conversation about the sensibilities of a people—their dreams, fears, and hopes” (5). The main chapters are structured themati- cally, focusing on what Abdullah identifi es as central issues shaping the lifeworlds of Muslim West African immigrants to Harlem. This story nec- essarily begins with the drama of migration itself, which is brought to us most comprehensively in chapter 2 (“America Dreaming”). Here and else- where in the book it is the very immediacy provided by the personal access to these experiences that is gripping and convincing in both rational and emotional ways. The story we are told dialectically connects the severe economic conditions in the migrants’ home countries with the utopia of an American paradise, providing insight into the—for many—traumatic experiences of migration and fl eshing out the clash of expectations and frus- trations after arrival. In a way this book can be read as an anthropological micro- study on the dislocations that accompany processes of economic and social globalization. Chapter 3 (“The Black Encounter”) is one of the most intriguing parts of the book. Skillfully leading us through prearranged as well as sponta- neous conversations with African migrants and local African Americans, Abdullah provides a view of the complexity of their encounter in Harlem/ United States. This is an encounter shaped by socioeconomic fears and competition, problems of communication based on cultural differences (food, clothing, music, body language, etc.) and misunderstandings, as well as language issues (language is also the focus of chapter 4), differing notions of race, blackness, and Africanness, and lastly very different views on America as a reality and as a promise. The major focus is thereby on matters of identity and belonging. Some of the questions addressed here and throughout are: “When does Islam matter, and when is it a non- issue? When does race matter? And when and in what ways is an African sense of .

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