Without Forgetting the Imam
Subtitle: Lebanese Shi'Ism in an American Community
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: December 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 242
ISBN-13: 9780814326756
Subjects: Anthropology; Civil rights & citizenship; Immigration & emigration; Islamic studies; Shiah; Minority Studies - Ethnic American; Islam; Religious Anthropology; United States; Religion - World Religions; Religious life and customs; Religion; USA; Islam - Shi'a; Shåi°ah; Dearborn; Dearborn (Mich.); Lebanese; Michigan
Description: Without Forgetting the Imam is an ethnographic study of the religious life of the Lebanese Shi'ites of Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Muslim community outside of the Middle East. Based on four years of fieldwork, this book explores how the Lebanese who have emigrated, most in the past three decades, to the United States, have adapted to their new surroundings.

Anthropologist Linda Walbridge delves into the ways in which politics and religion have converged as the Lebanese Shi'i community has remade its identity and accommodated itself to a new environment. She captures a broad picture of religious life within the realm of community living and within the mosques which have proliferated in Dearborn.

Walbridge explains how Shi'ites, affected in one way or another by Islamic revivalism, have brought different notions of how their religion should be expressed and carried out in America. These differences are reflected in mosque rituals, social functions, sermons, and educational activities. She also explores how contemporary Middle Eastern politics and the religious leadership in Iran and Iraq influence the functioning of the mosques.