American Muslims: Beyond 9/11
Review of Religious Research Special Issue Call for Papers
Guest Editor: Besheer Mohamed, Pew Research Center. bmohamed@pewresearch.org

Aims and scope
The Review of Religious Research invites paper submissions for a special issue on American Muslims. This special issue will draw upon contemporary research on Muslims in the United States. In 2003, Karen Leonard’s Muslims in the United States: The State of Research suggested that scholarship on American Muslims was growing rapidly and starting to shift in two important ways: One was a move away from purely descriptive analyses, toward theorizing that both drew on and contributed to broader social scientific understandings. Another shift was from a focus on Muslim American subgroups in isolation, toward considerations of Muslims complete as Americans with multiple identities and affiliations.

In the two decades since its publication, there has been a rapid expansion of rigorous empirical studies that have begun to tell a nuanced story about this evolving and diverse community. This special issue will collect articles that draw attention to what is known about Muslim American individuals, communities and institutions; what tools have been developed to study Muslims in the U.S.; and what questions remain unanswered.

Potential topics include:
1) political organizing and social preferences
2) religious switching and religious change
3) family dynamics (e.g. marriage, divorce, child rearing)
4) Muslim Americans’ institutions (e.g. mosques, non-profits, third spaces, businesses)
5) Transmission of religious knowledge (inter-generationally and transnationally)

Contributions may focus on specific subgroups of Muslim Americans or on broader national patterns, but all analyses should be attentive to diversity among Muslims in the U.S. across demographic and religious characteristics. Contributions from a variety of social science disciplines and methodological approaches are welcome.

Keywords: Muslim Americans; qualitative; quantitative; lived religion; religion & civics; religion & public life; racialization; religious practice; identity

Submissions: Please submit complete papers by December 1, 2024, in the RRR manuscript submission center and indicate the title of the special issue: American Muslims. Inquiries can be directed to Special Issue Guest Editor Besheer Mohamed at bmohamed@pewresearch.org.

Timeline
• Call for Papers: June 2024
• Submission Deadline: December 2024
• First Round Review: March 2025
• Expected Publication: June 2025