In addition to anti-Black racism and anti-Semitism, one of the pillars of the contemporary global white terrorism movement is anti-Muslim hatred. That hatred is founded on a kind of forgetting, an historical erasure, which is a result of the assumption that Muslims are foreign to the West. Such forgetting leads to madness, the same madness that inspired Don Quixote to joust with windmills in a post-Reconquista … Continue reading The Forgotten History Behind Anti-Muslim Terrorism

The IUPUI Religious Studies Department hosted the culminating event of the Community Competition to Prevent Islamophobia today. The presentations are summarized in this PowerPoint. Participants included Amy Guess and Kate Grabowski of Candles Holocaust Museum, Sajjad Jawad of Catholic Charities, Amina Dalal of the Islamic Society of North America’s youth community, Umaymah Mohammad and Ahmed Abbas of the Muslim Youth Collective, and Kristopher Steege and … Continue reading Community Celebrates Efforts to End Anti-Muslim Discrimination

Indianapolis — Accompanied by Imam Ismail Abdul-Aleem, Islamic Society of North America Secretary General Habibe Ali, Imam Michael Saahir, and Marion County Judge David Shaheed, Edward Curtis was awarded IUPUI’s Joseph T. Taylor Award for Excellence in Diversity at the February symposium dedicated to the memory of the School of Liberal Arts’ first dean. Curtis was nominated for the award by Associate Dean of Engineering … Continue reading Curtis wins Joseph T. Taylor Award for Diversity

In the post-9/11 era, the Muslim American service member, a walking contradiction to those who believe that Islam and America are polar opposites, has emerged as yet another sign of the nation’s ultimate significance. Muslim Americans are G.I. messiahs promised to redeem American nationalism and U.S. foreign policy. This blog post explores the religious meaning of fallen Muslim service members in U.S. nationalism. Read the … Continue reading Muslim Messiahs? American Civil Religion and U.S. Military Service

The Association for the Academic Study of New Religions has announced that Edward Curtis is the first prize winner of the 2017 Thomas Robbins Award for Excellence in the Study of New Religions for his article, “Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam: Astrophysical Disaster, Genetic Engineering, UFOs, White Apocalypse, and Black Resurrection,” in Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, … Continue reading Curtis Wins Thomas Robbins Award

Muslims in Carmel, Indiana, have faced a lot of local opposition to their proposal to build a new Islamic center. Whatever the motivations of the opponents, I try to contribute to the debate by offering some analysis of the functions of mosques as religious congregations in the United States. “The rise of the mosque as the preeminent religious institution among Muslims in the United States,” … Continue reading “Indy Star”: What’s American about American Mosques?

Terrorism. Anti-Muslim prejudice. Sexism. Culture clash. Political controversy. These concerns have so dominated the study of Islam in the United States, according to Edward Curtis, Millennium Chair of the Liberal Arts and Professor of Religious Studies at IUPUI, that we don’t have reliable, peer-reviewed research on how Muslim Americans pray, fast, get married, or welcome a child into the world. Funded by grants from Indiana … Continue reading How do Muslim Americans Practice Islam? Scholars, Community Members Contribute to New Book