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Zaid Adhami, "Dilemmas of Authenticity: The American Muslim Crisis of Faith" (UNC Press, 2025)
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello, Salam, and welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your co host, Shehnaz Haqqani. In one of the most important books published in 2025, Dilemmas of Authenticity, the American Muslim Crisis of Faith, published with UNC Press, Zayd Adhami explores questions of religious doubt, authenticity, and crisis of faith. The book examines what many American Muslims describe as a crisis of faith. But Adhami shows that this crisis is less about losing belief and more about pressures of authenticity. In a cultural moment where people are expected to be true to themselves and to believe sincerely, faith becomes something that must feel emotionally real and personally chosen. Drawing on ethnographic research and intimate conversations with American Muslims, Adhami shows how this demand for authenticity and does produce doubt and anxiety while also becoming a powerful ground for recommitment to tradition. The book challenges familiar narratives of secularization and religious decline and instead offers a nuanced account of how faith is lived, questioned, and sustained in an age that privileges, quote, unquote, authenticity. While I recommend this book to everyone, in case it's not already clear from my conversation with Zaid coming up, I especially recommend it to scholars and students of religion, anthropology, sociology, and American studies, as well as those working on Islam in the US it will also resonate, I believe, with scholars, students, and anyone who has tried to make sense of the complicated relationship between doubt, authenticity, and faith in contemporary American society. This here is my conversation with Zaid Adhami about his book Dilemmas of the American Muslim Crisis of Faith. Salaam. As salaam alaikum. Zayd. How are you doing?
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B
Walikum salam. I'm all right, hanging in there.
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A
I've been looking forward to this for so long. And as I was telling you, I loved this book. I mean, it felt very personally and spiritually fulfilling. And I. So I'm in this fellowship and I was workshopping a piece of my work there and I told them, told the audience. I was like, listen, I just read this book and it goes like this. And here's what the author does and here's. And I would like to do my project the same way. And like, I. Because I just, I thought the ethnography was done so well. Really enjoyed the methodology, the way that you. I mean, just a really, really beautiful way to study this subject. And I have been recommending it to. I get a lot of Muslims who write to me and asking me, you know, just expressing their spiritual crises. And I have been recommending it left and right to them. As well. So it feels very timely as well. And it's just such a very, very well written book as well. So thank you so much for writing it and then more importantly for agreeing to talk to me about it for this fun.
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B
Thank you so much for taking time out and to read it and your kind words. So much overlap between our books, actually.
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A
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, oh my God, that's a.
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B
Conversation for another time maybe.
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A
Yeah, no, but I really, like, I read every single chapter. I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I could do with it in my book and with the current project as well, because I'm talking to Muslim women who are marrying non Muslims. Right. And we'll talk about it briefly because I do have a question that I think that I would love to explore further with you. But yeah, so our initial question to our guests is to tell us a little bit about themselves and tell us to describe their intellectual journey a little bit. Would you please introduce yourself to the audience and tell us how you got here?
- [03:53]
B
Sure. Well, again, just thank you for inviting me for reading the book and having me on this. It's very bizarre to be doing this interview. I mean, I've been listening to these new books in Islamic studies and New Books Network podcast interviews for like 15 years now. And at some level often imagining like, oh, one day I might do one of these. And. And so it's weird to finally be like doing one. And yeah, so alhamdulillah. So at some level I've always been interested and involved. I've always been into Islamic studies in some way, you know, since being a child, you could say. So my father and my mother were both involved in revivalist, pietist, Islamic revival movements, pietistic movements in Syria. And you know, they were forced to leave, you know, Syria to escape the repression of the Assad regime in connection with that. And so. And then I grew up in California, very much a part of those similar kinds of, you know, American versions of similar kinds of revivalist and mosque networks in California. And so it was, you know, just very deeply immersed and embedded in, in a certain kind of religious communal life and family life. And for my parents, religious learning and study was. Is very important and, you know, so always kind of been studying Islam, whether with. With them or other teachers or on the side reading books, you know, like finding that were in my father's library and reading them, etc, but kind of the story of kind of doing Islamic studies academically and professionally, maybe I would, I would start that story a bit later, maybe Point to three things, like one for one, journalism. I did journalism in high school, this high school newspaper. And that led me to realize how much I love to write. And later, a few, a few years later, that would. When I was confused about what I wanted to do, you know, in terms of what I wanted to study, what I wanted to do professionally, it would. Somebody kind of made that connection to me and got me to realize, to consider academia, which I had never realized was a thing. But the ironic and tragic part is that becoming an academic and going through grad school, etc. Led me to having a much more tormented relationship with writing, at least with this book. This book was excruciating in many ways to write and was a very difficult process. But I'm trying to unlearn the. The difficult, you know, what we learn in grad school in terms of the. The constraints of coming back to some of that initial relationship with writing that I had. But the second thing I would point to is that as I was figuring things out in college, you know, early on, I was wanting to do something related to something in relation to the kind of social, you know, like policies, social welfare, contributing, you know, this idea of I want to contribute to the world in some way, I want to. And was. I was like engaging ideas around poverty and doing programs about homelessness and social service, et cetera. And so that led me to do a couple summers of research back in Southern California where so in the summers I would go back home and I did some research about social service provisions and public engagement in mosques. And that was my first kind of in like getting my feet wet in research and also led me to like, put me on the path of studying American Islam academically. I wasn't really familiar with the literature then, but kind of and somewhat doing like a proto ethnographic approach, you know, like kind of doing some qualitative research and figuring things out. So. And that also, as I was developing that work on like, Islamic social services and public, you know, public engagement, led me to kind of literature on religion in the public sphere, which led me to literature on secularization, et cetera. And so those things were, those were the interests that were developing that kind of led me as well and kind of intersect the kind of secularization literature ended up intersecting with the interests of this book, as, you know, you can see, and we can talk about a bit more. And then the third element I would talk about is that, like, I started off when I got to college studying, I decided at some point to study philosophy and then switched to like a joint major between philosophy and religious studies. And then it wasn't until like the last year, year and a half or so that I started studying Islam, you know, more academically and, you know, thinking a lot about questions of reform and modernity, et cetera. And so I eventually wrote an honors thesis as an undergrad, this kind of comparative study between the Egyptian writer Said Qutb and the Indian philosopher Muhammad Al Kbal and kind of comparing them and thinking about the conception of the kind of ideal Muslim subjectivity at the heart of their reformist projects and the kind of hermeneutical and epistemological underpinnings of that informed their ideas and their projects. Like that is how do we know what we know and how do we interpret text, etc. So, you know, by the end of undergrad, I was kind of immersed in these different kinds of projects and thinking about things and I just felt like I couldn't stop at that point and I needed to keep on studying. So then I applied to PhD programs. And so I wasn't sure yet if I wanted to go into academia, but kind of led me down this path.
- [10:21]
A
Thank you. Thank you for describing that journey. You know, thank you for saying publicly what graduates, like, what grad school does to. What academic work does to writing. Our relationship with writing for me, also with reading, like, I have not read for fun, for pleasure, and I can't, I just, I can't bring myself to read. Like, it's, it's, it's different. But I've been. I remember in graduate school, I tried really hard to force myself when once the dissertation was submitted to my committee, I was like, no, I'm going to read for fun. And I like only novels and things that were all. Only fiction. Like, nothing real. But then my interests are like, I have a very specific idea of what good writing is. So, yeah, no, I hear to say that's all valid stuff. I went through something very, very similar. So part of your journey here also describes sort of your interest in the kinds. In the way that this book started. But I would love for our audience to get a better sense of how this book originated. I know you did ethnography for this a lot. Like, I was a tenant 10 years earlier. I forget. And it was like a few years ago. I remember it wasn't like the last couple, the last few years. And we know book writing is a long, detailed process, so not to, I guess, any. I hope none of this is like, triggering in any way.
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B
No, no. Yeah. No.
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A
I talk about it love to hear how the book, the book came about, how the book's questions came about, how you became interested in the specifics of the book.
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B
Yeah, it's a very long journey, both the, like, backstory as well as even just the process of writing it, like you're alluding to. But so I would say, you know, the, the root of the questions animating the book come from my own, you know, I think are born of my own spiritual, intellectual journey and path in a similar. But, you know, also I think the. The crucial years are those undergraduate years. A very transformative experience in college, actually. But from even the summer before college, I was given a book by my, you know, my closest. One of my. The best teachers I've ever had in my high school AP US History teacher. I was very close to her and when I was graduating gave me this book that was new at the time called the End of Faith by Sam Harris. And so anyway, because we had had like a lot of back and forth about religion and stuff, and she knew I was like, you know, this very, like, religious kid. And. And so I, I read that over the summer I was in Syria actually, and it was a. It was a disturbing in many ways. But I also had my own. I had my responses and thoughts and I actually had an email exchange with him back and forth. I wrote to him with my, you know, responses to his, you know, his, his argument and he responded to me and we went back and forth a bit. So I always find that funny to think back on, but then that I think, as well as other things that were going on. Obviously life is complex, but that kind of put me in a certain, I would say, state of mind of like, responding to certain kinds of imperatives and questions as a Muslim. And then going into college, I started taking certain kind of Intro to Humanities and Western philosophical thought, et cetera, courses as a first year. So by the end of that first year, through social transformations going on in college as well as well as these kinds of studies, you know, it just began a long cycle of like, different stages of like, question, you know, feeling a kind of sense of crisis of faith, of my own ups and downs and upheaval in terms of, you know, spiritual and intellectual. At least three or four kind of stages of this that I can point to in the following several years of like, both highs and lows, of like, clarity as well as confusion and sense of crisis. So much of it was kind of just going on inside of me. So. So, you know, that was, you know, that all of that led me to study a lot of kind of, for one, I was thinking a lot about and studying stuff around epistemology, so how we arrive at knowledge and truth and our beliefs, and both in Western and Islamic kind of philosophy and theology. And so that was making me think a lot about, like, what does it mean to believe? What, what, how, you know, how does it work, what is, what is belief, et cetera. And so I think that led me to conceive of this project, but kind of examining it less in a kind of abstract philosophical sense, but more in a lived way of how people. Because I had done some of that prior ethnographic or like, qualitative research in American Islam, I was kind of set up to do this kind of empirical work. And so I was like bringing these things together and then thinking about questions of reform. And so all of it, you know, kind of brought me to this question of, like, how, you know, how do people believe or what does it mean to believe? And also, as I say in the book, I was encountering a lot of people, young, young, other young Muslims at the time, those years, who were also grappling with all sorts of, you know, similar kinds of struggles and questions, etc. And parallel issues. Maybe they're similar to mine or kind of somewhat parallel. And so, and I was also coming across increasingly, especially when I started my PhD, a lot of communal discourse, a lot of, like, communities and preachers and authority figures starting to talk about this issue. And to me it was like, very eye catching, like, oh, like they're actually naming this thing that I've, that I'm seeing. And that's both, like, refreshing. But also, I don't, I'm not sure, you know, how I feel about the way they're framing things. And so all of these different, you know, threads came together and to kind of like, lead to this project that I started. And so I started the ethnographic research in 2014. I did about a couple years of ethnography in Boston. And even though I maintained a lot of those relationships, I, you know, I kind of put a cut off point. So most of I continued some of these conversations with people, but in a much more informal way, just as friends. But I kind of like what I include in the book is largely like the conversations that happened in those two years.
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A
No, I'm, you know, for my current project, I had decided I was going to interview 50 people. And, and they're really detailed interviews, semi structured. And then I want to follow your model of just taking only a few to frame the book that are a few that are representative. Because I just, I think you do that so well because I, I just, I mean, when I want to. I mean, it's not only is it overwhelming, but there's so much rich material and then it's like, just take a few that are actually representations. Yeah, thank you for that. So let's get into the, into the, the contents, the content. If you could describe for us what you see as your primary arguments. And we'll discuss some of the main themes and topics, concepts that come up in the book momentarily. But for now, just an overview of what you see as the book's primary arguments, contributions, what interventions you see it to be making in the state of religion, in the state of Islam.
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B
Those are good questions. I could talk for. That sounds like an hour long book talk. So let me see. I mean, I would say so if we're thinking about kind of the questions that come up around doubt, this idea of crisis, of so people having doubts, you know, believe, you know, believers struggling with doubt, or this idea of crisis of faith, or even the kind of debates over reform in American Muslim community or global Muslim communities, even. So, um, you know, I'm, for one, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not trying to identify the, you know, in this book I realized that I'm not trying to kind of identify what are the sources of doubt, like where, why are people having these dissonances or where is this kind of sense of where is this conflict coming from? What is giving rise to doubt so much? I both feel like it's kind of somewhat obvious why. What are the kind of issues that are coming up for people and why that causes them doubt. It's kind of somewhat straightforward, but it's also too vast to capture. Like there are so many, you know, factors and, and issues at hand, etc. And in terms of like the kind of debates over how we interpret Islam or you know, debates over reform and tradition, etc. There's just, there's so much, I mean, there's libraries of, of work written on the subject and I felt like I couldn't, you know, the topic of like people's doubts could become so broad and encompass all of that and I, I couldn't, I couldn't capture all that and intervene in that. And so I wanted to, you know, say something slightly different about the kind of dynamics and conditions that underlie these experiences of, of doubt, crisis, conflict, et cetera. So one kind of main assumption or, or argument or contribution, you could say Is that, like, some level. What I'm trying to say and do is that is to say that doubt and crisis are not the same thing. That, you know, doubts and uncertainties might be a normal part of life, but there's something, you know, there are certain conditions that give rise to people becoming a lot more attuned to those, a lot more aware, a lot more fixated on them, and make them feel a kind of sense of anxiety about it, a sense of, you know, what. Yeah. So what makes kind of conflictedness or uncertainty or doubt or whatever feel so troubling and even paralyzing and become a kind of sense of crisis? And so it's that kind of way in which doubts get both framed but also experienced as a crisis that I'm trying to kind of capture. And that's where this idea of, like, the dilemmas of authenticity comes the title of the book and what I mean by that is. And so to try to be brief, you know, so when we think about authenticity, and I'll try to get to, like, why I use this as the central framing, but when we think about authenticity, you know, what is. What is authenticity? It's kind of thrown around as a word a lot. But, you know, if authenticity is a. Means a kind of. It's a. It's a word that measures some kind the realness of something, Right. So we could talk about tangible objects, you know, like a diamond ring or, you know, a Rolex or something. Like, is it authentic? Is it the re. Is it the real thing, or is it a fake? Is it a copy? We could talk about it in terms of more intangible objects, like cultures like cuisine, like, is this. Is this authentically Thai food or is this authentically, you know, black culture or something? And it's in that sense that typically we talk about authenticity in the context of Islam as the authenticity of this tradition. Is this. Is this the real thing? Does this accurately represent Islamic teachings or, you know, in some way? So that's the one sense of the realness of, you know, that is often invoked when we talk about authenticity in relation to Islam. But then culturally, we also, you know, authenticity also speaks to the realness of a person. So internally, how you know, the real self, are you being. Are you following the dictates of your real. Your true self inside? Are you. Is there. You know, there's an idea of trying to be true to yourself and. And not kind of. Yeah, so the. An idea of. Of really kind of excavating the real self and. And. And being true to that, and that, you know, I kind of point out is, you know, I think we all know is like a really dominant framework and an ideal in our cultural ideal for us in the 21st century of, of. In which that kind of rhetoric is everywhere, that kind of ideal is everywhere, of, of being true to yourself, of, you know, you do you, etc, whether, you know, in more cynical ways, like corporate advertisement, to more very genuine, like, meaningful ways of invoking that idea. But what I, you know, what I'm arguing is that that ethos of personal authenticity ends up kind of producing a kind of sense of dilemmas in that it doesn't. It, it's kind of unclear at times. It, it produces a sense of crisis, for one. On the one hand, it can contribute to a kind of hyper scrutiny. So I see it not just as a kind of some kind of affirmative, some kind of affirming ethic, but also something that's an imperative, something that kind of. We feel that we have to kind of scrutinize our interior world and kind of make sure it aligns with the way we're living our lives, et cetera. So it can be a kind of demanding ethic. And, and, and so when you think of, you know, to get a bit less abstract, I don't want to kind of get lost in the abstraction. If you think of somebody who's, you know, confront, you know, a Muslim, you know, is who is confronted with some kind of doctrinal ideas or some kind of practices that they feel like they can't accept this or they're struggling with certain doubts or whatever. The, the ideal of authenticity can kind of push you to question, like, well, what do you really believe? Like, is this, if you're having doubts about this, are you actually committed to this? Is this something you truly have conviction in, et cetera. And so on the one hand, it can have those kinds of effects and kind of intensify certain kind of anxieties about belief, et cetera. And on the other hand, though authenticity also is invoked as a way of kind of, as a kind of accept, you know, accepting where you are. So people are, you know, also invoke the idea of authenticity to, to say that, like, you know, this is. I have this, you know, attachment to this way of life. I have these, you know, I feel a connection with the Quran or with prayer or, you know, as a being, you know, Muslim kind of has this kind of meaning for me. And I, you know, but I kind of relate to it in my own way. And so it kind of authorizes and affirms people's feelings, experiences, etc, and their own kind of judgments in a way that allows people to hold on to tradition. So it both can serve, you know, one of the fundamental arguments is that it can both serve as a, as a pressure that causes one to distance themselves from a tradition or community while also being a way that people kind of hold on in the face of these pressures, can hold on to a kind of tradition or communal, communal way of life, etc, because they, you know, they've, they identify that with some kind of authentic personal connection that they have. And I don't want to talk too long, but one, one last thing I'll say two, two more things. One thing I'll say is that in terms of Islamic studies, one thing I'm trying to bring out is the way that this ethic or ideal of authenticity ends up converging with what I call Islamic revivalist modes of piety or a kind of revivalist authentic form of authenticity. And that kind of, that convergence of those things adds to the mix of what makes this kind, the conditions that make this kind of into a crisis. And we can talk about that more later. And then just the last thing I'll say is that in terms of the broader kind of context of religious studies and American religion, I think what I'm trying to offer is, for one, it's not a novel argument, but just a framework and narrative to understand, you know, trends and kind of the current climate and trends around organi, what we tend to think of as organized religion or religious traditions etc in American religion, to understand that what is happening is this kind of centering of personal authenticity, a kind of focus on individuality and fluidity and, you know, on emphasis on the personal that doesn't necessarily lend itself to straightforward secularization. So when people, when we look at these trends, there's a lot of ambiguity in, you know, in terms of what are, what is happening. And so I think understanding it through the prism of like, of personal authenticity is helpful. But I'm also trying to kind of one thing it's, you know, I, I'm showing is just trying to examine how these ideas around religious individualism and personal authenticity function when you're still not just people who are rejecting a religious tradition because it tends to be talked about as like the people who are spiritual but not religious, for example, or people who don't belong to a religious tradition. But what are the ways in which these pressures and these dynamics play out? And how do people navigate that when they do, when they are committed to kind of so called constraining themselves to a particular tradition or a community. They, you know, they're operating within that framework but are still also navigating these pressures of, of personal authenticity and individualism. So it's they're navigating pressures of communal belonging as well as that kind of individuality. And I think that, you know, what I'm suggesting is is that hopefully offers us some insight into more broadly like what is it or what is it like to belong to a kind of form of life or collective collective forms of life and movements and traditions despite the kind of while valuing individuality, for example, or despite in the face of doubts and uncertainties and dissonances, et cetera.
- [31:06]
A
With one of your interlocutors when you because as I was reading this book and I'm reading your interlocutors responses to comments, questions and you asked one of I think we'll come back to this later in the interview as well. But the whole time I'm thinking because I hadn't thought about this before because I also tell when I'm talking to Muslims who reach out to me with their questions, concerns, doubts and crises and I find myself like walking them through this and when I don't use the word authentic so much as, you know, what what feels what feels right to you and what you know, what is your like think about your own relation with God, et cetera, and then think about what would this God want. But I realized as I was reading and thinking if everybody just customized religion to their own needs and what felt right and authentic to them, given how different people I mean sure, you know, we also have lots of pattern similarities and stuff but then, you know, the essence of then Islam becomes just like any other religion. And I think you ask one of your interlocutors something like this later in the book. But in my opinion he misunderstood because he goes something like I think I have it in my, in my list of questions to ask, but I hadn't thought about that before. But it does show I think it does still point to how we're thinking of religion just as a collective. As a collective how we're thinking of what it means to be what it means to have a customized individualized relationship with religion. But I will say I wish that this book existed when I was going through my crises in college when I first I think this is such a common story for a lot of Islamic studies academics. When I started studying Islam academically and it was, I mean I come from a very, very, very uniquely conservative Pakistani Context. So there's that. And then, you know, my world has expanded with my study of Islam. And I felt so betrayed and so hurt. And I remember the first Ramadan when I wasn't fasting because I just couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to fast. And I had no idea what was happening. I'd heard the words crisis of faith, and I figured it was a crisis of faith, but I didn't know if I would ever come back to Islam. And, like, I didn't know what. What resources, what options existed. And I remember I. I was talking to a mentor, a Muslim male, academic, scholar of Islam, who is still an amazing mentor, very, very wonderful human being. And he congratulated me. He was the first person that I felt safe enough to say to, I, I'm not fasting. I can't. I can't fast. I can't bring myself to fast. And I, like, I have this. This is what I'm going through. And when he congratulated me, one of the things that he said was, look, if you don't have the right to disbelieve, and if you don't have the right to have this. This moment, right, this is all supposed to be a journey. And if you're not allowed to have this stop on your journey, then he was like, you don't really have the right to believe. And he was like, then what happens to belief? Like, what does it even. And it was such a. It was such a hopeful conversation. And then I began to really, for the first time in my crisis. And I. It lasted several years or a really long time. I remember thinking, it may not have been that long, but I remember by middle of grad school, I was good. Like, I was like, okay, I found my. I know who I am now, and I know what I want to believe and where I am. And for the first time, after my conversations with him, I felt, okay, this is like, I didn't want to. I wasn't looking for someone to validate me and say, this is normal. That's not what I was looking for. Because I was like, no, I want to stay a Muslim. But this is too. This is like, here's what my specific issues are. And for the first time, I was like, okay, I'm going to think of this as a jihad, and not the kind of jihad where, oh, no, the devil is telling me to do bad things. Shaitaan is my enemy here, and I got to fight Shaitan. Like, I wasn't fighting anything. Like, it wasn't like, I'm fighting, you know, something external. It was more like I'm really trying to get closer to God or understand what God wants from me and have my own authentic relationship. But that also have meant having that pressure of knowing who I am and then eventually comes and goes. But, but I remember I just, I. I've been recommending this book to people because I think that the as I was reading it and I, I saw myself in so many of your interliker and at different stages of my relationship with Islam and with God. So again, I really can't thank you enough for. And I also wish it had existed in graduate school when I thank you. It's such a wonderful book. And I remember I thinking this is such a good idea to write about what an important phenomenon to study at such a crucial time in our history. So. Thank you. Speaking of crises, I you talk about, of course, the entire thing is about crisis of authenticity. Crisis of faith. Let's talk about crisis of authenticity. If you could unpack for our readers, our listeners, what this what the crisis of authenticity specifically looks like for American Muslims or for Muslims in America and why you consider it to be so central to contemporary religious Muslim life. I'm interested in what exactly what are the unique ways that Muslims face this crisis of authenticity in the context of a crisis of faith.
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B
Yeah, so I think the interesting thing is that with, you know, the, the what when we talk about authent personal authenticity and being true to yourself, it kind of evokes this whole what I call in the intro like this constellation of values and norms and virtues like sincerity and autonomy and personal choice and personal, the knowledge of personal experience and the importance of introspection. All these things. And the complicated thing I think is that like obviously internally to Islamic traditions, pietistic traditions, philosophically, etc. You know, Sufi traditions and whatnot, there is an emphasis on these various, on various aspects of this. Like there is very much an emphasis on, you know, introspection, on knowing yourself and you know, on genuine conviction and certainty. That's one way you could kind of gloss an idea of personal authenticity and an emphasis on kind of personal experiential knowledge and all these. So there are various aspects of this that are very much deeply embedded in Islamic thought and they resonate and they reflect various aspects of the kind of contemporary, you know, dominant mainstream culture, cultural rhetoric around personal authenticity. I think one, so one, one thing though, you know, in terms of stepping back, and I don't necessarily say this all that directly in the book, but you know, I think you know. Well, I do say in a little bit, but so the, I think the difference might be in that, like the, the contemporary kind of ideal of personal authenticity can often frame things in. In a way in which kind of becoming your true self is an end in and of itself. It's a good. In and of itself. It's what you should be aspiring to. Like, that's what a full, you know, a fulfilled, meaningful life is, is becoming a fully individuated person that, you know, in which you find your true self. And, you know, I think in, you know, in, in various Islamic traditions, discourses and traditions, all of these are means to an end, which are kind of getting to know God and submission to God, etc. And so it kind of has a different telos or end point of what you're trying to get towards. But so that speaks to a certain kind of, again, some of these dilemmas or, you know, around authenticity that are playing out for American Muslims. Is that so? Within what I call, you know, this kind of revivalist piety that is very dominant, a kind of the. Almost a default, taken for granted way of thinking about what it means to be a believer, what it means to be Muslim, there is an emphasis on a kind of. On very kind of clear cognitive conviction that you should know what you believe and why you believe it and have good reasons to believe it. And then a kind of emphasis on like a wholehearted commitment that, like, if you should be, you should. That should then translate into a kind of, you know, consistent enactment of those beliefs. And if you don't, if you aren't, obviously there. I'm not saying there's like, you know, no recognition of, you know, imperfection and whatnot, but there's a certain drive to a certain kind of perfectionist thrust, a certain kind of drive to saying if you at times, implicitly, at least, that if you're not, you know, living in a certain. If you're not kind of fully committed to, you know, to executing these beliefs or living by these commitments, then maybe there's a kind of lack of belief and conviction and certainty at the core. And so it raises so. And that kind of revivalist drive to authenticity is also very much wedded to an idea of the other kind of authenticity that I was talking about at the beginning, an idea of an authentic Islam, that there is a kind of clear set body of Islam is a kind of coherent set of teachings, a system, systematic body of doctrines, etc. And, and if, you know, if you truly believe, you will believe in the Package as a whole, as it's often put, like you, there's no picking and choo, there's a whole package deal is often the rhetoric. And the idea is that like, well, the guidance, God's guidance provides this holistic way of life. And if you're not accepting that as a whole, you're kind of lying to yourself. So here authenticity is manifesting in two very different ways, at least in some of the stories and some of the aspects of the book that I'm showing that on the one hand, you can have a mode of personal authenticity that encourages you to say, well, I might not accept this or that kind of claim of orthodoxy or these authoritative teachings or whatever I'm being told in the community. This is what Islam requires, but I still have this like, authentic relationship with Islam and that's kind of my own personal connection. And then on the other hand, the kind of. There's a response to say, well, when you're picking and choosing and so not and whatnot, that is kind of not being. Not just you're not just not accepting Islam as it authentically is, but you're not even being real with yourself because you're not accepting the thing as a whole. So you see the way in which like authenticity pull. This kind of rhetoric of authenticity pulls in all sorts of directions. And so that's one of the reasons why I also, I'm pretty ambivalent about this rhetoric. I've increasingly become a lot more critical of it as I've written the book, as I've taught about it, because to some extent, as you were kind of also alluding to in your comment, like, if it's the end all be all, it doesn't. It becomes a kind of incoherent ideal. Which aspect of the self are you supposed to be true to? It's not very clear. Like, we're all internally very complex people. Like I. One part of me, you know, wants this and one part wants. One part of me thinks this way and one part of me thinks another. And then you're supposed to introspect and find your true self. And if that's the ultimate objective, well, which, which aspect is my true self? It's not very clear. And so there's obviously it's a complex, you know, it's a. It's a big philosophical. There's so many thinkers who have unpacked these things in complex ways. But I think at the, at the cultural level, at the popular level, it can both. It has various kinds of effects that I'm, you know, concerned about. But also it's, it's an unclear ideal. Despite that there are aspects of it that are, that have an important ethic of relating to people and yourself and with a kind of generosity of spirit in terms of like, you know, accepting where you are or understanding that people, you know, who people are and you know, various aspects of this that are important. But in and of itself, it becomes this kind of very messy ideal. And so anyways, for American Muslims who are grappling with this, I think it leads, it pulls in these various conflicting directions. And that's what I'm kind of calling the. This why the dilemmas of authenticity are at the heart of this kind of crisis of faith is because and contestations over, over Islam and over faith is that it kind of pulling in all these directions and leaves it kind of can be paralyzing.
- [44:26]
A
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- [44:54]
B
Experian.
- [44:56]
A
You use the word competing authenticities. I was trying to think of like, not prices of authenticity. Competing authenticities. Yes, exactly. It's. And that's, that's it. And I hadn't like Zaid, when I say this book was so, so educational for me. Like, I, because I, in so much of the work that I do, there is this, I mean, essentially this authentic, an authentic Islam for oneself. But I hadn't interrogated my own assumptions of what that meant. And which, when I say does it feel good for? Does it feel right? Not good. Does it feel right to you? Right. And given that we're humans with so many different things pulling us in different directions, what exactly does that even mean? And so, but I mean, ultimately, you know, it is, it's the, it's. I think it's as to one of my, as one of my mentors put it, like, it's a, it's a journey. Right? And so in. At different points of your journey, you're going to be pulled in different directions. And Islam just needs to, it doesn't need to. Because I mean, I was interesting in a Lot of your, like, responses to that. Something. It needs to make sense. It needs to. But also like. Well, it's also like if it doesn't make sense because things happen in life that don't make sense to you. But I mean, just really. I'm going to keep saying this, but I got so much out of this book.
- [46:07]
B
Thank you so much.
- [46:09]
A
In so many different ways.
- [46:10]
B
It means a lot.
- [46:11]
A
And then for this crisis of faith. Right. Which you describe as. As newly institutionalized, could you tell us. Could you tell our listeners what. What exactly makes it newly institutionalized? And it's connected to the revivalist authenticity discussion. But I'm interested in, like, when we have a. I mean, in my research on Muslim women's marriage to non Muslims, a lot of the, you know, famous American theologians think of it being a crisis that women are marrying non mus. Muslims and they're, you know, it's.
- [46:39]
B
It's whole.
- [46:40]
A
There's all kinds of crises that we're facing. But I'm wondering what the preacher. What, like, what these. What the. What preachers and community leaders when they talk about a crisis of faith, how are they defining it? And then whether it's their definition or your definition in the book. Do we have. Do we have.
- [46:59]
B
Yeah.
- [47:00]
A
I keep thinking. Because I kept thinking in some ways there's. I mean, what's happening currently with, you know, it's so unique and there's a lot of. With globalization and we have technology in ways that we didn't have before. Surely something weird is going on and something new is going on. But I'm wondering, in the past, people have had to also go through similar crises. Except I don't imagine. And this is why I loved what you called institutionalized, that it's. That this is. There's that institutionalization of the crisis. Because in the past, I mean, given especially that you're. As you're. You're working with Muslims in America, so they're in a minority context. And so there's all. There's the. The. It just. It made so much sense. Yeah. So I. But I would love for you to just unpack a little bit that.
- [47:45]
B
Sure. So, yeah, I'm. I'm using the word crisis in, I guess, two different ways because then the way that it gets used. I mean, I don't theorize maybe crisis as much as maybe some. Some readers or people who are more versed and that would have wanted me to. But basically, um, I'm saying that like on the one hand, again, like I was saying earlier, sometimes some. Some Things lead people to feel like this, this is becoming for me a personal crisis. Like, and what, whatever we mean by that, like, I'm questioning my identity, I'm questioning my way of life, et cetera. So that is, at a personal level, people are having crisis. What they describe as crises of faith or things that we often describe in that way. And then there's a kind of collective level, at the communal kind of saying that we have a crisis of faith as, as a community collectively, there's a kind of pandemic of people leaving Islam or having doubts or on, you know, and that's a kind of. So when I talk about the, what you're referring to of like crisis talk being institutionalized, I'm saying, well, over the course of the 21st century, especially the second decade, suddenly you got a lot of official discourse coming up in institutes and programs, etc, that, you know, are framing a certain kind of crisis in the community around this. And it both, it's both new. Like you're saying, it's not new and it's new like it's, you know, concerns with, in the American context as a, you know, minoritized group, like concerns with assimilation and the youth, you know, not, you know, continuing to practice Islam, etc. Like that's every generation, every generation has kind of constantly grappled with these anxieties. And throughout Islamic history, there's always a sense of, well, Islam, you know, people are not, you know, we're always in decline from, from the kind of an ideal or golden age or whatever. So the, there's, there's nothing particularly new about, you know, a discourse or rhetoric that like people are losing faith or are not believing properly or are not practicing Islam, etc. But on the other hand, for one though, just the extent to which I observed institutions being formed, programs being formed, authority figures talking about this, events being held, etc. That are specifically framed in this way around doubt, you know, crisis of faith, uncertainty, strength of conviction. That the problem here is one of belief is of kind of, you know, people losing their conviction and a problem of doubt. That seemed new to me. And I'm not, you know, I'm not a historian. So, you know, didn't, you know. And then, you know. But this is what I'm saying is that the way it's. That there's a framing that is, that seems novel and you know, if, if somebody finds something to show otherwise, I would, that would be cool. I would, I would be interested. But you know, and part of. So, you know, and in terms of what gives rise to this sense of crisis both at the collective level and the, you know, individual level. Like I was saying, again, like, the key story I'm trying to tell in terms of the analysis that, you know, ended up being helpful for me and insightful, I think, is this convergence of revivalism as this dominant institutional default of Islamic piety in the US as well as this kind of ethos of personal authenticity. But there's also, you know, an element that I wanted to mention when you were talking earlier as well, is, you know, what I talk about in chapter one is that obviously this is playing out in the context of the kind of hyper scrutiny of what we could call Islamophobia or anti Muslim hostility. This kind of the being, you know, in the, you know, in the limelight and constantly defending oneself and, and feeling the need to respond to endless demonization, that is a major, you know, and, and being minoritized in general creates a certain kind of self consciousness around one's, you know, identity and way of life, etc. So these things are certainly the backdrop in, in through which a lot of this plays out as, you know, and so, you know, for example, a kind of imperative of personal authenticity and figuring out what you believe doesn't play out equally for everybody, right? Like, people, you know, what you were saying about, like, well, does your ideology or your way of life fully, like, does it always make sense or do you have reasons to justify. I mean, not everybody feels the need to justify their commitments, right? Like, and so obviously this personal authenticity is tied in with secularity or and the kind of white post Christian hegemony. Obviously, as a minoritized people, then you feel an extra burden to be able to justify yourself, to be able to have good reasons for why you believe what you believe that brings all these issues to the limelight because of how politicized they are. So all of these are backdrops that are relevant and I kind of unpack them a bit and they play out in all the stories I tell. But it's not the kind of primary analytical focus that just because other people are a lot better at analyzing those things than me, and I was trying to say something slightly different. And then the other aspect of it that kind of brings this crisis discourse, I think, to the four is kind of the American culture wars, like so many of the issues that people are debating, people are agonizing over is framed through the American culture wars kind of debates and the kind of polarized, you know, this, you know, conflicts over things, especially things around gender and sexuality, but even more broadly, a Kind of these competing values between conservative and, you know, so called liberal, progressive, whatever kind of, you know, values that is taking, you know, that is so definitive of the American experience, especially, you know, in the last decade or two. So, so all these things are converging and like I said, it's a very, you know, but you know, I then focus mostly on these two key frameworks of revivalism and personal authenticity that I think are both, you know, around the turn of the century. You know, is my, my, my argument is that, you know, by the turn of the century these things have developed in a way where they're intersecting in all sorts of ways that lead to this kind of discourse just really proliferating along with the Internet and, you know, social media and so many factors, again, like, my point is not to try to list all the factors because that's, that would be an endless exhaustive list, but just trying to kind of tease out some of these conditions of how it's experienced and what the kind of underlying logic is.
- [55:07]
A
Effy. But I know I felt so seen by so many of your interlocutors, right? Like, I mean, I, some of them I just, I like, really, really connected with and I, and so proud of how they're, they're so articulate. Like, I, I'm just really, really impressed.
- [55:24]
B
With, with what brilliant, brilliant conversation partners.
- [55:30]
A
I could tell. I was so jealous. I was like, oh my gosh, I would have loved to be in that conversation as well. But I, so I, I kept wondering, right? Like, and I, and I mentioned this earlier, like, I, I would wonder for those who insisted that being a Muslim means just being a good person, leaving a good legacy behind, finding peace with oneself, et cetera. And I kept thinking, well, why necessarily Islam then? Because any religion can fill those gaps and any religion can fulfill these notions just fine as well. And so I made a note of this actually on pages 120 and 121, and then I saw that you asked someone that exact same question on page 158. Later you ask Samir, I think this is what I was mentioning earlier. You ask him, in your experience, it seems like Islam is about living out certain values and like a spiritual engagement with the world rather than necessarily accepting certain doctrines or following particular rules. Hasn't that ever made you feel like, well, why do I need Islam at all? Why can't I just live out those values and spirituality without Islam? And I think, and Samid is confused by this. Like, it's, you're clear that he, so he's confused by your question. And he explains that leaving Islam isn't an option for him, that, that that's who he is, that, that I live out these values through this identity. Like, that's what. That's what he says. And then Zainab did something similar earlier. She made it very clear that leaving Islam is not something she's interested in doing. That that's her default. Right. And the language that, I mean, again, these people are just like, they're so clear about who they are and what value Islam adds to their lives. So I was wondering how you, like, what do you make of these responses? And I was thinking about how, you know, what this tells us. Yeah, just really what this tells us about their relationship with Islam when they're thinking of it as a default, which to be sure, a convert probably. I don't know that a convert would have. I know she had such a sad story later in the later chapters, but I'm. Yeah. Just would just love to hear your thoughts on this observation.
- [57:37]
B
Yeah. Thank you. So, yeah, I mean, I should note, for one that, like, just methodologically, it's interesting for me to look back on when I posed those kind of questions. Both, you know, I think it's somewhat a deliberate methodological practice and maybe just kind of like conversation playing out in a certain way. But in some ways, I ended up playing the role of that, of that professor, of that public kind of scrutiny and that, that we feel as Muslims that that demands of you justification. Even though I am challenging or in, in many ways the analysis and the stories I'm telling challenges that kind of demand of that we can somehow need to or ever can fully justify why we are the way we are, why we believe. But in those moments, I'm like kind of poking at people and, you know, depending on, you know, I don't know whether what people will make of it, but I'm playing in that role as a, you know, to, to provoke and see what they, you know, how they respond. But at some level, they clearly, it's not like a. Something they haven't thought about before. Like, we're all. So, you know, that is such a. The framework within which we live that, you know, you kind of have to respond to that at a certain level. And they, you know, so one of the things I'm trying to say in that chapter is that, well, they. Both of these people, Zainab and Samir, are, you know, saying, well, I'm not. I'm. I'm sometimes I'm not very sure, you know, about what I really believe or, you know, don't have a very clear answer to this. Like, well, why be, you know, Muslim then and not something else? But, you know, they insist that like, well, this is just like you said, like, this is my, this is my default. This kind of, there's a, it's part of who I am, like, or it is who I am. And I mean, one of the points I was just trying to make in that chapter is that that can sometimes be read as a kind of a matter of just identity, right? A nominal identity that like, there is very much people who would describe themselves as cultural Muslims or secular Muslims. Like, yes, being Muslim is part of who I am because I've inherited that. You know, like, I come from a Muslim background and so obviously it informs aspects of myself, but I'm not, I'm not religious, I'm not a believer, I'm not. Etc. And for these people, which interesting is that they are very much framing themselves in terms of Islam as an inheritance. Well, this is what I was. This is what I was, you know, given in life. And it's just my default. But, but it's not just an identity. Like, for them, it's like there is some aspect of, like, it's not, you know, it's complicated, but it's not just like, well, this is a nominal identity, but I don't really care. I'm not religious. No, like, they care about living this out. And there's a certain idea of faithfulness and a meaningfulness and value to what Islam means for them in, in practice and, and you know, as, you know, but, but it's just, you know, there, there's a lot of, you know, ambiguity and conflictedness there. And I think for one, it points to that. I mean, I feel like their reflections invite us to consider that like, people are not atomized individuals who float in society kind of creating, you know, like just, you know, creating values and, and, and beliefs and commitments of their own and nor following norms on their own. Like, we, we belong in larger structures and, and traditions and communities and that informs the way we live our lives. So yes, you can. Obviously there are many people, I mean, there are people who, you know, even that I encountered during my research who did, you know, leave Islam. And that was certainly option. It was certainly much less common. But that is obviously something that people can do and they find ways of distancing themselves from that default that, you know, people like these two interlocutors found very difficult to conceive of. But even if you're you know, spiritual but not religious or you don't belong to any particular religion. You know, we are embedded in structures and institutions and, and, and, and traditions etc. Whether we are fully like it's very conscious or not, that informs the kind of values and, and, and commitments that we have. And I think, you know, that's at least part of what I, I would see them as pointing us to is that yes, there are lots of things they don't know what to do with or they're not, you know, too clear about their kind of intellectual convictions. But there are, there are modes of living as a form of life. They, there is a lot from their Muslim upbringing and from, you know, the practice of Islam that is very much part of their life and they stay connected to that. And so if you think of it, you know, you know, as a form of life, I think, you know, that that kind of clarifies some aspect of that. But I will say, you know, I do start the chapter by, and conclude the chapter by bringing in the story of that Michael Muhammad Knight talks about and you know, and feeling a similar kind of, you know, as one of our colleagues in Islamic studies, but kind of in, in his, in his kind of earlier non academic work talks about, in a memoir, talking about feeling a very similar kind of experience of being almost stuck with this thing like this is just a part of you, even though he converted to Islam. So I start with that and connect it to the experiences of these people. And so I think what's also that is you know, just kind of reiterating something I said earlier, what these stories push us to. You know, for me, in the context of the book, this is part of a larger argument in chapters four and five around the limits of justification that like again we are the, the ethos of personal authenticity could be kind of often experienced or understood in this way that you should have clarity and you should have good reasons for why you are the way you, you know, what you believe, what you know, why you follow, what you follow. And that's especially again like exaggerated within the context of a secular construction of religion and a kind of racialized Islamophobia and marginalization where you then kind of, you really have to like you're pressured to have good reasons and at some level, you know, any form of life, any way of living, any commitments that some of you keep on examining and digging and, and you know, would become paralyzing and ultimately one must live. And you know, some of my reflections with Zainab very much took me in that direction. Thinking with some other philosophers that like justification can only go so far. And so at some point we might not have justifications for certain aspects of things we're committed to, but we go on living. And you could choose that, like, well, decide that like, well, I'm going to abandon these. But then there are going to be other commitments that you have or, you know, belong to that you can't justify. So I mean, at some level it could be read in this way of like, oh, these religious people are not rational in the same. But it would be a kind of, I think a kind of hubris and, and myth that people tell themselves that, you know, that they're, that their worldview instead is kind of fully. Is rationally can be rationally justified in comparison. So yeah, there's lots of different kinds of issues that these stories raise, but those are some of the kind of takeaways that I would point to.
- [66:22]
A
No, I really, really enjoyed. I mean I just. Oh my God, it was so. They were so rich, Zayd. Like I, to be clear, I want to. So I didn't, I didn't think so. You were very clear in the book, when you push back or when you poke, use your word, you tell the reader, here's what I'm going to, here's what I'm doing. Like, this is why I'm going to ask this question. So in chapter six, when you talk about the sure Source article and I remember that debacle a lot when it was first happening and the response is read from the community, I have to say I wasn't as generous to Umzakiya that like you were in your very, very careful discussion of her. I almost left Islam how I reclaimed my faith because she's doing exact. She's doing to me, she's doing absolutely the same exact thing. Thing. Right. It's very, very similar at the very least to what what the author of, of the, of the short. Of that famous article was doing. And it just basically finding space within a vast tradition for herself, following her own intuition, making sense of something and then saying, okay, this is what I'm going to keep and this is what I'm going to not this is what I'm going to reject. And this is my space. This is my position in this particular community. And it reminded me of all the times that I've had Muslims challenge me or criticize me for practicing Islam in a way that felt authentic to me, that, that felt very real to me and that resonated with me and my values. But they disagreed with Me. And so they challenged me. And then I see them years or decades later, and they have. They're going through the same exact parts of the journey that I went through already when they were attacking me. Right? And I had a friend who said something really powerful about this a few years ago. She said, I was meeting up with a mutual friend of ours who now is in a very similar. And is at a very similar point in our spiritual journeys, you know, questioning things and then making space for herself in the tradition and then acknowledging that, okay, people have doubts, we have questions, et cetera. And this friend said something like, that's not fair that she's doing that now, that she's so accepting and so compassionate and kind now, because when I was in school with her, she was attacking me and she was. She started a rumor about me because I wouldn't wear the hijab her way, et cetera, et cetera. Like, we caused so much, like, so, so much, so much harm. Gets. You know, it happens. And then years later, we realize, oh, wait, I have the same question, actually. This person has already gone through and the damage has already been done is what my friend, she's like, she's already caused the damage. I don't care where she is now. I don't care how progressive and kind and compassionate she is now and how beautiful her relationship with Islam is now. She caused me so much damage. I was. I still haven't recovered from that damage, et cetera. But I just. I, like, that's how I. That's how I saw, um, Zakiyah's response. And I'll mention the. The. The fact that she wrote this entire book where, where she. And who knows. For she probably was going through the same crisis or the same. Had the same questions and concerns at the time that she's publicly speaking against in Nagar. Was it. Is that. Is that. And. But we don't know that because there's some kind of. There's. It still feels like there's a shame against, you know, publicly admitting that, hey, I actually don't have all the answers, and I'm. I'm kind of struggling, and I have questions and I have doubts and so on, but I just. I felt. I don't know. I read that and I was not generous, but I was like, okay, he's a true scholar, a true art, a true researcher here.
- [69:51]
B
That's fun. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly interesting. I mean, I would. So just for context, for. For listeners, I mean, so there's this blog, Practicing Islam in short shorts that I start the chapter six with this. These are, this is like a social media controversy, you know, that I open the chapter with but then get into a kind of a lengthy ethnographic interlocutor that kind of reflects some of these, these themes. But the, you know, she, she's making a case that like, well, I, you know, I do Islam in my own way, basically, you know, and names of a number of like, practices that would be seen as like, you know, really violating basic Islamic tenets and then is, you know, and then gets a lot of responses. And one of those responses is from this author, Omzakiyah, who's a kind of novelist as well as a kind of social media like self help person, guru. She critiques her for like just making, you know, like, you can't just make Islam whatever you want it to be. But then a few years later publishes a book like Shehnaz mentioned. Like, you know, I almost lost my faith and kind of frames it as, you know, I was kind of taught to not value and trust my own judgments, my own intuition, my own kind of experience and kind of to, to just give too much of myself over to authority figures. And so this is really important to kind of reclaim your own trust. And this is a theme that we see in various people who kind of bring this up as like spiritual advice throughout the book. I mean, I think, you know, what it is an interesting, you know, like I partly bring it up precisely to show what you're showing is that if, you know, you know, that, that rhetoric, that kind of emphasis on personal conscience and intuition and personal judgment and making things, you know, understanding things in a way that is at all, you know, like you can, you can accept is not just, is. It's not just a divide between the conservatives and the liberals. Like at some level everybody is invoking is, is engaging in that process. I mean, and so it, it is an invitation to kind of see that like, you know, to, to then respond to, you know, people who are kind of raising those kinds of issues of saying, well, you clearly don't have, you don't believe in this. You're just, you know, this is like so hypocritical and stuff. Like it can invite some humility in, in terms of, you know, if we're going to think about, you know, concrete takeaways from stories like the analysis like this. But I mean, what, you know, to kind of tease apart the difference, like maybe is between Al Nagar and Umzakiyah, like perhaps there's a, like she would say from her perspective that there's a difference in that, like where she's willing to interject her like personal conscience and make distinction, you know, like say like no, this is, this is a line for me, you know, or whatever, like make boundaries and, and assert her own personal judgment. It's on issues that are not, you know, to her are not. Don't have kind of like clear cut authoritative answers and consensus within a community of interpretation. And obviously we can, we can critique, you know, we can critique the lines of authority of who, who gets to say what consensus is and which interpretations are. But for her, she's not saying I get to decide, you know, what Islam is. She's saying, well, there are things I have to accept, but then there are these areas where like, there are more gray, there is gray area and there is more clear cut stuff. And then I'm like on the, on the gray area for people to come and like and assert this kind of stuff for me. So you know, we can, we can kind of, I think that's how she kind of her, you know, and I kind of mentioned that like she says this thing like you can't just throw objectivity and ignore evidence, you know, textual evidence or scholarly evidence and you know, etc. And we could kind of again, like obviously interpretive. We, we, we do this a lot in Islamic studies of showing how these interpretations are always kind of constrained and coming from a certain perspective. But I think one thing that, that back and forth, I think for me speaks to beyond the question of like interpretation is like that tension. It, it speaks to the tension of between the individual and the community or between individual judgment and kind of this being, you know, like you were saying a while earlier, like at some level, if it's a shared communal tradition, it has to be a shared conversation. And what you see, what I, you know, what I feel like the various stories and kind of discourses in the book would, could point us to in the big picture is feeling like, is this recognition that like well, people who are it. It can't. Nobody feels like as it works to just kind of be like, well I'm just doing my own thing as an individual and I, you know, I have it. There's no need. You know, the last chapter is kind of about belonging, for example, and the kind of longing for belonging, right? Like that people are like disillusioned with community and so like want to distance themselves but also keep on coming back to this need for like that they can't practice this on their own, that they need that they're seeking kind of spaces of, you know, shared understanding, shared practice, shared devotional kind of pie, etc. And so if that's the case, then the. It can't just be a matter of, like, well, I have my personal interpretations and I don't really. It has to be kind of in conversation at the. A dialogical kind of thing. And so I think, you know, for me, that through the process of writing the book, that kind of tension and grappling with the, you know, between individuality and collectivity and what, you know, there are no clear lines. Right. Like, but. But at some level it's something to kind of. To hold up both together and to be like, well, to affirm these. That space to kind of dissent and assert your own kind of personal understanding, you know, doesn't need to or maybe shouldn't again, to be more. The prescriptive takeaways that I'm not naming in this book doesn't need to kind of lend itself to a kind of, like, fully, you know, individualistic approach. So it's that kind of balance, you know, that I think you're speaking to that is like, yeah, the kind of things that really, like, I grappled with and struggled with through the process of writing the book that, you know, I hope is food for thought as we kind of try to figure these things out. What does it mean to be in community while upholding people's individuality and not, you know, requiring what, you know. And yeah, you know, I think, I think the point should.
- [77:31]
A
And I mean, to be in the book, you're very, very. When you, I mean, the very careful and very compassionate approach that you take to Umzakiya's story and her journey, like, and you're very clear about it all, like, the questions that are being raised by your analysis of her, of her discussion of her journey, of her, of her, like, what she says in that book. I almost left Islam. But it's like, to me, it's like she, you know, it's. It's so clear to me that she's doing exactly what she. I mean, like, even if she doesn't, it's just the fact that, you know, we. She. She's like, yeah, there's gray areas, but you don't. I'm going to decide what the gray area is ultimately. Or, you know, sure, the religious authorities have decided it, but gray areas are more correct and yours aren't. Or no, wearing short shorts or drinking alcohol or whatever it is that negarded in her article. That's not the Correct. Kind of. But meanwhile, whatever it is for, it was serious enough to warrant almost leaving Islam. Right? And that is where I was like, ooh, a little bit of humility, please. A little bit of humility, Uzikiyah. Like, that's not. And I. And I. I'm familiar with, like, I used to follow some of her works earlier. You know, one thing that I loved about the book so much was that I could. This is not an area that I study, but in my, like, the questions of crisis and faith and authenticity, doubts, et cetera. But in my interactions with Muslims and conversations with Muslims and the people who write to me, I feel like every story you. Every. Every individual person's journey that you discussed does truly reflect, which is why I was like, you did such a wonderful job, like, just taking a few. You clearly talked to so many more and you took just a few that are more represent. That are representative samples of. Of the larger issues. And I could tell. So, like, you do talk about. And I mentioned earlier, I was really saddened by. Nabil is the one who has the religious OCD and really, like, the guilt, right, that hunts him. And then Jasmine, the Muslim, the convert to Islam. So I really appreciated all of that. And for Nabil, I just. That resonated with me as well. I mean, I could see myself in almost all of the people at some point in my own journey. And, you know, with Nabil's particular experiences, I've witnessed what religious OCD can do to someone. I have a family member who suffers from the anxiety of missing prayers. I mean, like, I'm talking, like, panic attacks and like, the constant fear of. In, like, what a dua looks like for this person versus for me or what I want. And I. And I watch and I'm just so saddened that this is like, there's no way. And that's where, like, authenticity, etc. Comes to mind. Because I'm like, oh, my God, this is not. This doesn't. Like, how can this be? How can this feel right to you in any way whatsoever? But it's. The person is suffering, right? And a lot of other people that I know in. Amongst. In my. In my relatives. But I say all of this to dive into, like, this idea of trusting your intuition, right, While also believing in Islam. And you had. In my notes, I have Rashid. Rashid is the one who's really, really like, you have really powerful conversations with him about intuition. And I loved that he actually said something like, he understands. He says to trust your intuition, and he understands it to be Limitless, right. Like this idea that you can like just, just follow your intuition, you know, especially when it comes to faith and authenticity and so on. And meanwhile, your, you know, our Muslim preachers are not telling us to trust your intuition. You trust them instead. There's a limit to intuition. Don't ask too many questions. Your intuition will take you to the wrong path and so on. All of that really to say, just. I really felt like the specific stories you told, the specific individuals you, you selected to in this book, they really, really, I do think capture like the. Yeah, there was no one that was like, I have. Zayd. Are you sure? I've never come across that. That idea before. So I.
- [81:31]
B
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Rashid's example is super, I think interesting because he is, you know. Yeah, he places that kind of. He is supremely self confident in the one hand, but he's also like, you know, in terms of checking some kind of sociological box, he's certainly on the opposite end of the spectrum of like the people I was talking to earlier. Talking about earlier, right. Who, who have all these kinds of uncertainties. Like, he's somebody who never expresses any wavering about his faith. He's, you know, some would see, oh, like you're very doctrinaire and dogmatic and like conservative in certain ways at least. But, you know, combines that kind of like commitment to, you know, some idea of orthodoxy with this kind of like, sense of like, well, God is guiding you and you have to be open to God and trust that and, and kind of be super attuned to. To that and, and you know, and for him that's this, you know, but the, I think the important, the interesting thing, the complicated thing, the important thing is direct, you know, for him, that doesn't mean like he's just like trusting any, you know, any of his inclinations or, or like, or thoughts. Like he's. It, you know, it takes a lot of like for him, it's like very much. It's a, It's a, you know, it's a complex process of like trying to be attuned to, you know, what, you know, what you, you know, what you think God is telling you, but your needs in a certain kind of situation, etc. And you know, it's not like an uncritical, basically like just trusting any of his intuitions or sense of what's right and wrong, but kind of it's this real mix and similar in the chapter after that with the two, with the person you mentioned with kind of OCD in relation to religious practice kind of, you know, it ends up with this, in this way where the kind of experiential knowledge he arrives at or the kind of sense of like, I need to trust my own experience leads him to conflicting like answers and solutions at different times. And he then kind of becomes pretty kind of critical himself to rec of being like, well, my experience I'm interpreting, you know, I'm like understanding my experience in different ways based on like, different kind of spaces that I'm in, different intellectual like places that I'm in and different intellectual commitments that I have in these different periods of my life. And so that means, you know, we have to be, you know, he's very reflective person. Like, I have to be very discerning about this kind of personal experience. So in all these like, chapters, I feel like I ended up, you know, I'm trying to like, walk this tightrope and, and I think that, that a lot of my interlocutors are following that are. That are grappling with which is that like there is something very, you know, that they're very important to them that they're holding on to about personal experience, intuition, you know, autonomy, you know, like, personal judgment and autonomy and, and etc, individ, you know, emphasizing my individuality, my, you know, personal circumstances, while also recognizing that like, not taking a naive or like, like uncritical perspective on that for them is important because they're like, well, like, you know, our intuitions and our personal judgments can be informed by lots of things. And so they're, you know, struggling with that. And you know, and so, and you know, I think that kind of ambivalence that I expressed toward earlier in the conversation about this ethos of personal authenticity is precisely, I think playing out most clearly in those final chapters we, where these interlocutors really kind of got me. You know, I wasn't writing a book early on in the process. I wasn't when I was doing my dissertation research and even like early drafts of the book. I didn't think I was writing a book about individuality and personal authenticity. But it was like in some ways it was partly because of these reflections that they're getting me to kind of like, recognize how important that is, but at the same time also getting me to kind of like, think about that complex like, you know, act of like. And again, there are no clear answers or like lines that any of these people can draw of. Like, when do you know when to trust your yourself and when to kind of be critical of your own reactions because it could be reflecting some kind of like, inner disposition or larger kind of ideologies that I might not want to uphold. And so they're, you know, they're constantly navigating, and it made me constantly navigating a lot more attuned to this as like a kind of really fundamental tension that we. I don't really have any answers for it in this book. I don't know if there are answers, but it's something I think to. But again, like, holding up that tension is, I think is really crucial.
- [87:09]
A
No. And I mean, especially because when it comes to just knowing, you know, being able to trust your intuition, you know, we say this to women a lot, right, in patriarchy. Trust your intuition or don't do, like, just follow your intuition, etc, before you talk to this man or go out with this man, etc. But the fact of the matter is that for a lot of us, if you've dealt with any kind of trauma or if you've suffered any kind of abuses at all, your intuition is you just, you don't know what is intuition and what is anxiety anymore.
- [87:34]
B
Right, Right.
- [87:35]
A
Like, it's really, it's very complicated. But I mean, again, I just, things that I, that I just, I, I really, really resonated with what your interlocutors were saying. I would love to hear a little bit about your experience of doing this ethnography and like, and, and writing this book. I want to know what the, Like, I was so curious. I was like, did anybody ever follow up with him to say, oh, hey, I've changed my opinion about this, or actually I have something more that I could add, or he happened and now I think this. Or did your own thinking or your own relationship with some of these questions, right? Like, did you go through any kind of change? I'm so curious.
- [88:13]
B
Yeah, well, yeah, thank you for that question. I mean, for one, it was a very difficult process. Both the ethnography I found very challenging to do this kind of work and the, the writing in terms of like the field work, the ethnographic field work, I, you know, I found it. I have developed a real love hate relationship with this, not with ethnography. Like, I find it very rich. The ability to tell stories, the, you know, like, having these deep conversations and the insights that it generates. But there's also, you know, something like, I just, it always felt very conflicting to kind of be doing this work, especially because I wasn't like, for the most part, I didn't rely on like set, like doing kind of predetermined interviews with people. You know, I did. I did do, you know, you know, some. Some interviews here and there that were a bit more formally planned, but a lot of it was just kind of like, long, you know, informal conversation over months of. Of time, just kind of getting to know people and bringing things up or seeing what they're bringing up. But so then you're partly just living in community the way you would normally live in community, and you're partly doing this thing for your academic, you know, like, advancement and. But also, I mean, for me, it was like. Like it's about more than just an academic or professional interest. And I think people could tell, but it's also, I think, weird to people and weird to me to be in a relationship where you're like, you're in community with people, you're friends with people, but you're also like, constantly, like, writing down things and, like, wanting to record certain conversations and wanting to, like, jot down notes. And so it feels weirdly objectifying. I probably felt so much more insecure and anxious about it than they felt weirded out by it. But there were times where it led to, like, weirdness and even, you know, you know, trying to do this kind of work and the boundaries of when recording is okay or not, especially in, you know, in Boston post marathon bombings and like, concerns with informants and, and. And. And surveillance. Like, you know, that was something that came up and was a difficult situation where I probably made some mistakes, but. So that was a difficult process. But ultimately, you know, I made some really great friends. And so in terms of, like, fault, like, again, these were largely unplanned, informal conversations. Sometimes they were planned, but they still very. Felt much felt like, like we're just hanging out and chatting. And so a lot of these relations, especially the, you know, like, got to know a lot of people and talk to lots and lots of people. But the people who kind of show up in the book are, like, the bulk of the people who I ended up spending the most time with and, like, following up with over a course of, like, two years. And a lot of them became friends that I continue to kind of be in touch with over the years, but I kind of. And we might discuss things here and there, but I made a decision that, like, it's just. It's not capturing who they are as a person somehow, because, like, we're all constantly changing. So it's like, it's capturing those conversations in those two years and not what they think 10 years later. And I did share with Certain interlocutors. I shared drafts of things I was writing and had them. You know, generally, I never, you know, faced the need to, like, majorly change anything I was writing. Might be like, oh, I don't know. That's interesting that you emphasize that. You know, like, I would have. Maybe I would kind of frame it slightly differently, but generally they were very appreciative and. And generous, but overall, just very grateful to everybody who hung out with me and kept me company and. And gave me those insights. And then the right. You know, through the process of that and the writing, like I was saying I did, you know, a lot of my thinking shifted in certain ways in terms of what I was. Especially the writing. I mean, the writing process for me was a very long, painful process. I was very privileged and fortunate in that. Like, I mean, I. We were hit with COVID like, right in the middle of my process. And, you know, but our college allowed us to extend our tenure clock because of that. So I had a certain draft, received feedback that was from. From. In a manuscript workshop that was both very productive and generous, but also challenging. And I kind of went back to the drawing board and came up with a new framing for the book. And that's where the authenticity thing became the central framing. Because before, the book was framed very differently, and it was. The kind of. The way it was organized in some ways was differently. So that was a very painful process. And just figuring something about either this ethnographic work or the subject at hand. This book just felt so hard to figure out how the pieces. How to kind of lay out the pieces in relation to one another, because the organization was very hard. But, you know, I'm glad it's behind me. And, yeah, I feel like. And I end an epilogue with this reflection on writing this book in the midst of COVID in the midst of the, you know, the uprisings of 2020, you know, in terms of police violence and, you know, and everything in relation to that kind of how it got me to reflect Writing this and the focus on individuality and community really got me to focus a lot on how we think about collective life and personal autonomy. And so I think through teaching and through writing this book, I think become a lot more concerned with the kind of, you know, the kind of emphasis on personal authenticity, personal autonomy and choice and. And how we navigate communal ethics and relations and how we sustain communal life and collective life given the kind of emphasis on individuality and individualism and. And, you know, again, not to kind of swing in, you know, once you Know, mutually exclusive, one or the other, but to kind of really, kind of sit with that tension a bit more and really think about like, what are we prioritizing and when we kind of prioritize certain kind of independence and autonomy from relationships, from community, etc, what is that? What are the larger kind of structural implications and, and conditions that make that possible? So those are kind of big picture questions that, that the process led me to that I kind of end the book on. It's in some ways the piece of the book that I, you know, I, I kind of feel maybe because it came towards the end, you know, I feel very, I'm excited about those ideas and you know, I want, I think it's something that needs to, I need to kind of think through further now.
- [95:59]
A
Book writing, you know, ever since my own, when I wrote my own book, I was like, I will never, ever, I don't think I've ever appreciated books like this like before authors, the existence of authors before. So I, yeah, I, I, yeah, I.
- [96:11]
B
Vowed, I vowed that I would become a much more generous reader and not, and not criticize people's books. But I can't say that I've always kept true to my vows. I still read sometimes I'm still like, ugh. But you know, I try to, I try to reign it in.
- [96:27]
A
Same final question is we ask for authors is if there's anything that you're working on currently that we can look forward to in the near future.
- [96:36]
B
I'm not planning any kind of like big new project. So I have like so many small little things that I'm working on that I'd like to kind of see through and I don't have plans for any kind of big book project. One of the main things that I would say maybe is a slightly bigger project that isn't, you know, an extent it comes out from this book is that, you know, the initially I had frame the book as being about. So the title initially was going to be Questioning Belief. And what I meant one by that was both like people are questioning their belief, but also questioning what does, what do we mean by belief and is it a useful category or not? So that what didn't end up in the book is, you know, but that I've worked on a lot actually is a lot of like both the kind of theoretical, philosophical questions around like how we understand belief and the problem of translation from Islamic terminology around belief and faith like Iman and other related concepts to like English or you know, modern Western concepts. But more, you know, more for me More interestingly is the question of like the theological work and the theological conception of Iman, or faith and the theological traditions and philosophical traditions and how they have conceptualized this and how, how does doubt fit into the picture? Like how, you know, how do you have. What kind of understanding of, of faith does the analysis of this book lend itself to or does the question of doubt raised? And you know, I, I initially had some amount of that in this book and I ended up having to take it out. So that's something that I've been super interested in, I've worked a lot on. And this book ended up having very, very little engagement with Islamic theological traditions, which is something that makes me sad. But I ended up deciding to frame it in a different way. Primarily geared towards kind of a broader American religion and religious studies audience and not engaging. I just couldn't do all those things. And that's part of what made the process so hard was like different audiences and different frameworks. But so that's something I want to either, you know, I'm probably, I'm trying to write maybe an article or two in some kind of format to kind of work through those aspects of Islamic theological traditions and philosophical kind of reflection on belief and doubt. You know, Iman and doubt aside, small project that speaks to a larger kind of interest. I'm writing something about the music of Umkulthum, who is this kind of mid 20th century pop culture top Arab, the like the most popular Arab singer of the 20th century who can captures what we think of as. Which is this classical Arabic music. And so I'm writing a kind of like semi autobiographical musing essay that's also kind of reflecting on various aspects of things about like as a diasporic Syrian, my connection with her music as reflecting various kinds of political and spiritual questions. And in some ways it's connected to the problem, to the, to the project on doubt and, and the kind of questions in this book, but in a pretty meandering sort of way. But that's something fun that I'm working on, I'm hoping to. I can do in the, you know, you know, sometime in the near future. So that's kind of in progress. And then lots of other small things.
- [100:15]
A
That sounds so exciting. I'm really excited especially for the Und Kulthum project and then its connections to doubts and faith. So I'm looking forward to it. Well, thank you, Zeb.
- [100:25]
B
Thank you so much for this interview and for all your overly kind, generous feedback.
- [100:32]
A
No, oh truly, like I have. I mean it's like, this is one of the books that I have right here, so that when I'm talking to people and they ask a question like, oh, here, this is the answer to all your problems, dilemmas of the American Muslim Crisis of Faith. Thank you, Zayd.
- [100:45]
B
Thank you so much.
- [100:46]
A
All right. So that was my conversation with Zaid Adhami about his book dilemmas of the American Muslim Crisis of faith, published with UNC Press in 2025. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next.
- [101:06]
B
Time. Sam.