Forming an Integrated Identity By ASMA UDDIN

In Al-Mughtaribun: American Law and the Transformation of Muslim Life in the United States, Kathleen Moore traces the effects of law on Islam in America. She discusses how Muslims worked within the American legal framework in their struggle for social and political recognition as individuals and as a community, and how American law has, in turn, been influenced by the Muslims’ efforts. Moore demonstrates that law and the constraints it places on Muslims working within the legal framework shape American Muslim life and the Muslims’ conception of themselves as Americans.

Moore devotes much of her work to the issue of how law and its definitions of “citizenship” affect and are affected by social perceptions of who “belongs” and who is, or should be, a social and political outsider. In explaining the legal definitions of citizenship, Moore discusses hegemony, which she defines as “the organization of society along lines that benefit a particular class which has gained the loyalty of subordinate as well as dominant groups through a combination of coercion and consent.” According to Moore these terms are racial and religious; that is, White, Judeo-Christian America creates the legal and economic institutions that serve its needs and excludes as non-citizens those who do not belong to this group.