Excerpt:
Akbar Ahmed has spent a lifetime explaining the Muslim world to the West, and vice versa. In his latest book — his latest journey — he finds the two together in the United States and watches how they interact.
Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam is the story of Ahmed and five of his students as they traverse the country, as well as the stories they uncover in conversations with Muslim Americans at more than 100 mosques in 70 cities and towns. What they create is a varied portrait of America's several-million-strong Muslim community.
Ahmed, a former Pakistani diplomat and the Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic studies at American University in Washington, has traveled previously to learn more about Islam's place in the world: For Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization, he and a team of students travelled throughout the Muslim world. This time, the students become his native guides and helped their professor navigate the Muslim community that exists in America.