As a minority religion in a predominantly Christian country, America's Muslims face many difficulties - lack of understanding of their cultural traditions by the majority of their fellow citizens, threats to their civil liberties based on their beliefs and ethnicity, and challenges to retaining a Muslim identity within their community. Muslims in the United States clarifies this complex situation by explaining for a non-Muslim audience the basic teachings and practices of Islam, the history of Islam in the United States, and a discussion of how and where Muslims live in this country. The volume concludes with a discussion of the problems that Muslims have adjusting to American culture, and a description from the Muslim perspective of 9/11 and its aftermath. Muslims in the United States provides an objective overview of what it's like to live as a Muslim in the United States: BLIncludes a history of Islam in America and a summary of what is known about the diversity of the Muslim population BLExamines the centrality of faith for the Muslims of the United States BLAnalyzes the importance of women and the family BLProbes the troubles that Muslims have endured after 9/11

The conflict between Islam and the West is as disturbing on the outside, as it polarizes the world, as it is on the inside, when it divides families and causes enormous stress to Muslims living in the West. A mutual understanding is the answer to both of these conflicts. This work enhances the West's understanding of Muslim minorities and helps Muslims to understand their own identity problem in Western culture. Ultimately, Professor Akhtar delineates how Muslim families can integrate into Western society in a creative way that will benefit their families and society-at-large. Muslim Family in a Dilemma provides empirical examinations of many problems in the Muslim family in the U.S. and Europe, such as divorce, mental health, and the abuse of women. One chapter gives a special analysis of the maltreatment of Muslim women in Turkish families in Germany. In regard to these issues and women's equality, the Western position is accepted, and Islam is interpreted in several chapters as reconcilable with this outlook. Further consistent with the Western position, is what the writer of the last chapter, a Muslim female, has to state: pleasing your wife sexually is a religious obligation in Islam. That is in regard to sex in marriage. However, sex outside of marriage or free sex is irreconcilable to Islam. In a detailed critique of some of the Western practices and anti-family forces, Professor Akhtar determines the mutually exclusive relationship between unrestricted sex and marital integrity. One can have free sex or long-lasting marriage, but not both. He considers extra-marital sex as a paradox of Western culture, as it derives from an overvaluation of sex and overemphasis of individualism and cuts into relationships.