Scholars of Islam in the United States who attempt to render a composite history find significant archival and informational gaps in their narratives. In part, this is a consequence of limited information about Muslims in America during the antebellum period as well as insufficient primary resources outlining the interracial, intercommunal, and political engagement of various Muslim communities from the middle of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. As a result, scholars often find themselves stuck in discussions of the more recent present, unable to fully appreciate the myriad ways that Muslim American communities have historically dealt with the challenges of American society.

There is a growing body of literature on the place of the mosque in American Muslim life, the nature of Muslim leadership in America, and the ways that Muslims have understood, negotiated, and translated Islam into the American context. However, all too often this literature lacks a robust discussion of pre-1970s American Islam. Providing this history and filling the aforementioned gap is exactly the challenge that Sally Howell succeeds in taking on in Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past.

From the outset, Howell explains that a deeper appreciation for the history of Muslim American communities in the early half of the twentieth century can “help Muslims and non-Muslims realize the extent to which their identities are connected and mutually reinforced” (28). This richly researched study, which unearths archival materials and provides important and insightful interviews spanning the history of Islam in Detroit, is enhanced by photographs and images that bring the story of the Muslim communities in and around this city to life.

Howell's main objective is to provide a much needed corrective to what she sees as oversimplified narratives about the Detroit Muslim community that fail to appreciate the transcommunal and translocal nature of this community, as its members create diverse civic, ethnic, and gender relations by moving through different communal spaces. Howell contends that appreciating both how Muslim Americans interact in these spaces and the ways that they are connected to Muslims abroad “enable local Muslims to assert and overcome their status as “religious outsiders,” making “Islam compatible with American culture and intelligible to non-Muslim Americans” (13). She convincingly argues that the typical narratives of Islam in America have thus far seen these early Muslim American communities as isolated, disparate, and ad hoc. This is a narrative that describes American Islam in the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century as ignorant of “true” Islamic practice and describes its places of worship as little more than social clubs. She artfully uses archival materials and poignant interviews to show the ways that these narratives have been replicated and reinforced at various phases in the history of Islam in Detroit despite evidence to the contrary. Similarly, Howell discusses the mistaken notion of harmonious Sunni–Shiʿi relations in this period, which ignores the inner workings of Detroit's mosques and communities which show these communities in varying degrees of tension and acceptance.

By probing Detroit's Muslim history, Howell brings to bear the ways that Islam in America has adapted to national fluctuations in immigration, the economy, and politics, placing Islam within the larger history of religion in the United States. The effects of this contextualization and the depth of Howell's investigation open up avenues for future research on important aspects of Islam in America, namely the history of Sufism in the United States, the history women's leadership in the American mosque, and the relationship between black and immigrant Islam in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century.

While Howell does a commendable job of discussing ethnoracial aspects of Islam in Detroit at various moments in the twentieth century, Old Islam in Detroit places the immigrant Muslim experience at its center. In fact, Howell suggests a revisiting of the narrative which typically considers Islam in America as beginning with Morisco conscripts and the Atlantic slave trade. Howell argues, that “the history of today's Muslim American communities effectively begins in the twenty-eight years that separated the ‘Cairo Street’ and Highland Park mosques” (31), i.e. from 1893–1921. In this way, Howell makes an important, albeit problematic, contribution to how we see the history of Islam in America.

Old Islam in Detroit is a necessary addition to the library of any scholar of Islam in America or any course syllabus on American Islam. For scholars and students of the Middle East, it gives insight into the way that Middle Eastern politics and events affect immigrant communities and their understanding of Islam, citizenship, and identity.