Al Rashid Mosque

Written with a historical perspective, this book is a good addition to the literature on Muslim institutions in North America. Earle H Waugh has offered a close examination of Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada. The Al Rashid mosque, built by the Lebanese in the 1930s, offers a unique window through which to examine the origins and growth of 20th-and 21st-century Islam in Canada. As Waugh points out, the story of the Al Rashid mosque is one of "highs and lows, of weathering storms, and of becoming a beacon for a religion of great depth and significance" (p. xvii). He points out that the main challenges it has gone through include the accomodation it has had to make, to create a balance between "secularist ideologies and genuine piety, and in contemporary Canada, to accommodate to a new status of a distinctive Canadian voice for Islam" (p. xvii). As scholars such as Kambiz Ghaneabassiri (2010) and Shariq Siddiqui (2014) have pointed out, institution-building has been a key part of creating Muslim American identity

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