Rebuilding Community

With this monograph, Khoja Moolji fills a gap in the existing literature and moves the trajectory of her own work in compelling directions. It constitutes appropriate reading for graduate level or advanced undergraduate courses, and selections would enhance syllabi in a range of introductory level courses. The book will, no doubt, garner an enthusiastic audience among Ismailis who see their histories reflected with such care and precision. For all its academic and theoretical value, the most enduring impact may be the service, the seva, that Khoja Moolji performs in capturing so keenly and tenderly an era in Ismaili women's history. * Celene Ibrahim, Reading Religion * A Landmark study. Exploring the lives of Shia Ismaili Muslim women in the North American diaspora, Rebuilding Community illuminates many themes of our day - displacement, flight, migration (sometimes repeatedly from one country to another) followed by the work of recreating home and community in new spaces. Documenting the minutiae of their experience with brilliance and exquisite sensitivity, Khoja-Moolji also compellingly develops a theory of the ethics of care pertinent to any community of faith. * Leila Ahmed, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity, Harvard University * In this brilliantly conceptualized work, Khoja-Moolji argues for how the deeply ingrained ethic of care among migrant Ismaili women illustrates the critical role played by women in creating a vibrant symbolic, imagined, and living community, turning displacement into emplacement. Her careful research destabilizes understandings of migratory and refugee populations as solely victimized and traumatized, pointing instead to how the placemaking practices of such women draw upon shared spiritualities, ritual practices, traumatizing dislocations, and cultural traditions to forge connections across generations and geographical locations. We are drawn into a richly textured world in which mundane activities take on much greater significance when seen as threads in an intergenerational tapestry that tell the stories of loss, relocation, resilience, and regeneration. * Zayn Kassam, John Knox McLean Professor of Religious Studies, Pomona College * A pioneering study that sensitively explores the experiences of migrant Ismaili women in North America and the crucial role they have played in community formation through the ethic of care that is so central to their religious and spiritual lives. This compelling book will be of great interest to scholars in many intersecting fields, including religious studies, Islamic studies, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, migration and refugee studies. * Ali S. Asani, Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University * A book of rare power. Theoretically sophisticated and historically imaginative. The life stories and voices of Muslim women we encounter in this book offer new ways of thinking about and making visible the vital role of feminist ethics of care inside religious communities, and about the enduring power that practices of placemaking by women have in shaping and preserving religious identities. The book is written with an exemplary ethics of care and will itself become a cherished 'place' for honouring and celebrating the remarkable journeys of contemporary Ismaili Muslim communities. * Farouk Mitha, Institute of Ismaili Studies and University of Victoria *