Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West [Hardcover]

'Justin Gest, a young scholar at Harvard and the London School of Economics, has studied alienation and its neglected twin, engagement among the Bangladeshi community in London's East End and among Moroccans in the southern suburbs of Madrid. The result is a rich, groundbreaking work which researchers and government officials alike will find both valuable and challenging.' --International Affairs

'The book is sensitively written, and manages to remain sympathetic towards the interviewees with whom the author clearly spent much time talking and listening. . . It deserves to be widely read.' --Global Policy

'An excellent piece of work. I learned a lot from it. ... balanced and judicious, with very interesting findings both on a comparative basis and on a generational one. I am sure it will make its mark.' --Lord Anthony Giddens, Professor Emeritus, London School of Economics

With novel conceptual discussions and probing fieldwork, Apart explores why many Western Muslims are disaffected, why others are engaged, and why some seek to undermine the very political system that remains their primary means of inclusion. Based on research conducted in London's East End and Madrid's Lavapies district, and drawing on over 100 interviews with community elders, imams, extremists, politicians, gangsters, and ordinary people just trying to get by, Justin Gest reveals young Muslim men s daily existences. Confronting conventional explanations that point to inequality, discrimination and religion, he builds a new theory arguing that alienated and engaged political behavior is distinguished not by structural factors, but by how social agents interpret their shared realities. Filled with counterintuitive conclusions, Apart sounds an unambiguous warning to Western policy-makers, and presages an imminent American experience with the same challenges. How both governments and people discipline their fear and understand their Muslim fellows may shape democratic social life in the foreseeable future.

Justin Gest is Director of the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics, where he also serves as a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance. A graduate of Harvard and the LSE, he has written for a variety of American and British newspapers, and is now a regular contributor to the comment pages of The Guardian.