Feb 11, 2026

Dilemmas of Authenticity

The American Muslim Crisis of Faith

Zaid Adhami

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani

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Summary

In one of the most important books published in 2025—Dilemmas of Authenticity: The American Muslim Crisis of Faith, published by UNC Press—Zaid Adhami explores questions of religious doubt, authenticity, and crisis of faith. The book examines what many American Muslims describe as a crisis of faith, but Adhami shows that this crisis is less about losing belief and more about the pressures of authenticity. In a cultural moment where people are expected to be true to themselves and to believe sincerely, faith becomes something that must feel emotionally real and personally chosen. Drawing on ethnographic research and intimate conversations with American Muslims, Adhami shows how this demand for authenticity can produce doubt and anxiety, while also becoming a powerful ground for recommitment to tradition. The book challenges familiar narratives of secularization and religious decline, and instead offers a nuanced account of how faith is lived, questioned, and sustained in an age that privileges “authenticity.”

The book would be of tremendous benefit to scholars and students of religion, anthropology, sociology, and American studies, as well as to those working on Islam in the United States. It will also resonate with scholars, students, and anyone who has tried to make sense of the complicated relationship between doubt, authenticity, and faith in contemporary American society.

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Shehnaz Haqqani

Shehnaz Haqqani is a scholar of Islam whose research focuses on gender, sexuality, religious authority, and Muslim lived experience. She earned her PhD in Islamic Studies with a focus on gender and sexuality from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. Her first book, Feminism, Tradition, and Change in Contemporary Islam: Negotiating Islamic Law and Gender, was published by Oneworld Publications in 2024. Her current book project examines Muslim women’s interfaith marriages and relationships, exploring questions of religious authority, agency, family, and lived experience. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Project Development Grant, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, among others. She can be reached at shaqqan@emory.edu.

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