Building the Webb Community

This chapter explores the suburban religious landscape, educational networks, and narratives of the American Muslim past out of which the Webb community emerged. It demonstrates how the suburbs are a vital site to study broader dynamics in the American Muslim community. At its heart, the Webb Foundation is built on the idea that the Chicago suburbs can be the ideal place to practice Islam. Its core membership consists of young parents who are very committed to upper-middle-class norms of intensive parenting, such as supervising homework, shuttling kids between after-school activities, and maintaining an active presence in their social lives. The American Islam they seek to create fits into these constructions of family life, enabling children and adults alike to become American Muslims in ways they believe earlier generations were either unable or unwilling to be.