At the turn of the twenty-first century, any suggestion that the authority of traditional centers of learning in Muslim-majority countries could be eclipsed by new Islamic institutions emerging in the West would have appeared so incongruous as to merit no debate: after all, Muslim diaspora communities in the West have from the beginning staffed their newly found mosques with imāms from their home countries. Yet, as we will see in this volume, in 2016 such an assertion is easily defensible: increasingly, some of the prominent Islamic scholars today (with followers across the globe, especially among educated Muslims) are born or raised in the Western hemisphere. While Volume 1 mapped the discourses within the four most influential Islamic scholarly platforms in the Muslim-majority countries as they face pressures to adapt to the demands of modern times, this volume maps the weakening of their authority among pockets of second- and third-generation Muslims in the West whose socio-economic and cultural orientation is distinctly different from that of their parents’ generation. Better educated than their parents and more socially integrated, many young Muslims are turning for advice to new Islamic scholarly platforms emerging in the West, led by charismatic scholars. To understand the landscape of contemporary Islamic authority, it is important to recognize the growing influence of these institutions emerging in the West. By mapping the ongoing debates within these platforms, the volume illustrates how, despite growing concerns about the radicalization of young Muslims in the West, the current Islamic religious milieu in the West is highly conducive to nurturing an Islamic understanding that, while respecting the core of the Islamic tradition, is also proving adept at guiding young Muslims to be confident members of their respective societies.

Measured purely against the yardstick of traditional Islamic scholarly rigor, the scholars leading these platforms may not appear as grounded as the traditionally trained ‘ulamā’ discussed in Volume 1. In fact, all scholars considered in this volume, apart from those from the Deoband tradition, avoid the title of ‘ālim (specialist in Islamic sciences); the most popular honorific used by their followers is that of shaykh (a more generic title of respect; a learned man).