Vernacular Religion in the Iranian Diaspora
Women and Islam in Tehrangeles

Afsane Rezaei (Author)

9780299357405

Hardback, published 7 July 2026

144 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.368 kg

“Elegantly and succinctly argued, this groundbreaking study of Muslim women’s piety and sociality makes an important contribution to the study of vernacular Islam and of women’s agency in general. Eminently teachable in religious studies, women’s studies, and diaspora studies.” - Margaret A. Mills, author of Rhetorics and Politics in Afghan Traditional Storytelling

"In this nuanced and intimate ethnography, Rezaei offers a deeply insightful analysis of the lived religious practices of Iranian women. This critical work not only advances our understanding of the complexities of religious identity, 'Muslimness' and Islam, memory and nostalgia, and stigma and agency but also widens our perspectives of American life." - Fariha I. Khan, University of Pennsylvania

With nearly half a million Iranian Americans living in and around Los Angeles, Southern California is home to more Iranians than anywhere outside Iran. Although many community members identify as secular, stereotypes characterize Iranian Americans, like other populations from Muslim-majority countries, as pejoratively religious and culturally suspect. For Iranian American women who do practice Islam, navigating their religious, ethnic, and political identities, on both personal and communal levels, is thus complex, fraught, and poorly understood by both majority communities and scholarship.

Folklorist Afsane Rezaei applies theories of vernacular religion to Iranian American Muslim women living in Southern California, exploring how they negotiate their religious identities in this particularly delicate diasporic context, how they engage with external imaginaries in their practices and narratives, and how they develop a sense of agency over their religious identification. For many, Islamic religiosity in the diaspora is an integrated and embodied aspect of folklife, closely tied to the sense of self, social networks, and communal identity, and is negotiated and reimagined in everyday, improvised, and sometimes contradictory ways. Rezaei’s careful ethnography reaches beyond the binary of piety and resistance and offers new and nuanced understandings of Iranian American lived religion.

Introduction
1. Iranians in Southern California: Intra-Group Boundaries and Gray Areas of Belonging
2. “
Once Upon a Time a Pious Woman. . .”
: Recasting Vernacular Islam Through Narratives and Debates
3. From Sermons to Senses: Individuality, Tradition, and Sensory Memory in Women’
s Shared Ritual
4. Women’
s Vernacular Islam from the Outside In: The “
Angry Female Preacher”
in Memetic Representations
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index