Debates about contemporary Islam and Muslims in the West have taken some negative turns in the depressing atmosphere of the war on terror and its aftermath. This book argues that we have been too preoccupied with problems, not enough with solutions.The increased mobilisation and scrutiny of Muslim identities has taken place in the context of a more general recasting of racial ideas and racism: a shift from overtly racial to ostensibly ethnic and cultural including religious categor...

Multiculturalism appears to be in terminal crisis. It has been blamed for undermining national identity, diluting social cohesion, creating ethnic ghettos and cultural fragmentation, providing fertile ground for Islamic radicalism, encouraging perverse 'political correctness', and restricting liberal freedoms of expression, amongst other things. The public debate over multiculturalism has polarised opinion amongst the general public, policy makers, and politicians. But how much real eviden...

Few groups face as many misconceptions within their new countries as do Muslim immigrants. This book challenges the common misperceptions of Muslim immigrants as a homogeneous, religiously driven group and identifies the tensions they experience within their host countries.A comparative, multi-ethnic study, based on over two thousand interviews, Diaspora by Design examines Muslim populations that have settled in Canada, Britain, Iran, and Palestine. Utilizing hard socio-ec...

This volume examines, from diverse perspectives, what it means to be a Muslim in Canada. Is it a public or a private identity, and as an identity is it compatible with a secular democracy such as Canada? What relation does it bear to historical, cultural, and ethnic identities? Is a total agnostic or an atheist a Muslim? Is a person who disavows being a Muslim still a Muslim? How do Muslims cope with anti-Muslim bigotry, especially when it goes “official”? What alterations in social and re...

Militant Salafism is one of the most significant movements in politics today. Unfortunately its significance has not been matched by understanding. To begin to address this knowledge deficit this book argues that, rather than the largely unhelpful pursuit of individual 'root causes' offered in much of the literature, we would be better served by looking at the factors that have enabled and facilitated a particular political imaginary. That political imaginary is one that allows individuals...

In this feminist critique of the politics of religion, Sheila Jeffreys argues that the renewed rise of religion is harmful to women’s human rights. The book seeks to rekindle the criticism of religion as the founding ideology of patriarchy.Focusing on the three monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this book examines common anti-women attitudes such as ‘male-headship’, impurity of women, the need to control women’s bodies, and their modern manifestations in multi...

This groundbreaking book explores resistance against the harsh policing of sexuality in some Muslim societies. Many Muslim majority countries still use religious discourse to enforce stigmatization and repression of those, especially women, who do not conform to sexual norms promoted either by the state or by non-state actors. In this context, Islam is often stigmatized in Western discourse for being intrinsically restrictive with respect to women's rights and sexuality.The authors...

In response to the growth of a critical perspective on contemporary issues of terrorism, this edited volume brings together a number of leading scholars to debate the new subfield of 'critical terrorism studies'.In the years since the 9/11 attacks, terrorism studies has undergone a major transformation from minor subfield of security studies into a large stand-alone field, and is probably one of the fastest expanding areas of research in the Western academic world. However, much of...

Unsettled Belonging tells the stories of young Palestinian Americans as they navigate and construct lives as American citizens. Following these youth throughout their school days, Thea Abu El-Haj examines citizenship as lived experience, dependent on various social, cultural, and political memberships. For them, she shows, life is characterized by a fundamental schism between their sense of transnational belonging and the exclusionary politics of routine American nationalism that ...

Militant Islam provides a sociological framework for understanding the rise and character of recent Islamic militancy. It takes a systematic approach to the phenomenon and includes analysis of cases from around the world, comparisons with militancy in other religions, and their causes and consequences.The sociological concepts and theories examined in the book include those associated with social closure, social movements, nationalism, risk, fear and ‘de-civilising’. These are appl...

Written by two leading scholars, this book is an accessible overview of the global political consequences of the 9/11 terror attacks.The War on Terror has defined the first decade of this century. It has been marked by the deaths of thousands of people, political turmoil, massive destruction, and intense fear. Regardless of the name it goes under, the long war on terror will continue to affect lives across the world. Its catalyst, 9/11, did not have to happen, nor did the character...

This book examines the legacy of Lebanon’s civil war and how the population, and the youth in particular, are dealing with their national past. Drawing on extensive qualitative research and social observation, the author explores the efforts of those who wish to remember, so as not to repeat past mistakes, and those who wish to forget.In considering how the Lebanese youth are negotiating this collective memory, Larkin addresses issues of:Lebanese post-war am...