Muslims In The West After 9 11

This book is the first systematic attempt to study the situation of European and American Muslims after 9/11, and to present a comprehensive analysis of their religious, political, and legal situations. Since 9/11, and particularly since the Madrid and London bombings of 2004 and 2005, the Muslim presence in Europe and the United States has become a major political concern. Many have raised questions regarding potential links between Western Muslims, radical Islam, and terrorism. Whatever the justification of such concerns, it is insufficient to address the subject of Muslims in the West from an exclusively counter-terrorist perspective. Based on empirical studies of Muslims in the US and Western Europe, this edited volume posits the situation of Muslim minorities in a broader reflection on the status of liberalism in Western foreign policies. It also explores the changes in immigration policies, multiculturalism and secularism that have been shaped by the new international context of the ‘war on terror’. This book will be of great interest to students of Critical Security Studies, Islamic Studies, Sociology and Political Science in general. Jocelyne Cesari is an Associate at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for European Studies, teaching at Harvard Divinity School and the Government Department, specializing in Islam and the Middle East.

This book offers a chance for greater understanding of the political and religious groups in Islam that have contributed to events pre and post September 11th, and clearer insights into Muslim/Christian relations today. Many books have focused on the events of September 11th but have been primarily journalistic. This book draws together both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars who have been studying Christian/Muslim relations for many years. They assess the impact of 9/11 on Islamophobia and antipathy towards Muslims. Providing insights into various multi-cultural communities whose relations with Islam have been affected, the authors look particularly at regions where there are large minority Muslim communities (US and UK) and large minority non-Muslim communities (Indonesia and Nigeria). Assessing a number of issues impacting upon the teaching of Islam, this book allows readers to assess the consequences of the event and develop a more critical understanding of its implications.

Momentous events since September 11, 2001-Operation Enduring Freedom, the global war on terrorism, and the war in Iraq-have dramatically altered the political environment of the Muslim world. Many of the forces influencing this environment, however, are the products of trends that have been at work for many decades. This book examines the major dynamics that drive changes in the religio-political landscape of the Muslim world-a vast and diverse region that stretches from Western Africa through the Middle East to the Southern Philippines and includes Muslim communities and diasporas throughout the world-and draws the implications of these trends for global security and U.S. and Western interests. It presents a typology of ideological tendencies in the different regions of the Muslim world and identifies the factors that produce religious extremism and violence. It assesses key cleavages along sectarian, ethnic, regional, and national lines and examines how those cleavages generate challenges and opportunities for the United States. Finally, the authors identify possible strategies and political and military options for the United States to pursue in response to changing conditions in this critical and volatile part of the world.

From the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York to the Madrid and London bombings of 2004 and 2005, the presence of Muslim communities in the West has generated security issues and major political concern. The government, the media, and the general public have raised questions regarding potential links between Western Muslims, radical Islam and terrorism. This speculation has given rise to popular myths concerning the Islamic world and led to a host of illiberal measures such as illegal warranting, denial of Habeas Corpus, "black prisons" and extreme torture throughout the democratic world. This book challenges the authenticity of these myths and examines the ways in which they have been used to provide an ideological cover for the "war on terror" and the subsequent Iraq war. It argues that they are not only unfounded and hollow, but have also served a dangerous purpose, namely war-mongering and the empowering of the national-security state. It further considers the origin and transmission of these myths, focusing on media, government policy and popular discourse.

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as The Practice, 24, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.

Misperceptions and reservations about Islam registered a significant impetus following the tragic events of 9/11 and 7/7. Against a backdrop of intense Islamophobia and neo-conservatism, military invasions of Muslim countries and restrictive legislation on immigration and civil liberties have seriously affected inter-community relationships, bringing the Muslim diaspora under serious scrutiny. Concurrently, scholars and journalists have portrayed Islam as a hegemonic ideology needing reformation. Polemicists and neo-orientalists have left no stone unturned in denigrating Islamic humanism. Diehard evangelists provide moral justification for this animus, which reverberates across the globe through similar groups such as Likud and Hindutva. While Muslims are overwhelmingly aggrieved over the destruction and denigration of their communities and heritage, their problems of poverty, universal disempowerment and alienation remain unattended by both their rulers and their Western backers, whose own interests take priority. Exposés of torture and brutalization of internees at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib Jail, Bagram Air Base and Israel's Facility 1391, and massacres such as those at Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar, Gujarat, and Jenin, have exacerbated Muslim anguish. However, such assaults have also generated an overdue intra-Muslim debate in which scholars and youth groups can conduct a vital discourse on gender equality, democracy, pluralism and modernity. This volume presents a historical account of relationships among the Abrahamic traditions and then focuses on recent scholarship and polemical outpourings which have spawned anti-Muslim sentiments. Case studies from Western and Southern Asia illustrate a complex interplay between the written word and volatile geopolitics. Despite its focus on the Judaic-Christian formulations vis-à-vis Islam, the book also attempts to assess the Muslim position on ideological challenges presented by this dramatic phase in the tri-polar relationship.

A searing portrait of Muslim life in the West, this “profound and intimate” memoir captures one man’s struggle to forge an American Muslim identity (Washington Post) Haroon Moghul was thrust into the spotlight after 9/11, becoming an undergraduate leader at New York University’s Islamic Center forced into appearances everywhere: on TV, before interfaith audiences, in print. Moghul was becoming a prominent voice for American Muslims even as he struggled with his relationship to Islam. In high school he was barely a believer and entirely convinced he was going to hell. He sometimes drank. He didn’t pray regularly. All he wanted was a girlfriend. But as he discovered, it wasn’t so easy to leave religion behind. To be true to himself, he needed to forge a unique American Muslim identity that reflected his beliefs and personality. How to Be a Muslim reveals a young man coping with the crushing pressure of a world that fears Muslims, struggling with his faith and searching for intellectual forebears, and suffering the onset of bipolar disorder. This is the story of the second-generation immigrant, of what it’s like to lose yourself between cultures and how to pick up the pieces.

This text explores the long history of hostility between Islam and the West, as well as the profound intellectual and cultural influences they have on one another. In light of this history and in the wake of the September 11th attack, the author looks at the future, and offers a vision of a new political and religious world order.