Islam in Liberalism - Hardcover

Massad, Joseph A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022620622X ISBN 13: 9780226206226

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Synopsis

In the popular imagination, Islam is often associated with words like oppression, totalitarianism, intolerance, cruelty, misogyny, and homophobia, while its presumed antonyms are Christianity, the West, liberalism, individualism, freedom, citizenship, and democracy. In the most alarmist views, the West’s most cherished values—freedom, equality, and tolerance—are said to be endangered by Islam worldwide.  

Joseph Massad’s Islam in Liberalism explores what Islam has become in today’s world, with full attention to the multiplication of its meanings and interpretations. He seeks to understand how anxieties about tyranny, intolerance, misogyny, and homophobia, seen in the politics of the Middle East, are projected onto Islam itself. Massad shows that through this projection Europe emerges as democratic and tolerant, feminist, and pro-LGBT rights—or, in short, Islam-free. Massad documents the Christian and liberal idea that we should missionize democracy, women’s rights, sexual rights, tolerance, equality, and even therapies to cure Muslims of their un-European, un-Christian, and illiberal ways. Along the way he sheds light on a variety of controversial topics, including the meanings of democracy—and the ideological assumption that Islam is not compatible with it while Christianity is—women in Islam, sexuality and sexual freedom, and the idea of Abrahamic religions valorizing an interfaith agenda. Islam in Liberalism is an unflinching critique of Western assumptions and of the liberalism that Europe and Euro-America blindly present as a type of salvation to an assumingly unenlightened Islam.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph A. Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. He has written many books, including Desiring Arabs, also published by the University of Chicago Press. 

Review

“Islam in Liberalism is required reading for anyone invested in Muslim Studies. This book reminds us that in order to move beyond scholarship revolving around a simplistic binarism between West and non-West, we must never forget how this opposition has shaped and continues to actively influence scholarship today. Furthermore, studying ‘Islam’ requires unpacking this term, which has become a reified, catch-all signifier in much Western scholarship. More than that, though, it may suggest that some of what is called Muslim Studies is less about something called ‘Islam’ than it is about liberalism. Thus, anyone who seeks to study Islam within a Western context must also undertake, as a necessary correlate to Muslim Studies, something that might be called Liberalism Studies.” (Los Angeles Review of Books)

“This erudite, at times frustrating, but always challenging, work of scholarship should be essential reading for all scholars of Islam and Middle East politics.” (Cambridge Review of International Affairs)

“Islam in Liberalism is thus a crucial, timely, and inspiring study for critics of liberalism and for scholarship about Islam in political and social theory more generally. It is simultaneously a massive synthesis of numerous literatures and discourses about Islam, and an original, provocative reading of what unites constructions of Islam with definitions of liberalism.” (Theory & Event)

“Here’s a book that Donald Trump should read. At the heart of Massad’s Islam in Liberalism is a narrative about terms, translation and global imperialism. This empire is largely cultural but can turn territorial, and it belongs to the ‘liberal’ West. Massad argues, with relentless pace, that the West’s drive to hegemony is supported by a series of images in political, media and scholarly discourse that position ‘liberalism’ and ‘Islam’ as antithetical to each other. . . . Massad’s relentless interrogation of Western stereotypes of Islam, Muslims and the ‘Muslim world’ is much needed at a time when the Republican front-runner can win votes by subjecting Muslims to yet more demonization.” (Theos)

“Islam in Liberalism is a timely nuanced book, written in the same spirit and comprehensiveness of Massad’s previous work. Here, he continues his scrutiny of the relationship between knowledge and power and succeeds in becoming one of the most articulate scholars of critical studies. The book is a blast on much of the taken-for-granted solid boundaries that previous generation of scholars have erected to eroticize Islam and Muslims and make both the antithesis of Western liberalism. . . . This is a dense book full of powerful evidence, arguments, claims and interpretations. It maps the genealogy of a complex intellectual history entrenched in imperialism, colonialism, domination and resistance. There is a dark side to this history that is so clear in Massad’s book. The story of Islam in Liberalism is a narrative not only about liberal fears and anxieties but also about racism, phobia, and negation of the agency of those who are labelled Muslims. . . . Islam in Liberalism is a landmark in the field of post-colonial studies.” (Madawi Al-Rasheed, Politics, Religion and Ideology)

“Massad’s Islam in Liberalism provides a far more nuanced and complex reappraisal of this tumultuous history in a brilliant and impressive synthesis of recent post-colonial, psychoanalytic, feminist, and political theoretical literatures.” (Marc Aziz Michael, Politics, Religion and Ideology)

“Islam in Liberalism is a welcome and timely intervention into one of the most pressing questions of our times: why does Islam occupy such a central inimical place within Western politics and ideology? Massad answers this question with a straightforward thesis: ‘Islam’ as such does not exist. What has come to be called ‘Islam’ as a supposedly homogenous cultural entity in reality has been fabricated by Western liberalism as its symbolic Other.” (Sara R. Farris, Syndicate Theology)

"This is a powerfully—often passionately--written text. . . . The only book that I can think of in comparison is Edward Said's Covering Islam—but Massad’s book is far richer both in terms of the literature covered (much of which was of course not yet available when Said wrote his book) and the range of questions engaged.” (Talal Asad Graduate Center, City University of New York)

"In recent years we have come to take seriously the idea that certain othering concepts such as 'the Orient' and 'Islam' have played a vital role in giving reality to 'the West.' The extraordinary value of Massad’s new book is that he has shown, through a sustained analysis of a wide variety of historical and contemporary discourses, that 'Islam' has been more than a periphery-defining concept utilized merely to lend truth and solidity to the Christian West. Far more importantly, 'Islam' has been at work as a powerful agonistic imaginary indispensable for the self-definition of the West’s own polity as essentiallyfree. This is a deeply considered work that is more than timely." (Tomoko Masuzawa University of Michigan)

“A bold and insightful study of the historical and contemporary uses and misuses of rhetorics of democracy, women’s rights and sexualities in their deployments in relation to Islam—a rich important contribution to a growing body of such critical literature.” (Leila Ahmed author of A Quiet Revolution: the Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 022620622X
• ISBN 13: 9780226206226
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384