Islam in LiberalismJoseph Massad s "Desiring Arabs" (UCP, 2007) was an intellectual/literary history that sought out links between Orientalism and representations of sex and desire, rebutting in the meantime Western efforts to impose categories of heterosexual/homosexual where (in Islam) no such subjectivities exist. His new book broadens the purview to show us what Islam has become in today s world, attending fully to the multiplication of meanings of Islam. Islam in Liberalism is an intellectual/political history, enabling us to understand that history in terms of how Islam operated as a category within western liberalism; another way to phrase this is to say that Massad underscores how the anxieties about what Europe constituteddespotism, intolerance, misogyny, homophobiahave gotten projected onto Islam. It is, he avers, only through this projection that Europe could emerge as democratic, tolerant, gynophilic, and hemophilicin short, Islam-free. But in fact Islam has been there since the birth of Europe. Liberalism has been the weapon of choice since the late 18th century against the internal and external others of Europe. Massad s brilliant critique of anti-Muslim sexual politics in Desiring Arabs is now broadened provocatively to include NGOs, international organizations, and therapeutic programs. He moves from consideration of the meanings of democracy (and the ideological assumption that Islam is not compatible with democracy) through chapters on women in Islam, sexuality and/in Islam, psychoanalytic interpretations of Islamic themes, and the more recent development of the idea of Abrahamic religions among those valorizing an inter-faith agenda. Overall, Massad sets this book up as a biting critique of the sort of liberalism Euro-American propagated and brought as good news to an unenlightened Islam." |
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Abrahamic accessed 1 April activists Africa AHDR al-Kawakibi American anti Arab and Muslim Arab world argued arguments Beirut Benslama British Cairo caliphate Cambridge century Chicago Christian citizenship civil claim colonial context countries critique culture democracy democratic Derrida Desiring Arabs discourse Egypt Egyptian emergence English epistemology Euro Europe European feminism feminist French Freud Gay International gender global Homosexuality human rights Ibid identity imperial insist intellectual Islam Islamists Jacques Derrida Jewish Jews Joseph Massad language Lesbian London Middle East Middle East Studies modern Moses and Monotheism Muhammad Muslim women Muslim world Najmabadi neoliberal NGOs nineteenth Orientalist Ottoman Palestinian policies political Princeton psychoanalysis Puar queer question Qur'an racial religion religious resistance Safouan scholars secular Semitism sexual Shari'a social society Soviet Talal Asad term theory Third World tion tradition transformation translation United University Press violence West Western liberal women's rights York Zionism