This excellent edited collection unpicks and disputes multifarious and intricate
processes that underpin the homogenization, otherization, and vilification of
immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Muslim citizens, and individuals
with a Muslim cultural background in the group of countries known as “the
West.” It does so through presenting a selection of essays that offer an insight
into the localized, day-to-day realities of people whose lives are currently defined
by their link to Islam. The focus on gender, home, and belonging emphasizes
the particular challenge faced by Muslim women: Their bodies are
the battleground for the ideological wars fought by western governments on
the one hand, and by political Islamists on the other (pp. 30-31).
At the same time, media outlets and governmental policies portray and
essentialize all Muslims as a single, uniform community defined exclusively
by their Muslimness, thereby ignoring any of their differences based on “national
origin, rural-urban roots, class, gender, language, lifestyle and degree
of religiosity, as well as political and moral conviction” (p. 2). As all of the
essays demonstrate, these concerns about representation remain valid, despite
the critiques of historical and contemporary orientalism published by Edward
Said over thirty years ago notwithstanding: Orientalism (1979) and Covering
Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of
the World (1981).
The collection is a result of two conferences held in Toronto (2006) and
Amsterdam (2008) to discuss these issues. It is organized around four themes:
discourse, organizations, and policy; sexuality and family; youth; and space
and belonging. The first theme is represented by different perspectives from
the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Halleh Ghorashi
analyzes the disempowering effects of supposedly “empowering courses” for
immigrant women of Muslim backgrounds and indicates how women themselves
critique the terms on which such courses are delivered. Fauzia Erfan
Ahmed writes about the deteriorating situation for female American Muslim
community leaders who are forced into silence despite a long history of female
leadership since the time of slavery. Cassandra Balchin’s chapter focuses on
Muslim women’s refusal to cede the discourse of their legal rights to both the
governments and to patriarchal males within Muslim communities, who are ...
Tafsir Ilmi in Indonesia: History, Paradigm and Dynamic Interpretation
