Islam, Education and Freedom explores six key areas of freedom: identity, acceptance, pedagogy, conflict, trust, and love. Based on a qualitative case study of a progressive Islamic school in Southern California, North Star Academy, the book illustrates through the voices of the participants how each particular freedom was applied in the school. The authors show how the six freedoms were understood, taught, and practiced with the aim of developing courageous and confident American Muslims. It explores the ways the school leaders facilitate and impart each freedom and the influence this has on the development of American Muslim students' identity. The book culminates with a model for freedom in Islamic schooling. It concludes with three key insights: (1) Islamic schooling can facilitate or constrain the way that leaders, teachers, students, and the school community experience freedom; (2) as freedom is a core value of Islam, it should be made central to the conceptualization and practice of Islamic schooling; and, (3) Islamic schooling, when grounded in the six freedoms, can be a pathway to comprehensive school reform and is applicable to Islamic schools. The book includes a Foreword written by Khaula Murtadha, Associate Vice Chancellor for the Office of Community Engagement, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, USA.

Freedom of speech and extremism in university campuses are major sources of debate and moral panic in the United Kingdom today. In 2018, the Joint Committee on Human Rights in Parliament undertook an inquiry into freedom of speech on campus. It found that much of the public concern is exaggerated, but identified a number of factors that require attention, including the impact of government counter-terrorism measures (the Prevent Duty) and regulatory bodies (including the Charity Commission for England and Wales) on freedom of speech. This book combines empirical research and philosophical analysis to explore these issues, with a particular focus on the impact upon Muslim students and staff. It offers a new conceptual paradigm for thinking about freedom of speech, based on deliberative democracy, and practical suggestions for universities in handling it. Topics covered include: The enduring legacy of key thinkers who have shaped the debate about freedom of speech The role of right-wing populism in driving moral panic about universities The impact of the Prevent Duty and the Charity Commission upon Muslim students, students’ unions and university managers Students’ and staff views about freedom of speech Alternative approaches to handling freedom of speech on campus, including the Community of Inquiry This highly engaging and topical text will be of interest to those working within public policy, religion and education or religion and politics and Islamic Studies.

Islam in "Liberal" Europe provides the first comprehensive overview of the political and social status of Islam and of Muslim migrants in Europe. Kai Hafez shows that although legal and political systems have made progress toward recognizing Muslims on equal terms and eliminating discriminatory practices that are in contradiction to neutral secularism, “liberal societies” often lag behind. The author argues that Islamophobic murders in Norway and Germany are only the tip of the iceberg of a deep-seated inability of many Europeans to accept cultural globalization when it hits close to home. Although there have always been anti-racist elites and networks in Europe, Hafez contends that the dominant tradition even among seemingly liberal intellectual milieus and their media is Islamophobic. This fact finds expression not only in the growing anti-Islam sentiment among right-wing populists but sometimes also in so-called enlightened forms of contemporary media, public opinion, school curricula, and Christian interfaith dialogues. In addition to offering a critical assessment of positive and negative trends in Islamic-Western relations, Hafez also engages in a theoretical debate revolving around integration, tolerance, multicultural liberalism, and modern liberal democracy. He combines political philosophy and political and social theory with current analysis on communication and the role of both religious and secular institutions in community-building in modern societies. In essence, the author debates the question of whether liberal society in Europe, in order to avoid a growing gap between integrative politics and discriminatory societies, needs a complete renewal not only of political ideologies but also of cultures and institutions.

A comprehensive survey of Islamic accounts of causality and freedom from the medieval to the modern era and their contemporary relevance.

American Muslim religious liberty lawyer Asma Uddin has long considered her work defending people of all faiths to be a calling more than a job. Yet even as she seeks equal protection for Evangelicals, Sikhs, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics alike, she has seen an ominous increase in attempts to criminalize Islam and exclude Muslim Americans from those protections.Somehow, the view that Muslims aren’t human enough for human rights or constitutional protections is moving from the fringe to the mainstream—along with the claim “Islam is not a religion.” This conceit is not just a threat to the First Amendment rights of American Muslims. It is a threat to the freedom of all Americans.Her new book reveals a significant but overlooked danger to our religious liberty. Woven throughout this national saga is Uddin’s own story and the stories of American Muslims and other people of faith who have faced tremendous indignities as they attempt to live and worship freely.Combining her experience of Islam as a religious truth and her legal and philosophical appreciation that all individuals have a right to religious liberty, Uddin examines the shifting tides of American culture and outlines a way forward for individuals and communities navigating today’s culture wars.

This empirical study of Muslim communities on the northern fringes of Europe is a fine example from the field comparative sociology of religion, providing thought-provoking insights into the ongoing discussion on religious minorities in a multicultural European society.

Since at least the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of the most pressing political questions of the age has been whether Islam is hostile to religious freedom. Daniel Philpott examines conditions on the ground in forty-seven Muslim-majority countries today and offers an honest, clear-eyed answer to this urgent question. It is not, however, a simple answer. From a satellite view, the Muslim world looks unfree. But, Philpott shows, the truth is much more complex. Some one-fourth of Muslim-majority countries are in fact religiously free. Of the other countries, about forty percent are governed not by Islamists but by a hostile secularism imported from the West, while the other sixty percent are Islamist. The picture that emerges is both honest and hopeful. Yes, most Muslim-majority countries are lacking in religious freedom. But, Philpott argues, the Islamic tradition carries within it "seeds of freedom," and he offers guidance for how to cultivate those seeds in order to expand religious freedom in the Muslim world and the world at large. It is an urgent project. Religious freedom promotes goods like democracy and the advancement of women that are lacking in the Muslim-majority world and reduces ills like civil war, terrorism, and violence. Further, religious freedom is simply a matter of justice--not an exclusively Western value, but rather a universal right rooted in human nature. Its realization is critical to the aspirations of religious minorities and dissenters in Muslim countries, to Muslims living in non-Muslim countries or under secular dictatorships, and to relations between the West and the Muslim world. In this thoughtful book, Philpott seeks to establish a constructive middle ground in a fiery and long-lasting debate over Islam.

The patriarchal structure of the Nation of Islam (NOI) promised black women the prospect of finding a provider and a protector among the organization's men, who were fiercely committed to these masculine roles. Black women's experience in the NOI, however, has largely remained on the periphery of scholarship. Here, Ula Taylor documents their struggle to escape the devaluation of black womanhood while also clinging to the empowering promises of patriarchy. Taylor shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in being able to bypass the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments. Telling the stories of women like Clara Poole (wife of Elijah Muhammad) and Burnsteen Sharrieff (secretary to W. D. Fard, founder of the Allah Temple of Islam), Taylor offers a compelling narrative that explains how their decision to join a homegrown, male-controlled Islamic movement was a complicated act of self-preservation and self-love in Jim Crow America.

Religious schooling in Canada has been a controversial subject since the secularization of the public school system, but there has been little scholarship on Islamic education. In this ethnographic study of four full-time Islamic schools, Jasmin Zine explores the social, pedagogical, and ideological functions of these alternative, and religiously-based educational institutions. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork and interviews with forty-nine participants, Canadian Islamic Schools provides significant insight into the role and function that Islamic schools have in Diasporic, Canadian, educational, and gender-related contexts. Discussing issues of cultural preservation, multiculturalism, secularization, and assimiliation, Zine considers pertinent topics such as the Eurocentricism of Canada's public schools and the social reproduction of Islamic identity. She further examines the politics of piety, veiling, and gender segregation paying particular attention to the ways in which gendered identities are constructed within the practices of Islamic schools and how these narratives shape and inform the negotiation of gender roles among both boys and girls. A fascinating and informative study of religious-based education, Canadian Islamic Schools is essential reading for educators, sociologists, as well as those interested in Immigration and Diaspora Studies.