“Demonstrates that Western liberal ‘democracy’, portrayed as foreign to ‘Islam’, necessarily serves an imperial project. . . . timely and controversial.” —Politics, Religion & Ideology 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. 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. Islam in Liberalism is an unflinching critique of Western assumptions and of the liberalism that Europe and America present as salvation to Islam. “Essential reading for all scholars of Islam and Middle East politics.” —Cambridge Review of International Affairs “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.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

This timely book, newly revised for this edition, addresses the question of human rights in the international context, focusing in particular on the interaction between human rights as a value and norm in international relations and Islam as a constituent of political culture in particular societies. Katerina Dalacoura's argument proceeds at two levels. Firstly, it reaches a consistent normative position on the question of human rights. Secondly, the theoretical argument is reinforced through a detailed study both of the precepts of Islam and the role of Islam in the political process of 20th century Egypt and Tunisia. Dalacoura demonstrates that the interpretation of Islam in relation to human rights principles is not static, but is subject to reformulation.

This book offers comparative ontologies of both Islam and liberalism as discourses more broadly construed. The author argues that, despite recent efforts to speak of overlapping consensuses and discursive congruence, the fundamental categories that constitute "Islam" and "Liberalism" remain very different, and that these differences should be taken seriously. Thus far, no recent scholarly works have explicitly or meticulously broken down where these differences lie. The author rigorously explores questions related to rights, moral epistemologies, the role of religion in the public sphere, and more general approaches to legal discourse, via primary and canonical sources constitutive of both Islam and liberalism. He then goes on to articulate why communitarian modes of thought are better suited for engaging with Islam and contemporary socio-political modes of organization than liberalism is. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of politics and international relations, Islam, liberalism, and communitarianism.

U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights explores the integration of American concerns about women's human rights into U.S. policy toward Islamic countries since 1979, reframing U.S.-Islamic relations and challenging assumptions about the drivers of American foreign policy.

The liberatory sentiment that stoked the Arab Spring and saw the ousting of long-time Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak seems a distant memory. Democratically elected president Mohammad Morsi lasted only a year before he was forced from power to be replaced by precisely the kind of authoritarianism protestors had been railing against in January 2011. Paradoxically, this turn of events was encouraged by the same liberal activists and intelligentsia who’d pushed for progressive reform under Mubarak. This volume analyses how such a key contingent of Egyptian liberals came to develop outright illiberal tendencies. Interdisciplinary in scope, it brings together experts in Middle East studies, political science, philosophy, Islamic studies and law to address the failure of Egyptian liberalism in a holistic manner – from liberalism’s relationship with the state, to its role in cultivating civil society, to the role of Islam and secularism in the cultivation of liberalism. A work of impeccable scholarly rigour, Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism reveals the contemporary ramifications of the state of liberalism in Egypt.

Toward an Islamic Reformation is an ambitious attempt to modernize Islamic law, calling for reform of the historical formulations of Islamic law, commonly known as Shari'a that is perceived by many Muslims to be part of the Islamic faith. As a Muslim, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is sensitive to and appreciative of the delicate relationship between Islam as a religion and Islamic law. Nevertheless, he considers that the questions raised here must be resolved if the public law of Islam is to be implemented today. An-Na'im draws upon the teachings and writings of Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Mohamed Taha to provide what some have called the intellectual foundations for a total reinterpretation of the nature and meaning of Islamic public law.

Islam, the second largest religion in the world, has several authoritarian interpretations today that defy human freedom—by executing “apostates” or “blasphemers,” imposing religious practices, or discriminating against women or minorities. In Why, as a Muslim, I Support Liberty, Mustafa Akyol offers a bold critique of this trouble, by frankly acknowledging its roots in the religious tradition. But Akyol also shows that Islam has “seeds of freedom” as well—in the Qur'an, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the complex history of the Islamic civilization. It is past time, he argues, to grow those seeds into maturity, and reinterpret Islamic law and politics under the Qur'anic maxim, “No compulsion in religion.” Akyol shows that the major reinterpretation Islam needs now is similar to the transformation that began in Western Christianity back in the 17th century, with the groundbreaking ideas of classical liberal thinkers such as John Locke. The author goes back and forth between classical liberalism and the Islamic tradition, to excavate little-noticed parallels, first highlighted by the “Islamic liberals” of the late Ottoman Empire, unknown to many Muslims and non-Muslims today. In short chapters, Akyol digs into big questions. Why do Muslims need to “reform” the Sharia? But is there something to “revive” in the Sharia as well? Should Muslims really glorify “conquest,” or rather believe in social contract? Is capitalism really alien to Islam, which has a rich heritage of free markets and civil society? Finally, he addresses a suspicion common among Muslims today: What if liberty is a mere cover used by Western powers to advance their imperialist schemes? With personal stories, historical anecdotes, theological insights, and a very accessible prose, this is the little big book on the intersection of Islam and liberty.

In Islamic Exceptionalism, Brookings Institution scholar and acclaimed author Shadi Hamid offers a novel and provocative argument on how Islam is, in fact, "exceptional" in how it relates to politics, with profound implications for how we understand the future of the Middle East. Divides among citizens aren't just about power but are products of fundamental disagreements over the very nature and purpose of the modern nation state—and the vexing problem of religion’s role in public life. Hamid argues for a new understanding of how Islam and Islamism shape politics by examining different models of reckoning with the problem of religion and state, including the terrifying—and alarmingly successful—example of ISIS. With unprecedented access to Islamist activists and leaders across the region, Hamid offers a panoramic and ambitious interpretation of the region's descent into violence. Islamic Exceptionalism is a vital contribution to our understanding of Islam's past and present, and its outsized role in modern politics. We don't have to like it, but we have to understand it—because Islam, as a religion and as an idea, will continue to be a force that shapes not just the region, but the West as well in the decades to come.

In Christian Human Rights, Samuel Moyn asserts that the rise of human rights after World War II was prefigured and inspired by a defense of the dignity of the human person that first arose in Christian churches and religious thought in the years just prior to the outbreak of the war. The Roman Catholic Church and transatlantic Protestant circles dominated the public discussion of the new principles in what became the last European golden age for the Christian faith. At the same time, West European governments after World War II, particularly in the ascendant Christian Democratic parties, became more tolerant of public expressions of religious piety. Human rights rose to public prominence in the space opened up by these dual developments of the early Cold War. Moyn argues that human dignity became central to Christian political discourse as early as 1937. Pius XII's wartime Christmas addresses announced the basic idea of universal human rights as a principle of world, and not merely state, order. By focusing on the 1930s and 1940s, Moyn demonstrates how the language of human rights was separated from the secular heritage of the French Revolution and put to use by postwar democracies governed by Christian parties, which reinvented them to impose moral constraints on individuals, support conservative family structures, and preserve existing social hierarchies. The book ends with a provocative chapter that traces contemporary European struggles to assimilate Muslim immigrants to the continent's legacy of Christian human rights.

This book explores the anti-Islamic turn and expansion of the far right in Western Europe, North America and beyond from 2001 and onwards. Driven by terror attacks and other moral shocks, the anti-Islamic cause has undergone four waves of transnational expansion in the period since 2001. The leaders and intellectuals involved have varied backgrounds, many coming from the left, uniting historically opposed sets of values under their banner of a civilizational struggle against Islam. The findings presented in this book indicate that anti-Islamic initiatives in Western Europe and the United States form a transnational movement and subculture characterized by a fragile balance between liberal and authoritarian values. The author draws on a broad array of data sources and methods, including network analysis and sentiment analysis, to analyze the impact of the anti-Islamic expansion and turn at a macro level, and the theoretical implications for our understanding of the current far right flowing from this. Offering an overview of anti-Islamic activism, the book explores the background of their leaders and ideologues, provides an in-depth look at their ideology, online organizational networks, and the views expressed by their online members as well as which emotions and messages continue to drive their mobilization. The book will be of interest to scholars in the social movement field as well as political scientists, sociologists, and general readers interested in issues such as populism, extremism and understanding the ways in which the contemporary far right challenges liberal democracies.