Examines novels and short stories by Muslim authors who write in English.

Explores how medieval Muslim theologians constructed a female gender identity based on an ideal of maternity and how women contested it. Conceiving Identities explores how medieval Muslim theologians appropriate a woman’s reproductive power to construct a female gender identity in which maternity is a central component. Through a close analysis of seventh- through fourteenth-century exegetical works, medical treatises, legal pronouncements, historiographies, zoologies, and other literary materials, this study considers how medieval Muslim scholars map the female reproductive body according to broader, cosmological schemes to generate a woman’s role as “mother.” By close consideration of folk medicine and magic, this book also reveals how medieval women contest the traditional maternal identities imagined for them and thereby reinvent themselves as mothers and Muslims. This innovative examination of the discourse and practices surrounding maternity forges new ground as it takes up the historical and epistemic construction of medieval Muslim women’s identities.

Around the globe, concerns about interfaith relations have led to efforts to find earlier models in Muslim Iberia (al-Andalus). This book examines how Muslim Iberia operates as an icon or symbol of identity in twentieth and twenty-first century narrative, drama, television, and film from the Arab world, Spain, and Argentina. Christina Civantos demonstrates how cultural agents in the present ascribe importance to the past and how dominant accounts of this importance are contested. Civantos's analysis reveals that, alongside established narratives that use al-Andalus to create exclusionary, imperial identities, there are alternate discourses about the legacy of al-Andalus that rewrite the traditional narratives. In the process, these discourses critique their imperial and gendered dimensions and pursue intercultural translation.

"The essays in this book think through and with Deleuzian concepts in the educational field. The resultant encounters between concepts such as multiplicity, becoming, habit and affect and Multiple Literacies Theory exemplify philosophically inspired and productive thinking. "--Paul Patton, Professor of Philosophy, University of New South Wales

The jihad has been at the centre of the West's securitization discourse for more than a decade. Theorists constantly use the jihadist as a discursive tool to further their neoliberal, military and market agendas, perpetuating massive gaps of understanding between 'the West', Muslims and jihadists themselves. They are helped by Muslim interlocutors, who all too often play the role of 'good' Muslims explaining the motifs of the 'bad' Muslims. This timely book argues that Muslim theory and fiction has been significantly commodified to cater to the needs of western ideology. It skillfully critiques the ideological contradictions of the debate around the jihadist by offering a comprehensive analysis of Muslim and non-Muslim cultural critics. Ranging from Edward Said to Slavoj Zizek, from Don DeLillo to Orhan Pamuk and from Mohammed Siddique Khan to Osama bin Laden, this vastly heterogeneous discourse produces a multi-dimensional Muslim response. O'Rourke examines some of its critical fault lines in postcolonial theory and literary analysis. This groundbreaking book argues that the temptation to appropriate the figure of the jihadist offers a fertile area from which to launch a discussion about the limits of current theory.

The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions is the most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date. In scope, the book encompasses the genesis of the Arabic novel in the second half of the nineteenth century and its development to the present in every Arabic-speaking country and in Arab immigrant destinations on six continents. Editor Waïl S. Hassan and his contributors describe a novelistic phenomenon which has pre-modern roots, stretching centuries back within the Arabic cultural tradition, and branching outward geographically and linguistically to every Arab country and to Arab writing in many languages around the world. The first of three innovative dimensions of this Handbook consists of examining the ways in which the Arabic novel emerged out of a syncretic merger between Arabic and European forms and techniques, rather than being a simple importation of the latter and rejection of the former, as early critics of the Arabic novel claimed. The second involves mapping the novel geographically as it took root in every Arab country, developing into often distinct though overlapping and interconnected local traditions. Finally, the Handbook concerns the multilingual character of the novel in the Arab world and by Arab immigrants and their descendants around the world, both in Arabic and in at least a dozen other languages. The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions reflects the current status of research in the broad field of Arab novelistic traditions and signals toward new directions of inquiry.

This study analyses four new genres of literature and film that have evolved to accommodate and negotiate the changing face of postcolonial Britain since 1990: British Muslim Bildungsromane, gothic tales of postcolonial England, the subcultural urban novel and multicultural British comedy.

This book focuses on the way that notions of home and identity have changed for Muslims as a result of international 'war on terror' rhetoric. It uniquely links the post-9/11 stereotyping of Muslims and Islam in the West to the roots of current jihadism and the resurgence of ethnocentrism within the subcontinent and beyond.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.

What did Britain look like to the Muslims who visited and lived in the country in increasing numbers from the late eighteenth century onwards? This book is a literary history of representations of Muslims in Britain from the late eighteenth century to the eve of Salman Rushdie's publication of The Satanic Verses (1988).