Islamophobia/ Islamophilia

by Shryock, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780253221995
• ISBN10: 0253221994
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-09
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

"Islamophobia" is a term that has been widely applied to anti-Muslim ideas and actions, especially since 9/11. The contributors to this provocative volume explore and critique the usefulness of the concept for understanding contexts ranging from the Middle Ages to the modern day. Moving beyond familiar explanations such as good Muslim/bad Muslim stereotypes or the "clash of civilizations," they describe Islamophobia's counterpart, Islamophilia, which deploys similar oppositions in the interest of fostering public acceptance of Islam. Contributors address topics such as conflicts over Islam outside and within Muslim communities in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia; the cultural politics of literature, humor, and urban renewal; and religious conversion to Islam.

Author Biography

Andrew Shryock is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is author of Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination; Arab Detroit; and Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Islam as an Object of Fear and Affection	p. 1
Continuities and Transformations
Western Hostility toward Muslims: A History of the Present	p. 29
The Khalil Gibran International Academy: Diasporic Confrontations with an Emerging Islamophobia	p. 53
Modern (Self) Criticism
The God That Failed: The Neo-Orientalism of TodayÆs Muslim Commentators	p. 79
Gendering Islamophobia and Islamophilia: The Case of Shi'i Muslim Women in Lebanon	p. 94
Bridging Traditions: Madrasas and Their Internal Critics	p. 111
Violence and Conversion in Europe
The Fantasy and Violence of Religious Imagination: Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism in France and North Africa	p. 141
German Converts to Islam and Their Ambivalent Relations with Immigrant Muslims	p. 172
Attraction and Repulsion in Shared Space
Muslim Ethnic Comedy: Inversions of Islamophobia	p. 195
Competing for Muslims: New Strategies for Urban Renewal in Detroit	p. 209
List of Contributors	p. 237
Index	p. 239
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

What is most problematic about Islamophobia is its essentializing and universalizing quality, which casts Islam itself and all Muslims as real or potential enemies.... What is harder to assess is the challenge of countering Islamophobic impulses in ways that do not simply invert or reinforce them by cultivating their opposite: the image of the Muslim as "friend," as a figure identified with the Self, characterized as familiar, and with whom legitimate conflict is not possible.... When 'friendship' is subordinated to the demands of sameness... it can be just as coercive, just as prone to misrecognition, as the sentiments of hostility it is meant to correct.