In the popular imagination, 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, with full attention to the
multiplication of its meanings and interpretations. 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—women in Islam,
sexuality and sexual freedom, and the idea of Abrahamic religions
valorizing an interfaith agenda. Islam in Liberalism is an
unflinching critique of Western assumptions and of the liberalism that
Europe and Euro-America blindly present as a type of salvation to an
assumingly unenlightened Islam.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226206363
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter