Overcoming Orientalism

Tamara Sonn is the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the History of Islam, and director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her most recent books include Islam and Democracy After the Arab Spring (with John L. Esposito and John O. Voll), Islam: History, Religion, and Politics, and Is Islam an Enemy of the West? She is founding editor-in-chief of Religion Compass, Oxford Bibliographies Online--Islamic Studies, and senior editor of Oxford Islamic Studies Online and Oxford's Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, as well as Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion.

• 1. Introduction Tamara Sonn SHAPING THE DISCOURSE: Countering the Secular Bias 2. 'After Enlightenment, Return to the Marketplace: The Scholar's Responsibility for a Broken WorldKaren Armstrong 3. The Secular Bias and the Study of Religious Politics: On John Esposito, Michael Walzer, and Political IslamNader Hashemi DIVERSITY IN ISLAM: Whose Islam? 4. The Islamic Reformist Mosaic in Muslim Southeast AsiaKhairudin Aljunied 5. Looking for the Caliphate in All the Wrong Places: ISIS and Its Reading of ScriptureAsma Afsaruddin 6. How Islamic Is ISIS?Sohail H. Hashmi ISLAM AND PLURALISM: Interfaith Relations 7. Building Muslim-Buddhist Understanding: The Parallels of Taqwa/Allah Consciousness in the Qur'an and Satipatthana/Mindfulness in Anapanasati SuttaImityaz Yusuf 8. Televangelizing Muslims: Christian Satellite Television and Its Impact on Muslim-Christian Relations in JordanJordan Denari Duffner ORIENTALISM 2.0: Islamophobia 9. The Social Construction of The Racial MuslimSahar Aziz 10. Anti-Catholicism, Islamophobia, and White Supremacy in the United StatesScott C. Alexander 11. Islam and Exceptionalism in the Western Policy ImaginationPeter Mandaville 12. Pluralism, Authority, and Islamophobia: Shari`a and Its Discontents in North AmericaMohammad Fadel John L. Esposito: Select BibliographyContributorsIndex

Few scholars have so thoroughly contested the stereotyping of Islam and Muslims typical of the Orientalist tradition, so it is fitting that this volume celebrating his scholarly achievements should contain so many original perspectives on contemporary Muslim movements. The authors do not shy away from controversies, as with the brutality of the ISIS so-called Caliphate, but they carefully set such movements in social and historical context. This is an essential book for understanding the contemporary Muslim world, which interrogates the glib assumptions of so much writing about this key region.