Islamic Intellectual Tradition

Anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia are not just phenomena—they have increasingly become the focus of a new field of research: Islamophobia studies. Frequent national and international conferences and publications in this area bear witness to this. This article discusses the different prominent approaches to the concepts of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism that can be found in academic literature. It discusses the different theoretical strands within Islamophobia studies rather than the commonalities they share. In broad terms, three “schools of thought” can be identified in Islamophobia studies. The first conducts research on Islamophobia in the context of prejudice studies, the second is informed by racism studies and draws on the postcolonial tradition, and the third contributes to the second through the addition of a decolonial perspective.

This book examines both the liberal and the Islamic legal and doctrinal treatments of the moral and political terms of residence and citizenship in a non-Muslim liberal democracy. It seeks to stage an ideal moral encounter between contemporary political liberalism and evolving Islamic doctrinal discourses, first elaborating a uniquely detailed methodology for normative inquiry across ethical and religious traditions, asking what is involved morally and epistemically in justifying conceptions of justice and political morality in an ethical framework not one’s own. It then proposes an ideal-typical Islamic “doctrine of citizenship” in a non-Muslim liberal democracy, based on a survey of Islamic objections to liberal citizenship. It then examines Islamic doctrinal responses to the minority condition, from early juridical prohibitions on residing in non-Muslim lands to contemporary fatwas and treatises on the “jurisprudence of Muslim minorities” (fiqh al-aqalliyyat al-muslima). The specific questions comprising the general problem of citizenship in Islamic discourses include the terms and conditions of residence in non-Muslim polities; balancing Islamic commitments with loyalty to non-Muslim polities; the recognition of moral pluralism and solidarity with non-Muslim fellow citizens. This book establishes that classical Islamic jurisprudence already contains many powerful resources for justifying moral commitment to a non-Muslim society and that even conservative, classically-minded Islamic scholars are engaged in a theorization and theologizing of principled moral obligation to non-Muslims and non-Islamic polities.