Since September 2001, the term “Islam” has proliferated throughout Western media and popular culture. In recent months, there has been a particular level of hysteria to media and cultural discourses surrounding “Islam” in the West. Reports on ISIS, including debates about whether ISIS is “really” Islamic or not really Islamic; analyses of secularism and Islam in France, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack; increased attention to the prevalence and viciousness of hate crimes against Muslims in the US, especially following the murder of Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, Deah Shaddy Barakat, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha in Chapel Hill, North Carolina last month; commentaries on the continuing rise of right-wing Islamophobic and anti-immigrant forces in Europe, as well as hysterical false reports about supposed “no-go zones” in European cities with Muslim minority populations; renewed attempts to whip up fear about Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions, stirred up by Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress; the portrayal of Islam on television shows such as Homeland—all rely on incredibly simplified, and sometimes purely erroneous, stereotypes regarding Islam, circulated by commentators with little or no knowledge of the complex histories, practices, and political contexts that surround contemporary Islam.

So this week, we highlight various NEWTON texts relevant to the critical study of Islam, across a variety of perspectives, disciplinary approaches, and political frameworks. We have included texts dealing with the history of Islam, Islamic law, Islam and gender, and contemporary Islamic political movements and regimes. Readers looking for more information will not find a single, simple narrative of “what Islam really is” in these texts; instead, they will find a rich selection of critical approaches. Students and instructors will find a wealth of sources to integrate into your curricula and research projects in the coming semesters.

If you wish to recommend a book or peer-reviewed article for a feature in NEWTON, on any topics relevant to the region, please email us at reviews@jadaliyya.com. 

Rula Jurdi Abisaab and Malek Abisaab, The Shi‘ites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah’s Islamists

Lila Abu-Lughod and Anupama Rao, Women`s Rights, Muslim Family Law, and the Politics of Consent

Hisham Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture

Abdullah Al-Arian, Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt

Madawi Al-Rasheed, Carool Kersten, and Marat Shterin, Demystifying the Caliphate: Historical Memory and Contemporary Contexts

Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World

Asef Bayat, Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam

Jonathan A.C. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy

Edmund Burke III, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam

Mohamed Daadaoui, Moroccan Monarchy and the Islamist Challenge: Maintaining Makhzen Power

Lara Deeb and Mona Harb, Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi‘ite South Beirut

Markus Dressler, Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam

Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam

Ahmed El Shamsy, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History

Hilal Elver, The Headscarf Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion

Mayanthi L. Fernando, The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism

Amal Ghazal, Islamic Reform and Arab Nationalism: Expanding the Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (1880s-1930s)

Pascale Ghazaleh, Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World

Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915

Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament

Rikke Hostrup Haugbolle and Francesco Cavatorta, “Beyond Ghannouchi: Social Changes and Islamism in Tunisia”

Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North

Lina Khatib, Dina Matar, and Atef Alshaer, The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication

Joseph A. Massad, Islam in Liberalism

Toby Matthiesen, The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent, and Sectarianism

Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics (Fifth Edition)

Hakan Özoğlu, From Caliphate to Secular State: Power Struggle in the Early Turkish Republic

Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria: The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution

Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora

Mohammad R. Salama, Islam, Orientalism, and Intellectual History: Modernity and the Politics of Exclusion since Ibn Khaldun

Mohammad Salama and Rachel Friedman, “Locating the Secular in Sayyid Qutb”

Zakia Salime, Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco

Stephen Sheehi, Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims

Nimer Sultany, “Religion and Constitutionalism: Lessons from American and Islamic Constitutionalism”

Saadia Toor, The State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan

Maaike Voorhoeve, Family Law in Islam: Divorce, Marriage, and Women in the Muslim World

Max Weiss, In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi`ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon

Isabelle Werenfels, “Beyond Authoritarian Upgrading: The Re-Emergence of Sufi Orders in Maghrebi Politics”