Slowly, over the past 12 years, the landmark book – critical of Islamic fundamentalism and its treatment of women – has become increasingly available in Muslim countries. A year after it first came out, Oxford University Press released it as part of its millennium series in Pakistan. Last year, it was translated for Korean audiences (see YFile, Oct. 6, 2010).

, which won the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award in sociology in 2000, was translated and released in Indonesia by the Jakarta-based International Centre for Islam and Pluralism and publisher LKiS Yogyakarta.

Moghissi, who teaches  women’s and equity studies, couldn't be more pleased about her book's release in Indonesia, which has blossomed into democracy since the overthrow of President Suharto in 1998. “Indonesia is the largest Muslim country on Earth," she points out. “Obviously, the ideas remain current and of concern if publishers are making available a book that is critical of fundamentalism and of its treatment of women."

Neighbouring Malaysia long ago banned Moghissi’s book. “The fact that it is being published next door in Indonesia makes me even happier,” she says. No doubt copies will filter across the Strait of Malacca.

In her ongoing effort to illuminate the experience of Muslims in the West, Moghissi on the subject, .

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Released in December, the volume of essays by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic explores issues of race and ethnicity, culture, media, gender and migration.

The collection is edited by , associate dean external of 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, and Halleh Ghorashi, a professor at VU University Amsterdam.

In previews, London-based scholars say the essays “illuminate a rich mix of issues that shape and define the everyday experiences of diasporic Muslims,” address “some of the egregious stereotypes used about the Muslim diaspora” and show how “homogenization of diverse communities may serve political expediency but has a negative effect on the quest for meaningful integration.”

Moghissi, who teaches women’s and equity studies at 91��ɫ, has written the introduction and contributed one essay – “Changing spousal relations in diaspora: Muslims in Canada”. Other essays look at Muslim youth culture in Europe, radicalization of Muslims in Sweden, discrimination against young Muslim French women, and home and belonging for Moroccan-Dutch Muslims.

The essays grew out of a four-year international research project, "Muslim diasporas: Heightened Islamic identity, gender, and cultural resistance". Started in 2006, the project involved scholars in Canada, France, Sweden, Britain and the Netherlands and was funded by the Ford Foundation.

Moghissi is the author of , released in 1999 and still considered timely and relevant. It was translated and reprinted in 2010 by a South Korean publisher. In 2009, she published a monograph, , co-authored by 91��ɫ political science professors and .

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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For more than 1,400 years, Muslims have held multiple and diverging views about their religious tradition. Yet especially since Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims are commonly portrayed as homogeneous and dogmatic.

In his new book, , 91��ɫ anthropologist challenges that view. The 253-page volume published by I.B. Tauris and launched at Harvard University this fall features essays by world-class scholars that explore Islam and Muslim societies and cultures from a range of perspectives.

The book arose from a seminar series on Muslim pluralism hosted at the London-based Institute of Ismaili Studies in 2002 and 2003 in response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, explains Hirji in his editor’s note. “Since that moment, words and images concerning Islam and the histories, beliefs and practices of Muslims have proliferated globally.”

This complex portrait of Islam “challenges the notions that Muslims everywhere are the same or should be the same,” wrote Hirji. Like the seminar series, the book aims not to present the social fact that Muslims are diverse, he added, but to examine how Muslims frame their own diversity over time and in different contexts.

As a social historian as well as an anthropologist in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Hirji is interested in how Muslim societies express their sense of community. He has contributed the first of eight essays in Diversity and Pluralism in Islam, “Debating Islam from Within: Muslim Constructions of the Internal Other”.

Hirji co-authored and co-edited , a comprehensive account of Ismaili history and intellectual achievements, set in the wider contexts of Islamic and world history. He has co-edited Places of Worship and Devotion in Muslim Societies, expected out soon. He has also recently completed a 25-minute film on Tehreema Mitha (see YFile May 7, 2009), a classical and contemporary dancer from Pakistan, and is working with the Textile Museum of Canada on an exhibition of Muslim material culture and heritage in Africa to open in May.

Right: Zulfikar Hirji

At 91��ɫ, he teaches senior undergraduate and graduate courses on Islam and Muslim societies, visual anthropology and the anthropology of the senses.

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