At Freedom's Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament

At Freedom's Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament

The subject of this book is a new â€œIslam.â€ This Islam began to take shape in 1988 around the Rushdie affair, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the first Gulf War of 1991. It was consolidated in the period following September 11, 2001. It is a name, a discursive site, a signifier at once flexible and constrainedâ€”indeed, it
is a geopolitical agon, in and around which some of the most pressing aporias of modernity, enlightenment, liberalism, and reformation are worked out.

At this discursive site are many metonyms for Islam: the veiled or â€œpiousâ€ Muslim woman, the militant, the minority Muslim injured by Western free speech. Each of these figures functions as a cipher enabling repeated encounters with the question â€œHow do we free ourselves from freedom?â€ Again and again, freedom is imagined as Western, modern, imperialâ€”a dark imposition of Enlightenment. The pious and injured Muslim who desires his or her own enslavement is imagined as freedomâ€™s other.

At Freedomâ€™s Limit is an intervention into current debates regarding religion, secularism, and Islam and provides a deep critique of the anthropology and sociology of Islam that have consolidated this formation. It shows that, even as this Islam gains increasing traction in cultural production from television shows to movies to novels, the most intricate contestations of Islam so construed are to be found in the work of Muslim writers and painters.

This book includes extended readings of jihadist proclamations; postcolonial law; responses to law from minorities in Muslim-majority societies; Islamophobic films; the novels of Leila Aboulela, Mohammed Hanif, and Nadeem Aslam; and the paintings of Komail Aijazuddin.
Country USA
Manufacturer Modern Language Initiative
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2014-05-26

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Modern Language Initiative
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2014-05-26

At Freedom's Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament

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