Some Recent Publications on Islam/Muslims 
The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims by
Khalid A. Beydoun, 2023, University of California Press
“The New Crusades is an intersectional milestone. It lucidly illustrates how converging systems of subordination, power, and violence related to Islamophobia are experienced across the globe.”— Kimberlé Crenshaw, from the foreword
The first book to examine global Islamophobia from a legal and ground-up perspective, from renowned public intellectual Khaled A. Beydoun.
Islamophobia has spiraled into a global menace, and democratic and authoritarian regimes alike have deployed it as a strategy to persecute their Muslim populations. With this book, Khaled A. Beydoun details how the American War on Terror has facilitated and intensified the network of anti-Muslim campaigns unfolding across the world. The New Crusades is the first book of its kind, offering a critical and intimate examination of global Islamophobia and its manifestations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and regions beyond and in between.
Through trenchant analysis and direct testimony from Muslims on the ground, Beydoun interrogates how Islamophobia acts as a unifying global thread of state and social bigotry, instigating both liberal and right-wing hate-mongering. Whether imposed by way of hijab bans in France, state-sponsored hate speech and violence in India, or the network of concentration camps in China, Islamophobia unravels into distinct systems of demonization and oppression across the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Lucid and poignant, The New Crusades reveals that Islamophobia is not only a worldwide phenomenon—it stands as one of the world’s last bastions of acceptable hate.
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What is Islamic Studies?
European and North American Approaches to a Contested Field by (ed.) Leif Stenberg, Philip Woo, 2023, Edinburgh University Press
Explores the vibrant, divided and evolving field of Islamic studies in Europe and North America
- Covers topics ranging from gender and secularism to pop music and modern science
- Discusses contemporary and historical approaches in Islamic Studies
- Features contributions from leading scholars studying Islam and Muslims, including Shahzad Bashir, Hadi Enayat, Juliane Hammer, Aaron Hughes, Carool Kersten, Susanne Olsson and Jonas Otterbeck
- Addresses the role of both Muslims and non-Muslims in the ongoing construction of Islam
The study of Islam and Muslims in Europe and North America has expanded greatly in recent decades, becoming a passionately debated and divided field. This collection critically assesses the development of the field of Islamic Studies and its place in society. Featuring contributions from anthropologists, historians and scholars of religion, each chapter contains new empirical material and discusses approaches to the study of Islam, past and present.
The book situates Islamic Studies within broader discussions of the construction of identity and its political implications in Europe and North America. Authors also address tensions between normative and non-normative approaches to the study of Islam and Muslims and consider how these might be reconciled.
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Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance by Mustafa Akyol, 2022, St.Martins’ Essential
A fascinating journey into Islam’s diverse history of ideas, making an argument for an “Islamic Enlightenment” today In Reopening Muslim Minds, Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and opinion writer for The New York Times, both diagnoses “the crisis of Islam” in the modern world, and offers a way forward. Diving deeply into Islamic theology, and also sharing lessons from his own life story, he reveals how Muslims lost the universalism that made them a great civilization in their earlier centuries. He especially demonstrates how values often associated with Western Enlightenment ― freedom, reason, tolerance, and an appreciation of science ― had Islamic counterparts, which sadly were cast aside in favor of more dogmatic views, often for political ends. Elucidating complex ideas with engaging prose and storytelling, Reopening Muslim Minds borrows lost visions from medieval Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes), to offer a new Muslim worldview on a range of sensitive issues: human rights, equality for women, freedom of religion, or freedom from religion. While frankly acknowledging the problems in the world of Islam today, Akyol offers a clear and hopeful vision for its future.
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Being Muslim in Hindu India: A Critical View by Ziya Us Salam, 2023, Harper Collins India
Anyone who follows the news knows that the Muslims of India are under siege. They face what author Ziya Us Salam calls the gravest challenge to the community, and to the definition of a secular India enshrined in India’s Constitution, since independence. To be a Muslim in India today is to live with the reality of daily stigmatization and ever-increasing threats of violence. In several places, Muslims are expected to abide by the preferences of the majority community. At others, they might be killed on mere suspicion of cow slaughter, or much worse, just because they ‘look’ Muslim. There are attacks on their attire, language and culture.
Being Muslim in Hindu India is an impassioned cry for attention, an attempt to highlight just what has gone wrong with our polity and society in recent years. Painstakingly researched, the book talks of the constant ‘othering’ of Muslims, using tactics of both peace and violence. Starting from a denial of tickets to Muslim candidates by political parties or missing names from electoral rolls, the book goes on to talk of attempts to wipe out complete passages of the history of medieval India, as if the period from 1206 to 1857 existed in a vacuum.
Amidst these grave challenges, the book ends on a note of hope. This stems from the fact that even as the community faces political marginalization, the success of many of its young men and women gives India’s Muslims hope for a better tomorrow.
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Democracy, Civic Virtue, and Islam: The Muslim-American Jihad Against Extremism by Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed, 2023,Bilalian Rivers Press
There is no greater struggle for Muslims than the fight for clear recognition of what Islam is and what it is committed to. The Qur’an prescribes a basic, sacred commitment to the preservation of Life. Yet, among Muslims are groups which defile these teachings with horrific acts of violence against innocents while claiming to obey religious principles. These groups threaten all civilized notions of human society.
This book introduces an American community of Muslims and their guiding Islamic principle of citizenship responsibility. It presents Islam’s true character and delivers a debilitating blow to schemes and ideologies of extremists.
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