Islam, Muslims and the US: Essays on Religion and Politics

9/11 marks a turning point in the public discourses on Islam in the West and in the relationship between ‘Islam and the West’. Along with the US Wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, sweeping demonizations of Islam in the media, hate crimes against Muslims living in the US., there also emerged an interest on the part not only of non-Muslims, but Muslims as well, in learning about Islam. The author discusses at length the widening schism between Muslims and the west and the way the US has taken advantage of the deadly 9/11 strikes to take its war on terror to Muslim lands. She also discusses the marginalisation of Muslim women in Muslim societies around the world and goes on to say that for the patriarchal Muslim society the other is not the ‘western infidel’ but the Muslim woman, while for westerners, the other has been Islam since early medieval times, much before the advent of any Bin Laden.