Muslims in the West After 9/11

How did 9/11 change things for Muslims in the West? This book edited by Jocelyn Cesari is a collection of papers that seek to address this very question. The first and second parts of the book contain papers on the different European and American contexts, the rise of the security agenda, the influence of the new right and the effectiveness of liberalism as a call to arms. The third part of the book contains discussions on the governmental responses to the war on terror, the role of sharia in a democratic society, the effects on the Muslim community itself and the concept of the Muslim enemy in the public sphere.

The book begins with a survey of the situation of Muslims in Europe by Jocelyn Cesari and this is followed by a discussion of the situation of Muslims in the United States by Jane Smith. Cesari provides a good overview of European Muslims and in doing so she describes the salient themes that inform the rest of the book. The discourse on immigration has hardened since 9/11 as most Muslims in Europe are immigrants or the children of immigrants and this has had a deleterious effect upon them. The Bush years have also thrown up the challenge of accommodating Islam in the public sphere which becomes more challenging as sizeable proportions of the Muslim community are forming a new Muslim underclass. The new security agenda which has arisen as a result of many government’s attempts to prevent terrorist attacks has also led to what some have described as the securitization of Islam. This has also raised the issue of Muslim intellectuals as interlocutors between the community and the state.