Postcolonialism and Islam

This volume of seventeen articles covers an amazingly vast ground of scholarship and yields wide ranging insights. The editors’ Introduction (pp 1–3) does well to define and contextualise Postcolonialism and spells out the main contours of its relationship with Islam. Specifically, the volume examines Islam and modernity from the postcolonial perspective, with special reference to Orientalism and Islamophobia. More importantly, it explores issues and challenges relating to Muslim identity, cultural politics, racism and Muslim presence in Europe. The volume is divided into five parts: 1. Keynotes, 2. Theory, 3. Literature, 4. Culture and Society, and 5. Film. The three keynotes are both substantial and timely: a) Tahir Abbas’s “Mulicultural Politics in Post-Islamist Muslim Britain”, b) Javed Majeed’s “Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics, and Postcolonialism”, and c) Patrick Williams’s “Postcolonialism and Orientalism”.