Editorial

Abstract

This special issue was suggested to us by a reader during my term as AJISS book review editor. Soon after 9/11, many bookstores and popular websites, among them www.amazon.com, stocked up on Islam-bashing books whose main arguments were that Islam posed numerous threats to the United States, in particular, and to the West in general. Authors took umbrage with President Bush’s claim that the “war on terror” was not a war on Islam, and that, indeed, it was Islam that was the problem and the enemy of the modern age. How about making some scholarly responses to these books, our reader asked. I was initially of two minds, for these books were not academic treatises. Should an academic journal spend time on non-academic books? On the other hand, given how important these books were (and are) in shaping public opinion about Islam and the presence of Muslims in the West, it seemed essential that Muslim intellectuals should respond. To do nothing in the face of the barrage of negative and hostile arguments ultimately seemed irresponsible. The Muslim community was under attack – spiritually and physically. If there were no intellectual counter-arguments from a Muslim perspective, what could an uninformed and curious reader rely on to hear from the other side? A non-response by Muslims would count as affirmation, because the reader would have no alternative sources with which to think about the issues being raised. Thus, we decided to provide scholarly responses to the Islam-bashing books from Muslim intellectuals (or non- Muslim scholars empathetic with Islam) that would do more than say “these books are inflammatory” by providing reasoned analysis and argumentation as to why such books were not only wrong and misguided, but also that they were actually inciting hatred toward Muslims. Not everyone agreed with our thinking, and some Muslim academics felt it would be a waste of their time to review (hence give unwarranted credence to) nonacademic populist diatribes against Islam and Muslims. Others embraced the project with enthusiasm. A few reviewers who had initially consented found that in the end, they were unable to complete their assignments because they could not stomach such biased and non-academic books. When I became editor of AJISS, we decided to devote an entire issue to Islamophobia and not just review a few influential Islam-bashing books. By this stage, enough time had passed for it to become obvious that ...