Cosmopolitan Islamic Identity and Thought

Abstract

The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) held its Third Annual Canadian Regional Conference on “Cosmopolitan Islamic Identity and Thought” on 24 November 2007 at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, ON). Opening the event with her keynote address, “Consumption and Cosmopolitanism: The Veil, The Body, The Law,” Reina Lewis (University of East London) pointed out that in British culture, cosmopolitanism has not yet appropriated the Muslim veil as a desirable object of fashion consumption for the majority society, although Muslim women have appropriated and indigenized some western fashions. However, this does not prevent the majority society from making interpretive “readings” of the veil relative to dominant fashion cultures and participating in neo-Orientalist discourses. Despite the (shockingly) recent British legislation of 2003 that finally explicitly forbids religious discrimination, some recent prominent public discourse on the veil in Britain has turned its attention to the issue of face veiling as a potentially insidious fashion practice, arguing essentially (and uncritically) that visibility is equal to transparency, integrity, and truth ...