Allie’s reading week: #AnthroIslam

We promised we would do it, and now it is done ! Here are the first glimpses into some of the books we advertised in the context of our thematic thread on the anthropology of Islam (#anthroislam). Because the list is very long, we already started last week with a review of Samuli Shielke and Liza Debevec’s book Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes. An Anthropology of Everyday Religion. This week, we continue with four books that we believe offer innovative insights into the broad topic of ‘Islam’ in the contemporary world.

We start with an already classic book : Lila Abu Lughod’s Do Muslim Women Need Saving ? We did not receive the review yet (bear with us !) but to give you a foretaste, we recycle an interview in which she presents her main arguments. No need to say: it is refreshing to hear her deconstruct the stereotypical representations of Muslim women that currently circulate in the West !

On Wednesday, we publish a review of Morgan Clarke’s Islam and New Kinship: A Nascent Horizon for the Relationship Between Science, Reproductive Technology, and Fiqh written by Ivayla Ivanova. The book, published in 2012, touches upon a timely topic : reproductive technologies and the various ways in which Muslim scholars in Lebanon mobilise Islamic law in the context of medical innovation.

We continue on Thursday with a review written by Chris Moses of Armando Salvatore’s The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam. The book is more sociological than anthropological, but remains an important contribution to current debates on the role of religion in the transformation of our conceptualisation of the public sphere.

We conclude the week with a review of Nilüfer Göle’s edited volume Islam and the Public Controversy in Europe published last year. This interdisciplinary volume, which brings together contributions from sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers, provides an important contribution to current academic debates on the public sphere, but this time, from the entry point of controversies around Islam that have emerged in Europe in the post 9/11 context.

We wish you a nice reading week !