Book launch at the House of Commons
Print versionThinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives
The book launch was attended by over 100 invited guests
On Monday 31 January 2011, the book launch of Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, edited by the department's AbdoolKarim Vakil, took place in the House of Commons Grand Committee Room. The event was hosted by the Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, and jointly organised by the Research and Documentation Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain and Hurst publishers. The book launch provided the occasion for two panels and a Q&A session chaired by AbdoolKarim Vakil and was attended by over one hundred invited academics, civil society groups and parlamentarians.
Opening panel (pictured above): The Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP in the opening session sided (L) by Farooq Murad, and Sir Iqbal Sacranie, current and past Secretary Generals of the Muslim Council of Britain, respectively.
Academic panel (pictured above): (L to R) AbdoolKarim Vakil, Dr Nasar Meer, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Northumbria University; the Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP (Tooting), Dr S. Sayyid, Director of the Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, University of South Australia, and co-editor of the book; Dr. Nadia Fadil, FWO Postdoctoral Researcher, Catholic University of Leuven; and Dr Samia Bano, Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading.
About the book
S. Sayyid and AbdoolKarim Vakil eds., Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, London: Hurst & Co/ New York: Columbia University Press, 2010
Use of the term Islamophobia is today both inexorable and controversial. Thinking Through Islamophobia offers a series of critical engagements with the concept, its history and deployment, and the phenomena that it seeks to marshal. In an original and pioneering collection of essays twenty-eight contributors hailing from diverse disciplinary and geographical backgrounds draw on their expertise to map out the tensions between the concept and the phenomena as they are played out across different contexts and continents. Extending the discussion of Islamophobia beyond its commonplace focus on the West and staking a claim for the continuing relevance and critical purchase of Islamophobia in struggles for justice, Thinking Through Islamophobia locates the polemical debates on Islamophobia within wider cultural and political mobilizations engendered by the ‘Muslim question’.
Use of the term Islamophobia is today both inexorable and controversial. Thinking Through Islamophobia offers a series of critical engagements with the concept, its history and deployment, and the phenomena that it seeks to marshal. In an original and pioneering collection of essays twenty-eight contributors hailing from diverse disciplinary and geographical backgrounds draw on their expertise to map out the tensions between the concept and the phenomena as they are played out across different contexts and continents. Extending the discussion of Islamophobia beyond its commonplace focus on the West and staking a claim for the continuing relevance and critical purchase of Islamophobia in struggles for justice, Thinking Through Islamophobia locates the polemical debates on Islamophobia within wider cultural and political mobilizations engendered by the ‘Muslim question’.