Muslim Minorities and Citizenship: Authority, Communities and Islamic Law

(Hardback)

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Description

Issues of citizenship, identity and cohesion have rarely been as vital as they are today. Since the events of 9/11 and subsequent terrorist episodes in Bali, Madrid, London and elsewhere, focus in this area has centred primarily upon Muslim minority communities living in the West. Opinion polls of Muslim communities in Europe and publications from authors within those communities have shown that there is an energetic debate going on around what it means to be a Muslim and a citizen on this continent. Sean Oliver-Dee explores these questions of citizenship and loyalty from the point of view of Muslims living under non-Muslim rule and non-Muslim governments trying to engage with them. He draws on the historical contexts of Muslim minorities living under British and French imperial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and looks at how shari'a functioned within the context of imperial civil codes. This book draws important comparisons between the French and British approaches to their Muslim minorities, which illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of both, and engages with current debates about the compatibility of Islamic law with civil law in non-Islamic societies. This is important reading for scholars, students, commentators and policy-makers concerned with the question of Western engagement with its minorities.

Reviews

Issues of minority status and loyalty to the state have attracted particular interest in recent decades in the context of growing Islamic communities in the West. This book makes a significant contribution to understanding this most sensitive of topics by drawing on the past to engage with the present. By shaping the study around the issue of citizenship in Britain and France, Dr. Oliver-Dee has opened an important window into discussion and debate that will inform academics, policy-makers and the general public in diverse societies, both Western and non-Western. This work deserves to be widely read.' Professor Peter Riddell, Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths and Vice-Principal of Melbourne School of Theology.

Author Bio

Sean Oliver-Dee is an Associate Research Fellow at the London School of Theology and the Associate Researcher for the Church of England Representative to the EU.