Here are 100 books that Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire fans have personally recommended if you like
Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire.
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I'm Marwan Mohammed, a sociologist for the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), a pure product of the French working-class suburbs; having failed at school, taken to the streets, and ended up in research after a detour through social work and community organizing. I founded several grassroots organizations in the Paris suburbs, such as C'noues (which became a futsal club that trained several top-level players, including my brother Abdessamad Mohammed, the French national team's all-time top scorer) and more recently NormalZup, an association that tackles educational inequalities at source. I'll be telling the whole story in a forthcoming book.
This book provided me with the keys to understanding how the authorities' actions could bring racism to life. Arun Kundnani's book shows how the horrific attacks of September 11 gave rise to the construction of ideologies, opinions, theories, and public policies that regarded the domestic Muslim presence, whether immigrants or citizens, as a threat to the highest order, justifying programs of surveillance and repression that were discriminatory and infringed fundamental freedoms.
It's one thing for the country to protect itself from violent attacks; it's quite another to consider a mass of Muslims, especially the most visible ones, as a threat and a suspect population by associating religious practice with Islamism or radicalization. These two vague notions have helped to spread an Islamophobic culture of suspicion. Arun Kundnani's book sheds much-needed light on this turning point in contemporary history in various Western democracies.
"The new front in the War on Terror is the "homegrown enemy," domestic terrorists who have become the focus of sprawling counterterrorism structures of policing and surveillance in the United States and across Europe. Domestic surveillance has mushroomed - at least 100,000 Muslims in America have been secretly under scrutiny. British police compiled a secret suspect list of more than 8,000 al-Qaeda "sympathizers," and in another operation included almost 300 children fifteen and under among the potential extremists investigated. MI5 doubled in size in just five years. Based on several years of research and reportage, in locations as disparate as…
The Beatles are widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history and their career has been the subject of many biographies. Yet the band's historical significance has not received sustained academic treatment to date. In The Beatles and the 1960s, Kenneth L. Campbell uses The…
I grew up in New York City in the 1980s as an Arab Latina American Muslim, which shaped my interest in who is considered American. Back then, there was no language to talk about my experience of marginalization as Arab or Muslim. That changed after 9/11 and the War on Terror. A decade after that, the term “Islamophobia” entered the US lexicon, leading to social recognition of this form of discrimination, and many important debates about what constitutes Islamophobia. I made my career exploring how Arabs and Muslims figure into US racial politics, and am currently a professor of US Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California.
I write about Islamophobia in the US but often wonder how it manifests in other countries. I now know where to go for answers.
This book examines Muslim racialization in four countries – the US, the UK, India, and China. It takes readers through the history of Islamophobia in each country, examining the role of media in stereotyping and Othering Muslims. Importantly, the book also explains how anti-Muslim racism has figured in recent ethnonationalist movements and counterterrorism policies.
Prejudice against Muslims has a long and complex history, shaped over many centuries. In recent decades, discrimination, violence, and human rights abuses against Muslims have taken a significant turn, with rising reports and discussions of Islamophobia across the globe. However, as the authors of A Global Racial Enemy argue, much of the conversation has missed the key features of this increasingly insidious phenomenon.
This original book puts race at the center of the analysis, exposing the global racialization of Muslims. With special attention paid to the United States, China, India, and the United Kingdom, the authors examine both the unique…
I grew up in New York City in the 1980s as an Arab Latina American Muslim, which shaped my interest in who is considered American. Back then, there was no language to talk about my experience of marginalization as Arab or Muslim. That changed after 9/11 and the War on Terror. A decade after that, the term “Islamophobia” entered the US lexicon, leading to social recognition of this form of discrimination, and many important debates about what constitutes Islamophobia. I made my career exploring how Arabs and Muslims figure into US racial politics, and am currently a professor of US Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California.
Did you know that anti-Muslim racism and white supremacy are interrelated?
Razack’s book helps us understand why Islamophobia should be understood as a form of racism rather than religious discrimination. She powerfully shows that anti-Muslim racism is not unique to the political right and does not always take overt forms like “the Muslim ban.” Rather, it can manifest in liberal commitments to Western values of democracy, secularism, and women’s rights.
Razack argues that “anti-Muslim feelings” uphold infrastructures of white supremacy and laws that authorize racial violence.
How Western nations have consolidated their whiteness through the figure of the Muslim in the post-9/11 world
While much has been written about post-9/11 anti-Muslim racism (often termed Islamophobia), insufficient attention has been given to how anti-Muslim racism operates through law and is a vital part of law's protection of whiteness. This book fills this gap while also providing a unique new global perspective on white supremacy. Sherene H. Razack, a leading critical race and feminist scholar, takes an innovative approach by situating law within media discourses and historical and contemporary realities. We may think of law as logical, but,…
With Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as America’s new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan time…
I grew up in New York City in the 1980s as an Arab Latina American Muslim, which shaped my interest in who is considered American. Back then, there was no language to talk about my experience of marginalization as Arab or Muslim. That changed after 9/11 and the War on Terror. A decade after that, the term “Islamophobia” entered the US lexicon, leading to social recognition of this form of discrimination, and many important debates about what constitutes Islamophobia. I made my career exploring how Arabs and Muslims figure into US racial politics, and am currently a professor of US Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California.
What do romance novels have to do with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East? This fascinating book looks at novels featuring rich Arab sheikhs falling in love with white women in “Arabiastan.”
These desert romances date from the 1920s but saw a surge in popularity after 9/11. The sheikh figures falls in love with a white woman and seeks a military alliance with Anglo-US powers to protect his country from “barbaric forces.” Jarmakani dissects how this fantasy genre plays a role in normalizing the War on Terror.
In a surprising twist, she argues that Islamophobia can be perpetuated through desiring the Arab sheikh figure.
A curious figure stalks the pages of a distinct subset of mass-market romance novels, aptly called "desert romances." Animalistic yet sensitive, dark and attractive, the desert prince or sheikh emanates manliness and raw, sexual power. In the years since September 11, 2001, the sheikh character has steadily risen in popularity in romance novels, even while depictions of Arab masculinity as backward and violent in nature have dominated the cultural landscape.
An Imperialist Love Story contributes to the broader conversation about the legacy of orientalist representations of Arabs in Western popular culture. Combining close readings of novels, discursive analysis of blogs…
I grew up in the 1960s when the Supreme Court was widely praised in liberal circles for its path-breaking decisions protecting rights. Inspired by this vision of rights through law, I went to law school and then to graduate school, including a couple of years in England where I was confronted with skepticism about the role of courts. Are liberal beliefs about the role of the Supreme Court correct? Can courts really produce progressive social change, not just on paper, but in practice? Most of my research and scholarship addresses these questions that go to the heart of the belief that Supreme Court decisions protecting and furthering rights matter.
In this majestic study Friedman explores the relationship between public opinion and Supreme Court decisions over American history.
Friedman’s central argument is that the Supreme Court does not stand apart from the rest of the society in which it operates. Building on the work of Robert McCloskey and Robert Dahl, Friedman argues that over time the Supreme Court reflects the views of society at large.
The book is very well-researched and filled with fascinating, sometimes delightful, historical tidbits. It is written for an educated general audience.
In recent years, the justices of the Supreme Court have ruled definitively on such issues as abortion, school prayer, and military tribunals in the war on terror. They decided one of American history’s most contested presidential elections. Yet for all their power, the justices never face election and hold their offices for life. This combination of influence and apparent unaccountability has led many to complain that there is something illegitimate—even undemocratic—about judicial authority.
In The Will of the People, Barry Friedman challenges that claim by showing that the Court has always been subject to a higher power: the American public.…
As a social historian, I have helped to direct scholarly attention to the history of family life and helped to create the field of history of children. I'm the editor of a pioneering three-volume encyclopedia on the history of children and the author of six books and editor of three others based on extensive research about children’s experiences in the United States and the Western world. I've also been widely interviewed on the subject. The End of American Childhood brings this research experience and broad expertise in the field to a subject of urgent interest to today’s parents who want to understand how their own views about children and their child-rearing perspectives are grounded historically.
Sociologist Viviana Zelizer began the research quest to understand modern American childhood and policies toward children by proposing that how we understand the value of children changed radically in the late nineteenth century.
By redefining children as emotional assets rather than as economic investments—as objects of love and caretaking, rather than contributors to the household and public economy—American parenting was revolutionized.
This fundamental transformation offers the basis for understanding policy changes, a new commitment to schooling, and other efforts on behalf of children that took root at the turn of the twentieth century.
In this landmark book, sociologist Viviana Zelizer traces the emergence of the modern child, at once economically "useless" and emotionally "priceless," from the late 1800s to the 1930s. Having established laws removing many children from the marketplace, turn-of-the-century America was discovering new, sentimental criteria to determine a child's monetary worth. The heightened emotional status of children resulted, for example, in the legal justification of children's life insurance policies and in large damages awarded by courts to their parents in the event of death. A vivid account of changing attitudes toward children, this book dramatically illustrates the limits of economic views…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
I started my career teaching high school. I attended amazing professional development institutes, where scholars showed me how the stories I’d learned and then taught to my own students were so oversimplified that they had become factually incorrect. I was hooked. I kept wondering what else I’d gotten wrong. I earned a Ph.D. in modern US History with specialties in women’s and gender history and war and society, and now I’m an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University and the Coordinator of ISU’s Social Studies Education Program. I focus on historical complexity and human motivations because they are the key to understanding change.
This book is probably the first scholarly book that blew my mind and pushed me to want to know what else I had always gotten wrong.
Where, like most people I know, I had always thought that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was just a thing that happened because of “war,” this book made it clear why it happened.
The US and Japan, both diplomats and everyday people, did not choose to understand each other. Different world views, different assumptions, and plain old racism led the US and Japan into a horrific, bloody conflict with long-lasting consequences.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.”
In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.”
Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret…
Spending my childhood in Nazi Germany, the nature and the horrific consequences of Nazi ideology have occupied me as a student of German history and later as a teacher of intellectual and literary history. In 1933 Car Schmitt opted to support the Nazis. While he was banned from the public sohere in post-war Germany, his ideas remained influential on the far right and the far left, fortunately without significantly impacting the democratic reconstruction of West Germany. It was the growing international visibility of Schmitt’s writings that became my personal concern after 2000. In particular, Schmitt’s increasing influence in the United States energized me to reread and respond to his writings.
Most of us are familiar with or have at least heard of the novelist Thomas Mann, the author of Buddenbrooks (for which he received the Nobel Prize) and The Magic Mountain. He is less remembered for his important work as a public intellectual, as a formidable defender of liberal democracy and bold critic of Nazism during World War II. Tobias Boes’s lucid and well-researched study focuses on Mann’s critical contributions to the public discourse in the United States from 1938 until 1948, first as a refugee and later as an American citizen, through public lectures, numerous essays, and radio addresses. This is the fascinating story of a writer who started out as a German conservative and turned into Hitler’s most vocal critic. Thomas Mann’s War is a timely book, reminding us of what it meant to stand up for democracy and defeat Fascism in the 1940s and what it takes…
In Thomas Mann's War, Tobias Boes traces how the acclaimed and bestselling author became one of America's most prominent anti-fascists and the spokesperson for a German cultural ideal that Nazism had perverted.
Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in literature and author of such world-renowned novels as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, began his self-imposed exile in the United States in 1938, having fled his native Germany in the wake of Nazi persecution and public burnings of his books. Mann embraced his role as a public intellectual, deftly using his literary reputation and his connections in an increasingly…
I grew up in a small town, with a barn behind our house and an orchard across the street; nature was always part of my life. What made me more conscious of this was three canoe trips in the Quetico wilderness with my Boy Scout troop, where we saw loons, bears, and clear, sparkling lakes. I later became a political science professor, but I always hiked and camped, and eventually helped start an environmental studies program to share my passion with my students. I also learned about the growing threats we face from environmental destruction. These books helped shape my understanding of the problem and how to solve it.
I loved this book because it showed me the importance of grassroots organizing. The people in Appalachia were horrified by what strip mining was doing to their farms and communities, but couldn’t get help from their elected officials.
Even the big environmental interest groups were more interested in getting an agreement than in stopping the destruction of the land. They got some of what they wanted, but are still fighting to stop strip mining.
Surface coal mining has had a dramatic impact on the Appalachian economy and ecology since World War II, exacerbating the region's chronic unemployment and destroying much of its natural environment. Here, Chad Montrie examines the twentieth-century movement to outlaw surface mining in Appalachia, tracing popular opposition to the industry from its inception through the growth of a militant movement that engaged in acts of civil disobedience and industrial sabotage. Both comprehensive and comparative, To Save the Land and People chronicles the story of surface mining opposition in the whole region, from Pennsylvania to Alabama. Though many accounts of environmental activism…
Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink
by
Ethan Chorin,
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
I’m a professional explainer of Russia. For over 20 years I’ve been studying the country and trying to understand what makes it (and its leaders and people) so intent on attacking those around it and perceived adversaries further afield. That’s never been more important to understand than today when Ukraine and its soldiers are the only thing preventing Russia from once again rampaging across Europe. These books are ones that have helped me understand one part or several parts of the Russia problem, and I think they’ll be helpful for anybody else who wants to, too.
Another question I permanently get asked as a professional Russia-watcher is what Russia’s own population really thinks about its war on Ukraine and the atrocities committed there.
Surely, people think, if only ordinary Russians knew the truth about what their troops are doing in this unprovoked war of aggression – and how many of them are dying alongside innocent Ukrainian civilians and children – they would turn against the war. That’s why Jade McGlynn’s Russia’s War is such an important book.
Jade spent years researching Russian propaganda, its twisting of history, and the effect on what Russians think – and found, disturbingly, that yes, ordinary Russians really do support the horrors inflicted on Ukraine. It’s a disturbing read but another vital one for understanding what it will take to stop Russia.
In the early hours of 24 February 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war - one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe.
Russia analyst Jade McGlynn takes us on a journey into this parallel military and political universe to reveal the sometimes monstrous, sometimes misconstrued attitudes behind Russian majority backing for the invasion. Drawing on media analysis and interviews with ordinary citizens, officials and foreign-policy elites in Russia and Ukraine, McGlynn…
