Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity, and Muslims in Britain (Contradictions of Modernity) - Hardcover

Modood, Tariq

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081664487X ISBN 13: 9780816644872

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 2005

Synopsis

If, as W. E. B. Du Bois observed, the problem of the twentieth century was the problem of the color line, the problem of the twenty-first century may be one that reaches back to premodernity: religious identity. Even before 9/11 it was becoming evident that Muslims, not blacks, were perceived as the "other" most threatening to Western society, even in a relatively pluralist nation such as Britain. In Multcultural Politics, one of the most respected thinkers on ethnic minority experience in England describes how what began as a black-white division has been complicated by cultural racism, Islamophobia, and a challenge to secular modernity. Tariq Modood explores the tensions that have risen among advocates of multiculturalism as Muslims assert themselves to catch up with existing equality agendas while challenging some of the secularist, liberal, and feminist assumptions of multiculturalists. If an Islam-West divide is to be avoided in our time, Modood suggests, then Britain, with its relatively successful ethnic pluralism and its easygoing attitude toward religion, will provide a particularly revealing case and promising site for understanding.

About this title

About the Author

Craig Calhoun is president of the Social Science Research Council and professor of sociology and history at New York University. He is the editor or coeditor of several volumes and author of Nationalism and Neither Gods nor Emperors.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081664487X
• ISBN 13: 9780816644872
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 260