| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
As the Moroccan American scholar Anouar Majid reminds us on the first page of his latest book, Islam and America: Building a Future without Prejudice, we are drowning in information about the relationships of Muslims and the West but are not yet being rescued by this expanding corpus. This and his earlier We are All Moors come as close to any books I have read recently that hold out promise for such a rescue, at least in the forward-thinking rhetoric that outlasts the general effluvium of political punditry. Majid, who came to the United States in 1983, is currently director of the Center for Global Humanities at the University of New England in Portland, Maine. His training in literature has well prepared him to probe novels, poems, travel accounts and political manifestos for past reflections on how Islam has been perceived since the founding of the United States. His grasp of American history and a
wide range of historical sources consulted is a welcome contribution to a field where partisan political books stock major bookstores and reflective academic studies are read almost exclusively by a small circle of fellow academics. Both of these books deserve a wider readership that I fear they will not receive in the flood of punditry on Islam vs. the West
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