At the start of his outstanding new book, Constituting Religion, Tamir Moustafa explains that initially his ambition extended beyond Malaysia…
Constituting religion: From South Asia to Malaysia
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
Conversion and demographic anxieties
For readers interested in Islamic law and society, and especially for those who might not have thought that Malaysia is…
Judges, lawyers, politics: Religion still divides Malaysia
Constituting Religion is an immensely valuable work, as it shows the extent to which the Malaysian state apparatus has contributed…
Constituting religion, contesting constitutional identity
It is a truth universally acknowledged that religion, in the possession of man, causes division, conflict, and even war. Well,…
Why religion is different: Five contradictions of religion in law
Tamir Moustafa’s Constituting Religion incisively reveals both the enduring and disturbing impacts of constitutional law on the ways Malaysians imagine…
The religion trap
There is a trap in the study of religion and politics. All traditions are equally susceptible to it, but as…
Constituting Religion—A reply
From the start, this project was both exhilarating and humbling because the co-constitutive dynamics of law, religion, politics, and society…
The Universal Enemy—An introduction
In the introductory essay to this forum on his book, Darryl Li describes how instead of positing jihad or Muslims…
Decolonizing universalisms
Darryl Li’s book takes the experience of multiple projects of humanitarian interventions in Bosnia during the 1990s as a laboratory…
Looking imperial universalism in the eye
In his study of the jihad in Bosnia, Darryl Li performs what might be considered a “radical” move of his…