Islam in liberalism

In popular imagination, Islam is often associated with words like oppression, totalitarianism, fanaticism, cruelty, hatred of women, and hatred of homosexuality, while the supposed opposites are Christianity, the West, liberalism, individualism, freedom, citizenship, and democracy. In the most troubling opinions, it is said that the cherished Western values — freedom, equality, and tolerance — are under threat from Islam worldwide. Joseph Massad's Islam in Liberalism explores what Islam has become in today's world, with full attention to the proliferation of its meanings and interpretations. It seeks to understand how concerns about tyranny, intolerance, hatred of women, and homophobia, which appear in Middle Eastern politics, reflect on Islam itself. Massad shows that through this projection, Europe appears as democratic rights, tolerant, feminist, supportive of gays, bisexuals, and gender non-conforming individuals — or in short, free from Islam. Massad documents the Christian and liberal idea that we must spread democracy, women's rights, sexual rights, tolerance, and equality, and even treatments to heal Muslims from their non-European, non-Christian, and non-liberal ways. Along the way, it sheds light on a variety of controversial topics, Islam in Liberalism is an unwavering critique of Western and liberal assumptions that Europe and Western America blindly present as a kind of salvation for an uninformed Islam.