Dadabhoy, Ambereen. "Islam and the West." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/islam-and-the-west. [Date accessed].

Islam and the West

The fictive binary that remains in the 21st century

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Ambereen Dadabhoy
Harvey Mudd College

The supposed supremacy of “Western” civilization is a fiction that has its roots in the premodern past. A major requirement of the development of this narrative is an intentional severance of the “West” from the culture and influence of the “East.” The east, in this construct, is being represented by Islam and Muslim people. Guiding students through early modern texts reveals the entangled relationship between Christian Europe and Muslim culture and can help our students understand how the fictions we live with today were developed and maintained.

Further learning

Reading list

Staging Islam and Shakespeare

Ambereen Dadabhoy’s course asks students to investigate how individual, cultural, and political Muslim identity is manufactured in Shakespeare’s canon.

Ambereen Dadabhoy
Video

Othello and the epithet of "Moor"

Ambereen Dadabhoy uses Shakespeare’s Othello as a text through which students can think about contemporary Islamophobia.

Ambereen Dadabhoy
Video

Early modern Orientalism

Dadabhoy's course asks students to read  premodern texts to deconstruct enduring fictions about Islam and Muslims across time and place.

Ambereen Dadabhoy

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Syllabus

Citizenships ancient and modern

This course, developed by Dan-el Padilla Peralta, maps a history of citizenship as a concept and an institution from the ancient Mediterranean world to the 21st century.

This course, developed by Dan-el Padilla Peralta, maps a history of citizenship as concept and institution from the ancient Mediterranean world to the 21st century.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta
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Race-making in the Trans-Saharan slave trade

Embedding West Africa in broader transregional maps, Whiskey reviews the history of anti-Blackness in premodern Muslim societies while charting Ahmad Baba’s interventions in longstanding debates.

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Selected annotated bibliography