Roxanne L. Euben

Extract

The attacks on September 11, 2001 released a barrage of public rhetoric characterizing the 19 Muslim hijackers as evil fanatics “in love with death” and animated by a “hatred of freedom.” A spate of scholarship, op-ed articles, and policy papers devoted to anatomizing the “problems with Islam”—a propensity for violence and authoritarianism, an archaic conflation of religious and political domains, the pent-up rage of Muslims “left behind” by modernity—soon flooded airwaves, newspapers, and bookstores, in many cases recycling arguments several decades and even centuries old. Counterclaims about the inherently peaceful and tolerant essence of Islam quickly followed, and a very peculiar American public debate about Islamic authenticity was born.Roxanne L. Euben is the Jane Bishop '51 Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. The author is grateful to Lawrie Balfour, Michael Munger, and Keith Topper for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay.