Joseph A Massad Knihy

"In the popular imagination, Islam is often associated with words like oppression, totalitarianism, intolerance, cruelty, misogyny, and homophobia, while its presumed antonyms are Christianity, the West, liberalism, individualism, freedom, citizenship, and democracy. In the most alarmist views, the West's most cherished values -- freedom, equality, and tolerance -- are said to be endangered by Islam worldwide. Joseph Massad's Islam in Liberalism explores what Islam has become in today's world, seeking to understand how anxieties about tyranny, intolerance, misogyny, and homophobia, seen in the politics of the Middle East, are projected onto Islam itself. Massad shows that through this projection, Europe emerges as democratic and tolerant, feminist, and pro-LGBT rights -- or, in short, Islam-free. Islam in Liberalism is an unflinching critique of Western assumptions and of the liberalism that Europe and Euro-America blindly present as a type of salvation to an assumingly unenlightened Islam."--Cover

Sexual desire has long played a key role in Western judgments about the value of Arab civilization. This title reveals the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. It assembles a compendium of Arabic writing to chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab notions of cultural heritage and civilization.