Beyond Tolerance: Pluralism's History in Islam

This project aims to spend the 2012-13 academic year undertaking intensive historical and ethnographic readings on how Muslims negotiate pluralism through postcolonial disruptions, nation-state formations, and emergent urban cosmopolitanisms. This project will be divided into three broad themes, each informing important questions on the making and unmaking of Islam’s roots of “monotheistic pluralism”. Theme one will be a historical study of the ebbs and flows of pluralism as a key concept of Islamic theology and its reformulations towards cultures of exclusivities through Arabization, tribalism, the disjuncture of the Mongol invasion, and ultimately colonialism. The second theme will be an examination of several case studies, from Indonesia, Central Asia, and Europe on cultural-religious hybridity and the making of a “civic Islam”. The final theme will focus on Muslim cosmopolitanism in global cities, such as Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, and London.