Open AccessCosmopolitan Islamic Identity and Thought
Author(s) -
Christopher Cutting
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
american journal of islam and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2690-3741
pISSN - 2690-3733
DOI - 10.35632/ajis.v25i1.1509
Subject(s) - cosmopolitanism , islam , orientalism , identity (music) , transparency (behavior) , sociology , law , postmodernism , metaphor , history , media studies , aesthetics , political science , philosophy , epistemology , theology , archaeology , politics
The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) held its Third AnnualCanadian Regional Conference on “Cosmopolitan Islamic Identity andThought” on 24 November 2007 at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo,ON). Opening the event with her keynote address, “Consumption andCosmopolitanism: The Veil, The Body, The Law,” Reina Lewis (Universityof East London) pointed out that in British culture, cosmopolitanism has notyet appropriated the Muslim veil as a desirable object of fashion consumptionfor the majority society, although Muslim women have appropriatedand indigenized some western fashions. However, this does not prevent themajority society from making interpretive “readings” of the veil relative todominant fashion cultures and participating in neo-Orientalist discourses.Despite the (shockingly) recent British legislation of 2003 that finallyexplicitly forbids religious discrimination, some recent prominent publicdiscourse on the veil in Britain has turned its attention to the issue of faceveiling as a potentially insidious fashion practice, arguing essentially (anduncritically) that visibility is equal to transparency, integrity, and truth ...