You will define Islamophobia as a complex set of ideas and practices incompatible with the challenge of tolerance, a characteristic of the 21st century believed to rest on the recognition of the urgency of multiculturalism and pluralism.

You must support your definition with very specific ideas and practices evident in Ranya Tabari Idilby’s Burqas, Baseball, and Apple Pie that are irreconcilable with pluralism and multiculturalism.

Next, you will discuss how to combat Islamophobia in the context of the urgent call for tolerance. This call is usefully delineated in Brown’s book “A new Introduction to Islam”, chapter 17: “Islam in the Twenty-First Century”, and Kalin’s, “Islamophobia and the Limits of Multiculturalism”. Argue for a strategy in the light of their views to overcome Muslim difficulties in the West and to bring about what Idilby calls “American (or Western rather) Islam.”

In this endeavor, you need to address the following questions:

1) What traditions in historical Islam suggest that it is a religion capable of handling diversity?

2) Do Islamic liberalism and Islamic feminism hold any promise of fostering this American Islam (Islam in the West)? You will want to support your answer with insights gained from Brown and Idilby. In Chapter 17, Browns reviews seminal books within these two scholarly pursuit as represented by the following scholars and their works: Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite; Amina Wadud, Quran and Women; Fazul al-Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition; and Khalid Abu al-Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name. Idilby finds the work of Abdolkarim Soroush relevant to indigenizing Islam in the West.

3) Most importantly: Is the West prepared to engage multiculturalism and pluralism in good faith? Is the concept of the “clash of civilizations,” popularized by Samuel Huntington, conducive to plurality (Idilby begins her discussion of this on page 196). If not, why?