Baitun Noor Mosque, Calgary, Canada
M. A. Muqtedar Khan
University of Delaware
Symposium on The State of Muslim Minorities in Contemporary Democracies
Muqtedar Khan (Ed.)
International Institute of Islamic Thought | June 2021
On June 6th, 2021, a Canadian man killed a Muslim family of four in a premeditated Islamophobic attack. This was not the first such attack in Canada in recent times . On January 29th, 2017 a man entered the Islamic Center in Quebec City and killed six Muslim worshippers and wounded five . An Australian white supremacist killed 51 Muslims and wounded forty others in a shooting spree in Christchurch’s mosques on March 15, 2019 . New Zealand and Canada are not badly governed intolerant states, they are ranked in the top five democracies in the World . These attacks have underscored the rise of white ethno-nationalism and Islamophobia in Western democracies . While the plight of Muslims in states like Myanmar, Israel and China are well known what has got lesser attention is the not so good governance of Muslims in advance democracies.
In this third Symposium on Islam and Good Governance titled “The State of Muslim Minorities in Contemporary Democracies”, we bring you five peer reviewed essays by world renowned scholars that assess the state of Muslims in UK, USA, India, France, and Australia. Professors Tariq Modood and Thomas Sealy of the University of Bristol examine how Muslim Minority is governed in the United Kingdom. Professor John L. Esposito of Georgetown University reviews the state of American Muslims, their achievements, and the challenges they face. Dr. Jocelyne Cesari documents the plight of Muslims of France and the renewed measures by the Republic that endanger the rights and religious freedoms of Muslim in France. Prof. Muqtedar Khan and doctoral candidate Rifat Lutful of the University of Delaware elaborate the steady encroachment on Indian Muslims’ rights and freedoms as Hindu Nationalism gains more ground in the world’s largest democracy, India. The Symposium also includes a select annotated bibliography of Islam in the five countries covered by the symposium, carefully selected and compiled by James Korman of the University of Delaware.