ABSTRACT
What does it mean to ‘be Muslim’, or to adhere to the Islamic religion? The idea of who the Muslim is has taken on special significance since 11 September 2001, when being Muslim became a proxy for a whole host of concerns about security, terrorism, and the law-abiding citizen. There is a certain irony in writing a chapter on the Islamic legal approach to belonging (i.e. being Muslim) when that very legal tradition is invoked in a politics of fear (e.g. ‘Shari‘a creep’), and informs exclusionary policies of policing in North America and Europe. Yet indulging that irony and interrogating it for what it reveals – not only about Islamic law but also about the way the ‘Islamic’ is cast by policy makers – reveals the subversive potential of the comparative project that animates this volume.
