Announcing the Study Contemporary Muslim Lives Research Hub at Macquarie University

As director, I am pleased to inform you that today the website for the Study Contemporary Muslim Lives Research Hub at Macquarie University was officially launched.
Study Contemporary Muslim Lives (SCML) is a research hub based within the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University. It undertakes research on social, cultural and political aspects of contemporary Muslim communities and societies and is committed to the advancement of social scientific understandings of Muslim lives in different social and geographical contexts through excellent empirical research, scholarly publications, and active postgraduate programs.
SCML also has, among other activities, a Visiting Scholar Program. SCML welcomes applications from academics who want to carry out research as visiting scholars at Macquarie University. Visitors participate in and enrich the research-intensive and vibrant communal life of the Research Hub, which is part of the Department of Anthropology.

Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life

As Founding Editor, I am pleased to bring to you this inaugural issue of Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, the first social scientific journal devoted to the study of contemporary Muslims and their communities and societies. Tragic events have marked the beginning of this century, globally affecting Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The escalation of violence in the aftermath of 9/11, the unprecedented number of conflicts simultaneously affecting Muslim countries, as well as political attempts to redraw social ‘new orders,’ have changed how people (Muslim and non) speak, discuss, refer, diatribe, stereotype, defend, vilify, exalt, orientalise, define, represent, study, live, re-think, conserve, reform, reject, and revert to Islam. At the same time, it is not so rare to come across more or less direct contentions that Muslims are uncritical slaves to a fixed and unchanging set of religious dogma. In other words, Muslims are assumed to believe, behave, act, think, argue, and develop their identity as Muslims despite their disparate heritages, ethnicities, nationalities, experiences, gender, sexual orientations, and, last but not least, individually unique minds. Yet Islam can only exist as part of processes, as part of interpretations, culturally shaped and affected by our shared condition of being humans.

Muslim Anti-Semitism?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, has called (in translation) for
Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Recently, at the end of one of my
lectures, a student stopped me and asked whether we could define Ahmadinejad’s
statement as an example of Muslim anti-Semitism. He argued that there are similarities
between what he defined as “Muslim anti-Semitism” and Nazi anti-Semitism.
Indeed, it is not difficult to find some Arab political groups and mass media
who use anti-Zionist rhetoric as ludicrous as the infamous hoax known as the
“Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” There is plenty of anti-Semitism, but at what
point should it be called “Muslim”?