the extent to which Islam shapes intellectual practice in primarily Muslim societies and to give Islamic cultures a more prominent role in postcolonial and multicultural theories. The global furor over the Rushdie affair did more than any recent event to bring postcolonial fiction into the mainstream; yet, with very few exceptions, postcolonial critics never seriously examined the place of Islam in debates of multiculturalism. The challenge of including Islamic subjectivities and cultural epistemologies into a world of equal differences has been left untheorized, probably because the religious imaginary is dismissed ahead of time as either conservative or unredeemable. Yet I don't think people can step out of their cultures (notwithstanding the much vaunted hybridizing effects of the market place) and reconstitute themselves in an entirely new vocabulary. My defense of Muslims' rights to their identities and memories is motivated exclusively by my strong belief that only secure, progressive, indigenous traditions, cultivated over long spans of time, can sustain meaningful global diversities and create effective alternatives to the deculturing effects of capitalism.
-Anouar Majid, Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World, p. vii
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