Sharia and Its Discontents

Sherene Razack’s most recent book, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics, contributes to the growing critical scholarship about the sociopolitical meaning of Islam in liberal western states. Razack addresses issues ranging from prison camps and security certificates, to the imperialist potential of feminism and the sharia debate in Ontario. She offers a perceptive critique of the ways in which the political discourse about Islam provokes a culture of fear where we “use force and terror” to defend ourselves from a “menacing cultural Other,” and thereby contribute to the justification of empire. The “we” in this narrative is not a multiculturally governed Canada, Europe or United States, but very much the collectivity of "white nations" that base their use of law on racialized presumptions, which normalize the casting out of Muslims from political society.

Razack writes passionately about three stereotypes that facilitate the...