“Diasporic” Muslims, “Minoritarian” Islam, and Modern Democratic Citizenship: Negotiating Accommodation and Integration

Abstract

A central challenge to Australian multiculturalism is presented by the failure of many Australian Muslims, individually and within certain social groups and enclaves, to achieve integration within broader Australian society. Yet, understanding this failure and national predicament is not achievable by recourse to what we may call conventional postcolonialist “multicultural theory.” Fathoming this failure and the obstacles to Muslim integration does not require recourse—these days, habitual and often reflexive recourse—to the generalities of contemporary postmodernist orthodoxy, but attention to the historical specificity of Islamic society and sociability. It requires us, no more and no less, to take Islamic history seriously.