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Islam, Muslims, and the U.S.: Essays on Religion and Politics (India, Global Media Publications, 2004).

Contents: Introduction; 1: Muslims and the US after 9/11; 2: Islam, women and equality; 3: Religion and terror; 4: Understanding Islam.

"9/11 marks a turning point in the public discourses on Islam in the West and in the relationship between 'Islam and the West'. Along with the US Wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, sweeping demonizations of Islam in the media, hate crimes against Muslims living in the US., there also emerged an interest on the part not only of non-Muslims, but Muslims as well, in learning about Islam.

The author discusses at length the widening schism between Muslims and the west and the way the US has taken advantage of the deadly 9/11 strikes to take its war on terror to Muslim lands. She also discusses the marginalisation of Muslim women in Muslim societies around the world and goes on to say that for the patriarchal Muslim society the other is not the 'western infidel' but the Muslim woman, while for westerners, the other has been Islam since early medieval times, much before the advent of any Bin Laden."

“Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (University of Texas Press, 2002).

Does Islam call for the oppression of women? Non- Muslims point to the subjugation of women that occurs in many Muslim countries, especially those that claim to be "Islamic," while many Muslims read the Qur'an in ways that seem to justify sexual oppression, inequality, and patriarchy. Taking a wholly different view, Asma Barlas develops a believer's reading of the Qur'an that demonstrates the radically egalitarian and antipatriarchal nature of its teachings.

Beginning with a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, Barlas shows how Muslims came to read inequality and patriarchy into the Qur'an to justify existing religious and social structures and demonstrates that the patriarchal meanings ascribed to the Qur'an are a function of who has read it, how, and in what contexts. She goes on to reread the Qur'an's position on a variety of issues in order to argue that its teachings do not support patriarchy. To the contrary, Barlas convincingly asserts that the Qur'an affirms the complete equality of the sexes, thereby offering an opportunity to theorize radical sexual equality from within the framework of its teachings. This new view takes readers into the heart of Islamic teachings on women, gender, and patriarchy, allowing them to understand Islam through its most sacred scripture, rather than through Muslim cultural practices or Western media stereotypes.

Democracy, Nationalism, and Communalism: The Colonial Legacy in South Asia (Westview Press, 1995)

Focuses on the legacies of British colonial rule as a way to understand contemporary South Asian politics, specially the history of military rule in Pakistan and electoral democracy in India. (Can be read on-line at Questia; click on the title to be directed there.)

Contents: Preface; 1: Introduction; 2: Democracy, Nationalism, and Communalism: A Gramscian Approach; 3: The Colonial State; 4: Colonial Hindu Politics; 5: Colonial Muslim Politics, 6: Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; About the Book and Author; Index

Re-Understanding Islam: A double critique

(Spinoza lectures delivered at the University of Amsterdam), Amsterdam: van Gorcum

In these two lectures, Barlas offers a double critique: of Muslims for reading sexual inequality and oppression into Islam’s scripture, the Qur’an, and a critique of “the West” for failing to develop morally relevant ways of speaking about Islam and Muslims.

In ‘“Believing Women” in Islam: Between secular and religious politics and theology’ she considers some approaches to the so-called anti-women verses in the Qur’an (and to the Qur’an generally) that are putatively liberating for Muslim women. These approaches range from saying an outright “no” to the Qur’an to saying an unqualified yes to it. Barlas explores, and also critiques, the religious and political terrain that lies between this “no” and “yes” as a way to explain what is at stake for Muslims in different approaches to the text. While she does not build toward one conclusion, she illustrates both the problems with the secular Muslim politics of saying no to the Qur’an and the liberatory possibilities inherent in the scripture providing one reads it in light of certain theological and hermeneutic principles.

‘Would Spinoza Understand Me? Europe, Islam, and the Mirror of Difference’. Barlas asks this question as a point of departure for arguing that the ideological template that the West uses to make sense of Islam impedes thinking about it in morally relevant ways, hence also feeling solidarity with Muslims. It does this by treating difference itself as wild and oppositional, by re-inscribing a long history of Western violence against Muslims as discrete and episodic thus masking its continuities, and by reframing many Western transgressions as acts of reverse violence by Muslims thus transforming Westerners into victims. She substanitiates her critique by tracing three tropes about Islam/Muslims from medieval European Biblical exegesis to contemporary secular discourses.

Re-understanding Islam: a Double Critique

Spinoza Lecture I
“Believing Women” in Islam: Between Secular and Religious Politics and Theology 9
Framework of this lecture 11
Why say no?
Why say yes?
Secular fundamentalisms
Saying no, saying yes

Spinoza Lecture II
Would Spinoza Understand Me? Europe, Islam, and the Mirror of Difference
Framework of this lecture
Three traveling tropes
Repetition/Repression and other questions