Islam and Controversy (PDF)

all-important contextual power relations. In an era when 'liberals' from both the right and left have come together to denounce Islam as an intolerant force and a geopolitical enemy, Mondal reveals how professions of liberal reasonableness and neutrality mask an absolutist cultural supremacism wherein the 'right to offend' is separated from its consequences. He demonstrates how the central traditions of Western liberalism are each blind to the power relations which mark all societies and which take a particularly intractable form in multicultural ones.

At the heart of the book is the question, what is free speech for? Is it an end in itself? Or does it serve a higher purpose, such as safeguarding democracy, as is often claimed? In a brilliant, forensic analysis of some of the rhetoric around freedom and offence, Mondal asks how notions of a good and fair society can possibly be furthered by the deliberate denigration of a portion of its membership. Recognising ethics as central to the proper exercise of rights, he calls for an 'ethics of propriety' in writing and reading where mutual obligations are acknowledged. Through detailed readings of controversies such as the Satanic Verses affair, the Danish cartoon controversy, the outrage caused by the novel, The Jewel of Medina, and comedy films which have flirted with the sacred and the blasphemous, Mondal charts the dead-ends reached by conventional interpretations, while suggesting more fruitful ways to write, read and understand. This book is an important clarion call for care and sensitivity in our fraught multicultural world, while still emphasising a critical robustness that makes demands of all those who engage in public utterance." Peter Morey, Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies, University of East London, UK

Mentioned in the Times Higher Education, 13th January 2015: "[N]ovelist and journalist [Will Self] was speaking at the launch of Islam and Controversy, a new book by fellow Brunel scholar Anshuman Mondal. Coming less than a week after the massacre of journalists and cartoonists at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France, the book launch was dominated by questions about press freedom in relation to Islam."

Mentioned in the Times Higher Education, 5th February 2015: "Drawing on case studies ranging from cartoon images of Muhammad published in a Danish magazine to reactions to Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, Mondal argues forcibly in Islam and Controversy that the right to freedom of speech comes with responsibilities. 'The hard question is not whether you have the right to do that of course you do but is that the right thing to do?' he argues."