Short description
Looks at the legal and social responses to Muslims in the West. This work examines two interlinked ideas within the context of the 'war on terror' - first, the denial of a common bond of humanity between people of European descent and those of different origins; and, secound, the impact that that denial has on the idea of common law.
Long description
Three stereotypical figures have come to represent the 'war on terror' - the 'dangerous' Muslim man, the 'imperilled' Muslim woman, and the 'civilized' European who anchors them. Casting Out explores the use of these figures in the formation of a story about a family of civilized white nations obliged to use force and terror to defend itself against a menacing cultural Other. It argues that this myth is promoted to justify the expulsion of Muslims from the political community, a process that takes the form of stigmatization, surveillance, incarceration, torture, and bombing.In this timely and controversial work Sherene H. Razack looks at contemporary legal and social responses to Muslims in the West and places them in historical context. To historicize the legal projects that she discusses, Razack looks at the society that allows for the institution of exclusionary practices, a society bent on determining who belongs and who does not. Casting Out examines two interlinked ideas within the context of the 'war on terror' - first, the denial of a common bond of humanity between people of European descent and those of different origins; and, second, the impact that that denial has on the idea of common law.This is a study of great immediacy that uses the treatment of security detainees in the West, the flaunting of rights of Muslim populations in the name of protecting Muslim women, and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib to show that the framing of Western-Muslim relations is actually part of a racial construct of long standing.