Anouar Majid, is, according to Cornel West, one of a few "towering Islamic intellectuals," a leading figure in examining the place of religion and Islam in postcolonial theory and the culture of globalization. His work has been profiled by Bill Moyers in the Bill Moyers Journal and by Al Jazeera's Date in Exile program. He has been interviewed by several media organizations nationally and internationally. Born in Tangier, Morocco in 1960, he is a currently a professor of English at the University of New England.
His essay "Can the Postcolonial Critic Speak? Orientalism and the Rushdie Affair," published in Cultural Critique as its lead article, has become required reading on Salman Rushdie and is taught at universities across the English-speaking world. It is listed as one of the major articles of 1995 in Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 5; it has also been cited in works on Edward Said and journals of world history.
The themes of Islam and human rights explored in that article were further elaborated in "The Politics of Feminism in Islam," published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, considered the premier journal of theoretical feminism. Listed in the International Bibliography of Political Science (1998) and the International Bibliography of Sociology (1998), this seminal article has been assigned in many courses and discussed in several feminist circles around the country. The article was republished in a book titled Islam, Politics, Gender by the University of Chicago Press (2002).
Majid's book Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World, published by Duke University Press in 2000, was recommended by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as a book for understanding the context of 9/11. After noting that "the book draws upon an impressive range of scholarship" and describing it as "learned, lucid, and compelling," the online journal Jouvert wrote that "it poses a considerable challenge to scholars in a number of fields to reexamine some of their basic assumptions about modernity." The journal Genre ended its long review of the book by concluding that "the study of literature and world affairs will be significantly advanced if this book manages to set new trends." NWSA, the journal of the National Women's Studies Association, wrote that Majid "has written a masterful and passionate work" that challenges readers to seek alternatives to the current global system. The Journal of International Migration and Integration wrote that Majid “has some important things to say that scholars on all sides [Islam and West] should consider” and that the author “succeeds in opening up questions with which scholars, policy-makers and intercultural researches should be conversant.” The American Anthropologist wrote that, in the course of making his argument, Majid “displays a wide intellectual range that crosses disciplinary boundaries and draws on Anglo-American, French, and Arab scholarship.” Unveiling Traditions, it continued, “is a passionately argued, academically grounded work about the ongoing crisis of Muslim societies faced with new global realities engendered by world capitalism and the cultural hegemony of the West.”
The international journal of postcolonial studies, Interventions, began its review by saying that the book “could not be more timely, appearing almost prophetically as a voice of both urgency and moderation in its vision of a progressivist Islam. . . . It cannot be emphasized enough how salient this work is, how auspicious its defense of a moderate and humanist vision of Islam has turned out to be." The book, Interventions continued, is “of impressive scope” and “might be read in dialogue with (or against?)” Hardt and Negri’s Empire. In his book, Democracy Matters (2004), Cornel West describes the author as one of a few "towering Islamic intellectuals" and the book as a “superb text” and a “must-read.”
In 2004, Stanford University Press published Majid's Freedom and Orthodoxy: Islam and Difference in the Post-Andalusian Age, a book that looks at half a millennium of history and cultural contact to trace the evolving roots of discord and extremism. It was listed by the British magazine New Statesman as one of the best books of 2004. The Middle East Journal wrote that "Majid presents an all-encompassing view of significant aspects of history and suggests new conceptual avenues that may enable the world... to move toward peace and harmony," while the American Historical Review commented that Freedom and Orthodoxy is "an important alternative to... universalist ideologies, whether Euro-American or militant Islam." Al Jadid magazine wrote that the book is "extremely useful in presenting a historical perspective on the present situation in the Middle East" and that "it presents a wealth of information toward understanding the historical and ideological bases of the modern capitalist state, especially in the United States." Itinerario, the official journal of the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction, began its review thus: “This wide-ranging work gallops across time and space in an urgent plea for a new celebration of ‘provincialism’ as humanity’s only hope.” It is a “masterful synthesis drawing on a breadth of scholarship by historians, theorists, and literary critics as well as primary literary texts.”
The review concludes by saying that “this is an important work that calls for further engagement and serious contemplation.” Describing the book as "unassailably profound," the Muslim World wrote: "This is an impressive book, written by an unrelenting scholar," and that "it provides a refreshing break from the monotonous and fruitless attempt by cultures and civilisations to show how better they are." The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences stated that "Freedom and Orthodoxy is a brilliant apology for dismantling the hegemonic and false pretensions of western universalisms in favor of a world in which local groups (e.g., religious communities, regions, and nations) are allowed to construe their own strategies for cultural, political, and economic flourishing."
Majid's new book, A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America was the University of Minnesota Press's lead title of the Fall 2007 season. It went into a second printing in less than three months.The book has been praised for its impartial analysis of both Islam and American culture. Foreword Magazine wrote that “open-minded readers will gain many insights from Islamic and early American ‘heretics’ bestowing a rich appreciation for the value that voices of dissent bring to any society.” Multicultural Review noted that “issues are addressed in an even-handed manner, all the more remarkable given the politically charged nature of interpretations of events and situations taking place in the past decades," while Digest of Middle East Studies described A Call for Heresy as "analytically fruitful and handles works in Arabic and French adeptly. The book should be useful to an audience in need of less cantankerous and more productive ways to look at the ground that Islam and the West share.”
In 2009, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the royal decree to expel the Moriscos from Spain, Majid published We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities to recast the history of all minorities in the West in light of the medieval clash of Christianity and Islam in Europe and, particularly, in the Iberian peninsula. The Library Journal commented that Majid "has now written an alternative history of European xenophobia that will stimulate and provoke readers across the political spectrum" and that his "work will generate criticism and conversation; it will be taken up by intellectual reading clubs as well as graduate seminars and should be made available to all academic audiences as well as informed lay readers." Publishers Weekly noted that "Majid draws much-needed comparisons between events leading to atrocities like the Spanish Inquisition and present attitudes and trends, including growing disdain for Muslims in Europe and Hispanics in the U.S. Further, he shows how nations are strengthened by the acceptance and integration of the foreign (as is the trend, following initial xenophobic fits, in the U.S.), while cultural expulsion and/or cleansing hurts people and states (as in Germany's post-WWII "occupation and dismemberment"). With this intriguing historical analysis, Majid sounds a clear warning against the West's latest slide toward cultural scapegoating."
Professor Majid has lectured and given keynote addresses at major universities and cultural institutions in the United States and around the world; he also contributed opinion pieces to the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Washington Post. Several of his articles have been reprinted in different publications.
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