My books

Freedom of Expression in Islam: Challenging Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws, edited by M. Khalid Masud, K. Vogt, L. Larsen and C. Moe, London: I.B. Tauris, 2021.

ISBN 978-1-7845-3857-6 (hardcover), 978-0-7556-3882-6 (paperback), 978-0-7556-3768-3 (ePDF), 978-0-7556-3767-6 (ebook).

Publisher’s page: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/freedom-of-expression-in-islam-9780755638826/*

In Muslim countries, apostasy and blasphemy laws are defended on the grounds that they are based on Islamic Shariʿa and intended to protect religion. But blasphemy and apostasy laws can be used both to suppress thought and debate and to harass religious minorities, both inside and outside Islam.

This book – comprising contributions from Muslim scholars, experts and activists – critically and constructively engages with the theological, historical and legal reasoning behind restrictive state laws to open up new ways of thinking.

https://www.jus.uio.no/smr/english/about/id/oslocoalition/islam/resources/

With contributions by Abdullah Saeed, Omaima Abou-Bakr, Muhammad Khalid Masud, Mohammad Mostafaei, Moataz El Fegiery, Arafat Mazhar and Syed Zainuddin Moulvi, Syafiq Hasyim, Kecia Ali, Mahmoud Sadri, and Mohsen Kadivar.

Praise:

This book provides an uncompromisingly honest and exhaustive treatment of the laws of blasphemy and apostasy in Islam. This well-written and highly accessible collection of essays will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in freedom of expression and belief in the classical Islamic tradition and the modern Muslim world.

— Khaled M. Abou El Fadl

Islam and Freedom of Expression has also been published in

• Bosnian: Svoboda izražavanju u Islamu (Sarajevo: Centar za napredne studije, 2023?); publisher’s page
• Indonesian: Kebebasan Berekspresi Dalam Islam (Mizan, 2023?); publisher’s page

Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition, edited by Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen and Christian Moe, London: I.B. Tauris, 2013.

Gender and Equality offers a groundbreaking analysis of family law based on fieldwork, insights from distinguished clerics and scholars of Islam, and the experience of human rights and women’s rights activists. Using contemporary examples from various contexts, from Morocco to Malaysia, they explores how male authority is sustained through law and court practice, the consequences for women and the family, and the demands made by Muslim women’s groups. The book argues for women’s full equality before the law by re-examining the jurisprudential and theological arguments for male guardianship (qiwama, wilaya) in Islamic legal tradition.

Contributors: Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Mulki al-Sharmani, Marwa Sharafeldin, Aïcha El Hajjami, Zainah Anwar, Muhammad Khalid Masud, Nasr Abu-Zayd, Faqihuddin Abdul Kodir, Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, Mohsen Kadivar, and Anvar M. Emon.

Gender and Equality has also been published in

• Arabic: Qânun al-Usrah al-Muslimah wa Mua’dalat al-Musâwâh (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Lubnani, Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Masri, 2017 CE / 1439 H, ISBN 978-614-453-054-2)
• Bosnian: Spol i ravnopravnost u muslimanskom porodičnom pravu (Sarajevo: Centar za napredne studije, 2020, ISBN 978-9926-471-23-1), publisher’s page
• Indonesian: Reformasi Hukum Keluarga Islam: Perjuangan Menegakkan Keadilan Gender di Berbagai Negeri Muslim (Yogyakarta: LKiS, 2017, ISBN 978-602-6610-28-7)

New Directions in Islamic Thought: Exploring Reform and Muslim Tradition, edited by Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen and Christian Moe, London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.

How are Muslims to reconcile their beliefs with the imperatives and pressures of the modern world? How should they handle the tension between their roles as citizens and their religious affiliations and identities? This groundbreaking volume shows in what ways prominent Muslim intellectuals have attempted to bridge the gap by reformulating traditional Islamic notions in a way that is consistent with contemporary understandings of equality, justice and pluralism. The contributors examine the tradition that they seek to reform in relation to the human rights ethic of the modern world. The new wave of Islamic thinking which they represent emerges as multi-stranded rather than defined by a single trend or doctrine. Themes covered include a deconstruction of patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’an; the distinctions between universal and context-specific parts of Islamic texts; a re-contextualization of Shari‘a law; and a critique of religious jurisprudence, especially as it impinges on questions of sexuality and gender.

Contributors: Kecia Ali, Abdullahi A. An-Na‘im, Zainah Anwar, Asma Barlas, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Aïcha El Hajjami, Mohsen Kadivar, Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Muhammad Khalid Masud, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Tariq Ramadan, Nazife Şişman, and Abdolkarim Soroush.

Edited by Jørgen S. Nielsen, Samim Akgönül, Ahmet Alibašić, Brigitte Maréchal, and Christian Moe, Leiden: Brill, vol. 1: 2009, vol. 2: 2010.

The Yearbook of Muslims in Europe is an essential resource for analysis of Europe’s dynamic Muslim populations. Featuring up-to-date research from forty-six European countries, the reports provide cumulative knowledge of on-going trends and developments around Muslims in different European countries. In addition to offering a relevant framework for original research, the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe provides an invaluable source of reference for government and NGO officials, journalists, policy-makers, and related research institutions.

I co-edited vols. 1 and 2, where I was in charge of the reviews section, co-edited the thematic section with Akgönül, and penned the chapter on Slovenia. Overstretched commitments caused me to resign from the editorial board, but I stayed on as a contributor until 2020, covering Islam in Slovenia for twelve years.

Images of the Religious Other: Discourse and Distance in the Western Balkans, edited by Christian Moe, Novi Sad: CEIR, 2008.

This book contains the fruits of a 2006 joint research project of the Kotor Network on Religion in Plural Societies. The contributors come from countries of the former Yugoslavia: Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Serbia. They write about “images” of religious others, that is, about perceptions of and attitudes, drawn from school textbooks, religious community discourses, and social surveys of “religious distance”. Religion is a significant ethnic identity marker for the Catholic Croats, the Orthodox Serbs, and the Muslim Bosniaks, who are all South Slavs speaking roughly the same tongue. The “others”, then, are mostly people who belong to a religion other than the dominant religion of the dominant ethnic nation in their society.

Contributors: Milan Vukomanović, Ahmet Alibašić, Ankica Marinović, Aid Smajić, Zlatiborka Popov-Momčinović, Zilka Spahić-Šiljak, Zorica Kuburić, and Dinka Marinović Jerolimov.

Religion and Pluralism in Education: Comparative Approaches in the Western Balkans, edited by Zorica Kuburić and Christian Moe, Novi Sad: CEIR, 2006.

This is a unique comparative study of religious education in the successor states to the former Yugoslavia by researchers from each country.

Contributors: Marjan Smrke and Tatjana Rakar (Slovenia), Ankica Marinović Bobinac and Dinka Marinović Jerolimov (Croatia), Zlatiborka Popov and Anne Mette Ofstad (Bosnia-Hercegovina), Zorica Kuburić and Milan Vukomanović (Serbia), and Zoran Matevski, Etem Aziri and Goce Velichkovski (Macedonia).

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