ABSTRACT
The challenge In one of those strange yet telling silences, explorations of the post-9/11 world within the international relations (IR) discipline have predominantly examined the effect that the ‘war on terror’ has had on one ‘civilization’: the West. Debates on the ethical significance of the contemporary conjuncture, for example, have focused, primarily, upon the ambivalent relationship between liberalism, security and freedom within Europe and the USA (see, for example, Behnke 2004; Buzan 2006; and the collection of essays in Walker 2006). In general, debates in IR exhibit a serious lack of sustained consideration of non-Western discussions on the so-called clash of civilizations1 even though there has existed for some time now a sustained debate in Islamic jurisprudence regarding the ‘law of minorities’ whereby Muslims living in the non-Muslim world are no longer treated as transients, but as permanent residents (see, for example, Sulayman 1987; Soroush 2000; Euben 2002). Few IR scholars have engaged seriously with this sophisticated and long-running debate (exceptions include Hashmi 1998; Mandaville 2002; Piscatori 2003). The current debates in IR over Islam and the war on terror form merely the latest episode of sidelining the significance and value of what might be termed non-Western thought.
