Reading Islam in Hospitable Terms

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to understand how Islam is becoming Canadian. The process of becoming is illustrated using the philosophical framework of the ethics of hospitality developed by Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida as a means to emancipate from the Hegelian system of progress. This work illustrates the need to differentiate between Islam, Islamism and Muslimness. This is explained with an understanding of Hannah Arendt’s writing on totalitarianism, ideology and religion. Islam is found to differ from Islamism by its connection to a scholarly tradition while the latter’s emphasis on religious puritanism severs itself from tradition. Furthermore, examples are illustrated to show that Islam’s scholarly tradition respected context. By introducing the ethics of hospitality, it becomes evident that this ethical system promotes both the tradition of Islam and the contextualization of that tradition. The thesis’ final part exemplifies these ideas with a discussion on Islamic fashion as the embodiment of the ethics of hospitality.