Mona Abaza is associate professor in sociology at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Her publications include Islamic Education, perceptions and exchanges (Paris, Cahier d'Archipel, 1994), Debates on Islam and Knowledge in Malaysia and Egypt: shifting worlds (Taylor & Francis, 2002). She researches religious networks across the Middle East and south-east Asia, and consumer culture in a comparative perspective.

Recent articles

In spring 2003, Sonja Hegasy argued in openDemocracy that Arab intellectuals’ evasion of the challenge of globalisation was central to the Arab world’s culture of victimhood. Here, Mona Abaza – writing before the death of Edward Said, a key reference-point in the argument – responds that the seizure of Enlightenment values by an American-led imperial project undermines the search for an equal relationship between east and west.