The experiences of Muslim women in Australia cannot be typecast as a sisterhood of oppressed females. Challenging Identities questions the assumption of incompatible "Australian values” and "Islamic values”, and provides valuable first-person accounts from the lives of Muslim women in Australia.

Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh researches Islam in diaspora and the politics of the Middle East at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne. His recent publications include US Foreign Policy in the Middle East (with Kylie Baxter, 2008), Islam and Human Rights (with Benjamin MacQueen, 2008), Islam and Political Violence: Muslim Diaspora and Radicalism in the West (with Fethi Mansouri, 2007) and Islam and Globalization (2006).