The chapters included in this edited volume are a selection of the papers presented at the ‘Colonial and postcolonial governance of Islam: Continuities and ruptures’ workshop, held at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), in Leiden, the Netherlands, in August 2008.

The workshop was part of a series of activities organised by I MIS COE Network of Excellence Cluster B6 on linguistic, cultural and religious diversity and related policies. With respect to religious diversity, one of the fields to explore was the various perspectives on the governance of Islam in Western European societies. After publication of 2007's special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (volume 33, issue 6) edited by Veit Bader on this topic, ensuing debates highlighted the need to address the relevance of modern imperialism for contemporary forms of governance of Islam in Europe. This also entailed widening the historical and geographical scope of the project. Such a historical-comparative and transnational perspective on the colonial and post-colonial governance of Islam fit very well with existing research interests at ISIM. Both the workshop and the resulting edited volume are the result ofa very productive collaboration.

We would like to thank IMISCOE Cluster B6, ISIM and the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam (ASCA) for their financial contribution that made this workshop possible. For financial support for the editing of this publication, we are also grateful to the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AIS SR), particularly the Challenges to Democratic Representation research programme group and the Globalising Culture and the Quest for Belonging: Ethnographies of the Everyday research programme group.

Many thanks to the three anonymous reviewers of the IMISCOE- Amsterdam University Press Series for their constructive comments on the manuscript and helpful suggestions for improvements, to Karina Hof, managing editor of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee, and to Andrew Maggiore for editing the text,