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Today's Muslim world is beyond the periscope of Muslim majority societies and rather inclusive of the ever growing Muslim communities in the West. The ongoing predicaments in the Muslim societies might though be contemporary but inextricable from the bequeathed European legacies in these societies. Although, European formal administration of the Muslim world is past historical reality, nonetheless, should Europe take responsibility for the happenings in the Muslim world? In the post-Cold War era, how much similarities and dissimilarities can be drawn in the EU and the US foreign policies and actions towards the Muslims. The post 9/11 developments indicate visible signs of approaches and opinions in the EU countries towards some of the issues of the Muslim World – more so in the case of Palestine, Iraq Syria and Iran – ostensibly independent of Washington. Should the European gestures be taken as goodwill and pragmatism or other side of the coin in the US foreign policy? Would there be any degree of correlation between affairs of European Muslims and the larger Muslim societies? The need for greater mutual understanding between the EU and the Muslim countries as well as the OIC, is evident.

The convergence of Muslims in Europe and America from different Muslim majority societies conjures the idea of a multicultural milieu. The West has indeed become a crossroad of civilizations and cultures and such intersection is explicable for a cosmopolitan fiqh reflective of all the Muslims. The convergence of Muslims of different Madhhabs, cultural and social background in the West does not simply delineates the universality and homogeneous ground, but it also nicely presents the laboratory for the mixture of all Madhhabs that have long divided the Muslims. Bridging the past and the present is the golden aim of cosmopolitan fiqh and presenting Islam as a comprehensive faith reflecting on the entirety of life. Cosmopolitan fiqh can be yet an avenue for Muslims to showcase their worth and extent to which they can contribute in the societies they are part of.

The European Union (EU) has come a long way since its inception in late 1950s as the European Economic Community, now regarded as the most notable example of regional integration in the world. Yet, the union has witnessed several challenges — among them economic crisis, the dominance of large members within the Union and seemingly less favorable treatment towards new and aspiring members — which, to many, have casted doubts over the future of the arrangement, particularly the common currency and the monetary union. Nationalist tendencies have also risen across the members. Nonetheless, the EU remains far from an imminent failure. What is needed is to make the EU more democratic in its decision making and functioning.

1. Salient Topical Issues on Legislative Effectiveness in Nigeria's National Assembly: An Introduction -- 2. Concept, Origin, Significance and Composition of Legislature in Democratic Governance: A Theoretical Exposition -- 3. Historical Development and the Institutional Framework of the Nigerian National Assembly -- 4. Legislative Powers and Lawmaking Process in the Nigerian National Assembly -- 5. Legislative Effectiveness: A Discourse on Measuring Toolkits, Benchmarks and Indicators -- 6. Measuring Legislative Effectiveness in the Nigerian National Assembly: The Birth of ILES Model -- 7. Comparative Analysis of Legislative Effectiveness of the 4th–8th National Assemblies -- 8. Assessing the Legislative Effectiveness of the National Assembly: The ILES Model Approach -- 9. Interpreting the Lawmaking Performance and Determinants of Legislative Effectiveness of the National Assembly -- 10. Legislative Impact on the People and the Challenges Facing the National Assembly -- 11. The Patterns and Dynamics of Legislative-Executive Relations and the Impact on Legislative Effectiveness -- 12. Cost of Running the National Assembly and the Budgetary Process in the Fourth Republic -- 13. Conclusion: Toward Reforming the National Assembly

This book evaluates the legislative effectiveness of Nigeria's National Assembly under the Fourth Republic. The assessment covers five Assemblies (4th-8th) and focuses specifically on lawmaking, cost of running the National Assembly, and the budget making process. It empirically assesses the effectiveness of the Nigerian national legislature beyond previous emotional and sentimental evaluations of the institution. It has developed a model 'Institutional Legislative Effectiveness Score' used in assessing the institutional performance of the National Assembly from two perspectives: first, by comparing the performances of the two chambers in the same Assembly; and second, by comparing the performances of the institution across Assemblies. Aside lawmaking, the book also covers the major topical issues that characterized public evaluation of the institution. These include: size of the institution, budgeting process, cost of funding the institution, and the debate on the appropriate way in reforming the National Assembly. Adebola Rafiu BAKARE is a lecturer and currently Head of the Department of Political Science, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria.

This is an eight-page reflection piece on gatekeeping in IR knowledge production and the politics that goes into presenting national racial contestations as issues unworthy of international study and consideration. Premised on a personal experience of scholastic rejection, this commentary is a reflective intervention concerning the state of the field and the imperial connotations of methodological disciplinarity – the process in which IR research is restricted within disciplinary borders because of scholastic endeavours to keep the discipline pure. Here, using anti-imperial thought, I press for deeper consideration and re-evaluation of how academics come to decide which experiences of the world should be deemed worthy of global recognition and where the boundaries of IR should come to an end.

Motivated by Kundnani's [Kundnani, The Muslims Are Coming! (London, 2015), 10] commentary that racialization within counterterrorism politics reflects "an imperialist political culture," this article theoretically engages with and expands from the political moment that was Muslim counterterrorism policymaker Baroness Sayeeda Warsi speaking at the launch of Runnymede's Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All (A 20th Anniversary Report) in 2017. Noting Warsi's appeal to political blackness made during her speech contesting state-sponsored Islamophobia, it is argued that embedding Warsi's rhetoric in a wider analytical framework organized around black-centric traditions prompts a wider conversation about the intricacies of racism within Britain and its international underpinnings. Inspired by the arguments of Aydin [Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World (Cambridge, 2017)] and Narayan [Narayan, "British Black Power," The Sociological Review 67 (2019): 945–67], this article examines what it means for both immediate and conceptual resistance to Islamophobia if it and its racialization are considered as part of a wider global history of Muslims engaging in "black" as a mode of imperial resistance. By examining the relationship between anti-imperial blackness and Muslimness, this article offers a unique angle to understand the presence of the international, as several groups across the world endeavor to resist the racism of national security regimes.