exploring muslim identities in europe & north america

PROPUST KOJI JE UGROZIO SVIJET Činjenice koje trebate znati o Islamskoj državi An article by Sanja Despot partly drawing upon a public lecture I gave at Lund University on the Islamic State and on a short interview with me on the implications of the Paris attacks (in Serbo-Croat). Published in tportal on 21.11.2015 Tijekom jedne od racija u iračkoj Faludži 2004. američke snage su u zatvor Bucca privele grupu ekstremista, među kojima i do tada nepoznatog tridesetogodišnjaka Ibrahima Avada Ibrahima al Badrija, danas poznatijeg pod imenom Abu Bakr al Bagdadi. 'Bio je skitnica kada smo ga pokupili 2004. Nismo imali kristalnu kuglu koja bi nam kazala da će on jednog dana postati glava ISIL-a', ispričao je prošle godine za New York Times neimenovani dužnosnik Pentagona. U spomenutom članku se konstatira da je razvoj samoproglašenog kalifa Islamske države bio direktno uvjetovan pogrešnim američkim akcijama u Iraku Da se Amerika nije 2003. upustila u iračku avanturu, ISIL-a danas ne b...

Being Muslim in France means having to navigate through a complex terrain informed by an aggressive secularism, sponsored by the state, a hostile to Islam public opinion (as the recent successes of Marine Lepen in the opinion polls suggest) and a sectarian Muslim communal life. The following text by Giles Kepel that appeared in Le Monde on 01.11.2013, provides an interesting take on the transformations taking place within French Islam but also reflects aspects of the official discourse on the relationship between Islam and the French state. The translation is my own. On 15 October, for the first time in the history of the Republic, an incumbent Prime Minister visited the Great Mosque of Paris , on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the great feast of the Islamic calendar. In a brief statement, Jean-Marc Ayrault spoke to millions of our fellow believers in what he called "a great religion of France" to extend his wishes. He reminded them of "the ...

by Marc Krupanski and Zsolt Bobis             Open Society Justice Initiative Adji Ahoudian is a French citizen, and an elected member in the office of the mayor of the 19 th arrondissement in Paris. He proudly remembers the day he received his new official I.D., with the Republican motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. But then, after attending a council meeting one day, he was stopped by the police for an identity check, for no reason. Except maybe that he was black. “It is then that you realize that you belong to the Republic, you live in the Republic, but you aren’t actually a full citizen,” he says. “Instead you are a second-class citizen. You are continually reminded that due to your face, due to your skin color, due to your appearance that you are not really from here—even when you are an elected official of the Republic.” Adji’s story is told in a new report by the Open Society Justice Initiative that looks into the human reality of the ...

The French Senate voted almost unanimously to ban face-covering Islamic veils in public, opening the way for the enactment of the colloquially called anti-burqa law. Interestingly, 246 senators overwhelmingly outnumbered the one and only opponent of the law who voted against it. Similarly, in July, the bill sailed through the Assemblée nationale by a vote of 335 to 1. Despite the intense public debate, within the serene confines of France's legislature the law united government and opposition and was met with virtually no resistance.  It is telling that not only the rights of the estimated 2,000 French Muslim women who wear variants of the full cover, but also the broader right of self determination of hundreds of thousands of French Muslim women which the bill symbolically challenges have not been deemed worth defending by the French legislators.

Earlier yesterday members of the French parliament approved with 336 votes for and 1 against a controversial law banning the voile intégral (the burqa). The vote has not come as a surpise as it has been discussed and anticipated for several months. Although the reasons put forward in support of the ban consider the burqa a “prison for women” and a “sign of their submission to their husbands, brothers or fathers” and therefore identify Muslim women as the target of this law, the legislators crafted the law in such a way as to ban any face-covering material, to “forbid concealing one’s face in public.” On the surface, a gender blind piece of legislation whose authors claim no intention to discriminate against Islam, the law curiously contains elements that clearly negate the declarations of its sponsors. In a display of determined arrogance that totalitarian regimes would envy, the law stipulates that, alongside a fine of  €150, women who will be caught covering their faces will b...

In my post of 26 June, I expressed my doubts as to the stated rationale behind Barcelona’s ban of the face veil from civic buildings. Despite the feeble attempts of Barcelona’s mayor, Jordi Hereu, to decouple the burqa ban from popular and official unease and prejudice towards Islam, the statements of Spanish Justice Minister Francisco Caamano reveal the complexity of the issue: the Spanish Government is prepared to repeat the onslaught against Muslim women at national level on the grounds of safety and security and of its concern about the dignity of Muslim women. Poster from the Swiss minaret referendum where the face veil is recruited to add to the moral panic about the Islamization of the country "We have to defend women's dignity and the burqa and similar garments - regardless of the religion they are from - that do not permit identification of the wearer, affect the dignity of that person, and in this case women," Caamano told reporters. Spokespersons of the cons...

I am reproducing here a press release from Amnesty International on the Barcelona ban. As promised, I will resume my discussion of the ban and its repercussion in my next post. Spanish politicians urged to reject bans on full-face veils  Spain is the third European country this year to consider the banning of full-face veils 29 June 2010 Amnesty International has called on law-makers in the Spanish region of Catalonia not to adopt a motion on Wednesday in favour of banning women from wearing the full-face veil in public buildings and spaces. "Any wide-ranging ban will violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who choose to wear a full-face veil as an expression of their identity or beliefs," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's expert on discrimination in Europe. "Women should be free to choose what and what not to wear. This is their right under international human rights law. This right extends to forms of dress th...