exploring muslim identities in europe & north america

Danish artist Kurt Westergaard died at the age of 86 on 14 July 2021.  The  illustrator was the creator of one of the twelve drawings published by Denmark's  largest daily conservative newspaper   Jyllands-Posten  on  30 September 2005, in an article entitled  Muhammeds ansigt  (The face of Muhammad).  Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the daily had written about the project commissioned by him and which  Kurt Westergaard was part of : Modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where one must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context. ... we are on ...

Courtesy of Washington Post A cartoon that appeared recently in the Washington Post reminded me of a topic I have often discussed in classes and have written about in my book Islam in Europe , notably the construction of the Muslim woman as "subaltern". The cartoon powerfully points out the aporia of the woman over whose body two men, representing ‘Islamic traditionalism’ and ‘European secularism’ respectively are challenging each other. Gayatri Spivak has pointed out this aporia in her discussion of widow self-immolation in colonial India: "The relationship between the imperialist subject and the subject of imperialism is at least ambiguous. The Hindu widow ascends the pyre of the dead husband and immolates herself upon it. This is widow sacrifice… The abolition of this rite by the British has been generally understood as a case of "White men saving brown women from brown men." White women-from the nineteenth-century British Missionary Registers to M...

It may seem it was very long ago but ... In July 1934, the German jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt, considered to have been the chief political theorist of national socialism, published in the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung  (the journal of national socialist lawyers of which he was editor in chief of) an article that relates to his Political Theology and his theory of sovereignty [1] entitled "Der Führer schützt das Recht" (The Führer protects the Law), effectively justifying in it the murderous Night of the Long Knives by recognizing in Führer's sovereign authority the "highest form of administrative justice" ( höchste Form administrativer Justiz ).  I was reminded of this as I was thinking about how international treaties and legislation regarding refugee protection have been flouted by EU member states to the point that they are not worth the paper they have been printed on, or how our right to free movement is being curtailed by regimes of ...

A volume containing the proceedings of a seminar held at Youngstown State University on the theme of 'Public Islam' and the Nordic Welfare State has just come out as a special issue of Studies in Contemporary Islam and the Tidsskrift for Islamforskning .  The contributions in the volume are diverse yet interconnected. The articles that open the volume discuss how the two different welfare and civil society models represented by the Nordic countries and the USA may affect the institutionalization of Islam and Muslims’ public presence and values in these societies. Ulrika Mårtensson does that by providing a historical survey of the Nordic welfare state and its developments, including debates about the impact of neoliberal models and (de)secularization. Rhys Williams reflects on US civil society and its implications for American Muslims, while Tuomas Martikainen, provides a critical commentary on US research that juxtaposes European ‘religion-hostile’ management of rel...

BY CAS MUDDE December 16 at 2:59 pm The following guest post is by  Cas Mudde ,  assistant professor in the School for Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia  — reproduced from The Monkey Cage  -Washington Post. As Erik Voeten recently  posted , various European media recently reported on  research  on fundamentalism and out-group hostility by the Dutch sociologist Ruud Koopmans at the German Social Science Research Center (WZB), which found that “Islam fundamentalism is widely spread.” Koopmans and his collaborators interviewed nearly 9,000 people in six West European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden), including 3,373 ‘natives’ and 5,548 ‘immigrants,’ respectively of Moroccan (2,204) and Turkish (3,344) origin. The survey stands out because of its cross-national scope, its solid theoretical and empirical basis, and the high number of ‘immigrant’ respondents. That said,...

Meet the Somalis is a collection of 14 illustrated stories depicting the real life experiences of Somalis in seven cities in Europe: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Leicester, London, Malmo, and Oslo. The stories allow readers a unique insight into what everyday life is like as a Somali in Europe. Meet the Somalis is based on the firsthand testimonies of Somalis in Europe interviewed during six months in 2013. The Somali community in Europe is a vibrant, diverse minority group, including people of Somali origin born in Europe, Somali refugees and asylum seekers, and Somalis who have migrated from one country in Europe to another. There are no accurate figures for the number of Somalis in Europe, but on the whole they are among one of the largest minority groups. The illustrated stories focus on challenges faced by Somalis in their respective cities in Europe and issues raised in the Somalis in European Cities research, including education, housing, the media, employment, pol...

Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks Spyros A. Sofos and Roza Tsagarousianou Published by Palgrave Macmillan (October 2013) ISBN 9781137357779 Islam in Europe delves into the daily routines of European Muslim communities in order to provide a better understanding of what it means to be a European Muslim today. Instead of positing particular definitions of being Muslim, this volume invites and encourages a diverse body of 735 informants from Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK to reflect on who they are and on the meaning and place Islam has in such considerations. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork and suggesting novel ways of seeing the phenomenon of European Islam and the continent's Muslim communities, Islam in Europe examines how through their practices, discourses, face to face and mediated interaction, European Muslims construct notions or identity, agency, solidarity and belonging, or how they negotiate and redefine religion, tradition, authori...

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 ...

This video entitled  50+ EDL Vs 30+ Muslim Youths In Birmingham - EDL Run Out Of Brum  that has been seen 521,000 times is one of many that have appeared on YouTube over the past couple of years and document - some times even glorify - Muslim assertiveness in response to the activities of English Defense League . Such narratives of resistance are becoming more commonplace day by day and constitute part of an increasing in volume Muslim 'mythology of resistance' replete with heroes, memorable events and a geography of protest.  As we are arguing in our forthcoming book  Islam in Europe , this type of action constitutes one of the ways in which a European Muslim identity is forged, sometimes articulated to, often suppressing diverse ethnic and local identifications and experiences.  [The ways in which Muslims in Europe are represented by the mainstream or the extreme right provide] a lens through which they themselves see (and shape) their relationship wi...

July 1, 2013      by Harris Beider       Open Society Initiative for Europe In May, two young British men of Nigerian origin murdered a British soldier named Drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of Woolwich, in southeast London. The event made national and international news. Photos and videos in which one of the men explains his actions were captured by bystanders and circulated widely on social media. The perpetrators, who were born in the UK and had grown up in stable, devoutly Christian homes before converting to Islam, justified the killing as retribution for Britain’s military engagement in Afghanistan and other Muslim countries. In many ways, the response to this event has been predictable. The British government has started a review of its strategy on violent extremism, which could focus on curbing the activities of “hate preachers,” working with schools to save young people from drifting into extremism, and increasing the powers of surveillance on ...

The Open Society Foundations' Muslims in Europe report series constitutes the comparative analysis of data from 11 cities in seven European countries. It points out common trends and offers recommendations at the local, national, and international levels, including to the European Union and to international organizations. While not representative of the situation of all Muslims in these cities, this report does capture a snapshot of the experiences of Muslim communities in select neighborhoods in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Antwerp, Berlin and Hamburg, Copenhagen, Leicester and Waltham Forest-London, Marseille and Paris, and Stockholm. This body of work comes in response to major trends with regards to Muslims living in Europe: whether citizens or migrants, native born or newly arrived, Muslims are a growing and varied population that presents Europe with one of its greatest challenges, namely how to ensure equal rights and opportunities for all in a climate of rapidly expanding ...