exploring muslim identities in europe & north america

As Athens is probably the only European capital without a mosque for its 500,000 Muslim residents, discussions about constructing a purpose-built mosque started in the 1990s. A motley crew of "patriots" and "concerned Christians" have been mobilised by political entrepreneurs from across the political spectrum to frustrate the project as it was deemed by them to be unnecessary, undesirable and dangerous. 

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 ...

Recently, Charlie Hebdo featured a cartoon that purportedly provided commentary on the refugee situation and accusations of sexual misconduct in Germany by controversially depicting Aylan Kurdi—the three-year-old Syrian boy whose tragic drowning captured global attention—as a grown "pig-faced" individual chasing "white" women. The questionable caption asks what Aylan might have grown up to become, implying he would be an assailant in Germany. The illustration, created by Laurent Sourisseau, who is the magazine's current director and a survivor of the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo's offices, appears to underscore the claims that refugees, including Syrians, were among the perpetrators of the sexual assaults reported in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve. Despite the claims of Charlie Hebdo that it champions a "healthy critical attitude," the overtly provocative nature of the cartoon borders on sheer sensation-seeking. Indeed, misinterpreta...

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...