CULTURAL ISLAM IN NORTHERN EUROPE (original) (raw)
Islam and Muslims in Europe today: from cultural assimilation to social integration
Europa mit oder ohne Religion? Der Beitrag der Religion zum gegenwärtigen und künftigen Europa, 2014
This chapter provides a discussion on the contemporary experiences of Muslims in Western Europe in relation to integration, identity and cohesion and its impact on Muslim-Western European relations. In many ways Islam has always been part of Europe and in part it is because of Islam that Europe exists at all. There have been periods of exchange, dialogue and coexistence between these two great civilisations, but there has also been demonisation, stigmatisation and vilification on both sides. But it is the post-war migration, settlement and adaptation of Muslims to Western European nation-states and the implications they raise which are of particular interest in this chapter.
2011
"This thesis examines the socio-political representation of Europe-Islam reflexive relationship, and explores the logic of discourse through which contingent transnational repositioning of the meanings of Europe and Islam, as cultural reference points, come into being. In this thesis it is argued that imagining sociality among ‘indigenous’ Europeans flows simultaneously with the emergence of a contingent imagined ‘Muslim’ trans-national cognitive region. These two processes are intertwined with the diversification of citizenship practices of two liminal culturally intimate positions of being European and being Muslim, whereat the structure of discursive socio-political representation of the relationship of these two positions echoes culture-subculture dichotomy. The said main argument of the thesis is based on the hypothesis that the ‘voyage and discovery’ of European commonalities reproduces Center-Periphery logic when Europe encounters Others. When it comes to the situation of Muslims in Europe, this kind of othering helps development of transnational assemblages that function as spaces of contingent Muslim ways of being and ways of belonging. Key words: Europe, Islam, citizenship, cognitive region, subculture, cultural intimacy, liminality, center, periphery"
Muslims in Europe: The Stranger Within
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Over the last two decades major changes in the nature of work and employment have occurred on a global level. The restructuring of the global economy, for example, along with the growth of trans-national companies, favours decentralised production and a cheap and flexible workforce employed on a casual basis . Casualised labour is not marginal to the modern industrial economy, which is dependent on these earnings, yet workers are marginalised within society. Casual workers, however, are often denied all employment rights and are exploited by their employers, in turn pressured by the manufacturers, to obtain the maximum level of production for minimum levels of pay. (Fekete, 1997) Furthermore, public discourse and policy-making have converged, so as to highlight some of the negative effects of the drive to enhance " economic growth and competitiveness" . In particular, this convergence has highlighted the manner in which this may have contributed to an increase of the " social exclusion and marginalisation" for different social groups and communities within the European Union. This paper will explore this argument with reference to one community; namely European Muslims (immigrants and settlers) who constitute one of those vulnerable and marginalised of these groups and who appear to have experienced discrimination in the labour market and the societal effects that have followed the drive for economic competitiveness and the concomitant increase in flexible employment practices. The focus on European Muslims also derives from a parallel concern to deconstruct an increasingly popular account, which has gained currency both within the field of academia and among policy makers at the local, national and European level 1 . This is the essentialist account of the recent emergence and increasing visibility of Muslims Voices 2 within the European Union, which it is argued derive from a loyalty to an anachronistic and traditional Islamic culture, which is incompatible with modernity. As such these accounts also have contributed, albeit inadvertently, to the emergence of a new form of " racism" within Europe; Islamophobia. ) Furthermore, such accounts also suggest that European Muslims are able to make use of their particular cultural capital (Islam) in order to both minimise the effects of economic restructuring as well as to exploit niche markets within the changing European economy. This, of course, it is argued, allows European Muslims to temper the effects of this economic restructuring and thus, contrary to received wisdom, negate some of the socio-economic ramifications of their social exclusion and marginalisation which, may have intensified due to the economic restructuring process. Such accounts, however, raise a number of conceptual and empirical concerns, which will constitute the focus of this paper. First, is the conceptual paradox where an apparently traditional and anachronistic culture (Islam) constitutes the particular social capital that allows European Muslims, albeit some of them, to compete successfully in a very " modern" and contemporary phase of capitalist development. This in effect raises the issue of the extent to which it is appropriate, conceptually at least, to perceive of Islam as a socio-cultural set of values that are incompatible with modernity. Second, is the assumption, derived almost entirely from aggregate quantitative economic indicators, that because some European Muslims are able to mobilise and exploit their particular cultural capital, they in effect are less vulnerable to some forms of social exclusion and marginalisation. Instead, this paper will explore the emergence of Muslim Voices within Europe in an analytical account, which gives conceptual privilege to an articulation of the two recent processes noted above: globalisation and economic restructuring and the formation of Islamic political identities (Muslim Voices) on the European political canvas.