The voices in this book belong to parliamentarians, city councillors, doctors and engineers, a few professors, lawyers and social workers, owners of small businesses, translators, and community ...activists. They are also all Muslims, who have decided to become engaged in political and civic organisations. And for that reason, they constantly have to explain themselves, mostly in order to say who they are not. They are not fundamentalists, not terrorists, and most do not support the introduction of Islamic religious law in Europe—especially not its application to Christians. This book is about who these people are, and what they want. This book is based on three hundred interviews with European Muslim leaders from six European countries: Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and Germany. The question of Islam in Europe is not a matter of global war and peace but raises difficult questions about the positions of Christianity and Islam in public life, and about European identities. Europe's Muslim political leaders are not aiming to overthrow liberal democracy and to replace secular law with Islamic religious law. Those are the positions of a minority. There is not one Muslim position on how Islam should develop in Europe but many views, and most Muslims are rather looking for ways to build institutions that will allow European Muslims to practice their religion in a way that is compatible with social integration.
On the Muslim question Norton, Anne
2013., 20130221, 2013, 2013-02-21, 20130101, Volume:
2
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In the post-9/11 West, there is no shortage of strident voices telling us that Islam is a threat to the security, values, way of life, and even existence of the United States and Europe. For better ...or worse, "the Muslim question" has become the great question of our time. It is a question bound up with others--about freedom of speech, terror, violence, human rights, women's dress, and sexuality. Above all, it is tied to the possibility of democracy. In this fearless, original, and surprising book, Anne Norton demolishes the notion that there is a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. What is really in question, she argues, is the West's commitment to its own ideals: to democracy and the Enlightenment trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the most fundamental sense, the Muslim question is about the values not of Islamic, but of Western, civilization.
Moving between the United States and Europe, Norton provides a fresh perspective on iconic controversies, from the Danish cartoon of Muhammad to the murder of Theo van Gogh. She examines the arguments of a wide range of thinkers--from John Rawls to Slavoj Žižek. And she describes vivid everyday examples of ordinary Muslims and non-Muslims who have accepted each other and built a common life together. Ultimately, Norton provides a new vision of a richer and more diverse democratic life in the West, one that makes room for Muslims rather than scapegoating them for the West's own anxieties.
The French government's 2004 decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious signs from public schools puzzled many observers, both because it seemed to infringe needlessly on religious ...freedom, and because it was hailed by many in France as an answer to a surprisingly wide range of social ills, from violence against females in poor suburbs to anti-Semitism.Why the French Don't Like Headscarvesexplains why headscarves on schoolgirls caused such a furor, and why the furor yielded this law. Making sense of the dramatic debate from his perspective as an American anthropologist in France at the time, John Bowen writes about everyday life and public events while also presenting interviews with officials and intellectuals, and analyzing French television programs and other media.
Bowen argues that the focus on headscarves came from a century-old sensitivity to the public presence of religion in schools, feared links between public expressions of Islamic identity and radical Islam, and a media-driven frenzy that built support for a headscarf ban during 2003-2004. Although the defense oflaïcité(secularity) was cited as the law's major justification, politicians, intellectuals, and the media linked the scarves to more concrete social anxieties--about "communalism," political Islam, and violence toward women.
Written in engaging, jargon-free prose,Why the French Don't Like Headscarvesis the first comprehensive and objective analysis of this subject, in any language, and it speaks to tensions between assimilation and diversity that extend well beyond France's borders.
Since the beginning of its history, Islam has encountered other religious communities both in Arabia and in the territories conquered during its expansion. Muslims faced other religions from the ...position of a ruling power and were therefore able to determine the nature of that relationship in accordance with their world-view and beliefs. Yohanan Friedmann's original and erudite study examines questions of religious tolerance as they appear in the Qur'an and in the prophetic tradition, and analyses the principle that Islam is exalted above all religions, discussing the ways in which this principle was reflected in various legal pronouncements. The book also considers the various interpretations of the Qur'anic verse according to which 'No compulsion is there in religion …', noting that, despite the apparent meaning of this verse, Islamic law allowed the practice of religious coercion against Manichaeans and Arab idolaters, as well as against women and children in certain circumstances.
The Muslim conquest of the East in the seventh century entailed the subjugation of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and others. Although much has been written about the status of non-Muslims in the ...Islamic empire, no previous works have examined how the rules applying to minorities were formulated. Milka Levy-Rubin's remarkable book traces the emergence of these regulations from the first surrender agreements in the immediate aftermath of conquest to the formation of the canonic document called the Pact of 'Umar, which was formalized under the early 'Abbasids, in the first half of the ninth century. The study reveals that the conquered peoples themselves played a major role in the creation of these policies and that they were based on long-standing traditions, customs and institutions from earlier pre-Islamic cultures that originated in the worlds of both the conquerors and the conquered. In its connections to Roman, Byzantine and Sasanian traditions, the book will appeal to historians of Europe as well as Arabia and Persia.
Civil Islam Hefner, Robert W; Hefner, Robert W
2011., 20110521, 2011, 2000, 2000-01-01, Volume:
9
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Civil Islam tells the story of Islam and democratization in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation. Challenging stereotypes of Islam as antagonistic to democracy, this study of courage and ...reformation in the face of state terror suggests possibilities for democracy in the Muslim world and beyond.
Every year more and more Europeans, including Germans, are embracing Islam. It is estimated that there are now up to one hundred thousand German converts-a number similar to that in France and the ...United Kingdom. What stands out about recent conversions is that they take place at a time when Islam is increasingly seen as contrary to European values.Being German, Becoming Muslimexplores how Germans come to Islam within this antagonistic climate, how they manage to balance their love for Islam with their society's fear of it, how they relate to immigrant Muslims, and how they shape debates about race, religion, and belonging in today's Europe.
Esra Özyürek looks at how mainstream society marginalizes converts and questions their national loyalties. In turn, converts try to disassociate themselves from migrants of Muslim-majority countries and promote a denationalized Islam untainted by Turkish or Arab traditions. Some German Muslims believe that once cleansed of these accretions, the Islam that surfaces fits in well with German values and lifestyle. Others even argue that being a German Muslim is wholly compatible with the older values of the German Enlightenment.
Being German, Becoming Muslimprovides a fresh window into the connections and tensions stemming from a growing religious phenomenon in Germany and beyond.
The spread of Islam and the process of Islamisation (meaning both conversion to Islam and the adoption of Muslim culture) is explored in the 25 chapters of this volume.
In a Western world suddenly acutely interested in Islam, one question has been repeatedly heard above the din: where are the Muslim reformers? As the number of Muslims living in the West grows, the ...question of what it means to be a Western Muslim becomes increasingly important to the futures of both Islam and the West. While the media are focused on radical Islam, this book claims that a silent revolution is sweeping Islamic communities in the West, as Muslims actively seek ways to live in harmony with their faith within a Western context. French, English, German, and American Muslims—women as well as men—are reshaping their religion into one that is faithful to the principles of Islam, dressed in European and American cultures, and definitively rooted in Western societies. The book's goal is to create an independent Western Islam, anchored not in the traditions of Islamic countries but in the cultural reality of the West. It begins by offering a fresh reading of Islamic sources, interpreting them for a Western context and demonstrating how a new understanding of universal Islamic principles can open the door to integration into Western societies. The author contends that Muslims can—indeed must—be faithful to their principles while participating fully in the civic life of Western secular societies. This book offers a vision of a new Muslim Identity that rejects the idea that Islam must be defined in opposition to the West.
