The Ascendance of Official Islams

This article examines how and why four Arab states, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, and Egypt, have increased official Islam (OI) to counter the new challenges in the regional environment following the Arab uprisings. It argues that regimes responded to the initial rise of popular Islam as well as the threat from extremist groups by enhancing their support for official Islam. In an effort to control the religious space and legitimize their rule, these regimes have allocated financial resources, political capital, and institutional power to elements of official Islam. Furthermore, these regimes’ survival strategies vary according to the regime type and the presence or absence of inherited religious institutions. For example, we find that Tunisia turned to foreign training of their imams and greater cooperation with religious leaders in other countries. By contrast, Egypt, under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, further coopted al-Azhar and OI by setting the agenda for how religion institutions should engage society. Meanwhile, Jordan continued its long-standing development of OI while Morocco further expanded and internationalized OI. These similar goals but distinct approaches demonstrate the importance of the understanding the context in which these specific policies are developed.     

Accommodating Islam and the Utility of National Models: The German Case

This article questions the claim that the way German governments have responded to Muslim demands for accommodating Islam fits a German national model. The empirical focus is on Islamic religious instruction in five German Länder. The evidence presented shows that there is not one but several German models. Länder with Christian Democratic dominance were more supportive of confessional religious instruction than Länder where the left was stronger. At the same time Christian Democrats initially were more reluctant to extend the privilege of religious instruction to Muslim groups. In Länder where Article 7 III of the German constitution applied, corporatist hurdles were an obstacle for Muslim groups, but this was less the case in Berlin. Religion–state institutions are important for understanding how European countries have dealt with the growing presence of Islam, but it is equally important to understand the politically contested nature of these institutions.     

An imaginary orthodoxy — a reply to Laurence Harris

The view that world religions contain inherent implications for economic and political action is examined and criticised. Some of the inherent implications attributed to Islam are reviewed. Various authors have attributed contradictory implications to Islamic doctrines. This is because they have referred to different parts and aspects of Islamic religion and society, which like all other complex religions and civilisations have manifested a great variety of forms. The historical development of Islam is divided into three stages and these are in turn related to the economic and political processes basic to all pre-capitalist empires. Patterns of economic and political activism are related to the conditions prevailing at the different stages and to the religious formations within Islam. In particular, it is argued that the failure of the bourgeoisie of Muslim cities to achieve political autonomy and dominance (in contrast to their Western European counterparts) is not a consequence of religious attitudes favouring passivity, but results from the position of these classes in relation to the State and the dominant military classes.     

Religious schism or synthesis?

This article is a response to the article by Maloney et al., which adapts an economic model of Christian schism to Islam. We evaluate the basic assumptions, concepts, and approach of the article and then turn to factual questions to be considered. Their main contribution is to explain ex post the divisions observed in religions in general and Islam in particular as sects or schismatic breaks. The differentiation and application of concepts such as schism and sect across religious traditions is very problematic for the research design and analysis of the article. Despite the justification of generalizations for comparisons among religions in long time periods, the elimination of caveats and particularities undermines the argument.     

Does Tolerance of Religion in the Public Space Depend on the Salience of the Manifestation of Religious Group Membership?

The question of the role of Islam in the public space has become a new pivotal point in political disputes about civil liberties in Western Europe. This debate challenges the scholarly literature on tolerance by highlighting that our understanding of the situational factors shaping tolerance judgments remains limited. This study therefore investigates how the salience of the signaling of religious group membership influences religious tolerance. Based on a unique question-wording experiment embedded in an approximately nationally representative survey, I demonstrate that conspicuous manifestations of religious outgroup membership spark stronger intolerance than subtle manifestations and that anxiety mediates the effect of conspicuous manifestations of religious outgroup membership. Finally, I demonstrate that the effect of the salience of religious outgroup membership is strongest among those who are highly opposed to secularism. I conclude by discussing how these findings constitute an important extension of the extant work on tolerance and feed back into the discussion regarding the role of religion in the public space.     

Revealing and concealing: Islamist discourse on human rights

Historically as well as contemporarily, the relationship between religion and democratic pluralism in the Muslim world has been problematic. In the Muslim world, both governments and popular movements are using religious documents (the Qur'an and the hadith) to inspire political and social change. In the process, the fusion of religion and politics that characterizes revivalist Islam has impeded the development of both democracy and religious pluralism. An area of particular concern has been the reluctance of Muslim countries to implement international standards of human rights as defined in the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Since the adoption of the UDHR in 1948, there has been disagreement in the Muslim world about the relevance of this document for Islamic countries. The reactions have ranged from an angry rejection of human rights as destructive to Islam to claims that Islamic law guarantees the same rights as those embodied in the United Nation's documents. The two most influential international Islamic statements on Human Rights (the Universal Islamic Declaration on Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights) attempt to reconcile Islamic law and modern norms of human rights. These documents claim that human rights are an inherent part of Islam. Such arguments are cause for concern because since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, documents proposing regional alternatives to international law almost always entail the weakening of international standards. The incorporation of the Cairo Declaration into the UN corpus means that what were once informal, regional obstacles to implementing the protections guaranteed by the UDHR have become formal, regional norms that legitimate Islamist restrictions on rights.     

Muslims in Space: Observing Religious Rites in a New Environment

The first men to fly into space precipitated comments about religion and God, but for most of the history of human spaceflight these comments related to Christianity. As International Space Station partners recruit spacefarers from Islamic countries, they face new religious challenges. Islam is distinct from other large monotheistic religions by virtue of the fact that Muslim worship practices require routine attention to Earth geography and astronomy. It is a vantage point that changes in low Earth orbit. Recent Muslim astronauts and cosmonauts have led the way in adapting religious practices to their position above the Earth.     

Nations, taxes and religion: Did Mohammad have it right?

Maloney, Civan and Maloney (Public Choice, 2009, this volume) extend the existing literature on the economics of religion in several important ways. First, they define the religious good. They then distinguish a sectarian break from a schism, provide some analysis of schisms in the Christian world, and finally, and most interestingly, provide a summary of the religious practices and schisms in Islam. The two main strengths of the paper, and the most promising paths for future research, lie in the definition of the religious good and in the exploration of Islamic practices. Maloney, Civan and Maloney offer a novel perspective from which light might be reflected back upon Christian schisms.     

Politics of God or Politics of Man? The Role of Religion and Deprivation in Predicting Support for Political Violence in Israel

This study examines the associations between religious affiliation and religiosity and support for political violence through a nationwide sample of Israeli Jews and Muslims. Based on structural equation modeling, the findings show that by and large Muslims are more supportive of political violence than Jews and more religious persons are less supportive of political violence. Deprivation, however, was found to mediate these relations, showing that the more deprived – whether Muslims or Jews, religious or non-religious persons – are more supportive of political violence. The explanatory strength of religion and deprivation combined in this manner was found to be stronger than any of these variables on their own. The findings cast doubt on negative stereotypes both of Islam and of religiosity as promoting political violence. They suggest that governments which want peace at home, in Israel as elsewhere, would do well to ensure that ethnic and religious differences are not translated into, and compounded by, wide socio-economic gaps.     

Islam and Religion in the EU Political System

This article examines the increasing relevance of Islam and religion in the institutional arrangement of the EU post-Maastricht and the future policy implications for the complex political system of the EU. By adopting a combination of qualitative methodologies that are theoretically rooted in historical institutionalism and in a systemic view of the EU, the paper studies the emergence of Islam and religion as policy issues in two institutional settings, the European Commission and the European Parliament, during the 1990s and up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The analysis shows a growing attention to faith communities on the part of the Commission, in the post-Maastricht context, culminating in the elaboration of semi-official avenues for encounter and dialogue with religious groups. It also indicates how, in turn, these semi-official practices and the ideas behind them have gradually imposed themselves upon multiple levels of the EU political system, thus opening up an institutional space in the EU for consultations with and ‘informal policies’ towards faith communities, both within and outside the EU borders.     

Classical Islam and Medieval Europe: A Comparison of Political Philosophies and Cultures

There were fundamental differences in political philosophy and culture between Islamic and westem-Christian or European civilization in the period up to c. 1500, notably concerning the nature of the political community, of religious law and of the mode of political discourse. Europe proved open to Greco-Roman influences and thus developed, as Islam did not, a notion of the legitimate secular state.     

Understanding the effects of religious attendance on political participation among ethnic minorities of different religions

In the United States, active church membership among ethnic and racial minorities has been linked to higher political participation. In Europe, the influence of religious attendance on political mobilisation of ethnic minorities has so far been little explored, despite the heated public debate about the public role of religion and particularly Islam. This study uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to theorise the relationship between religious attendance and political participation of ethnic minorities in a European context and extend existing theories to non‐Christian minority religions. The article shows that despite a significantly different context in which religion's place in political life is more contentious, regular religious attendance increases political participation rates of ethnic minorities. Some possible explanatory mechanisms are tested and an important distinction is introduced between those mechanisms that mediate, and those that moderate the impact of religion. The study finds that British minority churches and places of worships vary in how willing and effective they are in politically motivating their worshippers, and concludes that this relates to the political salience of certain religions within the United Kingdom context.     

Pope Benedict XVI Confronts Religious Relativism

Pope Benedict XVI’s inflammatory speech at Regensburg highlights a subtle difference between Benedict and John Paul II. John Paul called Muslims and Jews “sons of Abraham,” and he organized high-profile interfaith events. Benedict is more skeptical of interreligious dialog and more confrontational toward Islam than was his predecessor. This shift in tone toward Islam stems from changed historical circumstances. Islam has replaced communism as Europe’s biggest ideological challenge. But, there are also subtle theological differences between the two Popes. John Paul was trained by Dominicans, and throughout his papacy, he was a champion of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Augustine, with his bleaker view of non-Christian cultures, is the dominant influence on Benedict. Benedict believes that theologies of religious pluralism, which lead to metaphysical and religious relativism, have replaced liberation theologies as the most serious threats to Catholic orthodoxy.

Rancière,religion and the political

In the past few decades, the ‘return of the religious’ has been a recurrent theme in popular and academic discourse. From debates regarding the permissibility of religious dress and symbols in the public sphere, to questions of the integration of Muslim immigrants, concerns about the rise of the Christian Right in American politics and the role of Islam in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, a great deal of attention has been accorded to the presence of religion and religious subjects in the public sphere. Such has been the importance attached to accounting for, categorizing and contending with this phenomenon that it has attracted the attention of many of the major figures in contemporary social and political thought. However, the ideas of Jacques Rancière, one of the foremost figures in contemporary political philosophy, are noticeably absent in these discussions. In this article, I take up the task of investigating how Rancière's political philosophy can be brought to bear on debates surrounding the relationship between citizenship, religion and the political. I argue that his reconceptualization of politics, democracy and political subjectivity makes apparent the limitations, and even futility of current debates between advocates of secular universalism and those of religious pluralism, and, through assisting in the critical analysis of the public presence of religion, provide an opening for the potential emergence of alternative forms of community and political subjectivity.     

The Anti-Axial Age

Karl Jaspers famously characterized the period from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the third century before Christ as an “Axial Age” in which intellectual freedom and creativity blossomed as never before. This article argues that it was followed, five hundred years later, by an “Anti-Axial Age”, which devised a novel formula for intellectual and political repression. Its essence was the state’s capture of the millenial narrative, which had first been developed as religious doctrine within Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Involving the two great classical empires of Western Eurasia, Persia and Rome, and then empowering the expansion of Islam, the Anti-Axial Age left an ideological legacy that continues to haunt the contemporary world.     

Gender,HipHop and Pop-Islam: the urban identities of Muslim youth in Germany

While many opponents construe the growing presence of Muslim headscarves in Germany as evidence of creeping Islamicization, religious activism can also be interpreted as an attempt on the part of migrant offspring to forge positive ‘hyphenated identities’, rooted in urban culture, material consumption, and specific mosque communities. Islam has become ‘young, chic and cool’ among ethnic minorities, often denied citizenship and opportunity in their country of birth owing to jus sanguinis and/or other complex naturalization requirements. Religiosity, in turn, is slowly giving rise to new types of civic engagement, leading more ethnic youth to pursue German citizenship. Drawing on representative surveys, inter alia, this essay argues that while not problem free, an emerging Pop-Islam movement has provided Muslimas especially with an important platform for breaking with traditional gender roles, building social capital and acquiring the participatory skills necessary to bring ‘civil society’ into their own communities. It moreover infers that national policies banning headscarves in public service professions are increasingly at odds with European Union directives addressing gender equality and religious discrimination.     

Islamophobic conspiracism and neoliberal subjectivity: the inassimilable society

O’Donnell analyses the confluence of Islamophobia and anti-government conspiracy theory in the works of the far-right think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He argues that, rather than only being a contemporary form of the religious and racialized demonologies that code ‘Islam’ as being the constitutive outside of ‘the ‘West—irrational, religious and authoritarian versus rational, secular and democratic—Islamophobic conspiracism should also be examined in the context of anxieties over the erosion of personal and state sovereignty under neoliberalization. Mobilizing an Islamophobic demonology that constructs ‘Muslims’ as inassimilable to ‘American’ subjectivity, the CSP's Islamophobic conspiracism projects this construction of absolute alterity on to American social and state systems. In doing so, O’Donnell contends, Islamophobic conspiracism takes neoliberalization's estrangement of the state and its citizens to its logical conclusion, transfiguring the societal processes that impact on the freedom of the individual—notably the state and civil society—into something inassimilable to that individual's claims to self-ownership and self-mastery.     

Saints,scholars and the idealized past in Philippine Muslim separatism

Philippine Muslim nationalism appeals to two distinct but related imagined pasts: the traditional territorial past of the precolonial southern Philippines and the newly-emphasized moral past of the Sunna; the sacred traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in the earliest days of Islam. Problems arise when the imagined moral past, embodied in the present by a sharp increase in the influence of Middle East-educated Islamic clerics and their calls for the purification of local Islamic practice, comes into direct conflict with the authority of the traditional aristocracy and locally-cherished cultural practices. The Muslim separatist movement that began in 1968 had dual goals. It was primarily an ethno-nationalist endeavour that had as its primary goal the creation of a Philippine Muslim nation - a nation-state governed by Philippine Muslims and modelled on the sultanates of the precolonial period. The second goal of the Muslim separatist movement was to reform local religious and cultural practices under the leadership of a new set of religious leaders. To understand the place of atavism and puritanism in the Philippine Muslim separatist movement I review the largely local tradition of saints and the more universal Muslim institution of religious scholars as they have interacted in the contemporary Muslim Philippines. I consider the contradictions between revanchist and reformatist goals of the movement by interpreting the narratives of Sultan Muhammad Adil, a prominent supporter of Muslim separatism in the Philippines.     

A funny thing happened on the way to the mosque: promoting civil society and religious pluralism through local conflict

Understood primarily as a meta-narrative reflecting citizens' reluctance to accept migration and Islam as permanent components of their society, grass-roots protests against mosque construction also highlight a democratic paradox regarding multi-level governance: while national governments bear chief responsibility for ensuring fundamental religious freedoms, local authorization procedures affecting mosque construction (e.g. zoning, building permits) have rendered communal spaces a Ground Zero for the regulation of Islamic faith communities. While similar protests have taken place across Europe, German officials face special problems in responding to challenges by neighbourhood groups, rooted in the complicated nature of federalism, the legacy of National Socialism and a new, if misunderstood, element of ‘militant democracy’ at local levels. The Pankow-Heinersdorf case, staged on the outskirts of eastern Berlin, shows that multifaceted interventions can help contesting parties come to terms with religious differences, develop their networking and dialogue skills and actually contribute to more effective democratic participation at the local level.     

Looking at Muslims: the visibility of Islam in contemporary French cinema

ABSTRACT

Tarr analyses the representation of Islam in five feature films made since 2006 that centre on the changing identities of Muslims in contemporary France. She locates the films within the context of the rise in Islamophobia in France following 9/11 and anxieties about immigration and terrorism, but also in relation to France's troubled postcolonial history and French republican ideology. In particular, the French notion of laïcité (secularism) has given rise to active hostility to any public expression of religious or cultural difference, particularly on the part of Muslims. Cinematic representations of Muslims, and particularly of the children of migrants from the Maghreb, have, therefore, since the mid-1980s, been treated with caution in order not to alienate mainstream Franco-French audiences and to facilitate the second generation's integration into French society. However, the five feature films addressed here—two mainstream popular comedies, Mauvaise foi/Bad Faith (2006) and L'Italien/The Italian (2010), and three independent, low budget, auteur-led, realist films, Dans la vie/Two Ladies (2008), Dernier maquis (2008) and La Désintégration/Disintegration (2012)—offer new narratives that challenge fears of Islam by foregrounding the protagonists' negotiation of their Muslim identities in a French context and, by implication, argue for the integration of Islam as a legitimate referent of French identity. However, their construction of Islam does not extend to positive representations of young veiled women, and they thus still risk confirming the oppressive majority view that certain practices associated with Islam, such as the wearing of the veil, are incompatible with the secularism of the French Republic.