After the “Innocence of Muslims” film: where the real dangers are
Jytte Klausen, interviewed by Giancarlo Bosetti
«Mohammed Morsi is new to political power, but he has a problem that is similar to the one Mubarak had: he needs desperately to get help from Unites States, the IMF and the supporters of the West. But on the other hand he needs to control elements at home that are very Anti-Western.» The well-known Danish intellectual Jytte Klausen, Brandeis University Professor and the author of The Cartoons that Shook the World, believes that the events and protests which shook many Arab countries after the broadcasting of some scenes of the offensive anti-Muslim trailer “Innocence of Muslims”, were not coordinated. Nevertheless, the governments in Libya and Egypt failed giving adequate protection to potentially sensitive targets. While in Libya the reason for this could be the weakness of the central government, in Egypt it seems that before his trip to the United States President Morsi «is trying to sell himself as expensively as possible and reassuring forces at home that he is not actually becoming an ally of the United States.» But the real danger, she explains, are secular extremists and provocateurs in the West on the one side, and on the other the numerous and heavily armed groups of extremists, Al-Qaeda affiliates and brigades of mixed origin starting to gang behind the black flag of jihadist Islam. Read the interview
Video – If Islam’s Militants are Sons of the West
Faisal Devji, Oxford University
“The problem with the notion of dialogue when thinking about global forms of Muslim militancy is that there appears to be no integrity, either on one side or indeed on the other”, explains historian Faisal Devji from Oxford University. “When you think about people like the brothers Tsarnaev in Boston, you have figures who are completely American and Americanized. It is impossible to think about them as somehow belonging to a closed ideological world of their own. Indeed, you can look at their violence entirely within the context of American forms of teenage or young-male violence, which includes school shootings or other forms of great damage. So how do they in fact differ from something, from a form of violence that is actually quite intimate to the United States?”. We interviewed Professor Devji during our Istanbul Seminars 2013. View the video
The risks of extremism and victimization
Nilüfer Göle interviewed by Alessandro Lanni
“Do we want to continue calling that filth a movie? And are we expected to fight to defend a commercial venture such as Charlie Hebdo’s?” Considered one of Turkey’s greatest intellectuals, Nilüfer Göle teaches sociology at Paris’s Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and studied with Alain Touraine. For years she has been studying Islam’s penetration of Europe’s public arena. What worries this scholar in these days of global protest and violence, is that Islamic fundamentalism will come into conflict with Western political secular fundamentalism and that it may use this clash for political purposes. “Muslims must condemn the violence carried out in the name of Islam. They cannot present themselves as victims and condemn the West. Such a step would be decisive in affecting the evolution of the ‘Arab Spring’ and for the role Islam could play in the democratization of these countries. Göle also believes that the West runs the risk of implementing a mechanical defense of freedom of expression.” Read the interview
Reactive Identities and Islamophobia
Muslim Minorities and the Challenge of Religious Pluralism in Europe
Stefano Allievi, University of Padua
The presence of increasing percentages of immigrants in the European social landscape it is not only a quantitative fact, with consequences on several social and cultural dynamics and indicators. It produces an important qualitative change. From being a pathology, plurality is becoming physiology. Religion is a key factor in this process. There is a synchronic pluralization going on: the level of pluralization of the religious and cultural offer is increasing, making society a kaleidoscope of cultures, whose pieces are in constant movement. Islam – and in particular Islam in Europe – is often considered the most problematic and ‘problematized’ expression of this process. It is what we could call exceptionalism: the tendency to see Islam and Muslims as an exceptional rather than standard case. Even the mediatic perception of Islam in conflictual terms can be considered a form of exceptionalism. And conflict a specific way of understanding Islam. Islamophobia is part of this phenomenon. Exceptionalism explains why Islam has become a discursive substitute of the main transformation, which is the much higher degree of cultural and religious pluralisation of European societies. Read the whole essay
Video – Living Together: Pluralism, Freedom of Expression and Offence
Peter Ronald deSouza
“I think it is important – as a first exercise for societies which are in transformation, learning to live with diversity and pluralism – to map these the trajectory from irreverence to offence in its different forms: irreverence, iconoclasm and then offence. Once you map that, you understand what are the elements of irreverence and iconoclasm which produce the offence. The production of this offence has two sides: it can emerge from the contents of what is said, from a film, a cartoon or a painting…and in can emerge from the perception of a group, so it is both content and perception. Very often the perception is produced by political groups, and here politics enters the production of perception. The production of that perception often produces an experience or an expression of offence, although the offence may not be intended and although it may be a very creative act,” explains professor Peter Ronald deSouza from the Institute for the Study of Developing societies in Delhi, India. Watch the video
Journalism in times of conflict. A weapon of war
Lawrence Pintak
How badly can media affect relations between the Muslim world and the west? Well, very badly. The same is done by politicians or by we who are ordinary citizens. Ayman Al-Zawahiri once said that “More than half of the battle is taking place on the battlefield of the media.” And Donald Rumsfeld declared: “A single news story … can be as damaging to our cause … as any other method of military attack.” After 9/11 these feelings of disconnect, this sort of war of the words increased. The fact was that Arabs, Europeans and Americans had very different perspectives of the conflict, and this is particularly true in the US where we have essentially seen no other viewpoint. Read the essay
After Utoya: The Background of Xenophobia
Roundtable from a conference held at the Institute of Public Knowledge, Columbia University, on the 9th of December 2011 after the murder of 77 people, the majority of whom students, by Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo and Utoya, Norway (July 2011).
Discovering the sources of a murderer
Giancarlo Bosetti
Liberal élites, multiculturalism and the language of resentment
Ian Buruma
Constructing the Self, constructing the Other
Seyla Benhabib
Citizenship and civil religion
Benjamin Barber
Identities, stereotypes and shifting areas of consensus
Jytte Klausen
Norway Incident: Theoretical and Cultural Backgrounds
Interview with Gholamali Khoshroo, Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Islam, Iran
Following the terrorist incident in Norway, its political and human aspects were more in focus while a correct analysis would be impossible without due attention to its cultural and theoretical root causes. The main factor which claimed the lives of about 100 human beings in a few hours was product of a long process which has been going on for years in Europe. In the following interview with Iranian Diplomacy, Gholamali Khoshroo, Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Islam, has talked about theoretical and cultural backgrounds of the incident. Read the interview
«We need an alliance with moderate Islam in order to defeat ISIS»
Italian MP Khalid Chaouki interviewed by Elisa Gianni
“The first to pay with their lives are those who profess this religion in a peaceful, calm and respectful manner.” With those words the Italian Speaker of the House Laura Boldrini commented on her meeting with the secretary of Italy’s Islamic Cultural Centre, Abdellah Redouane, and the faithful who were meeting for Friday prayers at Rome’s Great Mosque. This was an encounter that the Islamic community had wanted and requested and addressed at Italians and Muslims in order to say “no to terrorism” and reiterate that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Those words were part of the clear and explicit appeal read at a table at which the Italian state’s third highest ranking official sat next to authorities of the largest mosque in Europe. Read the interview
How Islam can fight back against Boko Haram
Marwan Al Husainy
When religion is used, or misused, as a violent tool against the innocent, then it is the user not the tool that is the source of violence. The mere idea of traumatizing a human soul violates all values on Earth. Whether based on religious texts or human interpretations, no value in the history of mankind justifies any brutal act against any of God’s creation. Read the article
Boko Haram: is this religion? Muslim people must take a stance
Gholamali Khoshroo
The kidnapping of 275 high school girls in Nigeria by Takfiri and terrorist members of Boko Haram group and their later announcement about their intention to sell the girls as slaves was shocking enough to heavily weigh down on the conscience of every human being. However, this has not apparently taken place in reality. It seems that the world has become callous and indifferent as a result of high frequency of violent crimes and extremism. Another aspect of this incident, which is also more catastrophic, is the announcement by the group that their irreligious and inhuman measure has been taken in order to uplift the name of Islam and in line with the implementation of the legal rules of sharia! Read the article
Video: Islamic Law and the Rights of Others
Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, UCLA
“The more human beings are able to explore and establish principles of justice, uphold of human dignity and resistance to oppression – so to freedom and liberty – the more they come to the divine objectives. This puts human rights and democracy at the very core of what it is to be a proponent of Shari’a”, explains Khaled Abou El Fadl, one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law and Islam, and a prominent scholar in the field of human rights, as well as the Omar and Azmaeralda Alfi Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, USA. View the video
Intercultural Lexicon: Islamism
Sadik J. Al-Azm
Islamism is a highly militant mobilizing ideology selectively developed out of Islam’s scriptures, texts, legends, historical precedents, organizational experiences and present-day grievances, all as a defensive reaction against the long-term erosion of Islam’s primacy over the public, institutional, economic, social and cultural life of Muslim societies in the 20th century. Read the full article
Video: On Islamic Fundamentalism
Sadik Al-Azm
Islamists want to regain control of all of the issues in everyday life, says Syrian philosopher Sadik Al-Azm. There might not be an end to violence not that a reactionary movement exists. This movement wants to retrieve what has been lost, instead of pursue progressive and new ways to live Islam today. Watch the video
Essays: Democracy and Islam
Irfan Ahmad
The dominant debate on Islam and democracy continues to operate in the realm of normativity. This paper engages with key literature showing limits of such a line of inquiry. Through the case study of India’s Islamist organization, Jamaat-e-Islami, I aim at shifting the debate from textual normativity to demotic praxis. I demonstrate how Islam and democracy work in practice, and in so doing offer a fresh perspective to enhance our understandings of both Islam and democracy. A key proposition of this paper is that rather than discussing the cliché if Islam is compatible with democracy, or Islam should be democratized, we study the ‘hows’ of de-democratization in Muslim societies. Read the essay
How 9/11 changed us
Stefano Allievi, University of Padua
For a few years, for far too long, ideas became radicalized, language was militarized, reasoning impoverished, reduced to simplistic and misleading pairs, such as black/white, good/bad, with God pitted against God (with God of course privatized by all parties involved). In this sense al Qaeda’s school of thought won the day and was reflected in the arrogant Bushism of the Iraqi adventure (based on lies and producing more terrorism than it defeated, not to mention the thousands of innocent victims, including the western soldiers sent to die there pointlessly), until recently all dominant and winning paradigms. But, today, something has changed. Read the article
Beyond the Clash of Ignorance
Hatim Salih
As Europe celebrates the golden jubilee of the Treaty of Rome – the founding document of what is now the European Union – the crucial debate over the past, present and future identity of Europe shows no sign of slowing down. Remarkably, in certain political and intellectual circles, “Islam” is often recklessly affirmed as the antithesis against which Europe’s true identity is best defined. This is clearly seen in the opposition between the West and Islam theorised by Samuel Huntington in his “Clash of Civilizations”, and in the much publicised Regensburg speech where Benedict XVI depicts a cartoon-like mythical Islam, bloodthirsty and inherently irrational. But another vision is possible. Read the article
A “post-secular” society – what does that mean?
Jürgen Habermas
I have thus far taken the position of a sociological observer in trying to answer the question of why we can term secularized societies yet “post-secular”. In these societies, religion maintains lays claim to a public influence and relevancesignificance, while the secularistic certainty is losing ground that religion will disappear worldwide in the course of accelerated modernization is losing ground. Above all, three overlapping phenomena converge to create the impression of a worldwide ‘resurgence of religion’: the missionary expansion, a fundamentalist radicalization, and the political instrumentalization of the potential for violence innate in many of the world religions. Read the whole essay
Backlash of Multiculturalist and Republicanist Policies of Integration in the age of Securitization
Ayhan Kaya, Istanbul Bilgi University
This paper is critically engaged in the elaboration of the securitization and stigmatization of migration and Islam in the west, which is believed to be leading to the rise of Islamophobic sentiments and to the backlash of both multiculturalism and republicanism. Migration has been framed as a source of fear and instability for the nation-states in the west in a way that constructs ‘communities of fear’. It will be claimed that both securitization and Islamophobia have recently been employed by the neo-liberal states as a form of governmentality in order to control the masses in ethno-culturally and religiously diverse societies at the expense of deepening the already existing cleavages between majority and minorities with Muslim background. Read the whole essay
‘Can Muslims be Suicide Bombers?’ An Essay on the Troubles of Multiculturalism
Volker Kaul, LUISS University
Is a Muslim still a Muslim when he crashes airplanes into the twin towers? Any serious theory of multiculturalism has to deny that Islam could ever come to justify suicide bombing and terrorism. My thesis is that none of the contemporary multicultural theories manages to do so, or at least not without collapsing into a Kantian conception of personal autonomy and, consequently, into some standard version of liberalism. Communitarianism, trying to demonstrate that fundamentalism has nothing to do with the true and authentic Islam and that it does not take into account the pluralism prevailing in Islam, has to moralize Islam. A Humean position, which takes Islamic fundamentalism to be merely a pathology, the product of resentment and Western neocolonialism, eventually could come to the conclusion that good an upright Muslims today cannot help but to become suicide bombers. Liberal multiculturalism, considering identity to be a matter of choice, must suppose that an active agent with self-knowledge is by definition a responsible person with a moral identity. In conclusion, multiculturalism, in its effort to make the good identities prevail the bad and the ugly identities, risks to adopt some of the same righteous attitudes towards Islam as traditional liberalism. Read the whole essay
Liberal élites, multiculturalism and the language of resentment
Ian Buruma
It is probably a mistake, or certainly an illusion, to think that xenophobia and dislike of foreigners and people who are different can somehow be stamped out. It slumbers in all of us and it depends on social and political circumstances in how it manifests itself. It is a bit like anti-Semitism – I think it was Isaiah Berlin who once said that “in Europe people more or less dislike Jews, but an anti-Semite is someone who dislikes Jews more than necessary”, meaning when it becomes murderous, and that’s when it becomes serious. I believe that this is true of all forms of xenophobia: it’s always there, but when does it become dangerous? As far as the issue of “Muslims in Europe” is concerned, for a long time people were indifferent to their presence: they just didn’t care. Read the article