Reflections on conducting research on the ‘war on terror’: religious identity,subjectivity and emotions

In recent years there has been an increase in literature which has explored the insider/outsider position through ethnic identities. However, there remains a neglect of religious identities, even though it could be argued that religious identities have become increasingly important through being prominent in international issues such as the ‘war on terror’ and the Middle East conflict. Through drawing on the concept of subjectivity, I reflect on research I conducted on the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on British Muslims. I explore the space between the insider/outsider position demonstrating how my various subjectivities – the ‘non-Islamic appearance I’, the ‘Muslim I’, the ‘personal I’, the ‘exploring I’, the ‘Kashmiri I’ or the ‘Pakistani I’, the ‘status I’ and the ‘outsider I’ – assisted in establishing trust, openness and commonality. I conclude by demonstrating how the ‘emotional I’ allowed me to manage my own emotions and participants emotions.     

Producing ‘internal suspect bodies’: divisive effects of UK counter‐terrorism measures on Muslim communities in Leeds and Bradford

Research on UK government counter‐terrorism measures has claimed that Muslims are treated as a ‘suspect community’. However, there is limited research exploring the divisive effects that membership of a ‘suspect community’ has on relations within Muslim communities. Drawing from interviews with British Muslims living in Leeds or Bradford, I address this gap by explicating how co‐option of Muslim community members to counter extremism fractures relations within Muslim communities. I reveal how community members internalize fears of state targeting which precipitates internal disciplinary measures. I contribute the category of ‘internal suspect body’ which is materialized through two intersecting conditions within preventative counter‐terrorism: the suspected extremist for Muslims to look out for and suspected informer who might report fellow Muslims. I argue that the suspect community operates through a network of relations by which terrors of counter‐terrorism are reproduced within Muslim communities with divisive effects.     

Control over female ‘Muslim’ bodies: culture,politics and dress code laws in some Muslim and non-Muslim countries

Control of the female body is a key component of both the formation of Muslim identities and the control of Muslim communities in European countries. I will argue that the regulation of the clothing worn by Muslim women, both the restriction of its use (which occurs mainly in non-Muslim countries) and the requirement to wear a particular item, share the same goal: the control of women’s bodies. In this respect, I will consider both the legal regulations that require women to wear the so-called ‘Muslim’ clothing and those that restrict it as a way of disciplining the population, and will focus on the control of women as a privileged form of political control.     

Muslim women as ‘ambassadors’ of Islam: breaking stereotypes in everyday life

This article explores the efforts of Dutch Muslim women who try to break the ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ stereotype by monitoring their own behaviour in everyday interactions with members of the non-Muslim ethnic majority. In representing themselves as modern and emancipated, they try to change the dominant image of Muslim women in Dutch society, and thus also that of Islam. Based on interviews and archival material, I demonstrate that initially this strategy was mostly adopted by Dutch converts to Islam, and later also by ‘born’ Muslim women. Why do more and more Muslim women turn themselves into ‘ambassadors’ of Islam? And what are the costs of this form of self-essentialization? This article demonstrates the usefulness of studying self-representations of minority groups in the light of existing stereotypes, arguing that Muslim women’s self-representations should be seen as part of a politics of belonging.     

Muslim American Women in the Post-11 September Era

Political events can serve as an impetus for civic engagement or disengagement. The events of 9/11 have directed attention toward US Muslim communities and occasionally inflamed anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiments. This article explores the impact of the 11 September events on hijab-wearing Muslim American women. These events and the negative perception of Islam have paradoxically given rise to Muslim women's public presence and paved the way for their political engagement. Their efforts, however, have been hampered by Orientalist and Islamic fundamentalist ideologies, each advancing its own constructs of Muslim women; one seeking to ‘save’ them and the other to ‘protect’ them. Muslim women have found both ideologies oppressive. As a result, they have been actively challenging these ideologies in American society at large and within their own Muslim communities. Through civic engagement and participation in Muslim organizations, these women have been making efforts to redefine themselves, claim their space, secure their rights and advance the causes of Muslim American communities.     

Managing ‘American Islam’

Focusing on the case of Islam in post-9/11 United States, this article highlights the particularity of how US secularism is enacted by the state. In much sociological theory, the United States has been understood to be a neutral and non-interfering state with regard to religion, thereby fostering a pluralist religious context of free consumer choice. Some Muslim reformists have argued that this context makes the US highly fertile ground upon which to reform Islam and to improve women's status in Islam. This article argues that, in the context of the US-led ‘war on terror’, the government has drawn on and amplified this discourse in the service of producing a representation of the US as tolerant, while also seeking to promote a concept of ‘true’ Islam and produce patriotic Muslim citizens. At the center of this discourse are contested portrayals of Muslim women as symbolic of a modern and liberated Islam that is uniquely ‘American’ and opposed to other presumably oppressive Islams. While this context may in fact promote the reform of Islam, it does so with state involvement rather than as a result of state neutrality.     

Cultural Identity and Acculturation Preferences Among South Asian Adolescents in Britain: An Exploratory Study

The study reported in this article is part of a wider research project on the adaptation of South Asians in Britain. It examines and compares the acculturation attitudes and cultural identity of Indian and Pakistani second‐generation adolescents Indian (Punjabi Sikh and Gujarati Hindu) and Pakistani (Muslim) in Britain. The research project integrates a social psychological approach to ethnic identity, Berry’s (Cross‐cultural Perspectives. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1990) acculturation strategy and stress models, and Phinney’s (Journal of Early Adolescence, 9 , 1989:34) model of ethnic identification. There were 240 adolescents, aged 13–18 years, with an even split between the genders. Results from this study suggested that the majority of Indian youth adopted integration strategies as opposed to Pakistani Muslims who adopted a separation strategy. Cultural identity is a term used to include both ethnic and national identities. Ethnic identity scores were high for Indian and Pakistani adolescents. National identity was more important for Indian adolescents but ethnic identity was more important than national identity for all groups. Perceived discrimination was related to acculturation strategies.     

Young Muslim women of Bengali and Moroccan origin in Italy: multiple belongings,transnational trajectories and the emergence of European Islam

This paper investigates the multiple dimensions in the identity constructions of the daughters of the Muslim migrations to Italy. It focuses on the transformations in the way girls and young women relate to religion, in the transition from the generation of mothers, who emigrated from countries with a Muslim majority, to the generation of daughters, who grow up in a European context where Islam is a minority religion. It discusses ‘transmissions’, ‘translations’ and ‘betrayals’ in the migration experience, from a standpoint which highlights the specificities of gender and of generation. The article is based on an intersectional analysis of biographical accounts by Muslim girls and young women of Bengali and Moroccan origin who were born and/or grew up in Italy. Intersecting religious identity with other identity lines such as national belonging (to the parents’ country of origin and to the country where they were born or grew up), gender, class, color and age, multiple reactions and positions emerged. In this context, the religious dimension inherited/experienced/reinvented/called into question by the daughters of migrations appeared to be in constant evolution. Indeed, the stories contained herein of young Muslims tell of the emergence of European Islam.     

Voting to belong: the inevitability of systemic Islamophobia

In this article, I connect Muslim American voting practices to the ‘good Muslim’ trope. Tracing participation of members of Islamic Representative Organizations (IRO’s) in election cycles from 2000 to 2016, I argue that elections have been a site for Muslim Americans to negotiate a sense of belonging in the U.S. My research reveals deep cynicism about the transformative potential of elections and a sense that systemic Islamophobia (i.e. militarism and surveillance) were perceived as inevitable. IRO members opted instead to vote as a way to articulate the presence of Muslims in the U.S.; for instance, Muslims ought to ‘make a statement’ by voting against Donald Trump or for the first woman candidate. In this way, voting can be understood as an articulation of a ‘good Muslim’ subjectivity through which IRO members seek legitimacy within, rather than a dismantling of, an Islamophobic milieu.     

Global citizens,exotic others,and unwanted migrants: mobilities in and of Europe

This article reflects on Europe’s problematic relationship with its ‘others’, asking in particular how the idea of the ‘exotic’ – constituting one of Europe’s ‘imperial ruins’ – intersects with the figure of the Muslim migrant. The Muslim migrant has in the present become in Europe a potent marker of otherness, which reflects how some cosmopolitan aspirations are perceived negatively in European discourses, revealing how mobility itself is racilized and gendered. WoDaaBe Fulani migrants from Niger have historically occupied a subject position in Europe as identified with ‘the exotic’. The article discusses WoDaaBe temporary migration to Europe to supplement their income back home, and their intersecting positions as ‘exotic’, as Muslims and black Africans. While contemporary discourses tend to highlight Europe’s status as a site of equality, human rights, and cradle of civilization, some bodies are welcome within the space of Europe while others are not.     

A ‘Minority’ on the Move: Boundary Work among Filipina Muslim Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East

This article analyses the migration of a religious ‘minority’ that is largely invisible within migration studies, namely Muslim Filipina domestic workers. More specifically, this research shows that the category of ‘minority’ is not fixed and is always negotiated through transnational spaces and boundary work. In doing so, the article highlights how religious belonging, the status of minority and migration intersect and are negotiated during the period prior to these women leaving their country, during their time in the country of destination, and when they return to the Philippines. How boundary work affects the religious belonging of this Muslim ‘minority’ is underlined by presenting the Middle East as an opportunity to perform norms of ‘Muslimness’. The performance of these norms as an opportunity for these women to challenge the status of being a ‘minority’ in the Philippines is also examined. Finally, this article shows how these Muslim ‘minorities’ gain access to a certain symbolic capital by becoming hajji and balikbayan (returnees) when they return home.     

Gender relations,transnational ties and rituals among Bosnian refugees

In this article I show how Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) refugees reproduce, contest and construct their ethnic and religious identities. Using ‘ritual’ in a broad sense to refer to everyday routinized activities and practices that characterize family hierarchies and gender relations, as well as more easily identifiable religious rituals, I show that rituals assert belonging to a community and an identity, but are also, in the process of construction and contestation, selectively evoked and ignored. ‘The Other’ constructed through certain rituals is not merely the non–Muslim Bosnian (Serbs and Croats), but also, for refugees, other Bosnian Muslims who stayed behind. Moreover, engagement in secular and religious rituals, and the wider issue of identity constructions cannot be understood fully without exploring the dynamics between refugees and people who have remained in Bosnia. Competing constituencies claiming ‘Bosnianness’ and ‘Muslimness’ can be found across national boundaries and complicate the attempt to construct a community of believers or nationals, or both.     

The politics of indigeneity in Myanmar: competing narratives in Rakhine state

This paper addresses a key issue that remains under-studied in discussions of Buddhist–Muslim hostility and violence in the northern Rakhine state in Myanmar. It reveals how the public narratives of both Rakhine Buddhist and Muslim political parties rely on the concept of ‘indigeneity’ to assert their claims as citizens and rightful sons of the soil, and to discredit the other’s position. This paper argues that this discourse, and the debate as it is presently formulated, has deepened the gap between two communities and obscured opportunities for identifying common ground that could be leveraged to foster more pragmatic approaches to deep-seated communal problems.     

Islam and patriarchy: how robust is Muslim support for patriarchal values?

Evidence that Muslims support patriarchal values more than non-Muslims is abundant but the nature of this evidence is contested. The ‘cultural’ interpretation suggests that patriarchal values are an inherent element of Muslim identity. The ‘structural’ interpretation holds that patriarchal values reside in structural characteristics and have little to do with Muslim identity. Evidence on these contradictory claims is inconclusive. Neither have advocates of the cultural position shown that Muslim support for patriarchal values remains robust under control of structural characteristics; nor have proponents of the structural position demonstrated that Muslim support for these values vanishes under such controls. Filling this gap, we use multi-level models to test whether Muslim support for patriarchal values vanishes under control of patriarchy's structural underpinnings. We find that Muslim support for patriarchal values is robust against various controls; and we identify mosque attendance as a mechanism to sustain Muslim support for patriarchy in non-Muslim societies. Yet, rising levels of education, labor market participation, and a glacial emancipative trend diminish Muslim support for patriarchy, especially among women.     

Suburban ethnicities: Home as the site of interethnic conviviality and racism

This article explores the ways in which the white working-class residents of a suburban English town reflect on their relationships with their British Asian Pakistani Muslim neighbors. Its focus is on how everyday constructions of home become sites for the intermingling of discourses of intercultural conviviality and racism. My contention is that the idea of home has not yet been given the detailed critical attention that it deserves in the sociological literature on everyday manifestations of multiculturalism, conviviality, and racism. My supposition is that a special focus on the idea of home as the site of conviviality offers a productive avenue to analyze how intercultural relationships are formed and how the norms of neighborliness are thought to break down, opening a space for commonplace racialized and racist stereotypes to take hold. The idea of home is central to the rhythm and landscape of the English suburbs. It conjures up the idea of a uniform and aspirational white space. Drawing on this imaginary of home, I shall trace how “white working class” “English,” “Scottish,” and “Anglo-Italian” residents’ everyday constructions of home become embroiled with their relationships with their British Asian Pakistani Muslim neighbors.     

Pakistani labour migration and masculinity: industrial working life,the body and transnationalism

In this article, I examine the narratives of migrant Pakistani men in their fifties and sixties, who became chronically ill over the course of their working lives in London. The men's life histories show that the body, and in particular the labouring body, needs more sustained attention in migration studies. Their narratives tell of how the physical toll of industrial labour resulted in chronic ill health, unemployment and various forms of ‘redundant masculinities’. Moreover, the impoverishment that frequently followed from ill health ate away at local social status and transnational relationships. I argue that the existing work on transnationalism has normalized the experiences of an entrepreneurial migrant elite and obscured those of migrants who are bound to one place by force of circumstance. Chronic ill health is not merely the experience of a minority who fall between the cracks of epidemiological studies on ‘healthy migrants’, as some have recently suggested, but rather, common to industrial labour migration.     

Qur’anic education and non-confessional RE: an intercultural perspective

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the reported experiences of Muslim students that regularly shift between Muslim ‘supplementary education’ (including its traditional confessional focus on learning to read Arabic and then memorise and recite the Qur’an) and mainstream school education (including its ‘inclusive’ form of religious education’). The aim has been to better comprehend how these students make sense of this dual educational experience while negotiating the knowledge, skills, and values that are taught to them by two often seemingly disparate institutions. A further aim is to place our findings within the growing field of intercultural education. Though both types of education are often thought to be distinct and oppositional – the former as non-confessional and ‘modern’, the latter as confessional and ‘outmoded’ – both English and Swedish students were able to identify a degree of symbiosis between the two, particularly in relation to the process of memorisation. Thus, it became increasingly clear to the researchers that Muslim student reflection on their participation in both traditions of education had an intercultural dimension in the sense of encouraging dialogue and discussion across educational cultures prompting new knowledge and understanding. This article lays out some of the evidence for this conclusion.     

Negotiating Gender Relations: Muslim Women and Formal Employment in Pakistan's Rural Development Sector

Drawing on evidence from qualitative field research, this article explores how Pakistani female development practitioners experience their work situations as they are shaped both by local sociocultural norms and globalized development agendas. In this context, policies at global and national levels demand that more female development practitioners work in remote rural places in Pakistan, thus creating new employment opportunities for some Pakistani women. This article argues that, in this work environment, these women are exposed to different expectations about their gender behaviour and that they therefore develop physical strategies on the one hand and discursive strategies on the other in order to negotiate gender relations in a way that allows them to engage in formal employment. This article adds to under‐researched debates on gender and work in Muslim countries as well as to debates in critical development and gender studies.     

Turkish and Moroccan Dutch professionals in social work

This article describes the perspective of newly started female Turkish and Moroccan Dutch professionals in social work and explores how they connect to the social work profession. Social work in the Netherlands attracts many of these young ‘new’ professionals. These second-generation women from a Muslim background are considered a ‘progressive force’ within their communities and can play an important role in ‘remaking the mainstream’. Increasing diversity and complexity go hand in hand with high expectations and claims. Muslim, gender, ethnic and professional identities have to be combined and demand high flexibility in doing boundary work.     

The translocation of culture: ‘community cohesion’ and the force of multiculturalism in history1

In his work on a Welsh border village, Ronald Frankenberg showed how cultural performances, from football to carnival, conferred agency on local actors and framed local conflicts. The present article extends these themes. It responds to invocations of ‘community cohesion’ by politicians and policy makers, decrying the failure of communal leadership following riots by young South Asians in northern British towns. Against their critique of self‐segregating isolationism, the article traces the historical process of Pakistani migration and settlement in Britain, to argue that the dislocations and relocations of transnational migration generate two paradoxes of culture. The first is that in order to sink roots in a new country, transnational migrants in the modern world begin by setting themselves culturally and socially apart. They form encapsulated ‘communities’. Second, that within such communities culture can be conceived of as conflictual, open, hybridising and fluid, while nevertheless having a sentimental and morally compelling force. This stems from the fact, I propose, that culture is embodied in ritual, in social exchange and in performance, conferring agency and empowering different social actors: religious and secular, men, women and youth. Hence, against both defenders and critics of multiculturalism as a political and philosophical theory of social justice, the final part of the article argues for the need to theorise multiculturalism in history. In this view, rather than being fixed by liberal or socialist universal philosophical principles, multicultural citizenship must be grasped as changing and dialogical, inventive and responsive, a negotiated political order. The British Muslim diasporic struggle for recognition in the context of local racism and world international crises exemplifies this process.