Politics of Visibility 2006-05-22 11-38-32 --- Projekt: T506.gli.amiraux_jonker / Dokument: FAX ID 028e116274920714|(S. 1 ) T00_01 Schmutztitel.p 116274920738 2006-05-22 11-38-32 --- Projekt: T506.gli.amiraux_jonker / Dokument: FAX ID 028e116274920714|(S. 2 ) T00_02 vakat.p 116274920778 Gerdien Jonker, Valérie Amiraux (eds.) Politics of Visibility Young Muslims in European Public Spaces 2006-05-22 11-38-32 --- Projekt: T506.gli.amiraux_jonker / Dokument: FAX ID 028e116274920714|(S. 3 ) T00_03 Titel.p 116274920786 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbiblio- grafie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de © 2006 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Coverlayout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Patrick Zachmann, Voting Muslim representatives in France. Paris, April 2003; © 2006 Magnum Photos/Ag. Focus Typeset by: Andrea Gruttmann, Bielefeld Printed by: Majuskel Medienproduktion, Wetzlar ISBN 3-89942-506-5 2008-12-15 15-28-45 --- Projekt: T506.gli.amiraux_jonker / Dokument: FAX ID 01ed197253341768|(S. 4 ) T00_04 Impressum.p 197253341776 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 7 Introduction: Talking about Visibility – Actors, Politics, Forms of Engagement 9 VALERIE AMIRAUX & GERDIEN JONKER Speaking as a Muslim: Avoiding Religion in French Public Space 21 VALÉRIE AMIRAUX “We should be walking Qurans”: The Making of an Islamic Political Subject 53 NADIA FADIL The Invention of Citizenship among Young Muslims in Italy 79 ANNALISA FRISINA From Migrant to Citizen: The Role of the Islamic University of Rotterdam in the Formulation of Dutch Citizenship 103 WELMOET BOENDER Islamist or Pietist? Muslim Responses to the German Security Framework 123 GERDIEN JONKER Secular versus Islamist: The Headscarf Debate in Germany 151 GÖKCE YURDAKUL From Seclusion to Inclusion: British ’Ulama and the Politics of Social Visibility 169 PHILIP LEWIS Alienation and Radicalization: Young Muslims in Germany 191 HAMAD ABDEL-SAMAD Appendix Abbreviations 213 Notes on the Authors 214 Index 216 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume results from three years of collective brainstorming. We had two occasions to meet and discuss the work in progress. Our first meeting took place at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin on December 7, 2003. It was fol- lowed by an evening of discussion with some representatives of local Muslim associations, which provided the opportunity of open and intense exchange on different matters concerning Muslims in Europe. A second meeting took place at the Institut d’études de l’Islam et des sociétés du monde musulman (IISMM) in Paris on July 5, 2004. We thank the Heinrich Böll Stiftung and Aliyeh Yegane (Berlin), the Centre Marc Bloch, and the IISMM for making these meetings possible. We also thank the contributors for having accepted to play the collective game from the beginning to the end and for helping to create the open and friendly atmosphere that was so constructive for our work. It showed us that collective scientific projects can be accomplished on a trustful basis and without stress. This approach also implied that the contributors accepted that we work with them on the different drafts of their texts, without considering our suggestions and discussions intrusive. For this trust, we express our heartfelt thanks. With the exception of one, none of the authors is a native English speaker. Ginger A. Diekmann, the copyeditor of this volume, saved us time and energy, helping us to make the volume come into existence. And to make our “looks and sounds like English” actually become English. Finally, we express our gratitude to Karin Werner, director of the Global Local Islam Series at transcript, for welcoming our volume in her publication series. During the research and in the final stages of the writing, three babies suc- cessively made their way into the world, somewhat disrupting the schedule. Their existence sometimes turned our endeavours into something closely resembling an equal opportunity adventure. Our final thanks therefore must go to Salomé (February 2004), Chloé (April 2004), and Daphne (October 2005) for helping us to prove that it can be done. Gerdien Jonker and Valérie Amiraux Valérie Amiraux & Gerdien Jonker INTRODUCTION: TALKING ABOUT VISIBILITY – ACTORS, POLITICS, FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT This volume started as several scholarly enterprises on the periphery of an international conference. Perhaps dissatisfaction with the meeting in question was at the root of its initiation, but more decisive, certainly, was that the right people happened to meet at the right time. The group that gathered together had not met before in this particular configuration. There were established academics and junior academics from different disciplines and with different scholarly backgrounds. Some had published extensively, whereas others were still working on their dissertation. What they shared was an awareness of a quickly growing gap in the field of Muslim visibility in Europe through the emergence of a heterogeneous and—to all appearances—very resourceful group of newcomers in the public arena. And a wish to make these voices available to a larger audience. Mapping the Field of Muslim Visibility in Europe In 2003, when we began the data collection that builds the basis of this book, policymakers and important segments of the media in many parts of Europe had been putting pressure on local Islamic organizations, accusing them of covering up fundamentalist sympathies and networks and of siding with terrorists. Translated into different discourses and practices, this trend spread throughout Europe. As a side effect of 9/11 and the Madrid bombings, the Islamic tradition was once again publicly charged of not being compatible with Western values such as democracy and human rights. Suspicion had taken root that, when all was said and done, Islam fostered principles that justified terrorism. Allegations of the incompatibility of Islamic and European values became stronger and more frequent, re-inviting public discussion about the loyalties of Muslim European citizens to democratic values. Almost everywhere in Europe, the public sought information about the scriptural basis of this religion, and sales of the Quran and related exegesis increased accordingly, sometimes creating the conditions for “public moral panics” that fed the general perception of Islam as an internal threat, in particular in countries where liberal multiculturalism had been the policy of choice (Werbner 2004, 452). A situation arose in which migrants from Muslim countries and their offspring were stigmatized as Muslims—regardless of 9 VALERIE AMIRAUX & GERDIEN JONKER their degree of religious involvement or Muslim identification—and treated as a potential danger. Coinciding with this development was the emergence of a very heteroge- neous group of young people which was publicly redefining what it meant to be a Muslim in Europe, as individuals or as members of a collective. Young people not only were taking the place of the older generation in almost all of the “old” Muslim associations across Europe—reflecting a generational shift in leadership in most of the European host countries. In addition, we noted that new youth groups were forming and organizing across the boundaries of nationality. Moreover, many actors made their entry on local and national stages who were not part of an organization and did not stress their religious belonging, but who nevertheless insisted on acting and speaking as a Muslim. What seemed to connect all these actors was their search for public recogni- tion of a distinct identity that they themselves labeled “Muslim.” They also shared a desire to be treated not as second-class citizens but as full citizens. In other words, a group of young people had made its entry on the European public stage, and it had laid claim to its own definitions over and against the political labels with which it saw itself confronted. The countries in which we traced this group of people were Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; the urban settings included Berlin, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bradford, Paris and its suburbs, and Carrara and Macerata in Italy. The scale of the initiatives we examined included the cleaning of a neighborhood park (Berlin), the repainting of a local train station (Macerata), the defense of Islam on talk shows (France, the Netherlands, Great Britain), the organization of exhibitions on Islamic history and Muslims (Antwerp, Paris), and interfaith encounters (Italy, Great Britain). Political careers and activism popped up just about everywhere. In addition to these actors, we also searched for radicals, from hard-to-reach youth to the jihadis who were so persistently evoked in the media. From our collective findings it appeared that, within the Muslim populations of Europe, the latter represented an obscure domain, one that was avoided in public and very rarely commented upon to outsiders. Terrorists, or so it appeared to us, are the eternal absentees. Whenever possible, we have tried to locate their relation- ship within the larger context in order to convey the voice of these marginal actors. Our common research question, however, aimed at encompassing a far larger group. Without excluding the phenomenon of terrorists, it intended to map the whole field of Muslim visibility. Over