Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in Western Europe

By Benjamin Bruce

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (August 25, 2018)

Series: The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy

Concentrates on the similar capacity of Turkey and Morocco to intervene in religious affairs as a domain of public policy

From sending imams abroad to financing mosques and Islamic associations, home states play a key role in governing Islam in Western Europe.  Drawing on over one hundred interviews and years of fieldwork, this book employs a comparative perspective that analyzes the foreign religious activities of the two home states with the largest diaspora populations in Europe: Turkey and Morocco. The research shows how these states use religion to promote ties with their citizens and their descendants abroad while also seeking to maintain control over the forms of Islam that develop within the diaspora. The author identifies and explains the internal and foreign political interests that have motivated state actors on both sides of the Mediterranean, ultimately arguing that interstate cooperation in religious affairs has and will continue to have a structural influence on the evolution of Islam in Western Europe.

About the Author

Benjamin Bruce is Research Fellow with the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef), Mexico.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• The Many Faces of Official Islam in Turkey
• The Makhzen and the Religious Field
• The Development of State Religious Services Abroad
• Creating a National Islam? Partial Governance and Public Policy Instruments
• Exporting Imams
• National Interests in Transnational Muslim Fields
• Conclusion

Reviews

– “Governing Islam Abroad is an authoritative guide to the nuances of transnational religious cooperation. Bruce uses extensive fieldwork to offer a multi-dimensional view of sending states and receiving states. It is a thought-provoking contribution to the debate over what constitutes a country of origin.” (Jonathan Laurence, Professor of Political Science, Boston College, USA)

– “Winner of the Rémy Leveau prize, this study provides a remarkable comparison of the public management of Islam abroad between Turkey, Germany, Morocco and France. Bruce’s exceptional work explores the implications of this new kind of foreign policy and migratory diplomacy, opening up new paths for research in comparative politics and on theories of public governance beyond borders.” (Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, CNRS Senior Researcher Emeritus, CERI, Sciences Po, France)

Source: Palgrave Macmillan

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (November 28, 2017)

This book explores the elective affinity of religion and post-secularism with neoliberalism. With the help of digital capitalism, neoliberalism dominates, more and more, all aspects of life, and religion is not left unaffected. While some faith groups are embracing this hegemony, and others are simply following the signs of the times, changes have been so significant that religion is no longer what it used to be.

Linking theories from Fredric Jameson and George Ritzer, this book presents the argument that our present society is going through a process of i-zation in which

(1) capitalism dominates not only our outer, social lives (through, for example, global capitalism) but also our inner, personal lives, through its expansion in the digital world, facilitated by various i-technology applications;

(2) the McDonaldization process has now been normalized; and

(3) religiosity has been standardized. Reviewing the new inequalities present in this i-society, the book considers their impact on Jurgen Habermas’s project of post-secularism, and appraises the roles that various religions may have in supporting and/or countering this process. It concludes by arguing that Habermas’s post-secular project will occur but that, paradoxically, the religious message(s) will be instrumentalized for capitalist purposes.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

• Part I: Religion and Neoliberalism

2. Religions Aligned with Neoliberalism

3. Religions Within Neoliberalism

4. Religions Alternatives to Neoliberalism

5. There Is No Such Thing as a Religion

• Part II: Aggiornamento of Critical Social Theories: The i-zation of Society Religion and Post-secularism

6. Jameson (1): From Late Capitalism to Digital Capitalism

7. Jameson (2): From Pastiche to the Pygmalion Process

8. Ritzer (1): From the McDonaldization Thesis

9. Ritzer (2): Standardization and Branding

10. Habermas (1): A Neoliberal Post-secular Project

11. Habermas (2): Neoliberal Post-secularism and the i-zation of Society

• Part III: Policy Implication: A New Compassionate Tax

12. Revising Religious Tax Exemption

13. Conclusions: A Global Compassionate Tax

About the Author

Adam Possamai is Professor in Sociology and Director of Research in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Western Sydney University. He is the (co)author and (co)editor of a dozen academic books, 5 novels, and close to 80 refereed articles and book chapters. He is the past President of the International Sociological Association’s Committee 22 on the Sociology of Religion. He has been a visiting Professor at the City University of New York and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His latest books are Religions, Nations and Transnationalism in Multiple Modernities (edited with Patrick Michel and Bryan Turner, 2017, Palgrave McMillan), Religion and Non-Religion among Australian Aboriginal Peoples (edited with James Cox, 2016, Routledge), The Sociology of Shari’a: Case Studies from Around the World (edited with James Richardson and Bryan Turner, 2015, Springer) and the novel L’histoire extraordinaire de Baudelaire (2017, Rivière Blanche).

Source: Palgrave Macmillan

Editors: Patrick Michel, Adam Possamai, Bryan Turner

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US (May 19, 2017)

This edited book explores the impact of globalization on the relationship between religion and politics, religion and nation, religion and nationalism, and the impact that transnationalism has on religious groups. In a post-Westphalian and transnational world, with increased international communication and transportation, a plethora of new religious recompositions religions now take part in a network society that cuts across borders. This collection, through its analysis of historical and contemporary case studies, explores the growth of both national and transnational religious movements and their dealings with the various versions of modernity that they encounter. It considers trends of religious revitalization and secularization, and processes of nationalism and transnationalism through the prism of the theory of multiple modernities, acknowledging both its pluralist world view but also the argument that its definition of modernity is often so inclusive as to lose coherence. Providing a cutting edge take on 21st century religion and globalization, this volume is a key read for all scholars of religion, secularization and transnationalism.

Table of Contents:

• Religions, Nations and Transnationalism in Multiple Modernities: An Introduction
• Contribution to a Socio-History of the Relations Between “Nation” and “Religion”: The Case of Catholicism
• “La Farina del Diavolo”: Transnational Migration and the Politics of Religious Liberty in Post-War Italy
• Persianate Islam and Its Regional Spread
• Charisma as a Transnational Enterprise
• Islam, Ethno-Nationalism, and Transnational “Faith Community” in Kyrgyzstan
• Multiple Modernities and Political Millenarianism: Dispensational Theology, Nationalism, and American Politics
• From Holy Sites to Web Sites: Hindu Nationalism, from Sacred Territory to Diasporic Ethnicity
• God Is Argentine and so Is the Pope! Catholicism, Popular Culture and the National Imagination
• Branding of Spiritual Authenticity and Nationalism in Transnational Sufism

Editors:

Patrick Michel is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France and professor (directeur d’études) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France. In addition to his primary interest in Central Europe, his research focuses on the theoretical aspects of the relation between politics and religion.

Adam Possamai is Professor in Sociology and director of research in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Western Sydney University, Australia. He is the past President of the International Sociological Association’s Committee 22 on the Sociology of Religion.

Bryan S. Turner is the Presidential Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Committee on Religion at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, US and Professor of the Sociology of Religion at the Australian Catholic University, Australia. He was the Alona Evans Distinguished Visiting Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College.

Source: Palgrave Macmillan

Religion, Ethnicity and the Female Voice

By Tania Saeed

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: October 17, 2016

– Provides an interdisciplinary study which combines gender studies and security discourses

– Moves beyond analysis of Muslims as a single category

– Analyses the grassroots female Muslim experience in the UK

This book explores everyday realities of young Muslim women in Britain, who are portrayed as antithetical to the British way of life in media and political discourse. The book captures how geo-political events, and national tragedies continue to implicate individuals and communities at the domestic and local level, communities that have no connection to such tragedies and events, other than being associated with a religio-ethnic identity. The author shows how Muslim women are caught within the spectrum of the vulnerable-fanatic, always perceived to be ‘at risk’ of being ‘radicalized’. Focusing on educated Muslim females, the book explores experiences of Islamophobia and securitization inside and outside educational institutions, and highlights individual and group acts of resistance through dialogue, with Muslim women challenging the metanarrative of insecurity and suspicion that plagues their everyday existence in Britain. Islamophobia and Securitization will be of interest to scholars and students researching Muslims in the West, in particular sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists. It will also appeal to analysts and academics researching security and terrorism, race and racialization, as well as gender, immigration, and diaspora.

About the Author

Tania Saeed is Assistant Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. Her area of specialization is democratization and social exclusion with a focus on religious minorities, gender, and security in the context of the United Kingdom and Pakistan.

Reviews

“As the incessant rise of Islamophobia … highlights the worse, otherwise hidden, blind spots of liberal democracies, the crisis has in turn generated a pathbreaking body of scholarship by critical thinkers across social sciences and humanities. This book is one exquisite example of such scholarship, where you will read a critical encounter between the convergent concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘ethnicity’ in a provocative conjunction with the female voice. This is a piece of magnificent scholarship and superb critical thinking.” (Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University, USA)

“It is hard to over-emphasize how important this book is … . The author has produced a sharp and incisive volume, which engages the reader throughout … . It really is a book for our times.” (Stuart Croft, University of Warwick, UK)

Source: Palgrave Macmillan’s Website