Visible Difference, Stigmatising Language(s) and the Distinctive Construction of Prejudices against Others in Leeds and Warsaw

The chapter argues that language and cultural communication matter in a transnational world and that the transmission of prejudices against minorities has to be closely analysed while contextualising national histories with minorities. Looking at two spatial sites (Leeds and Warsaw) and analysing interview material that was drawn from a larger study, the authors discuss the way local people address difference particularly through the axes of gendered ethnicity (Muslim men) and gendered class (male underclass). It explores how the same categories of difference are discursively produced in Poland and the UK/ England; to what degree they differ or overlap.

The 1996 ‘Muslim holiday’ affair. Religious competition and state mediation in contemporary Mozambique

Political commentators often cast religious con? ict as the result of the numerical growth and political rise of a single faith. When Islam is involved, arguments about religious fundamentalism are quick to surface and often stand as an explanation in their own right. Yet, as useful as this type of explanation may be, it usually fails to address properly, if at all, two sets of important issues. It avoids, Ž rst, the question of the rise of other religions and their contribution to tensions and con? icts. Second, it reduces the role of the State to a reactive one. The State becomes an object of contest or conquest, or it is simply ignored. Adopting a different approach, this article investigates a controversy that took place in Mozambique in 1996 around the ‘ofŽ cialisation’ of two Islamic holidays. It looks at the role played by religious competition and state mediation. The article shows that the State’s abandonment of religious regulation – the establishment of a free ‘religious market’ – fostered religious competition that created tensions between faiths. It suggests that strife ensued because deregulation was almost absolute: the State did not take a clear stand in religious matters and faith organisations started to believe that the State was becoming, or could become, confessional. The conclusion discusses theoretical implications for the understanding of religious strife as well as Church and State relations. It also draws some implications for the case of Mozambique more speciŽ cally, implications which should have relevance for countries such as Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe where problems of a similar nature have arisen.

Right to War in the Islamic Tradition:Jihad and its Compatibility with Modern International Law (will be submitted to the publisher in April 2014)

In the last century, Islam drew the world’s attention though such phenomena as the Islamic revolution in Iran, the fierce Muslim resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the assassination of Egypt’s President Sadat by a radical Islamic group. But it was when Osama Bin Laden and his organization Al Qaeda were established to have been behind the 11 September attacks in the US, the age-old images of Islam, the fanatical and belligerent religion threatening what the Western world stands for, were revitalized. The impact of 9/11 attacks was so great that even balanced portrayals of Islam were eclipsed by stereotypical images of a fundamental, anti-Western and warmongering religion that bore the hallmarks of medieval prejudices and rhetoric. The popular image tailored for the Western audience reflected Islam as monolithic, intrinsically aggressive, and determined to engage in religious wars against the interests and values of the Western civilisation.
This book intends to help reduce, at least to a reasonable degree, the impact of sweeping, and at times tendentious, generalisations about Islamic laws of warfare. The main purpose of this book is to place the legal, cultural and historical practices of Islamic wars in their broader socio-political contexts, thereby establishing that there has been no undisputed understanding of what defensive or aggressive warfare entails in Islam, whether in doctrine or in practice.

The Muslim Brotherhood: the Arab Spring its Future Face

The Muslim Brotherhood is the most significant and enduring Sunni Islamist organization of the contemporary era. Its roots lie in the Middle East but it has grown into both a local and global movement, with its well-placed branches reacting effectively to take the opportunities for power and electoral competition offered by the Arab Spring.

Regarded by some as a force of moderation among Islamists, and by others as a façade hiding a terrorist fundamentalist threat, the potential influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on Middle Eastern politics remains ambiguous.The Muslim Brotherhood: The Arab Spring and its Future Face provides an essential insight into the organisation, with chapters devoted to specific cases where the Brotherhood has important impacts on society, the state and politics. Key themes associated with the Brotherhood, such as democracy, equality, pan-Islamism, radicalism, reform, the Palestine issue and gender, are assessed to reveal an evolutionary trend within the movement since its founding in Egypt in 1928 to its manifestation as the largest Sunni Islamist movement in the Middle East in the 21st century. The book addresses the possible future of the Muslim Brotherhood; whether it can surprise sceptics and effectively accommodate democracy and secular trends, and how its ascension to power through the ballot box might influence Western policy debates on their engagement with this manifestation of political Islam.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book presents a comprehensive study of a newly resurgent movement and is a valuable resource for students, scholars and policy makers focused on Middle Eastern Politics.

Notions of Conflict and 'New' Citizens' Inclusion:Post-Cosmopolitan Contestations in Germany

This chapter argues that there is a gap between symbolic exclusion from the national community when it comes to the inclusion of new German citizens of Turkish or Kurdish background, and a broad claim to be a cosmopolitan society, at large. While focusing on narratives of minority key political activists in Berlin, and analysing individual stories on the background of contemporary populist xenophobic debates and hate crime of the 1990s, the chapter illustrates both, individual success and vulnerability due to institutionalised forms of anti- Muslim and anti-Turks segments in Germany.