Diversity and Unity of islam in Europe. Some Reflections

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) This volume embodies an uptodate and sensitive set of studies exploring the ongoing negotiation of European Muslim identities in Europe. The Editor argues there has been hitherto a three-fold response on the part of Muslims in Europe (some of whom are now 3rd generation Europeans) - integrationism, isolationism, and escapism. Today the latter two responses are giving way, it is argued, to an active shaping of Muslim European identities. The central issue remains: what degree of freedom and what potential for cultural and religious diversity can minorities have in an outwardly secular and plural European society?

Childhood cancer mortality in America, Asia, and Oceania, 1970 through 2007.

BACKGROUND: Over the last 4 decades, childhood cancer mortality declined in most developed areas of the world. However, scant information is available from middle-income and developing countries. The authors analyzed and compared patterns in childhood cancer mortality in 24 developed and middle-income countries in America, Asia, and Oceania between 1970 and 2007. METHODS: Childhood age-standardized annual mortality rates were derived from the World Health Organization (WHO) database for all neoplasms, bone and kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and leukemias. RESULTS: Since 1970, rates for all childhood cancers dropped from approximately 8 per 100,000 boys to 3 per 100,000 boys and from 6 per 100,000 girls to 2 per 100,000 girls in North America and Japan. Latin American countries registered rates of approximately 5 per 100,000 boys and 4 per 100,000 girls for 2005 through 2007, similar to the rates registered in more developed areas in the early 1980s. Similar patterns were observed for leukemias, for which the mortality rates were 0.81 per 100,000 boys and 0.55 per 100,000 girls in North America, 0.86 per 100,000 boys and 0.68 per 100,000 girls in Japan, and 1.98 per 100,000 boys and 1.65 per 100,000 girls in Latin America for 2005 through 2007. Bone cancer rates for 2005 through 2007 were approximately 2-fold higher in Argentina than in the United States. During the same period, Mexico registered the highest rate for kidney cancer and Colombia registered the highest rate for NHL, whereas the lowest rates were registered by Japan for kidney and by Japan and the United States for NHL. CONCLUSIONS: Improvements in the adoption of current integrated treatment protocols in Latin American and other lower- and middle-income countries worldwide would avoid a substantial proportion of childhood cancer deaths.

Patients with non-insulin depending diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome are suboptimal treated in swiss primary care.

The prevalence of complicated hypertension is increasing in America and Europe. This survey was undertaken to assess the status quo of primary care management of hypertension in patients with the high-risk comorbid diseases metabolic syndrome (MetS) and/or type 2 diabetes mellitus (non-insulin depending diabetes mellitus (NIDDM)). Data of anti-hypertensive treatment of 4594 Swiss patients were collected over 1 week. We identified patients with exclusively NIDDM (N = 95), MetS (N = 168), and both (N = 768). Target blood pressure (TBP) attainment, frequency of prescribed substance-classes, and correlations to comorbidities/end-organ damages were assessed. In addition, we analyzed the prescription of unfavorable beta-blockers (BB) and high-dose diuretics (Ds). In NIDDM, Ds (61%), angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) (40%), and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) (31%) were mostly prescribed, while in MetS, drugs prevalence was Ds (68%), ARBs (48%), and BB (41%). Polypharmacy in patients with MetS correlated with body mass index; older patients (>65 years) were more likely to receive dual-free combinations. TBP was attained in 25.2% of NIDDM and in 28.7% of MetS patients. In general, low-dose Ds use was more prevalent in NIDDM and MetS, however, overall, Ds were used excessively (NIDDM: 61%, MetS: 68%), especially in single-pill combination. Patients with MetS were more likely to receive ARBs, ACEIs, CCBs, and low-dose Ds than BBs and/or high-dose Ds. Physicians recognize DM and MetS as high-risk patients, but select inappropriate drugs. Because the majority of patients may have both, MetS and NIDDM, there is an unmet need to define TBP for this specific population considering the increased risk in comparison to patients with MetS or NIDDM alone.

Being Recognizable in Order to Overcome the Crisis: The Ambivalence of Islamis Actor's Struggle for Visibility in France and Switzerland

Since the 1990s, and especially since the early 2000s, passionate controversies (Göle 2014) have emerged around the new visibility of Islam in the public sphere across Europe. These controversies, which crystallized in the headscarf debate, seem even more disturbing given that women who wear it are often young, urban and educated: that is to say, "modern" (Göle 1997, 2011). Indeed, these young women wearing the hijab seem to disrupt the narrative of Western modernity, including the decline in religious practice (Hervieu-Léger 2006) or the narration of the process of secularization in Europe. It is in the context of these controversies that Islam is built imaginatively as a "public problem" that has to be "solved" (Behloul 2012). Thus, this social construction of the Muslim other has nurtured an assessment of the failure of multiculturalism in some European countries and a process of convergence around a single model of civic integration in Europe (Behloul 2012, Joppke 2004, 2010).

Transnational Senegalese Politics in France

Newsletter for Study of Islam in the Modern World (Leide/NL)

Zivilgesellschaft, Menschenrechte und Islam

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) Worin bestehen Konfliktpotential und Konvergenzfähigkeit religiöser Minderheiten? Religionen weisen häufig dort Konvergenzen auf, wo ihre Mitglieder einen Lebensraum teilen. Wenn also die Grenzen zwischen den Religionen nicht bereits geographisch festgelegt oder auf andere Weise von vornherein gezogen sind, sondern religiöse Gemeinschaften miteinander Berührungsflächen im Alltag haben, ergibt sich daraus häufig eine kommunikative Dynamik. Sie ist abhängig vom Selbstverständnis der betroffenen Religionsgemeinschaften. Wie wird jüdisches Selbstverständnis durch die jeweilige Umwelt geprägt, insbesondere im Kontakt mit west- und osteuropäischer Kultur? Wie versteht sich das Christentum angesichts einer mehrheitlich nichtchristlichen Umwelt? Wie konkretisiert es sich gegenwärtig in Deutschland in besonderen religiös-kulturellen Ausprägungen und in den Kontexten staatlich regulierter Pluralität? Wie versteht sich der Islam in Abgrenzung gegenüber und in Offenheit für Juden und Christen - vom Rekurs auf die Heilige Schrift her, in der Umsetzung mystischer Religiosität in Organisationen, bei der Konzeption von Bildung? Wie verband und verbindet sich islamisches Selbstverständnis mit europäischen Kulturtraditionen? Was ist hinduistisches Selbstverständnis aus der Perspektive der ,,Unberührbaren" und andererseits aus der Perspektive von Hindus in Deutschland? Wie verbinden sich hinduistisches, tibetisch-buddhistisches und Baha'i-Selbstverständnis mit westeuropäischer Kultur? Verbunden mit welchen Potentialen für Konflikt und Frieden stellt sich das jeweilige Selbstverständnis dar bei afro-amerikanischen Religionen, Hexenreligionen und bei der Rezeption esoterischer Traditionen? Beiträge aus Religionswissenschaft und Theologie, Ethnologie und Orientalistik, Soziologie und Politologie thematisieren Chancen und Probleme der auch in Deutschland zunehmend sich herausbildenden multireligiösen Situation.

Migrating concepts: Immigrant integration and the regulation of religious dress in France and Canada

Religion in general, and Islam in particular, has become one of the main focal points of policy-making and constitutional politics in many Western liberal states. This article proposes to examine the legal and political dynamics behind new regulations targeting individual religious practices of Muslims. Although one could presuppose that church-state relations or the understanding of secularism is the main factor accounting for either accommodation or prohibition of Muslim religious practices, I make the case that the policy frame used to conceptualize the integration of immigrants in each national context is a more significant influence on how a liberal state approaches the legal regulation of individual practices such as veiling. However, this influence must be assessed carefully since it may have different effects on the different institutional actors in charge of regulating religion, such as the Courts and the legislature. To assess these hypotheses I compare two countries, France and Canada, which are solid examples of two contrasting national policy frames for the integration of immigrants.

Political Emotions: Civil Religion and Melodrama in Spielberg's Lincoln

This essay focuses on how Spielberg's film engages with and contributes to the myth of Lincoln as a super-natural figure, a saint more than a hero or great statesman, while anchoring his moral authority in the sentimental rhetoric of the domestic sphere. It is this use of the melodramatic mode, linking the familial space with the national through the trope of the victim-hero, which is the essay's main concern. With Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America, as scriptwriter, it is perhaps not surprising that melodrama is the operative mode in the film. One of the issues that emerge from this analysis is how the film updates melodrama for a contemporary audience in order to minimize what could be perceived as manipulative sentimental devices, observing for most of the film an aesthetic of relative sobriety and realism. In the last hour, and especially the final minutes of the film, melodramatic conventions are deployed in full force and infused with hagiographic iconography to produce a series of emotionally charged moments that create a perfect union of American Civil Religion and classical melodrama. The cornerstone of both cultural paradigms, as deployed in this film, is death: Lincoln's at the hands of an assassin, and the Civil War soldiers', poignantly depicted at key moments of the film. Finally, the essay shows how film melodrama as a genre weaves together the private and the public, the domestic with the national, the familial with the military, and links pathos to politics in a carefully choreographed narrative of sentimentalized mythopoesis.