A fragmented discourse of religious leadership in France: Muslim youth between citizenship and radicalization

At a time when public debates about radicalization of Muslim youth in the West are taking center stage and when questions about “home-grown” security threats are increasing in the wake of a number of terrorist attacks in many émigré societies, this article provides fresh empirical insights from the perspective of religious leadership. It outlines a picture of a highly diverse Muslim religious landscape where competing religious discourses are struggling to attract and support Muslim youth facing social dislocation and identity crises within increasingly contested social milieus. The article argues that a typology of religious leadership is clearly emerging where a spectrum of faith-based orientations and religious practice emphasize, to different degrees, notions of attachment to universal ethics and individual agency. The fact that conservative, sometimes radical, interpretations of such contestations represent a minority of voices is heartening even though the actual damage by such minority is often disproportionate to its actual size within the so-called silent majority. The empirical insights provided by the religious leaders interviewed for this study offer hope that the future of Western Muslims is more positive than we are led to think, if the possibility of combining devout faith with local political engagement becomes a real and sustainable conduit towards social inclusion and intercultural understanding and if necessary support and understanding are extended by the host communities.

"If you don't want to take risks, then you have to be silent" : an interview with Howard Zinn.

An interview with intellectual Howard Zinn is presented. When asked on the responsibilities of a public intellectual, he mentioned doing something that would benefit the society and not just satisfying one's own personal ambition. He states that there are risks on coming up with ideas as a public intellectual, including the opinions of the people. He discusses the benefits and problems of being allied to a university as a public intellectual.

Silent windows

Silent Windows was a major exhibition of Terry Matassoni's paintings and works on paper spanning 23 years. It was held at Maroondah Art Gallery (Ringwood, Melbourne) in 2012.

The silent witness: art as a mode of representation of voices and visions of how,as a woman, I build borders and bridges in enacting my identit(ies)

Feminist theorists unveil how women negotiate their identities within complex entanglements of social constructs such as race, ethnicity, religious belief and practices, cultural tradition, and values. Feminist artists use subjective experiences that shape representation and performativity in empowering women to have a ‘voice’. In this paper, I focus on ‘breaking silences’ through series of my artworks (as part of my PhD research) that represent self-narratives as subjectivities of life experiences, contingencies, and cultural shifts through migration transitions as new ways of figuration and reflection on such issues. I look through discourses of gender differences, nomadic subjectivity, and new ways of figurations (Braidotti 2011, 10) and the affect theory (Gregg and Seigworth 2010), and the concept of giving ‘voice’ (Berlant 2011). Such discourses frame how I interrogate and represent my gendered identities.