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This chapter delves into the complex landscape of Muslim political agency within British politics, particularly focusing on how Muslim civil society organizations respond to the challenge of misrecognition. The prevalence of misperceptions and misrepresentations regarding Muslim political involvement often leads to accusations of fostering sectaria...
This article will explore the extent to which a focus on the ‘local’ can tell us something meaningful about recent developments in the governance of displaced migrants and refugees. Taking a multi-sited approach spanning cases in the south and north of Europe, we consider how the challenge of housing and accommodation in particular, a core sector o...
There is a gap between the ‘aspirational pluralism’ espoused by political elites, and Scotland’s record on the representation of ethnic minorities in politics. In this chapter we explore the status of a Scottish multicultural citizenship broadly conceived, and identify three clusters. The first centres on an aspirational pluralism, characterized by...
Political responses to ethno-religious diversity often include the idea of a common culture or (core) values, e.g., the German Leitkultur and comparable concepts in Denmark and the Netherlands. These intellectual debates underlie and inform different types of civic integration policies. Their structure demonstrates the discursive connection between...
This article revisits Critical Race Theory and brings it’s explanatory capacity to bear on the contemporary racialization of Muslims in Europe, most specifically the experience of British Muslim communities in education. The article argues that CRT can provide a theoretically fruitful means of gauging the ways in which anti-Muslim discrimination mi...
On the basis of the book chapters, this concluding chapter takes up some of key junctures and challenges either dealt with directly or lingering on. The chapter argues for more empirical and theoretical sensitivity to historical contexts of whiteness but without losing sight of the perspective on power and racial discourse formation it offers. Seco...
One unsettled analytical question in race scholarship concerns the relationship between categories of race and categories of post-colonialism. These are often run together or are used interchangeably; sometimes an implicit hierarchy of one over the other is assumed without explicit discussion. In that activity, a great deal is enveloped, including...
It is a common complaint among Muslim civil society organizations and activists that their presence in British politics is misconceived. For example, and notwithstanding a broader commitment to pluralism in British politics, activists who mobilize on the basis of Muslim religious identities often encounter the charge that they foster sectarian divi...
Different branches of anthropological inquiry that have focused on Muslim populations in the Global South, have tended to treat Islam as something like an independent variable. This is true of both those concerned with social structure and those which focused on social signs – each has often treated Muslims as either derivative of a monolithic Isla...
Since Sociology was established in 1967, the journal has assumed a significant role in shaping the discipline. In the interim years it is often said that the very practice of sociology has now ‘spun out’ beyond the dedicated departments that were once the centres of sociological practice. This raises questions as to the relationship between sociolo...
In this special anniversary issue of Sociology, we mark 50 volumes of the journal by reflecting on the developing story of sociology as both a disciplinary and intellectual pursuit. In this respect, the collection stands alongside a corpus of anniversary publications marking the contribution of Sociology to the study of key aspects of sociological...
Contemporary discussion about race has a tendency to set off out without first checking the rear view mirror. In Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives, in contrast, Murji and Solomos identify what has and has not been covered, and so appeal at the outset for a ‘more sustained’ account of changing research agendas of...
In this article, we consider the implications of the 'Prevent' strand of the government's counter-terrorism strategy for the UK state's engagement with Muslims. We argue that the logics of Prevent have been highly problematic for state–Muslim engagement. Nevertheless, we suggest that the characterisation of state approaches to engaging Muslims as a...
The concern of this chapter, as that of the book as a whole, is to explore contemporary relationships between Muslim minorities and the state, with a particular focus upon structural and cultural dynamics.1 In this regard the case of Britain is illustrative. This is because an analysis of political and institutional responses to Muslim “difference”...
This article provides a historically informed analysis of the contemporary incorporation of Islam and Muslims into an idea of common – national – membership in the United States and Britain. It shows that there is a current movement towards synthesis between religious and national identities by Muslims themselves, and explores the ways in which thi...
This paper explores Virdee’s account of how racialized minorities in socialist movements ‘played an instrumental role in trying to align struggles against racism with those against class exploitation’ (p. 164). In so doing, Virdee makes an important intervention at a time when popular historians and other ideologues are colluding in the elevation o...
When Barack Obama was first appointed as the US Democratic President in 2008, political commentators heralded his election as a watershed moment in American history. For many he was seen as emblematic of America's changing attitudes to race, and much journalistic ink has subsequently been spilled pontificating about the plight of a 'black man' in t...
The concept of intersectionality was developed by social scientists seeking to analyse the multiple interacting influences of social location, identity and historical oppression. Despite broad take-up elsewhere, its application in public health remains underdeveloped. We consider how health inequalities research in the United Kingdom has predominan...
Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and conversion in the New Europe, by Esra Ozyurek, Princeton, Princeton University Press 2015, 192 pp., ISBN: 9780691162799.
There is a widely shared view that the appeal of multiculturalism as a public policy has suffered considerable political damage. In many European states the turn to “civic” measures and discourses has been deemed more suitable for the objectives of minority integration and the promotion of preferred modes of social and political unity. It is theref...
At a time when all the political parties of Scotland are trying to establish a persuasive vision of the nation, inquiry into where ethnic and racial minorities fit into these debates provides one understudied means of bridging literatures on multinationalism and multiculturalism. Focusing especially on the lesser known question of how elite politic...
The alleged death of British multiculturalism has been celebrated in some quarters and regretted in others. Invoking Ulrich Beck’s discussion of zombie categories, we argue that while the appeal of ‘multiculturalism’ as a term has clearly declined, the category in Britain that it refers to encompasses not a single charter, but a series of political...
This essay provides a critical reflection on the intellectual and political questions raised by The Empire Strikes Back. It argues that thirty years after the collection helped establish the politics of race at the centre of mainstream scholarly debate; these have now been pushed to the periphery of British sociology. The discussion begins by setti...
Research Highlights and Abstract
This article
Contributes to theoretical debates about the significance of group identity and political representation; Contributes to academic research into the shift from formal and hierarchical to more informal and network-based styles of governance; Contributes to research on the integration of Muslims in Britain...
Research Highlights and Abstract
This article:
Examines the meaning of claims for ‘recognition’ and struggles against ‘misrecognition’ by working through aspects of Muslim political agency in contemporary British politics; Contributes to research on the political mobilisation of Muslims in Britain by examining how civil society organisations respon...
In this introductory article we critically discuss where the study of race in sociology has travelled, with the benefit of previously published articles in Sociology supported by correspondence from article authors. We make the argument for sociologies of race that go beyond surface level reconstructions, and which challenge sociologists to reflect...
Drawing on Razzaque's seminal book, From Human Being to Human Bomb which identifies patterns of extremist thought processes amongst young British Muslims, this study is the very first attempt at empirically testing such a concept and establishes a precedent for the study of the links between psychology and Islamism that continue to be critically un...
It is striking to observe the virtual absence of an established literature on race and racism in the discussion of Islamophobia; something that is only marginally more present in the discussion of antisemitism. This special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies locates the contemporary study of antisemitism and Islamophobia squarely within the fields...
This article delineates a number of conceptual-normative, analytical and political concerns, characterized as matters of (1) ‘semantics’, (2) ‘scales’ and (3) ‘solidarities’, in the ways in which we can approach an understanding of the relationships between antisemitism and Islamophobia. As such it takes its cue from Goldberg's (2009) insistence th...
In this discussion we offer an overview of the place of Muslim actors in European scholarship. We especially focus on the second and subsequent generations of European Muslims, and how future research agendas could conceptualise the relationship between contemporary Muslim identity and citizenship regimes in Europe. We explore the way in which our...
This chapter shares the core focus of the book in considering some key contemporary social and political developments relating to cultural diversity in five EU states. These span topics of naturalization processes, anti-discrimination measures and strategies for political participation, as well as civic integrationist and educational measures (Tria...
MoreyPeter and YaqinAmina, Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011, $27.95). Pp. 246. isbn978 0 674 04852 2. - Volume 46 Issue 2 - NASAR MEER
This paper critically examines some of the ways in which conceptions of interculturalism are being positively contrasted with multiculturalism, especially as political ideas. It argues that while some advocates of a political interculturalism wish to emphasise its positive qualities in terms of encouraging communication, recognising dynamic identit...
Interculturalism has replaced multiculturalism in many discussions of cultural diversity. But what does the term mean, and is it really a superior alternative to the multiculturalist model?Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood investigate.
The responses to our paper vary in their level of agreement and thematic focus but not in their scholarship and intellectual generosity, and so we wish to begin this rejoinder by registering our thanks to each respondent for reading and engaging with the piece in the spirit in which it was authored. Indeed, we are delighted to learn of the intent o...
The de-stigmatisation of Jewish people is now a taken for granted fact in the United States, where a population of less than 2 per cent is firmly represented in the elites of a country, which, since about President Reagan’s time, has started referring to itself as the leader of a Judeo-Christian civilisation. The transformation in Europe – a contin...
In the 20 years since the publication of Charles Taylor’s essay on ‘The Politics of Recognition’ (Taylor, 1992) and Axel Honneth’s book Kampf um Anerkennung (see Honneth, 1995), there has been an incremental proliferation in literature tackling the concept of recognition. While sometimes conflated with related issues, especially concerning the poli...
It is widely accepted that the category of ‘Muslim’ in Europe is patterned by a variety of subjective and objective features. Despite internal difference, some argue that there emerges something overarching that furnishes Muslims in Europe with a collective sense of self, evidenced by empirically observable Muslim identities at local, national and...
In recent years, the idea of the politics of recognition has become an increasingly popular way of thinking about a wide range of political phenomena, from the logic of social struggles to the nature of social justice.
Proposes a common European intellectual framework to evaluate recent developments in European multiculturalism. The heightened security awareness in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the London and Madrid bombings has resulted in a 'crisis of multiculturalism'. Now is the time to look at the renewed challenges that multiculturalism faces today. Each...
Great Britain was created through the 1707 Act of Union.1 Few shared a notion of ‘being British’ at the time; but by the end of the Napoleonic Wars the British increasingly defined themselves against the French and through their belief in Protestantism and free political institutions (Colley, 1996: 58). Expanding empire and industrialisation enable...
In this article we discuss the significance of how a variety of self-consciously Muslim actors have become increasingly discernable in public and media discourses in Britain. We show how within news reporting itself there is an observable variety of Muslim perspectives and that this marks a positive contrast with the more limited range of argumenta...
This paper examines the adoption of EC directives derived from Article 13 of the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam. It argues that these directives are party to important changes in established legal responses to racial and religious anti-discrimination in Britain. It maps the interaction of specific British approaches and generic European Commission direct...
This article reports on a study of mediatised public discourses on nationhood, citizenship, and gender in Britain, and analyses the ways in which these accounts may be utilised in the cultivation of particular kinds of social identities. We distinguish our approach at the outset from other lines of inquiry to report on a macro level exploration of...
Before the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) was amalgamated into a larger body in 2007, its former chair Julie Mellor once insisted that ‘Britain’s equality laws are a mess. Inconsistent and incomplete, they offer different levels of protection for different groups and none at all for others’ (The Guardian, 16 May 2002). In coming to this view...
Earlier chapters have delineated the emergence of a heterogeneous Muslim identity and characterised it as a form of Muslim-consciousness. Reporting on the first of three case studies, this chapter examines the relationship between this Muslim-consciousness and the civic status Muslims are seeking through the mobilisation for schools. In the opening...
The manner in which minorities are publicly represented is integral to Du Bois’ account of double consciousness, as Chapter 2 illustrated through his discussion of the ‘veil’ and the construction of the self. That external narratives on minority identity impinge upon the sorts of consciousness minorities experience, is a concern captured in his pro...
Among the back pages of a polemical magazine from the mid-1980s rests the following prescient observation from the Welsh Muslim convert Meryl Wyn Davies:
Muslims are prepared to organise for issues as they see them: to create a platform for being Muslims in Britain. But there is no obvious political home for this developing Muslim politics. […] All...
In his essay on ‘The Conservation of Races’, W. E. B. Du Bois (1897) directs himself to African-Americans and insists, ‘[I]t is our duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organisation, by race solidarity, by race unity to that broader humanity which freely recognises...
In their authoritative survey of social attitudes towards ‘belonging’ in Britain, analysed according to religious groupings, Heath and Roberts (2008: 14) make the interesting finding that while Christians tend to report the ‘strongest sense of belonging’ to Britain, Muslims are considerably more likely that any other religious group to report belon...
In a poignant letter to Guardian in November 2001, a Muslim reader once complained of how ‘I have to condemn these terrorist attacks louder than other citizens, as anything less disguises hidden support for the murder of innocent civilians. […] I cannot oppose the bombing of Afghanistan, as this amounts to treason because our troops are out there....
We should begin this chapter by recognising that there is a very deep and expansive body of literature on the idea and practice of citizenship, and that this reflects an incredible variety in its philosophical, legal, social and political framings. For the purposes of this book, a good place to enter a conceptualisation of citizenship would be to n...
British multiculturalism is alleged to have buckled under various Muslim-related pressures. Indeed, some intellectuals, commentators and politicians of different political persuasions have pointed to evidence of a ‘retreat’ to be found in an increased governmental emphasis upon ‘integration’ and ‘social cohesion’. One response to these developments...
Muslim schools in Britain have emerged as a highly salient issue that at times reinforces, and at other times cuts across, political and philosophical divides. It therefore comes as some surprise to learn that despite a general proliferation of literature on Muslims in Britain very little research has explicitly investigated how increasingly salien...
One outcome of the Muhammad cartoons controversy has been an opportunity for comparative critical examination of public discourse on conceptions of citizenship and belonging vis-à-vis Muslim minorities in different national contexts. In this article, we focus upon the press reaction in two north-western European countries that on first appearance o...
Meer and Modood identify a variety of reasons why the notion that Muslim minorities could be subject to racism by virtue of their real or perceived 'Muslimness' is met with much less sympathy than the widely accepted notion that other religious minorities in Europe, particularly Jewish groups, can be the victims of racism. They begin by elaborating...
Meer and Modood identify a variety of reasons why the notion that Muslim minorities could be subject to racism by virtue of their real or perceived ‘Muslimness’ is met with much less sympathy than the widely accepted notion that other religious minorities in Europe, particularly Jewish groups, can be the victims of racism. They begin by elaborating...
This volume is the first authoritative reference work to provide a truly comprehensive international description and analysis of multicultural education around the world. It is organized around key concepts and uses case studies from various nations in different parts of the world to exemplify and illustrate the concepts. Case studies are from many...
This article examines the adoption of EC directives derived from Article 13 of the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997). It argues that these directives are party to important changes in established legal responses to racial and religious anti-discrimination in Britain. It maps the interaction of specific British approaches and generic EC directives, and ass...
Since Al Qaeda's attacks on America in 2001, 'Islamophobia' has quickly entered common parlance. 'Islamophobia' is also a contested concept - its very meaning and implications varying widely depending where on the political, religious and intellectual spectrum one stands. Given this, there is much confusion as to what kind of experiences (if any) m...
This handbook bridges "explicit" treatments of ethical issues in communication and "implicit" considerations of ethics, putting under one umbrella analyses and applications that draw upon recognized ethical theories and those which, while they do not cite traditional ethical theorists, nevertheless engage important questions of power, equality, and...
Comparisons of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment (the latter also known as ‘Islamophobia’) are noticeably absent in British accounts of race and racism. This article critically examines some public and media discourse on Jewish and Muslim minorities to draw out the similarities and differences contained within anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sent...
The denial that racism operates against Muslims qua Muslims has permeated public and media discourse of late. Intellectuals, commentators and legislators from across the political spectrum have explicitly rationalized this position by distinguishing involuntary racial identities from voluntary religious identities. Meer explores the nature of Musli...
Equality for british muslims lies beyond race and religion -- it's time to bring the law up to date