There has traditionally been a wide divide between the study of the politics of Islam in the Middle East and in the West. Middle East-focused research in American political science has focused in great depth on issues such as political mobilization, social service provision, electoral performance, and Islamist ideologies. American research on Islam in the West, by contrast, has often focused on cultural conflicts, immigration, terrorism, and anti-Islamic campaigns. Today’s European scholarship on Islam distinguishes itself by a wide spectrum of methods, topics, and fieldworks, with a trend toward strong ethnographic research. Over the last two decades, a prolific and pluralist field of scholarship on Islam and Muslims in Europe and the U.S. has emerged and brought to the fore innovative perspectives and understudied topics.
On June 28, 2018, POMEPS and Sciences Po CERI convened a workshop with a dozen scholars of Islam and politics in Europe and North America to engage with these various perspectives. Their work in POMEPS Studies 32: The Politics of Islam in Europe and North America illustrates the richness of the field of the politics of Islam in Europe and the U.S.
Introduction, Marc Lynch, Nadia Marzouki
French Muslim authorities as social troubleshooters, Margot Dazey
What makes “Muslim representatives” representative? The public policy attempts to build a representative Muslim organization in France, Fatima Khemilat
The Hajj from a French perspective: The effects of the pilgrimage on collective identities, Leila Seurat
Constraining Muslim Mobilizations in France. Symbolic Repression and Disqualification as Demobilization Practices, Julien Talpin
Mosques and Political Engagement in Europe and North America, Aubrey Westfall
The Politics of ‘Tradition’ and the Production of Diasporic Shia Religiosity, Avi Astor, co-authors Victor Albert Blanco, Rosa Martínez Cuadros
The Islamic Deathscapes of Germany, Osman Balkan
“Do We Need a Minaret?”: Challenging Urban Contexts and Changing Islamic Theologies, Sultan Tepe
Approaching the Security-Integration Nexus, Andrew Aguilar
Towards an autonomization of Jihadism? The ideological, sociological and political permeability between contemporary quietist Salafism and Jihadism in France, Mohamed-Ali Adraoui
Sunni Jihadism and Religious Authority: Its Transformative Character and Effects, Tore Hamming
The Effects of Discrimination on European Muslim Trust in Governmental Institutions, Mujtaba Ali Isani
He’s Not an Imam, lol He’s a Postal Worker: Locating the Imam in the USA, Nancy Khalil
Trust and Giving for the Sake of God: The Rise of the Bureaucratic Non-Profit in American Muslim Charity, Katherine Merriman
Art and activism of the ‘war on terror’ generation: British Muslim youth and the politics of refusal, Bogumila Hall