Monthly Archives: November 2013

New publication on “Islamic Organizations in Europe and the USA. A Multidisciplinary Perspective”

Kortmann, Matthias; Rosenow-Williams, Kerstin (eds) (2013), Islamic Organizations in Europe and the USA: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. (Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, vol. 3), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=657020

This volume explores the extraordinary variety of Islamic organizations in Europe and the United States. It focuses on the question of how local, national and transnational environments and changing public discourses on Muslims and Islam affect Islamic organizations and their members. The contributions all employ a bottom-up research approach and uncover diverse reactions of Islamic organizations in their forms of organization, strategies and practices. Compiling twelve studies from researchers of a variety of disciplines, this volume provides theoretical and empirical findings on Islamic organizations from the Baltic States, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

Sample chapter [PDF]

Matthias Kortmann is Researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Munich, Germany.

Kerstin Rosenow-Williams is Researcher at the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.

Some quants posts at Bristol University

These posts include interests in ethnicity, migration and Muslim studies within a quantitative approach but are targeted at those specific interests.

Lecturer in Politics with Quantitative Research Methods

https://www.bris.ac.uk/jobs/find/details.html?nPostingID=1496&nPostingTargetID=4962&option=28&sort=DESC&respnr=1&ID=Q50FK026203F3VBQBV7V77V83&Resultsperpage=10&lg=UK&mask=uobext

Lecturer in Sociology with Quantitative Research Methods
https://www.bris.ac.uk/jobs/find/details.html?nPostingID=1497&nPostingTargetID=4955&option=28&sort=DESC&respnr=1&ID=Q50FK026203F3VBQBV7V77V83&Resultsperpage=10&lg=UK&mask=uobext

Professor of Quantitative Methods / Social Statistics:
https://www.bris.ac.uk/jobs/find/details.html?nPostingID=1501&nPostingTargetID=4974&option=28&sort=DESC&respnr=3&ID=Q50FK026203F3VBQBV7V77V83&Resultsperpage=10&lg=UK&mask=uobext

Senior Lecturer/Reader in Quantitative Methods/Social Statistics
https://www.bris.ac.uk/jobs/find/details.html?nPostingID=1490&nPostingTargetID=4970&option=28&sort=DESC&respnr=5&ID=Q50FK026203F3VBQBV7V77V83&Resultsperpage=10&lg=UK&mask=uobext

International Conference: Islamism versus Post-Islamism? Dec. 13th ­ 15th, 2013 Frankfurt , Germany

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Islamism versus Post-Islamism? Mapping topographies of Islamic political and cultural practices and discourses

Dec. 13th – 15th, 2013
Frankfurt, Germany

Normative Orders
https://www.normativeorders.net/en

The general view seems to be that in many countries of the Muslim world the cultural space shaped by Islamic discourses poses a challenge for Max Weber’s thesis that the world is becoming increasingly secularized and disenchanted. Islam is not only a vital religion attracting more and more followers, it has also undergone a number of adaptations to modernity in the course of the past 100 years. In countries with laical or pluralist political traditions, scores of young people join Islamist organizations, Islamic lifestyles are immensely popular, and Islamic utopias are serving as models for social reform. In many countries of the Muslim World, recent political developments have opened a political space to transform utopian Islamic political visions into policy, developments that seem to support some scholars’ assertions of a crisis of liberal democracy and the coming of a post-secular age.

Yet, the political and civic landscapes in which the actors are (re-)negotiating socio-political orders are far more variegated and not in the least limited to purely secularist or post-secular Islamist visions.
In practice, Islamic and Islamist discourses as well as reform efforts are characterized by a great deal of diversity, as well as by ambiguities and paradoxes that touch all fields of social, economic, political, and cultural activity. Not least among the ambiguities and paradoxes are how Islamist movements have been and currently are positioning themselves
visà - vis central principles of liberal democracy, such as pluralism, gender justice and unconditional equality before the law. This has led several scholars to suggest that Islamist movements are not necessarily anti-democratic. Rather, such movement may figure as import forces in the political transformation of regimes in the Muslim World from authoritarian to democratic, a development they identify as a “post-Islamist” turn, the most prominent cases of which are presently Tunisia and Egypt following the “Arab Spring”.

At the same time, polylsemic signifiers such as “democracy”, “justice” and “pluralism” are in practice interpreted in highly contrastive ways, with competing actors ascribing substantially different meanings to them in their struggles for social hegemony and political power. The conference seeks to link empirical research with theoretical debates about contemporary social, political and legal changes in the Muslim World, including developments not only in the Middle East and North Africa, but also in Central and South Asia, the Muslim-majority countries of the ASEAN region as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe.

FRIDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2013
11.00 Opening remarks
KEYNOTE I
11.30 Katajun Amirpur (Hamburg): A New Generation of Post-Islamist Thinkers. Occidentosis left behind 12.15 Discussion
12.30 Lunch
EUROPE
Chair: Oliver Bertrand
13.30 Susanne Schröter (Frankfurt): Longing for a Simple Life Salafism in Germany 14.00 Armina Omerika (Frankfurt): The Ethnic Turn?
Tradition and ethnicity in the gender discourses of The Salafiya in the Western Balkans
14.30 Kirsten Wesselhoeft (Cambridge): “The Day of Beauty and Well-being”: Islamic leisure in urban France and the ‘post-secular’ family 15.00 Discussion
15.30 Coffee
TURKEY
Chair: Katja Rieck
16.00 Fabio Vicini (Sienna): Rethinking Solidarity and Justice in Contemporary Turkey. The case of Muslim civil society organizations
16.30 Pierre Hecker (Marburg): Hegemony and Resistance. Turkey’s post-Islamist turn and the meaning of style 17.00 Discussion
Dana Fennert (Marburg) Film (60 Min) Musawah (Equality). The Fight for Gender Equality in Islam. 18.30 Standing dinner reception

SATURDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2013
KEYNOTE II
10.00 Gudrun Krämer (Berlin): Islam and the Principles of Secularism 10.45 Discussion
11.00 Coffee
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Chair: Katja Rieck
11.30 Dorothea Schulz (Cologne): Muslim Activism, Mass Media and the Making of Religious Attachment in Southern Mali
12.00 Rüdiger Seesemann (Bayreuth): Post-Islamism, Postsecularism, and the Politics of Islamic Knowledge. Insights from Africa
12.30 Discussion
13.00 Lunch
NORTH AFRICA I – EGYPT
Chair: Susanne Schröter
14.30 Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (Copenhagen):
Treatments of the Islamist and Post-Islamist `Alim in Egyptian Fiction. 15.00 Emin Poljarevic (Edinburgh): Is there a Post-Islamist Turn? Differences between the linear and organic progressions of Islamism in Egypt 15.30 Discussion
16.00 Coffee
NORTH AFRICA II – TUNISIA
Chair: Sonia Zayed
16.30 Robert Bianchi (Singapore): The Social Bases of the An-Nahdha Party’s Support in Tunisia
17.00 Karima El Ouazghari (Frankfurt): Islamism in Action. The Tunisian An-Nahdha party within changing contexts 17.30 Discussion
18.00 Dinner reception for invited speakers at the faculty Lounge

SUNDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2013
SOUTHEAST ASIA I
Chair: Gunnar Stange
10.00 Dominik Müller (Frankfurt): Resisting the Post- Islamist Evolution: Pop-Islamist youth politics in Malaysia
10.30 Kristina Großmann (Passau): Totalizing Visions of the Shari’a in Everyday Life. Enforcement, re/ production and transgression of the Islamic dress code for women in Aceh, Indonesia
11.00 Monika Arnez (Hamburg): Islamism or Post- Islamism in Indonesia? A critical analysis 11.30 Discussion
12.00 Lunch
SOUTHEAST ASIA II
Chair: Dominik Müller
13.30 Norshahril Saat (Canberra): Ideological and Utopian Islamism. The Offical ‘Ulama’ in post authoritarian Indonesia and Malaysia 14.00 Frederike Trottier (Frankfurt): Sports and Islam:
Muslim sportswomen in the Islamic Solidarity Games
14.30 Discussion
15.00 Conference ends. Optional visit to Frankfurt Christmas market REGISTRATION:
The registration fee is € 90.00 and includes all meals and coffee breaks.
It is to be made payable to Goethe-University Frankfurt For payments made from a German bank account: Bank: Helaba
Sort code (BLZ): 500 500 00
Account number: 100 641 0
Reference (Verwendungszweck):
Sachkonto 640 806 00 Prof. Dr. Schröter
For payments made from a foreign bank account
IBAN: DE 955 005 000 000 010 064 10
BIC: HELADEFF
Reference: Sachkonto 640 806 00 Prof. Dr. Schroeter

Conference Islamism versus Post-Islamism-Program.pdf

The Sociology of Irreligion - public event

THE NSRN ANNUAL LECTURE 2013

THE SOCIOLOGY OF IRRELIGION

PAST AND PRESENT

Professor Emeritus Colin Campbell (York)

and Dr Lois Lee (UCL)

in conversation

Followed by a drinks reception

and book launch for the republication of

Campbell’s Toward a Sociology of Irreligion

6.45pm 5 December 2013

Brockway Room, Conway Hall, London

This event is free but places are limited.

To register, please email Dr Stacey Gutkowski at stacey.gutkowski

Spam: New Series: Studies in Religion, Nonreligion and Secularity (De Gruyt er)

NEW SERIES!

RELIGION AND ITS OTHERS

STUDIES IN RELIGION, NONRELIGION AND SECULARITY

SERIES EDITORS

Dr. Stacey Gutkowski, Kings College London

Dr. Lois Lee, University College London

Dr. Johannes Quack, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt

EDITORIAL BOARD

Professor Rajeev Bhargava, Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, India

Dr. Matthew Engelke, Anthropology, London School of Economics, UK

Professor Kim Knott, Religious Studies, Lancaster University, UK

Professor Cécile Laborde, Political Theory, University College London, UK

Dr. Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Program Director, Social Science Research Council, USA

Professor Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, Sociology, Universität Leipzig, Germany

Professor David Wulff, Psychology, Wheaton College, USA

The new series Religion and Its Others: Studies in Religion, Nonreligion and Secularity (RIO) is the first to consider the multiple relations between religion, nonreligion, and secularity. Monographs, edited volumes, and readers in this series are concerned with the forming and reforming of religious traditions in relation to their cultural and political contexts, their boundaries, and what is beyond those boundaries. The series explores apparently nonreligious or ‘irreligious’
phenomena that are significantly related to religion (including forms of atheism, agnosticism, indifference) and modes of differentiation between religion and its various others, often institutionalized in cultural, legal, and political orders. Affiliated with the interdisciplinary Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (https://nsrn.net), the series invites proposals from across disciplines, including religious studies; anthropology, sociology, and psychology of religions; history and philosophy of religions; political, cultural, and area studies; media and communication studies; and studies of visual and performing arts.

Research areas of interest include:

  • the various modes of differentiation between religion and its others;

  • the various kinds of nonreligion and nonreligious-religious interrelations – the critical, pejorative, and radically secularist as well as the curious, admiring, or covetous and the distant, ignorant, or indifferent;

  • civic, juridical, and political as well as aesthetic, material, emotional, practical, or spatial manifestations of these relations.

We welcome proposals and ideas for the new series. Please contact Dr. Alissa Jones Nelson,
Acquisitions Editor for Religious Studies, in the first instance: Alissa.JonesNelson@degruyter.com

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faith and Work/Workplace Spirituality, Princeton University

Princeton University, Center for the Study of Religion - Faith and Work Initiative

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faith and Work/Workplace Spirituality

https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48070

Princeton University’s Faith and Work Initiative (FWI) within the Center for the Study of Religion (CSR) invites applications for a postdoctoral or more senior research position. Initial appointment is for one year, with possibility of renewal pending satisfactory performance. The position is open to recent Ph.D. graduates interested in studying the area of Faith and Work/Workplace Spirituality. Possible research focus might include, but not be limited to, critical reflection on:
organizational impact of workplace spirituality; historical or current issues in the faith and work movement; and methods, models, or scales regarding the integration of faith in the workplace; and other areas of research pertaining to the intersection of faith and work. Successful candidate will conduct his/her own research (33%) and work closely with FWI’s director to support his research projects (66%). S/he will also participate in a weekly interdisciplinary workshop with other CSR pre- and post-doctoral scholars, and in FWI and CSR-sponsored events.

Candidate must have strong organizational, research, and writing skills and previous research experience on faith at work/workplace spirituality or a related field (e.g., sociology, religion, business, ethics/moral philosophy, behavioral economics), and commensurate experience with relevant research tools, methods, and technology. Completion of PhD by 12/31/2013 required.

Applicants must apply online and submit a CV; cover letter describing interest in this position and this area of research; a brief (3-5 page) description of proposed research project and reference to existing FWI research projects (https://www.princeton.edu/faithandwork/research/) that s/he would wish to engage in; a relevant writing sample (published or unpublished paper) in English or with an English translation, preferably in the field of workplace spirituality/faith at work; and contact information for three references.

Princeton University is an equal opportunity employer and complies with applicable EEO and affirmative action regulations.

EU-FRA publications on antisemitism in the EU

European Agency for Fundamental Rights

New publications

Discrimination and hate crime against Jews in EU Member States: experiences and perceptions of antisemitism

This FRA survey is the first-ever to collect comparable data on Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of antisemitism, hate-motivated crime and discrimination across a number of EU Member States, specifically in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Its findings reveal a worrying level of discrimination, particularly in employment and education, a widespread fear of victimisation and heightening concern about antisemitism online.

https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2013/discrimination-and-hate-crime-against-jews-eu-member-states-experiences-and?_cldee=dHVvbWFzLm1hcnRpa2FpbmVuQGFiby5maQ%3d%3d

Antisemitism: Summary overview of the situation in the European Union 2001-2012

Antisemitism can be expressed in the form of verbal and physical attacks, threats, harassment, property damage, graffiti or other forms of text, including hate speech on the internet. The present report - the ninth update of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) overview of Manifestations of antisemitism in the EU - relates to manifestations of antisemitism as they are recorded by official and unofficial sources in the 28 European Union (EU) Member States.

https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2013/antisemitism-summary-overview-situation-european-union-2001-2012?_cldee=dHVvbWFzLm1hcnRpa2FpbmVuQGFiby5maQ%3d%3d

CFP: Panel The Good Shepherd: Secularities, Religiosities and Subjectivities DEADLINE 1st DECEMBER

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR PANEL THE GOOD SHEPHERD: SECULARITIES, RELIGIOSITIES AND SUBJECTIVITIES

International conference: RELIGION AND PLURALITIES OF KNOWLEDGE, 11 to 15 MAY 2014, Groningen

Convenors:

José Mapril, CRIA/FCSH-UNL, jmapril

Ruy Blanes, Bergen University & ICS-UL, ruy.blanes

Erin Wilson, University of Groningen , e.k.wilson

In the past decades, several authors have suggested that secularism is not only an institutional arrangement concerned with the separation of state/government from religion but instead it is a project with the objective of making a specific religious subjectivity, spirituality and relation to history. According to such arguments secularism implies a normativity that produces a specific religious subjectivity that is compatible with a liberal political ethics. Such an objective can only be achieved, so the argument goes, with the help of a particular style of scriptural hermeneutics which allows a secularized conception of religion.

This concept of normative secularism or secularity (or secular culture), although interpretatively rich, seems to imply a homogeneous perception of what secularism and religion are or ‘should’ be, and consequently an homogeneous notion of the subjectivities it produces. But is it so? It is essential to acknowledge the very different manifestations of secularism and the historical processes that implied the “localizations” of this transnational secularity. From this perspective, French and American secularisms are very distinct and both are very different from secularism in Italy, Spain or Portugal - and the same argument could be made in terms of their religious histories. The question then is: do these differences, these distinct localizations, produce different kinds of secular normativities and thus different religious subjectivities? And in what sense do religious movements themselves relate to (producing or contesting) such secularities and normative arguments? Do they feel the need to put the rules into practice or instead they try to claim an autonomous space for the religious? In what ways do these secular normativities and religious subjectivities condition and produce relationships between different social groups, particularly in relation to sensitive issues such as migration, ritual slaughter and gender equality, amongst a host of others?

In this panel, we would like to challenge the potential authors to address such topics and themes, from a variety of disciplinary and geographic perspectives, debating mutual definitions of religious and secular subjectivities. Possible approaches could include:

  • Religious and juridical jurisdictions: histories and normativizations;

  • The making of the subject - secular and/or religious framings;

  • The politics of recognition, between the religious and the secular;

  • Sacralizing and de-sacralizing the public space;

  • Detecting secular and religious subjectivities.

TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL SEND AN E-MAIL TO THE CONVENORS - DEADLINE 1ST DECEMBER

CFP:Tombs, Mausoleums, Shrines and Memorials of Religious/Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East (1980-2011)

Tombs, Mausoleums, Shrines and Memorials of Religious/Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East (1980-2011)

This is a call for papers for one or several panels on “Tombs, Mausoleums, Shrines and Memorials of Religious/Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East (1980-2011)” which will be held during the Fourth World Congress for Middle East Studies (WOCMES), 18th-22nd August 2014 in Ankara (Turkey). https://www.wocmes2014.org/

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeyni (1902-1989), Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953-2001), Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942-2011) and Osama Bin Ladan (1957-2011) were all political, religious or pious leaders of important countries and movements of the contemporary Middle East during the last two decades of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st centuries. Their deaths and funeral ceremonies, their burial places, and their tombs and mausoleums are the main topics of our panel(s). We are interested in receiving proposals which present new and unpublished researches on topics such as (but not limited to):

  • Death and funeral ceremonies as national and state formation; - Funeral architecture and national identity;
  • Memorials and mausoleums as a mechanism of symbolic legitimation;
  • Significance of memorials and mausoleums in urban topography and the creation of sacred public space;
  • The role of memorials and mausoleums in collective memory and constructing the narrative of the past;
  • The role of memorials and mausoleums in innovation and the creation of new rituals and performances;
  • The death of political and religious leaders and the creation of new saints and sanctity; - Creation of new sites of worship and political-religious pilgrimage; - Formation of religious-political tourism.

We are primarily interested in receiving proposals which focus on case or comparative studies related to the above mentioned leaders. All branches of disciplines are welcome.
Please send the title of your proposal, your discipline, a 500-word abstract and your full academic affiliation including your e-mail address as an attached file (Office Word) by 30th Nov. 2013 to:

Dr. P. Khosronejad
Department of Social Anthropology
University of St. Andrews
Email: pedram.khosronejad@st-andrews.ac.uk