The latest issue of the journal of the Jewish Museum Berlin features an article by Yasemin Shooman, a German historian, comparing anti-Muslim racism (Islamophobia) and antisemitism.
Posts Tagged ‘Europe’
July 12th, 2012
Bible, flowers, and relevance
posted by Candice ScharfJohn Boy, contributing editor to The Immanent Frame and an associate editor of Frequencies, reflects on his recent visit to Amsterdam’s Bijebels Museum.
June 1st, 2012
Multiculturalism in Europe
posted by The Editors
After the rise of multicultural policies in the 1980s and 1990s, the winds have shifted in Europe. Terrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Norway, and, most recently, in Toulouse, have furthered the securitization of Islam across Europe, while increasing immigration (predominantly from Muslim countries) has caused societal tensions. As a result, existing ideas concerning multiculturalism, religious pluralism, and national authenticity are being challenged. Past policies of cordon sanitaire are no longer in full effect, as mainstream political parties have come to adopt some of the ideas of their populist and right-wing peers; witness outgoing president Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign rhetoric against immigration and Muslims following the strong showing by right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen.
We’ve invited a small handful of scholars to comment on the increasing influence of anti-immigration and anti-Islam ideas and parties across Europe and to offer their thoughts on how best to accommodate minority claims (especially those involving Islam) in a democratic and liberal Europe.
April 24th, 2012
Religion and civic engagement in Europe
posted by David SloaneBritish think tank Demos has recently released a new report, written by Jonathan Birdwell and Mark Littler, entitled “Faithful Citizens.” The report investigates “the different relationship between religion and politics in the UK and Europe.”
February 22nd, 2012
Missions and church-planting in Europe
posted by John D. BoyLast month, Eurochurch.net published a report on the state of missional church-planting activities in Europe authored by Darrell Jackson and Tim Herbert.
February 2nd, 2012
Religion and state secularization
posted by Simon During
In discussing secularization, it has become conventional to note that the concept refers to various processes, of which three are particularly prominent. First, the gradual delegitimation of natural and revealed religion’s truth-claims in the face of rational critique. We can call this intellectual secularization. Second, the process by which some states have constitutionally disengaged from their citizens’ religious beliefs and institutions. We can call this state secularization. Third, the increase across society of knowledge, activities, values, tastes, and activities which lack religious content, as well as the extent to which, increasingly, people involve themselves with these non-religious forms. We can call this social secularization.
January 30th, 2012
“De-baptism”
posted by Wei ZhuWhile religiosity has been on the decline in Europe for several years, some Europeans are taking more radical steps in distancing themselves from Christianity and the Church hierarchy; they aren’t just leaving their congregations, but taking steps to become officially “de-baptized.”
January 24th, 2012
A coherent integration policy for Europe
posted by Charles GelmanIn the New York Times opinion pages, Boston College political science professor Jonathan Laurence argues that it’s up to—and in the interest of—Europe’s governments to devise a coherent policy of integration for the continent’s growing Muslim population.
January 9th, 2012
Normative or empirical comparisons?
posted by Veit Bader
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr confesses that she is not an expert with regard to “the value of normative theory for legal and constitutional concerns, and for political theory.” She rightly thinks that “for empirically grounded comprehension and explanation of societal and political processes, institutions, and practices” the use of normative theory “is limited,” but wrongly attacks normative theorizing as such and also misunderstands my proposal to “replace secularism.” In this brief response, I focus on three issues: first, her criticism of “normative theory” and “value judgments”; second, her krypto-normative remarks on learning from empirical comparisons; and third, her construction of “four types of secularity.”
December 13th, 2011
Multiple secularities and their normativity as an empirical subject
posted by Monika Wohlrab-SahrIt is difficult to come to an agreement when normative issues are concerned. Are the “moderate” forms of European secularisms flexible enough to include the Muslim population as well, as Tariq Modood suggests? Or are they “irretrievably flawed,” as Rajeev Bhargava has argued, because they emerged from a context in which Christian confessions dominated and were not set up to include non-Christian minorities? Or should we get rid of the language of secularism altogether and instead refer to liberal-democratic constitutionalism as a meta-language, as Veit Bader has proposed?
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