Essentialism and attribution of monstrosity in racist discourse: Right‐wing internet postings about Africans and Jews

We investigated a total of 4997 postings on an extreme right‐wing Internet discussion board with regard to the groups and themes mentioned. The most frequently mentioned target groups were Africans, Jews, Muslims, Poles, and Turks; the most prominent themes and contexts were conspiracy, criminality, exploitation, threats to German identity, infiltration, mind control and harassment, procreation, rape, and sex. We analysed in detail postings about Africans/Blacks and Jews, that is target groups that were the most clearly connected to particular themes. The analysis reveals that extreme right‐wing discourse essentializes the target groups of Jews and Africans/Blacks and ascribes them immutable group‐specific attributes that effectively make them ‘natural kinds’. The group of Jews appears as a kind of their own with super‐human powers and influence. Africans and Blacks are despised, firstly because their essential characteristics prohibit them to be categorically mixed with Germans (i.e. to become German by nationality) due to their incompatible essence, and secondly when they procreate with Whites. Such procreation produces ‘bastards’ that are met with disgust. We argue that essentialist thinking about social and ethnic groups explains a good part of their rejection by right‐wing followers. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the last Jews in Iraq and Iraqi national identity: a look at two recent Iraqi novels

After 2003, Iraqi literature, particularly the novel, rediscovered the now extinct Jewish community in Iraq. The Jews were the first major community in Iraq to be completely erased. Writing about the Jews served to underline the pluralism of Iraqi society in the past and to admonish against a similar fate awaiting other small communities in Iraq today. This article will focus on two recent Iraqi novels, written by two of Iraq’s prominent novelists, in which Jews are at the centre of the narratives: ‘Ali Badr’s “Haris al-Tabagh” (The Guardian of the Tobacco Shop), 2008 and Khdair al-Zaydi’s “Atlas ‘Azran al-Baghdadi” (‘Azran al-Baghdadi’s Atlas), 2015a. These are not only ordinary Jews, they are the last Jews of Iraq and Baghdad. As such, I will argue, they are doomed by the writers to serve as symbols for something exceeding their lives (and deaths) as individuals or Jews. The novels thus are more about Iraqi national identity after 2003 than about the last Jews. By choosing “the last of the Jews” as a protagonist the authors signal a pessimistic end to the illusion of sustaining a version of a pluralistic and accommodating Iraqi national identity.     

Culture,religion, ethnicity and the meaning of work: Jews and Muslims in the Israeli context

The work values of Arabs in general, and of Muslims in particular, have not yet been studied in Israel. This study examines the meaning of work (MOW) of 1201 Jews and 219 Muslims, who work in the Israeli labour market. The findings reveal significant differences in the MOW dimensions and demonstrate different perceptions and internalisation of work values between the two ethno-religious groups. While the Jews have a higher economic and intrinsic orientation and a higher need for interpersonal relations than the Muslims, the Muslims have higher work centrality. The findings attributed to cultural differences, ethnic conflict, occupational discrimination and high degree of segregation.     

Buon Purim: proselytizing, professing Jews and the Papal Inquisition in Modena

This essay focuses on an Inquisitorial trial in which a Jewish banker, Moise de Modena, well respected in the Modenese community (Christian as well as Jewish), decided in 1625 to make a stand against two constables and refuse them the customary ‘protection money’ which they demanded during the festival of Purim. The event provided a shaky foundation for their charge of proselytizing. De Modena faced persistent Inquisitorial prosecution but chose also to hire Christian legal counsel to defend him. The trial raises questions about Jews who were able to work behind the scenes during Inquisitorial prosecution in early modern Italy to ensure their acquittal. It also examines gift-giving as a specific social practice between Jews and Christians during he Jews’ ‘carnivalesque’ Purim, which in this particular year fell during Holy Week.     

Islam as a new social actor in Italian cities: mosque controversies as sites of inclusion and separation

Most Muslim immigrants oscillate in the public sphere between three levels in the public sphere: the local, the national and the transnational. While the national and transnational levels continue to be marked by a strong degree of conflictuality, it is at the local level where new integration strategies are implemented and ‘social capital’ is acquired. The comparison between two similar debates over the construction of a mosque in the Italian cities of Bologna and Florence with opposite outcomes reveals the importance of the local dimension in the construction of a national Islam and the significance of appropriate participatory tools in the inclusion of Muslims in the local public sphere. In particular, the article highlights the link between the legitimacy of Islam in the fabric of the city and the degree of openness of the Islamic community. It also illustrates how overcoming the reluctance and fear of different actors can allow citizens to assimilate the idea of ‘a mosque in the city’ and not just of ‘a mosque for Muslims’. The article describes how the use of appropriate tools, particularly of participatory decision-making, has made it easier for marginalised or politically excluded individuals to take steps towards full citizenship and for the Muslim community to emerge as a legitimate social actor in the local public sphere.     

Introduction: Judeophobia and Islamophobia in France Before and After <Emphasis Type="Italic">Charlie Hebdo</Emphasis> and Hyper Cacher

This article opens with an assessment of the narratives that emerged in the immediate wake of the Charlie Hebdo / Hyper Cacher events in January 2015. It does so by examining the differing hashtags of the moment—#jesuisCharlie, #jesuisjuif, #LassBat—and how each offered a distilled account of what the moment meant; these competing interpretations were echoed in the news coverage and the commentary that followed. The article proceeds to set out how this special issue reframes and reevaluates the recent history of relations between Jews and Muslims in France. Each author suggests that Judeophobia and Islamophobia are inextricably entangled in ways more complicated than simple formulas or hashtags can encapsulate. Taking on the suggestion that “Muslims are the new Jews” in France (or in Europe), the special issue instead urges an appreciation of the interlocked vulnerabilities and insecurities of both Jews and Muslims. Such an approach requires a recognition of the structural and institutional forces and ideologies that have shaped their interconnected destinies in the last generation.     

Interreligious prayer between Christians and Muslims

This article distinguishes various ways in which the term ‘pray together’ might be understood and focuses on ‘interreligious prayer’, by which is meant here praying together using the same words with two religious groups united in heart and mind, rather than ‘multireligious prayer’, which refers to prayer in the presence of another religious group. The article argues that, in the early literature on the matter, there is a danger of conflating the two different types, and then shows that some Catholic communities, following the initiatives of Pope John Paul II, have reached a consensus that interreligious prayer is problematic, while multireligious prayer is not. The article goes on to consider an essay by Joseph Ratzinger, which discusses the preconditions for interreligious prayer and is very sceptical about its possibility, except perhaps for Christians and Jews. Finally, one of Ratzinger's preconditions for interreligious prayer is used to examine the possible grounds for interreligious prayer between Christians and Muslims, and the article argues that the door is as yet neither closed nor open.     

Editorial

Abstract

After outlining its geographical horizons, this article goes on to survey the history of Islam, in Europe and the different profiles of the Muslim communities today in western Europe, the USA and the Balkans. It suggests that there are usually four phases in the development of these communities. The three main Western approaches to managing diversity are outlined, alongside the three most common models for the relationship between religion and the state. The politics of identity is discussed, addressing the question, ‘How can religious diversity be reconciled with shared citizenship?’, along with the crisis of leadership among Muslims in the West and the radicalisation of some Muslims. Muslim attitudes towards Christianity are described, as are church responses at both national and international level. Finally two further questions are addressed: ‘Can the churches act as an antidote to religious nationalism?’ and ‘Can Christians and Muslims together shape civic space for the common good?’     

The Challenge of Religious Pluralism: The Association Between Interfaith Contact and Religious Pluralism

This research contributes to increasing understanding of the ways in which Christians think about religious pluralism in the United States. It does so by empirically uncovering the relationship between inter-faith contact and the willingness of white Christians to support tenets of religious pluralism. To that end, this study largely intimates that religious identity reinforces a dualistic world view. For white Christians, it is likely that contact with Jews and not Muslims is salient to their religious pluralist understandings. Nonetheless, more so than other Christians, Evangelicals tend to embrace a theology that views their belief system as being in conflict and competition with non-Christians. To that end, it is plausible that even when Christians have positive contact experiences with Jews and Muslims, Evangelicals are less willing than are other Christians to recognize them as members of the American religious polity.     

Perceived sources and levels of stress,general self-efficacy and coping strategies in clinical dental students

The aims of this study were to identify sources of stress among clinical students and to evaluate the students’ perceived levels of stress, general self-efficacy and effective coping strategies in a private dental school environment. The study group consisted of 130 undergraduate clinical dental students in a Turkish private dental school, during the academic year 2014–2015. The students were surveyed using modified version of the dental environment stress (DES) survey, the perceived stress scale, the general self-efficacy scale (G-SES) and the brief coping scale. Age, sex, year of study, history of psychiatric treatment and factors that affected the choice of dentistry were also recorded. Final year and female clinical dental students, who were found to be the most stressful students, had moderate to high perceived stress scores. Total and ‘Faculty and administration’ related DES scores increased with the year of study. Stressors related to ‘Workload’ and ‘Clinical training’ affected females more than males. G-SES scores were higher in male students and students, who had no history of psychiatric treatment. The most and the least common coping strategies were ‘Planning’ and ‘Substance abuse’, respectively. ‘Religion’ was found to be one of the main coping strategies. Stress factors affecting Turkish clinical dental students studying at private dental school differed from the previously reported stress factors affecting students studying at a governmental dental school. Advanced year and female students experienced more stress than the other students.     

Sense of community among Muslims in the Brazil–Paraguay border: narratives of belonging and generational differences

ABSTRACT

The so-called ‘Triple Frontier’—the border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina—is the ‘host society’ of an important Muslim community, composed mainly of Lebanese immigrants and their descendants born in Brazil and Paraguay. In less than two decades, Shi’i and Sunni Arab Muslims created mosques, religious centres, a cemetery, and three schools. Mosques, schools, and religious centres are spaces for the production of a sense of community. The institutional discourse of these entities emphasises the connection between religion and community origin, considering Islam as part of ‘Arab culture’. Taking generational differences into account, this article aims to analyse the narratives of plural identity expressed in the meanings attributed to the immigrants’ self-identification as Muslims. Based on fieldwork in the South American border area, this work aims to shed light on the way in which immigrants and their descendants reinterpret their religious belonging, informed by the new experience of living in multi-religious societies.     

The Meaning of Pilgrimage (Hajj): Re-shaping the Pious Identity of Belgian Turkish Muslims

This article examines how Belgian Muslims of Turkish origin interact with the hajj (pilgrimage) and the meaning of the pilgrimage for Muslims living in Belgium. It focuses upon the space of pilgrimage rituals, identifies the motivations for the practice of the pilgrimage and attempts to explain how the ‘canonical meaning’ of the hajj, which is considered unchanging, is adopted in the new Belgian situation and how pilgrims regard it. The physical practice of pilgrimage constitutes an interesting area through which to depict how Belgian Muslims of Turkish origin experience the sacred journey that shapes their religious understanding and their identity. The article’s findings are based on interviews and observations in 2012 and 2014. The author visited mosques during hajj information sessions and spoke with imams, but the fieldwork was carried out among pilgrims who had visited Mecca for their hajj and ?umra..     

Challenging the opposition of LGBT identities and Muslim cultures: initial research on the experiences of LGBT Muslims in Canada

ABSTRACT

Many have described the cultural and political opposition between LGBT rights and identities and Muslim cultures. Rahman (2014) has argued that one important way to challenge this perceived enmity is to produce further knowledge about the experiences and identities of LGBT Muslims because they exist at the intersections of this political opposition and disrupt the assumptions underlying it. Drawing on Rahman’s framework of Muslim LGBT as “LGBT Intersectional Identities”, we provide initial evidence from on-going research into the experiences of LGBT Muslims in Canada, based on six in-depth qualitative interviews. Focusing on the tensions between living an LGBT life and being Muslim, we demonstrate that there are strategies for reconciling the two that undermine assumptions about the mutual exclusivity of Muslim cultures and homosexualities. These strategies both confirm the extant evidence of identity processes for LGBT Muslims and provide some new evidence of the awareness of negotiating Islamophobia, racialization and Muslim homophobia as part of the development of an LGBT Muslim identity, and the need to understand Muslim identity in a broader frame than simply religious. In this sense, the experiences of LGBT Muslims present an LGBT intersectional challenge, both to western assumptions about the coherence of LGBT identity and the coming out process, and to assumptions in Muslim culture that tend to position individuals who identify as LGBT outside of their traditions.     

Probability of reciprocation in repeated prisoner's dilemma games

Both social cooperation and self‐control require reciprocation. In social cooperation situations a single person's cooperative act, if not reciprocated by others, would be unreinforced both immediately and in the long term. Similarly, a single act of self‐control (refusing a single cigarette, for example), if not followed up by other such acts, would also be unreinforced immediately and in the long term. The present experiments varied probability of reciprocation in a prisoner's dilemma‐like game that could resemble a social cooperation or a self‐control situation. Participants earned points by playing against a computer. The computer offered the participant a choice between 5 or 6 points (‘cooperation’ by the computer) or between 1 or 2 points (‘defection’ by the computer). The participant's choice of the lesser alternative (‘cooperation’) or the greater alternative (‘defection’) on the current trial led, respectively, to cooperation or defection by the computer on the next trial with a probability (probability of reciprocation, PR) which could vary. When PR was greater than 63%, consistent cooperation maximized the participant's earnings. When PR was less than 63%, defection maximized earnings. Three conditions were studied: PR signaled by spinners; PR unsignaled; PR unsignaled with participants believing that they were playing with another person, not the computer. With PR = 100% (‘tit‐for‐tat’) and PR = 50%, the modal participant maximized earnings under all three conditions. With PR = 75%, participants maximized earnings only when PR was signaled. These results indicate that differences between people's tendency to cooperate with other people (social cooperation) and their tendency to cooperate with their own future interests (self‐control) may lie in differences in subjective PR. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion,moral thought–action fusion,and obsessive–compulsive features in Israeli Muslims and Jews

Previous studies suggest that the link between obsessive–compulsive (OC) symptoms and moral thought–action fusion (TAF) depends on religion; however, no study has compared Muslim and Jewish samples. We examined the relationships between OC symptoms, scrupulosity, religiosity, and moral TAF in Israeli Muslims and Jews. Religiosity was not associated with elevations in OC symptoms, although religiosity correlated with scrupulosity across the entire sample after controlling for depression and anxiety. Moral TAF was related to scrupulosity across the entire sample. The Muslim group had higher levels of OC symptoms, scrupulosity, and depressive symptoms than did the Jewish group, but the groups were equally religious. In addition, Muslims scored higher than did Jews on moral TAF even after controlling for symptoms; however, moral TAF was not related to scrupulosity within the Muslim group. In combination, these results imply that moral TAF depends on cultural and religious factors and does not necessarily indicate pathology.     

Religion and United States Physicians’ Opinions and Self-Predicted Practices Concerning Artificial Nutrition and Hydration

This study surveyed 1,156 practicing US physicians to examine the relationship between physicians’ religious characteristics and their approaches to artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH). Forty percent of physicians believed that unless a patient is imminently dying, the patient should always receive nutrition and fluids; 75 % believed that it is ethically permissible for doctors to withdraw ANH. The least religious physicians were less likely to oppose withholding or withdrawing ANH. Compared to non-evangelical Protestant physicians, Jews and Muslims were significantly more likely to oppose withholding ANH, and Muslims were significantly more likely to oppose withdrawing ANH.     

French Calvinism and Judaism

Abstract

Calvin's language against the Jews, as that of the other Reformers, is invariably harsh. Nevertheless, some of his doctrines—the quasi equal status of the two Testaments in matters of faith, but also Original Sin which transformed all human beings, the Jews among them, into sinners—make room for new attitudes: Jews are bad, corrupt and stupid, but Catholics are even worse. Calvin believes that there are still some elected among the Jews. With Beza, this legacy then deepens. Despite variations (millenarianism and irenism, the continually worsening status of the Huguenots), changed attitudes towards the Jews survive in the 17th century, and in the Refuge are reinforced by direct contact with Jews and new conceptions of Jewish history, which in Bayle and Basnage becomes normal human history. Persecutions are not divine punishment, but human evil, and parallelisms between Jewish and Huguenot history become evident. In France's ‘Desert’ clandestine and persecuted Huguenots identify themselves with the captive and persecuted Jews and Jerusalem under siege.     

Collective memory in the making of religious change: the case of ‘emerging Jews’ followers of Jesus

This study explores a facet of the construction of a new worldwide religious tradition that fuses the beliefs, rituals, and identity claims of both Judaism and Christianity. The Brazilian ‘Messianic Anussim’ comprise former Charismatic Evangelicals that adhere to a variety of Jewish practices. Unlike Messianic Judaism, where Jewish-born people identify themselves as believers in Jesus, or Christian Zionism, where Evangelicals emphasise the eschatological importance of the Jews and Israel this particular community maintains the veneration of Jesus and calls for a purification of Charismatic Evangelicalism while observing Jewish laws. Their calls for a ‘pious restoration’ are guided by a recovered Jewish identity that is inspired by the historical figure of the Bnei Anussim. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2013 and 2015, this study explores the formation of a new hybrid religious group.