Publics and Populations: The Politics of Ancestry and Exchange in Genome Science

While researchers collect and assemble relevant populations for genome studies, they are also, along with project designers and managers, interested in assembling publics. The public holds significant symbolic and discursive appeal for large-scale genome science. This is particularly the case in projects that collect or study aspects of human genome variation where histories of biological racism continue to cast a shadow over the promises of genomic medicine. In one of Canada's first large-scale biobanks, French Canadians, who are understood as a genetically close or homogenous population, are contrasted with what are referred to as ‘immigrants’ and ‘Québecers from various ethnic and racial backgrounds’ in public engagement and consultation forums. These latter groups, thought to provide a form of diversity, both in their views and their biology, are harnessed in the consultation practices as well as in the branding of the biobank. Within the local area of sample collection, the already constructed and available ways to categorise groups provide a powerful frame to narrate the relationship between the public and genome science. The process of making and consulting niche publics not only naturalises particular narratives of national belonging but also enables forms of exchange and sharing in international genome science. Just as assembling populations forms a central component of genome science, displays of publicness are integral for economies of exchange in genome science.     

The Production of Acceptable Muslim Women in the United States

In this article, I explore some of the elements by which Muslim women who wear the hijab in the United States are managed so as to produce and distinguish “unruly” from “good” Muslim female citizens within the context of American liberalism. Unlike the French state, which has regulated both the hijab and niqab through national legislation, the American liberal framework utilizes a laissez‐faire approach, which relies on a range of public and private institutions to determine acceptable public presentations of the liberal female subject. I refer to this form of management as “neoliberalism.” Neoliberal management works in conjunction with popular political discourses and domestic events in ways that alternately contract and expand the boundaries that allow “suitable Muslim women” in the public sphere.     

Gandhi,secularism and social capital in modern India

The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 was witness to Hindu Muslim conflict at its peak. In the 1990s, ethnic conflict was used by right wing ideologues to change the fabric of secular India. Using interview data and within a social representational framework the study demonstrates the processes whereby out-groups/in-groups are formed. Further, it is argued that religious tolerance as envisaged in Gandhian philosophy, needs to be an integral part of the debate on role of religion in the public sphere.     

Danish cartoon controversy in the Chinese context: transnational Islam and public visibility of Hong Kong Muslims

Placed within the wider Chinese context of Muslims’ reticent response to the publication of twelve cartoons by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, this paper attempts to understand the transnational impact of global Muslim protests against the Danish cartoons, which resulted in the re-emergence of Hong Kong Muslims in the public sphere. By discussing the genesis of the public appearance of Hong Kong Muslims in response to the Danish Cartoon affair, this paper argues that the controversy has resulted in a heightened sense of Islam in the Chinese public sphere. Framing the emerging Islamic voices in a context where the Chinese government has a coherent rationale towards religious policy in its domestic politics, and its unprecedented political experiment of ‘One country, two systems’, this article points out the contrasting public visibility and global connection of Muslims in Hong Kong and the Mainland.     

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.     

Sharʿī norms and German Schools: Court Challenges to Participation in Swimming Lessons,School Trips and Sex Education

ABSTRACT

This article examines the treatment by German courts, from the early 1970s to 2016, of requests made by Muslims to be exempted from school activities for religious reasons. Based on a qualitative reading of 72 court rulings, the article demonstrates a shift in the courts’ decision-making, from initially tolerating Muslim requests for exemption to firmly denying them. Arguments from the court rulings are substantiated by an analysis of the public discourse on Muslims in German schools. The results suggest that the transformation of court attitudes corresponded with the rise of broader concerns about multiculturalism and manifestations of Islam in the public sphere, the liberalization of gender norms, and increasing secularism within German society. The article further demonstrates that, contrary to public perception, requests for exemptions from school activities were not a distinctly Muslim phenomenon. Christian families have challenged school activities in a similar way.     

Islamic practice and state policies towards religion in post-Soviet Russia

ABSTRACT

What has the Russian state policy towards Islam been in the first two decades after the Soviet collapse, and how has it affected Islamic practice in the country? This study explores Russian state policies towards religion from 1990 to 2017 and discusses their impact on Islamic practice in the country. In the 1990s, relations between the Russian state and Islam (state-Islam relations) were accommodationist: the state granted unrestricted access in the Russian public sphere for all Muslim communities and allowed a wide range of Islamic religious practices. State-Islam relations in the 2000s became increasingly regulatory: the state assumed a more active interventionist role in the affairs of the domestic Islamic community in order to control religious practices of certain Muslim factions and to ensure privileged access in the Russian public sphere for state-approved ‘traditional’ religious organisations. This contribution reveals the dynamics of the Russian state’s attitudes towards the largest minority religion in the country in the first two decades after the collapse of the Soviet state. It also offers analytical insights on the dynamic nature of state-religion relations in other secular states with religiously diverse populations.     

From Validating to Verifying: Public Appeals in Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology provides a vivid and richly entangled contemporary example of a science being made public. A science, however, can be made public in different ways. A public could validate, legitimate, de-legimate, object to, verify, confirm or dissent from science. Practically, scientists could publicise science—in the mass media—or they could make science public. The contrast between high-profile, media scientists such as J. Craig Venter, and community-based participatory mechanisms such as OpenWetWare allows us to see how these alternatives play out in practice. While it is easy to criticise and dismiss the public-relations oriented promotion of synthetic biology by figures such as Venter, how should we evaluate the open participatory mechanisms of a social media effort such as OpenWetWare? I suggest, drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers and Michael Warner, that the case of synthetic biology is interesting because many synthetic biologists commit themselves to making it public, and making its public-ness part of how it is done. They place hope in publics to make the science viable. At the same time, however, the publics who are welcomed into OpenWetWare are largely confined to validating the coordination mechanisms on which the claim to public-ness rests. Whether publics can do more than validate synthetic biology, then, remains a question both for publics outside and inside this emerging scientific field. And whether the alternatives of validation or participation themselves adequately frame what is at stake in the emergence of fields such as synthetic biology remains debatable.     

Benedict XVI and Islam: Indonesian Public Reactions to the Regensburg Address

This paper examines the responses of the Indonesian public sphere in the reform era to Pope Benedict XVI's call for interfaith dialogue in his speech made in Regensburg on 12 September 2006. It explores five op-ed (opinion and editorial) columns published by Indonesian newspapers (Republika, Harian Pikiran Rakyat, The Jakarta Post and Gatra), a piece posted by the online Wahid Institute, and an interview posted online by Eramuslim. Not only do the arguments contained in these pieces offer a glimpse into the ‘battle’ between opinions in the public realm in Indonesia, but they also portray the relationship between Muslims and Christians in the country. This paper will present the Muslim responses to the Pope's speech and the ‘reassertion’ of his original message conducted by two Catholic priest-intellectuals.     

Image and Policy: The case of Turks and Pomaks in inter-war Bulgaria, 191844 (with special reference to education)

The article aims to reconstruct the public image of Turks in Bulgaria as it is presented by Bulgarian public figures and state officials and to study the influence of their perceptions of Muslim minorities on the formation of state policies. It argues that the prevailing images of 'otherness' and the paternalistic attitudes of suspicion and fear among Bulgarian governmental and administrative officials have enforced and been reinforced by concrete policy measures at local and central levels. The article traces the relation between recommended and real policy measures in the sphere of minority education as an indicator of state-minority relations in the inter-war period.     

The Muslim Community and Education in Quebec: Controversies and Mutual Adaptation

In this article, the author first deals with an overview of the socio-demographic characteristics of the Muslim community in Canada, especially in Quebec, and of its educational experiences in Quebec schools. She then analyzes in more depth three important controversies that have targeted the Muslim community in the last 20 years, respectively, regarding the teaching of Arabic at the end of the 1980s, the wearing of the Muslim veil in the mid-1990s and the wider reasonable accommodation debate, which did not specifically target it, in 2007–2008. In the third part based on a major survey of Quebec schools, she, nevertheless, argues that to some extent, these controversies have permitted to foster, to a certain degree, the adaptation of public schools to Muslim students’ needs.     

The Nation and the Nun: Mother Teresa,Albania's Muslim Majority and the Secular State

In Albania, a religiously pluralist country with a secular constitution, an atheist past and a Muslim majority, the authorities have since the end of Communism promoted Mother Teresa as the “Mother of Albanians” and an emblem of the state. The name, statues and portraits of this ethnic Albanian Catholic nun have become a prominent feature in the public sphere. Based on fieldwork material, Albanian texts and unique statistical data, this article discusses the “motherteresification” of Albania in the period after her beatification in 2003, particularly during the Democratic government (2005–13). It also explores alternative Christian and Muslim interpretations of the symbol in Albania. Both the top-down construction of “Mother Teresa” as a national symbol and the arguments against it demonstrate that secularism remains a core value. By fronting a Christian Nobel Laureate, this EU-aspiring country signals that it is peaceful and belongs to Europe and the West, a recurrent national concern for over a century and acute after 9/11. Making an ethnic Albanian nun a symbol of a Muslim majority nation thus makes sense.     

Producing the Post-Fordist Public: The Political Economy of Public Engagement with Science

The commercial exploitation of scientific knowledge and increased public participation in democratic decision-making about science and technology have emerged as the two central themes of contemporary science policy in Britain. We argue that the prominence of participatory discourse in contemporary science policy is primarily due to the close fit of this discourse with the post-Fordist and post-industrial economic strategy of the British state. Participation is a form of immaterial labour which gains currency in this phase of capitalism, blurring the distinctions between production and consumption, and between the economy and the political or communicative public sphere. Participation is cognitive, interpretative, affective, and social work which enters into the construction of technologies as bundled material artefacts and cultural meanings. Participation operates both in the production and consumption of goods and in the legitimation of social and political relations. Public engagement exercises prepare the product for the market and the market for the product. Such exercises therefore instantiate the way in which immaterial labour is both productive and political. Participation activates, but also disciplines, the subjectivities of post-Fordist publics. Contrary to the rhetoric of democratization that has accompanied public engagement efforts, these programmes potentially operate as forms of control and co-optation, and promote the shaping of publics as markets.     

Teachers and Teaching Islam and Muslims in Pluralistic Societies: Claims, Misunderstandings, and Responses

The author argues that teachers’ positive work in the education of Muslim students needs to be emphasized and their voices contextualized and critically engaged. He problematizes notions that have been circulating in the public sphere around the education of Muslims in western contexts (racism, Islamophobia, school curricula that ignore Muslim perspectives and contributions) by simultaneously acknowledging and refuting them. He contextualizes these issues by linking them to what education means in the context of intensified communication between diverse peoples, multiple perspectives and globalization. He ends by highlighting the data’s implications for research, policies and practices in education as well as for teachers’ training in Canada and other pluralistic societies.     

Between lived and the law: power,empire, and expansion in studies of North American religions

Taking debates about the Park51 (or ‘Ground Zero’) mosque and Islamic Community Center as a case study, this article demonstrates the need for scholars of religious traditions in North America to move beyond liberal modes of historicizing that pluralize narratives about religion but ignore how religion is defined and regulated. Liberal modes of historicizing create space for different traditions by first naturalizing differences as ostensibly fixed, inherent, and eternal – a dynamic that has proven to produce antagonistic narratives and relations as well as ‘tolerant’ ones. This is in part due to the fact that such narratives somewhat broaden the inclusivity of the U.S. public sphere but in so doing obscure the various means and power dynamics by which the boundaries of acceptable religiosity are policed. Finally, this article examines and offers analyses that provide more robust mechanisms by which to understand issues of religious diversity and liberty in the United States.     

Elusive piety: Hajj logistics and local politics in Tatarstan,Dagestan and the Crimea

ABSTRACT

This article explores a barely addressed but crucial element of Muslim politics in contemporary Russia: hajj logistics and its repercussions in Muslim communities. Focusing on Tatarstan, Dagestan and the annexed Crimea, I first introduce the actors orchestrating the Russian hajj, encompassing coordination with the Muslim Spiritual Boards and tour companies, transportation, medical care and distribution of the hajj quota annually provided by Saudi Arabia. I then illustrate the politics of quota distribution and the dynamics of the hajj market. While Islamic leaders definitely need the state’s increasing support and mediation, central and regional administrations also attempt to demarcate their own sphere of commitment to Muslim citizens’ sacred journey, often invoking the separation of state and religion. Nonetheless it is Muslim citizens searching for the optimal price and service for the holiest journey who shape Russia’s hajj market and the politics of the quota across Tatarstan, Dagestan and the Crimea.     

Contesting Islam through the 2012 Sydney Protests: An Analysis of Post-protest Political Discourse amongst Australian Muslims

The violent clashes between young Muslim men and police that occurred in and around Sydney's central business district on the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2012 have acted as a catalyst for an increasingly visible political struggle among different sections of the Australian Muslim population in the post-9/11 decade. The protests, ostensibly about the film Innocence of Muslims, have brought the contested nature of Islam and being Muslim in Australia firmly into the sphere of public political debate as Muslims aligned both against and with the protestors. This article aims to explore the extraordinarily open exchanges and contestation primarily between Muslims born and raised in Australia in the immediate aftermath of the protests and the mechanisms utilized to contest power, authority and legitimacy. In doing so, it reveals important insights into the debates defining Muslim political identity and considers the broader implications for Australian Islam and multiculturalism.     

Online Reactions to the Muhammad Cartoons: YouTube and the Virtual Ummah

The publication of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands‐Posten on September 30, 2005, created a great deal of controversy over self‐censorship, freedom of speech, and accusations of religious incitement. Muslim activists organized protests, and later hundreds of people were killed and hundreds of others were injured due to violent reactions to the cartoons. This article focuses on how people used YouTube to react to these cartoons by analyzing 261 video clips and 4,153 comments. Results show that the majority of the video clips and comments were moderate and positive in tone toward Islam and Muhammad; however, a small percentage either called for jihad against the West or made lethal threats against the artist. Other comments carried curses or insults against Denmark, while a few others were anti‐Islamic. The fact that these online reactions were highly varied in tone suggests that the online public sphere is very much divided.     

The meta-theory of piety: reflections on the work of Saba Mahmood

This paper discusses the extent to which Saba Mahmood’s ideas about Muslim women and agency are relevant for works beyond her ethnographic speciality. The first part will reflect upon her arguments about Muslim female piety within the larger context of progressive politics in the USA and the Middle East. The second part will describe the implications of Mahmood’s work towards the production of alternative discourses—that is, works inspired by and produced from outside the overarching influence of a Euro-American intellectual tradition.