Small acts,kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

In this paper, we suggest that social scientists' accounts of ‘activism’ have too often tended to foreground and romanticise the grandiose, the iconic, and the unquestionably meaning-ful, to the exclusion of different kinds of ‘activism’. Thus, while there is a rich social-scientific literature chronicling a social history of insurrectionary protests and key figures/thinkers, we suggest that there is more to ‘activism’ (and there are more kinds of ‘activism’) than this. In short, we argue that much can be learnt from what we term implicit activisms which – being small-scale, personal, quotidian and proceeding with little fanfare – have typically gone uncharted in social-scientific understanding of ‘activism’. This paper will reflect upon one example of this kind of ‘implicit’ activism, by re-presenting findings from interviews undertaken with 150 parents/carers, during an evaluation of a ‘Sure Start’ Centre in the East Midlands, UK. From these interviews emerged a sense of how the Centre (and the parents/carers, staff and material facilities therein) had come to matter profoundly to these parents/carers. We suggest that these interviews extend and unsettle many social-scientific accounts of ‘activism’ in three key senses. First: in evoking the specific kinds of everyday, personal, affective bonds which lead people to care. Second: in evoking the kinds of small acts, words and gestures which can instigate and reciprocate/reproduce such care. And third: in suggesting how such everyday, affective bonds and acts can ultimately constitute political activism and commitment, albeit of a kind which seeks to proceed with ‘not too much fuss’.     

Religious education of children in interfaith marriages

ABSTRACT

Various religious groups impose strict restrictions on their members marrying someone outside their faith, especially when it comes to Muslims marrying members of other religions. However, travelling in pursuit of higher education and employment has made it possible for people marry to outside their religious affiliation regardless of religious dogma and teachings. Since the 1970s, Turks have been migrating to the UK for various reasons such as job opportunities, and political conflicts happening in their homeland. The increasing number of marriages outside of the Turkish Muslim group has made it necessary to focus on the religious and ethnic identity formation of children in interfaith marriages of couples who are Turkish Muslims and non-Muslims and have at least one child between the ages of five and twenty. This case study examines responses of 32 couples and 15 children collected through questionnaire forms and interviews. The findings demonstrate that gender, religious and ethnic identity, level of religiosity, and the dominant culture have influenced parents’ identity and that of their children. While the parents try to minimise their differences by focusing on moral values, most children develop double consciousness, which can lead to hyphenated identity or syncretism.     

Pacifying Muslims in Germany’s ‘City of Peace’: interreligious dialogue as a tool of governance in Osnabrück

ABSTRACT

Addressing Muslims as a target group in municipal politics is a relatively new development in German cities. Interreligious dialogue, often initiated by established Christian actors, provides a format for doing so. In our local West German case study, the politics of dialogue link up with a historical narrative of Osnabrück as ‘City of Peace’, creating a semantic framework which is hard to resist, yet not undisputed. As a governance tool, interreligious dialogue has the potential to pacify and to structure social relations. It tends to prefer and support certain subject positions, while neglecting others. In this contribution we focus both on actors who are involved in local interreligious dialogue as well as those who – for diverse reasons – do not participate, and who question or oppose it. Thus, we analyse the effects of interreligious dialogue on local subjectivation processes, including alternative reactions that might challenge the dominant paradigm.     

Queer Muslims: between orthodoxy,secularism and the struggle for acceptance

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to concentrate on responses by Muslim scholars to both the Orlando incident and the United States Supreme Court Judgment on same-sex marriage. I first provide some comments on the Orlando incident in relation to the issue of Muslims, violence and homophobia. More importantly and central to my argument, I consider what the import of these responses are for Muslims – especially Muslims who identify as LGBTIQ or at least experience same-sex sexual attraction or participate in same-sex sexual conduct – and also what do such responses suggest about the prospect of same-sex sexuality being seriously considered, understood and accepted within the contemporary Islamic tradition and the possible consequences thereof. I make the case that the Islamic tradition, by way of its self-identified and proclaimed scholarly interpreters and representatives, urgently need to engage with the issue of same-sex sexuality in a more robust, dynamic and imaginative manner or risk a deepening epistemological crisis.     

Introduction: the image of Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Russia has a long, complicated and, at times, contradictory relationship with Islam and Muslims. Islam is classified as one of the ‘traditional’ religions, along with Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. Throughout Russia’s history across the centuries, the efforts by the state and Muslims to define their relationship have led to contradictory outcomes. This special issue grew out of a conference that took place in 2016, seeking to explore the complicated nature of the image of Islam in Russia from a multidisciplinary perspective. A collection of six contributions explore how Islam is viewed and projected in the public and media sphere in contemporary Russia, including state attempts to ‘manage’ the development of Islam, initiatives to transform the public image of Muslims and the charitable work of a mosque at the local level.     

Para athlete activism: A qualitative examination of disability activism through Paralympic sport in Ireland

ObjectivesLittle attention has been given to how Para athletes use their platforms for disability activism. This paper fills this gap by examining how Irish Para athletes take actions to create social change around disability.MethodsA qualitative methodology was adopted. 28 elite-level Irish Para athletes were recruited and participated in interviews. The data set was analysed using a reflexive thematic analysis.ResultsThree themes: ‘Para athlete activisms’ captures different ways of doing disability activism; ‘tensions between different activist identities’ concerns (hyper)critical discourses about various activist identities; ‘ableist influences on Para sport culture’ captures contexts that enable or prevent performing disability activism.ConclusionsThe central theoretical contribution is an interpretation of Para athlete activism in terms of a contextually informed continuum of behaviour change. This article is an evidence base for Para sport cultures that wish to connect with disability activism. Practical opportunities are discussed around the psychology of adversity, social legacy value, identity politics and challenging ableism.     

Apolitical Interpretation of Islam: Said Nursi's Faith-Based Activism in Comparison with Political Islamism and Sufism

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Islam has generally been represented in the media as a political ideology and some academics have over-emphasized this political image of Islam. These are not baseless speculations; there are several political Islamic groups worldwide. However, there are also many apolitical Islamic groups. This article analyzes one of the most influential apolitical Islamic movements in the world, the Nurcus, and its founder, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi. Nursi, the author of the Risale-i Nur collection, emphasized the ascetic aspect of Islam: ‘Ninety-nine percent of Islam is about ethics, worship, the hereafter, and virtue. Only one percent is about politics; leave that to the rulers.’ He also added, ‘I seek refuge in God from Satan and [party] politics.’ Through the analysis of Nursi's thought and activism, the article will try to answer the following questions: Was Nursi a Sufi? What are the theological and structural bases of Nursi's apolitical interpretation of Islam? What is the impact of the secular state in Turkey on the development of Nursi's apolitical outlook and activism? What does his apolitical understanding of Islam say to non-Turkish Muslims who do not live in a secular state?     

The politics of reflexivity: Subjectivities,activism, environmental conflict and Gestalt Therapy in southern Chiapas

Through the analysis of Gestalt Therapy workshops organised by a local NGO in southern Chiapas, Mexico, I explore the ways in which psychotherapeutic practice sheds light on indigenous and peasant subjectivation processes. Based on the analysis of testimonies from 23 workshop participants and personal observation, I discuss the role of psychotherapeutic practice in facilitating individual and collective reflexivity, and in fostering political fellowship and participation in community matters. Empirical evidence points to how healing interventions like the one here analysed – especially when implemented in contexts of conflict, material and symbolic dispossession – need to explicitly include work on structural issues of power in order to move beyond decontextualised, and thus depoliticised, reflexivity. This case study aids political ecologists interested in the subjective, emotional and embodied aspects of grassroots activism to comprehend how psychotherapy contributes to the construction of a private-public continuum of emotional expression, and its implication for understanding relationships between subjectivities, emotions and generative political processes.     

Thoughts on the inner conflict within Islamic culture: Their existential anxieties and ours

Abstract

This paper focuses on how Islamic terrorism is primarily part of a larger internal conflict within Islamic culture. Western, liberal (largely Christian) democracies evolved over centuries of their own bloody philosophical and political struggles between religious authority and what came to be defined as a modern, civil society built on individual freedom of belief, secular authority, and law. Now, Western liberal modernity represents a deep existential threat to traditional Islamic societies around gender, family relations, and individual beliefs. A ferocious internal struggle exists between those Muslims who believe Islam can absorb those tensions – creating its own version of an open, tolerant, cultural modernity – versus political Islamists, jihadists, for whom the annihilation anxiety elicited by the threatened social change is directed both internally and in violent rage at the West.     

At Port and at Sea: Early Muslim Presence along the Australian Coastline, 1880–1939

ABSTRACT

This article surveys contact between Muslims and Anglo-Australian settlers from 1880 to 1939 as observed and reported in English-language press by anonymous writers unfamiliar with Islam. The approach is text-based and discursive, and uses previously unresearched archival material to illustrate how Muslims were engaged with and ‘othered’ on the basis of both their races and religion. Content is organized according to state geography – Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia – rather than chronologically, to better distinguish between Muslim experiences in distinct coastal colonies. Muslim communities clustered around major Australian ports. Ports are boundaries between regions, separated by seas and straits. Their intermediate nature facilitates encounters between persons and groups that are unfamiliar with one another and foreign to each other, who would otherwise not have ongoing contact. Australia may be geographically remote but it is nevertheless a significant theatre for historical encounters between Christians and Muslims.     

Alternative realities: queer Muslims and the Qur’an

ABSTRACT

The interplay between Islam, Muslim lives and traditional/mainstream interpretations of the Qur’an have contributed to the marginalization of non-heterosexual Muslims. Queer Muslims face ridicule and rejection from friends and family and Muslim religious scholars openly question the morality and validity of their same-sex attraction. Yet, despite this, the source of this condemnation, the Qur’an, remains an instrumental source of support and guidance for Queer Muslims. The present study explores the entanglements of sexuality, spirituality and self-empowerment. Based on a structured interview with a gay Muslim man, an academic who is involved in Queer readings of the Qur’an, this paper explores how he resolves the now oft-mentioned “conflict” between Islam and homosexuality and how his scholarship serves to advance an alternative understanding and interpretation of the Qur’an. While his work is not endorsed, supported or recognized by mainstream Muslim scholars, it offers Queer Muslims the potential to be optimistic at the possibility of change. Reading the Qur’an while being sensitive to Queer lives means that contemporary interpretations, especially in relation to sexuality, can be reconstituted/reconstructed, making orthodox/“traditional” readings less rigid and impermeable. Using religious scholarship to “deviate” from and question heteronormative interpretations of the Holy text, the aim of Queer readings of the Qur’an is to embolden Queer Muslims to help them reclaim and exercise agency and power.     

The identity struggle within Islam: Discussion of “Thoughts on the inner conflict within Islamic culture: Their existential anxieties and ours,” by Malcolm Owen Slavin,PhD

Abstract

There is nothing more fitting, the author believes, than for psychoanalysts to help our nations better understand the identity struggle that he believes underlies the radicalization process of radical Islamists. This identity struggle is a very deep one. At its core, it concerns what an individual Muslim feels about his or her bonds to the nation-state and what single cause in their life they are willing to die for. In this article, this struggle is characterized as theo-political and Islamo-national. In order to understand this better as psychoanalysts, the importance of the personal narrative – this sense of how an individual’s identity fits and meshes with the world around them – is stressed. To that end, this article will first given an introduction to the author and his family, and then bring readers to the Arab Awakening, which began in 2011. Dr. Slavin’s paper on Tunisia has highlighted so many of the elements of the changes that transformed Tunisia and some of the substrate that led to that evolution; this article provides the context both regionally and, more importantly, within the Muslim consciousness. The author describes the lens through which he was raised in Wisconsin as a devout Muslim and the son of Syrian political refugees. This then overlays an understanding of what was really happening across the revolutions of the Arab Awakening against tyranny and in the global consciousness of individual Muslims.     

Picking Up and Defending the Faith: Activism and Radicalism Among Muslim Converts in the United States

Muslim converts tend to be overrepresented in terrorist activity compared to fellow nonconvert Muslims. However, due to the low base rate of terrorism activity, there is a significant risk that this overrepresentation is a “false positive.” We therefore tested the prevalence of far more common, but potentially antecedent, cognitions to terrorism—activism and radicalism––among convert and nonconvert Muslims. We surveyed 356 American Muslim adults, of which 177 were self-identified converts, with the Activism and Radicalism Intention Scale or ARIS. We found that converts as compared to nonconverts do demonstrate higher activism and radicalism intention scores. We also found that activism fully mediates the relationship between conversion and radicalism. This suggests that converts may be more likely to engage in radical behavior (such as terrorism) than nonconverts, but only because they are more likely to engage in activism than nonconverts. We discuss these findings in light of current psychology and political mobilization literature, then we offer suggestions for future research on the relationships between conversion, activism, radicalism, and terrorism.     

Perceived Disagreement and Heterogeneity in Social Networks: Distinct Effects on Political Participation

ABSTRACT

Although the coexistence of conflicting opinions in society is the very core of democracy, people’s tendency to avoid conflict could keep them away from political discussion and participation. On the other hand, being exposed to diverse political views could motivate citizens to participate. We conducted secondary analyses on two 2013 ITANES (Italian National Election Studies) probability samples in order to test the hypotheses that perceived network disagreement (between an individual and her/his discussion partners) and heterogeneity (among discussants holding different political opinions) exert independent and opposite effects on political participation through motivation and knowledge. Results converged in showing that disagreement dampened, while heterogeneity encouraged, political participation (voting, propensity to abstain in future, offline and online activism, and timing of vote decision) by decreasing or increasing, respectively, political interest and, in turn, knowledge.     

Bringing the mosque home and talking politics: women, domestic space, and the state in the Ferghana Valley (Uzbekistan)

In this article I argue that domestic space has to be theorized as an important center of religious practice and socio-political activism. Born-again and devout Muslim women in the Ferghana Valley (Uzbekistan) use domestic space as an important sacred place for religious observance and socialization equal to the mosques. This sacred place has a special meaning for born-again and devout Muslims as it carries a promise of personal and social change. In the context of religious and political persecution by the Uzbek state, domestic space is experienced as a politically safe place and as a critically important site of socio-political criticism and activism, as some intimate in-house discussions about religious, political, and social oppression take a form of public protest on the streets.     

Personal values and political activism: A cross‐national study

Using data from 28 countries in four continents, the present research addresses the question of how basic values may account for political activism. Study (N = 35,116) analyses data from representative samples in 20 countries that responded to the 21‐item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ‐21) in the European Social Survey. Study (N = 7,773) analyses data from adult samples in six of the same countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Poland, and United Kingdom) and eight other countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, and United States) that completed the full 40‐item PVQ. Across both studies, political activism relates positively to self‐transcendence and openness to change values, especially to universalism and autonomy of thought, a subtype of self‐direction. Political activism relates negatively to conservation values, especially to conformity and personal security. National differences in the strength of the associations between individual values and political activism are linked to level of democratization.     

Political Activism and Research Ethics

Those who care about and engage in politics frequently fall victim to cognitive bias. Concerns that such bias impacts scholarship recently have prompted debates – notably, in philosophy and psychology – on the proper relationship between research and politics. One proposal emerging from these debates is that researchers studying politics have a professional duty to avoid political activism because it risks biasing their work. While sympathetic to the motivations behind this proposal, I suggest several reasons to reject a blanket duty to avoid activism: (1) even if it reduced bias, this duty would make unreasonable demands on researchers; (2) this duty could hinder research by limiting viewpoint diversity; (3) this duty wrongly implies that academia offers a relative haven from bias compared to politics; and (4) not all forms of political activism pose an equal risk of bias. None of these points suggest that researchers should ignore the risk of bias. Rather, researchers should focus on stronger evidence-based strategies for reducing bias than a blanket recommendation to avoid politics.     

The emotions least relevant to politics? Queering autonomous activism

Studies of emotion and activism have often attempted to uncover ‘the emotions most relevant to politics’ (Goodwin et al., 2001). This suggests that only certain feelings are productive for activism, while other emotions have less relevance for activist theory and practice. In this paper I ask if the notion of politically ‘relevant’ emotions helps perpetuate a distinction between what is considered political and what is not. This paper builds upon a case study in which I interviewed self-identified queer-activists about their experiences of autonomous activism. These interviews reveal how the everyday emotions surrounding the ‘personal’ politics of sexuality/intimacy are often seen as either less important, a distraction from, or entirely irrelevant to ‘real’ political issues. Ultimately, I want to challenge attempts to neatly separate our intimate lives from the public sphere of activism. I argue that it can never just be a matter of politics and emotion, but also the politics of emotion (Ahmed, 2004). Therefore we should not just assume that emotions matter for resistance - without first realizing the importance of resisting these hierarchies of emotion.     

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.     

Gandhi and the Virtue of Care

The film Gandhi expands our understanding of how the virtue of care can function in the public sphere by portraying Gandhi dealing with Indian independence from Britain, the subjugation of women and Untouchables, and strife between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi illustrates in his social and political activism how the virtue of care is animated by benevolence and structured by the building blocks of the care perspective: responsibility and need, relationship and mutual dependency, context and narrative.