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1. An Institutional Approach to the Politics of Western Muslim Minorities [Includes Image Plates]
- Indiana University Press
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1 An Institutional Approach to the Politics of Western Muslim Minorities Abdulkader H. Sinno This is a book about how Western institutions interact with each other and growing Western Muslim minorities to shape the way Muslim minorities in Western Europe and North America are perceived, represented, and treated. Its goal is to answer important policy-relevant research questions in comparative context to explain variation among different North American and European countries. For instance, why are there many more Muslim parliamentarians in Western Europe and Canada than in the United States? How does the Canadian state benefit from the cooperation and input of the Canadian Muslim population in law enforcement much more successfully than the American and the British? Why do Muslims in Britain receive more religious rights than in France? Why do social conflicts in France sometimes produce riots by minority youths but grievances in Canada and, more slowly, in the United States are redressed within established institutions? Such are some of the urgent and complicated questions collectively addressed by the contributors to this volume. The theoretical thread that binds the chapters of Muslims in Western Politics is the use of an institutional approach to explain Muslim representation, attitudes , organizational development, civil rights, image, and political identification · Abdulkader H. Sinno in West European and North American liberal democracies. Chapters in each of the volume’s four parts address different institutional explanations of one or more such dimensions of Western Muslim existence in Europe and North America. They address the effect of Western historical institutional developments on the treatment of new Muslim minorities, issues of representation, public attitudes toward Muslim minorities and their civil rights, and the treatment of Muslim minorities in the legal sphere and law enforcement. Bringing them together allows us to understand how different institutions (governments, parliaments, courts, the media, political parties, churches, and law enforcement) interact to shape the lives of Western Muslims and the future of Western liberal democracies . But why should we care about this topic? The Importance of Western Muslim Minorities Contributors to this volume do not consider “Muslim” to necessarily mean a religious identity, but instead an identity that may have religious, racial, political, or cultural dimensions. It may be in flux and sometimes irrelevant, but it is hard to escape in the context of today’s politics in Western Europe, the United States, and Canada (the “West” for short in this volume). Politicians who define themselves as “culturally Muslim” or even as “secular Muslim” find themselves dealing with “Muslim” issues and being considered as “Muslim” by their own political parties when they wish to emphasize their diversity, by minority constituents who feel connected to them or who do not trust them, by jealous rivals wishing to discredit them, by the media when they need “Muslim” voices, and by civil society’s organizations . Even those who define themselves in opposition to the Islam of their families , such as the former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, end up being understood (and used) in the context of the broader politics of Western Muslim minorities. Non-religious members of Muslim minorities are defined as “Muslims ” by the media, by Muslim organizations, by religious leaders, and in the speeches of many politicians. Nowadays non-Muslim European politicians talk of “Muslims” in their countries more than of “Pakistanis” or “Turks.” And surveys (see Allen and Wike’s contribution to this volume) have shown the consolidation of a “Muslim” identity among Western Muslims. Even if someone from a Muslim background wishes to do so, it is not easy to escape being a “Muslim” in the West anymore. To borrow from two eloquent contributors to this volume, Muslims and Islam have been racialized (Jamal) and “being Muslim is not just a matter of faith, but also a sociological fact” (Klausen). The Muslim populations of west European and North American countries have grown dramatically since the 1970s, when their numbers were minuscule. Individuals who practice the religion or who belong to ethnic groups that are traditionally Muslim are now estimated to make up some 1–2 percent of the [44.204.24.82] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:19 GMT) An Institutional Approach to the Politics of Western Muslim Minorities · North American population and 4 percent of the population of the European Union.1 Absent dramatic changes like the accession of Turkey to the EU, which would make Muslims a sixth of the Union’s population, or changes to immigration laws that would slow growth, these percentages are likely to...