BY DORTHE POSSING A report, “Being a Muslim woman in Denmark,” published in March 2009 and commissioned by the former Danish Minister for Gender Equality, Karen Jespersen, concluded that the circulation of “Islamist” discourses on the Internet and Arabic satellite-TV put young Danish Muslim women’s notions of equality and citizenship at risk. The logic was [...]
BY PETER MANDAVILLE This is real life, engraved on my pages: families dying from starvation whilst the government’s worried about immigration. — Blind Alphabetz, ‘Concrete Landz’ Like everyone today, Young British Muslims are carrying around iPods full of the latest tunes. Despite the recent phenomenal popularity of a pop-oriented variant of nasheed devotional music—a key [...]
BY JEREMY RINKER The tension and excitement were palpable. It was October 2, 2006 and thousands of disaffected youth wagged their fists towards the sky from atop the numerous light posts and vehicles that dotted the divided thoroughfare. Crowds of revelers packed the entrance to the giant stupa which marks the hallowed grounds where, in [...]
BY JOHN N. PADEN Religious affiliation is one of many identities that may be mobilized for political purposes. Succession to leadership in democratic systems is always a political process, and symbol management is an integral part of this process. In pluralistic societies, the ability to balance the ticket, or to convince a multi-ethnic constituency that [...]
BY SALAH A. A. KHADR The importance of religion is by no means receding in the modern world. The salience of religious movements around the globe, and the substantial torrent of commentary by scholars and journalists that have accompanied them, attest to that fact. Whilst the “resurgence of religion” has been welcomed by many as [...]
BY MARC GOPIN There has been so much talk in recent years about radical religion, but so little talk of its roots often in state-based political calculus. From Iran’s strategic interests in affecting the Middle East through terrorist clients like Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Pakistan’s years of support for the Taliban and violent extremists in [...]