A new book gives a fascinating insight into why Germans convert to Islam despite suffering widespread marginilisation and hostility. Its conclusions will resonate with the growing numbers of converts and the role of Islam across Europe and beyond.
Being German, Becoming Muslim: race, religion, and conversion in the New Europe, by Dr Esra Ozyurek of the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science, focuses on contradictions and challenges in the lives of converts to Islam, and aims to understand what it means to embrace Islam in a society that increasingly marginalises and racialises Muslims. The book will be launched at LSE tomorrow (Wednesday January 21).
It explores different ways in which converted German Muslims—who now number in the tens of thousands—accommodate Islam to German identity and carve out legitimate space for Germans in the Ummah, the global community of Muslims. It analyses how today’s German converts come to terms with their admiration for Islam alongside the widespread marginalisation of Muslims. How and why can one love Islam, yet find it so difficult to love immigrant Muslims or their Islamic practices? What does it mean to be a “white” Muslim when Islam is increasingly racialised? How do German Muslims relate to immigrant Muslims once they convert? How do previously Christian or atheist German Muslims shape debates about the relationship between race, religion, and belonging in Germany?
In a political climate that sees no place for their religion and is antagonistic toward their conversion, some German converts try to open up a legitimate space for Islam by disassociating it from Turks and Arabs. Some promote the view that Islam can be experienced as a German religion; others call for a totally postnational Islam. Both groups argue that being German is not only compatible with but also can even lead to a better way of being Muslim, and some advance the idea that becoming Muslim can be an especially proper way of being German. In doing so, German converts to Islam simultaneously challenge and reproduce biological and cultural racisms as well as a homogeneous understanding of a German and European culture.
Dr Özyürek, Associate Professor in Contemporary Turkish Studies, commented: "Looking at the lives of converts helps us go to the root of challenge of religious diversity in our continent. The harder it feels to bridge being European and Muslim, space for radicalization grows."
The Launch
Date: Wednesday 21 January 2015
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, LSE
Speaker: Dr Esra Özyürek
Discussants: Dr Ruth Mandel, Dr Nasar Meer, Professor Joel Robbins
Chair: Professor Deniz Kandiyoti
NOTES
The book is published by Princeton University Press. To request a review copy, please email: julia_hall@press.princeton.edu|
To reserve a seat at the launch please email LSE.Press.Events@lse.ac.uk|
If you would like to interview Dr Ozyurek, please email e.g.ozyurek@lse.ac.uk|
Ruth Mandel is Reader in Social Anthropology at University College London.
Nasar Meer is Reader in Comparative Social Policy and Citizenship at Strathclyde University and a Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Fellow.
Joel Robbins is Sigrid Rausing Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
Deniz Kandiyoti is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009.
20 January 2015