Sadek Hamid

Tahir Abbas

In the last few decades, the media, academics, and the general public have put considerable focus on Muslim culture and politics around the world. Specifically, the rising population of young Muslims has generated concerns about religious radicalism, Islamism, and conflicts in multicultural societies. However, few studies have been devoted to how a new generation of Muslims is reshaping society in positive ways. In Political Muslims, Abbas and Hamid provide a new perspective on Muslim youth, presenting them as agents of creative social change and as active participants in cultural and community organizations where resistance leads to negotiated change. In a series of case studies that cross the globe, contributors capture the experiences of being young and Muslim in ten countries—the United States, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, and Indonesia. They examine urban youth from various socioeconomic backgrounds, addressing issues that range from hybrid identities and student activism to the strategic use of music and social media. With diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches, Political Muslims gives readers a nuanced and authentic understanding of the everyday social, economic, and political realities of young people.

Understanding Youth Resistance in a Global Context

Political Muslims

This edited collection is a cogent exploration of how the events of September 11 and the subsequent war on terror have impacted on the lived experiences of British South Asian Muslims in a number of important spheres, namely, religious and ethnic identity, citizenship, Islamophobia, gender and education, radicalism, media and political representation. The contributors to this volume are specialists in the fields of sociology, social geography, anthropology, theology and law. Each of the chapters explores the positions of South Asian Muslims from different analytical perspectives based on various methodological approaches. A number of the chapters carry primary empirical analysis, therefore making this one of the most pertinent compilations in this field. Other contributions are more discursive, providing valuable polemics on the current positions of British South Asian Muslims.

Communities under Pressure

Muslim Britain

Christopher Allen

Jasmin Zine

Halil Ibrahim Yenigun

Nancy Gallagher

Nancy L. Stockdale

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam. Submissions are subject to a blind peer review process.

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:3

New perspectives on ethnic relations, Islam and neoliberalism have emerged in Turkey since the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002. Placing the period within its historical and contemporary context, Tahir Abbas argues that what it is to be ethnically, religiously and culturally Turkish has been transformed. He explores how issues of political trust, social capital and intolerance towards minorities have characterised Turkey in the early years of the 21st-century. He shows how a radical neoliberal economic and conservative outlook has materialised, leading to a clash over the religious, political and cultural direction of Turkey. These conflicts are defining the future of the nation.

Ethnicity, Islam and Politics

Contemporary Turkey in Conflict

Terrorism and radicalisation are increasingly dominating sociological, political and cultural concerns. Extremism, violent or otherwise, does not emerge in a vacuum. Tahir Abbas explores how the problems causing violent extremism are local, and therefore, so are the solutions. The concept of countering violent extremism delivers community and youth developmental projects as a process of social engineering that aims to discourage, disengage and de-incentivise vulnerable young people on the verge of radical political views. This book aims to understand the concept of countering violent extremism from a global perspective using case studies from different countries, while examining the host of issues it carries.

The International Deradicalization Agenda

Countering Violent Extremism

Since the 1970s, there have been three challenges to traditional, homogeneous "national" identities across the Western world: political and socioeconomic inequality; neoliberal globalization; and more diverse, multicultural societies. As in the US and elsewhere in Western Europe, the declineof an old, masculinized national identity has now begun to open a new, dark era for Britain. Ever since the "war on terror" was added to the mix, "others" in Britain have been brutally demonized. Muslims, routinely presented as the source of society's ills, are subjected to both symbolic and actualviolence. Deep-seated and structurally racialized norms amplify the isolation and alienation impeding Muslim integration. Both these "left-behind" Muslims and white-British groups who perceive themselves as the true nation are under pressure from ongoing geopolitical concerns in the Muslim world, aswell as widening divisions at home. Tahir Abbas argues that, in this context, the symbiotic intersections between Islamophobia and radicalization intensify and expand. His book is a warning of the world that results: a rise in hate crime, the institutionalization of Islamophobia, and thenormalization of war and conflict.

A Vicious Cycle

Islamophobia and Radicalisation

Islamic political radicalism in Europe has seen dramatic growth in recent times. This book offers a sociological, anthropological, psychological and political science analysis of the causes and consequences of this phenomenon.Authors explore the motivations behind such radicalism, focusing on an array of different factors. These include economic and social alienation, political and cultural marginalisation, gender and masculinity, and psychological issues, both at an individual and community level.Other issues discussed are the state responses, national and international, to the 'War on Terror' which came about after the attacks on America in September 2001; and the role of Islamic political organisations and their impact on changing ethno-religious identities. This is considered particularly in relation to concept of the Ummah and its influence on the position of Islam and Muslims in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, as well as Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir.The authors provide an a

A European Perspective

Islamic Political Radicalism: A European Perspective

Mohammad Mazher Idriss

Why are honour killings and honour-related violence (HRV) so important to understand? What do such crimes represent? And how does HRV fit in with Western views and perceptions of Islam? This distinctively comparative collection examines the concept of HRV against women in general and Muslim women in particular. The issue of HRV has become a sensitive subject in many South Asian and Middle Eastern countries and it has received the growing attention of the media, human rights groups and academics around the globe. However, the issue has yet to receive detailed academic study in the United Kingdom, particularly in terms of both legal and sociological research. This collection sets out the theoretical and ethical parameters of the study of HRV in order to address this intellectual vacuum in a socio-legal context. The key objectives of this book are: to construct, and to develop further, a theory of HRV; to rationalise and characterise the different forms of HRV; to investigate the role of religion, race and class in society within this context, in particular, the role of Islam; to scrutinise the role of the civil/criminal law/justice systems in preventing these crimes; and to inform public policy-makers of the potential policies that may be employed in combating HRV.

Tahir Abbas

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