Securitising Citizenship: (B)ordering Practices and Strategies of Resistance

This article builds upon Yasemin Soysal's early work on post-national citizenship as constituting sites of resistance in contemporary European politics. Post-national citizenship provides every person with the right and duty of participation in the authority structures and public life of a polity, regardless of their historical ties to that community. This celebration of human rights as a world-level organising principle is, however, constantly challenged by liberal discourses and practices aimed to securitise identities and citizenships through the bordering of space, place and identities. Proceeding from a critical take on securitisation, we propose that in addition to a focus on the exceptional and on elite speech acts, we need to recognise that it is through everyday practices that people engage in (de)securitising strategies and practices that both rely upon and contest notions of belonging and borders. We exemplify by looking at two (diverse) minority communities in Britain and Canada that have been securitised at transnational, national and local levels, and study the extent to which we can see evidence of everyday resistance through the explicit or implicit use of desecuritising strategies. In both settings, the communities we study are young Muslims

Becoming “Holistically Indigenous”: Young Muslims and Political Participation in Canada

While media and the government often focus on the supposed “radicalization” of Muslim youth in Canada, our research explores the more complicated and nuanced political identities among 20 young Canadian Muslims. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with these youth in the Greater Toronto Area and in London, Ontario, we explore these young citizens' concepts of political participation; conceptions of the self as a political actor; formal, informal, and civic political involvement; and the relationship between their religious and Canadian identities. Our research is grounded in a positive and pluralistic politics of care, respect, and engagement. We treated Muslim youth as similar to other Canadian youth and designed our study guided by other contemporary research into Canadian youth and political participation. While our interviewees noted the impact of negative public discourse about Muslims and some experiences of racism, the research results revealed an overwhelming commitment to Canada and political engagement among Muslim youth, evidenced most fully by a high level of civic engagement

Islamophobia in European Schools: A Multinational Phenomenological Research

This study, which aims to investigate the existence of Islamophobia in European schools, an important part of the social structure, is designed as a phenomenological study. Data were collected through interviews with 36 teachers working in seven different European countries. As a result of the study, Islamophobia has been identified as an unignorable and a major problem in European schools. Moreover, it reveals that the teachers do not have enough knowledge about Islam, but the majority of participants have open or hidden Islamophobic tendencies. In addition, the teachers think that Islamic lifestyles and Muslims are not part of European cultures and that Muslim students should be subjected to intense cultural training. Again, the majority of the participants argue that the fight against Islamophobia can be achieved through prejudice and communication training for teachers. This study is important in that it is a pioneering work in the literature that investigates the entity of Islamophobia among teachers in Europe

Identity Doesn\u27t Form In a Vacuum: Deconstructing the Role of Hegemony in the Identity Formation of Religiously Diverse People

In a post-9/11 world, Muslims and Muslim-looking individuals are perceived as a homogenous group characterized as violent, oppressive, and barbaric. Conflating Islam with negative traits both corroborates and instigates the dominant hegemonic forces, which serve as the filter through which and the context within which identities are formed. In order to destabilize these hegemonic beliefs, this paper builds upon James Paul Gee’s (2001) identity theory, specifically what he terms “new capitalism.” This review finds Gee’s identity theory particularly salient in the current political moment in which Muslims and Muslim-looking individuals feel rejected and Othered in the United States. However, some short-comings were identified. To address them, other scholars such as Jasmine Zine and bell hooks are drawn into the conversation, and a new addition to Gee’s theory is suggested – that of hegemonic perspective, or H-Identity. Through greater focus on and isolation of the hegemonic forces which undergird identity formation, scholars will be better equipped to evaluate the impact of hegemony on religiously diverse individuals and minority groups. Further research on the role of hegemony in the construction of identity among minorities targeted by hegemonic forces is needed. This review may be useful in diverse psychological, political, or educational settings

Canadian Muslim Voting Guide: Federal Election 2019

This guide assigns a grade to each federal political party Leader\u27s response to identified key issues of importance to the interests of Canadian Muslims and the wider geopolitical concerns that affect Muslims globally. The criteria used to determine these grades has been based on whether a party leader\u27s particular political standpoints and/or policy initiatives are positive or detrimental to the interests of Canadian Muslims and the wider geopolitical concerns that affect Muslims globally

Deadly Predators and Virtuous Buddhists: Dog Population Control and the Politics of Ethics in Ladakh

The region of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas has recently seen a rise in attacks by stray dogs, some of which have been fatal. The dogs’ claims on territory have not gone uncontested in an emotional landscape fraught with anxieties over religious identities as tensions prevail between a Buddhist and a Muslim population. Consideration for the political effects of ethical discourses about dogs in Ladakh reveals how dog population control, and the intricately linked question of dog care have implications for the shaping of an animal ethics as a contentious political question. In the public sphere, some interpret matters related to dogs as a problem of human territoriality, while others foreground animal care as a virtue of Tibetan Buddhists. While these ideas about dogs and their treatment are shaped by a network of local and translocal ideas and practices about animal welfare and about religious identity, the politics of dog ethics in Ladakh is not an exclusively human product. Dogs are also agents of this politics, both in their physical capacity, to define dog-human interactions, as they are capable of being both affectionate and extremely violent, and because they have the potential to act on human’s production of meaning and exceed human expectations

A reflection on the Shari’a debate in Britain

This is the published version of this article. ‘A reflection on the Shari’a debate in Britain’. In: (2010) Vol. 13 Studia z Prawa Wyznaniowego (Studies of Ecclesiastical Law), pp. 71-98

Religious faith and psychosocial adaptation among stroke patients in Kuwait: A mixed method study

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Springer Science+Business Media.Religious faith is central to life for Muslim patients in Kuwait, so it may influence adaptation and rehabilitation. This study explored quantitative associations among religious faith, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction in 40 female stroke patients and explored the influence of religion within stroke rehabilitation through qualitative interviews with 12 health professionals. The quantitative measure of religious faith did not relate to life satisfaction or self-efficacy in stroke patients. However, the health professionals described religious coping as influencing adaptation post-stroke. Fatalistic beliefs were thought to have mixed influences on rehabilitation. Measuring religious faith among Muslims through a standardized scale is debated. The qualitative accounts suggest that religious beliefs need to be acknowledged in stroke rehabilitation in Kuwait

Health professionals' perceptions of cultural influences on stroke experiences and rehabilitation in Kuwait

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Informa UK Ltd.Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the perceptions of health professionals who treat stroke patients in Kuwait regarding cultural influences on the experience of stroke and rehabilitation in Kuwait. Health professionals interviewed were from a variety of cultural backgrounds thus providing an opportunity to investigate how they perceived the influence of culture on stroke recovery and rehabilitation in Kuwait. Method: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 12 health professionals with current/recent stroke rehabilitation experience in Kuwait, followed by thematic analysis of the verbatim transcripts. Results: The health professionals identified several features of the Kuwaiti culture that they believed affected the experiences of stroke patients. These were religious beliefs, family involvement, limited education and public information about stroke, prevailing negative attitudes toward stroke, access to finances for private treatment, social stigma and the public invisibility of disabled people, difficulties identifying meaningful goals for rehabilitation, and an acceptance of dependency linked with the widespread presence of maids and other paid assistants in most Kuwaiti homes. Conclusion: To offer culturally sensitive care, these issues should be taken into account during the rehabilitation of Kuwaiti stroke patients in their home country and elsewhere