Afterword: Reflections on nationalism

This chapter reflects on the issues raised in the volume. It examines specifically the history of violence and ethno-religious purification in nationalism. The chapter deals with examples from Europe, Iran, India, and China, showing some general patterns and differences

Muslim bare life in contemporary India

Today Hindutva has become hegemonic to the extent that Muslims not only have to fear for their way of life but also for their own bare lives. The election of Narendra Modi as prime minister is a sign of the changes that have occurred from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-led Hindutva campaigns of the 1980s to the firm grip on government by the BJP-RSS today. Analyses of ‘the success of India’s democracy’ (Kohli, The Success of India’s Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Banerjee, Why India Votes. New Delhi: Routledge, 2014) never seem to take fully into account the importance of religion and religious divisions. This chapter attempts to address the consequences of the rise to power of Hindu civilizational nationalism

The Netherlands and Islam

In the Netherlands and in other Western countries one finds a hostile image of Islam. Only recently we saw this image influencing the panicky reactions to the terrorist attacks on the USA by Arab Muslims. With great speed this attack was connected to statements of a general nature on the essence of Islam and of Muslims. Dutch politicians and Islam scholars spoke in public about the age-old frustration of Muslims that was presumed to be the background of this attack. Almost immediately the question of the loyalty of Muslim immigrants to the Dutch state and to Dutch norms and values emerged in public debate. Opinion polls showed quickly how fickle that loyalty is and how methodologically shaky opinion polls are. This was followed by attacks on mosques and Islamic schools. The urgency of a more sophisticated analysis of the relationship between the Netherlands and Islam is self-evident

Edward Said in the Netherlands

Edward Said's death was front-page news in the Netherlands and a Dutch journalist's interview with him in 1999 was broadcast on national television. This is the kind of attention given only to intellectuals of the stature of Sartre or Foucault. When he saw the interview on television, Pierre Audi, the artistic director of The Netherlands Opera, said that he had felt touched as though by the Allegro of Beethoven's great symphonies

Clifford Geertz: A Memory

On 30 October 2006, Clifford Geertz died at the age of 80. Known among social scientists primarily for his coining of the term “thick description” and his related understanding of culture as “webs of significance,” Geertz also contributed significantly to the study of Islam. In this contribution, Peter van der Veer draws upon personal experiences to contextualize the legacy of this eminent anthropologist

Research Centre Religion and Society

It has become increasingly important to study the social force of both religion and nationalism in many contemporary movements all over the world in an analytical framework cutting across conventional dichotomies. Until now, social theory as well as Western common sense have been often content to assume an ideological a priori distinction between the nationalist and the religious imagination

The nature of love: Harlow, Bowlby and Bettelheim on affectionless mothers

Harry Harlow, famous for his experiments with rhesus monkeys and cloth and wire mothers, was visited by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby and by child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in 1958. They made similar observations of Harlow’s monkeys, yet their interpretations were strikingly different. Bettelheim saw Harlow’s wire mother