Schwanitz, Wolfgang G.

English

Comparativ (E-Journal)

Buchbesprechungen | 117Anmerkungen:1 G. C. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? Post-kolonialität und subalterne Artikulation, Wien 2008 [1985].2 A. Eckert, S. Randeria, Geteilte Globalisierung, in: dies. (Hrsg.), Vom Imperialismus zum Em-pire. Frankfurt am Main 2009, S. 9-33, hier S. 11.It would be daring to review in usual de-tail the 19 chapters of the two books. In-stead, I will offer a focused look on chosen academic trends, name the books‘ authors and contents, and end with an outlook on research. Thankfully, the authors each put in their texts conclusions with endnotes and tables of literature. Both books, which resulted from conferences, are also avail-able in e-versions. Thus, I shall not equip this overview with more bibliographic data, but pick only a few works for mark-ing older and newer trends.Unlike today, early studies about Mus-lims in Europe embraced the global era in a more conducive climate. During the 1990s, many scholars were driven by a bold consciousness of coming and belong-ing together. So, works started also inspir-ing trends on: Arabs and other Muslims in Berlin and Europe; Colonialism; Asians and Africans in German lands; German-Arab, German-Indian and German-Ira-nian clubs; Arabs, Jews and Germans; vice versa Germans in the Mideast; and Mid-east and Europe bridging both the regions also by highlights of global and regional comparative studies such as 125 years of Sues Canal.1 Swiftly, positive attitudes dried almost out with endless wars and terror not only in the Mideast. After 9/11, and similar attacks all over the globe, the storm of hostilities got worse and turned academia upside down. Political Correctness reached bad levels. Higher education looks like split battle-grounds. Driving against the powerful trends, both books keep high standards.However, after the German unification, the finally reorganized archival centers of Berlin gained more attraction. So did the pioneering works on Muslims in Germany by the late Gerhard Höpp who connected to centers in America, Arabia, Israel, the Netherlands, Russia, Great Britain, France and Poland. He engaged as spiritus rector of many ensuing projects, and some of them are still resonating also in the two books under review.2Above all, there grew a need for research on how Muslim concerns and conflicts were settled, or not, from 1919 to 1939, and from 1914 to 1946 as in the second book. In light of multinational parts of Europe, the studies are designed in a trans-cultural fashion. This Muslim life in inter-war Europe quickly unfolded into a wider Bekim Agai / Mehdi Sajid Umar Ryad (eds.): Muslims in Interwar Europe. A Trans-cultural Historical Perspec-tive, Leiden: Brill 2015, 242 S.; Götz Nordbruch / Mehdi Sajid Umar Ryad (eds.), Transnational Islam in Interwar Europe. Muslim Activists and  Thinkers, New York: Palgrave  Macmillan 2014, 250 S.Reviewed by  Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Philadelphia, PA 11 | Buchbesprechungenfield of research. Partially also driven by discoveries in Berlin‘s and Istanbul‘s Islam policies that attracted then and now more Muslim and Islamist residents to Europe, and enhanced by a unique 2015 mass im-migration from Mideastern lands, which traces back to the waves after 1900, the focus shifted from the parallel interwar Mideast to ties within the Islamic Europe in that era.3Inevitably, now studies serve as histori-cal background between then, including ensuing hot and cold wars, and today‘s global war. Besides an all-time topic such as the European empires and the Middle East, in 2008 the theme of Islam in inter-war Europe emerged as a swallow on an ever widening sky along with the topic of Islam and Muslims in Germany that con-tains also articles on Muslims in interwar Europe.4 Other works tried to bridge Europe and the Mideast by specific periods, as for in-stance Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, or Islam in Europe, Revolts in the Middle East which are continued in a variety of books that combine transregional histories in the tri-angle of comparative studies – Regional-historische Komparatistik – in America, the Mideast and Europe. Lately appeared more regionally oriented studies like Mus-lims in Poland and Eastern Europe.5  Since 2013 boomed topical books which included as a major trend a focus on Islam and Nazi Germany, the German-Ottoman jihad in World War One, the Nazi-Islamist jihad in World War Two, the Cold War Is-lam policies of the divided Germany and plots against Christian and Jewish minori-ties within the European states, Islamic lands, the Ottoman Empire and Mideast-ern successor states. In another trend books focus on the immediate aftermath of wars or further also German circles in those lands and ideological points of Islamism and jihadism, mixes of minority and Jew hatreds such as anti-Armenianism.6Thus, both „interwar books“ were writ-ten on recent parallel tracks without being able to take the other same-time studies into account, mostly for one reason: they belong to an obvious 2013 to 2016 pub-lishing boom on similar subjects about ties between America, Germany, Europe, the Mideast and Islamic communities therein. A debate goes on about Euro-Islam or Eu-ropeanized Islam as reform Islam in rela-tion to many kinds of Islamism. How Muslims settled in Europe as minori-ties of newcomers from 1919 to 1939, or up to 1946, is also the key focus of those two books by known authors. In the first book, Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid present an introduction to a trans-cultural history of Muslims in interwar Europe – which is the era of all following contents. The scholars raise guiding ques-tions, for example, how Muslims interacted in new lands of residence, what impacted ties to co-religionists in states of origin and their views on life in Europe or what kind of challenges their stay in Europe had on the societies there. Other questions might have been the German-Ottoman origin of ideas and organizations in the European exile or how Muslims coped with recent atheistic streams like Nazism and Com-munism.Those Muslims kept strains of Islamism. As they discovered Europe from within, their Islamists displayed an inclination to Nazis. But the claim of a „continent as col-onizer“ is questionable. Not all Europeans Buchbesprechungen | 11were of that kind, certainly not Germany in the Mideast, for it had no colonies there and lost in 1919 all the others. Historical-ly, colonialism emerged as a two way lane between the Mideast and the West with the never ending colonialism of Islamiza-tion in a longer duration as the recent „ca-liphate“ indicates. Yet, the British, French and Dutch colonialisms were discussed, though less often recognized by Muslims of interwar Europe as an integral part of the Euro-American enlightenments. But they knew the old colonialism and com-pared its Islamist and Western brands. That much on chosen older and newer trends. Now a few words about the books‘ contents.Gerdien Jonker tackles religious moderni-ty and conversion to Islam in Berlin. Umar Ryad deals with the Salafiyya, Ahmadiyya and European converts to Islam. Likewise Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld discusses the conversion of European intellectuals and the case of Christiaan Snouck Hur-gronje. Naomi Davidson researches social assistance and „religious“ practice in Paris. Klaas Stutje unpacks Indonesian Islam in Europe with a focus on Muslim organiza-tions in the Netherlands and beyond. Ali Al Tuma writes about Moros and Cris-tianos under religious aspects of the partici-pation of Moroccan Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War. Egdūnas Račius explores Mus-lims of Lithuania and the predicament of a torn autochthonous ethno-confessional community. Zaur Gasimov and Wiebke Bachmann reflect transnational life in multicultural space in the light of Azerbai-jani and Tatar discourses in Europe.The second book on transnational Islam, on the other hand, enlarges the scope. Not only does one text include World War One and reaches until the end of 1939. But some of the articles go further. Da-vid Motadel shows the making of Muslim communities in Western Europe. Nathalie Clayer investigates the transnational ties of the Albanian and European Islam in Al-bania. Richard van Leeuwen explores two Ulama traveling to Europe at the begin-ning of the 20th century: Muhmmad al-Wartatani and Muhammad al-Sa‘ih. Götz Nordbruch analyzes Arab scholars at the Institut de Droit Comparé in Lyon, a re-reading in the history of Arab-European intellectual encounters. Umar Ryad writes about a Salafi student, orientalist scholarship, and Radio Berlin in Nazi Germany: Taqi al-Din al-Hilali and his experiences in the West. Moham-med Alsulami examines Iranian journals in Berlin. Humayun Ansari debates Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali’s Transnationalism: Pan-Islamism, Colonialism, and radi-cal politics. Ali Al Tuma surveys victims, wives, and concubines in the light of the Spanish Civil War and relations between Moroccan troops and Spanish women. Those cases and topics call for new com-parative ways and biographies. The con-version of Germans to Islam for instance, which then still rarely occurred, found its contemporary continuation in „Being German, Becoming Muslim“ with some East German touches.7 Comparable are also interwar calls to jihad from Europe to the Mideast with parallel or recent ex-amples of similar appeals, though from the Middle East to „within“ the West. Lacunas lie in theoretical frameworks de-ducted from this fresh richness. Also, two times German detachments of soldiers served in the Mideast, 1914 as partners and even leaders of Ottoman troops in 120 | BuchbesprechungenEurope and Asia, including Arabia and the Caucasus, and in 1941 with Italian troops in North Africa. Returning home, pro-found spin-off effects ensued, often with former comrades in arms like (the German Chancellor to be) Franz von Papen or the ex-general Erich Ludendorff. Both aided Islamists, the 1927 Berlin Islam Institute and 1931 calls to boycott Jews in Germany and Palestine. Clubs like the Orient Club and friendship societies came about on multiple sides based on shared war expe-riences too. Future research may turn to those war beginnings and the under-re-flected economic, cultural and academic facets of interwar Muslims and their Euro-pean counterparts.8 Often authorities tried to accommodate the needs of the new arrivals, just later to be blamed that their „segregational work“ did cement the lives of the „others as the eternal outsiders.“ To study many aspects of a former „learning by doing,“ adds a practical value to both books. In the art of presentation some texts set examples. Others, in the second book, appear to be fetched out of another work and dumped in with almost more endnotes than text pages which does not exactly further the readers lust of knowing.If and when a „Euro-Islam“ emerged in Weimar and Nazi eras is an open point for the differences among Muslims and Islamists, their sects, aspirations and agen-das, partial integration or often isolation, more embedded in transnational webs than in host lands. How did early genera-tions of national and global Islamists like Alim Idris fit into this phase? Sooner rath-er than later inclusive histories of Muslims in Europe are due, then synoptical works on them and other world regions. Next steps may include a closer look into the second half of the past century and more cross-comparisons of Muslim minorities in Europe with minorities in Islamic lands, with Christians and Jews in the Mideast and India. Two books on „Muslims in in-terwar Europe“ are treasure troves of indi-vidual fates and group attitudes. Both fill academic gaps and will surely advance to the core of books. Notes:1  Ausländerbeauftragte des Senats (ed.), Araber in Berlin, Berlin 1992; J. Heidrich (ed.), Chang-ing Identities, Berlin 1994; G. Höpp (ed.), Fremde Erfahrungen. Asiaten und Afrikaner in Deutschland, Österreich und in der Schweiz bis 1945, Berlin 1996. Drawn also of conferences on European-Mideastern ties and some books I edited with related articles therein like “Ber-lin-Kairo. Damals und heute” (1991), “Jenseits der Legenden. Araber, Juden, Deutsche” (1994); “125 Jahre Sues Canal” (1998); “August Bebel, Die Muhamedanisch-Arabische Kulturperi-ode (1884/89)” (1999); with Wajih A.S. Atiq, “Ägypten und Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahr-hundert im Spiegel von Archivalien” (1998).2  An overview is in my obituary “In memoriam Gerhard Höpp (1942-2003)”, in Orient 44 (2003) 3, pp. 339-347 http://www.trafoberlin.de/pdf-dateien/GerhardHoeppPDF300104Ori-entHamburg.pdf (28.06.2017).3  L. Schatkowski-Schilcher; C. Scharf (eds.), Der Nahe Osten in der Zwischenkriegszeit, 1919-1939, Stuttgart 1989; I. Friedman, British Mis-calculations. The Rise of Muslim Nationalism, 1918-1925, New Brunswick 2012, E.-J. Zürch-er (ed.), Jihad and Islam in World War I, Leiden 2016.4  N. Clayer; E. Germain (eds.), Islam in inter-war Europe, New York 2008; A. Al-Hamarneh; J. Thielmann, Islam and Muslims in Germany, Leiden 2008.5  W. G. Schwanitz (ed.), Germany and the Mid-dle East 1871-1945, Princeton 2004; idem with Barry M. Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Mak-ing of the Modern Middle East, New Haven 2014; D. Motadel (ed.), Islam and the European Empires, Oxford 2014; K. Górak-Sosnowska (ed.), Muslims in Poland and Eastern Europe, Warsaw 2011.Buchbesprechungen | 1216  W. G. Schwanitz, Islam in Europa, Revolten in Mittelost, Berlin 2013; idem, Mittelost Mosa-ik 2013, Berlin 2015; idem, Mittelost Mosaik 2014, Berlin 2016; D. Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany‘s War, Cambridge 2014; A. D. W. O‘Sullivan, Nazi secret warfare in occupied Persia (Iran), New York 2014; L. Gossman, The passion of Max von Oppenheim, Cambridge 2013; St. Ihrig, Atatürk in the Nazi imagination, Cambridge 2014; idem, Justifying Genocide, Cambridge 2016, see also my review in H-Soz-Kult http://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-25762 (19.01.2017).7 E. Özyürek, Being German, becoming Mus-lim, Princeton 2015, see also my review in Middle East Quarterly, XXII(09/15/2015)4 (19.12.2016).8 Economics in my articles: Changing or unknown identities? The example of the Deutsche Orient-bank AG in Cairo and Alexandria  (1906-1931), in: J. Heidrich, Changing Identities, Berlin 1994, pp. 401-413 http://www.trafoberlin.de/pdf-dateien/German%20Orient%20Bank%201994%20WGS.pdf (17.12.2016); Aziz Cotta Bey, Deutsche und ägyptische Handelskam-mern und der Bund Ägypter Deutscher Bildung (1919–1939), in: G. Höpp, Fremde Erfah-rungen, Berlin 1996, pp. 359-384 http://www.trafoberlin.de/pdf-dateien/Aziz %20Cotta%20Bey%201996%20WGS.pdf (17.12.2016). Over the last 20 years or so, the general situation in “tiny” Guinea-Bissau1 has gained considerable attention by academ-ics, politicians, and professional officers of various countries, international agencies and organizations. At the centre of this attention: continuous “political instabil-ity”, characterized by heavy infighting among political and military elites as well as a series of coups, accompanied by “state failure”, incapacitated institutions, and an allegedly outstanding role in the illegal trafficking of drugs from Latin America, through West Africa, to Europe. Thus, a small country, ranking among the poor-est in Africa and the world with extremely low human development indicators, very quickly assumed key importance, trigger-ing various interventions by a multitude of different actors (both state and non-state).Against this background, the present vol-ume edited by Patrick Chabal2 and Toby Green seeks to offer a collective effort to keep up with developments and “consoli-date reflection” (p. 2). To this end, it draws on the intimate knowledge of a set of authors of different academic fields most of which have worked and published on different dynamics in Guinea-Bissau for a long time. Comprising ten individual chapters, as well as an introduction and a conclusion, it is organised into three parts that deal with Guinea-Bissau’s “historical fragilities”, “manifestations of the crisis”, and its “political consequences”. In those, the volume touches upon different aspects relating to ethnicity, political institutions, rural economy and society, religion, gen-der, as well as to geopolitics and transna-tional organized crime. Thus, the book sets out to provide a multi-faceted, up-to-date and rather comprehensive overview.The book is framed by the introduction and conclusion provided by Toby Green. Preparing the stage, Green places Guinea-Bissau at the intersection of different glob-al and local dynamics, including in par-ticular transnational organized crime and Patrick Chabal / Toby Green (eds.): Guinea-Bissau. Micro-State to ‘Narco-State’, London: Hurst Publisher 2016, 290 S.Reviewed by  Jens Herpolsheimer, Leipzig

Bekim Agai / Mehdi Sajid Umar Ryad (eds.): Muslims in Interwar Europe. A Trans-cultural Historical Perspective, Leiden 2015; Götz Nordbruch / Mehdi Sajid Umar Ryad (eds.): Transnational Islam in Interwar Europe. Muslim Activists and Thinkers, New York:: Palgrave Macmillan 2014, 250 S.

https://www.comparativ.net/v2/article/download/928/822

Bekim Agai / Mehdi Sajid Umar Ryad (eds.): Muslims in Interwar Europe. A Trans-cultural Historical Perspective, Leiden 2015; Götz Nordbruch / Mehdi Sajid Umar Ryad (eds.): Transnational Islam in Interwar Europe. Muslim Activists and Thinkers, New York:: Palgrave Macmillan 2014, 250 S.

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