This collection presents a comprehensive guide to Islamic movements in Europe, aiming to offer original, definitive perspectives on Muslims and Islam in Europe today. Louise Pears finds this essential reading for policy makers and academics alike who are concerned with Islamism, and indeed those who aim to tackle the Islamophobia that has produced conventional understandings of Islamism as threat

Pears, Louise

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19/12/2014Book Revew: Islamic Movements of Europe: Public Religionand Islamophobia in the Modern World, edited by FrankPeter and Rafael Ortegablogs.lse.ac.uk /lsereviewofbooks/2014/12/19/book-revew-islamic-movements-of-europe-public-religion-and-islamophobia-in-the-modern-world-edited-by-frank-peter-and-rafael-ortega/This collection presents a comprehensive guide to Islamic movements in Europe, aiming to offer original,definitive perspectives on Muslims and Islam in Europe today. Louise Pears finds this essential reading for policymakers and academics alike who are concerned with Islamism, and indeed those who aim to tackle theIslamophobia that has produced conventional understandings of Islamism as threat.Islamic Movements of Europe: Public Religion and Islamophobia in theModern World. Edited by Frank Peter and Rafael Ortega. I.B. Tauris. 2014.Find this book:  Analyses of political Islam are often located within Muslim majority countries,whilst considerations of Islam in Europe are more likely couched in terms offundamentalism and threat, or alternatively integration and cultural cohesion.Islamic Movements makes an important intervention into these debates byconsidering the interaction between Islamic movements, a growing Muslimpopulation, and the structures of European nations. In doing so it contributes toa growing literature within Western scholarship that challenges the distinctionbetween the religious and the secular which is itself a production of a distinctlyEuropean conception of politics. It attempts to give a consideration of EuropeanMuslim organisations that reclaims them from the highly charged politicaldebates.It differs from texts that have preceded it by emphasising the European contextto consider “how the anxieties associated with radical Islam relate to theemergence of a Europe which is inclusive of Islam- and not merely to the features of radical Islamic groups” (p.xiii).With over 70 contributions the text conveys the complexity of the picture. These contributions are organised intothree parts, which gives a clear structure to what might otherwise seem a disparate collection of essays. In turnthese are supported by effective introductory chapters by the editors that help to build the contributions intointerventions into the political and academic literature. In these introductions, the editors grapple with the debatesaround the terms used to describe political Islam, the public, and political debates that this text keys into and theconceptual work around politics and religion that set up the contributions effectively.Part one considers a range of Islamic movements that have originated in Asia and Africa. This immediatelydemonstrates the diversity of context, aim and beliefs across these movements showing how the term “Islamism”cannot stand in for a range of Islamic groups that engage with and conceive of the political in different ways. Parttwo, Islamic movements in Europe, builds on this with essays that consider particular groups and federations withinspecific national settings and essays that consider Islamic guidance and public debates as well as Islamicknowledge and education. The final section, Islamic Movements in Europe: Islamism and Islamophobia, takes eightEuropean countries as case studies to give an account of Islamophobia that does not accept the underlyingassumption that it is motivated by security fears or a clash of civilisations, but rather considers how these debatesemerge from within national contexts.1/2Working through examples from each part of the book shows how they combine to build narratives about theinteraction of political Islam and specific European national settings. For example, in part one Taji-Farouki writes anintroduction to Hizb ut-Tahrir that is thorough, accessible and coherent (p.44). This is built upon in part two by Hamidwho gives an account of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the United Kingdom, that stresses the locally specific articulation of thisgroup (p.201). Still within part two, in the section on Islamic guidance and public debates, Lewis takes the UK as acase study to consider how Imams are taking part and framed within a context of de-radicalisation (p.237). Whilst inthe final section of part two, on Islamic knowledge and education, Nabi looks at the Federation of Student IslamicSocieties (p.301). Then in the final part, the UK case is examined again in Allen’s chapter on the British NationalParty in which he considers how Islamic movements have been framed to enable a resurgence of far right politics inthe UK (p.374). Whilst each chapter provides only a brief snapshot, taken as a group these contributions give amore nuanced account of Islamic movements within the UK.There is considerable variance in the quality of scholarship between the chapters – this is an issue common toedited collections – but the book would be improved by a more consistent standard. For instance, returning to theHizb ut-Tahir example, the chapter by Simonsen on Hizb ut –Tahrir in Denmark is just over one page long andprovides only a cursory account (p.205).A chapter that stood out was Sayyid’s “Poltics of Islam”in which he considers how Islamism presents a challenge tothe West, not on the old ground of existential threat, but because it opens up “the gap between what is universal andwhat is Western” (p.77) In this chapter Sayyid considers how the Western state centric conceptualisation of politicshas presented Islamism as anti-politics. He presents an alternative definition of the political as decision making,which takes into account social relations, subjectivity, and identity and the friend/enemy distinctions that result.Sayyid reframes Islamism “not [as] any particular organisation or movement, but rather it is an expression of Muslimpolitical agency.” (p.77) This powerfully argued piece helps to underline the challenge put forward by this book tounderstand “the anxieties associated with radical Islam” and how they “relate to the emergence of a Europe which isinclusive of Islam” (p. xiii).One criticism of this book as a whole is that despite the fact that it challenges the boundaries that have been drawnup around the political, it maintains a division between the public and private realms by focusing on active politicalgroups, and institutions, thereby reifying a traditional and gendered conception of political space. Perhaps as aconsequence there is little discussion of Muslim women within this book.The strength of this edited collection is its wide ranging scope, but this is at once its weakness because each shortchapter can only offer a shallow account. Overall this book is useful for those who have an interest in political Islambecause it offers a broad brush picture of Islamic movements in Europe. However, it is essential reading for policymakers and academics alike who are concerned with Islamism (and indeed those who aim to tackle theIslamophobia that has produced conventional understandings of Islamism as threat), because it presents an accountof Islamic movements of Europe that can move the debate on productively from the much criticised “clash ofcivilisations” narrative.Louise Pears is a PhD Student in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at Leeds University. Her researchis on the representation of terrorism on television and she uses gender theory, critical race studies, critical terrorismstudies and cultural studies. Her research interests are popular culture, feminism, race, whiteness, and security. Shealso teaches on research methods. She has an MA in Gender Research, an MSc in Gender and InternationalRelations, and an MA(Cantab) in Social Political Science.Copyright 2013 LSE Review of Books2/2

Book review: Islamic movements of Europe: public religion and Islamophobia in the modern world, edited by Frank Peter and Rafael Ortega

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