Interrogating Muslims: The Liberal-Secular Matrix of Integration

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This book interrogates the patterns and discursive structures that have generated the seeming urgency of Muslims integration. Focusing on Germany, it problematizes the grounds on which politics of integration are justified and reasoned upon, and thereby investigates divergent operations of power vis--vis Muslims and Islam in a formally liberal-secular society. The integration paradigm in Germany has been predicated on an imperial knowledge regime, in which Islam figures as the external friend or enemy of an imagined Christian secular. This book analyzes three kinds of integration practices as symptomatic sites for the multifaceted dimensions of power in this paradigm: the scientific measurement of Muslims degrees of integration which are correlated with their degrees of religiosity; the politics of recognition promoted by state-organized dialogue with Muslims; and the threat of sanction, found in the regulations of citizenship and explicitly in citizenship tests. Centrally, the book argues that the paradigm of integration navigates between universalist claims and particularisticracial and religiousre-enactments of a secular nation-state framework at moments in which this very framework is crumbling.

Reviews

Well-written, perceptive, and un-flinching in its analysis, Schirin Amir-Moazamis Interrogating Muslims is an important and timely intervention into the conversations and contestations around the Muslim Question in Germany. Amir-Moazami shows with rare clarity that we should think of integration less as the incontrovertible good in the contested terrain of majority-minority relations and more as a crucial element in the governance of Muslim minoritiesand in the identity formation of the majority. Through the lens of the Muslim Question, what comes into focus here is in fact the question of Germanys liberal identity itself. * Heiko Henkel, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark *
Schirin Amir-Moazami carefully studies how the structural interrogation of Muslims by state institutions in Europe forms an intrinsic part of the politics of integration. It does not stem from 9/11 and its aftermath, but has a much longer and more structural genealogy that connects it to the liberal-secular matrix, the politics of recognition, and the colonial mindset. This book provides the fundamental critique of integration in relation to Muslims in Europe that we needed. * Yolande Jansen, Associate Professor of Social and Political Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands *
By tracing the connections between the current political occupation with the integration of Muslims and the longer trajectories of nation-state building and European colonial projects, this book provides an important and refreshing contribution to the literature on integration and its discontent. * Birgitte Schepelern Johansen, Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark *

Author Bio

Schirin Amir-Moazami is Professor of Islam in Europe at Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany.