Evolving Conceptions of Human Rights as a Bourdieusian Distinction Strategy: A Critical Perspective on Policies Targeting Muslim Populations

Nakissa, Aria

doi:10.1007/s12142-020-00579-w

Cited by 1 publication

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“…European state schools take special measures to ensure that Muslims assimilate to a liberal European way of life. This involves teaching children about human rights, and making it difficult or impossible for them to observe orthodox religious norms concerning dress, diet, and worship (e.g., bans on veiling, mandatory swim classes with revealing clothing, compulsion to eat non‐ ḥalāl food) (Bowen, 2007; Engy, 2017; Ewing, 2008; Joppke & Torpey, 2013; Nakissa, 2020a). Adult migrants must take citizenship courses which inculcate liberal values.…”

Section: Post‐colonial Muslim Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Liberalism's distinctive policy for governing Muslim populations: Human rights, religious reform, and counter‐terrorism from the colonial era until the present

Nakissa

2022

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During the colonial era, liberal Western states established vast empires which came to encompass almost all of the world's Muslims. Western states worked out specific methods for governing Muslims, which were often referred to as "Muslim policy". Recent scholarship on Muslim policy exhibits several key trends. One is expansion of geographical scope, leading scholars to produce more comprehensive global accounts of Muslim policy. Another trend is expansion of temporal scope, leading scholars to systematically link colonial Muslim policy with the governance of Muslims in the post-colonial era. A final trend is the reevaluation of liberal governance. Accordingly, scholars argue that, contrary to conventional assumptions, liberal ideology allows for -or even encourages -imperialism, authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, and racism. The present article makes several new contributions. It provides a synthesis of recent studies on Muslim policy -giving special attention to the key trends mentioned above. Moreover, the article proposes a novel way of conceptualizing Muslim policy. It is argued that Muslim policy centers on three overlapping projects: (1) a "human rights" project (2) a "religious reform" project and (3) a security project akin to what is now known

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