Managing Muslim Visibility: Conversion, Immigration, and Spanish Imaginaries of Islam

Abstract

This article explores the efforts of Muslims, particularly European converts and Moroccan immigrants, to represent Islam in southern Spain. It examines Muslims' different representational strategies; their debates about representation; and related tensions between converts and immigrants regarding religious authenticity, representational authority, and social inequalities. The article contributes to understandings of Islam in Europe by examining how Muslims' representational practices unfold in Andalusia, a social context shaped by both pan-European, secular concerns about Islam, and a longstanding local tradition that both shuns and celebrates Spain's Muslim heritage. The author argues that converts' and immigrants' different placement in Spanish racialized imaginaries of Islam, uneven access to romantic historical narratives of Muslim Spain, and distinct structural positions in Spain's political economy converge to produce an unequal multiculturalism. This is expressed in converts' and immigrants' racial, gendered, and class-based anxieties about representing Islam in Spain. [immigration, conversion, Islam, Europe, minorities, representation]ABSTRACTO Este artículo investiga las diferentes motivaciones y estrategías utilizadas por musulmanes, tanto conversos Europeos como inmigrantes Marroquíes, para dar una buena imágen del Islam en la ciudad de Granada, España. A través de una descripción etnográfica de sus diversas prácticas de representación, el autor analiza varias cuestiones que dividen la población musulmana en Granada, sobre quiénes protegen la autenticidad religiosa y quiénes tienen la autoridad de representar el Islam en Andalucía. Estas discusiones entre musulmanes conversos e inmigrantes reflejan las desigualdades entre ellos, y sus diferentes posiciones dentro de las estructuras políticas, sociales, y económicas en Granada. Además, resultan de las distintas maneras en las que los conversos y los inmigrantes son vistos y tratados en Granada, una ciudad en que opiniones sobre el Islam han sido siempre influidos por una dualidad de la memoria histórica local, en la que se celebra y se huye a la vez del pasado musulmán de Granada.

Demolitions and Amendments: Coping with Cultural Recognition and Its Denial in Southern Israel

“…There is a spatial dimension to this delineation of acceptable and unacceptable forms of difference, though this is not primarily a distinction of public and private space, as it is in many multicultural settings (Rogozen-Soltar 2012;Silverstein 2004;Werbner 2002). Rather, in an Israeli state where disputants so closely bind place and identity because of the centrality of land for competing Jewish Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms (Zerubavel 1995), the spatial dimension of difference plays out in terms of landscapes.…”

The emerging visibility of Islam through the powerless: Indonesian Muslim domestic helpers in Hong Kong

“…It should be noted that the cultural diversity of Indonesian FDWs are extensively heterogeneous, not all of them are religious, and some of them are non-Muslims. Yet, this paper focuses on the majority of Indonesian FDWs as Muslims, and their choice to incorporate their piety into their lifestyle, thus rendering religion visible before the eyes of their employers and public audience in Hong Kong. Mainstream literature identifies the increasing public visibility of Islam across global cities (Endelstein and Ryan 2013;Göle 2002Göle , 2011Ho 2009;Hopkins and Greenwood 2013;Landman and Wessels 2005;Rogozen-Soltar 2012;Schmidt 2011;Subijanto 2011;Yel and Nas 2014). But different from the outbreak of public opposition, political resentment, and even waves of Islamophobia, this paper shows how some Hong Kong employers and portions of the public do not stigmatize this emerging trend, but are unable to understand how religious piety impacts the daily lives of Indonesian Muslim FDWs.…”

“A Logic of Camps”: French Antiracism as Competitive Nationalism

“…To that end, this consideration traverses and contributes to several key literatures. The anthropology of Europe has grown substantially over the past decades marked by, among other things, cautious scholarly interest in incipient supranational belonging (Balibar and Collins 2003;Borneman and Fowler 1997;Shore 2000), a continuing fascination with the problems of multiculturalism and large-scale legal pluralism (Al-Sayyad and Castells 2002;Michaels 2009;Wieviorka 1994), and swelling concern for the dilemmas of pan-European secularism and Islam in the public sphere (Al-Sayyad and Castells 2002;Goody 2004;Rogozen-Soltar 2012). Building on these, this article examines the persistence of nationhood despite intensive regionalization pursued by statesmen and lawmakers in the same period.…”