Shaping the Public Image of Islam: The Shiis of Ireland as “Moderate” Muslims

Abstract

Public discourse on Muslims in Europe has been characterized by a differentiation between "moderate" and "radical" Muslims. This discourse which distinguishes between acceptable and unacceptable forms of Islam also creates tensions and competitions among Muslims with organizations and individuals vying for leadership, recognition, and government sponsorship by presenting themselves as moderate voices within Muslim communities speaking out against extremism and radicalism. In Ireland, the Shii community, its clerical leader and other lay activists emphasize their moderate and integrationist understanding of Islam and appear as outspoken critics of radical and militant expressions of Sunni Islam. Thereby, representatives of the Shii community adopt the differentiation between moderate and radical Muslims in contemporary discourse and conflate it with the historical sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiis, translated into a European diaporic setting. In addition to providing a profile of the Shii community in Ireland, this paper discusses the Shii selfrepresentation as a moderate group among Muslims in Ireland. The reasons and motivations for this particular self-representation in the public will be examined by considering the socio-economic background of early Shii migrants, current streams of Shii thought and its impact on Shiis in Ireland and the double-minority setting as "a minority within a minority".

Editorial

“…There has been a much longer tradition of research on Nizari Ismailis in various diasporic contexts with early research on North America (Nanji 1983 andRoss-Sheriff andNanji 1991) and more recent research on gender and generational dynamics among Nizari Ismailis in Canada (Mukadam and Mawani 2007;Damji and Lee 1995;Bhimani 2017) and Australia (Mitha and Adatia 2016;Mitha et al 2017). In the last two years, more research has been published on Twelver Shia Muslims in Europe (Shanneik et al 2017) 1 with earlier work produced on Germany (Böttcher 2007), Ireland (Scharbrodt 2011;Shanneik 2013Shanneik , 2015Flynn 2013), Sweden (Larsson and Thurfjell 2013) and Denmark (Holm-Pedersen 2014).…”

Moderating Religious Identity and the Eclipse of Religious Wisdoms: Lessons from Hans Frei

“…The moderate/radical binary is amenable to a plurality of uses. Minority groups within Muslim populations in Europe use it to define themselves favorably as moderates over against Sunni communities whom they represent as evincing radicalizing tendencies (Scharbrodt 2011). Nor is the binary always used, as it is in France, to police a public/private boundary that confines religious expression to the latter sphere (see Marvelli 2012, 160-1).…”

Fighting for “Justice”, Engaging the Other: Shi’a Muslim Activism on the British University Campus

“…For this reason, adherents of Twelver Shi'ism 1 and other minority branches of Islam have often been overlooked in studies of Muslims in Europe more broadly; their experiences either glossed over or simply relegated to a caveat or footnote in more mainstream studies on Sunni Muslims (Bowen 2014;Cesari 2004;Grewal 2013;Hopkins and Gale 2009;Meer 2010;Modood 2003Modood , 2006Modood and Ahmad 2007;Roy 2004). However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in these marginalised communities, with a particular emphasis on Twelver Shi'ism and the place of Shi'a Muslims within Europe and the West (Degli Esposti 2018b, 2018aFlaskerud 2014;Scharbrodt 2011;Scharbrodt et al 2017;Scharbrodt and Shanneik 2018;Schmidt 2009;Shanneik 2015;Spellman-Poots 2018;Van den Bos 2012). While much of this emerging literature focuses on Shi'a rituals and practices, migrant spaces, and issues of gender and religious observance, there has been little focus on the ways in which Shi'a minorities actively engage with the wider societies in which they live.…”

“…In particular, a number of research participants highlighted the rise of Islamist terrorism post-9/11 and the prevalence of Wahhabi and Salafi brands of Islam within Britain as a way to stress their alleged difference from "those kinds of Muslims". While the growing influence of extremist interpretations of Sunni Islam within Britain have certainly contributed to an enduring sense of Shi'a difference (Scharbrodt 2011), there is also an important respect in which geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and wider Islamic world have also fostered intra-communal Sunni-Shi'a antagonism within the British context. In particular, the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, and the recent conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, have all nurtured different ideas of what it means to be "Sunni" and "Shi'a" Muslim in the contemporary world (Aly 2015).…”