Abstract
In this chapter, I consider a peculiar kind of opposition to Europe and a specific way of being anti-European by focussing on a particular allegedly cultural and religious sort of antagonism with respect to the idea of Europe. More precisely, I examine the literature dealing with the public representation of Muslims as ‘a problem’, as the archetypical ‘other’, or even as the ‘internal enemy’ in the USA and Western Europe. Through the analysis of Arun Kundnani’s critique of the Islamophobic narrative surrounding the war on terror, I try to show that not even the radical deconstruction of this narrative is enough, per se, to solve the contemporary predicaments that it correctly points out. Then, I argue that both the ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘war on terror’ paradigms, on the one hand, and the radical deconstructivist approaches to the relationships between American and European societies and their Muslim citizens, on the other, need a critical reconsideration. I thus present an alternative way for framing the question towards a possible solution. While my perspective is mainly normative and philosophical, here I also draw from different kinds of sources.
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Notes
- 1.
Kundnani defines terrorism as ‘violence against innocent civilians designed to advance a political cause’ (Kundnani 2014: 21).
- 2.
See again (Vezzani 2016). In particular, my approach is close to Andrew March’s one (March 2009). Both approaches are Rawlsian, but in my work I emphasise the role of the ‘idea of public reason’ and of public justification, while March focuses on the concept of an ‘overlapping consensus’ and the necessity of presenting an Islamic justification for stabilising the liberal conception citizenship in a proper way (or, as Rawls says, ‘for the right reasons’). In my Ph.D. Thesis, I explain the distinction between March’s comparative ethics and my own approach, that I define “justificatory evaluative political theory.” For the notions of public reason, overlapping consensus, and stability for the right reasons, see John Rawls’s Political Liberalism and “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (respectively, Rawls 1997, 2005).
- 3.
Rawls (2005: in particular xvi–xviii, xxv–xxvi, 36–37).
- 4.
This lack of trust is also shown by the 2009 “Data in Focus Report: Muslims” published by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (http://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2010/eu-midis-data-focus-report-2-muslims), according to which ‘one in four Muslims experienced discrimination and did not report their experiences anywhere,’ and which reveals that 59% of Muslims who did not report discrimination justify their silence by saying that ‘nothing would happen or change by reporting’ (8–9).
- 5.
Note: all websites were accessed for the last time on 25 June 2018. For publications that are available exclusively online (with no downloadable pdf version) page numbers have been omitted.
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Note: all websites were accessed for the last time on 25 June 2018. For publications that are available exclusively online (with no downloadable pdf version) page numbers have been omitted.
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Vezzani, G. (2020). From the Clash of Cultures to the Culture of Clash: Normative Political Theory and the Question of Muslims’ Citizenship in Europe and the USA. In: Baldassari, M., Castelli, E., Truffelli, M., Vezzani, G. (eds) Anti-Europeanism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24428-6_9
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