Abstract
As we saw in chapter five, some identity groups have been quite successful in securing formal roles in policy making and discussion at the local government level. By far the majority of these cases deal with African Americans, however, with other local ethnic groups such as Hispanics and Native Americans also gaining some recognition in areas where they constitute substantial proportions of the population. Gays and lesbians have particularly requested formal representation on community review of policing bodies, because of the high incidence of complaints lodged by gay and lesbian groups of police mistreatment. They have, however, in most cases been unsuccessful. I have argued that this is because the recognition of identity groups in the political process has been limited to ethnic minorities, while groups like gays and lesbians continue to be defined as voluntary associations, whose members are grouped together by their “lifestyle choices.” The assumption that membership in them is chosen, has precluded these bodies from being recognized as essential to the construction and shape of individual identities and lives.
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Notes
For an excellent survey of the development of relations between Muslim immigrants and Western host countries see Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Tariq Modood, “Muslims and the Politics of Difference,” in The Politics of Migration: Managing Opportunity, Conflict and Change, ed. Sarah Spencer (Oxford: Blackwell for Political Quarterly Publishing, 2003), 102–3.
Jorgen S. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992). The Honeyford affair in this period, in which racist accusations about minorities were made publicly by the white headmaster of a school in Bradford, with a large proportion of South Asian and Muslim students, helped reinforce a newly emerging political consciousness amongst Muslims.
David Herbert, “Islam, Identity and Globalization: Reflections in the Wake of 11 September 2001,” in Religion, Identity and Change: Perspectives on Global Transformations, ed. Simon Coleman and Peter Collins (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 156.
See Bob Hepple and Tufyal Choudhury, “Tackling Religious Discrimination: Practical Implications for Policy Makers and Legislators,” Home Office Research Study 221 (Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, February 2001), 20.
Iftikhar H. Malik, Islam and Modernity: Muslims in Europe and the United States (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 66.
Bobby Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London: Zed, 1997), 16.
Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam (New York: Routledge, 1995).
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “Muslims in U.S. Politics: Recognized and Integrated, or Seduced and Abandoned?” SAIS Review XXI, 2 (Summer—Fall 2001): 93.
Dale E. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
Garbi Schmidt, “The Complexity of Belonging: Sunni Muslim Immigrants in Chicago,” in Muslim Minorities in the West: Visible and Invisible, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane I. Smith (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2002), 48–9, 114.
Though the transition from ethnicity to religion as the fundamental marker of identity appears to be slower in the United States than in Britain. Garbi Schmidt concludes that ethnic affiliation is still the strongest argument against a unified Muslim American community. See Garbi Schmidt, Islam in Urban America: Sunni Muslims in Chicago (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), 191.
Nathan Glazer, “The Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern,” in From Different Shores: Perspsectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. Ronald Takaki (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994), 11–23.
Agha Saeed, “The American Muslim Paradox,” in Muslim Minorities in the West: Visible and Invisible, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane I. Smith (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2002), 48–9.
Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, 3 (Summer 1993): 22–49.
See Katherine Bullock, “Challenging Media Representations of the Veil: Contemporary Muslim Women’s Re-Veiling Movement,” The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 17, 3 (2001): 22–53.
Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), ch. 8.
See Muslim Women in the United Kingdom and Beyond ed. Haifaa Jawad and Tansin Benn (Leiden: Brill, 2003), xiv.
Nancy Hirschmann, The Subject of liberty: Towards a Feminist Theory of Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 171. When, e.g., the Bush administration went public to justify its attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan, First Lady Laura Bush spoke publicly about the cruelties and oppression enforced upon women by the Taliban, and their need to cast off their veils.
See Irene Donohoue Clyne, “Muslim Women: Some Western Fictions,” in Muslim Women in the United Kingdom and Beyond, Experiences and Images, ed. Haifaa Jawad and Tansin Benn (Leiden: Brill, 2003,) 28–30.
There is an extensive discussion in: Anne Sofie Roald, Women in Islam: The Western Experience (London: Routledge, 2001), ch. 12.
See the detailed discussion in: Jeremy Jennings, “Citizenship, Republicanism and Multculturalism in Contemporary France,” British Journal of Political Science 30 (2000): 575–98.
Jocelyne Cesari, “Islam in France: The Shaping of a Religious Minority,” in Muslims in the West, From Sojourners to Citizens, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 37.
Jane Kramer, “Taking the Veil: How Frances’s Public Schools Became the Battleground in a Culture War,” The New Yorker, November 22, 2004, 66.
Francoise Gaspard and Farhad Khosrokhavar, Le Foulard et la Republique (Paris: La Decouverte, 1995), 204.
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© 2005 Katherine Smits
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Smits, K. (2005). Cultural Recognition and the Claims of Muslim Immigrant Communities. In: Reconstructing Post-Nationalist Liberal Pluralism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980168_7
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