Welcome on this new blog. It is part of the Religionresearch.org site.

WAWGTDAI? is short for What Are We Going To Do About It? A question some people ask when they see, experience, hear things that are at odds with how they think a situation should be. So what to do then? And if to act, how to act? What would be most effective? What would be appropriate according to one’s own moral reasonings and how do people anticipate reactions from others?

About

ACT is a blog run by Fouzia Outmany and Martijn de Koning and attempts to map ongoing developments, controversies and research on Muslim activism. The focus will be the Netherlands but also other countries, in particular the US, UK, Germany, France and Belgium, will be covered. Why the name ACT? See HERE.

The blog includes a monitoring page that tries to list all important blogs, magazines and other channels set up by (Dutch) Muslims. The list will be expanded but you can see it HERE now.

The Research

ACT is part of the research project ‘Forces that bind or divide’ funded by NWO. In this project Annelies Moors, Sarah Bracke, Fouzia Outmany and Martijn de Koning work to analyse modes of intervention related to the Dutch Islam debates from 1989 onwards.

Whereas most research considers Muslims as the object of integration policies, this project focuses on Muslims as active participants and investigates how their interventions produce ties that bind or divide both between Muslims and non-Muslims and amongst Muslims. Have such interventions contributed to development of a Muslim public sphere? To what extent and along which lines is this public sphere fractured? How does such a Muslim public intersect with other religious and non-religious publics? What transformations have taken place in the binding or dividing force of Islam in the Netherlands?

Read more about the project on the Research page.

Contact

We appreciate feedback, ideas, and stuff you may think is interesting for us. So do not hesitate to contact us via the contact page and/or leave your comments.