An anthropology of Muslims in Europe - A modest attempt by Martijn
Dertig Nederlandse commando’s en mariniers zijn naar Afrika vertrokken voor de grote anti-terreuroefening Flintlock. En dat uitgerekend in Mali, waar een ontvoerde Nederlander nog altijd spoorloos is, al-Qaeda trainingskampen heeft en rebellen een bloedige strijd voeren met de regering. ‘De minister doet alsof het een training op de Veluwe is met een hek eromheen. Dat is niet zo.’
Why do researchers pick up a particular theme? How does their own life history influence their choices. We often assume and assert that our interest in particular topic is only motivated by the desire to do science. Often of course this is not entirely true. Jessica Stern, a leading expert on terrorism and radicalization, wrote a book. Her book Denial: A Memoir of Terror. About her own coming to terms with being raped as a teenager. She tries to extend her own personal experience to her research on terrorism by focusing on shame and humiliation. A brave account.
Eén bepaalde iemand stuurde mij een Wikileaks cable en even later zag ik hem ook op twitter voorbij komen. De cable geeft een inkijkje in hoe het Nederlandse leger en diplomaten in de loop van 2009 pleitten voor een verlenging van de missie in Uruzgan na augustus 2010. Dit deden ze, volgens de cable, door het proberen te beïnvloeden van bezoekers en beleidsmakers in Den Haag door de positieve aspecten van de Nederlandse missie naar voren te brengen. Oftewel hoe verkopen we een missie of hoe doe je dat juist niet?
The following text was used for a spoken column at the ICCT’s expert meeting on Freedom from Fear: Answering Terrorism with Public Resilience on 3 October 2011. Fear is a drug, and policies and management tactics combined with politicians who use feelings of insecurity and plead loudly for ever harder measures to resolve fear, are nothing less than socially accepted models to achieve ritualistic highs and illusions of safety that in the end do nothing except than cultivate that fear.
Is it possible to have a commemoration that includes alternative meanings of 9/11 and that produces alternative forms of solidarity and public memory?
A weekly round up of writings on the Internet, some relevant for my research, some political, some funny but all of them interesting (Dutch/English). (As usual to a large extent based upon suggestions from Dutch, other European, American and Middle Eastern readers. Thank you all.) This week featuring 10 years after 9/11
Na de aanslagen van 11 september stond terrorisme natuurlijk hoog op de politieke agenda. En dan met name terreuraanslagen (mogelijkerwijze) gepleegd door moslims. Na 9/11 werden moslims dan ook nauwgezet gemonitored door de Nederlandse staat zoals blijkt uit een recent vrijgegeven ‘secret cable’ bij Wikileaks. Het beeld is ontluisterend.
Since 9/11 the issue of radicalization of Muslims is top priority on many policy and research agenda’s. A large industry of research, policy making and advising, counter-radicalization programs and so on has emerged. In this post I will focus on research and the very basic question of what we know by now about radicalization.
In the aftermath of the killings by Breivik in Norway the New York Times had an article on the rise of hostility to Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands, the position of anti-islam populist Geert Wilders. Here is my view on that article and on the situation here.
It is important I think to see how Breilvik’s ideas (but not his actions) not only are derived from bloggers and politicians but also who they resonate with and are grounded on a grassroots everyday level. I also think the Netherlands can give some clues to that and is relevant here since Breivik partly derived his inspiration from Wilders’ Freedom Party ideology. In this blog therefore I will present some material of the Dutch section of the Ethnobarometer research in which we held focus group discussions on issues of security and culture after 9/11, the murder of Van Gogh and the French riots and Muhammad Cartoons. It shows how people struggle with tolerance on the one hand (seen as an important part of Dutch identity) and fear of Islamization and Muslims on the other hand expressed by different modalities of culture talk. While in the case of Bawer, Breilvik and Wilders the presence of Islam and Muslims are seen as the cause of conflict and by definition leading to conflicts, the Ethnobarometer research also revealed mechanisms that can de-escalate conflicts.
