An anthropology of Muslims in Europe - A modest attempt by Martijn
Last year we held the seminar Anthroplogy and/in Publicity. In the coming weeks, between doing research and teaching, I will reflect upon the issue of public anthropology and blogging? In particular I will engage with the question: ‘What is anthropology, if not public’?
In de Volkskrant stelde Wasif Shadid, naar aanleiding van Tofik Dibi’s Final Fatwa, dat allochtone politici het vertoog van de zogenaamde islamcritici overnemen. Dat leverde hem veel kritiek op waarna Latif Hasnaoui het voor hem opnam en zich afvroeg waarom moslim politici het niet meer voor islam en moslims opnemen. Dit leidde tot een debat over cliëntelisme, maar is dat niet de pot die de ketel verwijt?
After the violent clashes in Maspiro, Egypt, that left many Copts dead or injured, anthropologlist Samuli Schielke reflects on the current situation against the background of the Egyptian revolution as part of a tradition of revolutions.
Op vrijdag 7 oktober vond in Den Haag een protest plaats tegen het mogelijke verbod op het dragen van de gezichtssluier. Het protest was niet geheel omstreden. Hier een korte impressie.
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.
Nasrdin Dchar, a Moroccan-Dutch actor, won the Golden Calf (Dutch equivalent for the Oscar) for best actor in the roadmovie Rabat. He delivered a strong and emotional speech that evoked many reactions.
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 the European ‘burqa’ debates (incl. the Netherlands).
Er is een protestactie gepland tegen het mogelijk aanstaande verbod op gezichtssluiers. Deze actie zou moeten plaatsvinden op vrijdag 7 oktober. Daarnaast zijn er meer protesten tegen dit mogelijke verbod, onder meer op Wijblijvenhier.nl
A court in suburban Paris on Thursday handed out fines to the first two women tried in France for violating a ban on wearing face-covering garments in public. The French case is interesting for how it deals with the question of how to impose a law on a type of veil that is considered religious by some while leaving out all references to religion and gender. Similar measures are proposed in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Italy and Belgium already have a similar law.
On Friday 16 September the Dutch Council of Ministers agreed to prohibit covering the face in public space. In this blog Annelies Moors explains the new developments in the Dutch ‘burqa debates’. She argues that the arguments used by the government and politicians in favor of the ban are highly ambivalent and ambiguous and that with the new proposal Minister Donner almost acts as a mufti in declaring what is Islamic and what is not.
