The resistible rise of Islamophobia

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Poynting ◽  
Victoria Mason
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Racial Hatred ◽  
Immigration And Settlement

This article compares the rise of anti-Muslim racism in Britain and Australia, from 1989 to 2001, as a foundation for assessing the extent to which the upsurge of Islamophobia after 11 September was a development of existing patterns of racism in these two countries. The respective histories of immigration and settlement by Muslim populations are outlined, along with the relevant immigration and ‘ethnic affairs’ policies and the resulting demographics. The article traces the ideologies of xenophobia that developed in Britain and Australia over this period. It records a transition from anti-Asian and anti-Arab racism to anti-Muslim racism, reflected in and responding to changes in the identities and cultural politics of the minority communities. It outlines instances of the racial and ethnic targeting by the state of the ethnic and religious minorities concerned, and postulates a causal relationship between this and the shifting patterns of acts of racial hatred, vilification and discrimination.

Religious Minorities and the Anxieties of an Islamic Identity

2018 ◽  
pp. 164-194
Author(s):  
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Sectarian Violence ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Islamic Identity ◽  
Muslim Minorities

This chapter focuses on two Muslim minorities, the Ahmadis and the Shi`a, and some of the contestations around their position in the state. How these communities have fared in Pakistan is part of the story here, with the Ahmadis being declared a non-Muslim minority in 1974 and significant Shi`i-Sunni sectarian violence in the country since the 1980s. The principal concern of the chapter is, however, to explore the anxieties that the existence and activities of these minority communities have generated among the `ulama and the Islamists. In case of the Ahmadis, the anxieties in question have had to do not merely with the peculiarities of Ahmadi beliefs about the Prophet Muhammad, but with Islamic modernism itself. The anxieties generated by the Shi`a have a different locus, and also go beyond Sunni discomfort with particular Shi`i beliefs and practices. Much more than the Ahmadis, the Shi`a have raised difficult questions about what, if any, kind of Islamic law can be given public force in Pakistan, laying bare in the process nagging uncertainties about whether Pakistan can ever fully claim to be an Islamic state.

Reconciling state promises and practices: Constitutional promises and discrimination against religious minorities

2021 ◽  
pp. 003776862110123
Author(s):  
Roger Finke ◽  
Dane R Mataic
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Minority Religions ◽  
Independent Judiciary ◽  
Poor Predictor

Research on religious freedom has found a vast chasm between constitutional promises and state practices, with constitutional promises being a poor predictor of the state’s support of religious freedom. This research changes the focus from religious freedom to religious equality. We propose that constitutional promises of religious equality will be associated with less discrimination against minority religions and we explore the relationships governance and the promises of religious equality hold with religious discrimination. We find that promises of religious equality are associated with less discrimination. When exploring the interactions between promises of equality and our governance measures, we find constitutional promises of religious equality largely erase the differences in religious discrimination between countries with and without free elections and an independent judiciary. Yet, the reduced discrimination against minority religions does not suggest that the state removes restrictions on minority religions, only that they are equal with other religions.

Joseph II and the Jews: the Origins of the Toleration Patent of 1782

1968 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Paul P. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
Radical Ideas

That Austria's monolithic refusal to tolerate religious minorities within its borders in an age of increasingly general religious permissiveness would not for long outlive Empress Maria Theresa must have been apparent to all but the most obtuse contemporary observers. Throughout the period of his coregency (1765–1780), Joseph II had made it plain on more than one occasion that while, unlike Frederick the Great, he did not believe that all his subjects might attain their salvation in whatever way seemed best to them, he was, nevertheless, aware that many of them would persist in assuring their damnation in spite of the best efforts of Church and crown to save them. And he was unwilling to let the obduracy of a minority of his subjects cause the state to lose their wealth, their services, and their loyalty. Dominated by such radical ideas on the place of religious minorities in a state, Joseph, State Chancellor Prince Wenzel Kaunitz, and Franz Joseph Heinke, once Kaunitz's man but now independently charged with drawing up policy guidelines for a subsequent reorganization of Church-state relations, were as early as 1769 discussing not the advisability of tolerating non-Catholic religions but ways and means of implementing such toleration.

Hindutva: The Larger than Life-size Dream Realized

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110389
Author(s):  
Swamy Kalva
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Sangh Parivar

This article deals with the recent issues of rising mob lynchings, atrocities on Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities across the state. This study asserts that the Hindutva ideology itself is violence provoking one and the Sangh Parivar has started implementing its ideas into practice now. By committing these atrocious acts by the Hindutva mobs and the BJP governments holding the constitutional position and encouraging the mobs to commit the crimes reflects the same—to send a clear message to the religious minorities to live as second class citizens or else leave the country nothing less or nothing more. And nobody is going to escape this larger than life-size ambition of the RSS that India should be a Great Hindu Nation again like the ancient times.

scholarly journals Religious Expertise: Russian Experience

2013 ◽  
pp. 154-164
Author(s):  
Katerina Elbakyan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
European Court

In modern Russia, one often hears about the claims of state bodies to certain religious organizations, mainly related to the so-called “religious minorities”. The result is judicial precedents, when individual religious organizations are forced, often repeatedly, to appeal to the courts of various instances, including the European Court of Human Rights, in order to solve their problems. Sometimes, on the contrary, the state makes charges against religious organizations.

scholarly journals The Cultural Politics of Ethnic Identity in Xishuangbanna, China: Tea and Rubber as “Cash Crops” and “Commodities”

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 109-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet C. Sturgeon
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
The State ◽  
Income Levels ◽  
Cash Crops ◽  
Symbolic Value

In 2003, the poverty alleviation bureau in Xishuangbanna, China, introduced tea and rubber as cash crops to raise the incomes of ethnic-minority farmers who were thought to be backward and unfamiliar with markets. Using Marx's commodity fetish and Polly Hill's critique of “cash crops”, this paper analyses the cultural politics of ethnicity for Akha and Dai farmers in relation to tea and rubber. When the prefecture government introduces “cash crops”, the state retains its authority as the dispenser of knowledge, crops and modernity. When tea and rubber become commodities, however, some of the symbolic value of the commodity seems to stick to farmers, making rubber farmers “modern” and tea farmers “ethnic” in new ways. Through rising incomes and enhanced identities, Akha and Dai farmers unsettle stereotypes of themselves as “backward”. As a result of income levels matching those of urban middle-class residents, rubber farmers even challenge the prevalent social hierarchy.

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